Autumn Budget 2024

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, on his coherent and brilliant introduction to this debate.

I am also looking forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Booth-Smith. It occurred to me, while listening to the very powerful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, that the noble Lord is in a very good position to tell us where the Conservative Party would have done less in order to balance the books. We hear all this talk about the need for the state to do less; we never hear what it means in practice. Is it not time, after 14 years of failure on this score, for the Conservative Party to tell us what it intended to do? You see, I take a completely different view. For far too long in Britain, we have been trying to have European levels of public service with American levels of taxation, and we have to face up to that problem.

I congratulate our Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, on what she has done and the tough decisions she has taken to make sure of the possibility of a catch-up and restoration of standards in our public services. I also congratulate her on the fact that we have restored public investment to at least a sensible level. Here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, who is no longer in his place, that we need a sustained increase in public investment, which of course would bring in private investment, if we are to raise our rate of long-term economic growth. Investment is crucial for reform of public services and we must make sure that the money we provide is spent on reform. Simply repairing school buildings and hospital roofs is not reform; we must be very rigorous about how we spend the money.

I cannot remember who mentioned it, but I worry that the boost to public investment is not being matched by a boost in skills training and apprenticeships, and providing the people who can actually do the work. We will set up the national skills council and are committed to firm action in this area, but I would like the Government to tell us what we are going to do to make sure we do not have lots of skilled labour shortages.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, that this increased public investment has to have strong guard-rails around it. We have to demonstrate, not least to the financial markets, that the investment is being spent in a wise way.

We have got to be more ambitious for growth. I think people are being a bit unfair on the Government, in that the OBR does say that the longer-term impact of increasing public investment will be to raise the rate of growth over a five to 10-year timeline.

More immediately, the big challenge we face is on trade. As the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, said, that has not been made easier by the election of Donald Trump. It is in the national interest that we prioritise getting a much better trading relationship with the European Union, our main economic partner in the world. I look forward to assurances from the Minister that that will be at the top of the Government’s priorities.