Debate on the Address

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ed Davey]

I am delighted to say that today we welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis), the new Member for that constituency, to the Liberal Democrat Benches. I am sure she will have all the answers that the hon. Gentleman needs.

But growth and house building are not the only challenges, crucial though they are. I am sure that all of us across the House, as we knocked on doors during the election campaign, heard the same common refrain from people of all backgrounds and all walks of life: that nothing seems to be working as it should, from the health and care crisis to the sewage scandal to the cost of living. The British people have overwhelmingly rejected the past out-of-touch Conservative Government. They have gone, but after so many years of being taken for granted, many people have simply lost faith in our political system to solve their problems.

We on the Liberal Democrat Benches recognise the scale of the challenge now facing the new Government. They have a big job to do, and so do we. We will work hard on behalf of our constituents. We will scrutinise the Government’s plans carefully and strive to improve them, and we will oppose them when we think they have got it wrong, but where they act in the national interest to solve these problems and improve people’s lives, we will support them.

One issue that came up more than any other at door after door—I am sure it was the same for Members of all parties—was the issue of health and care. Patients are waiting weeks to see a GP or an NHS dentist, if they can find one; more than 6 million people are waiting on NHS waiting lists; tens of thousands of cancer patients are waiting months to start urgent treatment; patients are stuck in hospital sometimes for weeks, ready and wanting to leave but unable to do so because the care home place is not there or the care worker or support for the family carer is not in place. Fixing this crisis in our NHS is essential, not only for people’s health and wellbeing but for the economy and for growth. Only if we get people off the waiting lists and into work can we get our economy growing strongly again.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman mentions the delays and waiting times in the NHS and social care, but how much does he regret his role in the five years he spent in a coalition with the Conservatives creating that situation?

[Ed Davey]

I am disappointed in the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. We can all go back to things that other parties did in government and say that they were wrong. I would just say to him that I come to this task now in a spirit of constructive opposition to work for the best for our country, and I hope that he and other Members will do that too.

I welcome a number of the measures for the NHS in the King’s Speech, including on reducing waiting times and particularly on mental health. I want to work with the Government to improve those; they are long overdue. Of course, I also urge the Government to look at the proposals on the NHS in our manifesto, on boosting GP numbers so everyone can get an apartment within seven days or 24 hours if it is urgent, on improving access to dentists and crucially to local pharmacists—if more people can get the care they need early and locally, fewer people go into hospital—and on giving cancer patients the care they deserve with a cast-iron guarantee that they will start treatment within two months after diagnosis. This is the scale of the ambition we need for our NHS right now, and I hope the Government will show it.

There is another part of this crisis that needs to be fixed through urgent attention, and it is care. I spoke during the election about my own caring journey, first for my mum when I was a teenager, then for my dear nana, and now as Emily and I care for our severely disabled son, John. I have been incredibly touched by the response from colleagues across the House who have reached out to tell me how important it is that we speak out on care, for people who need care and for carers, both professional social care workers and the family carers who are looking after their loved ones.

I have had the chance to hear from carers of all ages all over the country as they shared personal stories with me. They include the couple who care for a son with similar care needs to John’s, who reached out to say that they know what it is like to worry about what will happen when they are no longer there to look after their disabled son. They offered me advice, and I was touched by their kindness and generosity.

Each care story is so different yet, in many ways, they have much in common. We all share a special, wonderful bond with the ones we care for, and we all share the feeling that no one else understands us. Caring has been in the shadows for far too long. Let this be the Parliament in which carers’ voices are heard and we become the caring nation.

Caring means people doing extraordinary things every day for the ones they love, often in the face of difficult circumstances, physical challenges, no breaks, mountains of paperwork, countless appointments and endless phone calls. They try to navigate a broken system that is simply not designed to work for carers. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches will do our very best to get a fair deal for carers, whether on carer’s allowance or on the big challenge of fixing social care, so that our loved ones get the support they need, when and where they need it.

Of course, this will not be easy. Fixing social care after years of neglect will be incredibly complicated, but we cannot shy away from it. Although it was not in the King’s Speech, I am encouraged by the reports that the Government are planning a cross-party commission on social care, which we urgently need to find a solution that stands the test of time. I hope we will hear more about that from the Government very soon. Fixing social care is not only essential to give people the care and dignity they deserve and to support family carers. Without it, we cannot fix our NHS.

It would be a big enough task if health and care were the only major crisis facing the Government, but clearly it is not. Inflation may have finally come down to normal levels, but the cost of living crisis persists. Families and pensioners still face record energy bills and sky-high housing costs and food bills. They need support and understanding, which begins with the Government’s promise to be fiscally responsible—that would mark a big and welcome shift from the previous Government’s rather reckless approach to the Budget. With energy bills forecast to rise by 10% in October, clearly we need bold action to bring down costs, from insulating homes to expanding renewable power.

The Liberal Democrats have a proud record of investing in renewable power, almost quadrupling it when we ran energy policy. Our policy drove the cost of renewable electricity below the cost of fossil fuel-generated power. I hope the Government will act with the same level of ambition to tackle not only the cost of living crisis but climate change too, because urgent action is needed to prevent catastrophic climate change. We have shown how it can be done, and how doing it well will benefit consumers, the economy and the environment. We welcome the Government’s focus on this challenge, and we will push them to meet it.

We will also push the Government on another environmental challenge: ending the sewage crisis. For anyone who still doubted, the election campaign clearly showed the strength of public anger about the pollution of our rivers, lakes and beaches. The Government have made welcome noises about holding the water companies to account and making sure they put these environmental issues before profit, but the Liberal Democrats will push Ministers to act as quickly and decisively as possible to put an end to this appalling scandal.

Health and care, the cost of living, climate change and sewage, these big crises just got worse and worse over the last years of the previous Government, whose failure to address them is a big part of why people’s trust in politics is so low. This year’s British social attitudes survey found that 45% of people—a record high—almost never trust the Government to put the national interest first. I am sure I speak for everyone in the House when I hope that this Government will prove that wrong. But restoring public trust and confidence in our politics is a major task for us all, right across this House, no matter our party.

I think there are two parts to how we restore that trust. The first is by tackling the root causes of the many scandals that have caused so much harm and done so much damage to public trust, from Hillsborough to Horizon to infected blood. We welcome the promised Hillsborough law, with its statutory duty of candour on public officials, but we urge the Government to go further in this area. Given the vital role that whistleblowers have played in exposing these scandals, I urge Ministers to look at our proposals for stronger protections for whistle- blowers, including a new office of the whistleblower.

The second way to restore trust is by transforming our politics, so they are relevant, engaging and responsive to people’s needs and dreams. The measures that the Government have promised to strengthen democratic rights and participation are therefore welcome, as is the principle of shifting more power out of Westminster and Whitehall, so local decisions are made by the people for them and the communities they live in. I am sure the Prime Minister knows that the devil is in the detail, so we will scrutinise those plans carefully when they come. We fear they will not go far enough.

It will not surprise anyone in the House to hear that we on the Liberal Democrat Benches believe that political reform must include electoral reform: proportional representation giving everyone equal power to hold Members of Parliament properly to account. Maybe even the Conservatives support that these days. I note that according to the same survey on British social attitudes, the majority of the public agrees with us.

I have focused on the many big domestic challenges facing us, but I will conclude by touching on the enormously challenging international picture. From Vladimir Putin’s appalling war in Ukraine to the dreadful conflict in Israel and Gaza, with the terrible humanitarian catastrophe there and hostages still being held by Hamas, these are tumultuous times indeed. They demand that we work together with our allies through international institutions. And yes, that means working constructively with our European neighbours, to rebuild the ties of trust, trade and friendship with our European friends that have been so badly damaged by the Conservatives.

As liberals, we believe that the UK can be an incredible force for good when we stand tall on the world stage, championing the vital British values of democracy, liberty, human rights and the rule of law. When the Government do that, they will have our full support. I close by paying tribute to those on the frontline of that effort: our armed forces, deployed around the world. Whether securing NATO’s flanks in eastern Europe, combating Daesh terrorists in the middle east or supporting peacekeeping missions in Africa, they serve our country with incredible courage and professionalism, and we all owe them an eternal debt.

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[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

May I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle) on her maiden speech? It is clearly a real achievement to be the first to make a maiden speech in this Parliament, and I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will join me in congratulating her and wishing her well in the years ahead here in Parliament.

I welcome all new Members to this House, not least because some of them make me look older, which I have been looking forward to for some time. I remember when I was first sworn into the House. I entered at a by-election and so swore in on my own, in a class of one. There was a real heckle on that occasion from the beast of Bolsover. He asked if I was here on work experience and everyone laughed. I have a few more grey hairs now, 10 years on, and have just been through a difficult general election in north Nottinghamshire. I want to begin by saying a special thank you to my constituents for doing me the great honour and privilege of re-electing me, all the more so on what was clearly a difficult night for my party. During this Parliament, I will represent my constituents with all of my vim and vigour.

Having served as a Minister under each of the last five Prime Ministers, I know what a special privilege it is to serve as a Minister, so I wish our successors in office all best wishes and good luck in the years ahead. As patriots, we all know that this Government’s success is our success, and we want them to tackle the great challenges facing our country. I want them to enjoy their time in ministerial office as much as I did.

The general election made a number of things clear to me. I am deeply proud of many of our Government’s achievements, which I will fiercely defend in the months and years ahead. We took a bankrupt country and righted our public services and public finances. We ensured a decade of good employment after inheriting high unemployment, particularly among young people. We led Europe in the defence of Ukraine. We reformed our education system, and we now outstrip countries all over the world in the literacy and numeracy of our children. We were one of the world’s greatest countries in tackling environmental challenges, decarbonising faster than any other G7 country. For those and other reasons, I will always defend the record of the last Conservative Government, but I will come on to some of the lessons I have learned from their failings.

[Neil Coyle]

Is the right hon. Gentleman suggesting that voters were ungrateful on 4 July?

[Robert Jenrick]

I cannot quite hear the hon. Gentleman. If he is asking whether the electorate were wrong, the answer is no. No politician should ever doubt the electorate, but it is right that we defend the things we did well in government so that there is a proper diagnosis of what we got right and what we got wrong.

I think we did get some things wrong. We promised to get Brexit done when we stood in 2019, and we did. We got Brexit done and restored our sovereignty as a nation, which is a great and lasting achievement, but we also promised that we would secure our borders and that we would ensure a strong economy, lower taxes and a strong NHS and public services, which the public rightly expect. On those counts, we did not deliver the public services, the lower taxes, the economic growth and the migration system that we promised and the public rightly expect.

The baton now passes to this Labour Government. Where they succeed, I will welcome and support them; and where they fall short, I will challenge them. We want to ensure that the great issues facing our country are properly addressed. We live in one of the greatest times to be alive, but it is a time of immense change. There is a power shift from west to east, and new technology, like artificial intelligence, is upending old industries. It is an age of mass migration, which is challenging the pace of change in our country, creating huge pressures on housing, public services and integration, and making it harder to build the united country that we all want to see.

I worry that this King’s Speech falls short on some of those great challenges. There are undoubtedly Bills that I welcome, and I am delighted that the new Government are taking forward the Bill for a Holocaust memorial, a project in which I have been involved for many years. Some of the Bills are radical, such as the changes to our energy policy, and I worry that they are radical for all the wrong reasons. Despite having decarbonised faster than other countries, and despite being responsible for only 1% of global emissions, we now find ourselves with a Government pursuing, for ideological reasons, a net zero policy that will make it harder for our own consumers to afford their bills. The policy will further erode our industrial base and leave us in hock to Chinese technology. We are trading dependence on Russian hydrocarbons for dependence on Chinese electric vehicles, smart meters and solar panels that will despoil our countryside. New quangos, such as Great British Energy, will spring up, serving no apparent purpose and taking inspiration from predecessors such as Robin Hood Energy in Nottingham, in my part of the world. That failed project wasted £50 million of taxpayers’ money.

I worry that 200,000 jobs in the oil and gas sector have been put in danger in the first few days of this Government, at a time when they are rightly saying that they want to fuel our economy, create jobs and change the dynamics that the country has seen since the 2008 financial crash and after 20 or 30 years of low productivity growth and unsatisfactory economic growth. We should all be working to find ways to do that and to make that possible.

I worry about the message we are hearing on the economy. We want economic growth, but economic growth is founded on harnessing the entrepreneurship of our people. It is about creating a start-up country and helping small business people to found businesses around their kitchen tables, like my parents did. It is not a statist vision of this country. It is not about using new quangos or a national wealth fund, which is an oxymoron because it is going to borrow the money it seeks to invest. It is not about changing our employment laws, which will make us less competitive and drive the kind of higher structural levels of unemployment we see in Europe that we have mercifully avoided over the last 10 years.

And I worry about immigration, because we live in an age of mass migration. I have been honest—painfully honest—about the failings of the last Government on this topic, but I worry that the same or worse mistakes are about to be made again. What we are seeing in the channel is a national security emergency. We are seeing tens of thousands of people about whom we know next to nothing crossing into our country, breaking into our country, in flagrant abuse of our laws. Some of them are subjects of interest being followed by our security services. This has to stop. Scrapping the only known credible deterrent, with nothing else to put in its place, is going to surrender to the people smuggling gangs. That is wrong, it is a mistake and I worry that we are going to rue the day that we did that.

I also hope that the Government will take legal migration seriously. We have to accept that the public in most parts of our country have been voting for 20 or 30 years, in elections and referendums, for Governments that promise to control and reduce the level of legal migration, only for Governments of all political colours to do precisely the opposite. That is immensely corrosive to public trust and confidence in politics and in democracy. As one of our colleagues said earlier, about the rise of far-right parties around the world, if we centrist parties on the left and the right do nothing about this, we will see the rise of far-right parties in this country. That would be a great mistake.

I hope the reforms I started, to reduce the number of people coming into this country legally, are taken forward, and that we further reduce those numbers. We could have used the King’s Speech today to implement a legal cap on net migration, embedded by Parliament in law. We have not done that, which will mean further pressure on housing, public services and the pace of change.

Let me close with this: the Prime Minister has said he wants this to be a new era, in which politics is defined by service. I think we will all agree on that point—it should be—but the question is who do we serve. I do not think we come to this place to serve the interests of new quangos, commissions and reviews, the legal fraternity in contested notions of international law, or the new and worrying rise in sectarian politics, represented in this House for the first time in my lifetime, which again should worry us. We are sent here to serve the interests of our constituents. I choose them; I choose to ensure the working people of Newark and Nottinghamshire are always represented. They sent me here with a few clear messages: secure our border; reduce immigration; lower our taxes; stop the crime; build homes; build a more united country, cohesive and integrated, not riddled by the poison of left-wing identity politics. That is what I am here to fight. Where this Government do that and live up to that test, I will support them. Where they do not, I will fiercely challenge them.

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[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

This is the first time I have ever been able to speak from the Government side of the House, having first been elected in 2015, which was six Prime Ministers ago. In the 2015 general election, Bermondsey and Old Southwark was so far down Labour’s target list—it was No. 84, I think—that the rule of thumb was that if I won, we would be in government. I will not ask where everyone else has been for the last nine years, but I will thank them and congratulate them on being here today, especially colleagues who have already made their maiden speeches and those who will make them in the coming weeks and months. It is amazing finally to be on this side of the House, but I cannot say that it has been worth the wait, given what the Tories have done to our country over the past few years.

My constituents’ overwhelming sentiment since the election is one of relief, and of shaking off the sense of shame and embarrassment about the previous Government and the country’s economic devastation. My constituents are still paying higher bills and mortgages as a result of Tory economic incompetence, but there is relief that the shame of the last Government is over. We saw the Equality and Human Rights Commission have to investigate the Department for Work and Pensions because of its unlawful behaviour towards disabled people. Through political incompetence and maladministration, the second biggest spending Government Department was unable to support disabled people properly. Change in the leadership of that Department could not be more refreshing.

Another cause for relief is that the Rwanda policy is scrapped. It was an unlawful, immoral international embarrassment that was raised with our Foreign Office and raised on every trip I went on with the Foreign Affairs Committee, to the UN, to the US and to Brazil. Wherever we went, countries saw that we were shirking responsibility while others shouldered a greater responsibility. It is also a relief for taxpayers because it was such a colossal waste—a humongous, knuckle-headed nonsense.

I cannot even repeat what Tory Ministers called the scheme when they were in government, because it would be unparliamentary language, but it cost hundreds of millions of pounds at a time when my constituents were being told that the £20 uplift on universal credit was unaffordable, that seeing a doctor or dentist was just not possible and that having enough police was a luxury and somehow not a Government priority, all while millions were poured down the Rwanda drain. And for what? A scheme that sent no one but Tory Home Secretaries to Rwanda at an outrageous cost. For the price of sending one person to Rwanda you could send six people into space, and the electorate gave their verdict two weeks ago when they blasted the Tories into space. And yes, terrible puns were on my leaflets in the election.

The Leader of the Opposition—it feels good to say that—said today that he wished to work with the new Government on certain policies. I say to new MPs that from opposition I was able to improve the laws on housing rights for women fleeing domestic violence, on some terminally ill disabled people receiving support from the personal independence payment and on support for communities affected by terror attacks. I say to them: take the Prime Minister up on his offer. He said that the door was open, so take him up on that offer to seek improvements that benefit your constituents.

Since the election, I have had constituents come in to Parliament. Two schools have come in: St Michael’s college in Bermondsey and the Southwark inclusive learning service from London Bridge. It has been amazing to speak to young people about the new priorities and how the new Government are already beginning to mend and heal the UK with the work done in the first week and announced today in the Gracious Speech. This includes lifting the ban on onshore wind despite Green opposition, boosting UK investment, beginning to fix our NHS, tackling crime and antisocial behaviour and reasserting targets for house building, which is a very welcome priority for my constituency in Southwark, where housing is always the No. 1 priority.

I flag to the new Government and new Ministers that the Bakerloo line extension would bring 20,000 new homes at least, and benefit not just transport infrastructure and homes but jobs across the country, and boost our economy. I hope to see the Bakerloo line extension delivered under the new Government, offering new hope and new ambition for Britain from a Government who finally say to people not what they cannot have but what we are seeking to achieve for our country and for our people’s future, including today. Of particular personal importance to me is fixing mental health services. My mum had schizophrenia, a mental health condition, and that was my route into public policy awareness and politics. To have the chance to influence and shape mental health services as we in the Labour party begin to fix them and build out better is an enormous privilege.

I want to end today with a special thank you to the wonderful people of Bermondsey and Old Southwark for giving me my fourth win, including defeating an independent Corbyn candidate; to the Labour members in my constituency who fought so hard, both locally and in other target seats; and importantly, to my local Labour party executive for all their hard work and support, in the last Parliament in particular and over the election period. I look forward to delivering the better Britain they fought for, under this Labour Government.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Edward Leigh)]

For his maiden speech, I call Graham Leadbitter.