Autumn Statement

Lord Cavendish of Furness Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)]

My Lords, as other noble Lords have done, I commend my noble friend on securing this debate and on introducing it with such thought and clarity. This afternoon I will draw attention to various aspects of the Autumn Statement and do so largely through the prism of my own experience of living for most of my working life in south Cumbria. Accordingly, I declare a personal interest. Although I have surrendered the chairmanship of my family group of SME companies to my elder daughter, I remain involved and I refer noble Lords to the register of interests.

Not of direct interest to me but very well received in Cumbria as a whole was the announcement of the new Carlisle enterprise zone. It may well be that a number of northern noble Lords have campaigned for this. It is my understanding that the honourable Member for Carlisle, Mr John Stevenson, played a prominent part in winning this prize for the county. It is good news.

I was personally pleased by a number of announcements relating to housing, the fiscal treatment of the SME sector and much else. However, it remains the case that the SMEs still suffer disproportionately from the burden of regulation. I am happy to give credit to the Government for seeking with commendable rigour to address this problem. I join other noble Lords in the plea to finally address the simplification of tax—which, again, imposes on SMEs very badly.

I suppose that I have read thousands of column inches on the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. There is the usual analysis of winners and losers. Two of the commonest themes are how lucky the Chancellor is with the economy and the OBR’s reading of it, and secondly, what a risk he takes with the windfall we taxpayers have handed him. On the first, I can say only that if the economy had worsened over the period I would have been surprised to hear his critics putting this down to bad luck. As to the risks he takes, he appears to have a greater confidence in our ability to grow the economy than do some of the commentariat. While I confess that his action took me by surprise, I share his confidence in the future. I cannot remember in my working lifetime there being so much excitement—in the north of England at least—and a sense of purpose in the SME sector, or, in my layman’s reading of the world, the economy in general.

History and politics are full of examples of people being handed a poisoned chalice. Some of us felt that it was a novel approach on the part of Mr Gordon Brown to poison the chalice just at the point when he was seizing it. If it turns out to be true that my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has in mind employment beyond his present job, I hardly think that he will want to make the same mistake.

On winners and losers, risks or the lack of them, fairness or otherwise, as the dust settles the commentators may conclude that the Autumn Statement was inconsequential. They would be wrong. An important feature of the Autumn Statement that has attracted almost no comment at all is that it is as much a statement of values and ideas as it is about the country’s finances. Here is why. I warmly welcome the general thrust of the Government’s policies towards devolution. We will never be a country at ease with ourselves until local men and women are once more accountable for the delivery of the services that our communities need and deserve. Now the opportunity really does seem to be at hand when it will genuinely be in the interests of local people to participate again. The rebirth of civic life is truly an exciting prospect and one that we should all support.

Those of us who have earned a living in the private sector have long known and understood that there is always scope to do more for less. All of us who have come through recessions have had to cut our cloth at one time or another. By contrast, the public sector and the trade unions have always insisted that any and all reduction in public spending must have a corresponding diminution in output. To their enormous credit, the Government, as far as I am aware for the first time ever, have exploded this myth. Under this Administration the state has got smaller.

I see that I am out of time, so I will finish by saying that there are other things that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, mentioned in terms of values and ideas. Our growth compares well with that of other economies. Our potential for exerting soft power remains significant. There is a radicalism in this Statement that repudiates the perception of national decline. With the Chancellor announcing additional resources for the Foreign Office, the Armed Forces, national security, the arts and other things, we have changed gear. I reflect that we are regaining some of our former influence, in a civilised way: not pushing others around, not grandstanding among nations, but positioning ourselves to defend our long-cherished freedoms and to grow and to build an economy that enriches all people and protects with a generosity of spirit those least able to fend for themselves.

Finance Bill

Lord Cavendish of Furness Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord O’Neill of Gatley for introducing this Second Reading debate. I was not quite sure how to approach it, as it is a strange one to be holding in your Lordships’ House, but I start by congratulating the Government on their continuing determination, as I see it, to do whatever is needed to restore good health to the nation’s finances. I realise that that is not always popular or easy, but it is urgent.

With every passing day, the perception grows that things are not quite so bad after all. “Why not water down the medicine?”, some are saying. Some commentators come close to saying that Ministers themselves share that delusion. We remain in a very dangerous place, and it is much to the credit of this Government that they hold to the course on which they were elected. I believe that we are heading for a strong economy, the chief beneficiaries of which are the working poor. It saddens me to think that the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, cannot accept that.

This afternoon, I want to touch on the topical issue of infrastructure and how it can be financed. Especially, I want to focus on my local town of Barrow-in-Furness and its surrounding area. As I have told your Lordships before, we are expecting investment in the region of £40 billion over the next decade. It will come from shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals, civil nuclear, offshore gas and other things, and a very exciting prospect that is for an area whose economic future has not always been certain.

Here I should perhaps declare a personal interest. I make no secret of the fact that the group of family companies of which I used to be chairman—I have now handed over to my daughter—will want to take advantage of that investment. I refer noble Lords to the Register of Lords’ Interests.

I think I am right in saying that private or institutional investment in infrastructure projects is at an all-time low. In 2008-09 infrastructure spending reached £57 billion. Since then it has dropped, in 2013-14, to £42 billion. The Chancellor’s anticipated commitment to spend £100 billion on infrastructure will be greatly welcomed, but how to find the money?

Brooding on this, I was struck by a piece I found on the Centre for Political Studies online news service, CapX, written by George Trefgarne whose father, of course, has long adorned your Lordships’ House with great distinction. Mr Trefgarne’s piece is headed with the words: “An idea whose time has come: project bonds.” I strongly commend it and further reading on the subject to your Lordships.

There was a consensus that allowed my party’s programme of privatisation and the less than ideal PFI arrangements of the party opposite. For whatever reason, that consensus collapsed after the financial crisis. In consequence, there seems to be very little appetite among investors for participating in today’s projects or mechanisms to attract those investors. It is difficult to reconcile the Chancellor’s spending ambitions with his admirable goal of deficit reduction. It is not only the annual deficit that should concern us, but the many billions of pounds that are set to be added to the national debt. Worse, unless a solution is found the Treasury will be on course once again to be in charge of every road, hospital and railway system in the land.

Mr Trefgarne’s article highlights a potential solution that is being canvassed both here and abroad. Instead of relying on the public sector to deliver our vital infrastructure needs, new companies would be created, perhaps jointly owned by a combination of devolved Administrations, local authorities and private sector investors. They would keep revenues and charges and in turn issue their own debt, underwritten at least in part by the taxpayer. Experience elsewhere suggests that project bonds offer long-term investors attractive yields and significant credit spreads. Typically, they are attractive to pension funds and life insurance companies. I understand that even in countries where public finance is not so constrained, project bonds are used to diversify funding, meet regulatory demands, improve efficiency or quite simply tap into private sector expertise.

The system is not so different from the one the Victorians presided over that led to the great boom in bridge, canal and railway building, but one does not have to hark back so far for a similar precedent. I believe London’s Crossrail is coming in on time and on budget, if I am permitted to sing the praises of the mayor in your Lordships’ House. It is funded by a coalition of private and public interests, and Transport for London has been licensed by the Treasury to issue its own debt to fund it. The EU and the European Investment Bank are running project bond pilot projects.

Of course, I am telling my noble friend nothing new, but I would like to ask him how closely he has followed the project bond debate and what conclusions he draws. Does he agree that such a mechanism will not occur without the Treasury willing it to happen? I think I may be right in saying that the Treasury has experience of and a track record with similar financial mechanisms. The proposal would in effect entail the Government launching and licensing an entirely new capital market. Can my noble friend say whether the Government stand ready to do such a thing? Combined with the incomparable existing skills in the City, that makes for a hugely exciting prospect—and a huge problem removed from the Government. If an increasing number of proponents are right about the potential of project bonds, then why wait? Above all, why wait until Wall Street or some other financial centre steals a march on us?

Returning to Barrow-in-Furness, my personal view is that the beautiful area in which I live is ill-prepared for the large investments I have talked about coming its way. By any measurement, our infrastructure is in a shocking state of disrepair. I have grounds for thinking that our local government representatives are in touch with Ministers and seek ways to remedy these problems. I wish them well. When I was in local government, I remember being tremendously impressed by the skill and ingenuity of our financial officers. I dare say it is a different skill set from the one my noble friend finds at the Treasury, but it is nevertheless completely appropriate to a rural county with a few dominant tier 1 companies and myriad SMEs, among which my family businesses are included. I look forward to a time when devolved government will once again allow this reservoir of skill to be deployed for the benefit of local people, jobs and services.

Finally, I repeat a plea I have made in other debates. It will not be lost on my noble friend that much of the investment I talked about stems from government procurement of one kind or another. Like the Government, tier 1 companies have cultural problems when it comes to engaging with SMEs. A more sinister problem is when tier 1 companies collude to keep SMEs out. There is often much comforting talk about benefits to the local supply chain, but again and again they fail to materialise. Is it possible to compel large companies to report on what proportion of their business benefits local companies? Also, could the Government be rather more forceful in changing this culture, especially given that they are ultimately the customer?

It is a pleasure to speak about the problems of success. My noble friend the Minister is an economist of great distinction and I have no doubt he will make a great contribution to Britain’s economic recovery. I live in a rather different world from him—among people who make things, grow things and do things, and market their wares at home and overseas. Our whole existence is about judging risk and living with the consequences. We seldom make a headline, nor do we seek to do so. However, I remind my noble friend that we represent 95% of this nation’s economy. I hope that, as he surveys his huge brief, he will keep in mind that the sector’s interests also need his concern and protection.

National Infrastructure

Lord Cavendish of Furness Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for introducing this important debate. His considerable experience, knowledge and enduring interest in Britain's economic performance were all evident in his eloquent opening remarks. In contributing today I declare my interests, which are quite numerous and varied, so I refer noble Lords to the register.

I wish to make two points. Given that the funding for 64% of our infrastructure projects is met by the private sector, it is worth asking why our national performance has slipped relative to other developed countries. Part of the answer must lie with the fact that our planning system moves at a glacial pace and needs urgently to be more responsive. More importantly—and I am sorry to say it—there seems to be no doubt that confidence is still lacking among the business community. It is not as though the Government have done nothing; on the contrary, as noble Lords have heard, they have done a great deal and in difficult circumstances, and I congratulate them warmly. I have listened to the arguments put forward by the Government against the establishment of an independent infrastructure commission and so doggedly advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, over a long time. I do not feel qualified to challenge those arguments. The rather convincing worry is that 89% of business wants such a body so that well developed infrastructure strategies are less exposed to political cycles, and, in a raft of other areas, business still has misgivings about the future.

One problem is that neither this Government nor any other understand business properly. It is not that we lack clever and committed politicians and officials—there is no shortage of those—but, crucially, not a single Minister, civil servant or public sector officer woke up this morning or any other morning to the reality of risk-taking and being held accountable, and the subtle workings of capital are not understood at all. It is an interesting reflection that barely a handful of noble Lords participating this morning have current experience of constructing a capital budget, or worrying about how they will pay the wages tomorrow morning or how they will cope with the daily tsunami of regulations. Business wants to see the politics of infrastructure change fundamentally in order to improve the perception of the UK as a place to do business. It would help if the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, would perhaps persuade his colleagues to talk less about such things as nationalising the railways.

I will finish by speaking about my own area of south Cumbria. I am more optimistic than the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. As he would agree, in common with many other rural areas we have had a varied economic history, but today in the Furness peninsula we are preparing ourselves for the biggest investment in our history. It is estimated that over the next decade some £40 billion will be spent in industries that include civil nuclear, biopharmaceuticals and nuclear submarine building, To put that in perspective, in money terms it is equivalent to one and a half times the Olympics. While it is hard to exaggerate this good fortune, the infrastructure implications are huge. Quite simply, we lack that infrastructure by magnitudes, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said. My major concern is to see that small and medium-sized businesses benefit from this investment and have access to the supply chain. I am out of time, but I simply ask my noble friend to visit and see for himself the scale of the opportunities and the challenges that face us.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Cavendish of Furness Excerpts

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, I will make three points, which are important at this stage of the debate.

First, I very much deprecate the frivolity with which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, answered my question about the time involved in producing an independent expert’s report. It is quite wrong to be frivolous about such a very important subject. Clearly, there has been a tendency to put forward a number of amendments in this group, all of which would increase both the time and the cost required to enable someone to benefit from the new regime brought in under the Bill. It is quite wrong of us in this Committee to underestimate the fact that if we passed these amendments we would add a considerable degree of cost and time. There would be the need to go to a coroner, the need for an independent medical expert, and for another independent expert who would be supposed to collect the drugs and oversee the process, and so forth. All that would mean more people, that arrangements would have to be made—in practice they cannot be made in a second or two—and that reports would have to be produced. We all know that people take some time to produce written reports, and on a matter of this kind one would take particular care to get every word in the report right. Therefore, I was not wrong to raise the issue of time and cost.

On costs, we heard with great relief some of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, about the possibility of using legal aid, but we know that, however generous the Government will be, not all the costs involved in this process will be defrayed from public funds. Therefore we do not want to produce a certain situation but, as a matter of fact, we already have a situation whereby if you have enough money you can go to Zurich and solve the problem that way. There is a significant gulf at present between those who have greater financial means and those who do not as regards the choice they have as they reach the end of their lives and how they want to go. We do not want to exacerbate that, and by increasing the cost we are doing so. We simply have to take that into account and it should not be frivolously dismissed, as it was this morning.

Secondly, I want to pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, a moment ago. I see no reason why palliative care should not be continued until the moment when the patient decides to exercise his or her option to terminate his or her life under the procedures laid out in the Bill, if it becomes law. I see no reason why there should be any need to withdraw palliative care some days or weeks beforehand. That seems to me a problem that should not arise at all.

Finally, I want to address the point made by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, whose main objection to the Bill seemed to be that the medical profession should not be involved in decisions about the deaths of patients. That is a very serious point; I made a point along those lines at Second Reading. At present, what most of us face if we have a slow death is palliative care, which generally ends up with palliative sedation. That means that the patient is put into a medically induced coma and all means of life support, including food and liquids—not invariably so but certainly in many cases liquids as well, so that the patient is dehydrated—are withdrawn, along with any life support in the form of oxygen and antibiotics. If the patient has had kidney failure and been on dialysis, that is withdrawn, so the patient dies from blood poisoning. The patient dies in a coma, which takes a great deal more than the 25 minutes that is the average in Oregon, when people use that regime for the right to die. It takes many days, in many cases; I have known at least one case when dehydration took two weeks to kill the patient, who of course did not awaken from the coma during the whole of that period. That is the reality: every day of the week and every hour of the day, doctors and nurses take decisions determining the timing and cause of their patients’ death. They are taking the decision to withdraw antibiotics and life support, putting the patient into a palliative coma.

It is the alternative to that regime that my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer is proposing this afternoon, so that people have a choice. The whole object of the Bill is to give the patient a vote. At present, in many cases, the patient does not even know about the decision being taken by doctors and nurses, which will determine the precise means and timing of their demise. Under the Bill, undoubtedly the patient would be in the front line and the driving seat, taking the key decision, and the doctors and nurses would respond to a decision made explicitly by the patient. That seems to me an enormous improvement. I hope that even those of us who do not want this particular regime and would not want to use it ourselves will not want to deny others the opportunity to have a choice between death in a palliative coma and death as it could be chosen under this Bill.

[Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)]

My Lords, there seems to be developing some suggestion that people opposed to the Bill are introducing amendments simply to add time and cost and to make it unworkable. Would the noble Lord, Lord Davies, understand that those of us who were in principle opposed to the Bill from the very outset realise that it is intended to be compassionate—as we all feel compassionate—but just find it impossible to reconcile compassion and the objectives of the Bill with the necessary safeguards? That is at the heart of the whole matter.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, but I must intervene on him. I said nothing designed to impugn the good faith and sincerity of anyone in this House, let alone people who have gone to the trouble of producing these amendments. What I said was that, whether it is intended or not, many of these amendments would have consequences in terms of time and cost, and it would be wrong of us to underestimate those consequences—and certainly very wrong frivolously to dismiss that whole issue, as happened this morning.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, given the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, I will take the Committee to the arguments that would have been contained in the group led by Amendment 11. I think that was the guidance that we were just given. Noble Lords will realise that later amendments, Amendments 90, 92, 93, 105 and 122 will be reached when they get there. I will try to keep my remarks fairly short, because I think that the Committee is growing weary.

This is an important question, as are many of those that have been laid before the Committee today. It deals with the title of the clause, which is “Assisted dying”. I would argue that that is incorrect; it is assisted suicide. Those who support the noble and learned Lord’s Bill are at pains to tell us that assisted dying is not physician-administered euthanasia, whereby a doctor administers a lethal dosage of drugs to a patient, but physician-assisted suicide, whereby a doctor supplies a lethal dosage of drugs and the patient swallows or otherwise ingests them. I invite the Committee to look at the procedures set out in the noble and learned Lord’s Bill against these claims.

Clause 4 is perhaps the principal clause in this respect. Its subsection (4)(a) allows a doctor or nurse to “prepare” lethal drugs for self-administration. Presumably this means putting them into a form, such as a liquid, that the person can swallow—in a way, so far so good—but subsection (4)(b) then provides for a “medical device” to be put in place to aid self-administration. Again, I suppose that this is fair enough, although rather more precision is needed as to the object of such a device. That is why I have tabled an amendment to that effect.

Then we come to subsection (4)(c), which allows a doctor or nurse to,

“assist that person to ingest or otherwise self-administer”.

Here we really are on the borderline between physician-assisted suicide and physician-administered euthanasia. Subsection (4)(c) raises some important questions. Precisely what assistance, apart from preparing the lethal drugs and perhaps inserting a feeding tube, does “assist … to ingest” include? Does it include, for instance, holding a beaker to the lips of the person? It is not difficult to foresee a situation in which a doctor or nurse supplying lethal drugs under the terms of the noble and learned Lord’s Bill could cross the line, however innocently, between giving the patient those drugs and administering them. Subsection (4)(c) introduces a significant and dangerous grey area into the process of assisting suicide.

The noble and learned Lord has, I can see, recognised this ambiguity in subsection (5), which states that neither the doctor nor the nurse may administer the drugs to the patient, but it seems that as long as subsection (4)(c) stands, the ambiguity will remain. Moreover, subsection (5) says nothing about others administering the drugs, which brings me to my next concern. It is not just a matter of the doctor or nurse refraining from administering lethal drugs. There are others who might be inclined to do so, possibly from altruistic motives. It is therefore important that there is oversight by the doctor or nurse of what happens when the lethal drugs are delivered.

At this point, the noble and learned Lord’s Bill becomes rather convoluted. It states, reasonably enough, that the doctor or nurse must remain with the person to whom the drugs have been delivered until either they have been ingested and the person has died or the person has decided not to take them, in which case they are withdrawn. Yet subsection (6) defines remaining with the person as being,

“in close proximity to, but not in the same room as, the person”.

I understand and respect the noble and learned Lord’s wish to allow a person who is self-administering lethal drugs to die without strangers in the room but we have to balance that against the scope for others to intervene in a way that is not permitted in his Bill if the drugs are ingested without supervision.

We all heard the intervention that the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, put to my noble friend Lady Finlay much earlier in our debates about the circumstances in which people might die. I would have thought that the doctor’s presence need not be obtrusive. Apart from anything else, we have to allow for the possibility—this sometimes happens, according to the evidence from Oregon—that complications, such as vomiting or distress, arise when the drugs are taken. The doctor needs to be in the room if that happens.

For me, this is an issue that helps to distinguish between assisted suicide and assisted dying. If it is not the wish of this Committee that we should legalise outright euthanasia—I do not believe that it is—then it is very important that those clarifications are made. While I am unable to move Amendment 11, which was originally on the Marshalled List, that would have been its purpose. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, for providing us with the opportunity while debating the amended Clause 1, which I will not be opposing, to debate some of these questions.

[Lord Cavendish of Furness]

My Lords, with the leave of the Committee and with the agreement of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, I shall speak to Amendment 10 under the new regulation that we have. With that amendment, I would probably include Amendments 52, 164 and 170. When I left Cumbria, Amendment 70 was included in that grouping but it was moved while I was on the train. Before speaking further, I should perhaps declare an interest since, as I told your Lordships at Second Reading, I was co-founder of St Mary’s Hospice in Cumbria more than 20 years ago and, although I retired some two years ago as chairman of the trustees, I maintain my involvement as the patron. I have no professional qualifications in the field of palliative care, but my close association with a hospice over a good many years has done much to crystallise my thoughts on the matters under discussion in your Lordships’ House today. We have heard many deeply moving personal experiences, and of course I have my own, but nothing has moved me so much as witnessing not only the physical and mental relief of patients of the hospice but the sense of pure joy that the hospice movement sometimes brings through acceptance and the general level of care.

I feel sure that it is a view shared by both sides of this debate that anyone who is provided with assistance to end his or her life must understand clearly what he or she is doing; that much is surely beyond argument. However, as with many other aspects of the noble and learned Lord’s Bill, there is a significant gap between saying what should happen and putting in place provisions to ensure that it does. It is to fill such a lacuna in the Bill that I am proposing these amendments. Many of the arguments have been covered by my noble friend Lord Howard.

For a fully informed decision, the Bill as it stands requires simply that a person seeking assistance with suicide must be,

“fully informed of the palliative, hospice and other care which is available”.

But what does that mean? It means no more than that the doctor assessing the request must explain to the applicant for assisted suicide what the various end-of-life care options are. Such a doctor may well know little of what modern palliative care has to offer. It is a medical speciality that is making huge advances year by year, and it is unlikely that even a good doctor, with limited experience of end-of-life care, will be able to be sufficiently acquainted with the subject.

There is also a world of difference when making a decision between being told about something and having had first-hand experience of it. I offer this quote from the report of the Select Committee which, under the chairmanship of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, 10 years ago examined the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe. The committee’s report recorded evidence from Help the Hospices, as it was then called, as follows:

“Experience of ... pain control is radically different from the promise of pain control, and cessation of pain almost unimaginable if symptom control has been poor. On this view, patients seeking assistance to die without having experienced good symptom control could not be deemed fully informed”.

Specialist palliative care embraces the holistic care of the individual and those around them, considering not only their physical or medical symptoms, such as pain, vomiting or breathlessness, but also their spiritual, social and psychological needs. When distressing physical symptoms overwhelm a patient, they cannot see beyond the pain, the breathlessness, the anxiety or the vomiting. Effective symptom management enables a person to re-emerge and function once more, and to make informed choices regarding their future. Without such experience, my contention would be that the applicant’s capacity to make informed choices is seriously impaired.

The chief executive and the medical director of the hospice of which I have the privilege of being patron do not, as far as I am aware, take a position either for or against the Bill. However, they agree with this amendment and have this to say:

“We see every day how very limited is the understanding and knowledge of Palliative care services among both patients and professionals. Most people resort to these services only when they have a need of them”.

This view of course contradicts that expressed earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, earlier in the debate.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Cavendish of Furness Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)]

My Lords, altering the rhythm of this debate once more, I want to speak on constitutional affairs—or, rather, to discuss what I see to be a threat to our constitution. I have heard it suggested sometimes that the British public have only limited understanding of the great issues that affect their daily lives. Even in your Lordships’ House, I have heard speeches that only just stop short of implying much the same thing. A number of European officials are on record as being openly contemptuous of voter intelligence and dismissive of their aspirations. A view has plainly taken hold that the lack of “demos” within the European Union contributes to the displeasure that has been increasingly directed at the political class, and notably so in recent weeks.

If my life’s experience has taught me one thing, and it applies to all organisations large and small, where accountability is absent or weak even, it is that you can expect trouble as sure as night follows day. The consequences of failures in accountability include incompetence, unfairness, waste and fraud. Some or all of these consequences are not just a danger, they are an inevitability. While I would agree wholeheartedly with those who believe that a significant element of public anger stems from the shortcomings and the undemocratic and unaccountable nature of today’s EU, there is also a compelling case that we should look closer to home to find the genesis of much of the public’s disquiet.

When the measures to update the electoral register were sabotaged as retribution for Parliament having failed to support House of Lords reform, some people may well have derived satisfaction from the thought that they had damaged my party. Never mind my party, whatever the motive, the effect of that action was to swindle the voters who in consequence will have to participate in next year’s general election using an old and out-of-date register. I find it hard to imagine a more unforgivably cynical or self-serving ploy. Nowadays, it looks as if the public share that view.

However, that misses another point. It may well be that your Lordships’ House could be improved and I am sure that it could. But at least it works, and I hear very little public demand to suggest that its reform should be a top priority. Where I sense many people feel an urgent need for reform is in the conduct of another place. Consider the continued and relentless use of programming and guillotine Motions in the other place, and the growing perception that House of Commons debates are irrelevant even when the subject matter is of huge public interest. The public see sparsely attended events where a handful of MPs, increasingly with little or no experience of the real world, often are seen reading from briefs prepared by lobbyists and who have vested interests.

Well within my memory, there was a substantial body of Members of the other place who were content to be and to remain respected Back-Benchers. This respect derived in large part from the fact that Back-Bench MPs really did hold the Executive to account. With new entrants today expecting almost immediate preferment, the party Whips enjoy a power that makes a mockery of the concept of MPs holding Ministers to account.

I have always held the view that the overwhelming majority of people who enter public life do so for honourable reasons. Very often things go wrong not because of bad intent but as a consequence of a collective failure to uphold the concept of accountability. I want to point to the apparent reluctance of modern Governments to reflect more than they do on the uses and misuses of power. The fact that Governments should have, and need to have, authority should not blind them to the fact that they govern by consent. Consent is not limited to what voters decide at election time. It needs to be sustained through day-to-day accountability. This weakness, in terms of accountability, spreads through all our institutions and all aspects of our national life. A senior figure in the BBC recently told me that no one knew how decisions were reached in his organisation. The same want of accountability is to be found in the huge array of quangos and monopolistic utility companies. It has led to atrocious service and an arrogant disregard for people’s needs and aspirations. Many of our corporate giants are patently unaccountable to their shareholders as well as frequently the enemy of small business. I was very pleased to see measures contained in the gracious Speech to curb some of their excesses.

Of course, no one conspires to govern badly but we must all take some responsibility when good policy surrenders to meretricious soundbites, personal integrity is at such a premium in public life and such a huge proportion of decision-making is ceded away to distant institutions without the consent of the people whose lives those decisions affect. I commend the coalition Government for the measures outlined in the gracious Speech and they will have my support. However, I hope the Government will reflect in the year that remains to them on the issues that probably cannot be remedied through the legislative programme alone. They need to react to the perception that power continues to be centralised and that we are governed less and less by people who enjoy popular support and more and more by new oligarchies both public and private.

We most surely need to understand that the recent election results were not uniform across Europe. We in Britain did not give encouragement to the National Front or any other extremist party. The public reminded us that we in these islands have a 2,000 year-old inherited settlement, unique to the English-speaking world, under which the freedom of the individual is better protected that anywhere else on earth, where government is servant not master. People believe that the often ancient institutions devised to protect them from unaccountable power are being compromised and weakened. There will be a heavy price to pay if their message is ignored.