King’s Speech

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, on his speech today and his presence on our Front Bench—indeed, I congratulate all the new Ministers. It is great to be in this situation again. I also congratulate and welcome the noble Lord, Lord Booth. His maiden speech was not uncontroversial, but I hope the House authorities take his point on discrimination and the procedures of this House in the not too distant future.

I do not normally intrude on constitutional issues, and I do not intend to change that today. You can speak on anything you like in the King’s Speech debates, so I will try to take a number of different issues and focus on their constitutional implications. I usually speak on energy, environment, housing or employment, so I will pick a couple of issues in those areas and draw the constitutional implications from them.

I start with climate change. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, was just in his place and I wished to compliment him on his role here. I too have been involved with the crucial issue of our time. I was a Minister in John Prescott’s department when we signed the Kyoto agreement; I was a member of the Joint Committee with the Commons that led to the Climate Change Act 2008. Theoretically, we have had cross-party support for all these initiatives for nearly 30 years. It is important that we have that degree of commitment to a long-term programme—both of the institutions support it, and particularly the Climate Change Committee. I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Deben, back in his place—I was just congratulating him. Where we have such cross-party support on long-term strategies, we ought to consider, as a constitutional issue, protecting them rather better than we do.

In recent months and years—in the last couple of years of the Tory Administration—the then Government and the national press effectively took us away from the strategy on which we were all agreed. That ought not to happen lightly. There ought to be a way to ensure that a slight change in the political mood following a particular by-election—which in this case was misinterpreted by both major parties—does not drive us away from a commitment we have made for years. In this case, the commitment is vital to the future of not only this country but the world. The effect of this has been to undermine not only our carbon change and net-zero progress but the United Kingdom’s role in leading the way around the world. That has a colossal implication, and it should not have been jeopardised by short-term political moves or relatively minor regulatory timetable changes to achieve changes to building standards and to electrify transport. The new Government can rectify this, and I believe they should.

The body politic as a whole needs to ensure that such strategies are protected. I am not saying they should never be altered—I am not a Mede or Persian—but I believe that we should have a stronger way of protecting such long-term strategies. It may be that defence strategy, for example, is in a similar category, and there will be others. I am not suggesting that we should never change them, but we should make it much more difficult to do so, and we should ensure that the good will and cross- party support for such measures is there.

The second issue relates to local government. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, recently spelled it out. The reality is that this Government’s measures on key issues such as social care, employment, and housing and planning will not be delivered without the co-operation of local government. Yet we know that, particularly in England, local government is in a terrible state. It is arguable—and it was argued earlier—that the structure of local government needs further addressing, and I believe that to be true. Certainly the finances of local government need addressing, which means that other resources must be available to local government, both directly in their own patches and through the system of rate support grants and the redistribution of that revenue from central government. If we do not do that, a lot of our programme will not be delivered.

I hope my colleagues on the Front Bench are listening and that, on both those issues, we will have some serious new thinking.