Tackling Intergenerational Unfairness (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Thornhill (LD) [V]]

I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, who demonstrated her mastery of the art of diplomatic disagreement and tenacity in some passionate exchanges during our discussions. This was the first Select Committee that I have been on since coming into your Lordships’ House, and I will confess to being both excited and nervous when I saw who were going to be my colleagues. I looked everyone up and knew that it would be a privilege to work with such a distinguished group.

I was also pleased to find another cheerleader for local government in the shape of our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord True. His experience and understanding of the role that local government can play in this area helped me in my role. I pay thanks and tribute to our community contact group, who gave up their time to come to Westminster on several occasions and contribute to our work. It certainly gave us a reality check to balance against the theories of our expert witnesses.

There is good news from our inquiry: that a strong and positive relationship exists between generations, even though there are serious concerns about fairness in public policy. Any policy based on the expectation that future generations will pick up the tab and pay disproportionately for present or past consumption cannot be considered either fair or just. Generations should not be unduly harmed by the actions of a previous or subsequent cohort, and there is a reasonable expectation that life should improve for the next generation. This is certainly a wicked issue, and the complexities and interrelatedness of so many of the questions raised led us to feel that all policy should have to answer at least two questions. What impact will this have on future generations in the short and long term, and how can we take this into account in setting policy? We were left in no doubt that this was an important aspect of all policy-making.

The report had at its heart the concept of the 100-year life course, which runs through all our themes. One in three babies born today will reach their 100th birthday. We are living longer and are mostly healthier for longer, but does public policy really take account of this? Do we take account of it in our own lives? All our assumptions were questioned and tested by our witnesses.

We learned that there is a structural shift taking place, with younger generations not seeing the increase in living standards enjoyed by previous generations. At the same time, older generations face a society that is not prepared for their numbers or needs as they age. Many young people, and their parents and grandparents, worry about whether they will be able to afford a home or achieve a secure, well-paying job. This is the result of a failure of successive Governments to plan for the future and prepare for the social, economic and technological changes that are rapidly taking place. Across all the themes in the report, from education to housing through taxation and benefits, work and skills, our evidence demonstrates that this is rarely taken into account.

Perhaps it was no surprise, then, to find that witness after witness commented on the lack of meaningful and appropriate datasets and statistical evidence for their work—although, as we have already heard, the Office for National Statistics is to be thanked for its immediate response to the report in which it accepted all the committee’s recommendations that were pertinent to it. It has since begun publishing new intergenerational analysis of the data it holds and has committed to including that analysis in future data releases. This was encouraging—unlike the Government’s response, which was disappointing to say the least. The Government responded to only 29 of our 41 recommendations, and of those 29 they rejected 21, thus rather proving the point of the core finding of our evidence: that intergenerational fairness is not currently considered relevant or pertinent to policy-making.

This indifference has been further heightened by the 18 months taken to bring the report to the House. Although I accept that Brexit and the pandemic have clearly had to be priorities, it is still disappointing. Reading through our recommendations to prepare for this debate, I was forcefully struck by the fact that many have been made more pertinent and urgent by both these events, as amplified by the noble Lord, Lord Price. The pandemic has changed forever the way that we work. Closing and opening schools has worsened inequalities. The impact of the coronavirus will be one of the defining features of a whole generation of British schoolchildren. The Chartered Institute of Housing recently warned that the UK is ill-prepared to deal with the housing needs that have now been made so much worse, that it is young households which will suffer the most, and that the crushing debt our society now carries will have to mean a serious rethink of who pays for what, and how, in the future. Now, more than ever, it is time to think in terms of intergenerational fairness.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)]

I call the next speaker: the noble Lord, Lord Bichard. Lord Bichard? I will have to move on to call the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford.

[Lord Bichard (CB) [V]]

I am sorry.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)]

Is that Lord Bichard?

[Lord Bichard (CB) [V]]

It is. I thought I was being unmuted. I have now unmuted myself, and I apologise to Members for that.

If I may continue, I will say that I share the frustration and disappointment already expressed about the delay in bringing this report to the House. But I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, that when you come to reread the report now it seems, in many ways. more relevant than when we wrote it two long years ago, and I want to focus on two issues where that is particularly the case.

Some people will have been surprised that the committee concluded that what we call “the intergenerational compact” remains strong. However, we found little evidence that one generation blamed another for the problems that it faced, and much evidence that different generations were providing each other with support, especially within communities and families. In a world that has become much more polarised during the pandemic, we should value and protect that compact. As the divisions between rich and poor, black and white, north and south, and leave and remain have become more pronounced, we really cannot afford to overlay them with intergenerational rifts.

Yet some generational groups will exit the pandemic harbouring a sense of injustice and looking to be reassured. As the report points out, to sustain or rediscover a positive relationship between generations, there needs to be

“a broad equivalence, and a sense of equivalence, about what is contributed … and what is received”

from the state during a lifetime. Quite simply, generations need to feel that they are getting a fair deal. For that to be achieved, Governments need to be—at the very least—aware of and able to explain the consequences of new policy proposals across the generations, as well as the changing impact of existing policies. That is why the committee made what I think are some very straightforward and simple recommendations. For example, it suggests:

“The Government should create Intergenerational Impact Assessments for all draft legislation … invest in developing its capacity to model the generational effects of tax and benefits policies”


and focus more on the long term. As the report says, to tackle a problem properly you need to understand it. I think we were saying that we do not yet have the data to understand it well.

As has been said, the Government’s response to these proposals has been, frankly, disappointing. The emphasis on reduced borrowing to lessen the debt burden on future generations never addressed the report’s recommendations and now looks sadly out of touch with the reality of public finances. The promise to continue to publish “a full Spending Review” at the conclusion of any comprehensive spending review does nothing to deliver the longer-term focus that the committee argued was needed, and the reference to the Treasury’s Green Book does little to respond to the simple suggestion that there should be intergenerational impact assessments. As has been said—I will not labour the point—the ONS response was much more positive. Is it too much to ask the new Government to look again at the committee’s recommendations on accounting for the future? I hope not.

The other section of the report that I want to touch on is chapter 6 and the importance of communities, about which the committee felt strongly. It stated:

“Community initiatives that bring generations together are an important way of cementing intergenerational bonds”


and tackling social problems such as loneliness and rough sleeping. They certainly are. The Government should therefore enable, rather than police, community activity. This theme was picked up on very strongly by the Public Services Committee in its recent interim report. The committee felt that what we saw were a series of initiatives on community activity but not a coherent strategy. I fear that that is still the situation and will remain the case until we get the long-awaited devolution White Paper. We are still not giving sufficient emphasis to places, communities and devolution. I hope that we will do so in future, and that this report will help us in that.