Economic Downturn

Lord Londesborough Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I was doing some other things this weekend, such as celebrating my daughter’s first birthday, and I will not comment on the leadership race. The noble Lord raised the need to have greater hybrid working, for example, and to look for other opportunities for efficiency in our economy and I absolutely agree with him on that.

[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that real economic growth will prove almost impossible in the long term while our workforce remains more than 1 million short? Given the current leadership debate, how long will we have to wait until the Government take action to address this growing labour crisis?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I reassure noble Lords that they will not have to wait at all. We are investing in skills across the range of our workforce to ensure that those who are out of work, or in work where they could be making better use of their skills, can find those opportunities. We need to encourage people back into the workforce—for example, older workers who moved out of the workforce during the pandemic—and we need to use migration in a targeted way to ensure that we get the right skills that this country needs.