The Right and Honourable Lord David Young
Unintended Consequences or The Impossibility of Politics
Lord Young | Unintended Consequences or The Impossibility of Politics | 06.20.22
- Well, good evening, good morning, or wherever. Allow me to explain. I am an entrepreneur who spent many years of his life in government, not as a professional politician, but more accurately as an unelected volunteer. That in itself is neither good nor bad, but I did have the great advantage throughout of not having to win a seat, tend to my constituents. So it made it easier life. I was able to focus on my job. And for my first five years following the election of Margaret Thatcher back in May ‘79, I was a sort of civil servant, one of the very early special advisor to Keith Joseph, the industry secretary. And after a couple of years, with unemployment soaring, I was appointed chairman of the Manpower Services Commission, and that was the government’s then largest agency tasked with all the employment and training programmes. Unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, had soured up to three, three and a half million, and it became a very big political issue. So by 1984, we’d made a start on containing it. Margaret Thatcher invited me into her cabinet where I spent my next five years, first as minister without portfolio dealing with unemployment matters. After a year, becoming the employment secretary. And after the '87 election, I became the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.
When I then returned back to my own life, back to private life, and we’ll come to that later. Bizarrely, 21 years later, at the ripe young age of 78, I was back in number 10 as Prime Minister David Cameron’s enterprise advisor, and back being an amateur civil servant again. Well, not much progress, but this charmed life gave me a ringside seat. And I must confess, I entered this new life with, how should I put it? Not an exalted idea of the abilities of politicians in general. In my innocence I thought most of them couldn’t run a corner shop, and nor to be fair could many of them, but many faced far greater pressures and required abilities that we rarely need in private life. And so anything I say today should not be taken as overly critical of the judgement of politicians. The consequences of many of their decisions were often far reaching. And those I talk about today had far more consequences than almost any decision we can take in private life. And to be fair, I ended my time in government with considerable respect for many of my colleagues. When I look back, I realised that I’d worked far harder under far greater pressure than anything I had to do before or since for that matter. And the consequences I’ll talk about today, I do not believe could have been reasonably foreseen or even avoided. Now, the decade of the seventies in the UK has been much written about, and as I lived and worked and suffered through every painful year, I hate even recalling it. I will gloss over the continual strikes, the raging inflation, the humiliation of being the sick man of Europe that confers day trade taxation that reached 98% on interest and dividends, and 83% on income at a comparatively low level.
Now, none of this was sustainable, but since it lasted from the end of the war to our first budget of the Thatcher government, the country had to adapt to it. Businesses small and large simply cheated the tax man, and entrepreneurs were few. You see, people are rational, and gradually many looked not for an unattainable wealth, but for prestige or status, getting a gong at a pension. The cream of Oxbridge, Oxford and Cambridge looked towards a life in the Foreign Office, or failing that, the Home Office or other parts of government. After that, there was the city, but never, ever industry. And as for working for yourself, the upper classes looked down on trade as socially, quite unacceptable. And we all reaped what we sewed. And the economy continued to decline. And the only growth industry in the country was inflation. That all began to change after Margaret Thatcher won the '79 election. In the first budget, the top rate of tax was reduced to 60%, and taxes and other regulations reduced. Suddenly it was possible to save money out of earnings, and that was no longer a mirage. And finally, by the mid-eighties, the Big Bang revolutionised the city to become the financial centre of Europe, and even began to challenge New York itself. By then the American banks saw the opportunities in London and came here in force, smuggling US pay scales in their baggage. The opportunities were there, but where was the talent?
They soon realised where the most able were hiding, and both senior and up-and-coming civil servants suddenly found they could earn a multiple of their government salaries. Over the next decades, not only did many of the brightest leave government, but even worse, the most able and ambitious never looked to White Hall first. I must confess, at the time I hardly noticed it. The civil service I worked with in the eighties was a Rolls-Royce machine, and we took it all for granted. All the programmes we introduced, whatever demands we put on officials were cheerfully accepted, and we introduced national schemes quite effortlessly, and they worked. So when I returned 21 years later in 2010, the change was already noticeable. Some of the changes I’ll come to later, but gone was the effortless spirit of can-do which used to permeate the service, at least that part of the civil service I dealt with. Of course, there was some very positive changes, and within the ranks of senior civil servants, women were no longer a rarity, quite the contrary, and it was much more inclusive. I retired from government, finally, in 2015. And all I know today is secondhand or from my formal colleagues. But what I do learn is much more than a little disturbing, in that today, after COVID, some departments, only 25% come into the office, and the rest are engaged on what euphemistically has become to be known as, working from home. And when I read that some senior officials are now refusing to carry out the instructions of their minister, I realise how much the world has changed, but alas, not improved.
I hope this will be a temporary after-effect of the pandemic, and the quicker things get back to normal, the better they’ll be. But before long, we might all be entering stormy seas, and above all, we need an official and effective government. And the government must think again of ways to attract the brightest, perhaps short-term commissions, but our government really does need more outside talent. My second example was quite the opposite, where the dangers were accurately foreseen and then totally ignored. The Conservative government, we, had a real problem during the eighties because although the government was Conservative, many parts of the country, the day-to-day management was in the hands of the local authorities, which in many cases were very left-wing. For example, the local education authorities who had full control over the state education system also interfered with the syllabus, notoriously renaming history as “peace studies,” and taking a very different line from the government right in the middle of the Cold War. So one day I was invited to Chequers where the Prime Minister has a weekend retreat one Sunday with a number of members of the cabinet for a presentation by Kenneth Baker of the soon to be introduced Community Charge. It all sounded very convincing. The annual charge per person would be about 140 pounds, which would be roughly where the existing rates system there was.
But it was designed that if a local authority overspent their budget, the charge would rise sharply. And since all local authorities were elected, we thought it would have a very effective limit to their overspending. But it was an entirely new tax, a poll tax, a charge per person. And it was not based on the value of your home, but on the number of people who lived there. So someone with a large family on a small income would pay far more than a very rich man with no family. And there were many jokes about the Duke and the Dustman, Dustman paying more than the Duke. But we were concerned about how well the new system would work since we were replacing an annual charge based upon the value of the property you live for a capital charge per head, and this I’d never done before. So not being highly silly, we agreed that the community charge would be introduced over five years at the rate of 20% a year. And the existing system of rates would be reduced over the same period by 20% per year. And that would provide a seamless way to migrate from one to the other. It was a well thought out plan that would’ve succeeded if we’d ever done it. But what worked out was that we won the '87 election, third election victory running, a margin of over a hundred seats. And frankly, it went to our head.
That year at the party conference, a debate took place on the community charge, and a proposal was passed to not waste anymore time as the charge had already been introduced in Scotland, where incidentally, there were already problems, and therefore we should go ahead, not bother with this cautious plan, and introduce the new charge immediately. There were many things the Conservative Party could be famous for, but not what I may tactfully call, party democracy. I suspect this was the very first time on record we ever listened to a resolution of the party conference. And so the government decided to introduce the new system immediately, and did so. The result was disaster, pure and simple. In many lower income areas the tax often more than doubled, hitting large families far more than their next door families with no children. In Westminster where I live, where parliament is, for some reason there was no charge at all. And before long there were civil disturbances and some of the poll tax riots nearly got out of hand. And as soon as we could, we abolished it. But there can be no doubt, it hastened the retirement of Margaret Thatcher. After 16 years as leader of the Conservatives and 11 years as Prime Minister, having restored the economy of this country and set it on a path to prosperity for the next 30 years. If we’d not changed our plans, we could easily have reversed direction. And in those circumstances, would it have extended Margaret’s term? Probably not, but it was a very unhappy period, and a memory that’s continued to overhang her time in office.
Now, after she left office, John Major followed, was Prime Minister, and the government staggered on for a few more years until in '97, Tony Blair, the leader of the new Labour government became Prime Minister. He won the election with a good majority, and had only just returned from seeing the Queen, and was, I am told, relaxing in the cabinet room with some of his new officials. The then secretary of the cabinet asked him how he’d like to be referred to, and he replied, “Tony, of course.” Now, to be fair to Tony Blair, I’m not sure he understood the significance of the question at that time, but his casual answer changed the way the part of our political system works. Let me go back just for a little. When Margaret invited me into the cabinet back in '84, as I say, first as minister without portfolio, employment secretary, and then trade and industry, I served there a full five years. The cabinet meetings were very formal in nature, had been set in their ways for many years, decades. And in my day, it tended to be every Thursday at 11 o'clock. It followed a long established pattern. First, the only people in the cabinet room throughout the meeting were the 22 members of the cabinet, including the Prime Minister, and in addition, the Secretary of the Cabinet and two note takers. Secondly, no one, but no one was allowed in the room whilst cabinet was sitting, except perhaps the Prime Minister’s principal private secretary, who was allowed to come into the room to give the Prime Minister a note if war had been declared.
Well, I exaggerate slightly, but some other matter of urgency. And finally, we always addressed each other during the meeting by our job titles, the discussion might go, well, the Home Secretary said this, but the Defence Secretary said that. It slowed the discussion down. It may even sound a little pompous, but it had two great advantages. First, it always reminded you why you were there, and what your responsibilities were. You weren’t just David Young, you were there for a purpose. And secondly, it became rather more difficult but not entirely impossible for the argument to sink to a personal level. I’d long left cabinet when Tony became Prime Minister, and although this change happened at the time, I, frankly, did not appreciate the significance. And then there was a further change two or three years later introduced by Tony that I had completely missed. Evidently during the later stages of a reshuffle, Tony was faced with a perennial problem that all Prime Ministers faced, having more applicants for cabinet positions than there were places, or certainly talent. And he had a brain rave, and on the spot invented a new category, someone with a right to sit in a cabinet room but without the right to speak. And there was one other change, of this one only personal and in my own department in trade and industry which did not outlast my term.
This was a very large department, in fact, it approached the treasury inside, and I had quite a few ministers of state and even more junior ministers and whips, about 16 or 18 in total. And I found it quite difficult to keep all of us on the same page. So I therefore decreed that after cabinet each week I’d give lunch in the department to which they were all invited and had to attend unless they were overseas on government business. And they were often rather jolly, enjoyable occasions that served the purpose to ensure that we were all on the same page. And sitting at the far end of the table well below the salt was a young man from Conservative central office, no doubt sent to spy on us and find out what an earth we’re up to. Well, I stood down from cabinet the summer of '89, and after a year in purdah, you have to take a year off, I was able to return to private life. Well, roll on, literally 20 years. And in the early summer of 2010, I was invited to see David Cameron, now leader of the Conservatives and about to become the Prime Minister, and whom I thought I’d never met and was intrigued to know why I was invited. When we did, I recognised him immediately as the young man sitting at the far end of the table well below the salt during my DtI years, and he invited me to come to number 10. And after a short while I became his enterprise advisor with my own office and staff, and spent five fruitful years.
As I was to produce a number of papers on small firms, on employment, on enterprise, I’d agreed with David Cameron that all my papers would go to cabinet for approval before being published. I did not want to inhabit any pigeon holes. And so it was a few months later, the beginning of the next year, I was back in cabinet, not of course as a member, but this time to present the first paper approved. And I must tell you, I could hardly believe my eyes. Instead of 22 members of cabinet, there were now 33, partly because we were in a coalition government, and in fact we had to extend the cabinet table itself. There were of course the usual, but, all the walls of the cabinet room itself are now lined with spectators. There must have been more than 30 people sitting around the room, no doubt those who can attend but not speak. But now also including many special advisors in addition to those sitting round the cabinet. When the meeting started, everyone was on first name terms, but this was no longer the cabinet of old that had argued through, and painfully fought through all the great decisions down the years. It was far more like a public meeting, with the result that any decision that was in any way confidential had to be taken in cabinet sub-committees, when before they would’ve been made by the full cabinet. What would that do to the cohesiveness of the cabinet as a whole I wondered. And I was to attend quite a few times over the next few years, and it was quite impossible to have any discussion with any degree of confidentiality.
Now, that was a minor, but important accidental change. But the next one I’m going to discuss was anything but, and I fear, it’s Tony Blair again. In his party conference speech in 1999, Tony Blair announced his admission that at least 50% of young people should go to universities. This was one of those statements that means well, sounds good, and had a transformational effect on the quality of our education, but not, alas, for the better. Now, I went to university in the dark ages, back in the early fifties. And I took a law degree at UCL University College, London. At the end of our three year course, and there were 120 students in our year drawn from the three major London universities. There were two first class degrees, and seven uppers seconds. Let me assure you that my name was not included in that very exclusive list, but in those far off days, about 8% were awarded honours of which first class degrees were under 2%, which was about the average for the time. Honours in those days really meant something, it marked you out for the rest of your life, but things had already started to deteriorate before Tony made his conference speech. Back in '94 when I’d been running Cable & Wireless and on a visit to Singapore, the senior minister, Lee Kuan Yew, summoned me to his office to complain bitterly about the state of our education system.
He said, “We used award jobs on the basis of UK degrees, but today a first class graduate from Strathclyde University is simply unemployable.” I have no idea what Strathclyde did wrong or what the individual did. And when I returned, I took this up with our then education secretary and complained about degree inflation. “Oh, no,” I was assured, there was none. That young people were much brighter these days. I promise you young people today are no brighter than they were in Roman times. What they do is work less. But the problem was only just starting. First pass degrees increase, just first, from 7% in '94, to 29% in 2019 before COVID. And in fact, all my figures are before COVID because everything has been messed up with exams over the last two years. For every student who got a first in the early nineties, nearly 20 do today, 20 times the number. And if you look at the proportion of students getting good orders, that is a first thought up as second, has jumped from 47% to 79%. And at 13 universities in this country, more than 90% of students were given at least an upper second. That is nonsense, and has made complete mockery of the whole system. So how did this come about? If you decide that half of all young people leaving school should go to universities, it creates two immediate problems.
First, you have to provide the means to enable these students to afford not only the fees, but their living costs and expenses over a three year degree. There was an existing student loan company making small loans for maintenance and fees for students and that was greatly expanded. So the average student today upon leaving university will be saddled with a personal loan approaching 50,000 pounds. In aggregate, almost 20 billion is loaned in each year to around one and a half million students in England. And the value of the outstanding loans at the end of March '21 reached no less than 141 billion pounds. The government official estimates say that in less than 30 years, the outstanding loans at 2019/20 prices will be about 560 billion pounds. Now, in fact, these cases, they’re not the usual type of loans that any one of us would recognise because they only start becoming repayable by instalments as a surcharge on your income tax once your income exceeds a threshold in England of about 27,000 pounds a year. And if you never earn that much, you never pay it back. And on the 25th anniversary of your loan becoming repayable, the entire balance is written off.
So how much of those 141 billion pounds going up will be paid off? Time with only tell. But there was an even bigger problem, he had to provide an enormous number of new university places, and as a result there was an unprecedented expansion of university sector. And many good polytechnics became in time, secondary rate universities at best. In a few short years, the university population nearly doubled, going from just under a million, to just under 2 million, nearly doubling in about eight years. Course, in my view, there simply wasn’t a talent around to create all these additional courses, and the expression, “Mickey Mouse degrees” became an everyday term. There was a vast expansion in media subjects and all sorts of soft subjects because happily, as it transpired, the science and technology subjects were just too expensive and just too difficult to expand quickly, and therefore did not become devalued in the same way. I had the privilege of chairing UCL for 10 years over this period. And as we were as much a research university as anything, we focused on getting better quality students rather than taking more of them. So approaching a quarter of a century or so after Tony Blair made his comments, his commitment, in which he undoubtedly meant well, we’ve reached the stage where we entice hundreds and thousands of young people each year to take a three year holiday to go to a second rate university, to get a third rate degree qualification that certainly doesn’t add to their employability, probably detracts from it and leaves them saddled with a debt of 50,000 pounds or more. Why did it happen so quickly and with such enthusiasm?
Well, may I merely note in passing, that the more students at a university, the higher the salaries of the management tend to be. And today the university profits of not that large universities earning in the region of half a million pounds a year to run an institution with government funds, and ensures that it supplies with sufficient young students. And furthermore, institutions that have notably failed to adapt to the challenge of the COVID years. And the demand for more young people with university entrance qualifications led not to increasing standards in schools, but to keep the numbers up, and keep the reputation of your school up led to actively reducing standards for the entry grades. And I’ve seen the admissions tutor, the law faculty at UCL faced with 120 applications, all every single one with four A-stars. And in his words, “It just became a lottery.” Last year Tony Blair announced he’d like to see seven out of 10 young people going on to tertiary education. Of course, additional education can add to employability, but that’s often skills-based training. And it’s worth noting that over the decades we’ve steadily reduced skill-based training in favour of ever softer university degrees. But the sheer unpredictability of events makes a political life a very hazardous one.
Take Brexit for example, the most divisive political issue of our time. We, a nation split down the middle, with a Prime Minister at the time who did not believe in Brexit, who didn’t want it, but who had to introduce it. And a parliament without a clear majority to do anything. When Theresa May finally resigned and Boris Johnson took her place, and in a matter of weeks completed the negotiation sufficiently to call an election, and then ran a triumphant election campaign that gave his government the largest majority since Margaret Thatcher. He must have thought that the world was his oyster, that he’d been given as favourable an opportunity as the most ambitious Prime Minister could ever have desired. It was Napoleon Bonaparte who’s reputed to have wished for lucky generals, and we certainly need lucky Prime Ministers. Boris just had time to form his government in 2019 when Christmas was upon us. And then early in the new year, stories began to circulate about an unknown disease emanating in Wuhan in China. Within a few weeks we were in the thrones of a hundred year event, a pandemic spread around the world killing unfortunately millions, and stopping the global economy stone dead. And then after creating a world-leading vaccine programme that saved us from the worst, and before he could get down to dealing with the challenges and the opportunities of a post-Brexit economy, President Putin launched his unprovoked assault on the Ukraine, threatened nuclear retaliation, we were back 50 years with a threat of a third world war, another refugee crisis, and the real possibility of global starvation.
Now, I really believe, and the history books will in time show that it was Boris’s energy and activity in the first few weeks after the start of the war on Ukraine, that an ambivalent EU up to then taking its line for Germany and France, overreliant on the supply of Russian oil and Russian gas, was finally shamed into facing the right direction, ensure that NATO will build up sufficient deterrents to prevent the war spreading, spreading any further than it was into Europe. Encouraged the United States to take a stronger line, and visited Sweden and Finland at the right time. So much so that Dmitry Peskov the Kremlin spokesman continually refers to Boris as Putin’s number one enemy. I personally cannot think of a better effort, yet I cannot recall at any time in my fairly long life, any Prime Minister of the United Kingdom being the subject of such abuse, and yes, derision has been levelled at Boris over the last few weeks by all and sundry. No, I’m not a fan of Boris as Prime Minister, and even if I had a vote, I could not be sure to vote for him in any future election. But I did read the famous Sue Grey report in full, and that was scathing, not about Boris, but about the civil servants who were in charge of number 10 and the cabinet office. And it is probably yet another illustration of the way the civil service has deteriorated over the years.
Because if I at any time as a cabinet minister had wanted to do anything that could be interpreted as in breach of the law, my permanent secretary would have invited himself into my office, sat down and told me politely not to do it. But if I insisted, would give me a letter to sign that I would take full, personal responsibility in authorising it. From the Grey report, not only did the civil servants not do that, they were the actual ones issuing the invitations. And what I believe Boris is guilty of in reality, is a lack of attention to detail, possibly coupled with a little laziness. Indeed, that’s where we came in this evening, with a weakened civil service as an unintended result of the recovery of our economy. Did Boris lie? I have no idea whether he did or not, whether it was accidental or intended, whether it was justified or not. But I do recall the leader of the opposition clean forgot that his own deputy was at a small party he attended. So it is possible for people in politics to make innocent mistakes, but what it does show at the end of the day when all is said and done, is the sheer impossibility of political life in the brave new world of social media.
Well, David, that was absolutely superb. I just wish you had more of a say in government these days. And will you take some questions please?
Of course I will, yes, with pleasure.
[Trudy] Sorry about the dark glasses, I’ve got something wrong with my eyes so I’m not the best. This is from Sheila. “I thought this about the expansion of university places for a long time. Delighted to hear you express what can be done.” She asks.
Well, what we have to do, I am afraid, is borrow a name, introduce a new system of examinations, a baccalaureate. Something which is not blessed with a name of hire or a school certificate, or whatever they call it these days. But we’ve got to go deliberately to improve standards, and it’s going to be remarkably difficult. People now believe that a university degree is their right, but what does it actually mean to you? And it’s one of the most difficult problems that I think is facing government today. The way in which we’ve really soft-soaped people, doing things for people rather than expect them to work. When I talk my law degree I was an evening student, I used to work during the day. But there you are, I’m an old man talking now.
[Trudy] No, no, I mean, you talk such sense. Nicholas has said, “Wasn’t it part of Blair’s strategy to reduce unemployment?”
Well, unemployment was already nearly down by then. Yes, they thought the more people they could attract into university would help to boost the figures, partly because they weren’t doing anything really to help employment grow. So they thought they could divert it, but I’m being unkind. So many things that happen in government get changed by the events after them.
This is from Leon. He says, “David, I fondly remember the days at UCL when you were chairman of council and I the chairman of medicine, and we presided over the change in leadership of the college. Good to see you on this forum. Since there’s a requirement for a question it’s, what is the salt situation on the table? Excellent talk.” I dunno, the salt situation is down the line a little bit, but there we are. But I couldn’t resist that. But the truth was, I was convinced I’d never met David Cameron, and I got the shock of my life. And I suspect if he hadn’t been sitting at the far end of the table, I would not have spent five very enjoyable years playing at politics.
This is an interesting one from Richard Lofsters. “Dear David, what would be your advice to Boris Johnson giving his current difficulties?”
It’s extremely difficult. Boris, in my view, is not a good peacetime Prime Minister, but he is a wartime leader. I mean, frankly, I watched with admiration the way he wouldn’t stop flying round the gull. Well, this is the very unpopular view. Everybody’s convinced he lies, I’m not sure how he’s lied. And he’s not a thousand percent character, but in politics you’ve got to be effective. And at a time like this when Europe is in the most dangerous position it’s been in, and I don’t exaggerate, for 50 years since the Cuban missile crisis, we need firm leadership and not to be undermined by all this stuff. Whether it’s even possible in a world with social media these days, I don’t know.
This is from Ingrida. “Lord Young has commented on the devaluation of university degrees financed by very heavy debt for each student. Would three year degrees covered in two years, with two courses running each year with terms of three months, alternating the years every three months taken as work experience, improve the long-term benefit of university education and make it more practical?” This is very much a question talking about practicality of courses.
Well, for many years now, Birkbeck College in London has run a two year degree and in the evening, in which they do the same work as a three year degree. People come there in employment, take the degree in the evening. I think if you need a degree, I’m not sure what you need a degree for. If you’re going to become a scientist, a doctor, a vet, anything science and technology, obviously you need that, and those degrees you can’t rush. But if you want other ones, you can certainly collapse. We have the long vacation. Do you know why, each year? Because in the old days in Oxford and Cambridge, the students were sent home to bring the harvest in, and that was the origin of the long summer vacation. Now, it’s about time we got a bit more up-to-date.
And this is from Philip. “How can the Yin Yang of UK politics be dampened when the system remains a two party one?” This is really about our electoral system.
Yes, I know. Well, the only thing is, I will say that the very few proportional vote or coalition system can get anywhere. Normally, it’s the lowest common denominator. It’s never the highest common factor. And that is a problem. The great advantage of our system in the UK, that we can have decisive government whether for good or for ill. So if we have a very left swing, in my point of view wouldn’t be such a good thing. But if you have accessible government encouraging enterprise as we’ve had one or two recently, then it’s a very good thing. If you have a coalition you get hamstrung, most of European nations, the politics are hamstrung by coalition.
This is from Faye Katsman, she’s one of our students in Canada. And she says, “Degree inflation is a significant problem in Canada. Education has been degraded. It’s not just a British problem.” And this is a mice comment from Martin Smolan, “What a privilege to hear a true fiscal social and educational Conservative at last, so erudite.”
[Trudy] I think that’s an absolutely lovely comment, and so true actually. What else have we got? Yes. And this is from Ralph. “Thank you Lord Young, for such an informative presentation. It’s remarkable how similar the problems of government in America, including incompetent leadership. What are your thoughts on financial conflict of interest amongst ministers and parliamentarians?” This is obviously from one of our American listeners.
Well, we’re quite rigorous. Even though I took an unpaid volunteer job all those years, I had to declare everything and give up my business. And I did for 10 years, I gave up the business. And even in the five years that I spent in number 10, I disclosed absolutely everything I did because the last thing I want to do, inadvertently do something which leads to a problem. I don’t think you should ever confuse private sector activity with what you are doing in public life, ever, because otherwise people will not accept what you say at face value, there will always be suspicions.
May I ask a question on that topic? Because obviously you’ve got a great moral compass and I think one of the things that has really turned so much of the electorate off politics, is they do not perceive that many of the parliamentarians do.
Yes. Because look, when you get on a bit, and I’ve got on quite a bit, you tend to get a rather rosy view of your youth and of the people you knew then. But to my mind, the calibre of politicians today is not what they used to be. And I’m not sure why that should be.
[Lita] No words.
But maybe I just didn’t know what they were really like before.
I’d love you to give us another presentation on that. I think that’s fascinating. Now, this is from Marilyn. She said, “Do you think the sale of council houses contributed to the present dire situation?”
No, I don’t think so at all. But we did make one mistake. I cannot tell you how bad council houses were in the UK when they were run by the local authority, how they were neglected and how they ran down, and how they were transformed. Margaret Thatcher used to say one thing, “Give a man, a woman, a parent, the responsibility of their own family, of being able to earn their own living, of providing for their own home, and you have got a good citizen of the country.” The council houses were transformed. They were painted up. I still to this day have taxi drivers tell me how their parents bought their own house and that set them up in the world. The mistake we made is we didn’t take the money and reinvest it in new housing. That’s what we should have done, and I hope that’s what we should be doing today. We need to replace the housing stock. But I do not believe in the state owning things. When the state owns things it’s the same as the state gives you an income. But can I just digress slightly on that? When I went into Manpower Services Commission, I found in those days, believe it or not, 16 year old school leavers, and there were 450,000 a year, on the first week of September would qualify for unemployment benefit, and would be paid in those days, 15 pounds a week, when they were probably getting 50 pence a week pocket money. Setting the lesson, the state will look after you. Well, we changed that. And I believe what we’ve really got to do is look after people who need looking after, but try not to tend too many people to not working.
This is another return to education from Faye. She’s asking, “Is the degradation of education an international issue?”
Yes, I don’t know if it’s international, I don’t know what we would gain if we sent a whole lot of students to a Russian university and we took theirs, but at least we might begin to understand each other. The problem is, I left school at 16 to go into a lawyer’s office. The average 83 or 4% of young people left school at 16 was only six or seven years, used to be 15. Today, people leave school very much later. They retire very much earlier. In fact, I worked out, if somebody left school and went into conventional employment, other words, retired at the retiring age, worked for a large company, in the course of one lifetime he would work twice as many hours as anybody leaving school today going into conventional employment. Twice as many hours in a working lifetime. And I believe that we are only at the start of this, that the three day week will be on us in a few years. And so we have a real societal problem is to know what to do with the time, how do people occupy, but particularly when they’re young. And it’s all too easy. And anyway, I can get on another hobby horse.
That’s an interesting one. This is from Lyndon Simon, who compliments you on your talk and then says, “What do you feel about the future of Brexit?”
As I tried to point out, Brexit hasn’t had a chance yet. It literally, we came back in November, the election, Christmas came and then everything changed. I’d say one other thing then. I spent many years working in Europe. When I was on the cabinet, I was in European council, I was the labour council, the employment council. Fundamentally, Europe is run on the civil code, which has its origin in Roman law. United Kingdom has never been occupied, the common law is our system. Under the common law, the citizen is free to do whatever he likes 'til the law says he can’t. Under the civil code, the citizen cannot do anything 'til the law says he can. That is why London always does so well, because it can innovate, and as long as keeps within the law. Why we started the world’s first industrial revolution, started at Stonebridge, didn’t start on continental Europe. And why? And it’s all the English speaking commonwealth are the same. The English common law is the legal system that gives people freedom to do things in a way that’s not been experienced many other places.
Okay, this is from Stewart. “Can Boris circumvent breaking the law with a settlement over the Northern Ireland issue?”
Well, when you’re talking about breaking the law, you’ve got to look at things that are really important. Boris isn’t just willfully breaking the law. And incidentally, I’m not sure when it was the Boris actually lied. I think all these myths are coming up, but leave that. We have an EU that’s now playing hardball because we left, and they’re desperate to ensure nobody else follows them. We had the troubles in Ireland. We were all targets of the IRA, including all the ministers there. We all went round in a very nervous condition for many of those years. If there’s a hard border between Northern Ireland and the southern Republic, then the IRA will come back into being, and it’s a serious problem. They know that in Europe, but they’re willfully talking about this. Boris I think probably signed something he shouldn’t have signed, but you’ve got to look at the bigger picture. He got us out of Europe, and got ourselves freed from that, which the majority of the people in this country wanted. And Boris has, I’m afraid, very much over a remainer basis.
You’ve had lots of comments on how wonderful the lecture is. This is from Catherine. “Thank you so much for your interesting lecture. What do you think of apprenticeships? I believe everyone who hasn’t quite the ability to get into a university can benefit from all the different subjects on offer. What is your opinion?”
Well, I think there’s a great compromise. We bought it in when I was in number 10. And I wish they’d made more of it. Apprenticeship degrees. What happens is, you go to a company, it’s obviously a company in science, technical, manufacturing, whatever. You sign up a five year apprenticeship and you take a degree in the course of that apprenticeship, and you end up not only having employed money through earned money in those five years, you don’t have a debt 'cause the firm pays for it and your employment, and you’ve got a very good start for life. We’re pushing those. But this diversion into media degrees, into soft things, is very difficult because we are tempting young people to have a three year vacation. The amount of work that people have to do at university has changed out of all.
There’s a lot of comments about politicians. Aubrey’s saying, “Please come to South Africa and teach our politicians.” Barry is saying “You have to get a licence to be a dog walker, but anyone can become a politician.”
Yes.
[Trudy] This is from Hazel. “Why do you think the UK has had such a low productivity economy?
That’s been the mystery. We’ve been looking at that, and I’ve been looking at it always, whether it’s the way we measure things, but actually to be fair, we’re a fairly laid back country. People enjoy life I think a bit too much. But we always have a way to measure out low productivity. I think we even work fewer hours, but I’m not sure. Nobody can find that mystery, solve that mystery. I don’t know why.
There’s a very interesting comment from Michelle. She compliments you and then she says, "As Jonathan Sacks despaired, 'self-esteem without effort, fame without achievement, sex without consequence, wealth without responsibility, pleasure without struggle, and experience without commitment.’” That’s the analysis according to Jonathan Sacks.
[David] Yes. Well, he’s right actually.
[Trudy] It’s an extraordinary comment, isn’t it? Now, just time for one more question. And Peter’s asking, “Should we deport refugees to Rwanda?”
Can I explain that please?
[Trudy] Yes, I think so, please.
[David] Refugees coming over in the channel in far too great number are there as a result of criminal activity. People who can afford it pay between three and $10,000 to send one single male of their family over in the boat, comes here, gets accepted here and established, and then sends for the rest of the family. We must open our gates to refugees. I’m the son of a refugee for heaven’s sakes, and I want that more than anything, but we should take them on the basis of need, and not the basis of being able to pay for it. That undermines the whole principle. And secondly, there are going to be great
[Trudy] Yes.
movements of peoples around the world, partly caused by global warming, now going to be caused by famine, by warfare. We’re going through a very difficult period that’s going to leave to movement of populations at a big scale. It may be in 30, 40 years, the centre of Africa will become uninhabitable. So where are the people going to go? They’re going to go north, and where are they going to go then? So the world has to look at this problem and really deal with it. And we can’t go round saying,
[Trudy] Traffickers?
you know, how many people can we take in? And we must find ways. So, going down to Rwanda was not to punish them, but was to make sure that when the criminals go to sell their tickets for the UK, that their potential customer will not be certain that they’re going to end up in the UK. They’re going to end up down in Rwanda.
[Trudy] It’s a truce.
I’ve said to everybody who criticised this, give me another solution. Any idea, tell me. The answer is not accept every person who comes in, because we can’t do that, because there’ll be a reaction against it from the population. And it’s the refugees who will suffer. That’s why politics is impossible science.
That’s actually an interesting note to finish on, isn’t it? Because obviously so many people listening will be the children, the grandchildren, the great grandchildren of refugees. So it is a very, very controversial
Yes.
[Trudy] issue. And let me thank you so much for your brilliant talk. The comments are glowing. And I’d like now to turn to Wendy Fisher, she is our vice chancellor now. Wendy, I’m making it official .
[Wendy] Hi David. David, Trudy, thanks a million for an outstanding presentation. And thank you Trudy for hosting it today. And I look forward to seeing both of you week after next. Thank you, David.
, Wendy.
[Wendy] Thank you, and please send my love to Lita.
That’s okay.
[Lita] I’m here, Wendy.
Hello, sending love.
[David] And thank you.
See you soon.
[Judi] Thank you Trudy, for doing the Q&A. Thanks, Wendy.
[David] Thank you.
[Judi] Bless everyone.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
[Team Member] Bye.