King’s Speech

Baroness Blake of Leeds Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, after a week of fixation on personalities and personal ambitions, we can now return—I almost said “to sanity”—to the process of policies and the political direction of the Government. I am sure that they will want to make sure that their policies do not hinder but promote growth, and that the rewards of that growth go in a fair fashion to those who create the wealth—that is, the workers and the legitimate workless—not to those who choose not to work.

Having said that, I have two points to make about today’s debate. First, I very much welcome the immigration and asylum Bill. I am reassured by the present Home Secretary—I think she is probably the best for, say, 20 years. She recognises the problems that have been caused by uncontrolled immigration, not least under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. For two decades, it has caused considerable alienation among the public, not because they are all racists but because of endlessly increasing demand on public services at a time when the provision of public services, particularly during austerity, has been reduced continually. The problem has not been created by Nigel Farage and Reform. They have stepped into a vacuum which successive Governments have allowed to exist. They have used it, but they did not create it. I think our present Home Secretary recognises that, and I therefore fully support her efforts to finally tackle some of the worst excesses of the problem.

Secondly, I welcome the national security Bill. I remind the House that we are approaching the 20th anniversary of the biggest terrorist attack in our history: the liquid bomb plot to murder several thousand people in aeroplanes across the Atlantic. That plot was foiled by the vigilance of our security services, under the leadership of the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, and here I must mention the noble Lord, Lord Evans.

It was a great thing that plot was foiled, but there were unintended consequences. The terrorists have not gone away. As one famous terrorist once said, they adapted: they shaped new, simpler and less vulnerable methods of murder—less vulnerable to detection—by individual acts of terrorism, using low technology such as knives, guns, cars, arson and opportunistic attacks on innocent civilians. They also targeted, in particular, the primary source of their hatred: the Jews—not just Israel. Anybody who can should look at the suicide videos which, fortunately, were ultimately of no use 20 years ago; they targeted the Jews. It is not just the state of Britain or the United Kingdom or Israel but individual Jews here and throughout the world. That is driven, of course, by extreme Islamism but it is now being succoured by the extreme right and, increasingly, the extreme left of politics. That should not surprise us. The extreme left; nationalism; the extreme right; extreme socialism; those were the intrinsic elements of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party of Deutschland.

When it is embedded like that—this is my final point—within civil society, it cannot be countered by the security services alone; that can be done only by civil society. It was defeated 80 years ago by the united resolution of the whole of the British people, including their united civil resistance to the poison of antisemitism at home. We need that again and urgently.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

My Lords, I realise that everyone has a great deal to say in this debate. Unfortunately, the advisory time is four minutes. There are a significant number of speakers. If everyone goes even half a minute or up to a minute over, it will really knock on the time. Can I please ask all noble Lords to stay within the four minutes allocated?