Queen’s Speech

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the gracious Speech. I note that there are 21 Bills—too many in my judgment—but I can applaud the vast majority since they are focused on one-nation Conservatism. En passant, I note that there is a key Bill on prison reform. I am a man of Bedford, where John Howard was the great prison reformer. John Bunyan was put in Bedford jail and Hanratty was the last man to be hanged there, following the A6 murders. I hope that we have done enough thorough, in-detail, pre-research in relation to the all-important reform of our prisons.

In my judgment, the Chancellor has set a clear financial strategy which I greatly applaud. Now is the time for implementation. I will comment on business and health matters. An element of business is the situation with Tata and British Steel. I want to thank the Secretary of State and the Minister of State for the time, energy, work and commitment they have put in to finding a solution. I had the privilege of working in India for a couple of years. I know the Tata company and I know in some depth the way in which the Indian community negotiates. I say to my noble friend who has to do a lot of it that I hope she has plenty of patience. She will need it. But the longer you sit there, the more likely you are to be successful. If the pension area is a problem, as a trustee of the parliamentary pension fund, I can say that no one particular format is a solution that can be implemented anywhere. There is flexibility and I hope that we will find an answer there, too.

I turn to exports. The House will recognise that, certainly in my judgment, five Ministers in charge of our exports over five years is not a good strategy. It is not one likely to produce any consistency. We can see the results in the balance of trade. Now we have a new Member of our House to take over that role, my plea to my own Government is that he will stay in position for at least three years and agree a strategy with the CBI and other relevant parties so that we can move forward and reduce what is really a pretty poor situation on the balance of trade.

London airport has been mentioned. Here is a golden opportunity to have a bigger hub airport to assist all our exporters, be they the SME Export Track 100 group, the City, or anybody else. The third runway is a must. I speak as someone who was only an RAF pilot but, by the time this runway is implemented, we will have a new generation of aircraft, with better fuel consumption, lower noise, a lighter carbon footprint from sustainable fuels and better air traffic control allowing better and less-noisy stacking. The people of south-west London should welcome all this.

Moving from high-tech to low-tech, I declare an interest in that my daughter has two shops in Bedford. There has been some progress on business rates but why does the poor, hard-pushed retailer have to wait until 2020 to move from increases based on RPI to increases based on CPI? Why can that not be done next year to help them a bit? We have a situation where 40% of trade is now done online. No business rates are paid by online traders. We have to find a way to bring about a balance between high-street and online trading. In my judgment, we should learn from the United States and look long and hard at a sales tax.

Thirdly, in the business area, I turn to the PM’s conference on fraud and the effect it may have on the Overseas Territories. Again, I declare an interest in that my youngest son is a lawyer in the Cayman Islands. That part of the Overseas Territories has worked really hard over the last three or four years to produce a register that is legitimate and to build up a financial infrastructure with it. It is available to the authorities here in the UK at 24 hours’ notice. I believe that that is as much as we can ask them to do.

This brings me to the USA, which is not co-operating at all but just siphoning off business from our Overseas Territories. Delaware, Wyoming, Nevada and now South Dakota are proudly advertising in the Financial Times and they are all taking business from our legitimate Overseas Territories. I do not think that is acceptable. If we are to have a global conference in 2017 with the USA as co-host, it is time that was sorted out.

I will mention three issues in relation to health. I ask Her Majesty’s Government to think again about changing the position of the specialist Cancer Drugs Fund to one where it is controlled by NICE and the commissioning committees. I suggest to the House that it should stay where it is because it is working well and we have a long way to go to equal what is done in the rest of Europe.

Secondly, palliative care is a disgrace. No GP—or very few—visits dying people. Young doctors are not even taught any element of palliative care. That whole area needs urgent attention.

Thirdly, as regards GP numbers and work patterns, the King’s Fund has just produced a report showing that 90% of trainee GPs and 70% of women GPs want to work part-time. On top of that, we have a shortage of GPs. This situation needs urgent review in terms of both numbers at our medical schools and rebalancing the figure from the 60%—and growing—female intake to somewhere nearer a 50-50 intake. Given our expenditure on health and on their training, we need to ensure that they commit to work full-time in the National Health Service. I declare a past interest in that my wife ran a large GP practice, had three children and helped me in my work as a Member of Parliament. That was not out of the ordinary in the days when she was a GP, which was not so long ago. If my suggestion is not taken up, I say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that there is no hope of having seven-day care.

I conclude with a very serious subject, which is prompted by just seven words in the gracious Speech—namely,

“the primacy of the House of Commons”.

Your Lordships will recall that I was Chairman of Ways and Means in another place from 1992 to 1997, charged with running all the committees and taking all the constitutional debates on the Floor of the House, including 25 days on Maastricht. I am acutely aware of the angst felt by the Government over the treatment of amendments to the welfare Bill. I warned the Government at the time that the amendments sent to your Lordships’ House should never have come here as they involved major changes involving billions of pounds and were in effect money Bill matters. I trust, therefore, that in the cold light of day and upon further reflection, Her Majesty’s Government will not be tempted to put any new check on your Lordships’ legitimate role to revise as we see fit any Bill that is sent to this House.