Future of Work — House of Lords, 2017-10-12
Topic: Technology
Joan Bakewell (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, on her speech and welcome her to the Chamber. Unfortunately, as far as I am concerned, she is sitting on the wrong side of it but, as far as I am concerned, she is the right gender. My welcome to you I sit on the Artificial Intelligence Committee of this House, and we have already had several meetings and more than 200 submissions, so what I say draws on that experience. Yesterday, the BBC’s technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, told us about the cycle of hype and warned us that AI is currently enjoying a huge hype. It is very much in the news generally. Only yesterday, Matthew d’Ancona, writing in the Standard, said that we have machines that can compose Bach, produce art and compose poems. Well, do we? Next week, there is a discussion at Portcullis House: "Will Robots Take Your Job?". Will they? Many questions are opening up and the "popularity"—I put that in inverted commas—of AI as a subject for journalists, programmes and investigation indicates an anxiety. One or two people suggested at our meeting yesterday that the anxiety was because automation was threatening middle-class jobs, and the middle class was more likely to be vocal about the issue. Perhaps that is a point. There is an indication that robotics and automation will enter the legal profession and make easy the incredibly extensive search routines that have to go on in law firms. So yes, slowly, without the hype, AI will be depriving a lot of people of their jobs I want to put two things to the Minister, some of which has already been mentioned by my colleagues. Healthcare will be one of the major needs of the future and there needs to be a revolution in our attitude towards it. Healthcare and the caring professions need to be elevated into a serious career option. There should be a higher status for them in our society. Students in schools should be offered by career guidance the prospect of a career in care. You will not be out of work if you take up a career in care. On the other hand, caring has a very low status, is very badly paid, has a high turnover and job satisfaction is often low, because the circumstances in which people operate are of huge pressure. However, I have had the huge pleasure of presiding at carers’ awards ceremonies. People have come up to me afterwards and said, "I am a carer. I absolutely love my job". That is the key to the jobs we want for the future: jobs that people can love doing, that they can enjoy doing, that offer empathy with fellow human beings rather than the monotony and depression of routine jobs. That is my first question to the Minister. My other concern is related to it, because it is about the ageing population. The retirement age is being extended but, for many people, it is ceasing to exist. People do not want to retire. They are under financial pressure to continue to work; their temperaments and health are such that they have energy to expend; and they want to continue working. What provision is being made for that? There needs to be a new structuring of work patterns that offers part-time work, reasonable rotas and different hours so that people over 60, or people over 70, can go on working and contributing without it being a strain on what they hoped would be a reassuring retirement. Attached to that is a strategy for continuum, lifelong learning, so that people who might retire at 50 with certain skills can return to study and take a degree in another set of skills which they can then use for the next 30 years. I speak as the president of Birkbeck, where of course we train people who are in jobs to have second careers. This is enormously important. It is proving very difficult to get the message out that part-time learning is worth doing and is available—it is difficult to get grants, and loans are tricky. We need a major rethink about this country embarking on a huge lifelong learning strategy not for a few early retirees but for its entire population.