Queen’s Speech

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate which has been hampered by the fact that although it began with a concentration on the economy—the House will not be surprised that I intend to direct a great deal of my remarks to the advocacy of the amendment moved by my noble friend—and although the economy was bound to dominate the debate, we had six other subjects to consider. Although they were somewhat late in getting under way on the agenda, they did not in any way receive short shrift once addressed by the noble Lords who were concerned with those issues. In response to the debate, therefore, the great danger is that I could make a speech which would take us well past midnight, whereas the Minister is aiming to finish well before.

I must first congratulate the two maiden speakers. The noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, had to withstand a most stimulating introduction from my noble friend Lord Myners concerning who he was. When he began his maiden speech, his response was of sufficient vigour to show that he is going to enjoy himself in his contributions in this House in the future. We particularly appreciated the points that he had to make about regulatory regimes.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham made a most impressive speech. Of course, we all envy him for both the city in which he lives and the cathedral which he has as his major location, but what we admired today was the seriousness of the contribution that he made on the economy. How welcome that was. If there is one obvious criticism of this place which gives rise to the demands for an elected House, it is inevitably that we are geographically limited. We have an overwhelming south-east concentration: a mere smattering of voices is heard from across the United Kingdom as a whole, and the north-east is not excessively represented in our contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, will jump up and correct me in a moment but he knows what I mean when, at times, even he has been a lone voice. It is very welcome therefore that the right reverend Prelate can make a contribution from that dimension.

If the House will forgive me, I will address one or two of the other issues next. My main role for the Opposition is in transport and this debate says that it is about transport. Several contributions were made that were of particular and striking interest on those issues—not least, the significance of transport as the basis for the important infrastructure of the economy. It is also an area in which we could accelerate investment. The case which the Opposition are putting is the necessity for getting people back to work on infrastructure projects, and where those can be accelerated and brought forward, they ought to be. That is an important dimension, which is why I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for his argument about increasing electrification for freight travel. I was grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, who talked about investment in roads. She is on pretty thin ice—not that the ice is always thin on roads—when she raises the subject of road charging. I see no indication from the Government that their radical thoughts have gone that far as yet. However, she is of course right that we need to look at investment in roads, not least at just keeping the present road structure maintained satisfactorily after the ravages of recent months.

The noble Lord, Lord Patten, said that we should bring forward the HS2 rail project as rapidly as we can. I say to the Government—this is not the first time that I have done so—that we in the Opposition are concerned about aviation policy. With every month that goes by we are losing out on international competitiveness because of our lack of airport capacity. We have said to the Government that we are quite prepared to discuss with them ways in which we can have a joint approach to a solution to this issue because of its great significance to the nation. All I say is that we are now faced with an exceptional degree of prevarication. I am grateful to those voices which have today emphasised that the Government should get a move on. As those voices have come from the Government’s side, that has given me even greater encouragement.

The enormously important issue of energy also had a fair airing in this debate. We have got to get our energy policy right. Of course, there were the inevitable collisions. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, talked about nuclear energy. My noble friend Lady Worthington of course has a great deal to say about nuclear power and how we must ensure that we reduce carbon emissions from our energy sources. However, there are enormous costs involved in nuclear power. We all know that. There have been heavy costs in the past, and we are almost starting from scratch on the next stage.

I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, who introduced the issue of the Severn barrage. He knows that the issue has been tested and costed. That is a real problem, but I am grateful to him for highlighting that we need to look at green energy. It is quite clear that we cannot rely on fossil fuels for the future and then meet our emissions targets.

The main subject of the debate was inevitably the economy. My noble friend Lady Royall, in moving the amendment, indentified what we regard as a clear record of the failure of this Government. The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, even indicated that he did not think much of the process by which crucial Budget decisions had been taken, particularly the extent to which Parliament had not been treated with the respect that it ought to have been in the Budget’s presentation. I agree with him entirely on that. The leaking prior to the Queen’s Speech itself was similarly unfortunate. I hope that we will not have those difficulties again.

Of course the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, did not associate himself with the more fundamental point that we are concerned with. Two years ago the Government set themselves a series of targets that they set out to achieve through various strategies such as Project Merlin and the banks’ position, about which we hear very little these days, and the whole question of being able to reduce the debt within a set period of time, a target from which they are already resiling.

Crucially, the price of the policy that the Government are inflicting on the nation is clearly unacceptable. Austerity is proving to be unacceptable in a range of countries that have given people a chance to have a voice in elections, such as Greece and France. With regard to local government in the UK—the noble Lord, Lord Tope, made a rather late entry into the debate—one aspect is that the cuts already enforced on local authorities have certainly produced a reaction from the electorate.

A short while ago, we ought to have set storm signals for the Government about the programme and policy that they are pursuing. One of the indicators of that in this debate is that, in addition to the trenchant criticism that the Government will have expected from my noble friends Lord Myners, Lord Haskel, Lord Whitty and Lord Hanworth, it came from the Cross Benches too. It was from the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, that the first onslaught came, and an extremely cogent and straightforward attack followed from the noble Lord, Lord Low. The analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, identified for the Government the fact that their position is untenable.

I noticed that reference was made to the British motor car industry and how we should be delighted at its recent figures. I take delight in those figures but I have a little difficulty with it being called the “British” motor car industry. I understand that it is a car industry that is in Britain, but of course the industry itself is Japanese. I make this obvious point. In another society, the car industry was saved by government action. If you go anywhere near Detroit or Michigan, you will know that the state can act effectively to safeguard even an industry in the most parlous position. That industry is now making profits and has made a significant recovery. I would be glad if the Minister indicated that the same degree of recovery has been occasioned through successful government support in our society.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, with whom from time to time I crossed swords in our previous incarnations in this House, asked me whether I had addressed myself to the question of the additional borrowing that would be implicit in the strategy that we advocate. The additional borrowing that we would be involved with would be quite limited in comparison to the significant losses of productive capacity represented by the policy pursued by this Government. The fact that we have so many assets underemployed and so many people unemployed is a massive loss. It will take us years to recover. The Government’s own projection—or, more accurately, that of the OBR—indicates that it will be many years before we recover the productive capacity that we had in 2008.

There is one change in the tenor of the Government’s argument now. When they are in difficulty, they are prone now to putting British economic policy in the context of the wider economies. We are faced with the fact that we are not completely in control of our own destinies and we have to take account of the pressures and weaknesses in the eurozone. We all recognise the validity of that argument. It does not quite address with the same force the international context. When the tsunami of the collapse of the international financial system occurred five years ago, according to them, our problems were entirely due to the mismanagement of the British economy and there was no issue of context there.

We are quite confident that all sides except those entirely devoted to the Government’s cause—and there are signs of dissent within their ranks too—and independent opinion, particularly independent opinion as represented in this House by the Cross Benches, are indicating that the terms of trade have turned significantly against this Government. Certainly the wider nation outside these walls has already given a preliminary verdict on just what austerity represents. This debate, if it does nothing else, ought to call out to the Government at least to admit that there are aspects of the promises that they made only two short years ago that they will be totally unable to fulfil.