Government Record on Education, Employment and Welfare

Baroness Fall Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fall (Con)]

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Evans on this timely debate and on her excellent remarks. It is always a pleasure, too, to follow my noble friend Lord Leigh.

The first duty of government is the national security, including economic security, of our country. By that, I mean delivering a functioning economy which creates jobs, underpins our national services and provides a safety net of welfare. It also means living within our means and protecting the right for future generations to do so. Education, employment and welfare are the topics of this timely and well-chosen debate, and key to all of this is growth. Today, I will focus my short remarks on employment and welfare.

The legacy of the last two years of the Labour Government has seen unemployment up, hirings down, a welfare bill through the roof and growth flatlining. The OBR’s latest Fiscal Risks and Sustainability report made for sombre reading by pointing out: first, that the fiscal problem is mainly spending-led and will likely worsen with the pressures of an ageing population; and, secondly, that debt is rising to unsustainable levels and the tax burden is already close to historic highs. On the eve of a new Prime Minister, I have a plea for Mr Burnham: we simply cannot afford more poor policy which will only make our country worse off and less able to deliver good schools and good jobs and support those who cannot support themselves.

What is Mr Burnham’s plan for growth? We hear that he wants to put taxes up, has ruled out so-called crude cuts to welfare and is sceptical about what he calls “tech boosterism”. His growth plan is devolution, which may or may not boost growth, and I hope that it does, but it is for the longer term and is not an immediate growth plan. Yet this is just the moment to be getting behind tech. We have the potential to play a leading role in AI to reinforce our competitive advantage for innovation in start-ups, quantum and cyber, and to boost the productively we desperately need in the NHS.

Let us look at tax policy. Mr Burnham is considering bringing capital gains tax in line with income tax, which would give us the highest rate in Europe, with less money to invest in new businesses, businesses which create jobs. As the Tony Blair Institute warned just this week:

“Taxing our way to prosperity is both bad policy and bad politics”.


By hiking national insurance and the minimum wage for the youngest, and adding regulation to working rights, Labour have hammered businesses, not helped them: worsening job prospects, especially for the young, as many noble Lords have mentioned, and adding to their job struggles, as even the Resolution Foundation warned. We now have over 1 million NEETS, as many have said, with one in five working-age adults on benefits and that number is growing. Where is the balance here? This is a tragedy that our society can ill afford.

Let us remember what our commitment is: to help people who cannot and support those who can back to work. If the Government do not want to listen to me, they should listen to their own advisers: Alan Milburn, who speaks devastatingly of the silence of the unheard voice of young people applying for jobs; Stephen Timms, who warns that PIPs are due to double by 2030 and must be addressed, or even Charlie Mayhew, who tries to tackle sickness at work. We need urgently to reassess and rebalance. I urge the new Prime Minister to have a strategy for growth and the bravery to address some of these very difficult issues in our country by getting behind businesses and entrepreneurs, incentivising work, getting young people a footing in life and tackling the tragic and increasingly unaffordable welfare bill.