Covid-19: Economy

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I have three questions for the Minister about the measures we need to adopt. They go beyond the consequences of Covid-19 to use the opportunities it offers. First and most importantly, how will Her Majesty’s Government direct their economic advisers to address the climate emergency? How will they get to the position that all economic analysts model and forecast through the prism of mitigation of or adaptation to climate change? How can we bring in externalities from outside?

Secondly, how will economic analysis be framed to prioritise well-being? I follow the authors of The Spirit Level in asking economists to pay more attention to non-monetary elements of inequality, such as health, social problems and access to amenities, in the economy. They demonstrate that equality is conducive to a thriving economy. To those who say that some public goods cannot be priced and are outside the province of economics—literally invaluable—I point out that there have been ways of considering how we should compute values outside the cash economy at least since Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees in 1723.

Thirdly, how will the Government ensure that citizens are party to economic environmental decisions? In this connection, will the Government now join the 88 nations which have ratified the Aarhus convention, which our former membership of the EU entitles us to do? We have experienced a high degree of public mistrust in political action. We need to repair this democratic deficit.

How should economic approaches adapt to the new world we shall find ourselves in so that we can use the opportunity to make it better?