Queen's Speech

Lord Newby Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, like all other noble Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the noble Lord, Lord Henley, on their new appointments and wish them every success. I have to say that I am extremely sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Myners, has decided to go to the Back Benches—a new experience for him. It has been a great pleasure taking part in debates with him over the past 18 months. Whether I have agreed or disagreed with him, his tremendous knowledge of the subject and willingness to engage genuinely in the issues will be sorely missed.

The noble Lord, Lord Myners, will recall that we supported the previous Government in their fiscal stimulus over the past 18 months, and he helpfully pointed out to the House that I argued against precipitate cuts in public expenditure now. I still believe that deep cuts in public expenditure this year would be a mistake, but the cuts that were announced last week could hardly be described as deep or severe. In some cases, such as abolishing child trust funds, the useless Connexions service and some of the RDAs—though not the northern ones, to reassure the right reverend Prelate—they were desirable in any event. Switching some expenditure into additional apprenticeships surely makes sense at this stage.

Given the crisis in Greece and elsewhere in Europe caused by excessive government borrowing, it would have been completely incredible for a new Government in the UK to come in without making any proposals about reductions in public expenditure. However, the £6 billion of cuts this year is a small fraction of the cuts that will be necessary over the course of this Parliament and a small fraction of the cuts that the previous Government foreshadowed in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Nothing that we heard today from the noble Lord, Lord Myners, told us how the Labour Party would approach making those cuts to which they are legally committed. There was not a scintilla of a suggestion about how the first pound might be saved. The key questions for all of us is how the cuts, which we all agree will have to be made, can be made to protect the poor and the vulnerable and how we create the strong economy and fair society to which the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, referred.

This is difficult because the poor and the vulnerable are necessarily the principal consumers of many public expenditure programmes. The challenges and opportunities in this area were eloquently set out by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, in his notable maiden speech last week. With his knowledge of government, he argued that many vulnerable people, households and communities received services that did not meet their needs, and that it was not simply a question of resources because often the services were more expensive than they needed to be. He suggested three ways of reducing costs, improving the efficiency of government services and, therefore, getting more for less: reducing silo thinking in Whitehall; improving the co-ordination between public local bodies; and better co-ordination of purchasing across the public sector. He argued that we should be shaping services around clients, not providers. Surely these must be the benchmarks against which we judge public expenditure cuts over the lifetime of this Parliament.

There are many measures in the Queen’s Speech that we welcome: the proposal on capital gains tax, the green investment bank and the Equitable Life Bill, which is a shameful legacy of the previous Government who steadfastly refused to deal with people who were suffering as a result of the Equitable Life scandal. We welcome the Hutton review of public sector pay and the proposals on mutuals and co-operatives. The economic challenge facing the country remains the greatest in our lifetime. This election result has given us the chance to play a major part in meeting this challenge. We intend to seize it with both hands.