Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy
Lord Wei Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wei (Con) [V]
My Lords, I am thankful that we can have this crucial debate today and I declare my interests in the register. For some time, it has been clear that we are in the midst of an epochal shift, in which the old certainties of the post-war era are being eroded. In their place come times that are much more volatile and unpredictable, and in which our historical approaches may need to be adapted. I welcome the review and the Government’s determination to give birth to a more agile, inclusive and responsive approach to our national security that recognises new threats and rivalries, and the innovation needed to address them.
I want to focus my remarks on the issue of resilience and the role we can all play to help mitigate some of the shocks on the horizon. There will continue to be shocks, as the review correctly highlights, whether climate-related, a major hack or a drone attack on a major city or installation, or indeed another pandemic—manmade or zoonotic. Covid-19 has shown that it does not require a nuclear arsenal or an army, cyber or non-cyber, to effectively shut down large parts of the British economy and system; you just have to fill our hospitals with patients.
What is being done to tackle situations that, without much initial bloodshed, could bring our economy and society to its knees, through asynchronous attacks? How do we not just build resilience in our major institutions, with the usual contingency plans, resources and responses, but go further to make the structure of our government, society and services nearly pandemic, drone or weather-proof? It seems that a lot of this has to be about how we protect the internet from, for example, future quantum-based attacks, and how we use it in future to go beyond Zoom and video calling to enable our economy and services to function in a more decentralised away. It is also to do with how communities can cope if supply chains are broken or the internet and power supplies are taken down. What guidance will the Government give to civil servants, leaders and the public on how to prepare for such eventualities?
How can innovation and the private sector play a role, enabling more people like Kate Bingham to help reshape our services with the connections and insights they might have to go beyond any groupthink that might linger? Indeed, in healthcare the response so far is admirable, and we must praise those front-line workers who have sacrificed so much—including those in my own extended family here in Britain—to keep us safe. However, tough questions need to be asked about how resilient the NHS and healthcare is in this nation. In the initial wave of Covid, it looks like nearly one-third of patients caught it in hospital. Waiting lists have grown, in some cases to over a year, and death rates have increased for non-Covid-related causes, which may be due to people not accessing or being asked to access diagnosis and treatment.
Will a resilient NHS look to move more diagnosis, scanning and treatment away from hospitals and into the high street and community or even, using the latest technology, into our own homes? Will we continue to rely on a large hospital-based system that creates an easy target for enemies, human or non-human in nature, to bring us down? Will we consider creating perpetual trials to accelerate vaccine and drug development and to accelerate the adoption of new devices ahead of being hit by sudden and chronic health-related challenges, where the system would be overwhelmed and might struggle to respond from a standing start?
What about education or business? How can we ensure those who cannot work online are able to continue to operate on-site in safe ways in future pandemics? Should we encourage people to have both digital and physical work skills, so they can still have a job even if their digital or physical work environment is compromised? What does a resilient foreign policy look like?
Many other areas like these need looking at further. I believe that, in future, the winners may not just be those who are big or well-armed, or who have soft power, but simply those who can survive by being resilient enough to fight another day.
Hong Kong: Human Rights
Lord Wei Excerpts(3 years, 12 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. As a Hong Konger by descent, I am heartbroken by this turn of events. It seems that the strategy to influence China peacefully through trade and dialogue has failed and that, sadly, we are progressing towards conflict.
My hope is that, as we respond, and so as not to make their lives worse, we will distinguish between the actions of China’s Government and its citizens, the people of Hong Kong, and indeed British-Chinese here, who have suffered a manyfold increase in racism in the last six months. We must do what we can to support the Chinese diaspora around the world and grant as much protection as we can to BNO passport holders, and the option of migrating here if the worst should happen. I pray that it will not.
Hong Kong
Lord Wei Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for tabling this very timely debate. I refer to my registered interests, to my role as chair of the Hong Kong subgroup of the APPG on China, and to my being a British-born Chinese from Hong Kong.
The unrest in Hong Kong lately has been a cause of great concern to me personally and to those close to me. It is a beautiful place and its people possess a tremendous calling, not just to generate wealth and to be an entrepôt between mainland China and the rest of the world, but to be a source of people, ideas, and resources for the world. My ancestors left their village in Zhongshan, just across the border, after 23 generations via Hong Kong to join our global diaspora, like millions of others, by sea and air.
So it is especially heart-breaking to see the violence that has arisen on both sides of the divide in Hong Kong, in the streets and over the airwaves, as a city turns in on itself even as the world watches. This reflects a wider trend globally, where it seems that disagreement, fuelled by the internet as well as economic and political factors, is stretching our governance arrangements to the limit, whether in our own constitution, the situation in the US, in Northern Ireland, or indeed in Hong Kong with its “one country, two systems” model. It seems the hardest thing in the world right now is how to share power peacefully, whether you are being called to give some of it away or whether you want more of it. Evidently, the status quo everywhere needs to adapt. That is true even of the situation here in Westminster, but the question is always what we change the system into. As we well know, constitutional reform requires time to do well, and to listen to all parties and views. The unintended consequences of change can be severe further down the track.
However, to resort to violence seems to militate against carefully considered reform. All sides in the conflict in Hong Kong need to explore non-violent ways to move ahead and show restraint—I know that many do and they ought to be applauded—because the violence distracts from the real issues that need to be addressed around the world, whether around the rising cost of living, the creation of laws that infringe on individual freedom, especially of conscience or belief, intergenerational inequality and increasing monopolies of land, technology and talent. Doing nothing is not the answer to addressing these issues, nor, sadly enough, as we can see in the UK itself, is greater democracy in its current form necessarily a full-blown panacea to addressing the challenges we have here, which mirror those in Hong Kong and elsewhere.
The best way forward is for those who have the means and influence to help instigate change at the local level by bringing in responses based on truly listening to those who are protesting and the condition of the silent masses who sympathise with them. For example, how do we quickly build more affordable housing? I refer to the Bristol Housing Festival, which I am involved in, for a local UK response. How do we give our young people more hope, better jobs and opportunities, and empowerment in their lives generally? How do we curtail monopoly and monopsony domination of our markets?
Indeed, an era is coming soon when we will need to upgrade democracy itself. Our current model favours majorities over minorities and incumbents over new entrants, but in the age of the internet and social media a minority or new challenger that loses in our current democracy is no longer always content to let the matter rest. We need mechanisms to involve people and to get consent and buy-in at every level, not just at the headline majoritarian stage or in our formal legislatures. This is true in Northern Ireland, in Asia, in the US and around the world. Personally, I favour not just asking people who they like or what idea they like, which is expressed in our currently populist representative democracy and referenda model that we have inherited from over a century and decades ago, but asking directly what they think will work and allocating resources accordingly.
I have chosen so far not to engage with the top-line questions arising from this debate since I believe to focus on them is to miss the essential issue, which is how places such as Hong Kong can become better environments in which to live, in which their citizens feel they have a future and where no one is left behind or becomes so frustrated that they are tempted to rise up violently. Should we give all Hong Kong citizens full passports? That depends on whether doing so would help to increase the peace and address the future of Hong Kong, or risk antagonising an already tense and volatile situation.
Should the UK take a stronger stance with China on human rights abuses and back all pro-democracy protesters in the streets? The UK has been clear about its position on human rights, and has already made known its concerns about police conduct and rightly called for an inquiry. On the rule of law and the rising constraints on freedom in the region, the question is whether violent confrontation is the most effective way to address and convey these concerns, or whether there are other ways to help all our citizens have better lives.
I was encouraged, for example, when one of the developers in Hong Kong recently donated 3 million square feet of land to the Government to create affordable housing. It is a first practical step to change. While reform of governance is vital, the urgent way forward in many parts of the world is bringing immediate and long-term relief to workers and young people who have suffered a real-terms decline in wages over the last 20 years or more, compounded by rising housing and living costs. Only innovative and radical action by those who have the land, money and people resources can move the dial, working with protest groups as well as with government. It has happened in the past in our country, with Cadbury, Shaftesbury and Spedan Lewis, who founded the John Lewis model. Without them, we could well have suffered a bloody revolution here. We need similar Asian reformers now to step up and take their place in history.
China: Investment into the United Kingdom
Lord Wei Excerpts(10 years ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I am most grateful to have been granted time for us to debate what I believe is a crucial inflection point both in the UK’s relationship with China and in China’s own outward investment story. I declare an interest as the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for East Asian Business and as a director for the Manchester-China Forum. I also declare a number of other relevant personal and public roles and interests which are outlined in the Lords register.
In particular, I would like to highlight through this debate the recent publication of a report commissioned by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for East Asian Business and conducted independently by Roland Berger entitled the Independent Review of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment. I hope that this report will help inform and stimulate this debate, and the debate that we as a society and country need to have as Chinese firms over the coming years dramatically increase their investments internationally, and in the process become a more important feature of economies such as ours.
In many ways there has always been investment and trade from and with China and the Chinese into the UK, whether in financial or non-financial ways, with waves of Chinese immigrants over the years putting in their time, energy and capital to help build and rebuild this country in the run-up to and after the two world wars. Think of the catering industry and the supply chains that feed it, and then think about the recent manufacturing story as UK firms worked with Chinese partners to lower their costs and globalise their supply chains. And then think about more recently as newly affluent and increasingly aspirational Chinese people have come to the UK to invest in a variety of financial assets, from property to stocks and bonds, arts and antiques, and luxury items.
During this period and in particular with the liberalisation of trade within China and encouragement of state and private enterprises to invest abroad, outbound FDI has accelerated, creating a huge opportunity for countries such as ours. The APPG report highlighted a number of scenarios, from today’s relatively low investment base to seeing the UK capturing between 3% and 5% percent of China’s future annual global outbound foreign direct investment, which alone would create between 48,000 and 75,000 direct jobs by 2020 in a median and optimistic scenario. The drivers of such investment include a competitive tax regime, the City of London as a future hub for offshore renminbi trading, high educational quality at different stages, our world-class industry sectors, and our openness as a country to FDI in areas as diverse as manufacturing, infrastructure and finance.
The Government in particular have done a significant amount to enhance Britain’s attractiveness to such investment. The most visible expression of this includes the various ministerial visits last year, as well as changes to the visa process to make it easier for tourists and business leaders to come, shop and do business here. Behind the scenes I know that much good work is carried out by UKTI, the China-Britain Business Council, and regionally to encourage Chinese people to visit and invest on both the large and the small scale. This has produced fruit with recent announcements such as the Royal Docks development by ABP, the investment into Manchester’s Airport City being spearheaded by Beijing Construction Engineering Group, and the significant investment in R&D and higher education by telecoms firms such as Huawei, a supporter of the APPG. In addition, we have in recent years witnessed major welcome investments into nuclear power, water utilities, engineering firms and even breakfast cereals. More such investments are in the pipeline, evidenced by recent positive visits to the UK by organisations such as the China Entrepreneur Club, whose member businesses represent a significant proportion of private enterprise turnover in China. Indeed, the chair of McKinsey & Company Asia recently wrote that 2014 could be the biggest year for Chinese foreign direct investment into the UK, and the APPG report highlights the continuing strong upward trend we are likely to see in the wake of these first major investments.
Now is a crucial time when major global Chinese firms are deciding where to locate their headquarters as they start to look beyond the borders of Greater China, and the UK can undoubtedly benefit from this influx so long as we remain an attractive place to invest and do business in. However, we must remember that the benchmark should not be how much such investment is growing in absolute terms, but how we are doing in capturing a share of this investment globally as compared to our competitor nations in Europe and around the world.
While we have a lot to be thankful for and to congratulate ourselves on as a country, the APPG report highlights a number of areas where we could do even better, not just to continue to boost our share of Chinese global FDI, but to ensure that there is balance and diversity in the investment from China geographically, by sector and, indeed, by size. The report highlights that as Chinese firms decide where to locate their headquarters, more could be done to address the issue of hiring talent. It is all very well to enable the chairperson to locate to the UK, but headquarters need to have top teams, and if you are relocating part of your top management from China to help establish operations here in Europe, you will want to do so in countries that make that possible. Currently, there are difficulties for firms looking to bring in experienced Mandarin speakers versed in their own corporate culture. Other countries in Europe and elsewhere often even help to negotiate visas for top management at the point when the decision about which country to locate to is being made.
We need to operate on a level playing field globally with other nations, particularly Germany and others in Europe who have the added advantage of being in the Schengen zone. The need for business management visas, which could be addressed if we redesigned our system more around the skills we need as a country, ought to be addressed alongside the issue of the removal of post-study work visas. In my view, the system ought to be relaxed for countries in the emerging world that we want to trade with more, such as China, in order to provide our local firms with Mandarin-speaking, China-savvy talent that will help them grow, as well as supporting firms which are interested in locating their headquarters here.
Another area highlighted in the report is the need for more FDI to be attracted into areas within and beyond London and for resources to help diversify agency support so that it is not carried out only centrally, but also regionally. With the recent focus of UKTI effort around strategic sectors, which fits with the report’s recommendation for greater sector expertise in our national approach to attracting foreign Chinese investment, there is a real opportunity for cities and localities to utilise their local knowledge and networks and help small and medium-sized enterprises to connect with China by receiving Chinese investment. It would be interesting to see what the Government can do to diversify and attract more funding into this area so that the north and west of the country and areas outside London, as well as poorer areas of London, can benefit from the influx of Chinese funds.
The report also contains a number of recommendations and observations that highlight the importance of the cultural and even linguistic sensitivity needed for us to continue and grow our trade links with China and to attract further Chinese investment, from bringing in Chinese language-translated tax information, just as we have brought in Chinese language visa application forms, to encouraging commissioners of public tenders to be aware of the sometimes lengthy decision processes in China for outbound investors, which can take a year or more for investments of more than $1 billion, to simply understanding China’s regular five-year plans and how they affect priorities for investment at the level of firms and sovereign wealth funds. Here there is a role for both public and private intermediaries to be supported in their efforts to help bridge the cultural and linguistic divide. Intermediaries struggle at times, particularly in making medium-sized deals happen, because the timelines for facilitating an investment and ultimately getting paid for their work can be lengthy. This is important because while billion-dollar deals benefit the economy and help us hit our quotas, small and medium-sized firms, as we know, employ more people and have the potential to create more jobs.
What is the Government’s response to the recommendations in the APPG report, and how do they intend to address the visa, regional and intermediary- support challenges that it highlights, so that we can continue to compete with countries such as Germany and others and bring the benefits that come with increased Chinese investment to more industries and to firms of different sizes and geographies?
The final point I wish to make is to emphasise the importance of relationships. For 50 or more years, we as a country have benefited greatly from our alliances with Europe and America, with whom we have shared cultural and linguistic histories. Businesses here in the UK have traded with, invested in and received investment from partners across the English-speaking world and the continent for many decades. Relationships have been key to this, as well as proximity and opportunity. With the re-emergence of China economically on the world stage, it is relationships that are going to be key, not least because, perhaps more than most places in the world, they form the bedrock of business culture. To receive productive, successful investment from China and to ensure it creates local jobs and growth for Britain and British firms requires an understanding of the Chinese mindset, its culture, its priorities and its people, and of how Chinese firms are having to learn to adapt to deal with our market, our legal system and even our media.
To this end, I want to ask my noble friend the Minister how as a country we plan to do more to engage the local Chinese British diaspora and visiting Chinese students in the UK—as well as more British students and graduates as they learn Mandarin and gain relevant experience in China—so that they can assist our efforts in both countries to facilitate, attract and make the most of increased Chinese foreign investment in the years to come. Beyond that, how can we work together to encourage our towns and cities to look east to create the right climate for Chinese FDI? Finally, I want to ask how we can get our small businesses in particular to feel more comfortable with trading and receiving investment from Chinese investors, which can then be a potential spring-board for them to expand their exports to other parts of the world, not just back to China itself.
The Chinese economy is going to remain a driver of the global economy, and over time of our economy, for many years to come. At this pivotal moment, let us do all we can to encourage relationships to be built up and capital to be invested so that British businesses, industries, and sectors can benefit from this growing and welcome trend. Let us ensure that at every level, not just here in London and in central government, everyone can play a part in helping to make this much needed investment work for the benefit of all.
China: Exports
Lord Wei Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Livingston of Parkhead) (Con)
My Lords, last week I was delighted to help the Prime Minister lead the largest ever UK business delegation to China. Our bilateral trade and investment relationship with China is improving. Exports to China have almost doubled since 2009 and more Chinese investment has come into the UK in the past 18 months than in the past 30 years combined. However, there is more to be done, especially in focusing on areas where the UK has particular strengths and where these match China’s emerging demands. Many of these strengths—healthcare, education, the creative industries and agri-tech, to name but a few—were showcased last week. Several agreements in these sectors were signed during the visit and these will open further opportunities for UK exporters.
Lord Wei (Con)
I thank my noble friend the Minister for his response. I look forward to the future growth in exports that will result from these significant and much needed visits, and congratulate him on the role that he played in the most recent one. We know that inward investment from countries overseas such as China and India can help build our capacity for exporting, with Jaguar Land Rover, Aquascutum and many other companies showing the way. However, our current measures of success do not necessarily capture the interactions between such investment and exporting. What are the Government doing to encourage, measure and link investment and exporting activities from countries such as China to grow total trade?
Lord Livingston of Parkhead
I thank my noble friend Lord Wei for that point and his efforts in promoting UK-Chinese trade. He is right to raise a number of areas, including export from the UK, imports from China and our relationship as regards investment. During the trip, I was delighted that we announced programmes that will help UK investment in China and Chinese investment in the UK, particularly in the area of the supply chain. We have found that, in a number of areas, to be important in improving our overall trade performance.
United Kingdom and China
Lord Wei Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I too want to thank my noble friend Lord Dobbs for tabling this very timely debate, and also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Whitby, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, on their outstanding maiden contributions today. A happy birthday, too, to the noble Lord, Lord Green, who will be sorely missed in his role as trade Minister.
I declare an interest both as someone with Chinese ancestry and as one who was born and grew up in Britain. This led me quite naturally upon entering your Lordships' House a few years ago to take a keen interest in the nature of the relationship between the UK and China, of British business and interests in China, and in the state and condition of the Chinese in Britain. To this end, I also declare an interest as the chairman of the APPG for East Asian Business, as co-chair of the Conservative Friends of the Chinese and as a non-executive director of the Manchester-China Forum. I also declare a number of other related interests which can be seen on the public register.
In each of these roles I hear much about the challenges and criticism from both sides in the UK-China relationship, from both the media and through public debate, as well as behind closed doors. There can be no doubt that there has been and will likely continue to be areas of major disagreement and cultural and political differences in the relationship between our two countries. I could spend much of this speech recounting the historic disputes and perceived injustices on either side. These might include British imperial imposition by gunboat on China of goods such as opium and other wares which Gladstone described as morally indefensible and which ultimately hurt us when our protected trade succumbed to global competition. Similarly, companies in Britain at times feel competition from China has been unfairly backed by a favourable currency, state subsidies and an intellectual property framework that historically has been hard to enforce, all under the control of a Government who exert supreme authority over their citizens and media.
I could go on recounting such instances but I will not because these issues are both complex and culturally and politically difficult to resolve. Will we ever get agreement if we see the world just through the Chinese leadership’s eyes? They are concerned to maintain stability in a country that is known to descend into anarchy if not led well and strongly; they are cautious about religion, as past cults have led to extreme acts of violence and terrorism, such as the Boxer Rebellion. The Chinese Government are keen to avoid other countries’ determining their own internal affairs given colonial experiences at the hands of almost every other major power. Or by pushing our western liberal agenda onto China will we get it to agree to open up faster, introduce democracy on our terms, give up its one-party communist system in favour of a fully western one with a strong and free media and full introduction of the rule of law? Your Lordships can see how these divergent approaches might not lead to swift agreement in the short term. Instead, there is another, pragmatic approach—a word that I choose because both the British and Chinese in general are highly pragmatic people. That is to focus not on what we disagree on at the outset, but on what we have in common. There is a lot we have in common, more perhaps than we realise, and more than is the case between China and many other of our competitor nations.
First, we share similar historical journeys. We as the first industrial nation know what it is like to shift painfully from an agricultural society to an industrial and then knowledge economy, with all the attendant environmental, social, and political issues that this creates. We have a lot of experience to humbly exchange with China on how to manage this transition, and we can also learn a lot ourselves as China attempts to do in 50 years what it took us hundreds of years to do, including adapting our politics to meet the needs of a more urban, connected society and innovating new solutions in healthcare, housing and education in the 21st century.
Secondly, we have a common economic interest. China is shifting from an investment-led economy to one driven by consumption. We are the services capital of the world and have a lot to gain by helping Chinese consumers and service businesses in China flourish, harnessing our knowledge, brands, and expertise. Having ourselves made the shift, we can make a living exporting that know-how to help other emerging countries make their shift as well.
Thirdly, we both love learning. Our higher education and independent school system is the envy of the world; many Chinese love to send their children to study here, and the door is wide open for businesses from Britain to share their vocational knowledge. Many UK businesses could make a living from just doing that for the next few decades, let alone trying to directly service clients in China, such as with Martin Sorrell’s new advertising school in Shanghai.
When I witnessed at first hand the recent visit of the Chancellor—where we with the help of the Manchester-China Forum facilitated the announcement on Airport City—and the visit of the Mayor of London, I saw much to praise in these developments, because we focused on what we have in common, and not necessarily just on what separates us. There is progress on tourist visas, on allowing Chinese banks to more easily invest in Britain, and on enabling investors to help fund our recovery. But there is still more that we can do and ultimately, as a country, we have to choose how we want this relationship to develop. Will we choose to let UK neo-protectionists determine our foreign policy just as they did 200 years ago? Our policies on abolishing the post-study work visa, a key draw for Chinese students; on restricting the number of Chinese executives and family members from coming to help Chinese CEOs set up headquarters in Britain and create local British jobs; and on continuing to count students in immigration statistics all seem to be of the same spirit as that which Gladstone denounced, and could do as much damage as certain imperial monopolies did to our competitiveness and to our regions still today.
Equally, will we let China romanticists determine our policy and expect to walk into China naively assuming to be given a red carpet welcome like our first ambassador to the Chinese imperial court, Lord Macartney? Some organisations and SMEs I know still behave in this way, hardly bothering to learn the language, or engage people who can speak it literally and culturally, then wondering why so little was achieved. Or will we perhaps choose another way, which is to provide UK-China bridges, whether between individuals, cities or organisations, to let people build trust and then decide and act for themselves? As much as we have recently, laudably, reoriented ourselves at the centre towards better China relations, we have also to acknowledge that many recent breakthroughs in trade, from Weetabix to Royal Docks to Manchester Airport City, university and other partnerships, often started through the efforts of individual relationships: through the Anglo-Chinese students and business people who became friends and set up their own joint ventures, involving their parents and networks from the UK and China; through stakes being purchased with the advice of lawyers, friends, accountants and bankers; and through the Chinese diaspora in Britain helping to build academic and commercial links. Perhaps our role at the centre is to increasingly get out of the way, politicising less, and making it easier for bridge builders and intermediaries to do their jobs.
Finally, in the recent Pew Research Centre global attitudes survey, we can see that the population of Britain sees China less as an enemy than do other nations, at 7% compared to the US at 18% and France at 10%, and that the young here are generally more favourable towards China. Perhaps we in politics and the media need to follow the public more closely and let the people get on with it. Osborne and Boris can hardly be blamed for making strong overtures to China; increasingly, they and we by doing so are also playing to audiences at home. A strong UK-China relationship is not just potentially good for the economy, but will increasingly represent, for those keen to follow public opinion, sensible politics as well.
Older People: Their Place and Contribution in Society
Lord Wei Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wei
My Lords, I too wish to thank the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for this debate and join my fellow Peers in paying tribute to his work over the years—particularly to his compassion, eloquence, and dignity in the face of great challenges. We wish the most reverend Primate well in this next exciting stage in his life and pray it will be one full of peace, fruitfulness and joy.
This debate surely comes at the right time as we wrestle with so many issues around care, fuel poverty, isolation and others that we have been discussing today. It is also a time when we face a real risk of intergenerational conflict if, as a society, we are not careful to build bridges and greater understanding between old and young. On the one hand, many younger citizens highlight a perceived sense of unfairness as they see stable and secure jobs disappear, the prospect of property ownership recede, and pensions become less generous. On the other hand, there can at times also be a view among some senior citizens that the young have never had to endure the post-war grinding poverty that millions endured, followed by the rebuilding of this nation and the sacrifices made financially as today’s older generations built up their families—sacrifices that contrast with the consumer and debt culture that pervades much of mainstream society today.
As someone who in your Lordships’ House is considered part of the younger generation and is technically least qualified to speak in this debate, yet also someone who has benefited so much from the wisdom, eldership and support of older members of society in my own life—not least in this place—I witness these tensions only too often. I feel deeply a need for those who can to call for peace and greater understanding on both sides of the generational debate, for only when old and young work together can we address the many challenges we face as a nation. In view of the time, I would like to focus my remarks on retirement and, in particular, on the forthcoming wave of baby-boomer retirements occurring over the coming decade, and how that might provide both a challenge and opportunity to us as a society.
Over the early part of this year, I had the pleasure of co-authoring a research policy paper funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, with the involvement of groups such as Manpower, Saga and Prudential, entitled Life Transitions and Retirement in the 21st Century. The paper sought to highlight the many major life transitions we all face from birth to death: starting and ending relationships, entering and leaving work, and entering and leaving the domain of various public services, from the criminal justice system to hospitals and education. The report highlighted in particular the opportunity to develop national service-type programmes, delivered by charities and social enterprises and targeted at people undergoing major transitions in life as a means of connecting them with each other to create social capital, providing useful information in a safe way, and of building resilience. Youth was one area in which such an approach was found to be worth while. Another is the entry into, and loss of, one’s first job. The biggest opportunity was in retirement.
In interviewing baby boomers nearing, or who had entered, retirement we found that there was a fundamental challenge that many now face: retirement can often be a traumatic experience for some and bewildering for others, and more could be done to develop ways led by retirees for retirees to help smooth this transition. The story was told by one policeman the team spoke to who recounts how, on his last day at work, he handed in his pass and was told, “That’s it, you’re no longer a policeman”. The loss of identity that can accompany such a sudden retirement, particularly for men, seems to observers to have an impact even on death rates in many such careers, an area which needs urgent further research. This example can be contrasted with another from a company like Shell, which has a wind-down programme, increasing time off from five days a week to four and three over three years, to give time for pre-retirement employees to adjust and build an alternative portfolio for their week.
What seemed to be needed was a kind of course, signposted to the retiring through employers and local agencies, and delivered through charities and social enterprises along a common framework, that could help walk people through, in a fun, confidential and relaxed environment, the areas that one may need to consider when retiring—not just how to plan finances, but the emotional side; the social side; what to do when health fails or as illnesses become chronic; how to handle other family members’ expectations; and, above all, the vocational or spiritual side, or what people feel called to use their later lives for. Such a programme could knit people together into support groups, and could encourage alumni to get involved, if they do not know how, in their communities and show them what is out there and what organisations, innovations, and ventures they could connect with, and even help build. Such a programme could send a clear message that later life is by no means an end but, indeed, a new beginning; not a burden on society, rather a precious asset; not just about social care, but about social eldership.
Retirement, we found, is not the caricature that we see often in the media, but increasingly complex. Millions will be working part-time in retirement and having portfolio existences, often for the first time in their lives. Many, if encouraged in the first year or so of retirement, before long-term habits are formed, could be encouraged to enjoy a well earned rest but also be given the opportunity to work out how to make the best of the remaining decades of their lives in non-traditional ways—blending, where possible, work and leisure rather than it being about one or the other. For example, they could get involved in their local communities directly, setting up in executive or non-executive capacities part-time small businesses co-owned with younger, unemployed people, and learning about the best ways and technologies to use to care for others around them, including their parents and, ultimately, themselves.
Many people do this already, often without remuneration or structured guidance to do so, and I pay tribute, as other have done here today, to the millions of those who in their later years have already found ways to do so much to contribute to society and those around them. For example, 65% of older people already help elderly neighbours and 49% serve the wider community in some way. However, baby boomers in particular—the 60s generation and beyond—will have a challenge, juggling the needs, care and struggles of their parents and their children, while also having a desire to make the most of life, express their own identities and have their own way, and not just get involved out of duty. If given the right support and networks, this generation none the less has the ability literally to turn around the fortunes of our nation, using their best years to help build the capacity and resilience of this nation. But they have to be in the driving seat. This cannot be led and driven top-down, but instead should come out of retirees’ own desires, callings, and initiative.
How could we move forward from here? Well the Shaftesbury Partnership, in which I declare an interest as a founder, are taking forward work with interested parties from the voluntary, private and government sectors to develop and pilot such a scheme. I would encourage any noble Lords who may have ideas or thoughts to get in touch so that we can trial such an approach.
A new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Life Transitions is also being established, in which I declare an interest as treasurer, to help parliamentarians and policy-makers think about and meet members of the public undergoing life transitions such as retirement. It is led by Chris White MP, with the support of others such as David Blunkett MP and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. I would encourage others to get in touch and participate in this work.
Thirdly, there is a low-cost role for government to help publicise, incentivise and support the development of such schemes, including skill-sharing ones such as WRVS’s Carebank and the Amazings initiative from Sidekick Studios. Perhaps when people first get notified of their state pension and official retirement arrangements, several years before they hit retirement age, they could be alerted to what is available and around them. More could be done for sure to support the many public sector workers, whose talents would otherwise be wasted for both state and society, to wind down and make the transition better. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on the Government’s stance in these areas. As the City of London itself transitions, could we do more to connect those who have worked in our financial services industries with opportunities to connect with others retiring and seeking to rebalance their lives for the benefit of us all and those most in need?
Retirement is changing, and we need to look at it differently and with optimism. The coming baby-boomer retirees represent the youngest ever retiring generation. Their energy and ideas, their leadership and resources can be a great benefit to this country. Let us find ways from within business, the voluntary sector and government local and central, to unleash on their terms their skills, energy and potential, to support them where it is needed, and to see later life not primarily as a source of decline and expense but increasingly as a rich source of wisdom and an asset—one which can benefit us all, not least those in or entering retirement themselves.