Debate on the Address

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Ed Davey

Tuesday 10th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

It has always been a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), especially since the current Prime Minister entered office. I agree with a lot of what she said, especially about the need to move ahead quickly with new legislation for people with mental health issues, and I thank her for what she said about social housing.

I would like to pay tribute to Her Majesty the Queen. She was missed today very much; on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I would like to send her our very best wishes. We all look forward to celebrating the incredible milestone of the Queen’s platinum jubilee next month. As an MP serving the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, I know that there will be street parties galore across my constituency, demonstrating our patriotic and affectionate support for Her Majesty.

I would also like to pay tribute to three others whose absence we feel very acutely today: James Brokenshire, David Amess and Jack Dromey, parliamentary colleagues who, sadly, have left us in the past 12 months. All three were MPs who commanded respect across the House for their seriousness of purpose and their collegiate way of working. They are all missed in every corner of this House.

I must compliment the hon. Members for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) and for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) on their speeches. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness was a well-respected Chair of the Select Committee on Education when he described the reforms of the then Education Secretary as “ill-conceived” and “incoherent”; he will be relieved to hear that his speech was neither of those things. In my opinion, he is neither an old duffer nor a young thruster but, far more valuable than either of those, a Member with an independent mind—a Whips Office dream. His mention of a royal commission to deal with political wrongdoing has given me an interesting idea that I think we should take up with Ministers.

We are all servants of the Crown, but the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire has taken that further than most, having worked for the Prince of Wales as a researcher. I am not sure whether she was consulted by His Royal Highness about today’s Gracious Speech, but her speech was an interesting insight into the complex relationships between Conservative MPs, and I thank her for it.

This should have been a cost of living Queen’s Speech. Families and pensioners across the United Kingdom are facing the biggest squeeze on household budgets and living standards at any time during Her Majesty’s whole long reign, going back to the 1950s, yet the Government’s programme offered nothing. There was a hint in the Prime Minister’s speech—I do not know whether Members caught it. He said that he and the Chancellor would bring forward some measures in the next few days. Yet the press are reporting that the Treasury is saying that it has no idea what the Prime Minister was referring to. It would be wonderful if, at least, a Minister from the Front Bench could enlighten the House because our constituents need some help and there is none in the Queen’s Speech.

Inflation is at 7% and rising. It is at its highest rate for 30 years and predicted to enter double digits by the end of this year. We have all heard, from many constituents, heart-rending stories about the sacrifices that they are making just to try to make ends meet because of inflation. We hear of parents going without meals to ensure that there is enough food for their children, and pensioners huddled in only one room to keep their heating bills down. Families who have already seen energy bills soar by £700 are now being told to expect another £800 rise in the autumn. People desperately need more help from the Government, but what have they received instead? Tax rises, broken election promises on pension rises, and wages rising far more slowly than inflation.

The Government’s unfair tax rises could not possibly have come at a worse time. The increased national insurance contributions, coupled with the freezing of income tax thresholds—which they would like us to forget—are hitting the low-paid very hard. What everyone really needs is an emergency tax cut, which is why the Liberal Democrats want an immediate cut in VAT. That would help everyone: it would help small businesses and high streets and it would cut inflation. By failing to cut VAT and by choosing to make the cost of living emergency worse, the Government have confirmed people’s deep fear that they are a Government who just do not care.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Given the reported increase in Treasury receipts owing to inflation and to increased VAT receipts, does the right hon. Member think it would be appropriate for the Government to take that action? Does he also recognise that the VAT reduction could not apply in Northern Ireland and people in Northern Ireland could not benefit from that because of the Northern Ireland protocol?

[Ed Davey]

I hope that the Government will find a way of working with politicians in Northern Ireland to help people who are struggling, but the right hon. Member is absolutely right about the VAT point. The Chancellor is getting £9 billion more in VAT receipts than the Budget prediction of £38 billion, yet the Government say that they cannot afford a VAT cut. That is clearly nonsense.

At the local elections last week, people across the country rose up to say “Enough is enough.” From Stockport to Somerset, Cumbria to Cambridgeshire, Harrogate to Harpenden, voters chose Liberal Democrats to be their local champions and to fight for a fair deal for them and their communities, and for Liberal Democrats, the fair deal must start with real action to tackle soaring energy bills and rising food prices. That does not just mean a VAT cut; we want to increase and extend the warm home discount to help more than 7 million people with their heating bills, and we want to increase the winter fuel payment to help pensioners betrayed by the Conservatives when they broke their election promise on the pensions triple lock.

Liberal Democrats want to help families and pensioners in rural areas who heat their homes with heating oil or liquefied petroleum gas and are not protected by the energy price cap. We would pay for that with a windfall tax on the super-profits of the oil and gas companies. Only last week, we learnt that BP and Shell are now raking in £1 billion in profit between them every single week from the same soaring gas and petrol prices that are making families suffer so much. Surely even this Government can see that, in the present economic crisis, we need to cut taxes for families by asking these corporate giants to pay a bit more.

The Government are failing so many groups. For instance, there is nothing to back British farmers, who are at once some of the hardest-hit victims of the cost of living crisis and crucial to solving the problem of food inflation for the rest of us. Instead of backing our farmers and our rural communities, the Government are adding to their pain. They are selling them down the river with trade deals that allow low-welfare foreign imports to undercut responsible British farmers, and cutting the payments on which they rely, which is costing some of them up to half their entire income. Quite simply, that risks driving many small farmers out of business altogether. In the south-west alone, farmers will lose almost £1 billion by the end of 2027 as a result of these Conservative policies.

This Government’s programme fails not only to help people with the cost of living emergency but to address the crisis in our NHS and care services. Take our ambulance services: many are in crisis, resources have been slashed and the paramedics and handlers are not being given support that they need. In the south-west, if you are a stroke victim, you now have to wait almost two hours for an ambulance. That is a terrifying statistic. The average wait for an ambulance is now almost two hours, and not just for stroke victims. In Devon, an 88-year-old man, Derek Painter, lay in “excruciating pain” after he fell on the stairs. He waited seven hours for an ambulance. That is just horrific. Thousands of people are watching loved ones in agony and distress; some have even watched loved ones die. This is heart-breaking and it cannot go on. Can Ministers—and the Prime Minister—look these families in the eye in such distressing circumstances and tell them that they have got a grip on this health crisis?

It does not stop at the ambulance crisis. Over many years now, this Government have allowed our NHS to spiral out of control. Local health services are at breaking point following the Conservative Government’s broken promise to recruit more GPs. People are struggling to get appointments and GPs are under more pressure than ever. And then there is the ticking timebomb of NHS dentistry—or lack of it—forcing people to shell out hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds for private work because they cannot get to see an NHS dentist. There was nothing in the Queen’s Speech to tackle these health crises and nothing for the social care crisis either. Last year, the Government promised to reform social care but all we got instead was an unfair tax hike. More than 1 million people are missing out on the care they need right now, and still the Government are doing nothing to help.

Nor are the Government doing anything to support the millions of unpaid family carers who are making big sacrifices to look after their families and loved ones. They were already facing serious financial hardship before the cost of living crisis struck; they are now being pushed to breaking point. They were again forgotten in the Queen’s Speech. I have told Ministers, including the Prime Minister, on countless occasions about the everyday struggles that carers face. The amazing Kingston Carers Network in my constituency tells me that its members, like carers across the country, are desperate for a rise in the carers allowance and for respite services to give them a break. Even the Government’s promise of a week of unpaid leave for carers—surely the very least the Government can do—was missing from the Gracious Speech. It is just not good enough. Without these unpaid carers, these family carers, our health and social care systems would crumble. The Government ignore them at their peril.

Nor can the Government afford to ignore the growing public anger about raw sewage being dumped into our rivers and seas. I see it in the Hogsmill river in my constituency—Kingston’s blue jewel and one of only 210 chalk streams in the world. Sewage pollution is killing these rivers and chalk streams. It threatens the habitats of countless wild animals and spoils the beauty of our precious local environment. I know other Members across the country are also seeing sewage being poured into their local rivers and streams, and into the seas along our coasts, whether in Eastbourne or East Devon. Liberal Democrats have proposed tough new laws to end the dumping of raw sewage and a new sewage tax on water companies. Our constituents will not forget the Government’s failure to listen and include such measures in the Queen’s Speech today.

Debate on the Address

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Ed Davey

Tuesday 11th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ed Davey]

I could not agree more. Having overseen the carbon budgets as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and having had to work with some colleagues on the Benches opposite, I know we have to hold them to account, as they will wriggle out of the law.

Liberal Democrats are proud to have the best record on climate change action of any party in this country, and we will keep campaigning for more action on climate.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that it was his party that authorised the changing of Drax B power station to wood pellets, which are now harvested from virgin forests in America and brought across to the United Kingdom, and now require a subsidy of £1 billion a year? Is that the kind of green energy that he talks about?

[Ed Davey]

I am happy to reassure the right hon. Gentleman that by getting rid of coal in this country, the UK is leading the way. We did that through a whole range of measures—whether it is the things he talks about at Drax, or making our country the world leader in offshore wind, nearly quadrupling Britain’s renewable power.

We want a more caring country, too—yes, for the bereaved families and children I have talked about, but also by strengthening our NHS, reforming social care and properly supporting Britain’s 11 million unpaid carers looking after loved ones at home. As such, I am genuinely saddened to see that the Government’s agenda bears little resemblance to such challenges, or to the concerns of people up and down the country. Alarmingly, this Queen’s Speech will instead erode individual freedom, snatch powers away from local people and undermine our very democracy.

Take the planning reforms mentioned by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead—I agreed with her points about those. The Conservative Government’s proposals for new planning laws will ride roughshod over the views of local people and create a developers’ free-for-all. As millions of pounds of campaign donations from property developers pour into Conservative party coffers, local communities will be silenced. That is not democratic, and it is not right. There is a much better way to get the homes we need. The local neighbourhood planning reforms that Liberal Democrats champion would produce a community-led planning system, not a developer-led one; where it has been tried, it has been hugely successful. Neighbourhood plans put the houses where communities want them, with the facilities and infrastructure that those communities need. Those undemocratic planning reforms are, I am afraid, just another example of this authoritarian Government. Their plans to crack down on protests, restrict judicial review and undermine the Human Rights Act are about taking power away from individuals, undermining the rule of law and silencing any opposition to this Government.

Then there is the plan to force people to show identity papers just in order to vote—a plan ripped straight from the Donald Trump playbook—despite, or maybe because of, the clear evidence that it will disproportionately impact ethnic minorities, older people and those on lower incomes, who are just trying to vote. Coming hot on the heels of the Government’s unworkable, expensive and divisive plans for covid ID cards, people can now see that this is an illiberal Government—cracking down on protests because they make the Government’s life uncomfortable, weakening the courts because they sometimes rule against Ministers, and making it harder for people to vote because they do not always vote for them. These are the actions of despots, not democrats. Liberal Democrats will fiercely oppose these plans, defend British democratic traditions and defend individual freedom and the individual’s ability to challenge Ministers and participate fully in our democracy.

The service of those working in the NHS during the pandemic moved the nation to stand on our doorsteps, week after week, to applaud them. However, the Government’s failure to fund our NHS before the pandemic was thrown into the sharpest relief imaginable, as our nurses and doctors had to struggle so hard at the beginning of the pandemic. It is scary to think what would have happened without the tireless sacrifices of our NHS and care staff under unbelievable pressures. So it is simply unacceptable that the warm words and applause of Ministers for NHS workers are not being followed up with a fair pay deal. With the vacancies and shortages of NHS and care staff made worse by Brexit and by the pandemic, to deny NHS staff a better pay deal is bad for patients. Only today we have seen the latest warning from the Royal College of Anaesthetists, showing that nine out of 10 hospitals have at least one vacancy for an anaesthetist, with the Royal College warning of a “workforce disaster” threatening millions of operations. This Government’s support for the NHS disappears when it comes to paying NHS workers properly.

Then we come to social care. There is nothing of substance in the Queen’s Speech to address the huge and growing crisis in social care. This pandemic has reminded everyone that caring for people’s health does not stop at the hospital exit or the GP’s surgery door. We can improve the NHS only if we fix social care too. If we care about the NHS, we must care about care, and yet the Government say in the Queen’s Speech:

“Proposals on social care reform will be brought forward”—

no detail, no timetable. The Prime Minister’s last Queen’s speech said that

“Ministers will seek cross-party consensus on proposals for long-term reform of social care.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 19 December 2019; Vol. 801, c. 7.]

Well, I have written to the Prime Minister three times in an attempt to build that cross-party consensus, and I am still waiting for a reply. The Queen’s Speech before that one said:

“My Government will bring forward proposals to reform adult social care in England to ensure dignity in old age.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 October 2019; Vol. 800, c. 2.]

There is nothing but promises, promises, and delay and delay. Meanwhile, people go without care.

The Conservatives’ failure to implement the social care reforms that Liberal Democrat Ministers passed into law based on the Dilnot commission has meant more than 1 million people missing out on care. The uncaring party opposite should be ashamed: instead of action, which we put forward, we see council budgets in crisis, care services stretched to breaking point, and more than 11 million unpaid carers left to shoulder the burden. This pandemic has shown that we are a nation of carers. There are millions of carers looking after their loved ones at home facing big challenges every single day—challenges made harder by covid. These family carers deserve our support, but they are being forgotten and ignored by this Government, as shown by the fact that they were not mentioned even once in the Queen’s Speech. Let me help. The Government can begin to correct that by including unpaid carers explicitly in the forthcoming health and care Bill, with a duty on the NHS to identify and support them. I urge Ministers not to miss that opportunity.

Another reason why I find this programme for government so dreadfully disappointing is that it further entrenches the Government’s isolationist tendencies. It is not just the recovery-threatening EU trade deal that is bad for Britain and bad for business, but the shockingly poor diplomacy ahead of hosting COP26—the crucial international climate change talks. Having led the UK delegation at three UN climate change talks and helped the UK and the EU to create their position ahead of the most successful climate change talks ever, in Paris in 2015, I am deeply alarmed by what I see and hear about the preparations for Glasgow.

Let me give some examples. Diplomatic relations with the EU ahead of COP26: throw some insults, send a warship. Relations with the US now that, thankfully, we now have a President who gets climate change: reduce the size of our Army and ignore President Biden’s warning over Northern Ireland. Relations with the developing world: slash our aid budget in the middle of a global pandemic. To cut foreign aid—to hurt the world’s poorest—is disgraceful in and of itself, but it is shocking during a pandemic. To undermine Britain’s global leadership just when the world’s future depends on it the most is nothing short of a catastrophe.

Then we have the disgraceful proposal in the new sovereign borders Bill to make it even harder for the world’s most vulnerable people—people in unimaginable hardship who are fleeing their home because of war or persecution—to find sanctuary in the United Kingdom, against all British tradition. The idea that this Government think it is a priority to make it even harder for people to claim asylum is sickeningly cruel and uncaring.

The Liberal Democrats want a plan for recovery that is fair, green and more caring, with no one left behind. Anyone who has seen their business fail or who has lost their job must be supported to get back on their feet. Any young person who has been robbed of months of their education must be supported with educational and emotional recovery. We want to see investment in reliable, well-paid green jobs, not only to tackle the climate emergency, but to power our recovery. We want a well-resourced NHS and social care system ready to meet the challenges of the future, and we want proper recognition of and support for the 11 million carers in our country to help heal our nation, not least for bereaved families and children.

I am sorry that this Government’s programme simply does not deliver the fairer, greener, more caring plan for recovery that our country needs. The Liberal Democrats will oppose it.