Tackling Intergenerational Unfairness (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Thornhill 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.