My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 108, 109 and 110 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson Ashley Abbotts and Lord Knight of Weymouth. I broadly agree with everything they said.
The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, in his introduction, referred to the level of dissatisfaction in our society: the threats from poverty, inequality and insecurity. I would say that these amendments are digging here into some of the depth of the problems that I referred to in my speech on a previous group and seek to provide some remedies. As he was speaking, I thought of meeting an USDAW representative in Sheffield referring to one of her members who had just come to her to seek a voucher for a food bank. The member was not, as you would expect as an USDAW member, unemployed; in fact, that member had seven jobs, but
they were all zero-hours contract jobs and that particular week they had not delivered enough money for that person to feed themselves and their family.
However, it is important that we do not just focus—the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, did not—on those who are in desperate poverty and inequality, as awful as that is. As he was speaking, I could not help but think of what the late, great David Graeber called—here I may be about to use what is unparliamentary language here, but it is a direct quote—“bullshit jobs”. The noble Lord referred to people’s desire to get meaning, to feel that what they are doing, how they are using their time and talents, is worthwhile and contributing to society. Indeed, a failure to acknowledge and understand that—a focus purely on the pounds, shillings and pence—is at the root of a lot of our problems: the financialisation, to which the noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred, of our entire economy—not just the financial parts but the real economy, the care economy, the public service economy.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred to managing things in a different way. I point again to New Zealand’s living standards framework, that guides its Treasury—based on a system not that dissimilar to our own—where they judge the quality of work, people’s security, the quality of the environment and the economy all together and seek to manage them to a stable, secure, decent whole.
These are important amendments and crucial principles, so I wanted to speak briefly in favour of them.