King’s Speech

Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in respect of the Bank of England court and as former leader of the TUC.

In a world of accelerating shocks, building UK resilience is vital, but after 13 years of Conservative administration, the economy is in a mess. The latest figures show stagnating investment, low productivity and zero growth. Families are still struggling with energy bills and falling behind on mortgage repayments and the rent, and I hope everybody in this House will agree that homelessness is not a “lifestyle choice”. Yet the King’s Speech offered no serious analysis of the challenges we face and no serious remedies, so the forthcoming Autumn Statement is the Government’s last chance saloon.

Many would agree that we need measures to boost productivity, and that technologies such as AI offer big opportunities to do that, but I have a word of warning. As the OECD has pointed out, higher productivity is no longer any guarantee of higher wages. That link has been broken, so we also need new policies designed to ensure that productivity gains are shared more fairly. The Bletchley Park summit was a missed opportunity—for sure, eyebrows were raised when the Prime Minister announced the Elon Musk interview on social media, with an image of the door of No. 10 morphing into the corporate logo of X; after viewing that so-called interview, I think it is safe to conclude that Rishi Sunak is no Jeremy Paxman.

The summit red carpet was rolled out for big tech moguls and Governments, including those of China and Saudi Arabia, so there was certainly expertise in the room on AI and mass surveillance, but workers’ expertise was not invited. There was no seat at the table for the TUC, despite trade unions representing millions of workers in the UK and around the world. Instead, the Government have lined up behind big tech lobbyists against strong regulation of AI. We are asked to believe that the industry will voluntarily do the right thing, but have Ministers learned nothing from the bankers’ crash? As Larry Elliott observed:

“There is, once again, a danger that the pursuit of profit comes before the public good. As in 2008, that way lies disaster”.


Government must also face up to the urgent challenge of industrial disruption and the risk that AI will exacerbate both regional and class inequalities. New jobs will be created, for sure, but many jobs will change and some will go. To smooth the transition, the country needs much stronger social protection and much more ambitious investment in skills and training. Competition policy must be tougher to prevent tech megacompanies exploiting their market power, and workers need support to secure a fair share of those productivity gains. That must include new rights to technology agreements, a human review of AI decisions and the right to disconnect. And, not least at Amazon, where low-paid workers are in the midst of strike action, workers need stronger rights to organise and to win union recognition.

I have a final word to the wise. In a country crying out for change, pre-election tax cuts for the wealthy and a bankers’ bonuses free-for-all will not cut it. Instead, we need a serious plan to rebuild the UK’s economic resilience; investment in a green industrial strategy to grow good jobs; and a little less deference and a lot more determination to hold tech giants to account for the common good.