Queen’s Speech

Lord Lennie Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, it is getting late; we are getting towards the fag-end of this debate and feeling tired. Much if not all that needs to be said has been said—with great respect to the noble Lords who will follow my remarks. I have culled those remarks hugely, and really have only three things to say.

First, I wish to address the remarks of my noble friend Lord Dubs; unfortunately he is not in the Chamber at present, but no doubt he will read what I have to say about letterboxes and his experience of a bad back while campaigning. I had a similar experience in Redcar and I was with two postal workers at the time. I said, “You guys must be fed up to the teeth with these”, and they said, “Funny you should say that. We are, and we’re doing something about it”. Apparently, there is a European health and safety standard, number whatever it is, and as we speak they are pursuing a case about a minimum height for letterboxes, through whatever channels are available, to standardise them—and not before time, we campaigners would say.

I associate myself with the remarks that have been made in defence of the Human Rights Act. It is an extremely important piece of legislation. I am not going to repeat what has been said about it, but defend it we will and defend it we must. It is now part of the fabric of our country and our role within the whole of the European Union.

I associate with those who are calling for a constitutional convocation or convention or body that will do the business of bringing together an assessment of where we are as a British constitution and, more importantly, where we intend to go. Those who know me well know that I am not critical of Tony Blair. He was my leader, he brought me in to work for the Labour Party, and I had a thoroughly stimulating time in that role. One thing I think we—not him personally, but we as a government—lost sight of was, having set up the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, we thought we had reached the end of that policy. We thought that was the job done whereas, in fact, it was only the start of matters and we had not thought through the consequences year on year, decade on decade thereafter or, indeed, the consequences for England and the United Kingdom as a whole.

There are two questions I would like the Minister to address in his response. One is about English votes for English laws. All I have read about this seems to point to any such law being completely unnecessary because no one has yet persuaded me that a law has yet been passed that does not have consequences beyond England, given that all laws are governed in part though Treasury funds, and how Treasury funds are allocated in one part of the United Kingdom has consequences for all other parts of the United Kingdom. Will the Minister enlighten us about whether in the last Parliament any law was passed that could be described as an English-only law and therefore the province of English MPs only? I also associate myself with the remarks about two tiers of MPs being a complete nonsense in the other place.

My second question is about the position of the north-east, which is where I am based. I am from Tynemouth. Currently, the north-east is the new squeezed middle in Labour Party parlance—we have consigned the previous squeezed middle, along with set-in-stone pledges, to somewhere hidden from view, hopefully for the rest of time. The new squeezed middle is between the devo-max proposals for Scotland, the devo-Manc proposals, as they are now known, around Manchester and the devo proposals agreed, as I understand it, for Leeds and Sheffield and possibly for Liverpool and associated councils thereabouts. In the north-east, we have a combined authority. Seven local authorities combined some time ago to co-ordinate a range of important activities, plans and policies around the north-east, and they have been doing a lot of work in preparation for discussions with government to gain power and control over a range of matters, such as economic development, planning, housing, social care and so on. The question is: are the Government saying that, however good the proposals, however important the matters raised, however good the policies produced, the precondition will be an elected mayor in the north-east or the parts of the north-east that combined to seek to take advantage of the Government’s proposals to devolve responsibility and budgets within England? If that is the case, as my noble friend Lady Quin said, it makes a nonsense of the purpose of the policy. Is it to improve conditions and standards and opportunities for citizens throughout England, or is it to impose a system of governance that the centre will control and impose upon all parts over England over time in order to retain the whip hand?

Finally, on matters of devolution and constitutional change, I would conclude by saying that if we act in too great haste, we will come to regret our actions for a long period of time thereafter.