Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower

Kate Osborne Excerpts

Thursday 9th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)]

People are sitting at home unable to buy food or pay their energy bills, while watching the King’s Speech in its all pomp and ceremony —so much money spent for the King’s Speech to be so vacuous and void of policies, with barely any Bills, announcements that have already been shelved, and no answers for the majority of the country. The speech was a wasted opportunity. The Government have no new ideas, no plans to improve the country, and nothing for small businesses, or for the majority of people in the UK. The Government have made no attempt to help the 14 million people living in poverty, no attempt to tackle rising unemployment, and no attempt to fix our broken benefits system.

The empty promises will not tackle the housing crisis, the NHS crisis or the cost of living crisis, or lift any of the 6,000 hungry kids in my constituency of Jarrow out of poverty. It is not right that in one of the richest countries in the world families are having to turn to food banks. The Trussell Trust has delivered 1.5 million food parcels in just six months. We have a Government who have given up on governing. They have wasted the last 18 months in Parliament. On 100 days, the Government finished early, cancelling planned legislation and votes as they made U-turns and broke promise after promise. In 2022, they announced 29 Bills, more than a third of which were abandoned or not introduced. In this King’s Speech, they announced just 21. We have to wonder how many of those will ever see the light of day.

The Government’s failed economic policies have resulted in £2.6 trillion of public debt—the highest debt the country has ever faced, alongside the highest rate of inflation in 41 years. Decades of inaction have left us with runaway rents, rising evictions and record levels of homelessness, and Ministers are blaming everyone but themselves. Despite the worst energy bill crisis in a generation, they admit that their lauded flagship plans will not cut energy bills by a single penny. There was nothing in the King’s Speech that will help people to pay their bills and stay warm this winter, no help for pensioners and children in cold homes, and no help for the record numbers of people currently in debt on their energy. With more than 75% of people saying that they are very concerned or somewhat concerned about affording energy bills this winter, we need a Labour Government that will bring down energy bills once and for all and make Britain energy-independent.

We have a morally compromised Government attempting to gaslight the country. Their sleaze, cronyism and failure to deliver on promises have left the country in a mess, degraded Parliament and eroded trust in politicians. Their new oil and gas plans will not deliver energy security. Their housing plans will not tackle the housing crisis, help renters or ban no-fault evictions. There is no sign of local housing targets or of the reform needed to our planning system.

The Government say that inflation has finally started to fall, in the full knowledge that that will not help with the cost of living crisis. The damage has already been done, and it will be even worse for most people this winter. They talk up their Victims and Prisoners Bill, when the reality is that they have destroyed our policing and criminal courts, with 90% of crimes going unsolved and prisons already full. Their plans to reduce or scrap sentences for abuse, harassment and stalking, in order to tackle the overcrowding crisis in prisons, is just appalling. Although the Government have repeatedly said that ending violence against women and girls is a priority, it continues at epidemic proportions, with an estimated 1.7 million women experiencing domestic abuse last year. Women and girls should not be put further at risk, yet those plans could see thousands of abusive men released.

The Government blame NHS workers for the crisis in the NHS, when it is their drive to privatise and underfund it that caused issues far before the pandemic or any strike action. The King’s Speech failed to address the NHS nursing workforce crisis, and the NHS and patients will continue to pay the price until at least the next general election. We need investment in the NHS, not the introduction of minimum service levels. Only the Conservative party thinks that the answer to the shortage of doctors and nurses is to sack NHS staff. After the past few years, it sums up how out of touch this Government are that one of the only things they promised to do in the King’s Speech was to sack doctors.

Ministers have doubled down on their anti-worker rhetoric, when the right to strike is a fundamental human right, protected in UK and international law. They have failed to tackle those making billions in profit while simultaneously leaching money from our public services and dumping raw sewage in our waterways, and they hope that people will not realise that the taxes they are paying are the highest they have been for 70 years.

Unfortunately, neither the King’s Speech nor yesterday’s statement called for a ceasefire in Gaza. People in Gaza are without food, water, electricity, fuel and communications, and the death toll is now more than 10,000. I agree with Oxfam, the United Nations Secretary-General and many others that a ceasefire is the only real solution. A cease- fire is essential to ending the huge daily loss of innocent lives, to ensuring that aid gets into Gaza and to ensuring the safe return of the Israeli hostages. We must have a path to peace out of the conflict in Israel and Gaza.

Instead of plans to improve people’s lives, what we get from this Government is divisive rhetoric, a “war on woke”, attacks on benefit claimants, attacks on minorities, attacks on refugees and attacks on the LGBTQ+ community—attacks designed to make us hate each other instead of hating this Government’s actions. The Home Secretary talks about “decent British people” at the same time as playing politics with our police force and wanting to remove tents from the homeless. Those plans may have been dropped by the Prime Minister, but they portray the callous and contentious way the Conservatives view people.

The Government’s failure to ban so-called conversion therapy shows a vile disregard for LGBTQ+ people living in this country. So-called conversion therapy is not therapy; people cannot consent to abuse. The decision to leave LGBTQ+ people suffering that torture, and at the mercy of bigots and abusers, is despicable. The Government have previously described conversion practices as “abhorrent”. They first pledged to outlaw them in England and Wales in 2018, as part of their LGBT+ action plan. That was pledged again by the then Prime Minister in 2019, then again in the 2021 Queen’s Speech, and then again in the 2022 Queen’s Speech, and yet again by Ministers in January this year.

[Neale Hanvey]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way on that point. This matter is important to us both, although I accept that we have very different views on it. One point that I struggle with when it comes to the discussion about conversion therapy is what to say to young gay men who have gone along with transition without talking therapy and then discovered that transition was actually completely wrong for them. They now find themselves with complete sexual dysfunction and have in some cases had their genitals removed surgically, and the same is true of young women who have gone through that. If we call talking therapy “conversion therapy”, and pursue an affirmation-only model, what hope is there for young gay people, or young people who are questioning their gender, to be able to get the support they need to have a decent puberty and grow up successfully?

[Kate Osborne]

I think the hon. Gentleman is conflating the issues here. We are talking about so-called conversion therapy, which starts from a place where it has already been decided that people need to be converted. What people need is support and understanding to help them through whatever process is best for them.

Multiple promises have been made by five different Ministers and four Prime Ministers in five years, and all of them have been broken. The work on the legislation has been completed; it has been worked on for years. The Women and Equalities Committee has said to Ministers that

“conversion practices are abhorrent and need to be stamped out.”

It is time to stop making empty promises, take action and make the ban a reality. With that aim in mind, I have tabled amendment (f) to the King’s Speech. I hope that as many Members as possible will agree to back it, including the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey), and that Mr Speaker sees fit to select it.

As I say, the work has been done. The Government know that the legislation is vital. The Leader of the House said this morning that

“it is still a manifesto commitment”,

and that they will update us on progress, but we cannot wait any longer. They should take action. They must accept my amendment and find a way to bring forward legislation to ban so-called conversion therapy as soon as possible.

Labour will ban those conversion practices in full. I hope that the next general election is very soon so that Labour can get on with passing the legislation. Many LGBTQ+ people are suffering now and need the ban to be put in place immediately. I plead with Members to back my amendment, and with the Minister to take action.