Queen’s Speech

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I add my welcome to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. As the Magpies’ trashing of Tottenham on the last day of the football season demonstrated, nobody from the Toon Army should be taken lightly. In that the right reverend Prelate also has my noble friend Lord Ridley in her flock, she will always have a fair amount of work on her hands as a rational optimist.

The gracious Speech had two golden threads running right through it: economic competence and life chances. The latter is significantly stifled if you do not have the former. It is largely a digital economy that we need to consider today. So I was pleased to see the digital economy Bill in the gracious Speech. We can no longer consider digital as a separate world from the real economy. Digital runs through everything that we are considering. The first Industrial Revolution took over a century. We are already into the first blows of the fourth industrial revolution and its pace is absolutely extraordinary.

I welcome the Bill’s provisions on superfast broadband. With the commitment to fibre optic, it is pleasing to see that the business department has very much moved on from cable. FinTech will be key to this. It already contributes £6.6 billion to the UK economy. What more can be done to enable FinTech to unleash economic power for the unbanked and underbanked and to provide credit lines? This can be such a boon for SMEs, business and the British economy. So what more can the Treasury do to encourage FinTech, not least in further pushing mandatory referrals?

On transport, the Minister referred in his opening speech to the success of the railways in increasing passenger numbers since privatisation. We need to see that same increase for buses. Having grown up in the West Midlands, like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, I was surprised to note that in the relevant Bill the word “bus” is spelled with an “s” rather than a “z”. Technology runs through that Bill as well in the potential use of data and the ability for people to have electronic access to timetables and the opportunity to understand and connect with public transport in a way that was previously unheard of. That is an example of how data can drive innovation and change. Buses are an excellent example of this. The Bus Services Bill provides a real opportunity to look at the whole question of access, not least for disabled people in the area of audiovisual announcements. That is certainly something on which I will speak more when we come to Second Reading in a couple of weeks.

As regards energy, if we are truly to get the best out of the economy, not least the digital economy and automated vehicles, we need power. I contend that we do not need Hinkley Point. Its economics do not add up, the technology does not add up, the numbers do not work and neither does the EP reactor. Will the Government take the opportunity to end Hinkley Point as currently constructed, or will we wait for the French to promenade away from the project? Perhaps we will have a third option: Hinkley Point will become the world’s largest renewable power plant as all that will be left to fuel it will be thin air.

I was phenomenally fortunate to attend with my noble friend Lord Kirkham a Duke of Edinburgh awards ceremony for gold award winners at Buckingham Palace last Monday. We heard stunning stories of the life chances of individuals across the country having been enhanced. We need economic competence, life chances, a high-skill, high-knowledge economy if we are to innovate and tech our way into the 2020s and beyond.