King’s Speech

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my condolences to the very moving tributes paid to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. I had not been here long enough to know him well, but, from what I have heard today, I am sure that he would want us all to continue to strive for the justice and rule of law that he worked for throughout his life. I send my condolences to his wife and daughters.

I congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, and the noble Lords, Lord Houchen and Lord Bailey, on their excellent and thoughtful maiden speeches. It is a huge honour to be asked to respond for the Opposition to today’s King’s Speech debate on home affairs, crime, justice and devolution. Today’s debate has shown the great strength and diversity of expertise in your Lordships’ House.

It was so moving yesterday to hear His Majesty refer to

“the legacy of service and devotion”

left by Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. His Majesty has continued in that honourable tradition of service to our country, as he took on the considerable weight of monarchy in the midst of his grief and sorrow at the loss of his beloved mother. It was a privilege to take part yesterday in the first King’s Speech for 70 years—it was my first King’s Speech since I entered your Lordships’ House—and to see at first hand the ceremony that we all value as part of our history and tradition.

On a personal note, Her late Majesty had a special role in the life of my home town of Stevenage, which was designated as Great Britain’s first new town on 11 November 1946—77 years ago on Saturday. Almost the entire life and development of our town took place under Her late Majesty’s reign. As an Elizabethan town, we were delighted to welcome her on a number of occasions, and we hope that King Charles will also want to visit. I cannot promise that he will be overwhelmed by our largely 1960s and 1970s architecture, beauty being very much in the eye of the beholder—I might love it, but we all have our own opinions—but I feel sure that he will be impressed by the outstanding community spirit, which is built on the foundations introduced by our early new town pioneers. This means that our motto,

“The heart of a town lies in its people”,


still holds good after seven decades.

But the people of our town, as with people across our country, are struggling, as mentioned by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York. We have seen the combined impact of the worst cost of living crisis in living memory, a severe and worsening housing crisis, and public services brought to their knees by 13 wasted years, which have seen the economy, opportunity and aspiration steadily decline. We have seen a failure to plan for, or tackle, the key issues that could help drive Britain’s future—the green, digital and medical revolution. That leaves communities with the sense that they are invisible to political leaders—even more so among our younger citizens, so powerfully advocated for by the noble Lord, Lord Bailey.

Worse than that are the horrors unveiled by the Covid inquiry, which has revealed the chaos, lack of direction and lack of compassion at the heart of government—all mentioned by my noble friend Lady Henig. The noble Lord, Lord Sedwill, described at the inquiry today an atmosphere of a Government who were “brutal and useless”. People feel that government is ever further away from them, which was further characterised last week by a Home Secretary whose priority, rather than tackling the root causes of homelessness that devastate so many lives, was to remove the tents that provide a last lifeline for the most vulnerable who are on our streets. My noble friends Lady Chakrabarti and Lord Dubs, as well as the noble Lords, Lord Dholakia, Lord Roberts and Lord German, all mentioned that issue. In the Home Secretary’s view, homelessness is a “lifestyle choice”. No wonder there has been an outcry from so many respected organisations engaged in helping the homeless, from Shelter and Crisis to the National Housing Federation and the Chartered Institute of Housing. They speak with one voice; they told the Home Secretary in a powerful joint letter:

“Sleeping on the street is not a lifestyle choice. Laying blame with people forced to sleep rough will only push people further away from help into poverty, putting them at risk of exploitation. At the extreme end we will see an increase in deaths and fatalities which are totally preventable”.


In the course of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, we tried very hard to get the Vagrancy Act repealed. During the debate on LURB I cited nine Acts that are directly in place to deal with anti-social behaviour and aggressive begging. Local councils recognise that this is an issue and many, such as my own, have introduced Housing First schemes that give people a roof over their head and support to tackle their complex needs—yet we are still waiting for the repeal of the Vagrancy Act.

We might have hoped that the King’s Speech yesterday would at least attempt to address the critical issues facing the people of our country and the impact on them of issues overseas. Instead, we saw a huge missed opportunity from a Government who have clearly given up on governing, and given up on delivering a serious plan for growth, economic renewal or the future of the country. Instead, we got a Prime Minister who spent last week, presumably having got through the paper sift for his next job, undertaking a preliminary interview with Elon Musk, then introducing a parliamentary programme that does little more than tinker at the edges—a programme so light that it is shadow-boxing with the issues of the day rather than proposing the heavyweight strategy we need to deal with the complex issues we face.

Of course, there are things we can support, such as ensuring that criminals face the courts for their sentencing. I pay tribute to the bereaved parents of Lucy Letby’s murders, and to Cheryl Korbel, whose daughter Olivia was murdered, for their campaigning on this. We support continuing to tackle smoking and banning unlicensed pedicabs in London—but what a shame that we do not have devolved government in this country, which would enable this without making it a national issue. We support the work on Martyn’s law and Jade’s law, but too much in the Speech had to be rowed back because the Prime Minister is too weak to stand up to his Back-Benchers—such as on the steps on leasehold—and too weak to stand up to his Home Secretary. So much of the promised legislation has been pushed on to the back burner. Then we saw a raft of rehashed announcements of things that we have heard about so many times before but that have not been delivered, such as those ably articulated by the noble Lord, Lord German.

The words in the King’s Speech:

“My Government will act to keep communities safe from crime, anti-social behaviour, terrorism and illegal migration”


must have a very hollow ring to our communities and the families that live in them. What they see is the visual evidence on their streets of drug crime growing by 19% a year. What they see is what the British Retail Consortium describes as an epidemic of shoplifting, costing £953 million a year. Just yesterday we heard from the RAC Foundation of a 77% increase in bilking, or stealing petrol from forecourts, with more than 39,000 incidents between July and September this year. Town centre crime has increased, yet there are 10,000 fewer police and PCSOs on our streets and in our town centres than there were in 2015, leaving shop staff feeling at risk and vulnerable. What they see is violence against women and girls reaching epidemic proportions, with more than 1.6 million women a year experiencing domestic abuse and more than 600,000 sexual assaults. What they see is their councils left powerless because of lack of funds to deal with epidemics of fly-tipping and graffiti.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, referred to the tragedy of knife crime that is happening to our young people. People need and deserve a police service in which they can feel confident and which will serve our communities. In spite of the day-to-day hard work of the vast majority of our police and police staff, who do an outstanding job, the lack of clarity from the Government, the drastic cuts that saw skill and experience drained away from our police service and the abject failure to deal with issues such as mental health continue to put unprecedented and intolerable pressure on our police services.

These issues were mentioned by the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, whose telling figure of four crimes per hour per borough is a stark reminder that there is lots more to do here. Throw into that mix that we now have a Home Secretary who, far from taking her responsibility to enable cohesive and united communities seriously, is actively seeking to divide and disrupt them, and we have a perfect storm. If the public do not see a Government taking seriously what they see before their eyes, no wonder they feel ignored. That is why Labour has pledged to turn things around.

We will reverse the collapse in the proportion of crimes charged. We will rebuild public confidence in policing and the criminal justice system and restore the rule of law on Britain’s streets. At a time when half the public say they never see a bobby on the beat, we will restore neighbourhood policing. My noble friend Lord Ponsonby cited the figure of 13,000 more officers and PCSOs on our streets and introducing a new community policing guarantee to make our streets safe. We will reverse the decision to downgrade the response to shoplifting under £200, making it easier to take action against repeat offenders and ending the farce of offending impunity. We will create a new specific offence of assault against retail workers, because everyone has the right to feel safe at work.

On the criminal justice system, there are noble and learned Lords in this House who will know far better than I the impact of the biggest Crown Court backlog on record, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Blunkett, with 64,709 cases outstanding in June this year. Listening to the speeches of noble and learned Lords has been one of the greatest highlights of my first year in your Lordships’ House. My own case of being violently harassed by an offender on my own doorstep, a terrifying experience, took 18 months and three visits to court to resolve—a harrowing and worrying experience for a victim. The failures in our system leave thousands of victims without legal advice and support. My daughter’s journey as a victim of domestic abuse and then stalking saw her given a date for her first court hearing on the date of her son’s first day at school. He was four years old. She told the court she would not be able to make it, and it said she would be in contempt of court if she did not turn up on that date. Victims are very lucky indeed to have the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, working on their behalf.

When we add to this situation the reports that our prison population has reached maximum capacity, at more than 88,000, leading to judges being ordered, or strongly encouraged, not to impose jail sentences, we have to wonder just how the Government intend to implement the Victims and Prisoners Bill. Sending prisoners abroad to serve their sentences is an overt admission of failure. The botched privatisation then renationalisation of the Probation Service has brought chaos and a loss of valuable experience at a time when this service is critical.

It is a fact that, under this Tory Government, eight out of 10 crimes are committed by someone who has at least one previous conviction. Labour will reverse the collapse in the proportion of crimes solved, fast-track the recruitment of detectives to plug the current shortage of 7,000, remove burdensome redaction rules to speed up charging decisions and save police time, and set up a new charging commission made up of former chief constables and prosecutors and chaired by the former Victims’ Commissioner, Vera Baird, to devise new plans to bring more criminals to justice. We will put rape and serial sexual offence units in every police force and have dedicated courts for rape trials.

I now turn to devolution. Having spent much of the last 10 years on English devolution and most of my first year in your Lordships’ House immersed in the depths of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, you would think I had had enough of that. Sadly, that Bill, like this King’s Speech, was a huge missed opportunity to create the kind of change that would drive Britain’s future. The noble Lords, Lord Bruce and Lord Stunell, both referred to this. It is astonishing that there was nothing in the King’s Speech to help grow our economy by devolving decision-making to the local areas that know best what will work, including, as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York referred to, those that include rural areas and towns rather than cities. The gracious Speech was certainly devo-lite.

The UK is one of the most politically and economically centralised countries in Europe, which leaves us stuck in a cycle of worsening inequality. It is hard to see how the levelling-up Bill will change that, as much of it has the effect of centralising decision-making, not devolving it. The Government’s devolution programme over the past 13 years has been characterised by a lack of ambition, with the odd deal being struck but only when local areas agree to governance arrangements imposed on them by the centre, along with a wasteful Hunger Games-style funding model. This system results in areas being pitted against each other, without any overarching vision for the future of Britain.

We believe that devolution settlements and fair funding should be made available to all parts of the country and would introduce new legislation for that in our first King’s Speech. This would involve a significant expansion of economic devolution in England, with local leaders using a range of powers to drive growth and prosperity in communities across the country. New economic devolution will give English towns and cities the tools they need to develop credible, long-term growth plans, with bespoke packages of powers to support new internationally competitive economic clusters in high-value industries, creating high-skilled jobs in their areas.

The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, referred to the excellent work on common frameworks undertaken under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lady Andrews. I worked with her on some of that and I agree with what he said. There was nothing in the Speech on the essential question of how the UK Government will develop devolution and the relationship between the home nations, or on how the Government will prioritise getting Stormont serving the people of Northern Ireland again. The noble Lord, Lord Bew, reminded me of the very powerful messages of hope that have come not from politicians but from the people of Northern Ireland to the people of the Middle East. As noble Lords have said, it is very important that the resources necessary to drive that forward are put in place.

In recent years, Ministers have consistently ignored and overridden the Sewel convention, including during the United Kingdom Internal Market Act. Through the commission on the UK’s future led by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Labour has proposed ways of modernising and updating our constitutional arrangements, improving the process of intergovernmental relations and putting more power into people’s hands.

In conclusion, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken today. All that the people of our communities can see, after 13 years of Conservative government, is a party that has given up on governing—a legacy of broken politics and a failure to take back our streets from gangs, drug dealers and fly-tippers or to focus on delivering the prison places we need to keep our streets safe. The best they could come up with on that was letting criminals out early. There was nothing in the King’s Speech to put communities at the heart of policing and to make community policing something to be proud of again. They have not even kept their pledge to stop the boats: the asylum backlog has surged to 175,000, nearly 34,000 people have come in over 700 small boats and over £8 million a day is being spent on hotel places.

We will, as we always do in your Lordships’ House, do our very best to improve the legislation that comes before us, but where is the radical legislation that can bring back the optimism, confidence and vision for the country, which, to use the words of my noble friend Lord Blunkett, has been denuded of hope? Where are the big ideas for Britain’s future? We agree with the Prime Minister that it is time for a change, but he will persuade no one that he is the change they want to see when he has been at the heart of the failure so far. After the hollowing out and undermining of our criminal justice system for 13 years, people believe what they see on their streets, not vacuous promises supported by a minuscule tinkering at the edges. The change we need is a general election. The change we need is a Labour Government.