United Kingdom: Productivity

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I share with some sympathy the worries of the two previous speakers about missing a football game. However, those who think that our international competitiveness is even more critical in tonight’s cricket match might like to know that Australia is 140-5 after 30 overs.

We were promised a plan to raise productivity, but this is a presentational document published alongside the Budget. It is less a plan than a repeat of the Conservative manifesto objectives printed out in a government paper, and, sadly, I have to say, it hardly inspired my Summer Recess reading. One of my senior colleagues who had a spell in the coalition Government said that you can always judge the lack of specific quality in a government publication by the amount of blank pages in it. I gave this publication the test. It is an 82-page document, with 11 completely blank pages. Counting the 10.5 half blank pages, that is 16.5 blank pages in total, 20 % of the content. That does not set a very good example, given that it is a document supposedly about productivity. We know we have a productivity problem, but what we could have done with is a detailed analysis of what that problem is and a delivery plan to address it. Policy objectives are fine but, as the Minister said, they are worthless without a proper analysis, implementation plans and clear output objectives.

Aiming for productivity growth should be about how we get competitive advantage in international markets and safeguard it so that we can counter our poor balance of payments performance and improve real incomes domestically. Management leadership quality, investment and the skills of our labour force lie at the heart of what we must do. I agree with the Minister’s point that skills and labour quality are the key to this problem. I am concerned that the wide horizons of the paper—the fact that it is like a box of liquorice allsorts, in that you never know what is coming next—means that it fails to grapple with the specifics of what matters.

In the time available, I can deal with only three aspects. First, on broadband, there is one page on infrastructure. I accept that this is important, but I have always had doubts about the delivery of 95% superfast broadband by 2017. Frankly, I am worried that I will be part of the 5% that is left out, not least because I do not know where we are now on this issue and I am suspicious that Ministers do not know either or are hiding something. Perhaps the Minister will tell us what percentage of households now have the opportunity to have superfast broadband, given that we have only two and a bit years to get to the 95% target.

However, more important than the broadband infrastructure is this. Until superfast broadband is uniformly provided, I can read my newspapers on my tablet only in my London home. However, in Hampshire where I live, I am dependent on a huge logistical enterprise of printing plants, huge motorway-bound trucks and wholesale distribution centres, and then a man in a white van having to survive my dogs to deliver my paper because the internet bandwidth is pathetic and downloading my papers is impossible. Incidentally, in rural France this summer, where newspaper delivery can even involve planes to deliver English newspapers, I had the capacity to download even the full Sunday Times on my tablet.

What this illustrates is more important than infrastructure. Infrastructure is critical but, even more importantly, digital technology is re-engineering all the processes of manufacture, distribution, sales and income collection in every sector—public and private—and anyone who says that productivity opportunities are slowing down is talking out of their hat. They are going to speed up even more as the international economy picks up speed. This report should be addressing that question. Are we going to have competitive advantage in this digital world, or will we be left behind? It is fast-moving and, in my view, the Americans and even the Germans are way ahead in terms of this digital re-engineering. I support the northern powerhouse and living wage initiatives, but they will take time to have an impact on productivity; the threat from those more fleet of foot and a failure to take advantage of the digital opportunities are immediate challenges.

I worry that, despite the initiatives we are taking in our schools and universities to raise skill levels, we are still not doing enough in our colleges and adult education institutions to grapple with the challenge of the need for competitive advantage in skills. Budgets for adult education and colleges are being cut while we try to chase the politically attractive targets of 2 million and then 3 million apprenticeships—of uneven quality. In the previous generation, car plants were located in Great Britain because our labour force was regarded as more flexible. But Toyota still went to France because, although the labour practices there were seen as less flexible, the labour force’s mathematical skills were better—it was more IT literate and its precision was more reliable—and that made up for the inflexibility. That will be the required competitive advantage for the future. The plan needs to highlight our weaknesses and deliver a remedy.

One of the most frightening figures is that Volkswagen invests €11 billion in R&D each year—more than what the whole UK Government, universities and research councils could contemplate; in fact, approaching a third of the whole R&D budget of this country. It is adapting IT systems with its excellent engineering motor products. In the future, garages maintaining cars are going to more reliant on IT skills than mechanical skills. It shows the challenge one country on its own will have going forward.

So my final point is about Europe. One of the factors behind the United States’ productivity is the scale of its domestic market. It encourages big-scale investment as well as the development of niche businesses. One of the sadnesses of the pettiness of our renegotiation saga is that we are neglecting the bigger prize we could get if energy, negotiating skill and diplomacy could go into the opening up of the European markets. Sadly, competition does not naturally happen; it needs regulation and policing to bring it about because vested interests and established individual businesses much prefer protected markets. In a digital economy, it will be even more important to protect consumers internationally. This report needed much more than the three lines given to the opening up of services, energy utilities, financial and digital markets in the EU—in all of which we have competitive advantage to exploit. With the scale of re-engineering coming from new technology developments and the international competition and opportunities it will open up, we cannot afford to operate alone as one country in a global world.