Policy-making: Future Generations’ Interests

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bird, is not only a damn good intervener but a hard act to follow. I thank him not only for initiating this debate but for another powerful speech. As a member of the recently reported ad hoc Select Committee on Intergenerational Fairness and Provision, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak. Given the subject matter, I am rather surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and I are the only ones from that committee.

Younger and older generations have always been politically different. The old saying that, “If you are not a socialist when you are young, you have no heart, and if you are not a conservative when you are old, you have no head”, is by no means a new concept, but today this alignment of political intentions has reached extraordinary extremes. Some 83% of Conservative voters are now said to be over the age of 45 and apparently just 4% are under the age of 24. The age at which you are more likely to vote Conservative than Labour is apparently 51. Before the 2017 election campaign, this was just 34. In two years the tipping-point age has increased by 17 years. This is not a problem just for the Conservative Party, though. A sizeable proportion of older voters will now not even consider voting Labour, imposing a hard electoral ceiling and threatening that party longer term as the population ages.

This is a dramatic shift and a reflection of the disillusionment young people feel with politics today. As we uncovered in our recent Tackling Intergenerational Unfairness report, the millennial generation is likely to end up worse off than their parents—the first such generation—as may the generations that follow. The concerns and interests of young people have never been more important, just as their prospects have never looked quite as challenging.

As a House with plenty of wisdom but rather lacking in younger voices, including in today’s debate—although I am glad to see some younger viewers in the Gallery—we must seek to represent them by listening and learning from them, as we did when taking evidence. In the few minutes that I have, I will look at the economy, education and the environment and I will lean on the research report, Generation Why?, published by the think tank Onward.

Members on the Benches opposite may claim that they stand up for young people’s interests. Noble Lords may say that young people want an interventionist state with high public spending and high taxes. However, polling evidence shows that 18 to 24 year-olds are most in favour of keeping taxes low—more than any other age group. Some 58% of 18 to 24 year-olds want the Government to balance public finances and to live within their means. Those of the next generation, and Generation Z in particular, are not some homogenous lefty block, but a complex and thoughtful section of the electorate who largely, even if they do not know it, support centre-right policies.

When Tony Blair set the 2001 target for over 50% of young people to go to university, many saw it as a bold and positive vision. However, as shown by another Onward report, A Question of Degree, a decade after graduation a 10th of current undergraduates will earn less than £25,000, and 83% of student loans will never be paid back in full. The system not only saddles young people with debt that can loom over them for decades, but the lack of income return from many university degrees means that the taxpayer bears the brunt of this broken system. It is therefore no surprise that 44% of people think that too many people go to university, as opposed to 25% who say not enough. University is not for everyone and, as our report recommends and as evidence we took showed, we should prioritise apprenticeships and retraining. The importance of skills and vocational education was one of the key conclusions. The labour market is changing and much more investment is needed in both vocational education and lifelong learning to prepare younger generations for a 100-year life.

As we have seen from the recent Extinction Rebellion protests and the visit of Greta Thunberg to the UK, protecting the environment is crucial. For us Conservatives, there should be a clue in our name. It is no surprise that 18 to 24 year-olds rate concern about environmental issues in the top three challenges facing Britain today. We are the first major economy to make a commitment to a net zero emissions target, which follows our impressive record on emissions reduction since 2010. However, a target must be followed by a clear plan of actionable and affordable policy which will allow us to achieve this. We cannot protect the interests of future generations if we cannot protect the natural world in which they will live.

As a country, we are at a critical moment in our history. We must listen to what young people are saying and find out what they are thinking. We must prioritise jobs, housing, the environment and education, because if we do not grasp this opportunity to win over the next generation with a positive vision for the future, our political system will not survive, and nor will it deserve to.