House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Steff Aquarone Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

Hello! It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid and South Pembrokeshire (Henry Tufnell), and I extend my warmest regards to all the Members making their maiden speeches today.

First, I would like to acknowledge my predecessor, Duncan Baker. He was an attentive and hard-working Member, and I wish him well in his future pursuits in industry. Before him, Norman Lamb served in this House for 19 years and left an extraordinary legacy in the realm of mental health, a cause that he continues to be a dedicated advocate for. It was in no small part Norman’s commitment to speaking the truth to power and giving a voice to the voiceless that made him such a hero to the people of North Norfolk, and which attracted me to politics fully seven years ago, when I was first elected as a county councillor—and I draw Members’ attention to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in connection with my continued role there.

I am immensely grateful for the trust that residents across North Norfolk have shown in me: trust to represent them here, but also trust to play a part in the deep transformation we need in our politics if we are going to make positive change for society. This is an extraordinary place, but I cannot do what I have promised to do for my constituents—we cannot really do what we have been elected to do—without giving it the shake-up that is long overdue.

When people in the beautiful constituency of North Norfolk cannot live well, in good accommodation, with access to transport and employment and healthcare as part of a vibrant society, it is all of us who are failing them. I am thinking of the former resident I met on the train just last week who said to me, “I just want to come home, but there aren’t the jobs and there isn’t the transport.” I am also thinking about Kit, who made me my wonderful Liberal Democrat tie, and about the need to protect the precious Norfolk broads that she lives near; about Lisa in North Walsham, who is living in constant anguish because of the supply risks to her life-dependent medication; and about Don, a 99-year-old in Sheringham who is pinning his hope on a new kind of politics for the sake of his grandchildren.

The Bill introduces much-needed reform of the House of Lords, which we Liberal Democrats of course support, but we know that it does not go far enough. We must establish a fully elected upper House—elected using a fairer voting system—as soon as possible.

The House of Lords is only one part of our broken system, which needs to see urgent, radical reform. The structure and organisation of government itself must evolve to be fit for the modern age, and that transformation must extend beyond government to the wider public services and administrative systems that serve our citizens. Continuing with the current siloed structures of government is to ignore the technological advances of the past 50 years and fail to embrace the logarithmic advances in the future we are already living in. This evolution is about bringing policy and service delivery closer to the everyday lives and needs of people at every stage of their journey through life.

The current structures are having a very real impact in rural areas like mine, where our public services are in dangerous decline. Benjamin Court, a re-ablement centre in Cromer, has fallen into the gap between two silos—social care, managed by the local authority, and health services, overseen by the NHS—leading to its closure. That is not to mention the desperate need for a properly networked rural public transport service, which is key to enabling access to everything from employment to healthcare, but it is out of those departments’ scope and is instead left languishing at the bottom of the pile of priorities by a near-bankrupt county council. These problems make the lives of my constituents harder every day. We cannot go on like this.

But there is a solution: we can bring the design and delivery of services closer to the needs of citizens and there is plenty of precedence to go on here. In the industrial revolution, Thomas Edison made a profound contribution to rewiring the way that industry was organised. Prior to electricity generation, which he helped to develop, there tended to be only one motor in a factory. Industry had to be organised around a single source of power, usually a steam engine, with every machine that needed power connecting directly to the central drive shaft in the ceiling above. Components could be made, yes, but they then had to be transported elsewhere and assembled, usually by hand.

Energy was the central organising principle of industry, but electricity made it possible to pipe power to anywhere on the factory floor. It meant that machines could be placed wherever they were needed, becoming more precise, efficient and specialised, and it led to mass manufacturing, with the product as the central organising principle of industry.

Over the past few years, we have gone through another revolution that is potentially even bigger—the communications revolution. It is powered not by the invention of electricity, but by data. Since the advent of the consumer web in the 1990s, people have come to expect a higher degree of personalisation in their interactions with organisations and services. Data gathered from a wide range of sources—not just digital—is driving innovation and enabling more tailored, proactive experiences for users. This ability to be more pre-emptive and personalised does not even need people to be digitally enabled.

Data has enabled the rewiring of industry, not around the production line or the product, but around the citizen, or user experience. That has caused profound change in the overall architecture of many modern organisations, but it has had limited impact on the way that Government and the state are structured. There are great innovations taking place to try to integrate services and make them more patient or user centred, but without fundamental change in the underlying structures of power and public services, their effects will be limited.

From tackling climate change and preventing sewage spilling into the sea, to helping people get work and get about—let alone get a dentist appointment—so much of the change this country badly needs is not limited to one pillar of the state, but cross-cuts different Departments. Perhaps it is time to move away from the traditional silos of Secretaries of State for education, health, and transport, and instead adopt a more citizen-focused model. Imagine Secretaries of State for the citizen experience, for wellbeing and prosperity, for children or for data and privacy.

If people in North Norfolk are to get the changes they deserve to our rural health and social care provision, to access and prosper in the jobs of the future and to trust politicians as the custodians of our natural environment, we need to be prepared to rewire the structures of politics and public service delivery around the needs of the people they—and all of us in this House —serve.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Maureen Burke to make her maiden speech.