Queen’s Speech

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to speak on the humble Address to Her Majesty’s speech, and it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Haworth. I find myself in total agreement with what he has just said on the nuclear programme, which certainly needs pushing.

Obviously, we face massive challenges at present. We have largely seen through the Covid crisis and now face an energy crisis and a crisis in Ukraine, which are international challenges. The national response has to be focused on the economy and energy, and these are fundamental. We should be aware, when looking at the economic record, of the great success that we have had on the furlough scheme and business support. It is easy to forget the economic success that we had during the pandemic, but there are new challenges now, which have rightly been highlighted by many noble Lords. There is the inflation challenge, at 7% and rising, and government debt interest—the largest item on the Government’s balance sheet, at £83 billion. That is just the debt interest for 2022-23, up by £30 billion from the previous year, as a result of inflation.

Unlike many others in my party, I do not have any visceral dislike of taxes where they are necessary and justified, and I believe that an energy windfall tax is more than justified. I find it hard to find a cogent argument against it when we have seen the massive super-profits that are being made, and when we are seeing the holes in government finances it seems sensible to bring it forward. I am glad that the Chancellor is considering it. Indeed, my right honourable friend Mel Stride, who chairs the Treasury Committee, has also said that it should be very much in play.

I recognise the dangers of inflation but like others—and many on this side of the House, too—I think that an uplift to universal credit is absolutely necessary. As a one-nation party, I cannot see how we can fail to protect the most vulnerable at this time, when inflation is racing. It must be done, and it must be done urgently.

The Queen’s Speech certainly has many aspects that I approve of, but it lacks vision. We need something more powerful than postponing the MOT for a year; we need something to aspire to to bring people together, as we did during the pandemic. We need some call to action or shared enterprise, which has got to be around the energy crisis. We have seen the rise in energy prices, which is very largely outside the Government’s control—but we have to have a response to help the most vulnerable. We heard the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, speak about the position of people on prepayment meters. That is absolutely right: we have to make sure that energy efficiency measures and help with the warm home discount is available to the most vulnerable, to help them with the cost of energy. We have to see how the energy security Bill, which I certainly think is a powerful measure and one that is potentially very useful, is extended to help those people in terms of action on retrofit and insulation measures, as well as ensuring that we are harnessing the resources that we have around this island with wave power and tidal power. Those things need doing urgently, and that would be regarded as a joint enterprise for the whole nation which we can come around to deal with a problem of long standing. It will be of even longer standing and more severe if we continue to fail to do anything about it.

We need also to look at carbon capture and storage, which we have dallied on for too long. It will create new jobs and help on energy security and climate change—but, above all, we need to help people who are not going to be able to pay their energy Bills going forward. We need to come forward now with something for those people. We have a tin ear on this, I am afraid; we need to ensure that that announcement is made sooner rather than later. If it means, as I am afraid it could well do, that we need a windfall tax on oil companies, or a one-off tax on oil and gas companies, that is something that would bring the nation together. I hope that we do that in short order.