Queen's Speech

Lord Bates Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow my noble friend. I was reminded that the paragraph in the gracious Speech that refers to high-speed rail links also mentions the increase in broadband speeds. As well as having that physical network and infrastructure to embrace and encourage enterprise in the economy through high-speed rail—which I fully endorse as someone who lives in a peripheral region in the north-east of England—increasingly, the second part, the commitment to and the going forward of the major broadband infrastructure, will be extremely welcome.

It is a privilege to take part in this debate on the gracious Speech. I, too, along with my noble friend Lord Griffiths, offer my congratulations to colleagues on the Front Bench—the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox. The noble Baroness gave an outstanding opening address. She displayed her instinct for business and enterprise, and an ability to cut through bureaucratic waffle with a knife—a fish knife at that. I want to use my time to focus on the needs of business, particularly as they pertain to the north-east of England. I should declare my interests, as listed in the register of interests, in two small- to medium-sized enterprises in that region.

The gracious Speech states that the “first priority” of this Government,

“is to reduce the deficit and restore economic growth”.

That is about as clear as we can get it. The task is to get the ruptured pipe of debt under control before it wreaks irreparable damage on the fabric of the British economy. Time is not on our side, but as Abraham Lincoln said, you cannot escape responsibility for tomorrow by evading it today. That is the lesson of history that the previous Government ignored and which it falls to this Government to tackle.

But it is not just about cutting costs, it is about increasing revenue and sales. Our sales force is the 2 million-plus businesses out there who are fighting for their very survival. We need to free them up to do what they do best: to create wealth and create jobs. Cutting corporate taxes will enable businesses to invest more of their own profits and in turn increase tax revenues to the Exchequer. Even more important, in my view, is the strong message of deregulation through the gracious Speech because that helps both sides of the balance sheet, the public and the private sectors. By reducing the burden of regulation, not only do we free up business to create more wealth, therefore yielding more tax revenue, but at the same time we reduce the requirement for armies of bureaucrats to police and interpret the rules, and allow more resources from the public sector to be directed towards protecting front-line services.

Finally, I want to say something about the north-east of England and local enterprise partnerships, which are referred to in the gracious Speech. Over the past couple of years there has been a healthy and vigorous debate in the north-east region about the future of our regional development agency, One North East. In the spirit of the coalition, consensus is beginning to emerge about the way forward, and I for one welcome that. On the one hand there was a debate about whether we should have multiple local enterprise partnerships, based on Teesside, the rural economy and Tyne and Wear. Consensus is emerging around the fact that we are the smallest of the English regions in terms of population and geography and therefore we need one voice for the north-east region. On the other hand, there is a recognition that the current organisation of the regional development agency is too large and unwieldy. In trying to manage everything, it is failing in many ways to do something significant. At the moment it manages everything from housing quotas, transport, highways, planning, cultural and even forestry strategies, thus falling foul of the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Myners—whose contributions from the Front Bench I have always enjoyed and no doubt will continue to enjoy when he speaks from the Back Benches—when he said that jobs cannot be created by interminable meetings in committee rooms. He is absolutely right. Jobs are created by businesses that make and sell things, and they deserve a Government who are on their side, not on their back. The role of an enterprise partnership should be focused solely on the need to promote enterprise within a region and to sell the region internationally.

On Saturday, I had the privilege of attending the rollout of a huge, 2,500-tonne pipe-laying rig, the first of its type in the world, which was launched on Teesside by the engineering business founded by Dr Tony Trapp, a former academic at Newcastle University’s engineering department. He has built a company without any government help which has a turnover of £150 million and employs 500 people, and which spins out lots of other businesses around the north-east. The north-east of England is now a centre of excellence for seabed and offshore engineering, and that is particularly significant given the commitment to new sources of renewable energy such as offshore wind farms. That is happening not only in this country, but around the world.

As well as legislation and money, we need to recognise that there is a place for inspiration and leadership. The north-east is the only region in the country which exports more than it imports, and we have many strengths, but in the past we have put far too much faith in government to solve our problems, and far too little faith in ourselves. Tony Trapp told me that his motto for success in business was ABC: ambition to achieve; belief in our talent and ability to succeed: and the courage to face up to the inevitable challenges along the way. That has worked spectacularly well for him and I believe it works for the north-east too. I also believe that it is a good mantra for the coalition Government.