Cost of Living — House of Lords, 2022-06-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Eatwell (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I am grateful to all participants in this debate, which has been I think both timely and interesting There have been two background themes in what people have had to say. One has been concern about the very bad place that Britain is in now, whether we are referring to inflation, as did the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, and my noble friends Lord Davies and Lord Stansgate; whether we are discussing energy issues and how the crisis is perhaps pushing energy and green issues in the wrong direction, as was suggested by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe; or whether we are referring to the issue of trust in society, going back to Robert Putnam’s famous Bowling Alone—and the way in which the glue of trust is being eroded by inflation as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, most powerfully argued—about which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, was also concerned, as was the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, in particular with her reference to young people, and my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe. There has also been the overall despair at the rise in poverty in this country at this time, expressed very powerfully again by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, by my noble friends Lord Sikka, Lord Davies and Lord Stansgate, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. This is the sort of desperate concern about the position we are in But the other theme has been "Well, what are we going to do about it? How do we rebuild?" Do we learn, as the noble Lord, Lord Desai, argued, from when it happened before, with respect to the experience of the 1970s? Are we willing to undertake the sort of radical reconstruction of our economy and our society, of the basic arrangements by which this country operates, to create the resilience so that this does not happen again on the same scale of desperation as we have had now My noble friends Lord Howarth, Lord Sikka and Lord Tunnicliffe made reference to issues of taxation, and there has been discussion of basic income as a way of completely reforming the underlying structure of support in society. But looking forward, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, having acknowledged and discussed the extremely difficult position of the economy, society and particularly the poorer members of our community —by which I mean not the bottom 10% but the bottom 40% or 50% of society, a good half, who are suffering—focused very much on the levelling-up White Paper. This was something of a surprise for me, because I was very struck when the levelling-up White Paper was published that the communities to which it referred regarded it as a complete damp squib. It was very striking that this central theme in government policy seemed to be so amorphous or inadequate The noble Baroness is right that we need a Government to provide real economic leadership for change and to provide some credible vision for a better future. We have plenty of romantic and colourful visions coming from the Prime Minister—it is just that none of them is credible. We need a real rethink. This could be part of her levelling-up agenda, and that could be turned into credibility, but it has to be part of a wider concern about economic change. We cannot have a situation where we sit back and allow the largest chip-producing company in the world—a British company—to be sold off to a Saudi-funded hedge fund. We cannot any longer tolerate the position in which Britain is just blown around with the storms of international economic markets. I hope that what we can take from this debate is both the enormous concern around the House—I am leaning very heavily on the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, when I say "around the House"—about the situation in which the people of Britain find themselves, and the equally great concern that we have to change. We have to think about a different way of organising our economic and social structure. I thank everyone who has participated in the debate.