Economic Growth

Lord Swire Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, on that note, I do not want to do anything this afternoon to dent the happiness index. I start by referring to my entry in the register of interests and by joining in the thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for instigating this debate and for what I thought was an exceptional speech with a lot of meat in it.

I recently read an article by that eminent Oxford political scientist, Professor Ben Ansell, who asked what this Government’s theory of growth was and came up with the conclusion, rather disappointingly, that there was no consistent theory or ideology. I do not know whether that is true, but I do know that there are a lot of mixed messages coming out of the Government at the moment.

I have been following closely the utterances of the Chancellor in Davos. She is saying some very interesting and, to my way of thinking, very positive things. One thing she said is that growth is to triumph over all else. However, at the same time as she is saying that, other members of her Government, including Ed Miliband, are still rushing to net zero. At the same time, we are told, we are looking at the prospect of an energy deficit, and there can surely be no greater impediment to growth than rationing power, which is something we might be looking at. These inherent contradictions unfortunately permeate through all parts of government thinking on growth. We are closing down the North Sea at the same time that President Trump’s mantra is to drill, drill, drill. Someone is right, and I do not think it is us.

This afternoon I want to talk about a couple of things. One is education. I simply do not understand where the Government are coming from in tinkering with our academies. I no longer know whether the Prime Minister thinks that academies are good or bad: there seems to be no consistency. The Government have driven 20,000 fee-paying students into the state school sector—which is struggling to accommodate them, and I have no doubt that there will be more to follow—and are changing the national curriculum. I ask the Minister: are they doing all these things out of a narrow ideology, or do they genuinely think it is going to better equip our young workforce for the workforce challenges ahead, particularly in the competitive world of things such as AI and quantum computing?

We know that unemployment is up and that NICs are going to attack all, not least the lowest paid—we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, about hospitality, which is going to be adversely hit—and those on the bottom rung of the employment ladder.

We know that we have a problem with productivity. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Desai; we are now signing off many more people for all kinds of mental health reasons. I read a very good article by the noble Lord, Lord Rose of Monewden, who said that working from home is a disaster and that in his opinion the country has gone back 20 years in the past four. The Government can show a real commitment to productivity and growth by insisting that civil servants return to their desks. In the United States, President Trump is about to sack great rafts of employees who refuse to do that.

The Government are now talking about tinkering with the visa regime to fill knowledge gaps in AI and the life sciences. Is that a tacit admission that we are unable to provide people of that quality in our own country at a time when we have a record population of 67 million, up from 50 million in 1950?

I want to think about our image abroad. What are we trying to sell to the international investment community? Are we to be a low-regulated, highly taxed digital economy or something different? We should look again at how we attract inward investment. I welcome the fact that we will look again at the non-dom policy. Millions of pounds have left this country; these people are highly mobile and, once they go, it is astonishingly difficult to attract them back.

Those are all the negatives. The positive is that the UK is still the second most popular place to invest. We have huge convening power, unequalled soft power and links through all the great international bodies, from NATO to AUKUS and the Security Council. And yes, we have the Commonwealth, which I go on about regularly—56 willing countries that would trade with us much more if only we were prepared to show that we took them seriously and wanted to trade with them.