Future of Work

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Knight on ensuring a debate on this vital issue and on his tour de force contribution. I thank the Library for producing its usual high-quality briefing. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, on her contribution. However, I make one small correction, which extends also to the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft. I am campaigning for people not to refer to skills as “soft” but rather as essential. I encourage the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, not to worry about her children as they have the biggest advantage of all in having a supportive, caring and stable family. My experience as a school governor of a primary school tells me that children who have that benefit will undoubtedly succeed in life.

Given the time limit, I shall focus on a few issues. However, I make the general comment that there are differing views on the future of work, with some forecasters saying that there has been a doomsday analysis many times in the past and yet the overall number of jobs has continued to grow in industries whose existence we could not have predicted—what I call the Panglossian view that everything happens for the best in this best of all possible worlds. However, even if you take the more pessimistic view evinced by my noble friend Lord Giddens, one thing is certain—namely, that the world of work continues to change, and at a faster rate, as he rightly said.

Demographic change presents another challenge in developed countries: as the birth rate falls it is counterbalanced by the increase in longevity, which means that people either choose to work longer because they find that it gives meaning to their lives or because the economic circumstances, including the raising of retirement ages, require them to remain in the world of work. We still tend to look at work as a continuum whereby we finish full-time education and, if we are lucky, enter the world of work until retirement, unless parenthood, caring responsibilities or redundancy disturb that continuum. We still practise what I describe as cliff-edge retirement at the end of employees’ careers. Surely it is time that we encouraged a phased approach to retirement, as other noble Lords have said, including my noble friend Lady Bakewell, which enables the transfer of valuable skills and experience to the next generation. Can the Minister tell the House what policies the Government have, or intend to develop, to encourage phased retirement?

The report gives many examples of the need to ensure that young people and those retraining are equipped with the necessary IT skills clearly essential in the 21st century. I could not help smiling when I heard my noble friend Lord Giddens refer to the existence of 2.4 billion smartphones. There probably are but I can tell noble Lords one thing: there are not 2.4 billion smart users, including me.

I want to focus on a sector that has already been referred to, where employment opportunities continue to rise, as many people have said. Regrettably, work in the care sector has a reputation for low pay and low skills, yet we all know that the need, given increased longevity, is exponential, as a number of noble Lords have said. There is a vital need for action to be taken to ensure that we enhance the reputation of work in the care sector, encouraging people to see this as a worthwhile career. After all, this is an issue where we all have a vested interest. Different models of employment in this sector are urgently needed, encouraging co-operatives and the not-for-profit models where workers share in the success of the care home and develop a long-term interest. The current model is not working, with thousands of care homes closing and horrendous examples of abuse exposed by individuals and the Care Quality Commission. Whatever robots may be developed, I doubt that we will develop empathetic ones.

Whichever view you take on the future of work, I agree with my noble friend Lord Giddens and others that we cannot afford to be complacent. We have to equip young people, and the not so young, with genuinely transferrable skills. There is a huge debate to be had on where we deploy our education resources. We spend billions of pounds on education but there still seems to be a divide between vocational and academic education, when we know that such a strict divide does not exist and that that is not what the skills requirement suggests that we need. We need to be more supportive of creative skills and recognise their huge potential in the work sphere.

I am nearing the end of my contribution and will focus on just one other thing. Noble Lords have talked about the redistribution of wealth and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, rightly referred to a new global tax system. Workers’ rights in a gig economy have been referred to and the Taylor report focused on the importance of that. Our economy is still too London-centric. The devolution of power has a role to play in this regard, not just through a northern powerhouse but in all the regions of the United Kingdom. We used to think in the trade union movement that one thing would be the answer to all our problems, but I have not heard it mentioned today—namely, the theory that with increased automation we might have a shorter working week. We can dream, can’t we?