Earl of Caithness
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(3 years, 1 month ago)
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The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, the Chancellor will long be remembered for his clever and sympathetic handling of the terrible pandemic that we have been through. As my noble friend Lord Bates just said, it is a remarkable tribute that we are where we are.
However, I hope that he will be remembered for something else, too. It is a word that my noble friend Lord Agnew did not use when he opened this debate: productivity. In the 1980s, productivity was about 2.5%. We could double living standards every 30 years. Since the 1990s, it has fallen to an abysmally low level and the OBR forecast is that it will not improve that much in future. My noble friend mentioned that he was planning to do something on management, but can he be more specific on how we will get the long tail of British businesses that are unproductive to be more productive with better management? It has been a long-term failing of the British, and we really need to get a grip on it for the future. Without productivity, we cannot increase the economic cake and therefore cannot get larger slices.
I turn to VAT. I would like to see one area of it increased. In our report, the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Committee recommended increasing VAT on unhealthy food. The Government noted the idea but have not acted on it. Will my noble friend take that away and come back? Getting us to eat better food will reduce the costs for the NHS hugely—by billions of pounds.
My third and final point refers to free ports. Why do the Government think that free ports will work this time when they did not work terribly well last time?