Technology and People: Deloitte Report

Lord Patten Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten (Con)]

Earlier this week, I saw a headline over an article by some transport guru in a national newspaper, “Driverless cars will not catch on”. That incited the punter in me to think that there must be an investment opportunity here. Where can I invest in the companies that will put the stuff into these driverless cars? After all, not many decades ago there were people saying on the record in the Economist and other great journals that the internet probably would not catch on too much.

It is much better to listen to the thoughtful words of the noble Lord, Lord Rees of Ludlow, on driverless cars and what they might produce in terms of a minefield in legal regulation. It is always better to listen to people who know their stuff, who have made stuff and think about stuff—just as my noble friend who opened this debate said in his notable speech. He is a deep thinker. As it happens, I think about him every day in my office at work because a couple of decades ago he gave me for my desk what is called in the trade a “business courtesy”—a memento of no value at all. It is a heavy, stainless steel apple produced by the lost wax process in one of his Redditch foundries, made by some of his people in a demonstration that manufacturing with leftovers can be fun. I think every day of my noble friend Lord Borwick when I go into my office and he made me think a lot in what he said this evening.

My noble friend used the report by Deloitte on this subject as a convenient peg on which to hang his provocative thoughts. At nine pages, the report is not exactly a PhD thesis. It restates the conventional wisdom—there is nothing wrong with conventional wisdom where it is correct—that since 1871, every time some new invention or process has appeared, there is normally turmoil. People are fearful for their jobs, there are calls for regulation or to stop it happening—as in Queen Elizabeth I’s time—but then everything always settles down. The one-time threat turns out generally to be a most beneficial job creator. It is just like in our experience when we lower the top rate of taxation: the tax take for the Treasury automatically, in a regulated way, produces more money for the Treasury to spend on those people who need help. These things have been the case every time since way before 1871, and always will be in future.

When I first looked at the report online, a sidebar popped up on the Deloitte site trying to recruit new people, including readers of the report, to join its ranks. “Never too late,” I thought. “Always look at a new challenge. Chartered accountancy? It’s a thought”. So I went down the recruiting list. Deloitte lists its seven areas of expertise of which it is proud—in rank order, I guess. The first is giving tax advice. Going down through the list, the last is technology. I am sure that its advice on technology is excellent. However, although it used to be those in blue-collar trades, as they were then called, who were at the forefront of uncomfortable change—losing their jobs and having to reskill—in future decades it will be more and more the white collars who see disruption and replacement by the sort of automation referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and others. That automation will go into areas such as legal work and, dare I say it, accountancy. Some people listening will realise that we have in the United Kingdom almost as many accountants as the whole of the rest of the other nations of the European Union put together. This sort of movement into these areas may well be a very beneficial piece of economic advance and disruption in the employment landscape.

It will also be less and less the case of new machines and technologies—those driverless cars and all the rest of it—but more of the de facto rebooting of human beings. Take apps, as have been referred to. Their use has created enormous wealth and new jobs. They have destroyed lots of other jobs, too. People used to be in call centres giving advice. They are not asked for that any more because apps get people the advice they want on where to go or shop, or how to get a restaurant booking. That has indeed destroyed jobs but it has also created an enormous amount of new growth. Only a year ago, text-based, artificial intelligence-driven chatbots were thought to be pure futurology, just like those driverless cars and the internet. Yet we now have this artificial intelligence-driven mechanism booking trains, getting food delivered and helping to monitor people who are schizophrenic and with long-term mental problems through the advice they can give.

The pace of change is extraordinary. The Government should be very happy with all this. I urge them not to start having lots of policies, strategies and groups, or retooling, rebooting and growing the department for business again. It would be much better if the Government and Ministers listened carefully to what has been said by the noble Lords, Lord Rees of Ludlow and Lord Giddens, and others in this debate, and just let it happen.