Spending Review: Intergenerational Fairness and Well-being

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean

Monday 20th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I commend the noble Baroness and her colleagues on the Select Committee on Intergenerational Fairness and Provision for its report. It has just come out and I read it over the weekend. I like the sentence in paragraph 3:

“Policy based on the expectation that future generations will disproportionately pay for present or past consumption cannot be considered just or sustainable”.


I agree with that. One of the ways of reducing intergenerational unfairness is to take further steps to reduce the deficit, and the report explains exactly why it is unfair for any Government to go on borrowing and borrowing and load on to subsequent generations ever higher debt. I hope that that part of the report will encourage support for the difficult decisions that the Government may have to take on public spending.

On the specific question about publishing a distributional analysis of the impact, I understand that that is quite difficult to do. If, for example, the Government decide to spend more money on high-quality childcare, would that score as an advantage for the child, who is getting the benefit of the childcare, or as a benefit for the parent, who would then be able to go out to work or who would not have to pay for that childcare? There are some real issues about definition before we can go too far down the road of identifying a solution along the lines suggested by the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that one of the most important problems here is the enormous debts that young people are building up through university charges? Our generation did not face such huge debts but the next generation does. As far as I can see that is one of the most important issues. I wonder what the noble Lord thinks about that point.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Steps were taken last year to raise the threshold at which debt starts to be repaid. However, as I said in my original reply, one of the report’s recommendations is to take this issue into account in the spending review. However, we have seen a huge reduction in unemployment among young people, with the rate among 16 to 24 year-olds having halved since 2010, which is a good record.

Voter Registration

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

That goes way beyond my negotiating brief and takes us into very difficult territory about the future of the common travel area in Northern Ireland. I repeat that we have had a debate about ID cards and the Government have made their position clear. We are not minded to introduce them in the UK.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

My Lords, have the Government done any calculations about the demographics of the electorate in coming years? Can the Government give any idea of the number of people aged 18 who will be joining the electoral register and the rate of attrition among older people who will be leaving the electoral register?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The short answer is no. But the noble Baroness will be pleased to hear that, since IER was introduced, 5.7 million people between the ages of 16 and 24 have joined the register, so we have had some success in getting that end of the register backfilled. So far as the other half of her question is concerned, I will have to write to her.

Brexit: Economic Impact

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I say to my noble friend that this country has been through a fairly divisive referendum campaign. I do not think it of great advantage to rerun some of the issues that were ventilated. We should do all we can to bring Brexiteers and Remainers together. In a direct answer to his question, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister made it clear that they are no longer seeking a surplus in the government accounts by the end of this Parliament—that target has been postponed. Therefore, some of the imperatives that my noble friend has just referred to are not as essential as they were under the previous Chancellor.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

My Lords, last week a colleague of mine who sits on the board I chair told me that his company was removing its headquarters from London to Paris as a direct result of the decision to leave the European Union. Can the Minister tell us how many companies have already taken that decision, and whether, on this issue, the Government are at least keeping a running record of those decisions?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I do not know how many companies have made that decision. I hope some of them might wait to see the outcome of the negotiations. We have seen significant investment, for example, by SoftBank, which is investing £24 billion in this country through ARM Holdings. We have seen investment by GlaxoSmithKline and we have seen Apple deciding to locate its new offices at Battersea Power Station, so it is not all one way as the noble Baroness has implied.