Queen’s Speech

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Higgins (Con)]

My Lords, this Queen’s Speech gives us an appropriate occasion to take stock, as we enter the finishing strait for the coalition agreement, ahead of the general election, before we become preoccupied with manifestos, and so on. The central piece of the Queen’s Speech is certainly on the economic side of things. Indeed, it begins,

“my Government’s legislative programme will continue to deliver on its long-term plan to build a stronger economy and a fairer society”,

and to,

“strengthen the economy and provide stability and security, my Ministers will continue to reduce the country’s deficit”.

It is now apparent that the policy that this Government have pursued on the economy was the right one, unlike a number of others advocated by the Opposition, and it is fortunate that we have a fixed-term Parliament so that we will have a period in which the fruits of the improvement in the economy can become more apparent. Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that progress in reducing the deficit has been slower than we hoped. Indeed, the target has been put back. In that context, it would be very important for the manifesto of the Conservative Party and, I would hope, of the other parties, to make it clear that we are determined to reduce the deficit entirely and to get around to reducing debt and reducing the burden on our children and grandchildren. There is still a long way to go in that regard. None the less, we have the fastest-growing economy. We have seen the IMF radically change its view of the British economy and the policy that we are pursuing; it is now very much in favour of what we have been doing and, indeed, have done.

Of course, there are still a number of dangers ahead, not least the rather precarious international political situation, and with regard to the eurozone. We are inclined to think that the eurozone crisis is over. The problem is that the eurozone structure and the extent over which it is operating geographically are fundamentally flawed. They may sort it out for the moment, but inevitably, as time goes on, it will continue to suffer very serious strains. That may jeopardise the future of the UK economy.

I say all this because I see no very clear alternative being put forward by the official Opposition. We have had a number of particular initiatives on fuel prices or whatever it may be, most of them abandoned very quickly after being put forward.

This is also an opportunity for us to take stock of a number of other matters. Perhaps inevitably, I shall mention one constitutional matter and some institutional matters. The constitutional one is, of course, the question of an elected House of Lords. As we approach the election, while the Liberal Democrats will no doubt include something on this subject in their manifesto, both the main political parties would be very foolish to do so. The reality is that the House of Commons has spoken; it now understands this issue, and it is not going to go ahead in agreeing to an elected House of Lords. Therefore, it would be very foolish for parties to endanger the programme that they wish to implement otherwise by including that in a manifesto. We ought to have learnt the lesson on that issue.

I am also slightly concerned about the position with regard to the House itself. I rather despair of hoping that some Members will stop referring to “the noble Minister”, when noble Ministers do not exist. There are noble Lords, but not noble Ministers. Indeed, even in this debate the same thing has turned up. But there are other important issues. We agreed some while ago to the use of iPads in the Chamber, but we have a very clear rule that speeches should not be read. Therefore, I was rather appalled to sit in on a debate recently where I regret to say that a Member of the Bishops’ Bench read his entire speech word for word from his iPad. I do not know whether he was in communication with any higher authority but, at all events, I thought that it was a rather unfortunate development.

It is tremendously important that we do something to adjust the balance in this House between legislation and general debate. My noble friend the government Chief Whip is very clear that the length of recesses recently has not been greater than normal. At all events, they have certainly seemed longer than normal, and there are a number of important issues that we could have spent time debating in that period—not least the crisis in Ukraine and the problems in Europe. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Tugendhat in this regard. It is quite extraordinary that we have not debated Ukraine in this House, and the problems arising with regard to Russia. My noble friend dealt with the issue very clearly. I managed to get a topical Question in the ballot, which came up a couple of weeks ago, but that is the only occasion when we have really tackled this problem. We have to face the fact that there is a change in our relationship with Russia. Whether it is true or not, it is widely reported that Mr Putin’s doctorate was on the use of economic power as a political weapon. We also ought to have a debate on NATO. We seem to have a defence organisation that is concerned with military matters, totally ignoring the fact that economic weapons are being used as well. As a result of that, we have been very ineffective in taking action on the position in international law and the treaty agreements with regard to Crimea. We have been pretty powerless, given the dependence of Germany and other countries on gas supplies, and so on.

Equally, we could have a very important debate on Europe, ahead of any proposed renegotiations. Again, we have not done that. So I would hope that we can have more time given to general debates.

The problem is in part a very fundamental one: we in the House of Lords have suffered from the way that the Labour Government, in a practice unfortunately followed by the Conservative Government, programmed their business. The result is that, as we well know—the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is not in her place, but she and I know this—Bills came here time and again with much of them not debated at all. There have certainly been a number of very big debates where that has been the case. The result is that we are spending all our time on legislation and virtually no time on general debates that might be of great use in holding the Government to account and informing them, given the level of expertise in this House.

Finally, I want to make a specific point with regard to a proposal in the gracious Speech for a Bill to,

“bolster investment in infrastructure … to improve economic competitiveness”.

I am very worried, as an economist, about the way in which we look at investment proposals. Traditionally, we have done it by raising capital, investing the capital and hoping to get a return on it, using discounted flow and all the other technical issues, with which I shall not burden the House now. Instead of that, we have seen increasingly with infrastructure projects, whether it is the renewal of railway equipment or wind farms, the use of the pricing mechanism to raise the money to make the investment. Those higher prices will very often be paid by people who will not live to see the benefit of that investment. Perhaps one can argue from an intergenerational point of view that this is only fair, given that we are in danger of landing our children and grandchildren with a lot of debt, but we will also give them a lot of infrastructure for which we have paid a far greater sum than is proportionate to the benefit we will derive from it. The Treasury uses the so-called yellow book as the basis for making these investment decisions. I do not think that they are being made correctly at present. I do not think that it is right to raise money by putting the cost on existing suppliers for the reason I have mentioned. This is a Bill that we will have to debate carefully and there are a number of others in the programme. However, I also think the case for having rather more general debates in the run-up to the general election is very strong indeed.