I want to write to Lord Liddle
Lord Liddle: ...on this side of the House think it very important that employee representatives—trade unions—should have a formal role in the development of this sector in some way. It is going to affect the jobs of an awful lot of people—bus drivers, lorry drivers and goodness knows who else. We all have a choice in life. Do we just take these technologies and try to impose them, or do we try to...
Lord Liddle: ...sophistication when there is an enormous waiting list for driving tests? The last stated figure was an 18 and a half-week wait for a driving test, which is very important to people trying to get jobs. The Government are supposed to be working towards a nine-week target. Can the Minister report progress on that, or is it just another example of a country that is not working any more?
Lord Liddle: ...there are clear implications for existing, well-established industrial sectors—buses, lorries and delivery vehicles—where many people are employed. It may be that there will continue to be new jobs in these areas; that is generally the experience of technological change, and it may get rid of the labour shortages that exist in some of these areas. That may well be true, but why not try...
Lord Liddle: ...also very much share the view of my colleague, my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe, that any partnership work should involve the trade unions. As someone said, this will have enormous consequences for jobs in the future and we must involve the trade unions from an early stage. The Bill is legal and technical, and it is necessary, but of course it is not the whole answer—it is not a policy...
Lord Liddle: ...I care a lot about local government and have spent 20 years of my life as a member of three local authorities—Oxford when I was very young, Lambeth in early middle age and Cumbria as a retirement job, as it were, until the authority was abolished at the end of March this year. I have great respect for what the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—Councillor John Shipley—said in his introduction....
Lord Liddle: ...“get Brexit done”. He did not give a—sorry, I was about to swear there. He did not care one little bit for Northern Ireland. That should be borne in mind. How do we make the best of this bad job? We must work much harder at getting effective mechanisms working between the Northern Ireland people, the Assembly and its stakeholders, and the European Commission. The situation requires...
Lord Liddle: ...will have the same rights as the European Parliament to scrutiny”. What a joke. I worked in Brussels in the Trade Commissioner’s cabinet when Peter Mandelson was Commissioner. One of my jobs was to maintain close relations with the trade committee of the European Parliament. These were very expert people who understood the issues properly, they had to approve a mandate for every...
Lord Liddle: ...participation as a top priority. If you get high employee participation, you get the tax revenues that enable you to improve public services. So we really need a strategy for filling all these jobs—getting older workers, perhaps on a part-time basis, back into services. We need a comprehensive strategy. My final point is that we must have radical reform. We have to be prepared to upset...
Lord Liddle: ..., in relation to the floods in Carlisle, 15 or more years ago, local radio was fundamental. I recently received an email from the people at Radio Cumbria, who say that the number of journalists’ jobs has been cut back from, I think, six to two. The amount of strictly local coverage is being drastically cut. That is a serious loss. On my side of the House, we are supposed to be...
Lord Liddle: ...first, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, who was a very good Minister. He always attempted to answer our questions and treat Members of Parliament with seriousness. He approached his job as a Minister with a level of seriousness that some members of the Cabinet would have done well to follow. Secondly, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Hayter for producing this very...
Lord Liddle: ...that, as the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, described, threaten the independence of its journalists. The BBC is not perfect; it has to change and competition is good for it. But I believe it is our job as politicians to support the BBC in this essential process of adjusting to change. Our job is not to starve it of resources by freezing the licence fee, or to fiddle with it, as the...
Lord Liddle: ...attraction, themed in this case on the wonders of the sky and seabed, but an inspiring educational experience as well as a centre of world-leading environmental research. It would create new jobs, from gatekeepers and cooks to technicians and scientists, which would all command respect. There is a plan there. All that is needed is for the Government to back it. With support from the...
Lord Liddle: ...the Secretary of State checking that a proper consultation has been carried out among employers in the area, checking that all the known facts have been gathered and assessed and that a thorough job of work has been done, and then giving it a tick or saying “You need to do your homework a bit better”? What actually is the role of the Secretary of State in relation to these local plans?...
Lord Liddle: ...—one of the great figures of Cumbria who was a Member of the European Parliament on two separate occasions for the north-west area. He has tremendous local credibility and does a very good job. The LEP has looked at skills and done a lot of work on skills. I hear no mention of what the Government intend to do with local enterprise partnerships. They seem to be too scared to say, or too...
Lord Liddle: ...to do with it—when I was advising my noble friend Lord Mandelson, when he was Business Secretary in charge of skills—I did not get the impression that that body had the capacity to do this job of co-ordination. It was basically responsible for making sure that public money was handled in an accountable way. What I would love to hear from the noble Baroness is an explanation of how...
Lord Liddle: ...going to fall disproportionately on the poor? Well, it is all very well having this theoretical debate, but what I am sure of is that there are not the people available with the skills to do this job within the five-year, 10-year or 15-year timeframe that has been talked about. The Government have to be more joined-up about these things if they are serious about addressing the climate...
Lord Liddle: ...system at breaking point, and a welfare safety net set at levels where families cannot afford to feed their children and that has numerous holes in it, meaning that there are people with insecure jobs and low pay who cannot afford to isolate and too many people falling through the net. We need to learn the lessons with an inquiry into what went wrong. I also hope that we will take the...
Lord Liddle: ...Michael Gove introduced the Government’s negotiating strategy for Brexit, in the House of Commons last spring, he said, with great enthusiasm, that Brexit would bring tens of thousands of new jobs in fishing to Britain. Does the Minister now regret that those promises were made?
Lord Liddle: ..., but does the noble Baroness accept that these movements are in part because of the scandalous pay and conditions of people working in the care sector, their need to combine several part-time jobs and their poverty, which makes them reluctant to isolate? Will the legislation proposed by the end of the year include a statutory framework to improve pay and conditions in the care sector, and...
Lord Liddle: ...when, as Secretary of State for Business, he secured assurances from Rolls-Royce that the establishment of the plant in Singapore would not lead to closure of the UK plant at Barlick or severe job losses. Given the crucial importance of Rolls-Royce to the British economy and the financial links between the Government and the company, why has the Secretary of State not made a personal...