Queen’s Speech

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I rise to move that this debate be adjourned until tomorrow. There were moments during the aftermath of the recent general election when it looked as though the entire government might be adjourned until a good deal later than that. But this was avoided and now we have a Lib-Con—or is it a Con-Lib?—coalition, although it is, as yet, far from clear who conned whom.

We heard today the first results of the coalition in the form of the new Government’s legislative programme set out in the gracious Speech. It is my duty to congratulate the mover and the seconder of the main Motion on their most excellent speeches. Before I do so, perhaps I may make my own position clear: I speak as acting Leader of the Opposition until the elections on my Benches have taken place.

It gives me great pleasure to pay tribute to the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, for their speeches today; one Conservative, one Lib-Dem—a very coalitionesque pair. Sadly, I have not yet had the opportunity to discuss the Con-Lib coalition with the noble Earl. I look forward to it over tea. Some might regard the noble Earl as perhaps not a natural coalitioner. Some might think that his long espousal in this House of Conservative beliefs and values might make him less warm than others to the idea of being in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Indeed, some might think that his many remarks, interventions, points and speeches in your Lordships' House over the past 55 years might have let slip the merest glimpse of opposition not just to those of us on these Benches—whether in Government or in Opposition—but to those on what used to be the Liberal and Liberal Democrat Benches during the whole time of the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, in this House. What absolute chumps those people must feel now that he is happily chained to his noble friends the Liberal Democrats. These heady days of new politics clearly bring change even to the most conservative of Conservatives.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, has told us, she has a wealth of experience to assist the coalition. Raised in Pakistan, where she attended a convent school, she is well used to cultural challenges. Her long-standing interest in international relations and her work in the Middle East will stand her in good stead, for she is no stranger to conflict resolution.

My second duty is to congratulate the noble Lord the Leader of the House who I know will be proud to lead the whole House. I also congratulate all those who serve in this Government. Government is an honour, a privilege and a huge responsibility. It is daunting and difficult, but it is a delight. I am grateful also to the Government for continuing to observe the convention of providing a copy of the text of the gracious Speech to the Opposition in advance.

I am even more grateful to the Sunday Telegraph for providing that service even earlier. Leaking such a major statement is usually a sign in politics that the ship of state is in trouble. But I simply cannot believe that the good ship SS “Coalition” can already be in such choppy and unstable waters, built as it is on the rock-solid stability of the astonishingly close policy fit between the two coalition partners on, admittedly minor, issues, such as the economy, Europe, human rights, the environment, military action, nuclear power and many equally trivial matters.

Brutally ignoring both these minor differences and their own manifestos, the new coalition has moved with impressive speed from the moment when, the day after the election, the soon-to-be Deputy Prime Minister began to deliver to the Leader of the Conservative Party the election result he could not deliver himself, despite only a few months ago being 24 points ahead in the opinion polls. The Liberal Democrats have driven for Downing Street with a ruthlessness which is familiar to those of us who have fought them at a local level, but which appears to sit oddly with the woolliness with which they are still characterised by some.

We in this House have long known the noble Lord, Lord McNally, as a cheery fellow, the sage of St Albans, full of jokes and cracks, which were mainly, over the years, as the noble Baroness pointed out, at the expense of the Conservative Party. Little could the noble Lord have thought that when the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, said more than a quarter of a century ago that the Liberal Democrats should return to their constituencies and prepare for government it would turn out to be the Liberal Democrats preparing for a Conservative Government.

We feel that this Government business will not be easy for them. You can see from their enthusiastic faces, free of all trace of shame, how fully and joyously they have abandoned their proud and principled history for power, for the warm embrace of government and the many government jobs that Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Chris Huhne have been given. And why should they not be? The Benches opposite are full of bedfellows as completely natural as those of David Cameron and Nick Clegg themselves. Think of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, or the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill. What closer colleagues with more completely congruent attitudes could be imagined?

The noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Strathclyde, were once compared to a well-known make of satnav, but at least TomTom sends you on only one route at a time. The Lib-Con coalition is already showing signs of being all over the place, but if David Cameron and Nick Clegg can be likened to the great Morecambe and Wise, perhaps Tom and Tom could be likened to another great 1970s comic double act, that of Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett—although in the case of Tom and Tom, not so much the Two Ronnies as the Two Tommies.

But while I might jest today, governing this country is a serious business. None of us involved in politics could or should ignore the message we were all given in the result of the general election: no party won and the outcome gave no party a mandate to govern our country. It produced a hung Parliament that is taking and will take a considerable amount of adjustment to get used to. The Conservative Party has long considered itself to be the natural party of government. We shall see how natural the Conservatives feel it to be now that they are in government with a party setting out, on behalf of both parties, the kind of programme of constitutional reform already mapped out by the Deputy Prime Minister. Perhaps the new shared enthusiasm derives from the fact that the constitutional changes can be relatively inexpensive in monetary terms.

We shall see, too, how natural the Liberal Democrats find it to be a party of government. I suspect that this will be at least as large a cultural change for them as it will be for the Conservatives, sitting alongside a party which in many ways is considerably further to the left than the left of the Labour Party. But the Liberal Democrats will have to realise that they cannot be fish and fowl; they cannot be in government and in opposition. The attitude they have tried to take on the issue of Short money in the Commons and its equivalent in this House shows that they have not yet made that leap.

Government is a serious business, and so too is opposition. Good government benefits from strong opposition. We will be a principled and reasonable Opposition; we will be a confident Opposition; we will be a rigorous and vigorous Opposition, and we will hold this Government to account. But in this House politics, although important, is not everything. Much of what we do and how we work crosses party boundaries and the boundaries of those not in political parties at all. I am sure that there will continue to be issues in relation to this House which will best be dealt with by the political parties and the Cross Benches working together. So, as well as opposing the Government when we believe that they are not acting in the interests of the country, we will work with them and the Cross Benches on these issues.

We look forward to dealing with the range of issues in the Government’s legislative programme as set out in the gracious Speech. I would be grateful if, in his reply, the Leader of the House will indicate how many and which Bills are likely to be Lords starters. There will be big issues to tackle, such as some of the cuts announced yesterday by the coalition—seen until a few short weeks ago by the Liberal Democrats as wholly wrong, but seen by these Benches as wrong then and wrong now. They are wrong for the economy, wrong for the recovery and wrong for the country. For example, up to 80,000 youth jobs could go as a result of cuts in the future jobs fund. This is somewhat at odds with the proposals on welfare reform announced in the gracious Speech, which is supposed to be about getting people back to work.

Then there is the constitutional programme claimed by the Deputy Prime Minister to be the greatest piece of democratic reform since the great Reform Act of 1832. Over half of the population of this country who secured the franchise in the period since then—women, they are called—might take a different view, but after a pretty much all-male election and with the coalition Government being run pretty much as a boys’ club, women in this country might just prefer to differ, just as they might prefer to differ over the recent announcements in respect of rape and anonymity, which is a truly retrograde step for abused women.

I would mention two further specific issues, the first of which is the appointment of Peers. The coalition says that “in the interim”, appointments will be made to this House,

“with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election”.

All political parties? Although the BNP did not win a single seat in the election we have just had, it won more votes than a number of other parties which did secure parliamentary representation. Perhaps this is merely a self-interested way of upping the numbers of the Lib Dems in this House.

There is a serious constitutional matter lurking in this point. The working assumption of this House is that the Government of the day should not have a majority. For the House to carry out its proper function of scrutinising and revising legislation brought forward by the Government of the day, the Government of the day cannot and must not command a majority in this House. That should be and has been the case on the Floor of the Chamber and in Committee. Today the coalition already has a large majority in this House. That, I know, is already causing concern in a number of areas, in the House and beyond. The concern would be deeper and wider if the coalition pursued, through the appointment of Peers, a House which would see that already large majority increased still further.

Like the coalition’s proposals for boundary changes and constituency reorganisation in the Commons, these proposals are not the new politics. They are, in fact, pretty old politics, pretty discredited politics, and smack to many of a political fix to benefit those in power. We will oppose them. The convention that the Government should not have a majority in this House is an important—a fundamental—part of the way in which this House works.

So, too, is another convention—the Salisbury convention. Like all such conventions, the definition of the Salisbury/Addison convention is not necessarily clear or agreed but its purpose and effect are unquestionably both—for this unelected House eventually to give the Government of the day, whatever their political complexion, their business. For the purposes of the convention, the definition of the Government’s business is equally clear: it is the programme of the Government as set out in their manifesto.

Where does that now stand? The process of negotiation of which the two parties opposite are so proud has seen the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties not take a scalpel to their manifestos but take great swingeing lunges at them with political machetes. The two parties talk of new circumstances, new politics and a new age. If new circumstances, new politics and a new age mean that the manifestos of the parties opposite are no longer worth the paper they were printed on, what does this mean for the Salisbury convention? These and many other issues are matters for the future, not for this day, but they are important. I give the Benches opposite fair warning: we on these Benches will not allow you to trample over these matters for your own political benefit, your own political gain.

The Labour Party is now the only Opposition in this Parliament to the new coalition Government. We did not seek this role—we wanted the outcome of the election to be very different, as the noble Earl said—but we will not shirk it either; we will carry it out properly. We will be an effective Opposition but we will not oppose for the sake of it; that is not what the public want. Opinion polls showed that many people wanted a hung Parliament and the electorate duly delivered it. But polls showed, too, that people want a strong, decisive Government and the coalition is the answer of the parties opposite. We will wait to see if the two conflicting positions can be bridged.

For our part, as the Opposition, we will seek to illuminate, expose, criticise and harry and, where appropriate, to co-operate, help and support. We believe that, sooner or later, this coalition will not hold despite the efforts to fix the Commons. Its differences are all too palpable; its divisions are fundamental. In this House, where the coalition is led by the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord McNally, sooner or later—just like the two Ronnies—the two Tommies will have to part; they will have to pursue solo careers and solo programmes. The Government have said that they stand for freedom, fairness and responsibility. These are principles with which the whole country would agree. We will play our full part in ensuring that they live up to them.

I beg to move that this debate be adjourned until tomorrow.