Budget Statement

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, it seems a long time since the Minister started the debate. I congratulate her, because she took an hour-long speech from the Chancellor, went to the major points and delivered it within about 19 minutes. That was very useful indeed for my noble friend Lord Eatwell, who I congratulate on delivering his usual barnstorming and devastating attacks on the Government’s performance. He picked out the major points and went for it. As I understood it, I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Bridges was, in many respects, giving my noble friend support on a number of the criticisms he was levelling.

I too welcome to the House the noble Baroness, Lady Moyo. I am not an economist—I am a simple old trade unionist—but I came here to learn, and I learned from the economists. I look forward to listening to many similar great speeches from her in the future, and I wish her a very warm welcome indeed.

Coming so far down the speakers’ list, I note that so much has been said already. My noble friend Lord Davies made a wonderful and devasting speech on pensions.

The one thing the Chancellor has done is steady the economy, and for that we must all be grateful, regardless of whichever party we come from. A year or 15 months ago, the country was in a hell of mess, and that was nothing to do with energy. The noble Lord on the Front Bench talked about energy, but it was not energy; it was precipitated by the leadership of the Conservative Party at that time. But we have now been steadied, and for that we should be pleased.

As to whether or not we are going to get ourselves moving to the levels of productivity that we require, I am uncertain. The noble Baroness, Lady Moyo, talked about 3% GDP. We last had that when Lord Darling was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when Labour was last in power. Let us hope that, if Labour returns to power within the next two years at the outside—I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, in particular—we will really start to see some genuine attention being given to the fundamental problems of the type which he described, and that we can get the economy moving.

I am interested in the reasons why we are short in the workforce. There is a whole range of different analyses being made as to the causes for that. When responding to the Chancellor yesterday in the Commons, my leader, Keir Starmer, said that we were the “sick man of Europe”. In that context, I think he was talking primarily about the economy, because in relative terms we are doing badly on recovery compared with most European countries. We are, and have been for quite some time, the real sick nation of Europe in health terms. I was expecting and hoping that the Chancellor, given his previous long experience of working on health, might have spent a little more time addressing some of the health issues which the country faces by looking for economic solutions, in part, to some of those problems.

Without doubt, one of our fundamental problems is that we drink too much, so some steps have been taken there which I welcome. The draught duty is an innovative approach, and it gives a marker for the future that we can set different levels of taxation within alcohol and we can focus. It is good to see that we now have the freedom to increase taxation within off-sales and supermarkets in a way that we have not done previously; it is at supermarkets where you get the cheap drink, and many people suffer ill health as a consequence. That was a movement in the right direction.

The other area in which we are very poor is the quality of the food that many of our people, including me, consume. There was a case for the Chancellor moving to address that issue and seeing whether we can effect some changes. Some progress was made under Mrs May. We introduced a tax on fizzy drinks, which proved to be effective, yet that has not been applied over a wider front, notwithstanding all the calls for greater taxation on sugar. Why are we not taking the opportunity to look at an extension of the sugar tax, when sugar is at the heart of many of the problems we have with our health in this country? If we looked at the kind of food we produce and at alternatives to sugar, we could find a new industry where British food manufacturers could give a lead in producing new types of food that would not only benefit our country internally but could be exported on a wider basis. If we look at the problems of the world, particularly North America, we see that food and obesity are great issues. Projections in America around the scale of type 2 diabetes are quite worrying. They indicate that it could go up to 90% with that disease. We have to find ways overall.

Let us take our weaknesses and see whether we can convert them into our strengths by addressing the issues. I support what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that health is about food, drink and exercise, and that we perform badly in comparison with what happens elsewhere in Europe. Curriculums in schools in Europe and elsewhere give much more time to sport and exercise than we do in this country. Why can we not change it? There are opportunities for change.

I come back to the issue of the workforce. I have already said that our ill health is one of the reasons why we have seen a decline there. That needs to be addressed.

We need also to look at what people want. There are those who have gone into retirement and not returned to the workforce. They want to stay at home. One of the lessons of Covid was that people do not want to leave their homes in the way they have done in the past. They do not want to go back to the offices, they do not want to go back to the factories—in fact, the number of our factories is now diminishing—and there is a push to stay at home. We should recognise and acknowledge that. Rather than saying, “Come back into the cities and travel”, we must acknowledge that people are not going to do that. Instead, we have to start planning to move more work from offices into the home and for people to work from home. Civil servants are doing it to a degree, and there has been a lot of criticism. It is misplaced. What I think we are seeing there is the lead for what should be happening in many other parts of employment in the clerical and executive sphere. The work should be going home, with people then having opportunities to give attention to their children and to care for those in their family who need it, rather than having to import people in. Rather than chasing and pushing people back to work, work should be moving.

Some of us had the opportunity yesterday to see the new technology that is coming, such as the headsets. It is truly amazing what is just around the corner. Just think back to the early 1990s, when we were holding “bricks” to our ears, and compare that to what we can now do with our mobiles. With these headsets we can create a virtual reality and communicate with people in a quite different way. This is the kind of technology people will be using in their homes in the future. The technology will advance and move beyond just sight: people will be able to smell, taste and touch; and they will work from home.

I know this is long-term stuff, but it will create an entirely different kind of workforce. I hope my party will look ahead to the nature of work in five to 10 years’ time and start preparing for it. Within that time we will have an entirely different idea of work and of the opportunities available to people, particularly in areas with high unemployment. There need not be unemployment, because we can take the work there. We have pressed the Civil Service to decentralise and to move to different parts of the country. Why, as part of equalisation and levelling up, are we not pressing the major companies in London and the City similarly to decentralise and take their work to areas where there are employment opportunities?

There are many opportunities, but they have not been seized in this Budget, I am afraid. We have some stability, but we need far greater ambition. I believe that my party has that ambition to take us forward and to help people.