Lord True (Con)
My Lords, the convention is to say that it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and the noble Lord, Lord Newby, but I have to say, having listened to the noble Lord on this auspicious, splendid and happy day, that it was a bit like being served at the end of one’s meal cold coffee and a soggy soufflé.
I would like to think that I could say something warmer about the noble Lord’s speech so I will try to do so. I find it amazing that, after a quarter of a century of trying since I first came to work here, I have now reached the average age of your Lordships’ House. One of the things about being older and Conservative is that one likes things to stay the same, so it was deeply reassuring to hear the trenchant criticisms of the Government from the noble Lords opposite. Some things never change and, as a good Conservative, I look forward to next year hearing them make the same criticisms—perhaps not always in the same terms but from the same seats that they occupy today.
Nevertheless, I like the noble Baroness and the noble Lord. They are not always angry, and they and their colleagues make the usual channels on which the operation of this House fundamentally depends work smoothly, and almost always with good humour. I should not forget the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, honed by 16 generations of Scottish deftness and silken charm—you have to watch those ones. But I sincerely thank them all.
Speaking of Scottish deftness and charm, I should say how much we all enjoyed the superb speech of my noble friend Lord McInnes of Kilwinning, as we did that of my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott. My noble friend Lord McInnes recalled—as did His Majesty in his gracious Speech—the extraordinary lifelong service of our late beloved Queen Elizabeth, to which the noble Baroness opposite also referred. It does not seem so long ago that we gathered here after her loss on that so very poignant day before the empty Throne; but experience has a habit of making the extraordinary seem ordinary.
This whole House—as we have heard today—is already steeped in gratitude for the dignity and good humour with which His Majesty has, after what was already over half a century of dedicated public service, taken up his great new responsibilities on behalf of us all. He did our nation proud in those memorable first state visits to Germany, France, and now, lately, to Kenya. I believe we are fortunate in our deeply thoughtful and gracious King.
Those who do not stray too often into the Not-Content Lobby—and I note from last Session’s statistics that that includes the overwhelming preponderance of the independent Cross-Benchers—will not know that as you come out of that Lobby my noble friend Lord McInnes is standing there, always smiling, cheerfully telling everyone who passes, “Another vote coming up soon, my Lords”. Given that we lost nearly 70% of the votes in the last Session and a record number of votes in the Session before that, I think that stamps my noble friend not as the dour Presbyterian that he has described himself as but as a sunny and incurable optimist. We need a bit more of that—perhaps I can offer some to the Liberal Democrat Benches.
I turn to my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott. I know we can all agree that it has been the great good fortune of this House to have benefited from her profound generosity of heart, her direct, sound sense and her expertise on welfare. We on the Government Benches were very sad when for personal reasons she had to stand down from the Department for Work and Pensions and her other duties. I believe she has made and will continue to make a real difference to the lives of some of the most vulnerable in society, and for my part that is surely one of the highest callings of anyone in public service. Simply put, my noble friend is one of life’s good people. She is one of those people in this House who you are always delighted to see heading towards you—and I must confess that that is not an absolutely universal quality. [Laughter] Do not tempt me. The whole House will have been moved by the poignant story that my noble friend told from her visit to New York last year. As the noble Baroness opposite also said, we think of our friends in Ukraine as we gather today.
The Government’s commitment to Ukraine will remain unwavering. Whenever I say that in this House as your Lordships’ Leader, I am fortified by the resolve shared by the whole House, as we have heard again today, that Putin’s foul aggression cannot and must not prevail.
We think also of the victims of the truly barbaric atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against Israel a month ago today in which at least 14 British nationals were killed, and for which there can be no justification whatever. The Government continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself in line with international humanitarian law. We must also support the Palestinian people and are doing so; they are victims of Hamas too. As the Prime Minister has said, there is no scenario where Hamas can be allowed to control Gaza again. We are working to support British nationals in Gaza and the wider region and to secure the safe return of hostages. We continue to work with international partners to prevent a destabilising regional escalation.
Before I proceed further, I join others in thanking Black Rod, the doorkeepers and all the staff for the skill with which our historic ceremony was conducted today. It was good to see it in all its finery once again. In fact, it is the first time for over 70 years that we have had a King and Queen present with full trains, and some thought went into the pages moving the trains and getting the royal couple in and out. And what about a Lord Chancellor walking backwards? Don’t you just love it?
In my first speech on this occasion, I want to thank my predecessor, my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park. I know she will be aghast to hear any praise for her, but she was an extraordinary Leader of this House for over six years, and it has been a hard call to follow her. I would like personally and publicly to thank her for her kind and wise advice to me.
I thank too my sterling Front-Bench colleagues for their tremendous work and dedication. They do a brilliant job, many of them without remuneration. I believe it is unacceptable in the 21st century that some of those who serve this House can do so only if they have private means. It does not reflect the dignity of the House or give those who serve our country faithfully their proper due. I have sought ways to overcome this, so far unsuccessfully, but I will continue to try.
No one could say that the last, long 16-month Session was a breeze. I am not a fan of long Sessions, as the appetites of departments—we could all round up the usual suspects, I am sure—all too often “level up” to fill the time available. Of the near 8,000 amendments that your Lordships considered in the last Session, 2,680 made to Bills came from the Government. That is too many, and I can assure the House that I and my noble friend Lady Williams, the Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms—and how lucky we are to have her—make this point to colleagues. However, the House never failed in its duty to scrutinise and revise—although perhaps sometimes we should recall that the elected House is not so stupid that it cannot hear our requests for it to think again the first time round. In the midst of it all, we passed a useful and, yes, improved programme of legislation, which will have tangible benefits on the lives of our citizens—even though at times it seemed easier, perhaps, to row a kayak across the North Sea during Storm Ciarán than to get a Bill to stop the boats through your Lordships’ House.
There is another important programme of work before us this Session. That programme will help us to grow our economy, keep our people safe and promote our national interests. Yes, we will back North Sea oil and gas extraction. Why? It is to help secure energy security and independence and save hundreds of thousands of jobs. We remain committed to our net-zero targets but we must get there in a prudent and proportionate way.
I know that this is not the favourite word of some of your Lordships, but we will continue to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by Brexit. Unwanted retained EU law will finally go and this Session we will cement accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, fostering trade and investment with some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Public service broadcasting will be safeguarded and we will repeal Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, which would have limited press freedom. We will give the police the tools they need to prevent complex new forms of crime.
Noble Lords will be aware that a number of Bills have already started in the other place and will be carried over. They include a Bill to ban public bodies implementing politically motivated boycotts of foreign countries and a Bill to improve the law on rents, to give tenants more security and landlords more control over their properties. There will also be a Bill to reform leasehold. I have to say that, when it was mentioned in the gracious Speech, I peeked out from under the Cap of Maintenance at the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, and saw that there was not a flicker of a smile on that normally sunny countenance. I hope that, given his constant, almost daily, questions on this subject, we may expect his strong support for leasehold reform.
As well as carry-overs, some of which will arrive before Christmas, there will be four Lords starters. These will include the pedicabs Bill, the autonomous vehicles Bill and the investigatory powers amendment Bill, which will have their Second Readings this month. I look forward to spirited but constructive debate in the months ahead. I know that it could be the last Session before a general election, when passions flame, but I hope that we will always be mindful of our traditional courtesies. They are part of who we are and why we work here well.
Perhaps I may conclude with a personal note, because it has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve this House for over 26 years, first below the salt and now, in a sort of Gilbert and Sullivan way, with the silver salt cellar of the Lord Privy Seal set before me. This may be a fault in me, but I can think of no greater honour than to be asked to lead this House. It would be the happiest and greatest thing for me if your Lordships were to feel not only that I was skilful in getting “terrible government legislation” through—that is what the Opposition would say, of course; I have to put that in, in case people read Hansard and have not heard the tone—but that I was dutiful in listening to Peers on all sides, and in helping the whole House to secure the good service and support that makes this a place where we can carry out our unique duties comfortably and well. That this should be a happy place is something that matters very much to me and, I know, to others opposite. I wish sometimes, however, that we would focus on the great if often humdrum work that we do, rather than calling out imagined faults and fidgeting about change that no one outside calls for and few would notice.
The reality is that, because of the failure of the procedure of the House of Commons in recent generations to do its legislative work thoroughly, this House recovered from the folly of a challenge to the Budget to fill that space and has become a literally indispensable revising Chamber. That is our role, and to do it we need rich diversity—more than we still yet have—including diversity of thought and experience. We need deep expertise, open minds and that sense of proportion which must always inform our judgments. The last thing we need is a House of political clones told by the media to turn up every day and be judged on how often they speak.
If I may, increasing numbers of your Lordships complain to me that sometimes in Committee and on Report, some of us speak for a little too long and a little too repetitively. I believe we could, with advantage, reinforce some of our older conventions, not only in these respects but in the way we regard the view of the other House. This House must, at some point, normally defer to the elected Chamber.
I am conscious that it was from this Dispatch Box that the great Duke of Wellington lead an unwilling House to let pass Catholic emancipation in the 1820s, reform the franchise in the 1830s and usher in free trade in the 1840s. Let us never forget that the Atlee Government started with only 16 Labour Peers, was outnumbered 10 to one by this side but went on to secure its reforming programme by agreement, good practice and convention.
As we continue to reflect on how best to perform our vital role and carry out our functions in line with our conventions, I will continue to reach out to your Lordships across the House where there is potential for reinforcing and building confidence in them. In my humble submission, unlike the vaulting ambition of grand reform, this approach is entirely in our hands.
I know I have troubled noble Lords’ digestion and agitated your good wine for too long. It has been a great and historic day in the presence of our new King, so I will finish by sharing the sunny optimism of my noble friend Lord McInnes. As that optimist, I say that I trust that this serious and ambitious legislative programme, which comes from a Government led by a Prime Minister with dedication to the long-term changes Britain needs, will commend itself to a majority of your Lordships. I look forward to sharing the work of the next Session with you, and it gives me great pleasure to support the Motion.