Queen’s Speech

Lord Razzall Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Razzall (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is no surprise that there are a number of key omissions from the gracious Speech. We all have our favourites. First, where are the detailed proposals to level up? The Tories won the election in 2019 and did well last week because the electorate believed that they had a plan to turn this slogan into action. Why do we have to wait until later this year to discover what that plan is?

Secondly, as other Members have said, why have the Government’s proposals for social care been reduced to one sentence?

“Proposals on social care … will be brought forward”,


the speech says. We have been many times through the history of the majority Tory Government since 2015, ducking the implementation of the Dilnot recommendations from 2009. As other speakers reminded us, the Prime Minister said in 2019 that he had a detailed plan for social care. Where is it? Is it that he is frightened by the reaction to Theresa May’s proposals in the 2017 election campaign?

Thirdly, there is no reference to what steps will be taken to ameliorate the effect of Brexit. Where are the sunlit uplands promised in the referendum campaign? Both the Bank of England and the OBR expect negative long-term effects on the UK economy from the trade deal signed with the EU; the Bank estimates that, in the long term, UK trade will be 10.5% lower and GDP and productivity 3.25% lower than with frictionless trade. Of course, it is SMEs who are the worst hit.

I have given examples in the past of businesses seriously damaged by the effect of the trade deal, such as the SME selling second-hand combine harvesters, which has to pay inspectors to produce complex certificates for the machines, causing significant cost and delay. There is also the bike manufacturer struggling to cope with different VAT regimes across 27 countries; the Scotch whisky producers with labelling requirements that often require small companies to set up a distribution company in Europe, significantly reducing profit; and the Nottingham company—it makes synthetic hairpieces for cancer patients—whose essential just-in-time supply chain in Germany has now collapsed. These examples are not indicative of the teething troubles that the Government talk about. They are examples of real damage that Brexit has done to many SMEs without any apparent economic advantage.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, told us, the major omission from the gracious Speech is any reference to a credible fiscal framework to ensure the smooth reduction of the gigantic government debt, now in excess of £2 trillion, albeit with a significant proportion held by the Bank of England. A recent report from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, with participation from the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, and Lord Darling, has five key recommendations. First, the date of fiscal events such as the Budget should be fixed well in advance, not decided on the whim of the Government, and should be subject to greater parliamentary scrutiny. Secondly, the OBR should publish reports ahead of these events, addressing key issues and numbers, not just giving them privately to the Treasury. Thirdly, the Chancellor should outline fundamental fiscal choices under different scenarios to be assessed by the OBR—

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Alderdice) (LD)]

We will move on as the noble Lord has lost his connection. I call the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.

International Women’s Day

Lord Razzall Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

My Lords, I feel both proud and disappointed—proud to be participating in this extremely important debate and disappointed that more of my sex have not seen fit to participate. As the Minister said at the beginning, if we are to talk or do things about equality for women, men have just as much a role to play as women.

There is no doubt that since I was born there has been progress in the role of women in the three significant activities of my life—first, in legal education and the practice of law. I did not go to Cambridge University, but many people may be surprised to realise that only in 1947, when I was four years old, were women admitted as full members of the university for the first time. I went to Oxford. When I went in the 1960s, with few exceptions—I think there were four all-female colleges—the colleges were all male. I read law there. Of the 200 students who read law at the same time as me across the university, only five were women—including the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, who unfortunately is not in her place today. Now, of course, all colleges at Oxford are mixed and there will be equal numbers of men and women reading law. I then joined a law firm that had been founded in the mid-18th century and had had no women partners at all. It had never had a woman partner from 1750 when the firm was founded to 1966 when I joined it. By the time I left, 25 years later, there were a significant number of women partners.

In the second area of my life, politics, there has clearly been a sea change in women MPs, as everybody has said. When I was born in 1943, there were only 13 women MPs; there are 220 today. Until the 1958 legislation to create life peerages, there were in your Lordships’ House only a handful of Scottish women Peers. Of course, the 1958 legislation was violently opposed at the time by numbers of your Lordships’ House. Indeed, the father of a colleague of mine, who had better remain nameless, said:

“This is a House of men, a House of Lords. We do not wish it to become a House of Lords and Ladies.”—[Official Report, 31/10/1957; col. 690.]


Fortunately, Harold Macmillan took no notice of that at the time and the legislation was passed. The success of that, as far as women is concerned, reminds one—looking around this Chamber—of Christopher Wren’s plaque in St Paul’s Cathedral: “Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.”

The third area of my life has been cricket, where there have been very significant changes. After a lengthy campaign, there are now women members of the MCC. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, grinning at that. The rise in the popularity of international women’s cricket would have delighted Lady Rachael Heyhoe Flint, who sadly is no longer with us. The success of women’s cricket is shown by the fact that you are much more likely to hear an international woman cricketer interviewed on the “Today” programme than you are to hear a government Minister.

But this is no time for complacency. As one of the noble Baronesses said, we are only 39th in our proportion of women Members of Parliament. It is quite surprising, as someone indicated, that Rwanda is first and the next four are Cuba, Bolivia, the UAE and Mexico. If we look at the role of women throughout the world, the statistics are shocking. An estimated 303,000 women worldwide die in childbirth or during pregnancy every year; the UN says that on average women earn 24% less than men; one woman in three is a victim of sexual or physical violence; only 48 women have been awarded Nobel prizes, and 822 men; and it is calculated that one woman in four alive today was a child bride.

The outlook, however, is not all bleak. I do not always agree with Boris Johnson, but I was impressed that when asked to choose the five women he most admired, one of them was Malala Yousafzai—the girl who was shot when campaigning for education and is now studying PPE at Oxford. Along with many noble Lords, I welcome the appointment of the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, to be at the forefront of promoting girls’ education throughout the world—more power to her elbow.