Debate on the Address

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ian Blackford]

I will make some progress.

The most glaring omission in this Queen’s Speech is the complete lack of any immediate action to help people faced with the biggest inflationary crisis in 50 years. Democracy spoke last Thursday, but it is pretty evident that the Government have not listened and, certainly, given what we have seen today, that the Prime Minister has not learned. People turned out last week to punish the Prime Minister for the scandal of partygate. Let us not forget that the public know that this is the only Prime Minister who has been found to have broken his own laws in office and yet he still sits here as Prime Minister. That should shame this House as it shames us.

The electorate also turned out to punish a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who have been so consumed by the crisis of partygate that they have failed to lift a finger to fight the Tory-made cost of living crisis. As the Bank of England confirmed last week, the occupants of No.10 and No.11 Downing Street have now led us to the brink of recession. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) has said, the very first line of the Queen’s Speech should have been a commitment to bring forward an emergency budget. Where is it? Where is the emergency budget that we need? We need an emergency budget to tackle now the rising cost of energy, fuel and food.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is remarkable that, for a Government who say that they care about the cost of living crisis, there was absolutely nothing new in this Queen’s Speech around, for example, a mass home insulation programme? Such a programme would be the cheapest, most effective and fastest way of getting our emissions down, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and tackling climate emissions, and yet we have nothing new on that at all in this Queen’s Speech.

[Ian Blackford]

The hon. Lady is right: there is nothing in this Queen’s Speech to deal with the cost of living crisis, and nothing to deal with home insulation. In the Scottish Parliament, the collaboration between the SNP and the Greens is an example of two parties coming together to make sure that we prioritise the climate emergency, which is really missing from this Queen’s Speech.

Scottish Power has already called for urgent action. It has called for £1,000 bill discounts for 10 million families before energy bills rocket by another £900 this autumn, and yet, once again, there is nothing of that from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor in this Queen’s Speech. In fact, the Chancellor has already told us that his strategy to tackle the cost of living crisis is, literally, to sit on his hands, because he thinks it would be silly to act now—silly to act at a time when people are facing tough decisions on whether to turn the heating off, whether they can afford to put food on the table. The Chancellor thinks it is silly to act—that tells us everything that we need to know about the humanity and compassion of this Conservative Government. Just like the spring statement, nothing has come from this Government. This Queen’s Speech represents one more missed opportunity.

I can give the Prime Minister some suggestions. He could have matched the Scottish child payment, which doubled in April and will increase to £25 per week per child by the end of this year. That is positive action to help those most in need. He could have matched the increase in Scottish-issued social security payments by 6%. He could have done what Governments are supposed to do in an emergency: helped people through it. By any measure or meaning, this Government fail on all counts.

Another gaping hole in this programme is when it comes to energy policy, as has already been raised. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) rightly said last month, the Prime Minister’s energy strategy is nothing more than a con trick, lacking any substance or ambition. The lack of ambition to drive growth in green investment and forge the path to net zero, not to mention an industrial strategy to back it up, fails this and future generations. That lack of ambition will not help investment in renewables, it will not help a just transition and it certainly will not help consumers now or in the long term. As for us in Scotland—a country so rich in energy potential—it is fleecing us of our green present and future.