King’s Speech

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

How about that? Tuesday. Rewind, delete Hansard, replace with, “We will introduce this Bill on Tuesday of next week”. It is a good thing and we thank the noble and learned Lord for undertaking it.

The noble Lord, Lord Godson, discussed Prevent and the question of extremism. It is a concern I share with him. There are some undercurrents in the actions over the election that I think need to be examined and that is something we will do. Not to jump to any conclusions, but we need to look at doing that and we will undertake it in due course. There will be a cross-government approach to that. The noble Lord will know, as I know, that the Home Office alone dealing with this, or even the MoJ alone dealing with this will not be sufficient to deal with some of the underlying activity: we need to have community resilience through various government departments addressing those issues. It is something I had a responsibility for a hundred years ago, some time around 2007, and I look forward to having that responsibility once more.

The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, talked about conversion therapy. I give her the assurance that this will be a draft Bill: there will be an opportunity to get stuck in and give a view, and the Government will take a view when we have had a view—if that makes positive sense.

Members also raised the issue of fraud and what we will do on that. Again, I have been given responsibility for that by the Home Secretary and I will be assessing what we need to take forward on it. I have not yet done that because I am two weeks into the job, but it will be done, there will be an assessment and the Opposition and my noble friends can quiz me and hold me to account on what we do over a longer period of time than we currently have at the moment.

As a Minister, I give the House two assurances. If Members wish to see me about a particular issue, my door will be open—it is less trouble to open my door than it is to face parliamentary questions, debate and pressure downstream. My door will always be open if Members wish to have a discussion, collectively or individually. I am happy to engage, as will be my colleagues in the ministerial team. Where we have disagreements, as we will, we will vote on it and see what the outcome is, but I hope to work to the principle I mentioned earlier: to try to reach a consensus on “we can work it out”. I hope we do so in a civil, proactive and productive way.

Finally, this Government are about change. An election was fought on change and change is what the United Kingdom voted for: change to reduce reoffending, improve police performance, increase police numbers and put people back on the beat; change to take long-term action to tackle organised criminal gangs who are exploiting people crossing the channel; change to speed up the asylum system; change to improve outcomes regarding violence against women and girls; and change to tackle the real challenges we will face in this department. We will do so in a way that ensures we meet our international obligations, support communities and deal with our society in civilised, forward-facing way. I do not wish to go back to the debates of the late 20s. We need to go forward to ensure that we co-operate with our European partners, respect the law and deliver for those who elected my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and over 400 Members of Parliament to do a job for my party and, most of all, for our country. I want to work with Members of this House to do that, and I am pleased to commend the King’s Speech to this House.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, before we adjourn, I congratulate my noble friend on a wonderful maiden speech. We look forward to hearing from him many more times—as he is a Home Office Minister, we will be hearing from him every week.

My noble friend comes to the House with a formidable record; he is respected on all sides, respected in the other place, and we are lucky to have him here. I worked with him a couple of years ago. We were both sent to Liverpool to deal with some problems in the Liverpool Labour party. I can assure colleagues that it is an exciting and challenging place, and I am so pleased my noble friend was there with me.

Debate adjourned until tomorrow.