King’s Speech

Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, there is very little time to say all the things that I want to say today. Nevertheless, here I am, casting my own small pearls of wisdom before your Lordships. I still hope that they will somehow make a contribution to the workings of this House.

I repeat my welcome to the Minister. Just for a moment, I shall continue on the theme of prisoners. I belong to a small, doughty cross-party group determined to rectify the most terrible of injustices still being perpetrated on the suffering, lonely rump of 3,700 indeterminate-sentence prisoners. Can the Minister at least give some hope that he has not totally ruled out a resentencing exercise? It could be combined with some of the innovative alternatives mentioned by many noble Lords, including the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven.

The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, spoke about small local remand centres. Not a lot of people know this, but it was at one of those centres—which then rejoiced in the name of Pucklechurch remand centre—that I began my training as an assistant governor in the Prison Service. However, there is no time to go into that fascinating aspect of my career here.

I will leave the subject of prisons and turn to the area that I mainly speak on: equalities. There is much to welcome on equalities in the King’s Speech. I look forward to working constructively with the Government to make the lives of women, ethnic minorities, disabled people and members of the LGBT+ community more just and more free. During the last Government, I and the then Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle brought forward Private Members’ Bills to ban conversion practices, and I am absolutely delighted to see that return as a government Bill.

The employment rights Bill also includes many things that I strongly back, including greater entitlement to flexible-hours working, employee protections from day one and banning zero-hour contracts and the egregious practice of fire and rehire. We look forward to working with the Government on all these issues.

The draft equality race and disability requirement for pay-gap reporting for disabled and ethnic minority workers for larger businesses is most welcome. We have fought for that for a long time and we wish it every speed on its way.

I believe that the most challenging problem in the field of equalities facing the Government is the scourge of violence against women and girls. Only yesterday, as a noble Lord said, we saw in the news a sharp increase in the reporting of violence and a sharp decrease in prosecutions. The Government have committed to halving violence against women and girls. The Minister has given us a flavour of the coming measures and we all look forward to learning more.

There are many things that I would love to have seen in this King’s Speech—for example, equal marriage for humanists and the equal and inclusive treatment of children from religious and non-religious families in schools: I am hoping for a favourable wind for the return of my inclusive assemblies Private Member’s Bill.

Many challenges face this Government. My party will work constructively with them to make the new equality laws the most effective that they can possibly be.