Budget Statement

Baroness Foster of Oxton Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)]

My Lords, I echo the remarks of my noble friends Lady Noakes and Lord Lamont, as well as others. I will touch on two areas of concern. However, first, I am extremely relieved that I am not the Chancellor.

Every year that I can think of, the NHS is overwhelmed; every year, billions more are invested and yet it never seems to improve patient care. Covid aside, it is far too hit and miss. We have world-class doctors, surgeons and nurses and many others in front-line care but, as my noble friend Lord Naseby mentioned, only 11% of GPs work full-time. That was before the pandemic. It is not about the number of heads in a structure or system; it is also about the hours they are contracted to do.

I had a look at the structures, at what in Brussels we used to call an organogram—it is quite a good word. I do not pretend to be an expert in this field but, like everyone in the UK, I am a shareholder. Out of the 1.4 million employees, around 450,000 are doctors, surgeons and nurses, with many more directly supporting them. I was astonished, however, by the diagrams of the top-heavy, top-down—that is an understatement—bureaucracy. None of the 27 quangos apparently focuses on adult care or mental health. Then there are 223 trusts, clinical care groups, NHS England, healthcare providers, NICE—it goes on and on. That leaves about 700,000 administrators, which is about half the workforce. I am sure many of them are doing a very necessary and brilliant job but, of the £225 billion budget—or 10.5% of GDP—and excluding the billions that have been thrown at it for Covid, what proportion is spent on front-line care?

My second concern is quite different. The aviation and tourism sectors have been decimated by Covid and are desperately trying to recover. My interest is non-paid, but I have spent most of my life in these industries. I welcome the reduction in APD for domestic flights, but it should have been immediate, along with reduction in APD for international flights as well. Job losses and bankruptcies have taken their toll. In addition, this demonising of the airline sector is appalling, particularly at the moment at COP, when it is desperately trying to recover. Collectively, aviation and tourism employ and support nearly 4 million jobs. Before Covid, tourism raised approximately £71 billion a year, which went to the Exchequer. Aviation alone supports nearly a million jobs, with another £52 billion raised, though clearly that was very reduced during the last 18 months.

Looking at the aerospace sector, we in the UK build the cleanest, greenest aircraft ever. That is not by accident; decades ago, the industry realised that the lighter the aircraft, the more fuel efficient it could be, so the price of the ticket could cost less. It happened through competition, and we all benefited. People were able to live, travel and do business abroad at an affordable price. As an island nation, we developed the largest route network in Europe and the second largest worldwide, outside of the USA. It has given us connectivity and increased commerce. An aircraft is not just about going on holiday; every hold will contain cargo, goods and products built and grown here and exported around the world. Even orders from Amazon arrive the next day.

Let us be clear: the aviation sector—private jets included, which, by the way, are a very small proportion of the industry—creates around 3% of CO₂ emissions worldwide. Engineers, scientists and the industry have over the years and decades invested heavily to continue to improve the aircraft of the future and we all support that. Let us not throw out the baby with the bathwater. These industries need confidence from government and from us, so I hope that we can have a more balanced discussion as we move forward.

Finally, this pandemic has caused havoc and we have spent billions of pounds dealing with it, but we have to get back to an economy where people keep most of the money that they earn, where businesses can plan ahead with certainty and where the Conservative principles of tax and spend return as quickly as possible.