Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bird, who is a man of action. I still buy the Big Issue, and a year ago a seller told me how it had turned his life around. I will support the Bill, even though I have doubts about its practicality. Dickens gave us a warning in Little Dorrit about the Circumlocution Office and its ability to obstruct progress.

I make a plea to the noble Lord to choose his examples more carefully. The old mental asylums were appalling places where people were incarcerated for years in appalling conditions. Community healthcare, first introduced by the Italians, was a major step forward. Of course, we need more of it and probably different varieties, but it was a major step forward.

Student fees, contrary to the noble Lord’s assertion, were first introduced by a Labour Government and saw a massive increase in working-class children deciding to go to university—often the first in their family to do so. When the previous Government decided to raise the fees to nearer £9,000, I was a bit concerned, but in fact the statistics showed us that working-class children continued to go to university. Of course we need to review the policy—apprenticeships now also need to be taken into consideration—but we should not ignore the fact that it was an important increase in social mobility.

I also have to take issue with my noble friend Lord Brooke, who referred to population control. The last person who gave that issue major impact was Malthus, who predicted that the world could never survive if the population increased from the then current number. It has of course increased phenomenally. Even the Chinese Government, with their dreadful means of trying to achieve population control, have realised that that is not the right way forward. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, reminded us, there really is a need to remedy the intergenerational compact. Is maintaining the triple lock really fair when we need to be spending more on the younger generation?

I might not go as far as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, because I think there are aspects of the Bill that are worth looking at. I remind people that the Environment Bill, even though the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, is very sceptical, is an attempt to look forward, provided that we do not set ridiculous targets—some were unfortunately posed in the recent debate on the Environment Bill—and provided that we base our approach on evidence, reckoning that this generation also has to be able to afford advances in the environment.

So we should give further time to the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Bird. Whether or not it proves to be practical, it is worth the effort, for the reasons that a number of noble Lords have given. In these circumstances, I will be supporting it.