Comprehensive Spending Review

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, as other noble Lords have said, this stage of the debate is quite difficult. However, I refute what the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, said, when he said that others say that nothing should be done. I cite the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, who said that it is a question of timing, severity and pace, and the current Government have got it wrong.

The noble Lord, Lord Stewartby, who is currently not in his place, spoke about people talking about gloom and doom in 1981 which did not happen. When I was on the Lancashire County Council with the noble Lord, Lord Greaves—now a member of a government party—Lancashire was knocked for six by government policies in 1981. Some of the Conservatives down in London never noticed it happen. Lancashire County Council's response concerned the discretionary element of local government—educational maintenance awards—particularly for young people in areas such as Skelmersdale. It is pretty horrific to see that progress being withdrawn.

The reduction referred to in local authority budgets is approximately 27 per cent over four years. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to the community and officers in Lancashire. All around the House, noble Lords know about the various local initiatives that have come from the flexibility of that part of local authority budgets where they can choose what to do. We are about to see the decimation of that across the country.

I have news for the noble Viscount—he may have missed it yesterday—but the Minister for children in another place suggested that local authorities could save money by recruiting volunteers to complement the work of social workers. I listened very carefully to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester and others in the Chamber. I am a passionate supporter of and I declare a non-pecuniary interest in the Scouts and the youth service in Lancashire and I have local government experience. If we look to the big society to replace social workers, to replace all the services currently undertaken at local authority level, things will go wrong.

The day the Prime Minister was expanding on the big society, I happened to be in the garden at Dolphin Square speaking to a Republican Presbyterian minister from a small town in Texas. He said to me, “It’s very funny in this country. Ronald Reagan had that idea. He came to visit our community in Texas and we worked it out that, to replace the publicly funded services, a church with the population of 200 regular communicants would have to raise $600,000”. That is the issue.

The issue is not that those of us who argue with the concept of the big society are opposed to voluntarism. Like people across this Chamber, we have all been involved in the voluntary sector, worked with it and supported it. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester was quite right to say that there is a lot going on out of there, but there is a great deal that can be damaged out there. The history of the charitable sector and true localism—by “true localism” I mean not cutting the discretionary budgets of local authorities—is innovation, initiative and meeting demand, which has then been taken over as a general universal right. My heavens, this Government’s budget, with its crippling timing, pace and severity, is about to destroy what centuries of people have put right. My heart goes out to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester on the issue of family and community stability. I represented part of Preston called Ribbleton for years. Terrible actions cause damage to the whole community and a whole generation of workers was wiped out because Courtauld moved in to get a grant and then moved out when the grant stopped and it was cheaper to go somewhere else. In that community we have some severe problems. The majority of people are stable, local people. They go to local churches. They will work with voluntary organisations. They help each other out. They visit the elderly down the street. However, if you start smashing their right to live in their social housing, all that will happen is that you will take the guts out of what is good in that community. That will be replicated up and down the country.

I did not think I would ever criticise the noble Lord, Lord Newby, for this in this Chamber but today the noble Lords, Lord Plumb and Lord Newby, raised the issue of public sector funding. The noble Lord, Lord Plumb, was probably the most honest; he got very close to saying, “What about more money for agriculture?”. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, said that the previous Government were spending too much money. My heavens, I look around this Chamber, where people have said, “Why can we not have more money for cleaning up the sea? Why can we not spend more on footpaths? Why can we not spend more on roads? Why can we not spend more on trains? Schools want more”. This has come from all around the Chamber. When we were in government the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats never once stood up and said, “When will this Government stop spending money on the things we think are important?”.

I accept that growth is critical. I accept that reform is necessary—not reform imposed by Whitehall but reform through innovation at local level. Yes, there should be fairness. But, please, as we go through what will be a very grim experience—not for me or, I suspect, for many people in this Chamber—can we add the qualities of honesty and transparency?

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[Lord Sassoon]

I am struck by the contrast of the optimism that we have heard today from businessmen in this House and those who are not businessmen but have clearly been talking to business people on the one hand, and the pessimism on the other hand of the academic economists and others who, even though we have had three quarters of strong growth, want to see disaster coming round every corner. I do not make any judgment about who is responsible for the growth, but I think we can agree that we have had three quarters of strong growth. Yes, the recovery will be choppy, but we have heard from my noble friend Lord Bates just how business in the north-east of England is looking forward and generating jobs for the future. We have heard similarly from my noble friend Lord Plumb about how agriculture will play its part. My noble friend Lord Allan of Hallam has explained how the use of data and technology will assist the recovery. These are the pointers that show us how the economy is going to generate sustained growth. The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, keeps saying that nobody knows. It is the businessmen of this country who write letters to the papers, urging us on with the deficit reduction we are set on, who know how the recovery is going to be sustained for the future.

While I do not agree with the doubts of noble Lords opposite about the overall judgments made by the Government, I do agree with some of the noble Lords opposite in a lot of what they said—the noble Lords, Lord Myners and Lord Haskel, for example, on the need for better infrastructure. That is precisely why we added nearly £9 billion of expenditure on infrastructure in this spending review. I agree with them on the need for investment in innovation, which is why we are investing £220 million in innovation centres and why we are investing £1 billion in the critical new technology of carbon capture and storage. Similarly, my noble friend Lord Newby identified science and apprenticeships as critical to growth. That is why we are protecting science spending in cash terms and why we are significantly gearing up on the number of apprenticeships compared with the plans of the previous Government.

Overall on growth, I was particularly struck by the contributions of my noble friends Lord Lamont of Lerwick and Lord Stewartby. They remind us that Conservative Governments have been here before, that Conservative Governments have taken us out of recession and rebalanced the economy, and we will do it again. For example, in the early 1990s, the public sector was reduced not by 490,000 but by 690,000 employees. At the same time, in the 1992 to 1996-7 period, the private sector generated 1.7 million jobs. I have every expectation—Members opposite may not—that the private sector again will rise to the challenge.

The second principle that I set out at the beginning is that our choices should be fair. We have heard some powerful speeches today, particularly from the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollis of Heigham and Lady Campbell of Surbiton, reminding us just how difficult it is to reshape the welfare system in the radical way that we intend at a time of considerable retrenchment in the public finances. I shall take away the points that they and others have made. In particular, I note carefully the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, about the mobility component of disability living allowance.

The spending review focuses support on those who need it most. It shifts the focus from welfare payments to services that improve social mobility in the longer term and to work incentives. The Government have sought to protect the most vulnerable. Working-age women, for example, tend to benefit disproportionately from health spending, which we have protected, and older women also benefit from additional resources for social care.

The universal credit will clarify and increase work incentives. Work will pay and will be seen to pay, but we must not rush the universal credit. As the noble Baroness said, it will take us two Parliaments to do that, because it is a difficult project and we must get it right.

We have also heard a lot on how young people will progress from care to university—points were made in different ways by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Nye. The Government are concerned to make sure that young people from the most disadvantaged homes get every opportunity. We are encouraging social mobility through maintaining Sure Start and extending early-years care. From 2012-13, we will introduce for all disadvantaged two year-olds substantial school premiums. The Government are also protecting the ability of those on lower incomes to go into higher education, including through a scholarship fund of £150 million by 2014-15.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, will the Minister care to fill in a little gap concerning the 16 to 19 year-olds?

[Lord Sassoon]

As I have said, we are coming forward with a £150 million fund that, by 2014, will enable those on lower incomes in that 16-to-19 age group to transfer into higher education.

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[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

Will the pupil premium be taken from funding for those young people aged 16 to 19 in schools?

[Lord Sassoon]

The pupil premium will be used to ensure that those schools that have a particular proportion of disadvantaged children will get a premium to ensure that there is an appropriate rebalancing.

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[Lord Sassoon]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Myners. He had great trouble keeping a straight face. I have to say that I took extremely seriously my noble friend Lord James of Blackheath’s suggestions that there were people who could help us out with our financial difficulty. The noble Lord, Lord Myners, thinks it is all a joke. I have been in detailed discussions over the past number of weeks with the noble Lord, Lord James of Blackheath, and of course we take seriously anyone who wants to invest in our economy. I know many people believe that there will be great opportunities in our infrastructure programme to invest in rebuilding our networks to underpin growth.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

On a minor point of information, were any of the Minister’s Liberal Democrat noble friends present at any of these meetings?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, if we start getting into who was present at which meetings at this hour of the night, we will never get home. I do not start counting off who is a member of which party in coalition Government meetings. That seems to be an obsession of the opposition party.

I will conclude briefly. It has been a very difficult and challenging spending round but we have made sure, as far as we possibly can, that everyone pays their fair share. We have taken the country back from what was—I am happy to say it—the brink of bankruptcy.