Debate on the Address

Debate between Catherine West and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 10th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[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.