Queen’s Speech

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate, one that has included many speeches that are thoughtful, inquisitive and questioning of the Government. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Fullbrook, on her excellent maiden speech. She speaks with experience of the other place and of local government and I look forward to future debate with her. In a debate that addresses the safety and security of our nation and its citizens, I pay tribute to the police, the other emergency services and all those who keep us safe in their many jobs and roles in these vital areas of work.

In my contribution, I intend not only to look at home affairs matters but to refer to contributions that noble Lords have made on a number of other issues today. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, rightly drew attention to the lack of support for artists and musicians, and the failure to get them proper access to the European Union. That is damaging for our economy and for a sector that brings billions of pounds into the UK.

I agree with every word of the contributions by the noble Baronesses, Lady Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury and Lady Bull, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Hudnall. We have wonderful arts and cultural offerings here in the UK. I am proud that, when I was a young councillor in 1986, my first vote on Southwark Council was to end the ridiculous dispute with Sam Wanamaker and get the Globe Theatre built. Anyone who knows the Bankside area knows that it has been transformed by the arrival of the Globe, with the plays of our greatest playwright being performed where he himself performed them in the 16th century.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, spoke about the number of young people who have learned to read music and to play a musical instrument and who have had their eyes opened to the wonderful world before them. I was not good enough to play professionally, but I learned to play an instrument and to read music, and that has given me a lifelong love of classical music. I walk past the Royal Festival Hall every night on my way home. As a kid from a council estate, not only have I attended concerts there but I have played there many times. That was thanks to a wonderful teacher at a school I went to, Franz Busuttil.

I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, when he draws attention to the plight of freelancers. This is a group of people who have not been looked after at all in the pandemic, and lots of them have now gone into other areas of work. We run the risk that they will never be able to return to their professions, in which case we, the country and our economy will lose. It really is not good. Noble Lords’ contributions about the insurance cover for live events are also something that the Government need to listen to.

I was interested to hear the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Pickles. He spoke about proposals for postal and proxy voting. I am afraid that I take the view of my noble friend Lord Blunkett on these matters. I would be a bit more convinced of the intention of the Government if I had heard what we are going to do about the 8 million people who are not on the register, but there has not been a word about them. I want to hear how the people in our country who do not have a vote are going to get one, so when that Bill comes here we are going to look carefully at that issue.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, carried over from the last Session, contains provisions that the Labour Party not only supports but has campaigned for. That includes the police covenant—but the covenant must mean a real step change in support and protection for police officers—and the increase in sentences for assaults on emergency workers. We support the measures in the Bill on causing death by dangerous driving and on the extension of protection for young people under the age of 18 against those who want to have sexual relations with them. We will want to explore how we can widen the scope to maximise the protections for young people. We welcome other elements, such as the recognition that the remand of children must be used as a last resort and the reform of the criminal records disclosure regime. However, there are elements of the Bill in respect of protest and the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities that we have considerable concerns about, and we will seek to examine them fully and possibly amend them when we debate them in the House.

On the counter-state threats Bill, we on these Benches want to see measures in place that give our law enforcement and scrutiny agencies the tools that they need to keep us safe. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, that we need laws that are balanced and fit for purpose in order to combat the threats that we face from hostile states. We have a serious problem here that needs to be tackled: dirty money flowing into London; property being bought from states, despots and other individuals so that they can hide their money, their ill-gotten gains, in a safe jurisdiction; attempts to undermine our democracy, which the Government have done very little about; and people poisoned and murdered on our streets. The Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on Russia exposed the weakness of the Government’s approach, illustrating how badly the Government have done in underestimating the threats posed and the response required.

My noble friends Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Mann raised the issue of football. We need to give fans much more influence and power regarding their local football clubs. Local clubs are the lifeblood of their communities—I have supported Millwall my whole life and the Millwall Community Trust is a fantastic organisation; Sean Daly’s team has done really good work there. Football club community trusts all over the country are key parts of their communities, and we need to support them in the work that they do.

The Government’s announcement of a strategy to combat violence against women and girls is welcome, but there is no timescale and many of the measures listed have already been brought into force so it would be good if the Minister could tell us more about what is proposed and give us some sense of the timescale that the Government are working to, because that is not very clear from the papers released so far. We on these Benches want to support the Government in tackling this huge problem in our society.

We support measures to give victims stronger rights, although I note that the Bill coming before us is a draft Bill. While it is good to carefully consider proposals, this is taking a very long time. I hope that in this Session we can make some real progress.

I have lost count of the number of immigration Bills we have had since I joined this House in 2010. Their frequency seems to be one in every Queen’s Speech. It is matched only by the frequency of planning Bills. What this tells me is that we have a Government who talk tough but who fail to deliver on the pledges they have made, and who preside over an incompetent and chaotic system, all of their own making. No one can suggest that the Windrush Compensation Scheme is going well. Look at the dangerous situation we have in the English Channel. Where is that comprehensive deal they keep talking about with France? What about the closure of the Dubs scheme, where only a few children have been beneficiaries? This is not the way to tackle these issues. I accept that they are challenging, but the solutions should be underpinned by agreement, firmness, fairness, competence and compassion, none of which is on display if we look at the proposals from the Government today.

The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, made reference to the need to update the law to combat modern slavery. I agree with those calls for change.

I further add to the calls made by the noble Lord, Lord McColl of Dulwich, who is not in his place, to do more for victims. That is exactly right. When that Bill comes forward again, I hope that the Government look at those calls. If we can only match what has been done in Scotland and in Northern Ireland on these matters, we will be doing a good job. The noble Lord, Lord Morrow, who is also not in his place, made a great contribution to improving the laws there in Northern Ireland.

In terms of legacy issues, the Government must honour their commitments made to families and to victims. People need to learn the truth of what happened to their loved ones. The process must be rooted in the rule of law and based on support for victims and communities in Northern Ireland. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, will be able to set out what the proposals in the Queen’s Speech will deliver. We need some clarity there. The noble Lord, Lord Rogan, made reference to the Ballymurphy families, who fought for justice for five decades. His description—that they received the official government apology from the Prime Minister by email—is appalling, and contrasts poorly with the way David Cameron apologised to victims following the publication of the Bloody Sunday inquiry reports.

The online harms Bill is very welcome as far as it goes, but it has taken a long time to get this far. We are still talking about only a draft Bill, as my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede made reference to. I very much support the aims of the Government to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online, with no safe space for criminal conduct or activity, to protect children from abuse, to protect us all from scams, to protect us all from fake news, misinformation and disinformation, and to make platforms face up to their responsibilities. Every time action is called for, the missing piece is the platform—the host not doing enough to tackle the menace that is the awful, corrosive, illegal and criminal side of the internet.

As my noble friend Lord Ponsonby said, the decision of the Government to hold back on criminal sanctions for directors is most regrettable. The most direct way to get powerful executives to take some action is to place responsibility firmly in their laps.

Look at the damage that has been done to people’s health and safety by conspiracy theories—the absolute rubbish that has undermined the Covid vaccination programme around the world. The reality is that vaccination is the only way out of the pandemic, not just in the UK; we need the whole world vaccinated. That is the route of safety to get us all back to something that represents the normality that we were used to.

We need urgent progress in this Session; we need a bold vision for safety, security and the protection of our citizens, putting measures in place to give people the confidence to thrive. What we get from the Government falls far short of that; it is particularly frustrating and disappointing to see proposals that are welcome but where the pace of change and reform is so slow. The draft victims Bill and the draft online harms Bill are two examples of where the Government have dragged their feet on proposals which we all agree are urgent and necessary.

In conclusion, there are measures that we support but where we want the Government to go further, and there are others that we have grave concerns about. However, as we always do, on these Benches we will work constructively with the Government to improve the legislation that comes before us.