Office for Demographic Change Bill [HL]

Lord Horam Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 4th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, one reason I support my noble friend Lord Hodgson’s Bill is that it will encourage long-term thinking. He mentioned in his opening remarks “long-tail issues”, which is a common phrase in the insurance industry. In the epic contest between our western-style democracies and dictatorships, which we see playing out in the world, democracies are often said to suffer an inability to think long term, because of the frequency of general elections. They always look at short-term fixes for solutions. I believe this sort of agency could promote a more balanced approach, with more attention to longer-term issues that have a fundamental effect on quality of life in this country.

The second reason I support the Bill is that it will encourage us to look at the environmental, ecological and social factors, as well as the purely economic. I say that as an economist myself. As my noble friend Lord Hodgson said, life is not all about increasing gross domestic product and I fully concur.

Ministers have said in the past when discussing this issue that this proposal is covered by the activities of the Migration Advisory Committee. However, if you look at the members of that committee, you see that they are almost exclusively labour market economists. They look at skill factors—whether we have a shortage of lorry drivers, people with digital skills or care workers—and are not concerned with wider issues such as the beauty of our countryside, the space that we occupy and the ecological effects of population growth. So it is not an appropriate body to look at these issues, even though the Government have said in the past that it is. I have also talked to Professor Bell, chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee, who agrees that the remit is quite specific and limited.

My third reason for supporting the Bill is that we are a small country. Bill Bryson called his delightful travelogue of Britain Notes from a Small Island. When the Americans came over here in the Second World War, they had a briefing from their staff that said, “England—think South Carolina. It’s the same size.” Even today, South Carolina only has 10 million people. We have five or six times that number in England. If you look around the world, there are only four countries of a similar geographical size to our own that have a greater population: Taiwan, South Korea, Rwanda and Bangladesh.

In those circumstances, we must look very carefully at how we use land. I noted that when the present Prime Minister was still a journalist for the Daily Telegraph, he wrote in an article on 25 October 2007:

“It is time that we had a grown-up discussion about the optimum quantity of human beings in this country, and on the planet. Do we really want the south-east of England, already the most densely populated country in Europe, to resemble a giant suburbia?”


“Hear, hear,” I say. We do not want that to happen, and we must work out policies which prevent it.

I will make one final suggestion to the Minister on this subject. The Prime Minister has tasked Mr Rees-Mogg in the other Chamber to come up with some ideas about the benefits of Brexit. I voted remain in the referendum but, none the less, I would like to see some of the benefits of Brexit brought forward. Might I suggest that building up an office for demographic change could feed into that, by essentially looking forward and giving a bit of vision to the whole area where this country is going, post Brexit? As Harry Perkins, the hero of former Labour MP Chris Mullin’s excellent novel, A Very British Coup, said, “We politicians spend a great deal of time looking at the ground. Just occasionally, we should gaze at the stars.” I think my noble friend is gazing at the stars here in a very illustrative and visionary way, and I agree with his Bill.