Queen’s Speech

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, the hotchpotch of issues that this debate has thrown together bears little relationship to the content of the legislative programme, and the same goes for most speeches so far. I therefore thought that I would start by referring to at least one piece of legislation that I approve of and is actually in the programme. It will need strengthening, but I strongly support, and congratulate the Government on bringing forward, the Modern Slavery Bill. That Bill and the topics that it deals with have a number of dimensions. They clearly include the appalling sex trade and the trafficking of women and children in particular. As my noble friend Lord Collins mentioned and as the Guardian highlighted this morning, the Bill also deals with the trafficking of workers. I will seek to ensure that those aspects are strengthened as the Bill goes through this House.

The second thing that I should like to say—which I was not expecting to say—to the Government and my own Front Bench is that I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, in terms of the need for this country to have much more positive engagement with the institutions of the European Union. Whatever we may think, it is necessary to take that on board. The referenda are already dominating this debate in some ways. I hope and believe that the Scots will vote to stay in the United Kingdom, and I hope that if we have to vote in a referendum on Europe we vote accordingly to stay within the EU. I hope the case for both is put rather more positively than it sometimes is. However, even if Scotland votes no and even if we vote to stay in Europe, the very process of those campaigns will change the nature of our politics and the nature of our democracy.

In particular, it is clear that there will be more devolution to Scotland following a no vote. We have before us a Bill for more devolution to the Welsh Government, which I support, including on taxation. In Northern Ireland there are calls for more devolution on taxation as well, particularly corporate taxation, for obvious reasons in relation to competition from the Republic. In many respects we are becoming, and have become, an asymmetrical federal state. That has implications for our constitution. It has implications for this House, which I will not go into today, but we will have our chance to debate that in a few days’ time. The issue I wish to focus on is that that raises the issues of subsidiarity and devolution within England. I should declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA, although I am not speaking for it here.

Some may ask, “What subsidiarity in England?”. In essence, outside of Greater London there is no devolution of substance in England any more. We argue for subsidiarity but, despite the supposed intentions of the Localism Act, less is devolved to local authorities than 10 years ago, and a huge amount less than 40 years ago. Successive Governments have taken more and more powers away from local authorities. They allow them fewer and fewer resources, give them less and less discretion and have taken away whole chunks of responsibilities, such as housing, education, the ability to set their own budgets and to raise their own resources.

Local authorities are simply becoming delivery mechanisms for the central state. That is politically counterproductive. We clearly recognise in Scotland and Wales the distance and resentment towards Westminster-dominated decisions. We need to recognise that the same instincts apply in Newcastle, Norwich, Cumberland and Cornwall. I am not in any sense arguing for an English Parliament—I do not think that is the right outcome—nor am I suggesting that we should go back to the construct of the rather artificial English regions and make them a political entity. However, we do have to think again about how power is devolved in England. I am quite attracted to the idea of city regions, but I am probably more likely to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who said at the beginning of this debate that we need a whole constitutional commission to look at these issues. That needs to start as soon as possible.

I have two other quick points. First, I have a small note of dissent on Ukraine. I hold absolutely no brief for Putin and his strategy, but I query the precipitation of this crisis and the alacrity with which the West—all of us—accepted the legitimacy of a street-based coup to depose, effectively, an elected Government. That came not that long after virtually the same thing had happened in Egypt to an elected president. I hold no brief for the Muslim Brotherhood, nor for the previous corrupt Ukrainian Government, but I ask policymakers to think how this looks in the eyes of the Arab world and the citizens of the former Soviet Union in terms of the legitimacy and reality of the West’s commitment to democracy.

My last point is on the culture and DCMS brief. A year ago there was one DCMS issue that probably should never have been a DCMS issue but dominated our discussion in this House: what we were doing post Leveson. That seems to have disappeared from view; I have not heard any speech on it today. The Government and Parliament have retreated. We have been foisted with a partial, industry-based quasi-regulator that is probably no better—in some ways it may be worse—than the one we had before. The issue of regulation of press behaviour has obscured the central issue here, which is plurality of ownership of the media. We have retreated definitely from that so that it is out of sight, yet your Lordships’ House has a committee that has done a very good report on that area. I do not agree with all of it, but we need to return to this issue. True democracy needs diversity of opinion; that means plurality of ownership. Some time—not too far in the distance, I hope—politicians will grasp that issue and do something about it, but evidently not this Government and not this Queen’s Speech.