Debate on the Address

Catherine West Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

It is a real delight to follow my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who I know has such a deep understanding of housing and the problems that so many of our constituents face, from the basics of mould and infestations right through to the complexities of leasehold properties, cladding and all of that. It was a very good speech, and I thank her for that.

There are some very good themes in the Queen’s Speech; the question will be in the detail and about how much we manage to achieve in this parliamentary Session. I welcome this opportunity for the Queen’s Speech and the platinum jubilee celebrations. I do not know whether you will be at any street parties, Mr Deputy Speaker, but you will be very welcome to come along to the Cecile Park street party if you are available over the four-day holiday. No one has mentioned that today, but giving us those extra few days to enjoy the jubilee is probably the best thing that the Government have done in the past few years. It is a bit of a boost for the local economy and a bit of a celebration as well that we have got through a pretty tough time with covid. We are hopefully at the other side of that.

The other positive elements that have a lot of potential in the Queen’s Speech are the modern slavery Bill, about which the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) spoke at length, with the possibility of civil penalties for organisations that do not comply with modern slavery requirements; and the economic crime and corporate transparency Bill, which will hopefully contain the long-overdue Companies House reform. We know that that is key to cracking down on the kleptocracy that was so evident when President Putin began his terrible assault on Ukraine earlier in the year.

I will focus in my short remarks on the context of this Queen’s Speech coming straight out of an election period. I wonder whether that is why the Government Benches are completely empty except for one Whip and one Front-Bench Member. Perhaps the wind is out of their sails following the 500-odd losses at local government level. Who is to say? I am not sure why the Government Benches are so empty, but the context of the Queen’s Speech is pretty desperate. We are on the verge of a recession, and we cannot afford to be complacent. We want to see an emergency Budget as well as this Queen’s Speech, and I was a little unsure as to whether there would be a statement from the Chancellor. The Prime Minister mentioned that, but that was then ruled out by his spokesperson at 10 Downing Street. If anyone can clarify, please do intervene.

I was surprised also that in the Prime Minister’s brief remarks about the Queen’s Speech, Peppa Pig did not make any appearance. At one point, given the speed at which he delivered his remarks, I thought “Peppa Pig” might just accidentally pop out of his mouth as he was speaking. It felt like one of those speeches. I do not know if anybody else shared that sentiment. Listening to how it revved up and then slowed down again, I thought it could have perhaps gone into that.

Speaking of Peppa Pig, I note that the CBI today has said that the Queen’s Speech and the economic measures proposed are not good enough. That is a real pity, because the Chancellor’s response during covid was a correct tripartite response among our Government, the CBI and the TUC. The TUC has severely criticised the Queen’s Speech for sadly not having an employment Bill where we could address: the lack of security in our workplaces; the vexed issue around flexibility at work and who should be in work and who should have the right to work at home; and maternity provision, pregnancy provision and adoption provision. Those are all things we could have put into that speech to improve our workplaces and address retention. We know that a lot of good workplaces do not know why they cannot retain staff. That is a real missed opportunity.

The other missed opportunity is on the environment. We really want to be turbocharging the insulation of all of our homes, particularly in areas where those of us have very old Victorian stock, which is expensive to retrofit, but desperately needs to be tackled.

An hon. Member spoke earlier about the failed green deal in 2010, which was a tragedy, and the second scheme that failed after the 2017 election. Time after time, we have had schemes that have failed. I was pleased to hear the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) praise the role of local government during covid; if local government were given cash to get all its own stock up to scratch, we would be doing a lot for the environment and fuel poverty, and a lot to reduce people’s bills. We have had two failed schemes that cost a lot but did not do much for the environment or the consumer, so in the end, those sorts of basic schemes cost less. That would be a way to achieve things again.

We have heard many contributions about food poverty. All hon. Members want to see fewer queues at food banks in our constituencies and people being able to afford to work a decent week’s work and put food on the table with their earnings. I do not know why that is so difficult, but I do know that by the end of the year, when inflation hits 10%, we will see even more people queuing at food banks, which is not a sight that any of us wish to see. Of course, that situation will also be exacerbated by the 30% drop in Ukraine’s exports, particularly of cooking oil and wheat, which will increase hardship at our tables. We need the Government to step in, take responsibility and roll out a programme that addresses that lack.

We also need much more innovation in our industrial strategy. I was disappointed that the Government cancelled the industrial strategy last year; that was a real missed opportunity. For example, why do we not just fund the manufacturing of more personal protective equipment? We know that we need it because we need to have stock ready. We have plenty of centres, such as Leicestershire, parts of London or parts of the midlands, where we could begin that and fund it, and then it would pay for itself over time. Let us get innovating, have a Brexit dividend and be creative.

In addition, we have the productivity challenge, which comes back to the fact that we have far too many people in low-quality further education courses because we still have not put right the 50% cut to FE in 2010. That desperately needs to be addressed. It was good to hear other hon. Members speaking about the apprenticeships and the way that many apprenticeship schemes have failed.

On public services, it is essential that we tackle the lack of GP appointments and that we look at the record NHS waiting lists to see doctors and nurses. We simply do not have enough health practitioners working in the health service. We have been promised parity of esteem for mental health for years and we still do not have it in this sketch-out of Bills, but we will keep fighting for people who have mental health problems for those to be considered as seriously as physical health problems.

On supersize classrooms, we know that the last time that a Labour Government came in in 1997, they immediately reduced classroom sizes and kids started to learn better. We need to do that now—let us not wait for Labour to come in and do it again—because we know that it works. We are still spending per child only what we spent in 2010 on education, which is holding our productivity back severely. We need to address that urgently.

I am pleased that victims of crime are mentioned in the Queen’s Speech, but I want to see what that means. Far too many victims of crime are not being supported and are getting desperate that our justice system is not working for them. I will be following that detail closely. We know that just one in 35 victims of rape, for example, end up with a successful charge. That must absolutely stop.

My time is up, but we can revisit those issues. You are shaking your head, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I will conclude as I know that there are one or two more speakers to come. All I will say is that an opportunity has been missed today. We have had a very interesting and engaging set of speeches from Government Members, but perhaps not attached to what the reality is in our own constituencies—whether on the Northern Ireland protocol, which we had a bit of a debate about; apprenticeships and young people; manufacturing in some of our hubs; or the housing crisis, which my hon. Friend the Member for York Central mentioned. There are so many areas that could have been addressed by those on the Government Benches, yet it did not seem to occur to the Prime Minister to talk about the pressing issues. To come back to my first point about the empty Benches on the Government side of the House, I wonder whether this disconnect led to the loss of 500 council seats, because in the end in a democracy, if we do not talk about the issues that matter to working people, we do not end up winning an election.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I would like to start by passing on the very best wishes of the people of Chesterfield to Her Majesty the Queen, who we were all very sad was unable to able to address us. It is the first time since 1963 that the remarkable woman has been unable to be here, and I know people will be wishing her well.

This was a remarkable Queen’s Speech day, and not just for that reason. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) said, the speed at which the Prime Minister’s speech was delivered suggests to me that when he finally loses his job, which he should have done several months ago, he might be gainfully employed as a horse-racing commentator. Alongside that, the debate has been remarkable for two things. The first is the fact that, as we were listening to Government Members and the issues they wanted to address, it was remarkable to think that the Government were responding to a country they have been running for 12 years. It was also so clear that so many of the issues facing the country are not an accident, but a deliberate result of the policies this Government have pursued for the last 12 years. It was a Queen’s Speech simultaneously packed with different initiatives, yet at the same time failing to meet the challenges that the British people are struggling with so much at this moment. It is for precisely that reason that this Government look so exhausted, so tawdry and so out of touch.

Let us have a look at what this Government’s priorities will be—as Mr Speaker suggested we should, I have obtained a copy of the Gracious Speech. The Government start by claiming that they will

“grow and strengthen the economy and help ease the cost of living for families.”

On growth, this is a Government of high taxation because they are a Government of low growth. They are a Government who have had low growth during 12 wasted years. They have consistently grown our economy by less than the previous Labour Government. In all but one year, growth under this Government was less than 2%. Under Labour, 2% growth was achieved 10 years straight. So why should we believe that this is a Government capable of delivering on their priority to grow the economy?

On strengthening the economy, the Government’s consistent failure to deliver the Brexit they promised means that our economy is considerably weaker and less resilient than it was before the Prime Minister was elected. On the cost of living, their refusal to implement a windfall tax means that this Government, uniquely among all the European Governments, are allowing oil and gas producing firms to enjoy obscene profits while raising taxes on working people. We are only two lines into the Gracious Speech, and already the Government are referring to three areas—growth, strengthening the economy and the cost of living—in which they have indisputably failed.

The speech goes on with the Government claim that they will support the police to make our streets safer, but we have 7,000 fewer police than we had in 2010. Our court backlogs mean that terrified victims of crime wait months and even years for their perpetrators to face justice, and the Government were forced to exclude fraud from their crime statistics to try to pretend that crime was falling.

Just last week, I met a woman in my constituency, Jane Allen, who still mourns the loss of her brother, Phillip. He was murdered by a man who was on licence after being released from prison halfway through his sentence. The murderer, Jordan Maltby, should have been housed in an approved premises, but none was available. He should have been in regular contact with probation officers, but he was seen only once in the nine weeks he was out. He should have been monitored by police, but the demands on police time meant that did not happen. In a completely unprovoked attack, he murdered Phillip Allen in cold blood outside his house.

The Government’s failures to provide the number of police we need, or properly to fund probation or address court delays, mean that under this Government our streets are less safe, not safer. In 2013 there were 634,000 violent offences in England and Wales. Last year there were 1.78 million violent crimes, which is 1.78 million opportunities to see the full cost of that failure. We have a larger population, but fewer police, more violent crimes, longer court delays and a failing probation service, and the Government want us to believe that they will make our streets safer.

[Catherine West]

Our condolences go to my hon. Friend’s constituent, Jane, for the loss of her brother. Does my hon. Friend agree that as so many crimes happen because of the same group of people, if we do not get them the first time, the issue multiplies? The failure to bring a charge in the first instance makes the situation ever so much worse for more and more victims.

[Mr Perkins]

That is absolutely the case. Whether courts are not seeing people in time, or deciding not to send people to jail who they really should because jails are so overcrowded, or giving people shorter sentences, there are a whole variety of reasons why these violent criminals are making our streets less safe.

The Government claim that they will fund the NHS to reduce covid backlogs. This is the Government who caused the pre-covid backlogs. We went into covid with the longest waiting times since—guess when?—the last time we had a Tory Government. Labour left government with a two-week cancer guarantee and waiting times below 18 weeks across the country. This Government reduced NHS spending from when they came to office in 2010 to 2019, when the covid pandemic hit, so that Britain went from being in line with the European average to being a backmarker once again. They presided over an NHS staffing crisis, failed to train enough doctors or nurses, and discouraged European nurses from helping out. This failure is on their watch—and I have not even got to the end of the first paragraph of the Gracious Speech. We have a Government who ask us to believe that they are the party to address the very problems they have caused. These are not issues that the Government inherited, but ones that through a decade of austerity, through their failure on Brexit and their prioritisation of culture wars ahead of the business of government, explicitly acknowledge the failure that 12 years of Tory rule has led to.

We should not be fooled into believing that this is a Government with a plan to address those failings. The Budget showed that a Government who have normalised food bank usage will not be a Government committed to helping people with the cost of living. It is remarkable. We heard the Prime Minister on his feet today claiming that we will see action on the cost of living in the coming days, only for Treasury sources to brief that the Chancellor of Exchequer knows nothing about that, and that there are no plans. This Government not only fail to take action on the cost of living, but they fail even to agree on a line about when they will take different steps.

The Government had a choice about how the global rise in energy prices could be tackled. They could have chosen to ask energy companies to share a little of their grotesque wealth, or they could have asked landlords and property billionaires to pay a little more. Instead, the Chancellor’s eyes fell, as they always do, on the working poor, with the British Government uniquely raising taxes for working people. This is a Government big on tactics but bereft of strategy. The Home Secretary wanders around looking for a culture war to join, while failing to address the issues that make our streets, and indeed our homes, less safe.

A Labour Queen’s Speech would have contained measures genuinely to alleviate food and energy poverty, and support people with the cost of living crisis. We would have seen a commitment to an industrial strategy that targeted the greatest resources on those areas that need them most, and addressed the ways that things such as the apprenticeship levy are failing. A Labour Queen’s Speech would have recognised that we cannot cure NHS waiting times unless we resource and value carers in our community, and that overseas workers help us to allow our elders to grow older in dignity. A Labour Queen’s Speech would have tackled tax avoidance and non-dom status—as it turns out, that was the modus operandi of prominent members of the Cabinet and their families—and rooted out the scandalous wastage of public money that the Government routinely allow. It would also have prioritised repairing relations with our European counterparts so that Brexit can be a mutual success, rather than revisiting previous failures as it appears that, depressingly, the Government intend.

This is a Government exhausted of ideas and too mired in their own disgraces to address the problems of the nation, and it is well past time for them to be gone. They have now reached the stage where the Prime Minister is so weakened that he has to threaten his own party with an election if they do not offer him their support. Labour will be ready when that election comes, and that cannot come a moment too soon.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(David T. C. Davies.)

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.