‘Two Brains’ fights for Britain’s young
DAVID Willetts has a vision for a future Britain in which a new generation of workers are employed in a thriving space industry – and young people can afford to buy their own house.
For many that will sound like science fiction itself, but the former Government Minister turned thinktank boss is hopeful that both could be reality if we just take the right steps now.
Willetts, dubbed ‘Two Brains’ for his detailed academic approach to policy, left the House of Commons at the last Election, but is now carving himself a new role as a key voice in the often fiery debates on earnings and equality.
He is a notable critic of the tax credit cuts proposed by the Chancellor and a champion of the young, who he argues are getting a raw deal from the economy and the State.
From the Tory front bench he has moved to the Lords as Baron Willetts but has also become executive chairman of the Resolution Foundation – a think-tank focused on low earners and what can be done to help them. After 23 years in the House of Commons, 58-year-old Willetts describes it as a ‘fresh turn of the kaleidoscope’.
But the work of Resolution may prove a continuation of his longstanding concerns. In 2010 he wrote The Pinch, a book outlining how the baby-boomer generation are taking a disproportionate share of the nation’s wealth while their children are left to struggle.
It sounds like a recipe for family rows over Sunday lunch, but Willetts insists he is not an agitator for a generational war.
‘People often say that I am stirring up conflict between the generations. But I completely believe that pensioners care about their kids and the polling evidence is that the young do not begrudge pensioners their pensions,’ he says.
But he equally insists that the figures speak for themselves. In his spartan office in Resolution’s Westminster headquarters he brandishes the statistics to prove his case.
He points to a graph: ‘This is the per head value of benefits going to different age groups.’ He points to a relentlessly rising line. ‘Here you can see the pensioners and the value of their benefits continuing to rise. If you look at these other groups, working age families and children, you see a real fall.’ It is this that he says prompted him to become a critic of the Chancellor’s tax credits.
‘On tax credits I was concerned about the size of the losses of some individual families and that is an omission. I very much hope that is something the Chancellor is now looking at,’ he says.
His concern over the raw deal now being given to the younger generation stems at least in part from observing his own family.
‘One of the things that got me started was my wife saying to me: “How on earth are our two kids ever going to get a step on the housing ladder?” That is a huge question and a domestic issue – it still is because they have not got their own places,’ he says. ‘My fear, which I think a lot of parents have, is that the younger generation are not getting a fair deal,’ he says pointing to pensions and houses.
‘You start with the fact that for the twentysomethings and even the thirtysomethings both of those crucial forms of wealth are much harder to acquire than they were.
‘Then if you look at earnings there is also evidence that earnings of some of the younger people in the jobs market are falling behind those of the older members. I do think it is very important that the burden should not all fall on the younger generation.’
One of the key ways pensioners have gained over working age people has been the triple lock on state pensions rising every year in line with wages, inflation or 2.5 per cent (whichever is the highest).
‘We are doing more analysis on that now,’ he says. ‘But I think there has to be a question mark about the long-term affordability of the triple lock. It is a very considerable com- mitment in public spending.’
But again he insists this is not necessarily a recipe for intergenerational war. ‘The paradox is that one of the things pensioners do with these benefits is that they want to give something to their kids,’ he says, pointing to deposits for houses and simple inheritance.
‘So when we are voluntarily choos- ing what to do with our money within families, there is evidence of significant gifts from older to younger people. Why is it when it comes to the allocation of state benefits we are doing something which is going in a different direction?’ he asks.
‘If it is only done through the family you end up in a situation in which the only people who can afford houses are the people whose parents have already got a house. It is absolutely right that parents want to look after their children, but it also has to be done at the level of public policy.’
Much of Willetts’ analysis may sound unusual coming from a Conservative. The Resolution Foundation is an independent think-tank with no political affiliations, but it is seen by many as Left-leaning because of its focus on lower earners. Has Willetts shifted leftwards? He insists not and that Resolution is strictly non-partisan.
‘This is a non-party think-tank,’ he says. ‘I believe in a one-nation Conservatism that is about opportunity, it is about creating the opportunity for young people to get on the housing ladder and build up a pension and earn a decent wage to do that.’
He points out that the Resolution campaign for a Living Wage – a heritage from before his time at the thinktank – is now Government policy. And he says the highest levels of Whitehall are on side when it comes to his own agenda of helping the young. ‘I know from my conversations with members of the Government, right up to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, that they absolutely understand we have to offer a fairer deal to the younger generation.’ But he also admits that his own thinking has shifted. While he disputes whether inequality really has grown in Britain in recent years, he admits that his views on whether it actually matters have changed.
‘I think inequality matters. My own thinking has shifted on this. Thirty years ago I would have said the only thing that matters is your absolute living standard. Now I think where you are relative to others also matters.’
Away from Westminster, Willetts is a keen swimmer, cyclist and supporter of wife Sarah Butterfield’s artistic career. ‘I go to exhibitions and am sometimes a kind of painter’s assistant. I carry the paints and the wet canvases back to the car.’
He is also a non-executive director at Surrey Satellite and the British space industry is his other passion – it was an area he championed as Universities and Science Minister.
He helped negotiate a place for a British astronaut on the International Space Station, so claims some credit for Tim Peake’s upcoming space mission and will be attending the launch in early December.
And he argues space technology will be a valuable part of the British economy in the future that can provide jobs in significant numbers.
‘Some of it is really quite labour intensive and the white lab coat will be as much a part of 21st Century work as the blue overalls are of traditional manufacturing. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the future who will be working in these types of environments,’ he declares.
And, perhaps, buying a house and saving for a pension with the proceeds. UK space scientists’ new mission,
The Chancellor and Prime Minister know we have to offer a fairer deal to younger people