King’s Speech

Lord Morse Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morse (CB)]

My Lords, in the gracious Speech we hear once again the aspiration for a country that is fair for all, a nation in which opportunity is widely shared, justice is consistently applied and every citizen feels that they belong. This is powerful stuff and I doubt that anybody would disagree with it, but the real question is: is it borne out in reality? Do we actually deliver on it?

If we are to test that honestly, we should begin with a hard case, and I cannot think of a harder case than the Windrush generation, one of the most troubling scandals in recent public life. Here were citizens who came to this country, often at its invitation, and contributed over decades to our economy, public services and communities. Yet many found themselves wrongly classified, wrongly excluded and, in some cases, subject to profound injustice. This was not simply an administrative error. It was a systemic error, one in which process took precedence over people and warning signs were insufficiently heeded. The lesson here is not only about correcting past wrongs—important though that is—but about embedding a deeper awareness across government of the human consequences of policy.

A country that is genuinely fair for all must ensure that its systems are not only efficient but humane, not only consistent but sensitive to where that consistency involves injustice. That requires a culture that is both accountable and willing to question itself, and where restitution happens faster than at a snail’s pace, which is certainly applicable to this case. To coin a phrase, fairness delayed or maladministered is fairness denied.

We see a different, deeply serious challenge in the current upsurge of antisemitism. This is not an abstract concern. It is about Jewish citizens being able to feel safe going about their daily lives, whether they can participate fully in public life without fear and whether long-standing forms of prejudice are being sufficiently challenged whenever they appear. Antisemitism, like all forms of hatred, does more than harm those directly targeted. It undermines the fabric of trust on which a fair society depends. A society cannot be credibly fair if a group, such as our Jewish citizens, is persistently exposed to violence, hostility and exclusion. Addressing this requires not only firm enforcement of the law but a clarity of leadership and consistency of principle, especially when those principles are inconvenient to assert.

Alongside these issues, we should also reflect on the broader condition of our political life. In recent years, we have seen a notable degree of churn and instability: frequent changes in leadership, shifts in policy direction and increasingly hostile, fragmented and sometimes scandal-riven public discourse. This looks increasingly like instability rather than normal democratic change. That instability undermines confidence—not only confidence in capital markets and business, but confidence among the citizens of this country, who, after all, have no choice but to be deeply dependent on government for the services it provides, both during their lives as a whole and particularly when they are vulnerable at certain points. How confident are they that the Government will come forward with the services and support they require?

The aspiration of a country that is fair to all remains both right and necessary, but its credibility will be judged not by its wording but by its application: by how faithfully we learn from past failures such as Windrush; how firmly we confront prejudice in all its forms, particularly antisemitism; and how effectively we bring stability and consistency to our political life. Fairness is not a slogan; it should be something which affects every aspect of our activities.