Cross-government Cost-cutting

Lord Bird Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Bird]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made, if any, of the savings that might be realised by their cross-government cost-cutting exercise.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I will take a leaf out of some of the interesting ways that noble Lords begin discussions in this House. Recently, there was a big discussion on railways and someone—I will not mention who, because I cannot remember their name—described a particular train journey. They were talking about something very big, the railway crisis or whatever you want to call it, but using a little anecdote to tell the whole story. I want to start with that idea, so please bear with me.

I am going to talk about a young woman I met three years ago. She was a librarian in a prison that specialised in sex offenders. She was doing a very important job; she was trying to give something to a group of people, some of whom were banged up for life and some were in and out, who everybody else would rather shy away from. None of us likes sex offenders and people who do things like that, but she was working away. This young woman had four children. On top of that, she was paying a mortgage on her house and was about £10,000 away from paying it off. She left that job and did other jobs, one of which was for Stoke-on-Trent City Council. On two occasions, the council overpaid her. The first time, she managed to pay it back, but the other occasion—the mistake was made by the council—will lead to this woman, at 4 pm on 6 January, being thrown out of the house that she has almost finished paying for.

I use this as an example of what I call a miscarriage of common sense. That is how I see it. You cannot really blame the council, which went through all sorts of rigmarole to get its £7,000 or £9,000 back. Unfortunately, the young woman had three deaths to deal with, almost all at once, including her own father. In the miasma of a life led in poverty, myopia took over. She put her head in the sand and just lost it every time there was a court case, a letter from a solicitor and all this sort of stuff. She was declared bankrupt and is now leaving her home. She and her four children will be homeless on the Epiphany. As the House knows, that is the day the three wise men visited—but there is a lack of wisdom here.

This miscarriage of common sense is largely because the young woman lost the plot. The reason I am interested in this is not just because I know this woman, but because it is exactly what happened to me when I was five and when I was seven. My mother lost the plot and did not pay the rent, and I was homeless at the age of five, along with my four brothers. I was homeless again at the age of seven, with my five brothers. We ended up in a Catholic orphanage in north London for two or three years. I really fell low; the others seemed to bounce back. I spent much of my life getting over those foundation stones of distress.

That is why I hate this idea and want to do everything possible. I am hoping to appeal to the Minister, because I know she has a good heart, to maybe ring up Stoke-on-Trent and ask if the council can stop the dogs, bailiffs or whatever you call them from going after this young woman and kicking out her four children. The council will not pick up the bill, because the house is in the neighbouring county of Staffordshire; she lives in Newcastle-under-Lyme. The council that is throwing her out is passing on a bill of maybe £30,000 to £50,000 a year. I do not know the exact figures to house a homeless family in that area, but that is an example. I do not blame the council. I am just asking it to rethink and not to make this a big issue. Do not destroy the lives of these children and this young mother.

Sorry, I must have a drop of water. Unfortunately, we had a Big Issue event and it involved a lot of drink. As I do not normally drink—well, God bless me. Anyway, I did get here at last.

There is a lovely printing term—it is not a rude term—called arsy-versy, so I would like noble Lords to look at my question upside down and asked themselves, “Is the noble Lord, Lord Bird, really interested in what estimate the Government

‘have made, if any, of the savings that might be realised by their cross-government cost-cutting exercise’”?

I am actually more interested in how much it will cost them socially to make those cuts. I do not believe that the Treasury says, “We are going to cut a bit here and cut that bit, and this is the effect it will have.” We could take £10 out the system, for instance, but it would actually cost us £20. When money is taken out the system because of austerity, as was demonstrated between 2010 and 2016, the problem bleeds into other areas.

I keep saying this and will say it again: when Covid came along, our hospitals were almost full, at 85%. You need 10% for eventualities. In that situation, all you do is pass on the problems. That is why austerity is too expensive. It is too expensive not to repair a few tiles in the roof but to let the roof fall down.

One of the major problems we have is the law of unintended consequences. I am appealing to the Government not to allow this injustice to happen, because it will harm people if we do anything that causes people to slip into poverty more. We need to protect our safety nets. We need to strengthen them and make sure that people do not fall into poverty and are not evicted because of the increase in the costs of living, fuel poverty and all sorts of things like that.

On the NHS, it is interesting that the BMA says that 50% of people who present themselves in hospital with a cardiac arrest suffer from food poverty—so there is a relationship between food and government cuts and what happened with austerity between 2010 and 2016. I have to end there, although I would love to have another 20 minutes—can I? No? Perhaps another time. God bless you all, and happy Christmas.