Spending Review 2025

Debate between Lord Lansley and Lord Livermore

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right when she says that a lot of our capital spending is long term. I think that is perfectly right. For example, the noble Baroness earlier talked about pension funds. I met representatives of some of the largest Canadian-Australian pension funds recently, and they told me that one of the most attractive parts of the UK economic landscape at the moment is the long-termism of our policy-making. They want to see long-term commitments and long-term investment so that they can invest into this country. The long-term nature of the policies is important, but my noble friend is absolutely right that people need to see improvements in their lives much sooner than that, because obviously they have lived through the cost of living crisis brought about by the previous Government. We need to see those cost of living improvements quickly.

One of the funds established yesterday was the pride in place fund. It is important that people see improvements quickly in their local communities. We also announced funding for the warm homes plan, with a total of £13 billion allocated across this Parliament to improve the energy efficiency of people’s homes. We did a big boost to social and affordable housing, with £39 billion, and expanded free school meal eligibility in England to all children with a parent receiving universal credit. We invested more to fund childcare entitlements for working parents. We funded the freeze to prescription charges at below £10 over the spending review period, and we launched a new crisis and resilience fund to help families when in crisis.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister will recall the table to the spending review which lists the departmental expenditure limits. Within that there is a line for the reserve, which I assume is essentially the contingency reserve. I recall that, back in 2023-24, the contingency reserve was over £9 billion, and that was completely blown and we had to have supplementary estimates. The table shows that, for phase 2, the reserve is at 1% of the totals for DEL and does not increase over the three years: it goes from £6.7 billion, to £6.7 billion, to £7.1 billion. This seems to be an inadequate figure for contingency that far out and is not, as one would expect, a rising figure—a wedge of contingency—in the later years. I wonder whether the Minister might explain why that wedge does not appear as one would have expected.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

If I may say so, the rising wedge, as the noble Lord describes it, is his analysis. It clearly is not analysis shared by the Government. I do not know whether it is based on any economic theory. It may be, but it is clearly not one that the Government share, because they are the numbers that the Government have set out.

Spring Statement

Debate between Lord Lansley and Lord Livermore

Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for the points that she makes. I of course agree very much with her. As she knows, it was announced yesterday that we are increasing the defence budget by £2.2 billion in 2025, taking additional spending on defence to over £5 billion since the Autumn Budget. She is absolutely right that defence spending is a huge contributor to the future growth of our economy. That is why in the industrial strategy we have set out eight sectors that we believe will fuel the growth of the economy in future, and defence is one of them. Shortly in the spring, we will publish an industrial strategy for defence, which will set out how we can get highly skilled jobs throughout the UK as a result of the increase in spending that we are carrying out.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

When the Government came into office, the disability employment gap was 28.6%. With the £1 billion return-to-work funding that the Minister has referred to repeatedly, what is the Government’s target for reducing the disability employment gap by the end of this Parliament?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am afraid that I do not know what that target is. If there is one, I will find out for the noble Lord and write to him.

Growing the UK Economy

Debate between Lord Lansley and Lord Livermore

Monday 3rd February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. This is, I think, probably one of the few issues that we disagree on. Obviously, she is asking me to comment on what she was told several years ago, and I cannot necessarily comment on what she was told then. She is describing, I think, the concept of a hub airport, which is why Heathrow is such a specific proposition, and will lead to significant amounts of growth in our economy, not least because of freight. The amount of freight that Heathrow conducts, the increase in trade, and the new emerging markets that an expanded Heathrow will connect us to, will directly lead to increases in growth in this country. That is an incredibly valuable thing.

The noble Baroness spoke about regional growth and regional airports. I would simply point her to the enthusiastic response from regional airports. They have come out very strongly in support of an expanded Heathrow, because they know it will lead to expansion for them and growth and jobs in their areas. We know that, in terms of the economic benefits of the expansion of Heathrow, 60% of those benefits will be outside London and the south-east. So I genuinely disagree with the noble Baroness when she says that it is negative for the regions; I think this is a very positive point for regional growth.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords of my registered interests relating to Cambridge and Oxford. I welcome what the Government are saying in their focus on the Oxford to Cambridge growth corridor, and the appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Vallance. But the establishment of an Oxford growth commission needs to run in parallel with the existing work of the Cambridge Growth Company. Can the Minister tell us more about how the Oxford growth company can catch up in terms of the existing leadership team, budget and local political relationships that the Cambridge Growth Company has now established?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. As he stood up, I was reminded that he contacted me last week on this point and I owe him a response. I apologise to him for not having got back to him quickly enough. What he said dovetails perfectly with what the Chancellor said in her speech. Clearly, the Cambridge Growth Company has been very successful under the leadership of Peter Freeman. We have now set up a growth commission for Oxford to review the barriers to growth that are holding the city back from reaching its full potential. At the moment, that is a specific team within MHCLG, but it has the potential to grow into something similar to what is happening in Cambridge. I do not think we would see any problem in that happening and developing in that way. What the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, is doing is complementary to that in terms of joining it up.

The whole point of the growth corridor is that we do not see it as two separate cities doing their own thing but instead join them up and see the benefits. People talk about it being Europe’s equivalent of Silicon Valley. All the business reaction post the announcement has been incredibly positive in terms of what it can do and the benefits that it can achieve in attracting businesses into the area. The big problem businesses have is a lack of affordable housing and fast transport to move people about within that region. We are looking to address both of those things. I think we will be very supportive of what the noble Lord says about Oxford.