Lord Birt
Main Page: Lord Birt (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Birt's debates with the Department for Transport
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Birt (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and his hymn of love to his native city. As a Liverpudlian, I fondly recall visiting Blackpool routinely as a child and less fondly watching Stanley Matthews give us a display of how to play football in the second football match I saw as a child.
In 2008, the UK economy suffered a body blow. At long last, we are beginning to recover, but our bounce back has been slower than other leading economies. Moreover, it will be 2018 before we are again, as a nation, in fiscal balance. Our debt levels are now, and will remain for some time, among the highest in the world. It will be a generation before they return to prior levels, always assuming that we will have responsible Governments in the future willing to work to that goal. All parties standing at the next election will, I hope, set out their plans for returning our national debt to historical and defensible levels.
Our lengthy recession has had manifold adverse consequences, as we are all aware. Many individuals and businesses have moved backwards in their fortunes. Responsible savers are paid minuscule rates of interest, well below the rate of inflation, yet still pay tax on the proceeds—punished twice over for their prudence. Even the best-run economies were affected by the global recession, but the UK’s difficulties were intensified: first, by a large financial sector, parts of which, as we all know, were infected by an ingrained culture of risk-taking and greed, making casino bets with their clients’ money; and, secondly, by a failure of government correctly to forecast tax revenues and tailor the level of public spending accordingly. On the one hand, regulation of the finance sector failed us; and on the other, the institutions of government proved inadequate to the task of managing our public finances. Changing the culture and behaviour of a whole industry is not a trivial task, but let us cross our fingers that the new financial regulation reforms will work.
The OBR is a welcome new institutional fixture of manifest independence and integrity. Alongside an independent Bank of England—another welcome reform of recent times—the OBR, if it is retained and respected by future Governments, should prevent political hopefulness and opportunism once again tipping over into recklessness. Yet one fatal imbalance in our economy has not been addressed: for 40 or 50 years, like a badly run business, the UK has consumed too much and invested too little.
Public investment in the UK as a share of GDP is consistently below that of other countries. Unsurprisingly, there is a clear correlation between countries with excellent infrastructure and national competitiveness. The UK lags behind the rest of the world, as once we led it, in creating modern infrastructure and—surprise, surprise—our national productivity trails our competitors too. We know that we allowed our Victorian water and sewerage infrastructure to decay, that we were slow off the blocks with broadband, that we have procrastinated over power generation for the past two decades, and that we have by far the most congested roads and underinvested road and rail infrastructure of any major country. The cold statistics speak for themselves, but each of us can make brutal comparisons whenever we travel to competitor countries. It is shameful but characteristic that we did not long ago resolve how to deal with chronic undercapacity at Heathrow, one of the UK’s most prized strategic assets.
Last year’s Treasury document, Investing in Britain’s Future, was a list of directionally sound projects, but it was neither a vision nor a plan for modernising our creaking, crumbling, unfit-for-purpose national infrastructure within the span of a generation. I greatly respect the record of the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, and I do not for a moment doubt his good intentions, so I will look keenly at the plan he outlined earlier to see how far it goes towards meeting those long-term goals. As a nation, we need to resolve to set aside 3.5% of GDP annually for investment, which is the long-term OECD average. We have been so far below 3.5% for so long—we are currently at something like 1% to 2%—that we probably need to spend 4% to 5% of GDP on our infrastructure for at least 20 years simply to catch up with other nations.
We also need some formal mechanism to embed a long-term commitment on investment into our budgeting, and perhaps in her concluding remarks the Minister will tell us what share of GDP the newly announced infrastructure plan implies over the next five to 10 years. For decades, Governments of all kinds have promised investment but have then short-sightedly cut it at the first sign of economic reverse, most recently vouchsafing in late 2008 that capital spend would be protected—I quote the Treasury of the time—“to support the long-term productivity and competitiveness of the UK economy”, only to see the capital budget savaged, cut by almost half, in the period from 2009 to 2011.
We should continue the process of remedying the long-standing weaknesses in the governance of our economy and, alongside the OBR and an independent central bank, create a new institution of some kind that will depoliticise long-term infrastructure investment. Projects, as we know, can take decades to gestate, plan and deliver. We need an organisation that will bring together the main political parties in order to forge and stand behind a consensus about our national infrastructure. HS2 and the skilful cross-party work of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, offer us some hope that this might be achieved. Let us complete an institutional framework that will stabilise our economy, improve our productivity and end the catastrophic dislocations that have plagued us on and off for half a century, and which have substantially reduced our economic performance as a nation and prevented this creative and enterprising country from achieving its full potential.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure and an honour to welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester and congratulate him on making a maiden speech; to do so on the Queen’s Speech takes exceptional courage. He said that he has hard work ahead of him to achieve the goal of women bishops, and asked if there was enthusiastic support in this House. I assure him that there are many who will provide him with such support; indeed, he may regret asking the question.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, was right to say that the better the debate, the worse the wind-up. I realise that I have an extraordinary challenge in the wind-up today; there were so many speeches today across such a wide range of issues that I realise that in the time available it is going to be absolutely impossible to respond to all the points that have been made. Where there are questions that I have been unable to answer by the end of the debate, and there will be many, we will try to follow them up.
I start by putting today’s discussion in some sort of context. Four years ago we gathered in this Chamber to debate the first Queen’s Speech since the formation of the new Government. It was also the first time that Britain had a full coalition for more than half a century. However, we were also in the middle of the biggest economic crisis for decades. It was crucial that in that first Queen’s Speech we sent out a strong message of intent to reassure the country. Indeed, Her Majesty’s opening words in that Queen’s Speech of May 2010 made absolutely clear our top priorities: to reduce the deficit, restore economic growth and govern with fairness and responsibility. We know that those are the yardsticks against which this coalition Government’s performance will be measured.
I do not intend to reiterate the speech made by my noble friend and colleague Lord Deighton at the beginning of this debate, which listed the successes and achievements on the economic front. They were echoed by my noble friend Lord Flight, who predicted 3% GDP this year—I hope he will give me some good horseracing predictions, because that requires true courage and acuity. My noble friend Lord Razzall talked of the animal spirits that are pushing forward the economy. My noble friends Lord Northbrook and Lady Noakes pointed out how manufacturing is on an upward trend. That was a real challenge for us to achieve, and we are achieving it. My noble friend Lord Wrigglesworth talked about the achievement of reducing the structural deficit and achieving confidence in the markets at the same time as real fairness in the ways in which we have had to make cuts in order to manage the deficit. My noble friend Lord Shipley talked about the robust contribution of small businesses, as did quite a number of other noble Lords. When you listen to that list, you recognise that this is very far from a zombie Government. This Government are alive and kicking. I take the point that zombies are immortal. Now there is a prospect.
In fact, if anyone is looking a little pale on this occasion, it has to be the Opposition and their speeches today. I am just astonished at the level of amnesia. When I listened to the speeches made by the noble Lords, Lord Adonis, Lord Giddens, Lord Lea of Crondall and, to an extent, Lord Davies, they all seemed to have forgotten the state of the economy that they handed to us. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, and this is crucial, that, yes, there was a financial crisis, but the Government had run this economy in such a way with such overspending that there was no resilience to come back from it, and it is because of that that we faced the crisis that we did, which was so much worse than that in other developed countries. It is from that base that we have moved forward.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that many of the issues that he raised and criticised this Government for were actions that his own Government had not taken. Although this is slightly out of the range of the economy, one of the things that shocks me most is that as I go up and down the country and talk to young people who are now just getting into employment, they came through education during the Labour years when they did not get the skills they needed, when there were no apprenticeships, respect for vocational education or opportunity. It is those changes, including 2 million apprenticeships by the end of this Parliament, that are beginning to make a real change and eat into the figure for long-term youth unemployment. I agree that we must focus on that relentlessly, but that is just one of the many issues on which I wanted to challenge.
The noble Lords, Lord Giddens, Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Davies, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, all raised the issue of inequality. We have been in a period of real austerity. We are beginning to recover. We are now seeing wages begin to recover, which is crucial, but we also made sure that people kept their jobs. To have been through the period of recession that we have been in and to have managed to keep down unemployment, which is now down to 6.8%—which is not where we want it, we want it much lower—has been a very significant achievement. What more could you do to tackle inequality than to start to take people at the bottom of the earnings scale out of income tax? That is something that Labour never conceived of doing. Labour may now be on board—everybody is on board—but my party led on this issue and has been crucial in making those kinds of changes, along with apprenticeships and the kinds of opportunity that are offered.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, mentioned women. Since the coalition Government came to power in May 2010, there are 446,000 more women in employment. Between 2011 and 2012 the gender pay gap reduced for all employees. Even if you look only at full-time employees, it also reduced. We are not where we need to be but, my goodness, we are on the path. There are not many who could have said that, certainly not coming through the kind of economic period through which we have been. We must not relent.
I will try quickly to cover some of the key issues. On the issue of women, the tax-free childcare that we are now putting into place, something that has never been done before, as well as the improvements that we are making in the support to parents on universal credit, are great breakthroughs. They will be very important in the lives of people, especially in the lives of many women.
Quite a number of noble Lords raised the issues of social housing; I am trying to watch the time as best as I can. Social housing was the focus of speeches by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble Lord, Lord Sawyer; it was covered by the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Leicester and of Rochester; and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, talked extensively about it, as did the noble Lords, Lord McKenzie of Luton, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, Lord Wrigglesworth and Lord Harrison. They fell into two groups. There was discussion of affordable housing and housebuilding. When we came into government in the financial crisis, obviously the consequence of that financial crisis was that housebuilding had largely collapsed. It is one of the first industries that gives way in that kind of financial crisis. We have been coming back from that, but the impact of the crash was huge. Housebuilding is now at its highest since 2007. Over 445,000 homes have been built since April 2010; 170,000 affordable homes will be built between 2011 and 2015—we have got to 99,000 so far; and £23 billion of public and private finance will help to ensure another 165,000 more affordable homes between 2015 and 2018, which will be the fastest annual rate for 20 years.
We need to keep absolutely focused, which is one of the reasons why the Bills that were announced in the Queen’s Speech were so important. The ability now to transfer unused land held by agencies from those agencies to the HCA to turn into housing projects much more quickly will be one of the many things that will help, along with the changes in planning law which, as many have said, is not a protection in many cases but an obstacle. We need to change that dynamic.
The other issue that was raised was concern about the house price bubble in London. Hopefully, that is now mitigated against as we look at the most recent figures. I want to be absolutely clear that, as some said on the Floor of the House, Help to Buy does not appear to have been a contributor to that: Help to Buy has been helping people outside the London area. Mark Carney’s name has been taken in vain on quite a number of occasions, but what is really important is that the Bank of England is now looking at macroprudential tools rather than interest rates only to try and manage the housing market. It is now becoming tougher, for example, to qualify for a loan in London for high-priced houses. Mechanisms like that can help us deal with those bubbles without the necessary resort, which will have to happen at some point, to interest rates.
Somebody raised the question of foreign buyers. Noble Lords will know that Boris Johnson now has an agreement with builders in London that they will market first in London rather than overseas. There are other measures like that which we can manage to achieve. Others mentioned some of the tax steps that have been taken to try and contain that.
I move on quickly from that issue to the issue of energy, which obviously plays a big part in the Queen’s Speech. Again, I am under tight time pressure, so I will focus fairly heavily on the issues of extraction of oil and gas from shale, and geothermal. I want to provide some reassurances—I am desperately looking to find out exactly what the question was—that the report of the Economic Affairs Committee, discussed by its chair, the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, my noble friend Lord Teverson and the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Jones, and others, will be responded to before the summer recess.
There is a consultation at present on the Government’s proposals for underground access. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that this concerns access below 300 metres. Many of the people who oppose the headline that they see on this measure have no idea that we are talking about levels below 300 metres. It does not apply to surface access. It is very much to the credit of this country that we have a very tough regime of approval for the kind of exploration that would be necessary for shale oil and gas extraction. They are internationally recognised and there is no attempt to break down those protections, which are essential for the confidence of the community. Others have talked about the importance of sharing the benefits with the community, and a number of programmes deal with that. I will gladly write to noble Lords with more detail because I can see that time is racing away from me.
There were a number of questions on devolution and local government from the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Leicester and of St Albans, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, and my noble friends Lord Tope and Lord Shipley. Devolution is absolutely critical and the Government have taken it forward in a way that no one has for a generation. I work with the Local Growth Fund. Local enterprise partnerships are obviously working closely and are deeply engaged with their local authorities and other stakeholders in the community and are coming forward with strategic plans for economic growth in their areas, bringing in new kinds of thinking and breaking down the old silos, which is critical. It means that the Government are handing over the motivation for and the design of those strategic economic plans to local areas, which is a crucial piece of devolution.
I look at simple things in the transport world where we transferred significant parts of the support that we give to buses, including the bus service operators grant, back to local authorities. There is very much a pattern. I recognise that these are hard times, but the good local authorities have looked at the harder financial profiles they face and have managed them very effectively. I take on board the warning of my noble friend Lord Tope; we have had that same concern virtually every year. Really good authorities have found ways to deliver for local people—and, ironically, the approval ratings for local authorities have gone up significantly: they are now at 77%. So there are ways, and we must demand that at a time when every penny is important.
Infrastructure forms a significant part of the nature of this Bill and a number of people raised it. The noble Lord, Lord Birt, said we did not have a plan; we certainly have a plan by any definition of a plan that I know in the national infrastructure plan. As the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, is sitting here, I asked him to confirm what I am saying. The plan sets out what the Government want to achieve, the approach in each sector, and the action they will take to ensure delivery, including identifying key priority investments.
That has been crucial, and sometimes the numbers used to describe investment in the UK and to compare it with other countries fail to recognise that essentially road and rail are public investments in this country, but nearly every other kind of investment in infrastructure comes from the private sector. I was recently in the United States, where they are now trying desperately to copy what we are doing because one’s ability to leverage in that kind of private money significantly increases the amount of investment in infrastructure and creates so many possibilities that could never come from just using the public purse. So we need to stop using distorted figures when we look at these numbers.
Noble Lords talked of their concern over the new status of the Highways Agency—the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, mentioned it.
Baroness Kramer
I will have to come to the noble Lord with that number, because I do not have it to hand. I would be quite interested in seeing it myself, as I have not seen it expressed in that way—but I would be delighted to.
Something that is very important about the Highways Agency, which encapsulates the real change that this Government are bringing to infrastructure, is that it will sit as the delivery implementing agency, in effect, for future roads investment. Sitting outside it is the roads investment strategy, which remains entirely the responsibility of the Secretary of State. I should say that the Highways Agency is also wholly owned by the Government—it is definitely an agency. For the first time, we will have long-term certainty of funding for roads and a programme over a Parliament in the same way that we have had for rail. Many in this House have pointed out that the problem in project after project has been that investment has been subject to a stop-start set of decisions, which have disrupted long-term investment. Now we can begin to have that kind of assurance. Bringing into the Highways Agency people with the skills to deliver that efficiency, just as we are doing in the rail sector, is absolutely crucial. With the scale of investment that we are undertaking, we have to make sure that every penny is well spent. That means that we need that specialised expertise and we will have it going forward—we hope, if this House and the other place agree to the kinds of proposals being put forward in the Queen’s Speech.
I have less than two minutes, so I close by reiterating my thanks to everybody who is here. I recognise that there are very significant areas that I have not covered, but I shall try to do so in writing in response to questions. Finally, it has been an absolute privilege to be in the Department for Transport at this time. I look back at previous Ministers, and many in this House who had to deal with cuts and decline. We are at a time when this Government are taking a completely different approach towards infrastructure. It is part of the growth, because it becomes the framework for important economic growth. We are building Crossrail, we are completing the Northern Hub, and there will be £70 billion of capital investment in transport over the next Parliament. We are trebling the budget for major road schemes. Network Rail will spend £38 billion over the next five years. We have doubled the investment in cycling and we are investing £500 million to position Britain at the forefront of ultra low-carbon motoring. As the demand for travel rises, we are meeting that challenge.
Busy arteries such as the west coast main line will be overwhelmed in the next decade if we do not build new capacity between our cities in the form of new rail, which is why we need the new north-south rail High Speed 2. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that it is of course our intention that eventually there will be an HS1-HS2 link. The scheme in the programme was simply inappropriate and unworkable. It is something we want but we recognise that it will need to be looked at in the future.
However, the most important thing about HS2—this goes back to the discussion on the economy and equality—is that it offers so much opportunity to the Midlands and the north, which they deserve. We must take connectivity along with it. That goes back to the devolution issue. The noble Lord, Lord Deighton, has led that work and worked closely with the communities in the Midlands and the north. They have told us what connectivity is needed to maximise the benefits of HS2. That line offers a future in which once again, as has always been the case traditionally, the Midlands and the north can balance out London and we achieve growth all across our nation so there are no areas to which we have to transfer payment, as it were. Rather, there will be great generation of wealth, income, jobs and new business all across the country.
I thank noble Lords for their contributions and wish there had been time to respond to more of the questions.