Queen's Speech

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, several noble Lords have observed how the eloquence, elegance of presentation, experience and commitment of the noble Lords on the Front Bench add greatly to the positive prospects for governance in this new Parliament. The maiden speeches of the noble Lords and the right reverend Prelate also bode well for this as a thoughtful, engaged and reflective new Parliament.

It is a new Parliament and a new Government, but also a new type of Government and Parliament. It was interesting to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, and my noble friend Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope speaking about those of us from the Celtic fringe, who have some experience of these questions. This is one of the marvellous things about our great United Kingdom: it is not all one country with one set of experiences. There are some of us who have experience of fairer forms of voting, which bring different ways of forming Governments. It is interesting now that many of those who said, “We can’t have proportional representation because it will bring coalition government”, now discover that first past the post may also—not only on this occasion, but perhaps in the future—bring coalition government.

One of the things that has interested me and several colleagues from Wales and Scotland is that it is clear that the institutions here at Westminster and in Whitehall, and many of those who are involved in them, have not yet quite understood what coalition government is. It is not merger government. It is not even a political marriage. It is coalition government in which parties bring their own sets of principles and ideas and decide that they will contract to work together for the better of the country. They do not, on that basis, give up either their principles or their policies. Anyone in this Parliament who thinks, for example, that Mr Martin McGuinness and Mr Peter Robinson no longer want to see, on the one hand, a united Ireland, or, on the other, a more united United Kingdom, clearly does not understand much about either the peace process or the politics of my part of the world. If they are sent to the Northern Ireland Office, they will find it a rather rude awakening.

Those of us on the Liberal Democrat Benches have Liberal Democrat principles and policies. We believe that—together, on this occasion, with our Conservative colleagues—we can see those brought into operation. It was gratifying to listen to noble Lords on the other side of the Chamber making clear that they had observed that this Government indeed have a different set of policies than would have been the case had they been wholly a Conservative Government or wholly a Liberal Democrat Government. That is all to the good. It is all part of the new approach to politics that we are seeing develop over time. We saw it in the approach of the previous Labour Government to a number of matters, and we see it going further.

Having heard my noble friends, Lady Walmsley, Lady Sharp, Lord Addington and Lord Kirkwood speak about education, children, sport and welfare, I want to concentrate on health, as it is very close to my heart and experience. I have just retired after working for 30 years in the health service, particularly in mental health. My wife is a pathologist; my brother is a dermatologist; my sister-in-law is a paediatrician; my brother-in-law is a general practitioner; and my sister and her husband are scientific officers in a medical laboratory, so I have some insight into the way the health service works.

The previous Government were undoubtedly committed to achieving fairness in healthcare. They put substantial amounts of money into organising and reorganising healthcare to try to get a good outcome. However, I am afraid that there was a modest outcome and the morale of professionals working in the health service was remarkably low. I give an example. John Reid moved from the Northern Ireland Office—he moved through different ministries—and spent some time in healthcare. He had a notion, which he shared with the previous Conservative Administration, that half the consultants were out on the golf course most of the time. Therefore, he required all consultants to produce a diary showing what they did every half hour for a month, so that he and his colleagues could then clamp down on these lazy fellows and girls who obviously were not paying attention to what they were doing. The result was that consultants began to discover that they were doing far more work than they were contracted to do. They decided that if the Government were going to treat them with suspicion and say, “We will pay you only for this and this”, they would drive a hard contract and reduce their commitment to working only the hours for which they were contracted. The result was a health service contract for consultants that cost the Government more and reduced output, and doctors, who were paid more, having lower morale. It was not that the Government were not committed to fairness—they were—it was a matter of how people were handled and a belief about the way that things work.

Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg have said that this Government will operate on the basis of freedom, fairness and responsibility. Nobody is going to stand up in your Lordships' House and say, “I am against fairness”. We are here because we genuinely want to see a fairer country. However, fairness does not come from the top down through imposition; it comes through freeing and inspiring people. Of course, there is a need for an element of regulation. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, knows very well that I have been working on regulation in psychotherapy for some time. I am sure that he is awaiting the letter that he will get from me in the next week or two which asks if we can have a chat about how regulation in the psychological therapies should move forward. I am not against regulation at all. However, it has to be done in such a way that people feel that they are valued and are not being pushed away from their professional commitments. That is why one of the things that appeals to me about the approach that the coalition Government are taking is that they are saying, “We are not only going to try to work together in this way but we are going to try to give responsibility back to professionals”.

One of the disastrous things that occurred in healthcare happened as a result of it becoming a question of managerial approach and a business ethos. Businesses never produced healthcare in the first instance; it came out of voluntarism, faith communities and professionalism. When you turn it into a business, you eat away at some of the key commitments that people have to this work. They do not do it for the money, but they are not going to do it if they are not paid. They want to make a commitment to people and to feel that it is valued, and they want to feel that those with whom and for whom they work are part of the world which they inhabit.

One way that the Government can get rid of a lot of the funding that is not going to front-line services is by reducing the degree of managerial input and returning a lot more decision-making to clinicians of all kinds—not just doctors—and to patients. We can start this new Parliament not by giving over many of the achievements of the previous Government but by building on the possibility that we can have real change for the better in our politics and in all the areas of work that we have been speaking about today, not least in healthcare.