Lord Bridges of Headley (Con)

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. Let me start by apologising to the noble Lord, Lord Pitt-Watson, for not welcoming him to his place; this is the first time I have debated against him. I very much applaud his emollient and reasonable style. I think those of us on this side of the House think it is a welcome change from what we had before. We can have a proper debate about the issues before us. I also thank all noble Lords who have spoken from all sides of the House and made such incredibly thoughtful contributions, in particular—forgive me for singling them out—those members of the Economic Affairs Committee who served under me. This is rather like the reunion of a pop group: we are playing our golden oldies. I will speak very briefly. There was so much to cover that I hope noble Lords will forgive me as I am not going to go into depth and detail on all the points that were raised. At the start of the debate, I listed the Ds that we and other nations face: defence; demographics and the ageing population, which the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Davies, the noble Baronesses, Lady Alexander, and my noble friend Lord Hill picked up; welfare dependency, which others including the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, picked up; and decarbonisation and the green transition, which the noble Lord, Lord Howell, spoke about. I missed two Ds. The first D is depressing. This debate can be incredibly depressing. But that said—and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, makes a good point, as does the Minister—we do have strengths. We absolutely have strengths as a nation, and it is very important that we do not play them down. I do not for a moment want to suggest that this country does not have massive potential but, if we are to unleash that, we have to be honest about the challenges we face. The Minister said, and I wrote it down, that he thinks this country is on the up. I would love to think so. I hear him, and he obviously makes a very valid point about statistics that have come out suggesting that productivity might be turning the corner. He hopes it is—I noticed that little tweak on the Chancellor saying that it is turning a corner. When I think of a country on the up, very sadly, the things I see going up are our taxes, our debt and our debt interest. Unless we are honest about this, we will not be able to bring the public with us in taking the tough decisions that need to be taken. The second D I missed is digitalisation and AI. I agree with the Minister that the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, is absolutely right to talk about this. AI is the revolution sweeping the world, transforming business models and entire economies. It offers immense potential and massive opportunities, but we also have to confront the challenges and risks it poses. One of the risks that we face right now as regards the fiscal outlook—the noble Baroness, Lady Morrissey, will know all about this—is the immense amount of debt that tech companies are issuing around the world. This relies on productivity, profits and this revolution continuing to gather momentum. That in itself poses a risk, and the noble Baroness is absolutely right to highlight it. This debate, though, confronts a very simple point, which my noble friend Lord Hill and others made. We have to have honesty about the challenges we face. We are in this position because, over the best part of a generation, as a political class we have not had the courage to confront the public with the consequences of the decisions we were taking, not just in the next year but in the year after that and the decade after that. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, alluded to this. During Covid and the energy shock we ran up enormous bills and enormous debts. We were not honest about that. We now need that honesty; we need to be honest about our solutions based on clear conviction and clear belief. Above all, we have to be honest about the trade-offs that need to be made in response to the challenges we face. As my noble friend Lord Hill said, we cannot try to tell everyone that we can have our cake and eat it; I am very sorry to say that these decisions are going to be painful. But the British public are not stupid. They know that we as a nation are now living beyond our means. They will reward the politicians from whatever side of the House who speak to them with this honesty and have a credible, coherent plan to get us out of the mess we are in. Choices will have to be made. We all know that a country can spend beyond its means for a time. It can borrow, it can tax more and it can hope that growth will come to its rescue, but we know from our history that if Governments wait too long, they risk losing the freedom to make those choices themselves. I want to end by thinking about the Budget, which a number of noble Lords have referred to. I think that the Budget will be a battle between two cities: the City of London and the City of Westminster. The noble Baroness, Lady Morrissey, made a point very clearly. There, in the City of London down the road, they are looking at nearly £3 trillion of our national debt, our rising debt interest and our shrinking fiscal buffer, and asking whether we as a nation have a credible plan to live within our means. Here, down the Corridor in the other place, in the City of Westminster, are 403 Labour MPs, many demanding that the Government spend more, tax more, borrow more or, at the very least, do not spend less. Many of those MPs understandably argue that: indeed, it is what brought them into politics. Plaudits to them; they are standing up for their convictions and beliefs. They believe, quite possibly like the Prime Minister, who holds passionate beliefs, that we took the wrong turn in the 1980s. I end with this thought: we ended up making very tough decisions in the 1980s because, during the 1970s, we ducked them. We consistently pushed things down the road. The circumstances today are no doubt very different, but the lesson is not. We still have the freedom to choose and we should use it, because if we do not take the tough decisions now ourselves, eventually others will make them for us.