Lord Razzall (LD)

My Lords, I join other noble Lords on the committee in thanking our recently departed chair, the noble Lord, Lord Wood, who was an excellent chair, as we have all agreed. I have only one tiny criticism about his chairmanship and his drafting of this report, and I speak as the one of the tenders of the Asquithian flame on these Benches. If you look at the report closely, it says that in 1909, when the old age pensions were introduced, they were introduced by Lloyd George as Prime Minister. They were not; they were introduced by Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Asquith was Prime Minister, so I want to get that on the record. Many people may have thought that we chose to do a report on the ageing society because the majority of the members of the committee were over 80 when we decided to do this. I have to say that that was not the case. We chose to do it because, as a number of noble Lords have indicated—certainly the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, did in his wonderful opening speech—this is a serious issue facing our country. One thing that nobody, apart from the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, touched on is that we are not the only country facing these issues. To take three of them, Italy is the worst—or best, whichever way you look at it—country in Europe for these problems, probably because, as a well-known Roman Catholic country, it has the lowest rate of fertility. Further away, Japan has a massive problem which will result in the reduction of the population of Japan. The best view about what has happened to Japan is that it is because it has had no immigration, as a result of which its population is shrinking. Then, of course, the obvious country with a problem is China, because that is what happens if you have a one-child policy—it comes back to bite you in future years. Our committee was extremely strong on what we do not believe the solutions are. First, on fertility, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, indicated, we did not believe that doing anything about fertility would be enough to solve the problem. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Nargund, had some solutions, and I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, disagreed, but we were not saying that doing something about fertility would not have some impact, we were saying that doing anything about it would not have an impact in the timeframe to solve the problem. The second thing that we thought would not solve the problem is immigration. As the noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Turnbull, indicated, whatever we do about immigration, we do not believe that that would have an opportunity in the timeframe to do anything about it. Thirdly, we do not think that what appears to be the Government’s approach, which is, “If only we did something about productivity, that would solve the problem”, is correct. Despite endless government attempts to do something about productivity over the last 14 to 16 years, there does not seem to be any evidence that we have done anything about it. So we do not believe that that will solve the problem. As far as pensions are concerned, we did look at them, and we certainly looked at the question of an increase in the starting pension age. As the noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Reid, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, indicated, we again thought that it was too late to have a massive impact by increasing the state pension age. The noble Lords, Lord Redwood and Lord Willetts, probably disagree, but that was our conclusion. As readers of the report will see, we did not look at the triple lock. This debate probably indicates why we did not do so, because it is clearly a highly controversial topic. On the one hand, we had the noble Lords, Lord Reid, Lord Turnbull, Lord Tugendhat and Lord Macpherson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, all indicating that they thought keeping the triple lock was silly, while on the other hand we had the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, indicating quite the opposite point of view, and I think the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, thinks we certainly should not do anything about it without a proper debate. For that reason, we rather wisely kept off in the report the issue of the triple lock. As noble Lords will realise, we believe that the magic bullet, to the extent that there is one, is to do something about getting people aged between 50 and 65 either to stay in work or back into work. As a number of noble Lords have indicated, there are a number of reasons why they leave work. The noble Lords, Lord Liddle, Lord Lamont and Lord Tugendhat, all indicated that people do not work because they have caring responsibilities. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, was the only person to say what I think is very often the case: actually, they have made enough money so that they do not have to work. That has an impact on our society. People such as the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, have also made the obvious point that there are often health concerns. The noble Baroness had some interesting suggestions as to what might be done to help that. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, also drew attention to the fact that it is not only what is happening at the top end but what is happening at the bottom end that is relevant. As the Milburn report indicated, unless we do something to bring young people back into the workplace we will not help to provide the revenue necessary to support the elderly. I, and the committee, agree that requires action. Finally, as the noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Davies of Brixton, both articulated, the government response to our report is at best disappointing and at worst very disappointing. I hope that the Minister can do a bit better in reply.