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.

Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society

Baroness Fall Excerpts

Friday 5th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fall (Con)]

My Lords, I join the chorus in thanking the most reverend Primate for an excellent and timely debate and a brilliant speech. It is also always a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Ahmad.

We are already in the midst of a technical revolution. AI is only the latest iteration to radically change the way we live, work, think and even love. We have learned the hard way, from our battles with social media, that unless we seize the moment and try to mould technology to our value system, we will be left navigating the Wild West. AI is much larger and more consequential. Debate seems to swing between two extremes: the optimists who believe that AI will solve all our problems, and the pessimists who believe that robots have already taken charge. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between.

This is no futuristic debate—AI is already here—which is why this is such a commendably timely intervention. We can already feel AI in the workplace. We hear business leaders speaking about the opportunities for improving productivity, although they do not really know exactly how, or whether AI will give way to new and unknown jobs. The transition is likely to be a difficult one. However uncomfortable it may be, attempting to put the genie back in the bottle is not a strategy. We in Britian cannot afford to stand back and miss the AI boat, for our own future prosperity and security.

As we grapple unsuccessfully with low growth and low productivity, there are so many areas where AI could be a rocket-booster. We are a country with world-class universities, a strong financial sector, leading scientific research and a thriving creative industry—all areas where AI can drive enormous growth, if we get the policy and investment right. But—here is the crux—the debate over last weekend between former Prime Minister Blair and Burnham and Streeting seems to be a classic misunderstanding. There should be no trade-off between growth and inequality. Growth is vital to the health and welfare of our nation, as is ensuring that those benefits are felt by all communities. These aims must go hand in hand.

It would be extremely dangerous to turn our backs on AI because of concerns around driving further inequality, just as it would be foolish to ignore the possibility that it could. We should not be blind to the danger that the latest tech revolution continues the trend we have already seen in globalisation in delivering for some but not others. When people begin to feel that the economy is no longer working for them, and that they have no stake in its success, the politics of that frustration follows quickly behind.

No group is more exposed to AI than the young, especially those about to leave school wondering what best to study next and whether there will be a job for them when they leave higher education. Alan Milburn spoke devastatingly of the silence of the unheard voice of young people applying for jobs. His recent report has shaken the nation. One million and growing young people who are NEET is not just a national tragedy but an economic one in slow motion. We must ensure that the Government do not make policies that make this worse. It is a moral and economic imperative that these issues are tackled, especially at this time of AI.

The dignity of work is a very human condition. We heard Pope Leo and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury speak so eloquently about what it is to be human. I was struck too by the call to arms. Setting boundaries for AI is a matter for all humanity—no one is without responsibility to shape the future of AI, including and especially those who dedicate themselves to the AI race. In the pride and ambition to win, we must never lose sight of what we are trying to achieve. As the co-founder of Anthropic said this week, morality is not a side business.

We must focus on what we want from technology, before it imposes what it wants on us. There are no easy answers. We are grappling with a revolution in real time. We are trying to make it bow to our values. While the opportunities are clear, it is the responsibility of each and every one of us to push back against the excesses of AI and to grapple with the moral issues it raises, for AI will shape the future, and we must shape it in turn.