Queen’s Speech

Lord Newby Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, each year, in advance of the Queen’s Speech, we receive our Writ of Summons. Normally when I glance at it, I smile rather complacently when I see that we are being summoned to consider “arduous and urgent affairs” and “imminent perils”. This year, however, those words seem only too apt. We are indeed, as the Queen herself put it, living in sombre times, which she must feel even more keenly today with the illness of the Duke of Edinburgh. We wish him well.

Recent weeks have seen a spate of quite horrific events. I too would like to pay tribute to the victims of the terrorist attacks in Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park, and to those who lost their lives in the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower. The terrorists who carried out the attacks in Manchester and London hate our tolerance and the freedom it brings. The attacks were meant to divide us, but the response from the local communities and the country more generally was to unite, to show compassion and to support the victims and their families. I commend in particular the actions of the imam of the Finsbury Park mosque, Mohammed Mahmoud, whose calm, decisive intervention prevented further injuries and violence.

That same generosity of spirit has been shown in recent days to those who lost their homes and all their possessions in the Grenfell Tower fire. The alacrity with which so many people gave their time, money and possessions to help the victims was truly remarkable. I also pay tribute, from these Benches, to the emergency services for their professional and courageous responses to all these tragedies. The police, fire service, ambulance crews and medical professionals acted with bravery and huge dedication. They have humbled us all.

It is a great pleasure to echo the Leader of the Opposition, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, in congratulating the proposer and seconder of the humble Address. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, made a speech of characteristic energy and wit. The House will be aware that there are times—many times—when the noble Lord does not quite see eye to eye with the Liberal Democrats. It is always rather worrying when making a speech to see the noble Lord readying himself to intervene with what one often rightly fears will be a particularly fatal acerbic barb. This, however, is nowhere near as worrying as when I was a Minister and the noble Lord rose to intervene on a Treasury Question. Then I knew that the Government, and more particularly me, were really in trouble.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, made an excellent speech. She is the youngest Member of your Lordships’ House. I was once the youngest life Peer in your Lordships’ House, and I know how daunting it is to speak to an audience whose average age is several decades older than one’s own. This is, of course, one of life’s few problems that diminishes with the years, but in the case of the noble Baroness it is clearly not a problem even now. Her speech had all the hallmarks of a consummate wordsmith.

I must apologise to the House that this speech is not as polished as I would have liked, but when I sat down to write it towards the end of last week I was unable to make much progress. Everywhere was confusion. Was there a Conservative deal with the DUP? Had our Brexit negotiating stance softened? Had we indeed reached, to quote the breathless Times headline of last week, the end of austerity? And which, if any, of the Conservative manifesto pledges had not been jettisoned on the grounds that they were too unpopular to pass the Commons?

I thought then that I would write the speech at the weekend, but Sunday came and the fog had not lifted. The only new announcement was that because it was proving so difficult to write this year’s Queen’s Speech the Government had decided not to have one next year at all. Perhaps, I thought, Monday would bring clarity. It did not. Tuesday? No better. Although we now have a speech, it leaves all the big questions facing the Government and the country completely unanswered. The recent terrorist attacks and the Grenfell Tower fire have both in their different ways illuminated rifts in our society that appear to be widening rather than closing. They both demand a thoughtful and proportionate response from government, but there is no sign of that in the Queen's Speech.

Those specific events, appalling though they are, happened against the backdrop of two more systemic crises facing the country as a whole. The first relates to public services and the public finances. On education, the Government are planning a 7% real-terms cut in spending per pupil. In health, as more and more hospital trusts run up large deficits, it is impossible to see how current levels of patient service can do anything other than decline further. On social care, we face a funding crisis which the Conservative manifesto made no serious attempt to resolve at all. Following the debacle of the dementia tax, we now also have no idea what the Government plan to do to limit the amount that individuals might pay for their care.

Overall, the Conservative manifesto treated the electorate like children when it came to money. We were told not to worry our pretty little heads about how a raft of spending pledges were to be met, because the all-wise Government would ensure that it was okay. It was hardly surprising that the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that they were “not being honest” with the electorate, and that they would have to raise either taxes or borrowing beyond their current plans if the quality of public services, including the NHS, were not to decline. We therefore do not know in reality how the Government will pay for their plans, nor indeed what those plans really are.

We do, however, know that the economy is in real trouble. We have the lowest growth in the G7, inflation is rising fast, real wages are falling, and as a result consumer expenditure is starting to fall. This all stems from the fall in the pound brought about by Brexit, the second major crisis facing the country. The election was called ostensibly to give the Government a larger majority and therefore a stronger hand in the Brexit negotiations. In reality it was a cynical attempt to use a brief window of opportunity with what they saw as a weak Labour leadership and a temporarily robust economy to shore up the Conservatives’ own fortunes. They failed to read the history of Ted Heath’s attempt to fight a single-issue election in 1974, and they have reaped the consequences.

As a result, and as the Brexit talks begin with a massive climbdown over timetabling, our weakened Prime Minister and squabbling Ministers have made us worse than a laughing stock across Europe. We have become an object of pity, with prayers for our well-being being said last weekend across Germany and with newspapers across the continent saying yesterday that the Government have already thrown in the towel on the Brexit talks.

There is clearly no majority in the Commons or the country for the harsh form of Brexit which the Government presented at the election. There is certainly no majority for the idea that no deal is better than a bad deal. For noble Lords opposite who have argued that the there was no alternative to this harsh approach, I suggest they have a word with the Chancellor, who is clearly desperately trying to moderate it. He, at least, knows that Brexit will be bad for jobs, public finances and investment and is trying to limit the damage.

My party has made it clear that we will be looking to work across Parliament to try to achieve the least worst Brexit possible. We agree with the Prime Minister in her speech of 25 April last year that any Brexit will make us poorer, less secure and less influential, but it is incumbent on us all to try to mitigate the cost incurred by any final Brexit deal.

We will, however, continue to argue that the people, having started the Brexit process, should have the final say. I believe that every poll on the subject over the past couple of months has shown a majority of respondents now saying that they thought that the Brexit decision was a mistake, and a poll published over the weekend showed that a majority now want to have a final say on the outcome of the negotiations. During the Article 50 proceedings in your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, argued that Labour could support such a confirmatory referendum if public opinion was asking for it. I trust that that remains the Labour Party’s position.

In this period of unparalleled uncertainty, we are of course delighted that in your Lordships’ House we have retained strong and stable leadership, and we welcome the Leader and Chief Whip back in their previous roles. We are sorry, but unsurprised, that the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, felt unable to carry on defending the indefensible as Brexit Minister, and we welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, to her new role. We wish her luck; she may need it.

There has been some debate about the effect of the election result on the application of the Salisbury convention. On these Benches, we are clear: we will carefully scrutinise every piece of legislation which comes before us and judge it on its merits. There are clearly some measures in the Queen’s Speech with which we will agree—for example, the reform of mental health legislation and the new rights for tenants. But if we think that a Bill contains measures which are damaging to the country, we will seek to ask the Commons to think again. The balance of forces in the Commons now means that the Government will face daily problems getting their legislation through there, but when legislation eventually comes to your Lordships’ House, we will give it exactly the same degree of scrutiny as we have in the past.

The current situation in the Commons is obviously a muddle. We do not know whether the Conservatives will do a formal deal with the DUP. If they do, there will be concerns about security, human rights and funding. Most importantly, there will be concerns about how the Conservatives can possibly be honest brokers in the ongoing implementation of the Good Friday agreement. In these circumstances, it is imperative that the Government provide full transparency of any deal that is entered into. It is only by making the agreement public and allowing the details to be open to public scrutiny that the electorate can be satisfied that the Prime Minister is acting in the national interest, not just that of her party.

The Prime Minister called this election purely to strengthen her position and that of the Conservatives. She has achieved the opposite. At this time of national crisis, and in the absence of a majority Government, Parliament assumes a particular responsibility to provide a sense of direction for the country. We on these Benches take these responsibilities with extreme seriousness and will play our part in bringing the country through our current travails and into a better future.