Queen’s Speech

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2013 Lords Chamber

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[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

That this debate be adjourned until tomorrow.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I wish on behalf of the Opposition to give my thanks to Her Majesty the Queen for delivering the gracious Speech. However, I am not so sure that I can extend the same courtesy for the content of the gracious Speech to the Government Benches that produced it.

Before I turn to the Government’s legislative programme, as set out in the gracious Speech, it is a great pleasure to congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Lang of Monkton and Lord German, on their speeches this afternoon. The noble Lord, Lord Lang, of course has a distinguished record, not just as a member of SOCs—an organisation whose membership I certainly aspire to—but as a former senior MP and Cabinet Minister. His membership of the Commons neatly coincided with the entire period of the previous Conservative Administration; he won his seat in May 1979 and lost it in May 1997. He rose through the ministerial ranks to be Secretary of State for Scotland—never the easiest job in government, especially not when succeeded in office by the now noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean. He then became President of the Board of Trade, which is also not the easiest job in government, particularly not when succeeding in that office the now noble Lord, Lord Heseltine.

However, navigating his way through such highly dangerous, shark-infested Tory waters meant that the noble Lord, Lord Lang, was a natural to play a central role in John Major’s “Back me or sack me” re-election campaign as leader of the Conservative Party in July 1995. The then Prime Minister was trying to rid himself of those in the Conservative Party who were on one side of the Tories’ fundamental divisions over Europe from the late 1980s and early 1990s onwards. I will not use in your Lordships’ House the term that the then Prime Minister used for them, but your Lordships may recall that it seemed to closely question their parentage.

The experience of the noble Lord, Lord Lang, in helping to handle that kind of thing means, I suspect, that he knows a thing or two about divisions. So it is probably of no comfort to him to be seeing something of a replay of those years in interventions such as that yesterday from one of the noble Lord’s then colleagues: the former Chancellor, the noble Lord, Lord Lawson of Blaby. However, it is a replay with a difference. Last time, it was just the Conservative Party ripping itself apart. This time, with the prospect of an in-out referendum on our membership of the EU, the stakes are so much higher. The noble Lord, Lord Lang, has been a distinguished Member of your Lordships’ House for many years, and I take this opportunity to pay particular thanks and tribute to him for his role as the chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.

On behalf of the whole House, I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for his speech in celebration of the coalition Government, or in celebration of coalition in general. When I worked, as at one point I did, for the European Commission in Wales I knew Mike German. I think lots of people, especially in Wales, will know him better as that. We worked well together on the enlargement of the European Union and I am of course pleased to see him as a Member of your Lordships’ House, even as a Liberal Democrat. Mike is a former leader of the Liberal Democrats in Wales—yet again, not the easiest job in the world—and his lifelong involvement and interest in education has led him inevitably to see all the ups and downs of public life.

As a Welshman, the noble Lord, Lord German, will, I know, be interested in the Government’s attitude towards the Silk commission on fiscal devolution and the powers of the Welsh Assembly, but as a loyal Liberal Democrat I noticed that he was far too polite to mention its omission from today’s gracious Speech. As a former Deputy First Minister in a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition Administration in Wales who is now serving on the coalition Benches in Westminster, we can only speculate as to which coalition partner he has felt more comfortable with.

We now have before us the legislative programme from the Government for this new, coming Session of Parliament. It is such a thin programme that it was relegated to second position on the lunchtime news by the resignation of Sir Alex Ferguson, a great manager and a great Labour man. Little of the programme is new because so much of it has been very kindly leaked in advance by the Government. As the Government have found, however, briefing out policies in advance does not always work to their advantage.

The Government might expect the Guardian columnist, the ever excellent Polly Toynbee, to summarise the legislative programme in today’s gracious Speech as a collection of “dismal offerings”, but they might well not have expected similar flak from rather different parts of the political spectrum. So only this week, the normally Conservative-cheerleading Daily Mail newspaper described today’s legislative programme in the following terms:

“It’s a shame there’s so little to commend the rest of the speech’s predicted contents, which are largely measures we already knew about”.

The Daily Mail went on to describe the measures in today’s speech as “gimmicks”, and despite apparently hoping against hope that the Prime Minister would have a “few surprises” up his sleeve today, it summed up the Government’s legislative programme as: “Must do better.” Today the Daily Telegraph, in its online edition, goes even further. Commenting after the gracious Speech had been delivered, the Daily Telegraph’s view was that the Government have passed their “High Noon”. It concludes:

“The sun is setting on the Coalition.”

I pray the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph in aid not because they are supporters of my party, but for precisely the opposite point: with friends like these does the legislative programme we have before us today need enemies?

Today’s gracious Speech is important because it puts before both your Lordships’ House and the people of this country the final serious remaining legislative programme of this coalition Government. Final because this time next year the coalition Government—if they are still in place by then as a single entity—will be bringing forward a legislative programme which will come to its conclusion in a wash-up ahead of the general election due in May 2015.

So what do we have in this year’s programme? Well, it is difficult to tell because we do not actually know what will happen to the measures announced today in the Queen’s Speech. Take, as an example, last year’s legislative programme. The centrepiece of the programme, as set out in the gracious Speech in May 2012, was reform of this, your Lordships’ House, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lang. The gracious Speech could not have been clearer:

“A Bill will be brought forward to reform the composition of the House of Lords”.

As we know, a Bill was brought forward, but within months, the House of Lords Reform Bill was in trouble. The Bill was voted against by 91 rebelling Conservative MPs, and so much of a rebellion it was that the Conservative MP leading the supposed rebellion has now very particularly been favoured by the Prime Minister by being appointed to the Prime Minister’s principal policy review committee. Finally, it was abandoned and withdrawn by the Government. The Bill moved, within months, from being the flagship of the gracious Speech this time last year to not being a Bill at all. So we have little idea whether, as with last year’s flagship measure, any of the measures in today’s legislative programme will survive the huge fissures of difference between the component elements of the coalition. They might, but they might not. We just do not know.

Even when we get Bills, we do not really know what is in them because of the way the Government deal with the legislative process. So we have the Government making significant amendments at the last minute, often in your Lordships’ House, when Bills have already passed through the other place. The Government’s pernicious abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board in the last Session was a clear example of a poor way of making policy. We have no idea, for instance, whether more Bills will come forward as a result of the spending review due next month.

To be fair to this coalition Government, they are trying to learn from experience. Rather than bringing forward measures which will fall apart because the coalition cannot agree them, this year the coalition has adopted an exciting new strategy of simply not including in its legislative programme measures which it knows it will be divided over. So, no legislation, shamefully, to put into statute the coalition’s explicit commitment to earmark 0.7% of gross domestic product on overseas aid. I am, however, delighted that the gracious Speech included the commitment that the Government will work to prevent sexual violence in conflict world wide.

Neither is there any legislation on establishing a register of lobbyists: what the Prime Minister once described, ahead of the general election in 2010, as,

“the next big scandal waiting to happen”.

Why not? We saw an appalling example of outrageous lobbying by News Corporation over its bid for BSkyB, for instance. The Government’s current proposals on lobbying are inadequate. They need to get serious about lobbying transparency. This Queen’s Speech was an opportunity to do so—an opportunity missed.

Neither is there any legislation on the sale of cigarettes in plain packaging—again, a commitment promised and abandoned because of the efforts of the tobacco lobby. It was also abandoned in the face of a political challenger, the leader of UKIP, who was seen in interview after interview last week, after so many Conservatives had defected to his party, celebrating that success with a pint in one hand and a fag in the other. One wonders about the influence of Mr Crosby, who lobbied so hard on the issue in Australia. Neither is there any legislation as floated on public health, or on minimum alcohol pricing. Those are just the measures which have been floated in advance of the Queen’s Speech, but which are not in the programme. What about anything on this Government’s other proud boasts?

Where is anything, for example, on the environment, from a Government who bragged that they would be the greenest ever? Where is anything on media plurality and ownership, or anything to help housing in this country—to help people who need social housing, as well as those aspiring to own their own home? We know that building houses rebuilds Britain and provides jobs.

Where is anything on child poverty? There is nothing, despite the coalition’s pledge to maintain Labour’s goal of ending child poverty in the UK by 2020, and today’s report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which says that one in four children in this country will still be living in poverty by 2020, and that this Government’s tax and benefit reforms, introduced since the last election, are responsible.

So what do we have? We have a gracious Speech which actually mentions 15 specific new Bills, as the Health Secretary, Mr Hunt, very helpfully told us on the “Today” programme this morning—insultingly, four hours before the gracious Speech was actually given. Mind you, given that the Prime Minister himself was out on Twitter this morning about the legislative programme, mentioning various Bills—again, well before the gracious Speech was given—I suppose that Mr Hunt’s behaviour, for this Government, is nothing special.

We have legislation promised in government briefings on social care, anti-social behaviour, dangerous dogs, local audit, pub management, consumer rights and asbestos-related cancer—all of which we, as a constructive Opposition, will look at and to which we will determine our response.

The proposed legislation on social care and carers, outlined by the noble Lord, is particularly important. That is age, you see. Our society would be in enormous difficulty without carers, but we will want to ensure that this issue is not used by this Government as a means of transferring extra responsibility to local authorities without the means to deliver. Today’s report from the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services on the serious reduction in services due to budgetary cuts should be a stark warning to the Government.

We have legislation on pensions, on police powers, on HS2, on intellectual property, and on offender rehabilitation, which we will examine closely and measure against tests of fairness and effectiveness. We have legislation that is clearly aimed at attempting to stave off for the Tories what they see as the threat from UKIP—on immigration, for example—by proposing to put in place, among other measures, a bureaucratic nightmare requiring private landlords to check their tenants’ immigration status. I trust that this legislation will not waste the opportunity to deal with the big issue of exploited foreign workers undercutting local workers. But we shall see.

These are dismal offerings. This is a Government who legislated for a five-year Parliament, but as this legislative programme so clearly shows, they have run out of steam after only three years. This is a Government who have already lost momentum.

What we need, but do not have, is the legislation that we have proposed in Labour’s alternative Queen’s Speech. This includes, for example, a jobs Bill to put in place a compulsory jobs guarantee, and a finance Bill that would kick-start our economy and help make work pay with a 10p rate of tax. We also propose a housing Bill that would take action against rogue landlords and extortionate fees in the private rented sector. What we have, however, is a legislative programme that does not even begin to meet the economic challenges which people, families, communities and the country are facing. It does not begin to address the scale of anxiety and disillusion throughout the country, which was shown clearly not just in the results of last week’s elections but in the shameful 29% turnout. We have legislation that will not do much if anything for individuals, young people, families and communities who are now so hard-pressed by being squeezed by the Government’s economic policies that many of them barely know how to make ends meet. They have to borrow from family and friends, and take up people’s generosity by making use of the rapidly burgeoning number of food banks. They worry not just about themselves and their children’s future but about getting food on the table. Yet the Government just say there will be no change in their economic plans for this country, just more of the same—more friends appointed to No. 10 and more being out of touch with the reality of people’s lives.

We have a legislative programme that does not address people’s problems, that is about the coalition’s priorities rather than the priorities of the people, and that is out of kilter with the people of this country. We have before us today a Government who are running scared. They are running scared of themselves and of what the other side in the coalition will do, whether over reform of your Lordships’ House or boundary changes. They are running scared of the economic arguments that we in this party, on these Benches, have put forward, which have now been taken up by virtually every serious economic and international organisation that worries about the UK’s lack of economic growth. They are running scared of UKIP and their own defections to a fourth party. Above all, they are running scared of the people of this country. These people’s lives are hurting and they want something different. They want to see jobs and growth, and they know that this coalition is falling apart at the seams. They want to see real change.

They will get their chance for change in the general election that is due two years from now. If the rise of UKIP and the poor performance of both coalition partners in last week’s council elections and by-election mean that the parties on the Benches opposite are not looking forward to that point of decision, we on these Benches certainly are. In the mean time, we face the last even remotely serious legislative programme of this coalition Government. We the Opposition will support it where it is right and oppose it where it is not. We will take our work seriously, scrutinising and amending legislation and holding the Government to account.

We want the Government in this House to take their own responsibilities as seriously, so we urge them to return to the efficient practice—cost efficient and time efficient—introduced by the party on these Benches that aligned the sittings of this House with those of the House of Commons. We want to see the Government Benches manage their programme more efficiently than they did in the previous Session, so that the House will not be forced off suddenly into extra recesses. We want to see better answers from government spokespeople in the House. We want to see the open policy articulated by the noble Lord, Lord German. We want answers that are based on content and that respect the House.

We on these Benches will get on and do our job. As the Opposition in this House, we will scrutinise this legislative programme and look hard at what the Government propose. We will hold the Government to account, and we will start with the debate on the gracious Speech that will begin in this House tomorrow.

I beg to move that the debate be adjourned till tomorrow.