King’s Speech

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Over the many years I have seen him performing, he has been a brilliant contributor and we need to recognise that, because of his educational needs, he brings a particularly important thing to the attention of the House. He has done it again tonight, and I hope that the Education Minister is listening because what everybody with any form of special needs requires is recognition that they are just a bit different from the rest of us and that all of us are different. I hope that message is taken up.

This is probably about the 30th gracious Speech debate I have attended, and I always try, meticulously, to follow the recommendations suggested for the particular day. My problem is that my main obsessions these days are climate change and employment and neither of them actually appears in the titles for the day, so I have decided to use the energy security hook to mention some things which, broadly speaking, relate to climate change.

In that context, I congratulate the Minister, my noble friend Lord Whitehead, not only for sitting through 90% of this debate, which I know from experience is a terrible drag, but also for making clear that, despite all the shots that we are getting from all sides, including from some within the Labour movement, our commitment to our net-zero strategy remains. I was disappointed in the Opposition for effectively repeating and underlining that what was a good cross-party consensus for about 10 years has now entirely disappeared. I am really glad that the Minister made it clear that our commitment is to energy security through the use of renewable and nuclear energy. That is the investment we need to make, and we need to recommit ourselves to that.

Perhaps I can pick up a couple of other environmental issues. The water Bill is absolutely necessary but, as two or three noble Lords have already said, it is not enough. I have always advocated renationalisation of the water sector. I recognise that is not approved by any party in this House, but the second-best solution is actually the rationalisation of the regulator. However, that has to be for real. The fact that we have two or three regulators regulating the same sector, while the Environment Agency—the main regulator, in a sense—was starved of resources for 10 years during past Governments has meant that, effectively, the regulation of the water sector has not operated. We need stronger measures than are apparently going to appear in the Bill to deliver the water sector that we need.

My only other comment is to congratulate the maiden speakers in this House, while recognising that this debate has been primarily about the education sector. The Government have to think again about aspects of the interface between education and the development of technology. I say that energy security depends on having a just transition for the workforce, but so too for parts of the wider workforce the whole AI revolution is going to transform the white-collar sector in the way that the energy one has transformed its blue-collar sector. We need proper and effective manpower planning for that transition which is going to take place. I hope that the Government, in focusing on not just the FE end but the whole question of training and retraining, recognise that the technology challenge means a much more effective, and much more interventionist, programme of training, retraining and planning for the future workforce.