Queen’s Speech

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I stand humbly in this historic Chamber today. I am humbled by the warm welcome of my fellow Peers and the support of all the officers and staff; I wish to thank each and every one of them. I am truly humbled by the enormity of the honour that I feel—a pride that I know is shared by my family, my friends, and so many of my former constituents in Gedling, whom I was proud to represent for 22 years, the people of Nottingham City, the people of the county of Nottinghamshire and beyond.

As I stand here discussing this Queen’s Speech on the theme of communities, voices from my past are calling out to me. I can hear my 94 year-old father, a former Metropolitan Police officer, saying, “Don’t forget neighbourhood policing.” I can hear the man I was named after, my uncle, who is buried in a war grave dated 6 June 1944 in Ranville, in Normandy near Caen, saying, “Never take democracy and freedom for granted.” I hear the voices of Nottingham school pupils, many from disadvantaged backgrounds and growing up in poverty, whom I taught for some 20 years, saying to me, “Make sure every pupil succeeds, whatever their ability, and that we end the academic/vocational divide.”

I can hear the pleas of the many former constituents of mine who needed help with claiming their welfare benefits when the state often made it incredibly difficult for them to do so, when their only crime was poverty. I can hear the voices of young people, including my own grandchildren, demanding that we save the planet for them, if not for ourselves. I can hear so many voices, including me as a younger man, an idealistic socialist standing on the miners’ picket lines or ferociously protesting on behalf of local councils and communities for a better deal. All of them, including the younger me, are calling out: “Vernon what are you going to do with this privilege and this honour you have?”

I say to them, as I say to all noble Lords—this is something we all share, whatever our party background—that I will stand up and speak out, as others have already done on these and other issues, through this House as a proud, working Labour Peer. I say to the Minister that I am no cynic about these things. I know that change has occurred and will occur. However, if the pandemic has shown us anything, it is the power of the state, both at local and national level, to act swiftly and decisively for the benefit of all communities in every region. Why does the state not act with the same level of urgency now for the sake of our communities? I do not want another Peer to be raising in 30 years’ time exactly the same issues of poverty and inequality in our communities as I am.

I wonder what Lord Stanley of Alderley would think. He spoke of the need for a Notification of Poverty Bill, in which he raised many of the issues we still discuss today concerning the working poor. That was in 1935. In discussing welfare and all these other issues, it cannot be right for 2.5 million people to rely on food banks, 980,000 of them children. It cannot be right for over 6 million people to depend on universal credit to survive. It cannot be right for 14.5 million people in our country, including 4.3 million children, to live in relative poverty. It cannot be right for life expectancy, health outcomes and so on still to depend on where you live and where you come from.

It cannot be right for 793 million people across the world to face starvation and for so many of our elderly not to have the social care they need and deserve. We have to act with greater urgency. The cry from communities and the demand from those who were on the frontline during the pandemic, often the poorest paid, is that they want something different. Indeed, is that not the cry from every community? My task, through the vehicle of the Labour Party, will be to play my part, however small, saying that my vision is, “It does not have to be like this”. The state needs to act, and I say to the Minister that that is how this Queen’s Speech will be judged.

To quote the great Romantic poet, Percy Shelley:

“…to hope until hope creates

From its very own wreck the thing it contemplates”.

What inspiring words. My hope, my vision, is to do all I can for a fairer, more equal society. To those voices of my past and present, I say, I have heard you. The power of our words needs to ring out across our nation. The dream of a better future is one we all have to make a reality, and as soon as we can.