Income Inequality

Lord Newby Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, one of the widely regarded measures shows that inequality may have widened, which is the one that would include the broadest measures of wealth to account for house prices. That is the only one that shows that; all the others, as I have said, show the exact opposite of the tone of most of these questions. That is why we are also focused, as part of the productivity plan and otherwise, on trying to do something about broadening the supply of houses and to discourage the degree to which landlords have been influencing the housing market. These policies, along with the others I mentioned, will continue to attract the justifiable prime focus of our economic policies.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that yesterday’s employment figures showed a further fall in productivity? Why do the Government think that happened and what are they doing about it?

[Lord O'Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, of course one can infer some tentative implications about productivity from yesterday’s data on employment, but it would be very premature to do so. We know from the very latest productivity statistics that, if one uses a magnifying glass, there has been a modest increase in productivity in the last two quarters for which data have been reported. It is an ongoing observation that, in what are generally currently regarded as some of the most successful economies in the world, cyclically, the US included, they have, if anything, an even bigger apparent conundrum on this than we do here in the UK, because of the evidence of the past 12 months.