King’s Speech

Lord True Excerpts

Wednesday 13th May 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord True]

That this debate be adjourned until tomorrow.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, how nice it is to see our House without those railings today. It is an absolute pleasure to follow the wise and witty speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, and the noble Lord, Lord Roe of West Wickham. The noble Lord, Lord Roe, has had a brave and remarkable career of public service, which he was too modest to speak about, but his words only reinforce the great respect in which he is already held here. He was, among other things, a distinguished boxing champion. Perhaps if there is the risk of too many rounds of ping-pong this Session, the noble Baroness the Leader might send him to sort us out or maybe lift us out.

As for the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, I had the honour of serving with her on your Lordships’ Intergenerational Fairness and Provision Committee. She mentioned some differences that we occasionally have, but frankly I have been puzzled that no Government have ever picked up our joint recommendation to scrap the triple lock. However, it was good to hear in her speech today a little bit more about apprenticeships. The noble Baroness is the very model of sound sense and good reason, worn with wit, lightness and charm, as we heard today—and that is what your Lordships’ House is all about.

On the previous of these occasions, I began by congratulating the party opposite on its historic electoral success. I might leave that bit out this time. It is stormy weather today. I noticed that it was hailing this morning. It only rained on Rishi Sunak. What I can tell your Lordships is that I have paid my council tax, I never worked for the Red Cross, I never worked for the Ministry of Justice, and could not afford a Lamborghini to rev up fossil fuel in the faces of my Green electors. I have also never taken a £5 million cheque from a dodgy foreign donor over a fag and a pint.

To be serious for a moment, as Leader of the Opposition I cannot ignore the large gaps left on these Benches and the Cross Benches by the expulsion of dozens of our colleagues. We do miss them. Although we have welcome news that a minority will return, 1,784 years of experience have been lost to our House. It was a mighty rent and, in many ways, hurtful. It will be hard to forget, particularly with the huge threat of further expulsions hanging over the older Members in our House. We really must think very carefully about how far we let this process of expulsions go. We now have a Bill to remove peerages in the gracious Speech. I suppose we will have to call it “Peter’s law”. We will need to look very carefully at the details of that Bill too—its scope, its criteria and who decides, lest it ever become a licence for the social media lynch mob.

The heart rather sinks at No. 10 boasting about 37 Bills and draft Bills this Session. This is quite unbelievable. Too much legislation equates directly to too many demands on this House and long days that nobody wants on either side of this Chamber. Can the Leader confirm, when she winds up, how many of these Bills will start in this House?

I want to say something about procedure, because the great principle of our constitution is that the King’s Government must be carried on, if not quite like the “Carry On” film it has been in the last few days. The last Session was sometimes fractious, although the genuine good will in the usual channels, led by the noble Baroness, which I greatly appreciate, generally helped us through. However great the turnover of our Members, we must all try to preserve the ancient courtesies of this House. We are a House of self-regulation, and with that must go a high degree of self-restraint. The House values not the quantity of speeches but rather their quality, like the two we have heard today. Less is often more, except when it comes to good humour and focused, non-repetitive argument. The Companion must always be respected, and I support the initiative of our Leader in sending out what we hope will be a useful aide-memoire on some key points of behaviour.

I started the last Session by saying that having been on the receiving end of a record pounding in the number of defeats and amount of ping-pong from the party opposite, I hoped that the era of repetitive ping-pong would be over. Well, I confess that it did not always quite work out that way in the last Session, but I recommit to that objective, and this must be a reciprocal effort. Governments are entitled to legislation in due time—always via agreement, one hopes—but we need fewer, shorter, better-drafted Bills from all Governments. Massive, sprawling Bills inevitably spawn sprawling Committee stages. We also need, in other parts of the House, careful thought as to the range of amendments and restraint from all in repeating at length arguments made in detail in Committee or, for heaven’s sake, summing up at length what we have already heard.

We could also, and we dedicate ourselves to this, improve engagement in this House to settle lesser issues here, perhaps, in my submission, by better use of Third Reading and the time between Report and Third Reading. Far too often in recent years, minor issues have gone to ping-pong but could have been settled here earlier, and were settled. It is also important, I must tell my colleagues, that we adhere to the long-held principles of the Salisbury/Addison convention and, where we can, reinforce them. A manifesto Bill, however ludicrous or damaging it may seem to others, has a special status and should not be wrecked or voted down in this House. We on this side pledge to continue constructive discussions in the usual channels on these and related topics, but I will always fiercely defend the unique freedoms of this House—it is these that have made it the best revising Chamber in the world.

The gracious Speech was a bit disappointing. A good point is that there was no Chagos Bill. The bad points were more borrowing, no savings and—two serious points—no provision for defence, on which the noble Lord opposite was quite right, and no welfare reform, where we on this side have offered to work cross-party together. Those offers still remain. What an extraordinary time it is in politics when we have moved in under two years from the most crushing electoral victory to the most devastating political defeat. Even the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, cannot blame that on his predecessors. I see that the noble Lord is getting his old boss, Gordon Brown, back to help him. I thought our global envoy to the markets was called the Chancellor of the Exchequer; I wonder what she has done wrong.

I am always encouraged when a Prime Minister in trouble sends for people even older than me, but where is the future here? Instead, the Prime Minister wants to take us back to the past with a Bill that will be a massive Henry VIII power to reverse the decision of the British people to choose freedom from Brussels. He says that doing this will be the defining measure of his time in office. Did he perhaps not notice the repeated verdict of people in the north, the Midlands, and the east of England in the recent elections? I do not think that the hopes of the people of Barnsley were for more freedom of movement or more wrangling with unelected civil servants in Brussels about what can be called marmalade or Yorkshire pudding. The future of Britain is in trading in the wider, fast-growing world, not going backwards to tight linkage to the weakest and slowest-growing part of the world economy.

The gracious Speech promised a criminal justice Bill. Oh dear—yet another Home Office Bill for the noble Lord, Lord Hanson. At least he is being paid now, but my heart sinks. This Bill will

“deliver services the British people expect”.

This is the spin. I can firmly say that there is one service in criminal justice that the free people of this country have expected since the time of Magna Carta, and it is the right to trial by jury. Blocking jury trial was never threatened in any manifesto, and this side will exercise the full freedoms of the House to defend it.

We are also promised an energy independence Bill. We support the wider use of nuclear power, but the Bill promises more spending, more regulation and more pylons. That is not what people want. How can we be independent without the use of fossil fuels? We will seek to amend the Bill to open up drilling in the North Sea, support the Scottish economy and save the jobs of thousands of skilled workers.

We are also promised steel nationalisation—another blast from the past. That will not change the brutal economics of this great industry. Instead of pouring more and more borrowed billions into this, should we not be helping it and other vital heavy industries by stopping the crazed levies and taxes that have given the UK the highest energy costs in the world and destroyed jobs?

The gracious Speech talks of using

“the power of an active State”

to intervene in business, but the truth of the matter is that business and small businesses up and down the land are already reeling from misguided government regulation and bludgeoning taxes. Far too many of the measures in the Speech go back to the past. We on this side have put forward a costed set of serious alternative proposals on which we would have acted. We will try to inject their spirit into every measure in this programme.

The Government talk of answering the hopes of the British people. The British people said what they hoped for last Thursday, and it was an end to more of the same under a divided party and a floundering leadership. On one thing, however, I most vehemently agree: we need the “values of decency” and we need the lamp of faith. I trust that we all agree on the most urgent, condign action to eliminate the scourge of antisemitism that is a stain on our free society. I promise the noble Baroness that, on this and other things, wherever we can, we will work together across the Chamber. I beg to move that this debate be adjourned until tomorrow.