Queen’s Speech

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, it is an honour to contribute to my first Queen’s Speech debate. I start by saying how much I appreciated and was content with the contribution made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle in her maiden speech. I know just how difficult I found my speech to make back in January. Her speech was outstanding and shows what a contribution she will be able to make to the House in future on behalf of both the Church and her diocese, for which she spoke so eloquently.

I start by making what has become almost the statutory declaration on where I stand on the EU referendum. I definitely want to remain. As someone who spent 20 years working in the construction industry, which will be an essential component of delivering most of the things that we are discussing in today’s debate, I am pleased to report to your Lordships that a poll of construction industry professionals published last week shows that 63% of them share that view, with 21% saying that they would wish to leave. It is interesting to see what their principal concerns were, should the UK leave the European Union. Labour shortages in the industry were a concern for 55%, the higher cost of materials were a concern for 53%, and less foreign direct investment in the construction industry in the UK was a concern for 60%. Those are points that I hope very much the House takes into account as we approach 23 June.

I want to use the balance of my time on one of the given topics for today, the environment, on which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and my noble friends Lady Featherstone and Lady Parminter, have spoken. They noted that the word “environment” does not appear in the gracious Speech at all. I am not sure that they have drawn the appropriate conclusions from that, because the Queen’s Speech has a wonderful quote:

“My Government will continue to play a leading role in world affairs, using their global presence to tackle climate change”.

I wholeheartedly commend and endorse that commitment, and the House will understand that I turned to the briefing pack provided by Her Majesty’s Government to follow up and see exactly what that would consist of. It took me a while, but eventually I reached page 80, where the briefing pack says:

“Following the Paris climate agreement we are committed, both at home and overseas, to reducing emissions and increasing investment in clean energy technologies”.

That sounds very positive and encouraging, especially to those of us who have the view that climate change is in reality the greatest challenge facing humankind. The Government will have every assistance from these Benches to deliver on that very bold aspiration.

Unfortunately, there is no hint in the gracious Speech about how that is going to be achieved. As my noble friend Lady Parminter pointed out, there are no Bills, there is no policy announcement or time scale, and there are no stepping stones. The 85-page brief is full of information on everything else but remains silent on how the Government intend to use the second year of their five years in office to begin the process of meeting the new commitments that they entered into in Paris, let alone their existing statutory obligations under the Climate Change Act. The sum total that they come up with are the two lines that I have already quoted.

So is that it? Is there to be no forward movement at all in policy and delivery? Is there simply a reliance on steady-as-she-goes, with existing measures? I very much hope that that is not the case. Since May last year, those existing measures have been deliberately and systematically toned down, delayed, cancelled and abandoned. The gracious Speech sets out a bold aspiration, but in real life the policy direction since last May has been backwards. For example—and this is close to my own heart—the back-tracking on zero-carbon homes is a substantial blow to meeting the Paris targets. So, too, is the dismantling of any effective retrofit programme of energy saving in homes, and the drastic cuts to the feed-in tariff.

As all the pre-existing coalition programmes set up by Liberal Democrats and Conservative Ministers in the previous Parliament are being undone, and at the same time tough new targets and commitments are being adopted via the Paris agreement while boastful claims of world leadership are being made in the Queen’s Speech, why is the gracious Speech completely silent on what is going to be done instead to fill the gap? If the Minister does not know or cannot say now what the answer is, can he at least tell us when he will tell us? When will your Lordships be permitted to know how the Government intend to make a reality of those bold words in the Queen’s Speech, when Her Majesty said:

“My Government will continue to play a leading role in world affairs, using their global presence to tackle climate change”?