Budget Statement

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I place on record my thanks to the Chancellor, the Ministers and staff in Her Majesty’s Treasury. Quite frankly, the response that they gave to our population was proactive and sensitive and showed an understanding that I did not expect to see, so I thank the Treasury. I also thank the volunteers in the health service. I had a jab on Saturday, and the number of volunteers who are helping our people is amazing.

On the Budget, I pick out the global investment fund, which my noble friend just mentioned. It seems a very significant way forward. I will just cover exports and the NHS. First, on exports, I am a marketing man by profession and spent nearly 17 years working overseas and in the UK on exports, mainly focused on south Asia. The Financial Times of a couple of days ago had a headline:

“Sluggish exports: the ‘worrying trend’”,


which is quite right; that is one of the key issues that we face.

We now also know, on the ground—my noble friend Lord Londesborough has given considerable detail on this—about the problems of the supply chains and so on. I got a letter yesterday from the Department for Transport, and I just pick out that, on HGV drivers, it says we used to have a scheme for professional and career development loans, which was closed in 2019—understandably at that point. I suggested in a Written Question that it should be reopened, and am told that there are no plans to do so and that it is the responsibility of the employers to get on and do it. That is not the way forward to co-operate and get things moving in this country.

What can we do to improve the marketing? I personally believe that, as a Minister, Liz Truss went a long way to help and I hope that some of the energetic work that she has done filters through. But the Foreign Office is still not, in my judgment, oriented enough to exporting. I believe that the number 2 in every high commission and embassy should be in charge of export and business development. The ECGD is there—it should help and it wants to help. Look at what is happening in the port at Felixstowe; why have we not got that sorted out?

We used to use the BBC external services for promotion, and we have plans for a royal yacht. Why do we not revamp the Queen’s Award for Industry towards exports, or possibly resurrect the British Export Council? Perhaps we should use more collective market research, which we used to use a lot, but do not seem to use very much at the moment. Although I understand about air passenger duty, we also have to be very careful to look after our international airports, which are fundamental to our development as a world economy. There is a lot to be done in the world of exporting, and much of it is to do with marketing.

I turn to the National Health Service, which is the biggest employer in the UK, indeed in Europe. It now takes 8.4% of our GDP. I come from a doctor household: my wife started a practice in Biggleswade and built it up to be the biggest practice in that part of England. My son, also a GP, is now a deputy coroner. I myself studied and worked on the PAC for 12 years.

Just look at the PAC’s recent Test and Trace Update: Twenty-Third Report of Session 2021-22. It says that test and trace

“has not achieved its main objective to help break chains of COVID-19 transmission and enable people to return”

to work. I will pick out one particular paragraph:

“NHST&T’s continued over-reliance on consultants is likely to cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds … Despite NHST&T committing to reduce the number of consultants it employed, the number”


went up between April and December. The pay is

“£1,100 per day but some are paid more.”

Finally, it makes the point:

“Over a third of the 523 recruitment campaigns run by NHST&T up to the end of May 2021 failed to appoint anyone.”


That is not a happy scene.

I would also look at medical schools. I have consistently raised questions about numbers in our medical schools, because I have in-depth knowledge about this. I started way back on 11 October 2011, and more recently I raised a Question in 2016, five years ago. Our dear friend, the noble Lord, Lord Prior of Brampton, who was in the Department of Health at that point, said we would

“fund up to 1,500 additional medical school places”.

In my supplementary, I pointed out:

“In the last three years, we have lost 3,500 medical students, but the problem goes deeper … Today”—


that was 2016; it has worsened since then—

“56% of the intake of medical students is female. Furthermore, 70% of female GPs today work part-time, and a recent survey by the King’s Fund says that 90% of all medical students in training want to work part-time. Given that it costs £200,000 to train anybody … surely the time has come to consider a … full-time commitment of at least four years after qualification, similar to what they do in Singapore”.—[Official Report, 26/10/16; col. 197.]

The Minister said that they would study this and see whether they could produce a scheme whereby all medical students would have to be committed to four years after qualification.

Nothing has happened. Frankly, it is not good enough. It is a huge problem. The Great British public cannot get to a GP today. I feel particularly strongly about it. We need to get a grip on central expenditure, review the number of medical schools urgently and ensure that there is a contract for every single medical student such that, when they qualify, they either pay back the money if they are not going to work or sign on for four years, as they have to do for Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.