As my noble friend said, a nice try. The big theme of several speakers related to productivity, and I will deal with that as best I can. I should like again to correct the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, about GDP per capita. This year, 2015, it will in fact be 5% higher than it was in 2010, so it is simply not the case that while GDP overall has risen, GDP per capita has fallen.
There is, I think, widespread acceptance that we need to increase productivity. As the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, is aware, there has been a productivity gap between this country and some of our competitors in Europe and the States for a long time. It fell and has risen slightly again. There is an interesting argument to be had about whether, particularly in times of austerity, it is better to have rapid employment growth, even if productivity does not increase as quickly, than to have higher unemployment and higher productivity. Personally, I think that over the last five years the fact that there has been rapid employment growth has been of crucial importance, and that we are now beginning to see some increase in productivity, and I obviously share his view that we wish this to accelerate.
I should like, though, to tackle head-on the assertion of the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, that the Government have no view or strategy on improving productivity. How do we do it? One of the key points is that we have to improve the qualification and skill levels of the workforce. Everybody agrees on that. We accept that there are far too many people who have far too few skills. That is why, for example, we have accelerated the academies programme to improve teaching in schools.