Covid-19: Businesses and the Private Sector

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I share with the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, a belief that the country needs a vibrant private sector of both big companies and SMEs. However, the crisis requires us to rethink its moral purpose and relationship to the state. I associate myself with what the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said on the first point.

Shareholder value had already been knocked off its ideological pedestal before the crisis, but what we now see are the green shoots of a new era of public-private partnership that we should support. On Covid vaccines, the Government are sponsoring research and innovation, but also trying to ensure that we manufacture the stuff in Britain. The Government should take a comprehensive look at nurturing domestic and pan-European supply chains for goods, from basic PPE to highly advanced telecoms equipment. There are pressing security concerns that have to be addressed—I do not want a new Cold War with China—but we have to be less naive and more robust.

Covid is creating the greatest economic crisis since World War II. The Government are offering generous loans to keep companies afloat, but many of these will not be repaid. The solution is to convert these loans into public equity. We must turn the British Business Bank into a German-style KfW and work out how this new relationship will work.

Finally, the Government are opening their doors again to the trade unions. Employers are seeing the positive role that workplace representatives can play in ensuring health and safety. We need to match a new era of public-private partnership with a new era of social partnership.