Queen’s Speech

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I have very much enjoyed listening to the speeches today, in particular the two maiden speeches. I was also struck by your Lordships’ very interesting comments on the problems of productivity.

I take issue with the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, about welfare. We spend about £100 billion on welfare—more than health and several times what we spend on defence. If we do not adjust welfare we will have to cut something else even harder, which could have adverse effects on the economy. The noble Baroness suggested that my party is lurching to the right. The bad news for her is that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has firmly pitched his tent on the centre ground and he has no intention of moving it.

Towards the end of the last Parliament I initiated a QSD on cyclist fatalities in London caused by HGVs. I was grateful for the participation of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, who is in his place. Sadly, since Dissolution there have been a few more of these dreadful accidents. They are simply not tolerable. I can tell the Minister, my noble friend Lord Ahmad, that I will be on the warpath this Parliament. The impression I get is that Ministers would be happy if they could show a measureable reduction in the number of these accidents and fatalities. We do not appear to have a policy or set of policies to get us towards zero—by “zero”, I mean that in some years there are no fatalities. I believe that we can get to nearly zero by using sensor technology. The sooner we get to that point, the more lives we can save in absolute terms. We must not forget the very serious life-changing injuries as well.

I expect that Ministers will still be being briefed that the sensor technology available is simply not good enough to be mandated. That is not surprising, since central government has not promulgated a set of performance or evaluation criteria for manufacturers to work out what they need to do to be mandated. In short, industry does not really know what it has to do, although some manufacturers and suppliers think that they have the solution, which they do not. I do not need an answer this evening, not least because I will be tabling a whole range of helpful Written Questions for my noble friend the Minister to answer.

I was very pleased to hear the comments made by the Minister, my noble friend Lord O’Neill, about HS2. I was rather less enthusiastic about the comments made by my noble friend Lady Noakes in her otherwise excellent speech. She did a rather good job of criticising HS2; I just did not agree with her. The construction industry needs to have a steady and continuous stream of mega-works to be sustainable. That is to the benefit not just of front-line construction workers, but of the enablers: the architects, engineers and all the other specialists who work on these mega-projects. They have already done a considerable amount of work on HS2 phase 1 and they will be on to HS2 phase 2. We also must not forget the plant-hire industry, which hires all the necessary cranes and construction equipment. We have constructed the Olympic park; we are now building Crossrail. After Crossrail we will have HS2 phase 1 and then phase 2 to build. But if we do not build HS2 phase 1, what is the construction industry going to do in terms of mega-projects?

On affordability, we are currently spending around £3 billion on Crossrail per annum. When I was having a pop at the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, I pointed out that we are spending £100 billion on welfare, so it is not as if we cannot afford HS2—we can.

I appreciate that my noble friend Lady Noakes could not give a full argument against HS2, but she mentioned time savings of 20 minutes to get to Birmingham. She will recognise that those time savings are also applicable to those passengers going north of Birmingham. HS2 is not just about time saving for the few, but about increasing capacity, because otherwise we will run out of capacity on the west coast main line. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is in his place. He will want space for freight trains to run on the west coast main line. We have absolutely got to build HS2. But it is also about connecting all our great cities in this country. As far as I am concerned, there is a very strong case for HS2. The report from your Lordships’ Select Committee on Economic Affairs is a bit unfortunate. No doubt we will debate it fairly thoroughly in due course.

In his interesting speech from the opposition Front Bench, the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, mentioned late payment of commercial debt. This was the subject of my maiden speech many years ago. I can see no good reason why we cannot have a system whereby all normal trading invoices are paid by the end of the month following the month of the invoice. This whole business is simply a waste of effort with the purchase ledger section in one business and the credit control section in another all undertaking perfectly pointless activity. In addition, some commercial organisations, especially in the haulage industry, can run up several months of credit with their customer and the customer goes bust, which can then send the haulage company out of business. Therefore, as I say, there is a very strong case for moving gradually to a system whereby invoices are paid by the end of the month following the month of the invoice.

Finally, I turn to how this House will operate in this Parliament. We are not in a new situation. I am confident that noble Lords on the Benches opposite will recognise the need to act responsibly and that my noble friends on the Front Bench will recognise that for our Parliament to work effectively the Government in this House must be defeated from time to time.