Queen’s Speech

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is an honour and privilege to speak at the end of this day’s debate—indeed, this three-day debate—on the gracious Speech. The large list of topics and the large number of speakers proves that we could have done with one more day. I am grateful to my noble friend for his opening address, which covered some of the long list of Bills covered by this debate. I will do my best to be coherent on some of the others. It was a pleasure to be present at the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Blower, who brings a lifetime of public service, education and trade unionism. I for one am very excited that she has joined our Benches and look forward to working with her.

This was a veritable pot-pourri of speeches, some more fragrant than others. Possibly the noble Lord, Lord Bates, wins the prize for the most fragrant. On this side of the House, I felt that I needed to start by joining the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Benjamin, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and my noble friend Lord Griffiths in talking about child safety on the internet, because we were delighted to hear the Government renew their pledge to make the UK the safest place in the world to go online. However, I am pretty sure it is in respect of the Government’s pledges about making the internet safer and a better place for children that a number of noble Lords are most keen to see early progress; they have said so. I am not alone in feeling intensely disappointed about what happened with the implementation—or non-implementation—of Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017. Those are the provisions which would have allowed this country to become the first in the democratic world to restrict access to online commercial pornographic sites by introducing an age-verification regime, as we have with great success for online gambling. I was particularly pleased to see in one of the background briefing notes that in a review of gambling legislation the Government were going to address loot boxes, for example, which are a modern scandal, deceitfully costing children and their families a great deal of money. Here I pay tribute to the excellent work done by the Gambling Commission and Parent Zone, which have done so much to draw attention to the matter. What is the timescale now for online child safety?

The Queen’s Speech and the Conservative Party manifesto contained a number of announcements on specific areas of public spending, particularly those to do with economic affairs. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Fox, that we look in vain for an energy strategy or an industrial strategy, but 14 million people in this country are locked in poverty. That is the context in which we must address the economic affairs of this country, as was extremely well described in terms of regulation and everything else by various noble Lords, not least the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, with her usual expertise in these areas.

I want to talk about the inaction of dealing with the fact that three in four children in poverty have a working parent. Despite the record employment that the Government trumpet at every available opportunity, the proportion of children in poverty with working parents has now reached an all-time high of 72%. Two decades ago, it was barely half that. These changes have very little to do with universal credit, for good or ill, because it is not yet being received by enough people to show up strongly in the figures. But given that the national living wage has increased each year and that employment has risen across the UK, why are so many families getting swept into poverty?

Nothing that I have heard so far in the debate from the Government or in the Queen’s Speech acknowledges that one of the richest nations in the world is so unequal and so failing its children and their future. My noble friend Lord Hain was completely correct in his economic analysis and I will not repeat it, except to say that I would like to know what the Minister thinks is in the Speech that will address those inequalities and that problem, which faces so many millions of our children.

It is true that Brexit has been a huge distraction from domestic problems such as poverty and, to become the compassionate country that we all want the UK to be, we have to address the underlying drivers of poverty in a sustained and strategic way. The Minister needs to explain how these policies will address those issues.

The record so far is not encouraging. There is a crisis of low pay and stagnating wages. The 2019 spending round was a one-off election gimmick, which did little to reverse a decade of austerity. The recent figures by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, for example, show that car sales fell to a six-year low in 2019, with the chief executive stating that Brexit uncertainty remains the biggest threat to the industry—and I could go on. In fact, all these things were so much better explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. I am not sure that the revolutionary proposal about responsible capitalism of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, will bring us the answer that we need.

I turn to the proposals on housing and building safety. The fire at Grenfell Tower exposed a broken system for fire safety checks and controls, and the Government have been off the pace on almost every front in their response. We need a £1 billion fire safety fund to address these problems. When will that be available?

People who rent from private landlords are at the sharp end of the housing crisis, and the number has risen rapidly since 2010 to more than 11 million people. We need legislation with new rights across the board for private renters—rent controls, open-ended tenancies and binding legal minimum standards. What plans do the Government have to allow tenants to hold rogue landlords to account?

My noble friend Lady Drake wisely made the link between financial resilience and household well-being. Any intention by the Government to support home ownership should be welcomed across the House, but what steps will the Government take to increase housebuilding, particularly in those towns and cities where it is most in demand?

The Government mention English devolution. As they aim for full devolution across England, there will be occasions when communities oppose the powers that they are offered. I would like to know from the Minister quite how they intend to deal with that in their devolution settlement. I would also like some assurance that, when the Government proceed with this, extensive consultation will exist.

I was not going to mention transport because it has been covered, but I will mention buses because most of us catch buses. But they are under threat almost everywhere in the country except London, and there is a good reason for that. I would like to know what the transport policies of the Government will be to address the remedial action our bus services need, particularly in rural areas.

On health and social care, we welcome the emphasis the Government have put on the NHS. We have an NHS funding Bill. We have the health safety investigative Bill, which we have already had the Second Reading of but will probably have it again in the future. We have the medicines and medical devices Bill. We have the long-term plan and proposals about mental health and social care. But, today, the NHS recorded its worst accident and emergency waiting times in England since the current targets began in 2004, so we have a mountain to climb.

I do not remember the last Labour Government feeling the need to pass a law to force themselves to invest in the NHS. I find that a slightly bizarre proposition. I do not understand, if the Government are forcing themselves to invest in the NHS, why they are not doing the same for, for example, education, social care or mental health. I know that some people in the country have problems with the credibility of the Prime Minister and the Government, but I did not think that the Government had the same problems themselves.

The Minister made an extravagant claim about the amount of expenditure being put into the NHS. She claimed that it was the largest since the world began, but the truth is that that much was spent between 2004-05 and 2009-10. I will allow that it is the biggest investment under a Tory Administration in this century.

The point has been made by many noble Lords that the Government are under scrutiny. They are under scrutiny over social care and the National Health Service, and they will have to deliver. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, and my noble friends Lord Hunt, Lord Dubs, Lady Pitkeathley and Lord Bradley mentioned social care and the investment that needs to be made there. I will not repeat all that, but it is interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, Carers UK, the LGA and Peers across the House all agree about the need to get social care sorted. I hope the Government have heard that from this debate.

I close by mentioning the work of your Lordships’ House in the coming months and years. We know from the reaction of Conservative-led Governments in the past few years that carrying out our role of scrutiny, revision, examination and testing of legislation has sometimes brought an overreaction—that is the best way I can put this—from Governments who have threatened to do things to us as a consequence of our proposals. I place on record that the Government should expect us to do our job here diligently. They are likely to find this place a fertile ground for seeking amendments and concessions. I urge the Benches opposite not to be cowed or distracted from proper parliamentary scrutiny by the political, administrative and constitutional reforms being floated by this Government already. This starts on Monday, when I hope that the Government and the Benches here honour, for example, my noble friend Lord Dubs’s amendment concerning child refugees, and that this House sticks to its commitment on this. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bichard. I look forward to the Minister’s response.