Office for Demographic Change Bill [HL]

Viscount Craigavon Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 4th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Craigavon (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, on introducing this Bill and the way that he has done it; I speak very much in support of it. I spoke in favour of these same ideas contained in an amendment previously offered by the noble Lord in the Immigration Bill. It was resisted by the then Minister, mainly on the grounds that immigration was covered by the Migration Advisory Committee and that its role was being widened to cover the immigration system as a whole.

I hope that this debate and the future of the Office for Demographic Change—the ODC—can range much wider than just immigration, as will my contribution now. Attention is being drawn today to the central role that population size, increasing or decreasing, plays in so many aspects of our lives. If the Minister today tells us that the Cabinet Office would be the “hosting” ministry for the resulting provisions in this Bill, I hope that that office could anyway become the lead centre for liaising with the many other ministries which are also directly affected by what happens to UK population size. I hope that might emerge regardless of what happens to this Bill.

I realise that this Bill is rightly drawn quite tightly in order to start off with a manageable remit, and one accepts the stated assumption that the ODC may not consider the impact of any alternative policies—but it can commission research and draw on the experience of other countries around the world. Following what is proposed in the Bill, the annual charter would set out the population projections in different timescales and what policies might be needed to achieve an acceptable level of population. This would be subject to an annual parliamentary debate. That would bring a most useful focus on this subject from multiple angles, and one would hope that over time it would develop some sort of agreed methodology in this very complex subject. The assumption is at present that there is no attempt at such a general assessment.

One of the main concerns worth addressing is how much the continuing reduction in UK total fertility rates is based on conscious and intentional decisions—maybe based on economic circumstances—and how much is driven by an intuitive, almost unconscious, preference. It is also very difficult to quantify the widely claimed reaction of this being a crowded island, with which many agree.

Personally, I shy away from the general economic growth mantra, but that itself in future might be affected by artificial intelligence rather than AI having any direct physical influence on the number of births. Having followed over many years the progress of numbers in China and the one-child family norm—it has now officially ended but is still voluntarily prevalent—it is astonishing to learn that what the Chinese call assisted reproduction technologies, such as IVF, are used by more than 1 million people a year and are widely encouraged. We know how many other national schemes to bolster population have largely failed over the years.

Although we can learn from other countries, I realise that this Bill mainly addresses the UK, where we have major considerations relating to population to deal with—for example, the cost of housing and the exorbitant cost of childcare, as well as the issue of pensions in the broader context of the interests of the old versus the young. All those are concerns of different ministries.

Finally, in this short debate, I again congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, and Civitas on this initiative, which will, I hope, lead to greater things—if not exactly what is in this Bill. I hope that the Minister may see fit to encourage the location of the Cabinet Office as the centre of wisdom and feedback on this subject from all other ministries.