Lord Willetts (Con)

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, and my noble friend Lord Blackwater on their excellent maiden speeches. My noble friend has a deep knowledge of English culture and English history, and we had that on display as he rooted his Euroscepticism in a battle in Essex in 991. Now I understand it, and I very much look forward to his interventions in the future. I should declare my interests as chair of the Regulatory Innovation Office and a visiting professor at King’s College London, because I want to touch on the technology and education themes in the King’s Speech. The speed of technological advance means that regulations cannot just assume the old ways, and, of course, there are deep concerns about AI and online safety, which have been expressed already in this debate. But those 44,000 pages of environmental assessment before a nuclear power station can be built are a scandalous waste of public resource. We need to get the balance right when we set regulation. I very much support and hope that the nuclear regulation Bill and the regulation for growth Bill will be opportunities to do just that. Universities are key drivers of new technologies and innovation. They are also a key route for young people, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds, to transform their lives, so it is very frustrating to read this week that Alan Milburn, leading the NEETs review for the Government, said that he wanted to steer young people away from higher education because of graduate unemployment. The Minister is responsible for NEETs and policy. If we look at young adults aged 22 to 24, we will find that 10% of graduates will at some point during that period not be in work, which is a problem, but will she confirm that 30% of non-graduates will have that experience while they are aged 22 to 24? Getting into higher education is a great way of boosting job prospects and reducing welfare dependency. Can I therefore also ask the Minister why the legislation to index university fees, proposed in the Government’s own White Paper with the promise of legislation, does not appear in the King’s Speech? We do have a problem of NEETs and youth unemployment. When we compare our performance to other countries across Europe, we find that the big reason for our poor performance is quite simply that we have fewer people in education and training. Particularly, things go wrong at the age of 16—the transition from GCSE. We do not have enough people staying on for level 3 education and beyond. We heard in the excellent maiden speech by my noble friend Lord Blackwater a powerful example, a case for the cultural and educational benefits of that education. Our problem in this country is not too much education; it is too little.