Policy-making: Future Generations’ Interests

Lord Crisp Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate and I welcome the thinking that is starting to happen on this topic around the world. Like my noble friend Lord Bird, I am attracted to the Welsh model and support his call for a UK equivalent. I am also grateful to him for giving me the opportunity not only to talk about this but to be made to think and read about it in advance, and bring it to top of mind.

There is a clear set of problems here, as noble Lords have said. Climate change and national debt epitomise this clearly. We are passing a burden to future generations, and we should not underestimate or neglect that. As has been argued in the papers that the Library has produced, our current means of economic analysis of future costs tends towards more short-termism. This is aggravated by the political cycle, which encourages short-termism and, at the moment, is further aggravated by the lack of political vision in the country. It seems that maybe my noble friend Lord Bird has got his timing absolutely right: where there is a lack of vision, there is also an opportunity. Maybe this is the sort of opportunity that an incoming Government—assuming that we have another stable Government in due course—might see as something that could help unify the country. Bring people together to think clearly about the future, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds mentioned about Kazakhstan, where I too have dropped in occasionally, as one does. In countries such as Kazakhstan they focus on the future and think about what is coming, whereas we perhaps concentrate more on the past.

There is also a problem today, as noble Lords know and have said, that younger people as a whole are disadvantaged compared with older generations such as mine, in matters as radical and important as life expectancy—which seems to be going down—opportunity, access to owning their own homes and student debt. Some people feel completely left out of society and its benefits, and many are becoming cynical, not least about politics. Here I note the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, that it is dangerous if people, particularly the young, lose trust in our political system.

Maybe there is another way to look at this. It could appear as if we in the older generations are being asked, reluctantly, to give up some of our power and privilege for future generations. But what do we stand to gain by doing so? Is it not in our interests as well? Generations are different, as has been said. It is interesting, from talking to employers with major workforces, that there are four or five different generations, with different needs, expectations and ways of working today. Different generations are different. They are different from us and see life in different ways. I am conscious of this in working with a lot of young nurses and doctors. They have different needs, different skills and different talents. They have an enormous amount to offer. Here I echo the noble Baroness, Lady Massey.

It always seemed an enormous paradox that most planning is done by the over-55s, and they promptly retire five years later. As I have learned today from the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, most planning is done by people who have just decided to become Conservative voters—if I understood what she said. Could we not do something different? Is it not better now, instead of just representing the interests of young people, to engage and involve them? There is a simple point here: should that not be good practice in all our planning mechanisms, not just in a single commission? I know we now try to organise ourselves to have gender and ethnicity balance, but should we not always engage younger people and make sure that our planning programmes always have some people aged 35 or under?

A common-sense new-normal way of thinking about the future and planning things should engage young people in every location where planning is underway. This adds to the richness of the debate. I know, because we have done that deliberately in the last two commissions I chaired. We have not had a youth group to advise us but people who actually have a seat at the table. On a good day, we in the older part of the committee or commission add a bit of wisdom and experience, and they add some new insight and energy, though we both have our bad days as well, when different qualities come to the fore.

It is worth noting that young people tend to create the future. This is not a new thing about tech pioneers. I mentioned I am working with nurses a lot at the moment, and it is interesting to reflect that, when Florence Nightingale was in the Crimea and doing the sorts of things that started to change the world of nursing, she was in her early and mid-30s. This is not a new phenomenon. Young people have a great deal to offer us, and those of us over 55 need perhaps to create a few more spaces at the table.

That is perhaps more directly relevant to the debate on Monday in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, when we will look at the composition of public bodies, so let me return to the point about a commission and a real focus from policy nationally on future generations. I agree with the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity, which proposes a UK commissioner, reform of the National Infra- structure Commission and imposing statutory duties on Ministers and public bodies to publish the implications of policy. Those need to be worked through, but they seem a good starting point for the future. How do the Government plan to think about these things and respond to such proposals?

Finally, action related to the future generations along the lines that we have talked about today could be one of the great unifying issues for a new Government. I commend this point to the Minister.