King’s Speech

Lord Waldegrave of North Hill Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the well-argued speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Mattinson. I suspect we will have plenty more argument on that subject. However, today belongs to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, although we were privileged to hear a powerful maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Case.

Can this really be the troublesome young journalist for the Times with whom I used to have lunch in the early 1970s, in direct disobedience of the predecessor of the noble Lord, Lord Case, Sir Burke Trend, who had forbidden any contact with this dangerous figure? Can this ermined and gartered figure really be the same person? Yes, it is—my goodness, Burke would be surprised, but pleased.

The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, together with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, and the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, has put paid to a traditional part of the British constitution. Perhaps after some advice from the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, he put paid to Lord Melbourne’s dictum that “there is no damn merit about the garter”. This was an essential part of our constitution and laying it to rest, as it now finally has been, is to be welcomed.

I come not only to praise the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, but to say how much I valued our personal friendship over many years, plotting about more open government and many other things, and that we must listen to him. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, was before, I am a member of the Constitution Committee. I will put before fellow members, of whom I am only one, of course, that we should now be looking to the very present dangers that exist for our constitution and try to identify the weaknesses, bolster the strengths and say that sometimes there should perhaps be more legal backing, although the introduction of lawyers into the process of government is not always to be welcomed. We should look to the weaknesses while we have time because, like the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, I predict that this is going to come under grave attack, or is liable to, in the years ahead. It is no news to any noble Lords that, at the moment, we have powerful forces about in the political world of the United Kingdom who are blaming the instruments of government, and not their own policies, for the problems we face.

I believe there is, in a prominent position in this country, the son of a tool-maker. He should surely know the phrase, which we were all brought up with, that a bad workman blames his tools. It is not the independent Civil Service, or some imaginary deep state, or any of that nonsense, which stops good policy being made; it is that we have lost, in the House of Commons, the capacity to debate new legislation in the way it ought to be debated. That is at the heart of quite a lot of the ills and problems that this House now faces. It is considered, consensual patriotism—consensus in its broadest sense, which linked Sir Winston Churchill to Mr Ernie Bevin, two people who could hardly have been more different in background and in every other way—which leads to good long-term policy.

I, for one, hope in a small way to respond to the appeal from the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, and that the House as a whole listens carefully to what he says.