Queen’s Speech

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to respond on behalf on the Opposition. I start by declaring my interest as president of the Healthcare Supplies Association and of GS1. As we are discussing culture, I should say that I am also a patron of the CBSO and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

We have once again heard from the Minister the extravagant claims made by the Government for this year’s Queen’s Speech. We are told that they will adopt a one-nation approach, support aspiration and give new opportunities to the most disadvantaged. I have to say that, listening to the Minister, I hear scant evidence of that in the subjects that we debate this afternoon.

Although economic growth is returning, its benefits are not being shared, the economy remains fragile, Britain’s productivity lags behind, tax revenues have fallen and the trade deficit is growing. The Government’s claim to bring the public finances under control is surely inconsistent with the many uncosted pledges in their manifesto. Who can doubt that the price to be paid for that irresponsibility will fall heaviest on the very disadvantaged people that the Government claim to want to help? That certainly characterises the Government’s welfare policies. We of course will back measures to help people get into work. However, it is now even more important that there are decent jobs for people to move into, that childcare is affordable and available, and that there are adequate funds for discretionary house payments; otherwise, the Government’s reduction in the cap will, tragically, put children into poverty, increase homelessness and end up costing more than it saves.

On welfare, the overriding question is where the promised £12 billion of welfare cuts will fall. The Government have been silent on this; not surprisingly, since they are clearly in disarray about what to do. Wherever the axe eventually falls, inevitably it will be on the independence of disabled people and on working-age families, who will face an even tighter squeeze in the years ahead. It is hardly inspirational to further penalise working people who are in receipt of welfare subsidies because their pay is so poor. I ask the Minister to listen to Steve Hilton, Mr Cameron’s former adviser. He said recently:

“It is outrageous that people should work all hours of the week and still have to live on benefits because they don’t get paid enough”.

He said that it is,

“a really big problem both economically, socially and morally”.

Quite, my Lords—quite.

On education, we will hold the Prime Minister to account for his latest promises on free childcare for 3 and 4 year-olds. The rhetoric might be promising, but the reality is that children’s centres have closed and the cost of childcare has soared. The average family now pays £1,500 more per year for nursery fees than it would have done in 2010. The National Day Nurseries Association says that fees will rise to subsidise the cost of free places because the Government have miscalculated the costs. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, was hardly reassuring on this in his Answer to an Oral Question earlier.

Talking of value for money, it is surely a scandal that, with a severe school place shortage in many areas, the Government are ploughing hundreds of millions of pounds into building new free schools in other parts of the country where there is already a surplus of places. As Simon Jenkins put it, it is all on a par with their,

“covert project to nationalise all schools”.

New primary and secondary schools, together with those schools defined by Whitehall as failing or coasting, are to be brought under regional tsars. It seems to me that that is all on the basis of the rather selective evidence that we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Nash, this afternoon. The latest centralising absurdity is the intention to remove the duty to hold a public consultation before a school converts to an academy. So much for parental involvement, of which the noble Lord’s party made so much in the years behind.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, did mention culture this afternoon, and I am grateful for that. However, he will have noted that the Queen’s Speech was absolutely silent about the brilliance of the cultural heritage of this country. I wonder whether that silence reflects the way that support for the arts has been decimated by this Government, both directly through Arts Council funding and indirectly through the impact of reduced local authority support.

Perhaps, too, that silence reflects the threats made by the noble Lord’s party to the BBC. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Freud, will say in winding up that the long-term future of the BBC as an independent and vibrant organisation is assured. Already, it has suffered a budget cut of about 25% since 2010. The rush to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee and cut funding further is bound to impact on the quality and range of programmes.

There can be no doubt that many arts organisations face huge pressures. I will take as an example the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which I know best. In very difficult circumstances, the city council has done its best to protect funding, but, inevitably, there has been a loss of grant. With all the imaginative fundraising in the world, an orchestra such as the CBSO is now very vulnerable, as are many of the best arts organisations in our country. I would like the Government to encourage the Arts Council to do more to redress the imbalance in funding between London and the rest of the country. I remind the Minister that the 2013 report, Rebalancing our Cultural Capital, showed that per capita spend in London was 15 times that of the rest of the country, and I ask him what the Government are going to do about it.

So there is silence on the arts in the Queen’s Speech, and I rather thought that the Government might have liked to keep silent on the NHS. The Minister has no doubt read, as I have, the recent King’s Fund independent analysis of the wretched 2012 health Act. It concluded that it had produced an unwieldy structure, with leadership fractured between several national bodies, a complex regulatory system and a strategic vacuum in leadership. It is on that rocky ground that the Government now promise the integration of health and social care, implementation of the five-year forward plan, seven-day working, more resources for mental health and more funding generally—at least until the Secretary of State said yesterday that no more was needed.

How is integration of health and social care to be achieved when social care continues to take such a heavy burden in local authority cuts? Does anyone believe that the hapless clinical commissioning groups will take any notice of pleas to spend more on mental health? They certainly have not done so far.

No one could argue with the desire to reduce higher mortality rates at weekends, but is a true, seven-day working model deliverable given the scale of the financial challenge in the NHS, which is formidable? Already, we have seen performance deteriorating. The four-hour waiting time target for major A&E departments has been missed every week for nigh on two years. Cancer waiting time targets have been missed for five consecutive quarters. Ambulance waiting times have deteriorated. Lack of access to GPs is a source of considerable public concern. It was reported that 160,000 patients in the last two years have had to find new doctors because their practice has closed. Seven-day working in hospitals needs seven-day working in the community. How is that to happen when primary care is under so much pressure at the moment?

We know that employment agencies are taking the NHS to the cleaners, and the Government have belatedly acted by placing a cap on payments—I think that they found that the free market does not seem to work—but is not the real cause of agency overspend the lamentable decision that the noble Lord’s Government took to cut nurse training places? What are they going to do about it?

Seven-day working is hardly credible without recognition of the financial consequences. We had a provider deficit of nearly £1 billion in the last financial year; it is now estimated to double in the current financial year. The Minister mentioned the mystical £8 billion, but that is promised for 2020. It is clear that the NHS needs resources now, and it is clear that the £8 billion is credible only if the NHS drives up its efficiency to a level never achieved before. I would like to hear in the Minister’s winding-up speech exactly how he thinks that is going to be done without impacting on safety and quality of patient outcomes, remembering that clinical staffing costs are the biggest spend in the NHS budget.

The Government have such little confidence in their stewardship of the NHS that they are refusing to bring any NHS legislation to Parliament. Because of that, the professional accountability Bill, which is a Law Commission measure to enhance public protection through professional regulation, has been killed off. The Royal College of Surgeons has warned that one consequence will be that doctors will continue to perform cosmetic surgery without the necessary additional training or qualifications. Why is that going to be allowed to happen?

The Queen’s Speech certainly does not want for rhetoric. However, we shall judge the Government on their ability to deliver so that the benefits of economic growth are enjoyed by all rather than just the wealthy; that welfare policies will support rather than penalise working-age families; that schools and teachers will be encouraged to do their best for young people; that the huge contribution of the arts is recognised and appreciated; and that the NHS will be properly funded to respond to the extraordinary pressure it is under.

From these Benches we will be rigorous in our scrutiny of the legislative programme. We have made clear that, within the bounds of the convention, we will not hesitate to seek to defeat the Government when the occasion demands.