Spring Forecast Statement

Lord Barber of Chittlehampton Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Barber of Chittlehampton (Lab)]

My Lords, following a distinguished former Chancellor of the Exchequer and a brilliant speech from the noble Lord, St John of Bletso, I rise with some anxiety to make a speech on the economy. Nevertheless, I want to try to bring a note of optimism into our deliberations, because optimism itself may be part of the solution to the challenges that lie ahead.

I congratulate the Chancellor, my noble friend Lord Livermore and the Treasury team for the Spring Statement and the facts set out within it. I know that it came before the conflict began, but growth and retail sales were up, and inflation and interest rates were down. There are grounds there for optimism. Of course, the conflict creates a new situation, but, as we go into that conflict, as a result of the Chancellor’s efforts over the last 18 months, we are better placed to face that storm than we would otherwise have been.

I especially welcome the emphasis in the Statement on spreading growth to “every part of Britain”. This is vital. I will emphasise three factors that will help generate growth and spread it across our country, and I will illustrate this with examples from the south-west of England, where I live. I am anxious about that as well, because the noble Earl, Lord Devon, is in the room and his family has been there for 700 years, whereas mine has been there for only 15 years. Nevertheless, it will be good to hear what he has to say about it. I declare an interest as the unpaid Chancellor of Exeter University, so I am embedded in the system there.

The first message I want to emphasise is stability. I strongly welcome the Chancellor’s emphasis on bringing stability. Of course, you have to adapt to changing circumstances, but stability really matters. The CBI welcomed it when the Statement was made and, given the uncertainty, it is more important than ever.

Obviously, we cannot control global events, but we can control how we respond and how we act within these shores. Let me give an example from the south-west. We all agree that critical minerals are essential to the future of the economy and we all agree that they are a source of global tension, but we have critical minerals right here in Britain. In Cornwall, there are deposits of lithium, and a company called Cornish Lithium is already set up to exploit that. Tata and Agratas are building the biggest electric vehicle battery factory in Europe in Somerset. Altilium, in Devon, is recycling spent EV batteries and recovering 95% of the rare metals from them. The Camborne School of Mines, part of the University of Exeter, is at the forefront of the world’s research and innovation in these areas. These are just emerging factors, but we can see there the beginnings of the circular economy that will drive economic growth, environmental sustainability and national security. All of that is possible without setting foot out of the south-west of England. However, we can see that happen only if we have stability. That is my first point: stability is essential to getting the necessary investment and relationships.

My second point is about education and skills. This has already been mentioned in the debate and is fundamentally important. We should celebrate in this country the big improvement in our education system over the past 50 years. Fifty years ago this year, Jim Callaghan made the famous Ruskin speech, drawing attention to the problems. Successive governments of all parties have built on that, and we now have a much better education system, but there is more to do, especially in relation to skills.

In the south-west of England, traditional employment is low-skill and low-pay—it is agriculture and it is tourism. The economy of the future that is emerging will be high-skill and, I hope, high-wage. Such tech jobs, engineering jobs and software jobs absolutely depend on ever higher levels of skill right across the workforce. Navantia in Devon, Babcock in Devon, Leonardo in Somerset, Agratas in Somerset and the spaceport in Cornwall all need important and detailed engineering jobs and technical jobs. Across the UK, the Royal Academy of Engineering estimates that we will need 834,000 such jobs over the next five years— 4,000 of those will be at the Agratas plant in Somerset.

That is very demanding, and our education system will need to adapt further and faster to keep up with that demand. What we are looking for, surely, is a demand-led skill system where the employers create the opportunities and the education system empowers students to seize them. Education does not just create wealth; it spreads wealth and it turns wealth into family income. If you want to find that out, talk to the apprentices—there were some brilliant young apprentices in the Palace of Westminster yesterday. Talk to them at the Dyson Institute in Malmesbury or, if noble Lords want to come and visit us, at Exeter University, or at Sheffield University. They are doing wonderful things and they see the skills that they learn one day applied the following day.

My third message is about the speed of decision-making. In education, we need to go further, faster and deeper. The Government’s recent announcements will help us do that and are to be welcomed. Generally, however, the speed of decision-making needs to be speeded up.

Noble Lords will be aware that I spent many years in Whitehall trying to speed up the pace and effectiveness of delivery. I have heard all the excuses for delay: “Why don’t we do some more research?”; “Why don’t we try a pilot study?”; “What about another round of consultation just to check?”; or—before my time—“Why don’t we try it out in Scotland first?” These excuses are well known to the Civil Service. I love civil servants, and they too smile when they hear these excuses, because they are very familiar with them, but the problem is deeper than the Civil Service. It is about our processes and our culture, and the way we go about making decisions. It is not just in Whitehall but across local government. We need to shift the default in government across the country, at every level, from delay to delivery, from process to outcome, and from talk to action. The Government’s completion in short order of three major trade deals is a good example that you can get things done rapidly that are important to the future of the economy.

These things significantly affect the south-west. We have a number of fantastic small businesses, such as CMTG in Torrington. The last time Torrington was in the news for military purposes was in 1646, when the Royalist arsenal blew up. Now it is developing software for military helicopters. I could list a number of other businesses. California has its valley, Shoreditch has its roundabout and Devon has its defence innovation ecosystem. All these companies depend on the quality and speed of decision-making at the MoD.

I was fortunate to teach a course at Harvard for several years with the former Prime Minister of Mozambique, Luísa Diogo, a wonderful woman who died recently. She got 15% growth in a single year, as Mozambique was coming out of a civil war. I asked her how she did it. She said: “I didn’t do anything. The people of Mozambique generated that growth, especially the women. What we did was create the right context”. Stability, skills and speed of decision-making will create the right context. To conclude with her words, “If you get the context right, you unlock the music in people”. That is our task in the years ahead.