Queen’s Speech

Lord Monks Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I, too, add my congratulations to our two new colleagues on their effective maiden speeches, and I wish the right reverend Prelate the very best for the future.

Not long ago, when the Cameron-Osborne team led the Conservative Party, the party clearly believed in small government. Indeed, sometimes, they seem to have embraced austerity not just to pacify financial markets but as an opportunity to roll back the frontiers of the state and create extra spaces for entrepreneurs to prosper. All this was in line with the Thatcherite creed. Also in line with that creed were: the new anti-trade union law; public sector pay freezes; rising levels of inequality; deep cuts in local authority budgets; inaction on the growing gig economy; and an end to the important initiative of Sure Start. Equally importantly, NHS funding in real terms was cut and left the service rather weak to face the onslaught of Covid-19. Noble Lords will get the drift. A smaller state was very much the goal.

Now that is changing, if we can believe the Prime Minister’s promises, as many certainly did at last week’s polls. The Government are spending heavily and promise to spend a great deal more. The furlough scheme, in particular, has made a huge difference—imagine the unemployment situation without it. My noble friend Lord Hain was quite correct to warn of the dangers of its sudden withdrawal. The Prime Minister promised the voters of Hartlepool and elsewhere that there would be this powerful levelling-up agenda and new investment in the NHS. As the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, has spotted, the small state is in full retreat in Biden’s America, for sure, and now over here. If the Government deliver on their promises—which is quite a big “if,” given some of the promises that have already been broken—we will see a return to one-nation Toryism for the first time in many years.

There are big weaknesses in the Government’s approach, with a major question being: how is it all to be paid for? The damaging effects of Brexit on the economy are already very evident in Northern Ireland and in the fishing industry; less noticeably, perhaps, in other sectors that are dependent upon exports, but, undoubtedly, it is causing major dislocation. There is this big hole called social care, which many other speakers have referred to. There is no sign of a new employment Bill, without which levelling up could look more like levelling down and there could be a further spread of the gig economy, with all its abuses and insecurities for workers.

I acknowledge that the levelling-up agenda is extremely ambitious. I would like to be able to think that it will be delivered; I hope that it will be. Of course, we have seen big transfers in the past to hard-hit regions and nations. They certainly created jobs but too many of them were precarious and low paid, and they have been outstripped by deindustrialisation and structural and cultural changes.

Now, the pressure is on the Government to carry out their promises—especially their promise that the young can expect good-quality jobs in their hometowns without needing to move away to the big cities, with the little bit of extra glamour that they can impart. It is a bold and welcome promise; I hope that this House and others will hold the Government to it. I look forward to learning about how it will be delivered. Of course, there are scores, perhaps even hundreds, of towns and villages in the old industrial and seaside areas of this country. I hope that action will not be limited to where there happens to be a by-election.