Business and Planning Bill

Baroness Noakes Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, this Bill has my complete support. The coronavirus pandemic started as a health crisis, but it is now primarily an economic one. Our GDP has contracted at an unprecedented rate this year, falling by over 20% in April alone. The policy priority has to be a return to economic growth. The furlough scheme, the guaranteed business loans and the other measures have been lifelines, but they were never going to completely offset the huge economic damage that has been inflicted by the lockdown. Indeed, as those schemes start to roll off, we can expect more business failures and higher unemployment that will in turn further impact GDP. The construction and hospitality sectors have been particularly hard hit, and this Bill, while it is no panacea, makes important contributions to their revival.

A number of noble Lords have expressed reservations about the licensing and planning relaxations in this Bill. I ask them to give these temporary measures the benefit of the doubt. We have to get our economy moving again. Once we have recouped this year’s loss of GDP, we can decide from a position of relative economic security what relaxations we can keep and what must be tightened or reversed.

It has been relatively easy to scare people into staying at home, and in broad terms the lockdown has been a great public policy success. The hard task now will be to get people out again, and attitude surveys still show considerable caution. The opening of shops last month and of pubs, restaurants and—praise be!—hairdressers last weekend shows that the public can be tempted out, but not yet in the kinds of numbers that will restore our economy. We need to go even further. We need people to return to normal life, and that means returning to work.

For an economy that has about two-thirds of GDP in household consumption and 80% in the service sector, extensive working from home as a norm will end up being an own goal. I believe your Lordships’ House has a role to play here. Our leaders have been frightened into a risk-averse form of upper Chamber that positively encourages noble Lords to take part from their armchairs at home. Sometimes noble Lords are even outside the UK. I believe we should set an example to the nation that life can and must return to as near normal as possible. The presumption should be that noble Lords are physically present in Parliament and vote in person; I stand with my noble friends Lord Cormack and Lord Balfe on this. Alternative participation mechanisms should be available but only for those who cannot be present for medical reasons.

We can do two things today to help our country return to economic health and prosperity. First, we can support the proposals in this Bill and speed its passage through the House and on to the statute book. Secondly, we can be a living example that working life can be very much like before, albeit modified by informed risk management and sensible risk mitigation. Noble Lords should remember that the Writ of Summons that each of us received requires us, “waiving all excuses”, to be “personally present”. Let us return to that in September, if not before.