Budget Responsibility and National Audit (Fiscal Mandate) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-09-09
Topic: Education
Susan Kramer (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken in this debate. Of the four of us who have spoken, three had no choice. However, the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, was a true volunteer. That makes him No. 1 in my book as a consequence. I very much value his contribution and the examples given of Sweden and the US taking a different approach to issues such as the fiscal mandate. That opens up our minds. He warned us against a Victorian vision of the economy and, in doing so, drew on his own experience as a very successful creator of a business. He very much urged the Government to take advantage of low interest rates to accelerate the commitment to infrastructure well beyond their current and original ambitions. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Young, has taken this point on board I thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, very much for finding so much common ground. It is always good when views are shared across these Benches. I am sure he is right that we will confront these issues in the Autumn Statement in November, long before any Bill introduced as a Private Member’s Bill will have the opportunity to have any impact. On that score, I say "Cheeky" to the Minister for bringing in a quote from my good colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Beith. However, he too will recognise that this is an important mechanism for getting a debate on an issue that very often comes after an Autumn Statement, although it should come before it. I hope that the Government will create some opportunities in their own time for key issues like this to be considered, particularly in the context of Brexit, which creates a much more dynamic situation and means that many more things need to be considered by this House and the other place I particularly valued the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, to the discussion of what the Government describe as a switch to grammar schools, which for 90% of people is a return to secondary moderns. That gets very much lost in the discussion, and I hope that what he has said will be seen as something of a reprimand to the media, which have ignored the 90% who will never have the opportunity to participate in the quality of education that is now being identified for a limited few I am delighted to hear that the Government welcome the general principles that were laid out in my Bill, but we have some differences of interpretation. Many in this House, and many on the Minister’s own Benches, will find the commitments to infrastructure spending frankly unambitious, given the needs of the time. We face generations of underinvestment, and the Government need to look again at accelerating our commitment to dealing with that in these times of great economic uncertainty and challenge. He also explained that the change in the definition of a budget balance or surplus was driven by the Conservative 2015 manifesto. Just because one makes a foolish statement in a manifesto, that does not mean it then makes sense to put it into practice in government. The Government need to look again at something I know they themselves see as a pair of handcuffs; there is no reason why we should all suffer as a consequence of manifesto drafting When the Minister looked at generational fairness, he once again focused on making sure that the next generation does not have to carry the debts for its predecessor generations. I fully accept that. However, that is far too limited an understanding of what is happening to our younger generation, who are in the most extraordinary situation. When the Minister and I were young, we always knew that we could do better than our parents. We now have a generation for which that is exceedingly questionable. That issue must be addressed before we end up alienating those who will inherit not just the national debt we leave behind, but society, opportunity, the economy and so much else. That has to go much more centre-stage in the Government’s thinking On competition, the only thing the Minister mentioned was tax cutting. That indicates the narrowness of the Government’s definition of competition—"Have we cut corporate taxes?" Frankly, cutting corporate taxes may have made some companies happy but it certainly has not led them to invest more, to train more or to increase their productivity in any marked way. Therefore, we have to look at other strategies to achieve that goal, and we need to understand the limits of tax cutting and decide whether it is appropriate for our target I thank everybody for participating in this debate. These are topics that we will return to, whether in the context of this Bill or in other contexts. For me, this has been a very interesting first go around the subject and it has also provided a great opportunity to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Young, to his new role. I look forward to many more exchanges on these and similar issues, and I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.