Contribution
My Lords, in my view, the targets—or possibly milestones—set out in the Statement are laudable, but I have severe doubts about the Government’s ability to meet them. Setting targets is easy but, without a proper plan for delivery, they are so much hot air.
In an attempt to improve delivery, the Government’s focus is on how budgets are used and whether the right systems are used to deliver policy outcomes. That is clearly crucial. In relation to that, the Statement poses the question: is power being devolved enough? Our view is that it is not being devolved nearly far enough, and that, unless power over budgets and tax raising is devolved to a far greater extent than the Government plan, those on the front line will not be in a position to exercise their discretion to deliver policy in the most appropriate way for the communities in which they live.
So I ask the Government: how rigorously are they going to look to devolve power? Will they report regularly, with reasoning, on the extent to which they have considered and accepted or declined to devolve power in individual policy areas? Given that their targets can be achieved only if the Civil Service is highly motivated, how do the Government believe that recent statements by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, which cast doubt on the competence and enthusiasm for change of civil servants, will help meet that requirement?
Of the six milestones, I would like to question those on health and housing. On health, how do the Government reconcile their milestone of reaching the standard of no patient waiting more than 18 weeks for elective treatment with the Secretary of State for Health’s statement earlier in the week that the NHS should prioritise emergency treatment and “forget targets”? How is the NHS supposed to know what its priorities are if they appear to be changing from day to day? How can any target in respect of hospitals be achieved unless the Government fix the broken care system, which currently sees so many people stuck in hospital who do not need to be there?
Of all the targets, the one which strains credulity most is that on housing. The Government have pledged to build 1.5 million homes during the lifetime of this Parliament. They seem to think that changes to the planning system will be the most significant contribution towards meeting this target. I do not intend to comment on today’s planning announcement, but no planning changes are likely to come into effect until a year after the election at best. So the Government will have to meet their target with a maximum of four years’ increased rate of housebuilding.
This seems implausible, particularly as the Government have said very little about two of the non-planning policies that will be needed to make this happen. First, what is the Government’s numerical target for the building of social homes? Social houses are desperately needed to meet demand but, without a major increase in social housebuilding, it is very difficult to see how the Government can meet their overall target.
Secondly, where will the workers come from to enable the houses to be built? Present skills shortages in the construction sector make a rapid scaling-up of housebuilding literally impossible. Changes to the skills regime will help, but they will not yield a significant increase in new skilled employees until towards the end of this Parliament. The only way to meet the skills gap in the short term is to allow more migrant workers into the building sector. Will the Government therefore replace the arbitrary salary threshold for work visas with a more flexible, merit-based system to enable this to happen?
Finally, having set such clear priorities, what plans do the Government have to report regularly on their achievements? Will today’s Statement be followed by regular updates on progress? Setting targets is easy, but being able to achieve them is vastly more difficult.