Middle East: Economic Update

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I have much experience of his fair-minded Cross-Bencher activities, and I am always grateful to him for his comments. He is absolutely right that there was encouraging economic news last week. As I said, the latest GDP figures show the economy grew faster than expected in the three months to February, and that growth for the three months to January was upgraded. He is obviously also right to say that Iran now presents serious challenges for our economy, and for all global economies. He is also absolutely right to say that it is important that we beat the forecasts. We have beaten the forecasts before: we beat them last year and I am confident we will be able to do so again.

We must continue to bear down on inflation and to build our energy security, both of which we have discussed already. Of course, we must continue with our growth plan. We must continue investing in growth-enhancing capital, transport and housing, for example, with record investment in R&D. We must continue reforming the planning system, to get Britain building; we must continue deepening our economic relationship with the European Union; we must make sure we have the fastest adoption of AI in the G7, which we have set as an objective; and we must deliver an effective regional growth strategy, so that growth and the increase in living standards are felt throughout our country.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, the Treasury gets criticised for being too short-termist these days. I am wondering whether it undertakes market research among the public about the extent to which there may be an opportunity to get greater investment from them if we were ambitious enough to try one or two tactics such as, for example, reviving post-war credits. That produced money for the Government when they needed it and paid a return. People invested very widely after the last war, a long time ago; I am looking backwards. Looking forwards and at the Front Bench of the Tories, they are very much in support of public/private partnerships. When are we going to get that moving? I believe that, if we did market research, we would find that there is a view among the public that they would be willing to invest and this would provide new revenue.