Comprehensive Spending Review

Lord St John of Fawsley Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, I must crave the indulgence of the House for speaking to your Lordships with laryngitis, but my presence is an earnest of the Church of England’s profound concern about the issues before us today.

There are aspects of the comprehensive spending review that we on these Benches would be happy to acknowledge and applaud, not least the commitment to protect overseas aid spending, the re-emphasis on the rehabilitation of prisoners and the proper commitment to prevent structural and personal debt running out of control. However, noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that, like most bishops, I am hearing a great deal of genuine anxiety and concern in my diocese among serious people—vice-chancellors, local authority chief executives, health managers and businesspeople—since the Chancellor sat down after delivering his spending review Statement. Local government chief executives express profound concern about the termination of the so-called specific grants and are deeply concerned about the £2 billion black hole in local authority support that was reported in last week’s MJ.

I cannot help coming to the conclusion that there is a gap between a London-centred debate about debt reduction and a different debate in the regions about the extremely painful consequences that are having to be managed by those not privy to the initial decisions. There is genuine fear among some of the most vulnerable people that their already difficult lives are to be made effectively impossible by the assault on benefits. As we all know, there is a growing sense of indignation, which I do not necessarily condone but which I certainly understand, that in the City of London and in the boardrooms of too many companies, it is business as usual with inflated salaries, enormous bonuses and apparent disregard for the Government's rhetoric that we are all in this together.

I am not an economist, but I am well aware that professional economists by no means agree that the Government's approach to the deficit is necessarily the right one. Where the discipline of economics is divided, we expect the Chancellor to be light on his feet and ready to change direction if the impact of his policies turns out to be dramatically different from what is predicted. The Treasury does not know, any more than I do, which group of economists is correct, but the well-being of millions of our fellow citizens depends on the Chancellor getting this right and having the courage to change direction if necessary.

I want to make one key point that is not dependent on economic expertise but is about the kind of society that we think that we are building. How on earth is the so-called big society vision of stable, mutually supportive communities to be enhanced by changes to housing benefit that will drive poorer people into what amount to townships in the undesirable areas of our towns and cities? That is the inexorable logic of capping housing benefit. More than that, how will limited tenure of social housing help us to build the big society? It is precisely the long-standing residents whose family commitments have begun to recede who are the linchpins that bind a neighbourhood together. The very people who will be the foundation of a bigger, more mutual and caring society are being told that they cannot take security of tenure for granted. The importance of stable populations in neighbourhoods and communities appears to count for nothing. I am led to suspect that any money saved by moving people out of their homes will have to be spent many times over on supporting and managing the problems that follow when formerly stable communities become home to transient populations of insecure tenants who have no incentive to act as though they belong to their neighbourhood. Why should they try to belong when successive governments’ housing policies have created, not a big society, but a very thin, rootless society among those who rely on social housing?

The reason why people rely on social housing is, basically, not fecklessness or inadequacy but simply because our mismanaged housing market has fallen out of step with our deeply unequal labour market. When hard work does not pay enough to pay for decent housing, we had better act to raise wages or create more houses to bring their price down. On both counts, successive governments have been too shy of acting. The present belief that cutting housing benefit will depress the market and reduce private sector rents might just work if there were more houses to meet the demand. As it is, all the risk is being borne by the vulnerable, not the comfortable.

[Lord St John of Fawsley]

My Lords, what the country now needs is not blame for the deficit—we all know who is responsible for that. What we want is hope for the future, which is the second of the theological virtues faith, hope and charity. Anybody listening to the Minister’s speech will note a very subtle but clear change in what he was saying. It was shot through with hope for the future, and also flexibility. Congratulations to him for doing so.

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, it seems to me that hope for the future depends on ensuring that those who are most vulnerable, those who are most excluded and those who most depend on the state for any kind of security are made secure by these changes. Hope for the future depends on recognising the widespread damages to society and to social justice from ever-widening inequalities, which have been widely researched and established by many authorities. We do not create a fair society—let alone a big society—by placing some of our fellow citizens beyond the reach of social solidarity. I hope that such is not the intention of the Chancellor but I fear that it may be the effect of some aspects of the review. I hope that the indignation of many people in my diocese turns out to be uncalled for, but I fear that this may be just the beginning, for the cuts have not yet begun to bite deeply.

I trust that the Chancellor will prove quick to turn again if the harm caused by his policies becomes a price not worth paying for merely economic rather than fully social recovery. The Church of England remains committed to work with government and with others to respond to the vision of the big society, but I fear that the comprehensive spending review has made that vision much harder to realise and even more necessary.