Debate on the Address

Debate between Charles Kennedy and David Davis

Wednesday 8th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kennedy]

Well, on the immigration matters, let us see the detail first. We have got some initial inklings and there will probably be quite a lot of detailed and, I suspect, sticky debates to be had on some aspects of how this is going to be done. On Europe, the Prime Minister has made it clear in his letter to his parliamentary colleagues in just the last 24 hours that he cannot go in the direction many of them are urging precisely because it is a coalition Government. We can point to our presence having some constructive restraining interest, although I will enter one caveat, which is a challenge for the Liberal Democrat side of the coalition.

The snoopers’ charter is a controversial and high-profile issue, which has been fiercely argued in public, in this House and elsewhere only a matter of months ago—it is not in the Queen’s Speech. That is a significant example of the difference between having an unfettered majority Conservative Government and having a Conservative party in government that is having to take account of another set of views. Although Liberal Democrats are right to argue—my colleagues and I do so regularly—that we can temper this, prevent that, or perhaps improve on how something might otherwise have been done, the bigger challenge for us over the next couple of years, starting with this Queen’s Speech, comes from the fact that simply saying, “Vote for us. If you didn’t, it would be worse” is not the most persuasive of electioneering clarion calls. We have to turn that into a more persuasive pitch—we have two years in which to do so, and I am sure that we can.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Kennedy]

I give way to another occasional renegade.

[Mr Davis]

Very occasional.

Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that the appeal of the Liberal party would be greater if it was sometimes more robust on some liberal causes? For example, in the previous Session the Liberal party let through the provision on secret courts, despite it being completely against its traditions of more than a century.

[Mr Kennedy]

I am not party to the internal machinations of coalition relationships, but the little that my antennae allow me to pick up—the right hon. Gentlemen must know this from his right hon. and hon. Friends—is that more than a few Conservatives, both within government and further afield in the parliamentary party, feel that these damn Liberals are enough of a fly in the ointment as it is, thank you very much, without the likes of him, of all people, encouraging us to become even more obstreperous. I am sure that those on the Government Front Bench have noted his constructive contribution, and I wish him well.

I have a final point to make on coalition politics. The Queen’s Speech, which I welcome—who among us could disagree with it—says that the Government remain committed to

“a fairer society where aspiration and responsibility are rewarded”.

D’accord, no problems there whatever. Earlier in the year, a number of Liberal Democrats could not give our support to the capping of welfare benefits and went a little further than the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) in our rebellion; we not only abstained, but took a few steps further in the direction of the alternative Lobby. Others among us have expressed our opposition to or voted against the so-called “bedroom tax”, certainly as it is constructed now. Governments have to nudge people in certain directions and influence behaviour, but the difficulty is that that is different from being drawn into the potential political quagmire of social engineering. The Lib Dem voice needs to be heard loudly on that, within the echelons of the coalition and among the public: in supporting reward for aspiration and responsibility we are not losing sight of the fact that those aspirations can sometimes be given adequate opportunity only if the Government of the day recognise their responsibility towards the social composition they have inherited; and we cannot necessarily achieve mission impossible with all our desired social reforms, given the country’s difficult demographic backdrop.

Therefore, the principles of social justice, which I hope will continue to underpin not only the Liberal Democrat contribution, but the conduct of the coalition as a whole, need to be heard, loud and clear, on the telling domestic issues, such as immigration, and on the absolutely critical international issues, such as Europe. On those issues and others, I believe that our Conservative colleagues, for reasons best known to themselves, are allowing a gap to open, rhetorically and in reality, in British politics, which, in terms of our responsibility in government, we must develop.

I notice that Labour is achieving up to a glass ceiling but seems to have difficulty getting much beyond that, so our voice needs to be heard all the more on such issues, unambiguously, without any sense of retreat, nipping and tucking, or dodging and weaving. On many of these vital matters, we are going to get too much of that from the Labour leadership over the next period. We should be clear, consistent and unafraid, because what we are saying needs to be heard, in much the same way as what we said about Iraq—even though many in this place thought there was not much of a vehicle for that—needed to be heard out there. Sometimes people will respect you even if they do not necessarily agree with you on the issue of the day. Let us not be afraid, let us give the Queen’s Speech our support, but let us use it as the launch pad for the next two vital years in British politics.