Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity

Mark Hendrick Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

What was known as the Queen’s Speech, now the King’s speech, was seen as an opportunity by the incumbent Government to lay out an ambitious policy agenda for the future. What we have seen from this King’s Speech, at what many might call the fag end of this Government’s time in office, is anything but ambitious. It is a collection of measures to try to cause division in the country. This Government do not want to fight the next election on their record in office, so they will fight it on what they say Labour will do. They will try to describe what is mainstream as extreme in order to promote their right-wing agenda as moderate—for example, by watering down our climate change commitments.

I will go even further and suggest that the Government want to placate even more of the Prime Minister’s right-wing colleagues by bringing about the notion of climate scepticism, as though our nation’s fears and worries about climate change are overblown and unfounded, when in fact the evidence of excessive flooding and heatwaves has appeared before our own people’s eyes. The use of the word “scepticism” is designed to conjure up a vision of the past, where Euroscepticism appeared to vanquish those who wished to remain in the European Union. Well, we have all seen how that played out. If climate scepticism catches on in the UK, it will do the same damage to our emissions targets and our reputation that Euroscepticism did to our trade, our economy and our reputation.

This Prime Minister, in order to try to distance himself from the previous Conservative incumbents in No. 10, is now trying to make out that he is a break from the past, where there was once cross-party consensus, through environmental measures and the likes of the cancellation of HS2. He is trying to dissociate himself from 13 years of Conservative Government failures, and to present himself as something new. The trick that he is trying to deploy is to bring forward measures that I would describe as counterintuitive. By playing down the need for strong environmental protective measures and the need for HS2 to go to Manchester, he is being different for difference’s sake. Climate science tells us that cleaner cars and well-insulated homes will save energy and help the progress towards net zero. Economists do not just look at the cost to the nation of HS2; they look at the best estimates, which by the Government’s own analysis suggest that the completion of HS2 to Manchester would have brought £24 billion a year to the north’s economy and created 96,000 jobs. It would have improved capacity and connectivity and closed the productivity gap with London.

The Prime Minister thinks that the public will be fooled into thinking he is a different Prime Minister with a fresh agenda for the future and forget the fact that he has been in government since 2018. The crime—I nearly said “the crime minister”; it is a crime, some of the things that I think are going on on the Government Benches. The Prime Minister has been in the Cabinet for more than four years, was Chancellor of the Exchequer for two and has now been Prime Minister for a whole year, so it is not as though he is new to being in government.

Providing solutions to problems that do not exist is part of the Prime Minister’s agenda. Labour is not in government now, so it is irrelevant whether we would promote the annual issuing of North sea oil and gas licences. If we were in government and those licences had already been granted, as is likely to be the case, the decision would already have been taken. If those licences were not already granted, a Labour Government would have the choice and do what was best for the UK. In addition, the Government are fabricating policies that the country would get under a Labour Government, such as a meat tax, car sharing and seven different types of bins.

What have we seen in this King’s Speech? We have a sentencing Bill that will require whole-life sentences for the worst murderers. It would mean that rapists could not be released early and make shorter sentences more likely for lesser crimes. That sounds okay on the face of it, but it has more to do with the fact that prisons are full and the Government’s building programme cannot keep pace with convictions. I have a constituent who is a victim of rape and has had to wait five years for her case to come to court. There is more of a problem getting rapists into prison in the first place, with a conviction rate of only 2%, never mind letting them out early. There are many problems with the criminal justice system. Sentencing is a good headline, but it is not the answer to the system’s many woes.

This Government are running out of steam. They should call a general election tomorrow, because the country is crying out for change.