Home Affairs and Justice

Charles Kennedy Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute briefly to this debate. Such is the nature of these debates that most of my remarks will be much more localised and parochial than those that fall within the ambit of the justice and home affairs issues being debated today.

First, let me say to the shadow Home Secretary that in the golden age of my period as a party leader I had to go, with great regularity, to meet a succession of Labour Home Secretaries. At that time, one never quite knew what was most likely to have changed since the previous meeting. On issues such as detention orders, people were scratching their heads and trying to find their way around the problems to which she referred. One week, Tony Blair would tell us that it was absolutely essential to have this number of days or it would be the end of civilisation as we knew it, and then poor Charles Clarke would have to go off and try to make sense of it. At the next meeting, when that issue had been shelved, we would be told that something else was absolutely critical and had to be dealt with or the earth would collapse around our ears. Given all the criticisms in the concluding part of the right hon. Lady’s speech, I have to say to her that any cursory examination of the way in which the Home Office and No. 10 handled these matters under Prime Minister Blair would reveal it to be rather chaotic. If I were her I would tread carefully and not be too critical about the progress that has been achieved recently under the coalition.

The second point I want to make about justice and home affairs involves casting my mind back even further to when I first became a Member in 1983. At that time, I was part of a new intake and the youngest Member of the House, and much to Mrs Thatcher’s disapproval, as Prime Minister, the House had voted by a significant majority to conduct an experiment into the televising of our proceedings. It is interesting to look back at the Hansard reports of those debates. As a party representative and the youngest Member of the House, I was appointed to the Select Committee that, under Sir Geoffrey Howe, oversaw the conduct of the experiment with cameras. At that time, people were predicting that all sorts of things would happen to the character of the Chamber if the cameras were allowed in. They said that everything would be a disaster, that nobody would understand what was going on and that the quality of our democracy would be demeaned—it went on and on. In due course, the cameras came in and, rather like what happened following the debates about votes for women, if anyone had stood up in the House of Commons a year or two later and suggested that the cameras should be taken out, they would have been laughed out of court.

“Court” is the operative word here because there has recently been an example in the Scottish courts, which has been well publicised south of the border, of the televising of a judicial sentencing. When the broadcasters came into the House of Commons, they were subject to very strict criteria, and they conducted themselves very responsibly, as they had to. I know that some people have genuine apprehensions about cameras coming into the courts in England, but I think the broadcasters will conduct themselves in exactly the same way. I do not think that televising proceedings will undermine the quality or integrity of the justice being dispensed. Instead, as with our proceedings, it will open them up to a wider audience in a way that is more illuminating, although perhaps not always more encouraging.

I want to touch on four of the measures announced in the Queen’s Speech and focus on how they will affect my part of the country—the highlands of Scotland. I will also make a further general point about House of Lords reform. First, we have already had the very welcome decision that the Green investment bank will be sited in Edinburgh. As a Scot representing a Scottish constituency, I am highly pleased by that, as one might expect. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) played a very important role in that campaign. The highlands of Scotland could contribute to the Green investment bank’s potential and also benefit greatly from it. I am thinking particularly of areas such as the Kishorn site in my constituency, which is on the brink of being brought back into being and at the cutting edge of offshore technology. I am also thinking about the tidal stream campaign at Kylerhea, which has attracted a great deal of attention and has great potential.

Secondly, I welcome the measures on banking. The anger that we all know remains out there among our constituents across the country and across parties about the inability of so many small businesses to secure decent levels of funding from the banks is genuine and further reform is essential. In my area and others, we need only look at the continuing rate of shop closures on the high street. In an area such as the Scottish highlands, to which tourism is so important, there is a stranglehold on local bed-and-breakfast businesses when it comes to getting funding out of the local banks, although it is not the local banks that are preventing that from happening because they are at the bottom of the food chain. Those decisions are being taken way up the food chain. That is why the measures on banking announced in the Queen’s Speech are so welcome and necessary.

Thirdly, let me address an issue on which the Liberal Democrats, including many colleagues of mine, some of whom are still in the House, some of whom are in the European Parliament and some of whom have moved on to become Members of the other place or to elsewhere, have campaigned for the best part of 20 years—the regulation of the supermarkets in relation to local agricultural producers. For example, producers have to sell milk to supermarkets at below the cost of production. Coupled with the phasing out of milk quotas under the common agricultural policy, that has caused a huge contraction in the number of producers, which is unhealthy in a liberal economy. It has also put them at a severe commercial disadvantage in relation to the supermarkets. The proposed reforms are a welcome development, and the thumbprints of Liberal Democrats are right across them.

My fourth point is about reform of the electricity market to ensure fair prices. Our position in the highlands is thanks to the late, great Tom Johnston, a pioneering Labour Secretary of State after the second world war—“Power to the Glens” was the slogan at the time. The most marvellous and visually dramatic hydroelectric system was built, and it remains tremendously vital for power production to this day. It is safe, secure and sustainable energy. We make as much from it as we can commercially, and climatically we are now well placed—perhaps not for all the right reasons—to take advantage of wind generation, both on and offshore, but the highlands pay more per unit for electricity than any region of Scotland. The House can imagine the incomprehension, if not irritation and downright anger, locally, not least when we have no gas alternative. The past winter has not been the easiest, and my postbag is still full of letters from pensioners who are unable to heat their homes adequately. All around us is the magnificent contribution that we make to the UK national grid, yet in return we do not seem to get a reasonable and fair rate in our area. If the legislation can help with that, it will be welcome indeed.

My final point is on House of Lords reform. I mentioned votes for women and the televising of the House of Commons. Nobody in their right mind would want to reverse those decisions. When we have a properly democratically accountable and elected House of Lords, nobody in their right mind will want to reverse that either. They could not argue for such a case with any credibility.

The very fact that the debate is still going on more than a century after it was predominant in British politics is in itself unbelievable. As the legislation goes forward, I do not doubt that we shall have arguments and disagreements in both Houses and within and across parties, but surely to God, in this day and age, we must find a basis for a mature, bicameral, properly democratically elected and functioning Parliament, fit for the modern age. The House of Lords does a lot of its work very well—I do not criticise it on that—but globally it is an unjustifiable and incomprehensible anachronism in this day and age, as history will judge when it is ultimately reformed. People will look at their history books and ask why it took generations of parliamentarians more than a century to get together and do it. I hope that my Labour friends across the Floor will not succumb to playing party politics and making mischief to try to cause problems for the coalition and miss the bigger historic opportunity before us.

There is much to commend in the Queen’s Speech, and I am delighted to speak in its support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

This debate has taken place against the backdrop of a huge march by the country’s police officers. An estimated 30,000 police officers have been on the streets in London, not a stone’s throw away from here. They have been marching in their thousands against swingeing cuts to the police front line and the Government’s decision to cut 20% from police budgets. Today’s consideration of the broad aspects of the Queen’s Speech and its specific home affairs and justice aspects has to be seen in this context.

A few years ago, I took part in the police service parliamentary scheme, which was an ideal opportunity to see at first hand and to experience what policing meant at the sharp end. I was seconded to the city of Newport and spent a number of weeks witnessing what policing actually meant. It was an extremely valuable experience, particularly because I saw the multiplicity of problems that the police had to face in the conduct of their duties. As a result, my estimation of the police rose enormously. All Members should participate in the scheme if they have the opportunity to do so, because I have absolutely no doubt that their view of the police will be heightened enormously. One police officer told me that although they might have had some reservations about what the Labour Government were doing at the time, the investment in policing meant that it was transformed, particularly in our poorest communities. The current deep and rapid police cuts mean that the people who live in our poorest communities, and who need police support more than anybody else, will suffer most of all.

This afternoon’s debate has been good and wide-ranging. The hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster) spoke lucidly about the children and families Bill. The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) referred to the banking proposals in the Queen’s Speech, the European Union and measures for small businesses. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) welcomed the introduction of an offence for drug driving, and in doing so made a very powerful statement to this House. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) made a very strong speech covering children’s issues and alluding to his own personal experience. He also referred graphically to the situation in his constituency, which is one of the least well off in the country.

Some Members have been entirely supportive of the Government’s proposals, but others have expressed a variety of concerns and reservations. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) spoke about the future of policing, and his concerns were shared by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and repeated by many other Members. My hon. Friends the Members for Blaenau Gwent and for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) made strong statements of concern about what is happening in their own, very different, constituencies.

In a multiplicity of ways, many of today’s speeches have highlighted the fact that the Government’s programme is woefully inadequate. At a time when most people’s standard of living is falling, when unemployment is high and may well get higher, and when insecurity is widespread and the prospects for our young people are worse now than they have been in living memory, it is almost unbelievable that the Government should make constitutional reform one of their priorities. My hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick) was absolutely spot on when he said that when he went down to his local public house, nobody—I repeat, nobody—mentioned to him the need for Lords reform. I am sure that every single Member on both sides of the House would agree with him and say that that is exactly their own experience. Although nobody in the Government says that reform of the House of Lords should be a priority—they have changed their tune over the past few weeks—it has been given pride of place in Her Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech.

Let me be clear—I say this in particular to the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy) —that Labour supports a reformed House of Lords, with a wholly elected second Chamber. However, we want the relationship between the Chambers to be properly codified, with the primacy of this Chamber upheld. We believe that this issue should be put to the people of the country in a referendum because it is a change of major constitutional significance.

The prominence given to this issue demonstrates better than anything else how out of touch the Government are. As the Labour party demonstrated in the local elections last week, the Government have no idea—

[Mr Kennedy]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr David]

Okay.

[Mr Kennedy]

It takes a lot for the hon. Gentleman, whom I like and admire very much from our European days, to provoke me, but he is accusing the Government of putting forward something that was in the coalition agreement, in our respective party manifestos and in the manifesto on which he stood when he was elected to the House last time around. He asks, “Why now?” It is not as if this debate has suddenly popped up in the last six weeks or six months, or in the couple of years since the coalition was formed; it has been going on for more than a century. Is the position of the Labour party not just complete emergent opportunism—“Make us virtuous, oh Lord, but not yet”?

[Mr David]

I have a soft spot for the right hon. Gentleman, but it is a bit rich of the Liberal Democrats to accuse the Labour party of opportunism. When the country is faced with an unprecedentedly difficult situation—now, of all times—coming forward with a piece of constitutional reform is a step too far, as far as most people are concerned. As Aneurin Bevan said, politics is all about priorities—that is the religion of politics. For the House at this time to spend what will inevitably be a long time debating this issue will send out a negative message. There is no doubt in my mind that the people of this country will take a dim view of the political priorities of the Government.