Treatment of Detainees
Lord Beith Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
There is no suggestion that British agents, officials or security service personnel were in any way involved directly in torture. It is important that we get it straight that that is not what is being said. The hon. Gentleman’s general point is right: we do not keep ourselves safe and secure—or promote the things in which we believe—if we drop our standards. We both served on the Home Affairs Committee that met in those difficult days straight after 9/11, and I remember—I am sure that he does, too—the great pressure there was on everybody to find out what was going to happen next. We should remember, as we carry out this inquiry, the pressures that were on security services across the world to try to prevent a repeat of those dreadful events.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Will the previous findings of the Intelligence and Security Committee on all these matters be, partly, the building blocks of the inquiry? Will the Prime Minister also concede that the test that he has rightly reserved to Ministers represents a classic moral dilemma, because while taking every possible step to ensure that Britain has in no way assisted or abetted torture, a decision has to be made on how to relate to the services of regimes whose conduct we do not trust, but who may hold information vital to the safety of the people of this country?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is right that the previous ISC findings will be enormously helpful to the inquiry. However, let me try to clarify a bit further what Ministers would have to decide—although hon. Members can also read the guidance published today. It is not that Ministers would be consulted in cases of torture, because torture is ruled out completely. This difficult matter refers to cases of so-called mistreatment, of which there is no proper definition: it can range from things that we would probably consider to be torture, such as waterboarding, to factors such as an inappropriately sized cell. That is why there is some need, in the very difficult circumstances with which one of our agents could be faced, for that level of discretion. That is the sort of moment we have to try to consider and get right, and not be over-bureaucratic about.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Beith Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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The Attorney-General
I do not think that it will in any way lessen the seriousness of the matter; on the contrary, it will emphasise the seriousness. The hon. Gentleman should bear in mind that anonymity for defendants in rape cases existed between 1976 and 1988. Indeed, I defended rape cases over that period and saw that trials were conducted without difficulty and with no lessening of the gravity of the offence. However, such matters can and will be debated, and if they are debated with a proper emphasis on detail, I believe that we will reach the right solutions.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
If we go down the road of balancing victim anonymity with anonymity for the person accused, is not the important consideration that if the prosecution has good reason to believe that evidence will be brought to light if the identity is known, it should be possible to waive anonymity?
The Attorney-General
Yes; my right hon. Friend makes an important point. I have no doubt that that issue is one of those that can be examined. It is worth bearing in mind that the existing anonymity for complainants has the consequence, for example, that there are occasions when a history of false complaints made to someone other than the police does not come to light before a trial takes place. However, that has not been put forward as an argument for removing anonymity for complainant victims. He is correct, however, that such matters can all be looked at properly when we examine this area of the law.
Constitution and Home Affairs
Lord Beith Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Straw
I should also tell hon. Members that if they were to read section 3 of the 1998 Act, they would find that if, for example, the First Minister is voted out by a simple majority and after 28 days no new First Minister has been voted in, an election has to take place. That is done by a simple majority, so the only effect of this provision is to delay matters by requirements relating to a simple majority and 28 days. There is no parallel, whatsoever, in these arrangements, and the hon. Member for Wyre and Preston North knows it.
Sir Alan Beith
Is the right hon. Gentleman’s real view that the Prime Minister’s unfettered power to call a general election at a time of his choosing should be retained and that we should not have fixed-term Parliaments, or is he proposing an alternative mechanism, be it the Scottish Parliament’s combination of a 66% threshold and a one-month rule or some other mechanism?
Mr Straw
I do not understand. Either this has been done for partisan reasons—[Hon. Members: “Answer the question!”] Of course, I am going to answer the question—I always do—but I am allowed to answer the question in my own way. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and I have been debating this for long enough. I say to him that either this has been done for the most crude of partisan reasons, or the Government have simply misunderstood how they can establish fixed-term Parliaments and take away the right of the Prime Minister to recommend Dissolution before then. It is very straightforward. We can legislate for fixed-term Parliaments—our view is that we ought to go for four-year, not five-year, Parliaments—and we can also legislate to take away the power of the Prime Minister to recommend Dissolution before then, but what we should not do is legislate to take away the power of the House of Commons to remove a Government. I am afraid that they are doing that on some curious and spurious arithmetic.
In the same speech in which he talked about the 1832 reform Act, about which I have had to correct him, the Deputy Prime Minister also said:
“We are not taking away Parliament's right to throw out Government; we’re taking away Government's right to throw out Parliament.”
That is utter nonsense. It is casuistry in the extreme. We are talking about the Government’s right to throw out Parliament and we are talking about Parliament’s right to throw out the Government.
I remind the House of an excellent article in The Daily Telegraph, inserted by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), in which he says that the 55%-majority plan will “taint” the “New Politics” and that to
“introduce such a measure in this way is simply wrong.”
He goes on to say:
“The requirement for a 55 per cent majority to dissolve parliament, and thereby dismiss a government, dramatically reduces the ability of Parliament to hold the executive to account. It is a major constitutional change, possibly one of the greatest since 1911.”
He also draws attention to what would have happened in 1979, which some of us will recall, when the Government of the day lost their majority by one vote. The then Leader of the Labour party and the Government said that there would have to be an election—it followed like night follows day. People talk about having a period of looking at a coalition in such a situation, but what do they think was being done in the days leading up to that vote but searching for a coalition? It was precisely because one was not available that the Government ran out of numbers and the vote was lost. In that situation, when there had been a vote of no confidence in the Government, the Labour Government could have carried on—they might no doubt have wished to—until the following October, because the 55% threshold would not have been achieved. If that had happened, they would have been in the ludicrous and wholly undemocratic position—
Debate on the Address
Lord Beith Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I usually enjoy and can be quite entertained by the speeches of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), who can be very humorous, but today he chose to make a series of very serious allegations, which he has the opportunity to make outside the House where there are proper procedures that can be followed to test them, and I would expect him to do that.
I usually also expect the right hon. Gentleman to have some wider grasp of the context of his comments, but I found no evidence in his speech that he realised that, actually, we are all minorities. No party won a majority at this election, and therefore some combination of parties had to find a way of ensuring that this country had stable government.
The right hon. Gentleman also seems to be unaware of the fact that his party’s Chief Secretary left a note saying that there is no money left, and the scale of the debt seemed to pass him by, too. I was disappointed that on this occasion I did not enjoy one of his speeches as much as I sometimes do, especially as I regard his great seniority—he is one of the four or five MPs who has been here longer than me—as rather reassuring.
I wish to extend my congratulations to the Members who spoke earlier: the two opening speakers and, indeed, the acting Leader of the Opposition, who I thought spoke with some force, and quite a lot of the time with some dignity as well. I, too, am puzzled as to why she is not entering her party’s leadership contest, but I shall come back shortly to the interesting subject of the future of the Labour party.
First, I want to remind the House that we are all minorities now, and that that left my party with a choice. We could enable a Conservative minority Government to take office, which would not have been a stable Government, would not have had broad support and would not have carried out Liberal Democrat policies, or we could reach an agreement to work together to create a stable Government drawing on the ideas and policies of both our parties. We explored whether a coalition with Labour and others was feasible, but there was no sign of movement from Labour on the civil liberties issues, such as identity cards, or on our tax proposals for people on low and middle incomes. There was also no majority for such a coalition and, perhaps most telling of all, there was no real will within the Labour party to take it on. Moreover, I think that some on the Labour Front Bench saw honourable defeat and moving aside to resolve their own leadership questions as a better course—and the more cynical would say some of them thought, “There are too many difficult decisions to be taken; let’s get out of the way and leave it to somebody else to take them.”
Sir Alan Beith
No, I want to make a little progress, but I shall give way later.
Labour Members have now entered a leadership election which I am sure we will all find diverting and entertaining. As the Prime Minister pointed out, two brothers are taking part. Why is that principle not extended further? I wanted the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) to stand in contest against her husband; that would have been good. There might also be the question of the husband of the acting leader of the Labour party taking part, along with her; that would be fascinating. And why should the hon. Members for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) and for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) not also stand, so that we have two sisters in the race? A pack of “Happy Families” cards could be kept handy in case there is a tie at the end of the contest.
Let me make a serious point about Labour’s leadership election, however. I think Labour and its new leader will have to think through the consequences of the massive debt crisis they have left behind. If they are serious, they cannot simply enjoy the luxury of attacking every cut as if no action needs to be taken and nothing needs to be done. Frankly, if there had been no election and they had stayed in office, they would have been confronted with the same difficult decisions that confront this coalition Government now. We cannot tackle this crisis on the basis that something will turn up.
Kevin Brennan
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He has taken as his theme that we are all minorities; does he believe that 54 per cent. of this House constitutes a minority?
Sir Alan Beith
I was going to come to that point later, but I shall deal with it now. The hon. Gentleman seems to confuse two things. A vote of confidence—a decision to throw out a Government—is at present and in the future a matter for a bare majority of those voting in this House. That is perfectly straightforward: a majority in this House can get rid of a Government in whom it does not have confidence. That is not the same question as whether a general election should immediately take place. If we make it the same question, consequences follow. One is that it influences the potential outcome of a vote on removing a Government and may make some people more unwilling to remove a Government. In addition, we then present the sovereign with a potentially politically controversial choice about whether to grant a Dissolution, as most precedents require, in circumstances in which there is or may be an alternative Government.
That is why the Labour Government legislated in the Scottish Parliament that there should be a distinct procedure. It is why the German Parliament, which we helped to set up after the war, has a distinct procedure for a constructive vote of confidence. It is a well established practice in many countries, but we should be clear—
Sir Alan Beith
No, I have dealt with the point. We should be clear that there is a difference between the vote to get rid of a Government and in effect placing in the hands of the Prime Minister the power to call a general election whenever he feels like doing so and whenever it is in his political interests to do so.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
The right hon. Gentleman has referred to the situation in Scotland, and as an MP from a constituency next door to Scotland he should know well that there is a difference between what the Government propose in this case and what applies under the Scotland Act 1998, because if the Scottish Government lose a vote of no confidence on a simple majority, the First Minister loses his role as First Minister, and if a replacement is not found within 28 days, there has to be a new general election. That is not what has been provided for in this case. That is precisely why we oppose the proposals in this programme of government.
Sir Alan Beith
I have not yet heard from Opposition Members a suggestion that there is an alternative way of ensuring that their stated objective of a fixed-term Parliament is built in. They chose that particular complex scheme, including a higher threshold of 66%, in Scotland. So far, they have simply suggested that no other system than a bare majority is appropriate, in which case they do not genuinely believe in the fixed-term Parliament for which they argue.
Pete Wishart
I know that the Liberals quite readily abandon their plea for proportional representation, but is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that PR is a fact and a feature of the system in the Scottish Parliament and that is why there is a threshold?
Sir Alan Beith
How could I not be aware, as my party played a large part in ensuring that it was the case? I look forward to the hon. Gentleman’s co-operation in securing some moves in that direction.
I have sat in the House for, I think, 36 Queen’s Speeches, but this is the first time that I have been able to listen to one in which Liberal Democrat policies are clearly included as such in the programme. I am referring to policies that we campaigned on in the general election campaign to make our country fairer: fair taxes, a greener economy, a fair start for every child, cleaning up politics, restoring freedom and civil liberties by scrapping identity cards and passing a repeals Bill, which we have long argued for. That is all to be put into practice. I am talking about cleaning up politics by reforming party funding and giving people the right to sack their MP if they are found to have done something fundamentally wrong.
Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Alan Beith
No, I want to make some progress.
The measures include having an elected House of Lords. In 13 years of the Labour Government, they did not do that. I am also talking about a referendum to end the first-past-the-post-system with what I regard as the first step on the electoral reform road—the alternative vote—which means that every MP would have to secure the support of more than half his or her constituents.
Reforms to the House of Commons are part of this Government’s programme. The Back-Bench business committee, ultimately taking over the full management of the business in the House, will give the Government their business but allow the House to decide what time to spend on what parts of it—a measure that the previous Government resisted right up to the final moments of the Parliament. When the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) was referring to parliamentary reform, I was astonished that she had so quickly forgotten how hostile she was to change in the last days of the previous Parliament.
More Liberal Democrat commitments include the freedom Bill, the financial services Bill to try to sort out a system in which at the moment banks are too big to fail, and energy efficiency measures in homes and businesses, for which I have fought through much of my parliamentary career.
I want to mention fairness on Equitable Life. I mention in passing that I have a minute interest in that matter, but what is important to me is the undermining of the ombudsman’s authority by the Labour party which was so dangerous to this House. The ombudsman is one of the few servants of the House who has some authority over Government. That authority was undermined by the refusal to implement an ombudsman decision, which occasioned special reports from the ombudsman. At last, we have a commitment to do something about that.
I would like the new Government to look closely at some of the work that Select Committees have been doing, and in particular at the work that the Justice Committee did under my chairmanship in the previous Parliament on justice reinvestment—on looking at why we are committed to spending so much money on creating so many prison places, rather than ensuring that young people do not get involved in crime in the first place. The previous Government tried to do that with regard to youth justice and the women’s prison estate, but that work needs to be extended much more widely if there is to be real progress, and I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to do that.
I represent a constituency in a region that has serious concerns about the impact of the financial crisis, and I welcome my right hon. Friends’ decision to retain a regional development agency in our region; that is strongly supported by the business community. The agency will need to be clearly focused on regeneration, and I am anxious to ensure that, despite budget pressures, it can continue to do its work in an area that relies too heavily on public sector jobs at the moment.
Tony Lloyd
I am, of course, very much on the same side as the right hon. Gentleman on the issue of the RDAs, but at what point, whether during the election campaign or subsequently, did he draw the conclusion that his party’s view, which was that the early repayment of debt would be damaging to the economy, had been reversed? Its view now supports that of the Government, and that will create unemployment in his constituency and mine.
Sir Alan Beith
One of the key features of what we have agreed in the Government’s programme is that some of the savings produced by the measures announced yesterday have to be ploughed back into helping to create jobs, for example through the affordable house building described earlier. Market perceptions have changed over the period, and it is important that we make it clear that we are prepared to make the kind of cuts that will be necessary. We cannot go on with £160 billion of public sector debt. Anyone who imagines that we can is living in a dream world.
The situation makes things difficult for areas such as mine, where crucial elements of infrastructure have never been properly put in place; the A1 link between the north of England and Scotland is one example. For us, raising capacity on the east coast main line is more urgent than high-speed rail; we urgently need that capacity ahead of high-speed rail to make sure that we are not disadvantaged when it gets only part way up the country.
I very much welcome the pupil premium, which should particularly help disadvantaged children in a number of areas, such as Northumberland, that up to now have had more than £1,000 less per pupil than some other areas of the country. Much has been said about Building Schools for the Future, but that programme failed to provide for schools such as the Duchess’s Community High school in Alnwick. The buildings there are a disgrace, and the previous Schools Minister, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), admitted as much, but its excellent results precluded it from being considered for rebuilding under that programme. We need measures that will enable decisions to be taken that do not go against schools that do a good job.
I welcome the abandonment of Labour’s forced local government reorganisations. Unfortunately, it has come too late for Northumberland, where the verdict of the people in a referendum not to have a single authority was simply ignored by the previous Government.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman has a strong record of standing up for the north of England. Does he support the halting of BSF funding for schools in Gateshead?
Sir Alan Beith
The hon. Gentleman has to realise that very difficult public spending decisions have to be taken. Unless he and his hon. Friends start to recognise that they would have had to do something similar, they are in an unreal world.
One of the things that I most approve of in the Gracious Speech is its very first line:
“My Government’s legislative programme will be based upon the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility.”
That is a statement of belief, with freedom as its first principle. Hallelujah! We have not heard one of those for a very long time. The lack of any clear framework of belief or ideology was the blight of the Blair years. There was plenty of self-belief, but self-belief is not enough. Without a clear set of underlying principles, there is nothing to guide Governments when making decisions on issues that have not been anticipated or predicted.
A Government who believed in international law would not have launched in Iraq an illegal war that has cost so many lives. A Government who had a fundamental commitment to civil liberties would not have introduced identity cards or tried to introduce 90-day detention without charge or trial. A Queen’s Speech sets out a programme of what is mainly law making and the repeal of laws, but it is usually events and the Government’s response to events that write the history of Governments and Prime Ministers—and in this Government, no doubt, the Deputy Prime Minister as well.
The Government are made up of two parties with very different histories, different policy commitments and different basic philosophies. We are in contest with each other for the support of the voters, and we will continue to be—in by-elections, local elections, elections to the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments and European elections. But, we are working together in government because the voters gave no party a majority, and the country needs a strong, broadly supported and stable Government. We have been able to reach a wide-ranging agreement that combines policies from both our manifestos, and it is a considerable achievement to have done so. It is even more of an achievement to have done so in a way that sets out and puts into practice clear principles, some of them shared by both parties, some brought to the table by one party and some by the other.
Tories—if the Prime Minister will forgive me for referring to his party for a moment—have, except during the Thatcher years, traditionally tended to be suspicious of ideology and belief. However, in the Tory manifesto this time I detected an unusual assertion of some welcome principles, such as the decentralisation of power—not a principle that ever attracted Mrs Thatcher, but one that is an integral part of the coalition Government’s programme. Times are changing.
Every Liberal Democrat Member carries a membership card, and I think that I have one with me. Here it is! It says:
“Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we to seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.”
That says it all; and it says why I am proud to support a Queen’s Speech that not only asserts but seeks to put into practice principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility.
This country faces an horrific debt crisis—left to it by the previous Government. The coalition will have to take difficult, unwelcome and unpopular decisions, and it will need to test its decisions against those principles. Liberal Democrat Ministers in the coalition have a particular responsibility to see that it does so, and we Liberal Democrats below the Gangway will hold them to it, along with the whole Government.
We said that politics would be different after the election. It is.
Miss Begg
My hon. Friend says that he does not like it. We might not like the inability to influence policy in the same way, but the view is very similar.
I suppose that one of the reasons why I am still here is my Liberal Democrat opponent. He put out so much literature, all of which told constituents in my very marginal seat that if they wanted to get rid of Labour, all they had to do was vote Liberal Democrat. My majority was emblazoned across all his leaflets. I had always had a real problem in convincing my constituents that, yes, I did indeed have a marginal seat. They kept saying, “You’ll be fine, Anne, don’t you worry.” I said, “No, I have got only a 1,300 majority and I have a marginal seat,” but they would say, “Oh, it’s all right—you’ll be fine.” So I thank the Lib Dems, who put out a sea of leaflets with my majority on them, all claiming that Labour could be defeated only if people voted Liberal Democrat. Thank goodness, my constituents saw what was best for them and for me and voted Labour after all.
I am proud of the achievements of the Labour Government in the past 13 years. Before history is rewritten too much and our achievements are swept away in the great euphoria of the new coalition Government, I should say something about the Liberal voters who did not realise that by voting Liberal they would end up with a Tory Government; in Aberdeen South, they were very well aware that if they voted Liberal they would get a Tory Government. To those Liberals, I say a Scottish phrase: if ye didnae ken then, ye ken nou!
The Labour Government’s achievements have been many, but the one in which I take most pride is how we tackled the scourge of poverty—both pensioner poverty and child poverty. I do not want anyone to undermine what we did as a Government to bring people, particularly pensioners, out of poverty. We ended absolute poverty with the introduction of the pension credit for all pensioners in this country and we made huge inroads into tackling relative poverty. We did the same with child poverty; we turned the tide. The numbers were going up under the last Conservative Government, but we have turned that around—we turned that around, I should say; I have not yet got my tenses right—and the numbers of children in poverty were coming down.
The Labour Government also transformed the landscape on equality. I am thinking not only of the rights of the lesbian, gay and transsexual community, but of those of us with disabilities and those facing discrimination because of their gender or on any other grounds. I worry that the new Conservative-Liberal alliance will not take equality as seriously as the previous Labour Government took it. There are some warm words in the Queen’s Speech, but warm words do not necessarily add up to a strong commitment to the equality legislation already on the statute book and to building on that to make sure that equality is at the heart of everything that the new Government do.
A Liberal-Tory coalition is not a new thing. We had one elected in Aberdeen in 2003, and it lasted until 2007, when a Lib Dem-Scottish National party coalition was elected. I have to say that it was not a happy experience for the good burghers of Aberdeen. Under the Liberal-Tory coalition elected in 2003, the city council underwent a huge reorganisation, which cost huge amounts of money, took away the existing directors of education and housing, and reorganised local government in Aberdeen into three geographical areas. By 2007, it was clear that the whole restructuring had failed miserably, and it had cost a huge amount. I do not know the exact cost because it is difficult to disaggregate these things, but it was certainly more than £100 million.
Aberdeen has had a foretaste of what may now happen under this coalition Government with regard to public spending cuts. In the first year, there were supposed to be £25 million-worth of cuts, which miraculously rose to £50 million, and in the second year there were proposals for another £30 million-worth of cuts. This happened in one small city as a result of the financial mismanagement of, essentially, a Liberal-dominated council. Perhaps some of the Members sitting on the Government Benches should worry that the Liberals may talk a good game, but when they get into power there is quite a different outcome. What we found in Aberdeen, before the effects of the global crisis kicked in, and before any of the proposals made by the Government in the Queen’s Speech or in the days leading up to it, was one of the richest cities in the United Kingdom on the verge of bankruptcy. It has been a sorry tale.
We often think of public servants as faceless bureaucrats and paper-pushers, but we must remember that it is these very same public servants who work for our local councils in providing the care for our elderly and disabled, and who will find that their jobs have been lost as a result of the actions taken by this new coalition Government. It is frightening to think of what might happen when we have the new cuts on top of the existing cuts. We have already seen it in Aberdeen. Schools have closed. Day centres for people with severe disabilities have closed without alternative provision being made, and those people have been left to find activities for themselves because they are no longer provided by the council. All the warm words—“Oh yes, we’ll provide something better”—have never materialised into action.
Perhaps that helps to explain why I am sitting here on the Labour Benches having survived the Liberal bounce, the Clegg bounce, or whatever it was it called. It is because people in Aberdeen know the reality of what it is to live under a council run by the Liberal Democrats.
Sir Alan Beith
The hon. Lady seems to be overlooking the fact that this coalition Government are confronting a gap of £156 billion to £160 billion between what the country is spending and what it is taking in. Should she not take that into account?
Miss Begg
Part of the reason for my illustrative lecture is that in 2003 the Liberal council in Aberdeen took on a budget that was £27 million in surplus and turned that surplus into a £50 million deficit, without any kind of economic crisis. That did not happen to the Labour local authorities elsewhere in Scotland; it happened only, surprisingly, in Aberdeen, where we had a Liberal-Tory coalition that later became a Liberal-Scottish National party coalition. That council took a rich city that did not have any financial problems and, by its sheer incompetence in reorganising itself, managed to bring it quite close to bankruptcy.
One would think that the council would have started to listen to the people, but it has not. We have our own 55% question in Aberdeen, because there was a proposal to put a lovely new arts centre in Union Terrace gardens, a lovely Victorian park right in the centre of the city. It had the backing of the Scottish Arts Council and had most of its funding in place. Everything was ready and the lease was about to be signed with the council, which owned the land in the gardens, when one of our local businessmen came along with an offer of £50 million to cover over Union Terrace gardens and create a civic square. He said that he would do that only if the people of Aberdeen wanted it, and £300,000 of public money later, spent on a consultation on which the council had said no public money would be used, 55% of those who took part said that they did not want the civic square, and 44% said that they did. Last week, how did the Liberal Democrats and the SNP on Aberdeen city council vote? Did they vote with the majority of people in the consultation? No, of course they did not. They voted to allow the civic square to go on to its next phase.
Some £50 million from a philanthropist and local businessman sounds like a lot of money. Who would dare to turn it down? It might seem churlish to suggest it. The problem is that the proposed civic square is not going to cost £50 million, or even £100 million. It was costed, very quickly, at £140 million. There was not supposed to be any taxpayers’ money involved, but another £90 million will have to be found from somewhere. That is the position in Aberdeen—we have a bankrupt council, an economic crisis given the potential funding problems coming to us down the line, and a council that has decided to go on to the second stage of a grandiose scheme to raze a public park to street level when the majority of the population do not want it to happen. That is not democracy, and the people of Aberdeen are feeling angry and disfranchised because they have not had a say. I heard in the Queen’s Speech that local communities are to be given power over planning, although I appreciate that that will not apply in Scotland. If that power for people in England means that local councils then ignore their views, the promise will have been hollow.
I have talked for longer than I meant to, but I wish to mention one more concern before I close. Although it is popular and may seem right to suggest that people should have access to cancer drugs that have not yet been properly registered, I worry that that proposal overrides the mechanism that the Labour Government put in place, which is the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. I ask the Government to be clearer about whether that is in fact what the Conservative-Liberal coalition wants to do. Does it want to dismantle the whole apparatus of NICE? It was through NICE that we stopped the postcode lottery in drug funding, and it is through NICE that we ensure that drugs are safe and good value for money before they are made available to the population. I worry that if a drug company has a very expensive drug that it wants to sell, it will now be in a position to be more generous in its description of the efficacy of that drug. That would put pressure on patients, who would then put pressure on doctors to prescribe it, whereas it might not have got through the NICE appraisal scheme. We have the NICE appraisal for a good reason, and I worry that the new Government could undermine the whole basis of an organisation, which the Labour Government quite properly set up.
Perhaps it does not sound like it, but I am delighted to welcome the Queen’s Speech today. It is interesting to be back and on the other side of the Chamber. The 1997 election and coming to Parliament was exciting, and returning to Parliament this time has been equally exciting. Perhaps, because there was no change of Government in 2001 and 2005, it was a bit of an anti-climax when we all arrived back—we simply had to get on with the work. This time, it has been fascinating, if only to watch the body language of Members opposite.
Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
I am grateful to you for calling me to speak, Mr Speaker, and I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans). Having been a parliamentary candidate in a rural area, I can commiserate with him. I understand the various problems that such areas have.
The hon. Member for Ribble Valley was very generous in his remarks about Ashok Kumar and David Taylor. Both were close friends of mine, and they are greatly missed. I am glad that the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) is still in his place, as he will see the generosity of spirit that passes across the House when Members from different sides talk about parliamentary colleagues.
In his speech, the hon. Member for Watford mentioned immigration, which is a subject that we encountered on doorsteps all the time. For me, it is a conundrum. What is immigration? Are we talking about the asylum seekers who come to our country and claim asylum, or about the Europeans who come here under the European programme? Or are we talking about the problems caused to housing and services such as the NHS?
All parties have taken the question of immigration on board, but I am not yet entirely sure how we can deal with it. I notice that the Government have mentioned a cap on immigration, which would probably apply to immigrants from Commonwealth countries. The issue needs to be taken seriously and cautiously: the Government must try to meet the demands of the public, yet at the same time give some leadership on the matter.
The hon. Member for Watford also mentioned the alternative vote system. I am very glad to see the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) in his place. He will know that I have fought long and hard for the first-past-the-post electoral system, and that I am not a supporter of proportional representation. The Liberals may have wanted that system since 1923, but their ardour has cooled somewhat.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the alternative vote system was a step on the way. Scripture says, “In My Father’s house are many mansions”: I presume that the right hon. Gentleman is moving from the mansion of first past the post to the alternative vote and, in his best hopes, to proportional representation. I often wonder why the Liberal Democrats want to have a change in the voting system when the present system has put them in government.
Sir Alan Beith
There are indeed many situations in which my party would not benefit from a different system, as there are areas where we get more seats than the votes would justify. The same is true of the Labour party in the north-east, but the number of seats should reflect the numbers of votes cast. When people go to vote at the polling station, they should know that the outcome will reflect the actual votes cast.
Sir Stuart Bell
I have heard that old argument over many years. The question of fairness in the voting system goes back to Jeremy Thorpe in 1974. We will have many arguments on the subject but, if the Conservative party has an ideology and a belief in itself, it will want to become the majority party again one day.
The Labour party is a social democratic party. We will evolve our social democracy, and we believe in governing on behalf of what we believe in. Neither the Conservative nor the Labour parties would put themselves in a situation of permanent coalition with the Liberal Democrats. They might support the Conservatives this time, but they might support the Labour party at another election, as has happened in Germany. Therefore, I join the hon. Member for Ribble Valley in his campaign against the alternative vote system.
I am very glad to see that the hon. Member for Watford is still in his seat. He is learning to stay in this House of Commons beyond the person who speaks after him. I took a particular pleasure in listening to him, as I spent some of my childhood in Watford. I remember Gammons lane, Leavesdon aerodrome, Watford station and, of course, Watford football club. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that Watford has changed enormously since I went there as a child. I am sure that the diversity to which he referred is a great benefit to the town.
The hon. Gentleman spoke extremely well, if I may so without flattery. He must remember Adlai Stevenson’s remark to that effect that flattery is fine as long as one does not breathe in. No doubt the hon. Gentleman will hear much flattery in this House but, on the occasion of his maiden speech, he will find that it is genuine. I shall give the hon. Gentleman some advice, however—the best speeches are those that come over well in the House but also read well in Hansard. One can sometimes make a very fine speech in the House that does not read very well in Hansard. The speeches that read well and come over well in the House are the finest ones.
The hon. Member for Ribble Valley said that the hon. Member for Watford did not use notes, but he also had his speech in his hand. That is a fine thing to do, as speaking on the Floor of the House is not a memory test. In his early days, the great Winston Churchill made a long speech but, 35 minutes into it, he forgot what he wanted to say. He did not have the speech with him, and he was stuck. From that time on, he always had his speech with him. Even when one does not refer to the text much, it is a comfort to have it in hand.
When a young man called Tony Blair first came into the House, I told him, “It’s not a memory test. You’re here to make a point. Therefore, while you may rely on your memory, you should always have a note somewhere.” That is the last advice that I shall give to the hon. Member for Watford. The other piece that I would have given him was to make his maiden speech early, but it is too late for that now. He has done it and got it out of the way, and that is fine.
The hon. Member for Watford is fortunate in one sense and you, Mr Deputy Speaker, will understand this. When I made by maiden speech in 1983—and I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) referred to me—the Deputy Speaker who is in the Chair now followed me, and I have his words yet. The hon. Gentleman will remember this occasion in the years to come. One’s maiden speech is probably one’s best, but I do not want to discourage him yet.
In these debates, I normally follow the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), but I have not had that opportunity today. He gives wonderful lectures in classical economics, and I have heard the same speech many times over many years. Ronald Reagan could have done no better. The Laffer curve was alive and well: reducing the rate of taxation increases the revenue that comes from it—we have heard all that before, many times. If we had followed his advice during the recession, I do not know where we would be today. It is probable that 500,000 jobs would have been lost, with more to come, but I do not want to get into a debate with the right hon. Gentleman at the beginning of a new Parliament. I have a great admiration for him, and he renders a great contribution.
The right hon. Member for Wokingham talked about this being a new Parliament. Those of us in the Chamber this afternoon who were in the previous Parliament will know how shabby it was in the end, and how disreputable it had become. We dishonoured ourselves in the eyes of the public and ruined our reputation.
We are now in a new Parliament, and every Member of Parliament has a new mandate. The people who voted us in expect the highest standards from us, and that is what we will give them. We should put the past behind us and become the kind of Parliament that we ought to be and will be in the future. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East also made that point.
The hon. Member for Watford spoke about his constituency. Since the last Queen’s Speech, the constituency next door to my own has suffered the closure of the Corus steel mill, where the blast furnace has been mothballed. That unfortunate development cost 1,600 jobs and caused great anger in the local community. That anger was directed at the previous Labour Government, with people wanting to know what was going to be done about the matter. Nationalisation of the plant was suggested, but that was not open to the former Government, just as it is not open to the new Liberal-Conservative coalition.
The former Member of Parliament for Redcar, Vera Baird, paid a heavy price for all that went on. She lost a 12,000 majority on a 20% swing, and a Liberal Democrat was returned with a majority of 5,000. I wish him well, but I also convey my sincere regrets to Vera Baird. She was a fine Member of this House: she was Solicitor-General and she did not deserve her fate. However, her story is a great reminder to us all that our constituency interests are very important. I remember that she missed many meetings in Redcar because she had to be here for a vote in the House. It is extremely important that we link ourselves to our constituents and stay close to them. That is one of the lessons to be taken from what has happened, and it is of great importance for our constituencies.
I mentioned Corus, but I should also like to mention One North East, our regional development agency. The new Business Secretary has said that he will keep it, and we are very grateful for that. A programme worth £60 million was introduced on the back of the mothballing of Corus, and that money is very important for us. The programme is going ahead, although I have been told by way of a last-minute message that the £1.5 million pledged by the previous Labour Government to help Corus employees through the Teeskills bursary may be reconsidered. That would be a grievous blow to the people who have been made redundant.
In the speech that the Prime Minister made on the steps of No. 10 Downing street just after he became Prime Minister, he talked about how he would look after the frail, the elderly and the poorest. It was a noble statement on his part and we will keep him to it. One can hardly say that the Government have not hit the ground running in this post-election period. We had the statement from No. 10, the original coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats, the formal agreement and now today the Queen’s Speech. I almost forgot the statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday, in which he reduced the deficit—or whatever the right hon. Member for Wokingham wants to call it—not by £6.2 billion, but by £5.7 billion net.
We have heard many comments about the deficit and the reasons for it. The Governor of the Bank of England has been invoked to support the Government, saying that it is important that we show the world how we intend to reduce the deficit. We have heard a great deal about the Greek economy, although I have no idea why the Greek economy came to the forefront during the election. The Greeks had a problem with the euro, which was not our problem. The Chancellor said that we had a greater deficit than Greece, which just goes to show what you can get away with saying—of course we have a greater deficit than Greece, because they have 2 million citizens and a very small economy. Why would we wish to link our deficit with those in the eurozone when we are not a member of it? Indeed, the right hon. Member for Wokingham vaunted that fact, saying how wonderful it was that we had stayed out of it, now that it was having a crisis. It is not a crisis, but a difficulty, and its members will come to terms with it.
Angela Merkel put forward a proposal for budget controls for European member states, with which—much to my surprise—the right hon. Gentleman agreed. But President Sarkozy does not agree with that, and nor do I. I do not believe in treaty changes, and it was peculiar that the Queen’s Speech said that no more treaties would be ratified without a referendum, because no more treaties will come out of the European Union. No one wants a treaty, including Sarkozy and the French, the Dutch—anyone you ask. So it is an empty promise.
I am pleased that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have been to Europe and that they both realise that our future is in Europe. Whatever the criticisms of the European Union and the euro—whether we should be in or out is an argument that died a death a long time ago, so the concession by the Liberal Democrats was an empty one—the eurozone will sort out its problems. As the Prime Minister said, it is in our interests that it does so.
We had an interesting speech from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East. I have welcomed the hon. Member for Watford, and I also wish to welcome the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), who is not in her place but happens to be the sister of my right hon. Friend. I wish her a great career here and I am sure that she will enjoy every moment.
The Queen’s Speech began by saying:
“My Government’s legislative programme will be based upon the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility.”
Who on earth would disagree with that? They are fine social democratic principles. As Max Hastings wrote in the Financial Times, we are all social democrats now. He argued that there will never be another right-wing Conservative Government. Remarkably, this coalition has squeezed the right of the Tory party and the left of the Liberal Democrats. My guess is that, as the years pass, the Liberal Democrats will be very squeezed in the middle. Those who wish to go the Conservative way will do so, and those who want to come the Labour way will do so. However, they are experiencing the aphrodisiac of power at present, and we wish them well. They are well meaning, and we hope that they succeed in what they set out to do. We will follow events with great interest.
We support in the main much of the essence of the Queen’s Speech. The attacks on the public service—and 300,000 jobs are in the frame under the proposals set out in the Financial Times today—in the statement yesterday, and that are likely in the Budget on 22 June and the spending review in September, will contain a lot of pain. That pain will be felt in the public sector. The Government have not yet understood the balance between the public sector and the private sector. The private sector has lost out in the global economy over many years and our manufacturing is down. On Teesside, we are looking into green technologies with the £60 million coming from One North East. As that imbalance has been created, work has been found and jobs created in the public sector, and that has helped the private sector. If it is the philosophy of the Government to modify that arrangement again—the recalibration that we saw under Labour—there will be more unemployment, and that will not be good for the country. Lord Lamont, when he was Chancellor, said that unemployment was a price worth paying. We are getting the same message now, and we will counter it, argue against it and expose it.
We wish the Government well. I want them to succeed, because I want the country to be stable. We do not want a political crisis on the back of the financial difficulty. We will give them a fair wind, and I know that they act with great sincerity in all that they do. Of course, we will also be Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition. We will be strong and alert in Opposition, and we will hold the Executive to account, as will their Back Benchers. This is a new Parliament and a fresh beginning for us all. It can be an exciting, great and a noble undertaking, especially for all 232 of the new Members. I wish them all well.