Debate on the Address

Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts

Tuesday 11th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)]

I applaud and welcome the aim of measures in the Queen’s Speech to deliver not just a national recovery from the pandemic but a recovery that makes the United Kingdom stronger, healthier and more prosperous than before—a country that truly works for everyone. As ever, the Queen’s Speech contains a number of commitments to legislation and other measures. I welcome the commitment to measures to improve mental health, but I note that yet again we do not have a specific reference to a new mental health Bill. I hope the Government have made it clear that they intend to bring a new Bill forward. I hope that that intent is still there and that we have not seen the timetable slipping further away from us because this is an important Bill for the Government to bring forward.

I welcome the commitment to legislate to deliver the lifetime skills guarantee. That delivers on the recommendations of the Augar report. Once again, I thank Sir Philip Augar and all his team for the work they did in that area. The issue of providing opportunities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) indicated earlier, lies at the heart of what we believe in as Conservatives: the concept of everybody having the opportunity of an education throughout their life and developing their skills, and a Government who create the environment in which jobs are created. That is core conservativism. We believe that people should be given the opportunity to go as far in their life as their talents and hard work will take them.

I welcome the reference to the UK leading the way on ensuring internet safety for all, especially children. Again, I note there is no specific reference to the online harms Bill, but I hope we will not see further delay on that Bill because, by bringing that legislation forward, the United Kingdom can truly show its leadership on this issue.

I welcome what I believe lies behind the references to legislation on elections: the abolition of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. It had its moment in 2010. It was necessary to calm markets and provide a degree of certainty, but as I found with my dealings with the Act it is perhaps now best consigned to the wastepaper bin.

Overseas aid was mentioned earlier by the Father of the House. The Queen’s Speech refers to a Government commitment

“to provide aid where it has the greatest impact on reducing poverty and alleviating human suffering.”

The aid budget would have been cut significantly anyway because of the fall in our GNI, but it is the Government’s intention to cut it further, from 0.7% to 0.5%. This will have an impact across the board, but particularly in an area that I am interested in: modern slavery. I know that the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery is already concerned that its funding from the Government has been cut by 80%. So projects helping to alleviate and to deal with modern slavery will be cut. I urge the Government to look again at this reduction because it is having an impact on the poorest and on suffering across the world. If we really want to show our values as a country, we should be doing everything we can to uphold those commitments.

I am pleased with the reference in the Queen’s Speech to

“invest in new green industries to create jobs, while protecting the environment.”

That shows what we as Conservatives know: the old argument that we can either deal with climate change and protect the environment, or have economic growth, is completely false. As this country has shown in recent years, we can have economic growth, and deal with our emissions and protect our environment. That is what we will be doing in the future.

I want, very briefly, to refer to three other issues. The Gracious Speech contains a commitment, referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) in her excellent seconding of the motion, to bring forward laws to modernise the planning system. May I just say that we saw some of the best of the House of Commons today in the proposer, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Shailesh Vara), and the seconder of the motion? On modernising the planning system to enable more homes to be built, of course we need to build more homes, but if the laws are based on the proposals in the White Paper, I fear this is less about modernisation than about giving developers greater freedom. Underpinning the proposals seems to be the concept that the reason more homes are not being built is the planning system. In fact, the last figure I saw from the Local Government Association showed that 1 million homes have been given planning permission but have yet to be built, so the issue is not just about the planning system.

A key issue in the White Paper proposals was the division of the area of a local authority into three different areas—we read that this may now be two: of growth and protection. In the growth area, outline planning permission was automatically to be given to developers. I have discovered that I have a slight difference of opinion with my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble on this issue. Maybe we need to go for one of those drinks she was talking about. [Interruption.] Two drinks! You’re buying me two drinks.

[Katherine Fletcher]

indicated assent.

[Mrs May]

I think my hon. Friend felt that the proposal would bring greater local involvement. In fact, the White Paper proposals would bring less local involvement. They would reduce local democracy, remove the opportunity for local people to comment on specific developments, and remove the ability of local authorities to set development policies locally. I think the White Paper proposals would also lead to fewer affordable homes, because they hand developers a get-out clause.

We need more homes to be built. We need the right homes to be built in the right places. I fear that, unless the Government look again at the White Paper proposals, what we will see is not more homes, but, potentially, the wrong homes being built in the wrong places.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. Does she agree that this will particularly impact on the delivery of green homes and getting to net zero?

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for her intervention, but I remind her of the commitment that the Government have already shown to the issue of green homes for the future in their proposals. There are issues that have yet to be looked at, such as retrofitting in relation to heating systems, but the Government are already starting to show the way forward on this. However, it is important, in looking at the planning system proposals, that those issues are also taken into account.

The Gracious Speech commits the Government to bringing forward proposals on social care reform. This commitment has been made by Governments of all colours over the last two decades, and it is a bit rich for the Leader of the Opposition and other Labour Members to complain about the Government on this issue, given that they were 13 years in government and had, I think, six or seven different proposals, but never actually delivered anything on this. I know it is not an easy issue. I put forward a plan. It was comprehensively rejected, so I recognise the difficulty in trying to come forward with something here, but it is an issue that we need to grasp. The pandemic, and the issues around social care that came up in the pandemic, have shown the importance of this and of reform that genuinely provides a sustainable social care system into the future. However, it also needs to be a system that does not exacerbate intergenerational divisions.

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree with what the right hon. Lady is saying on this. I just wonder whether we do not actually need to look at the issues that lead to dementia, making sure that there is more research, in particular, on acquired brain injury and concussion in sport, which does seem to have had a dramatic effect on the number of people who are now suffering from dementia, and whether that needs to feed into the process of looking at the issue of social care.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman has been very adept in bringing into this debate an issue—acquired brain injury—on which he has been a doughty campaigner. I fully agree that the question of some of the issues around acquired brain injury—he mentioned brain injury in sport, which has particularly been raised in relation to rugby union recently—is an important one that needs to be considered.

Alongside the issue of social care, there is legislation on the NHS. One important issue will be the future of integrated care systems, and this feeds into the question of social care. The White Paper suggested that the Government were going to take a bureaucratic approach of requiring the boundaries of integrated care systems to mirror local authority boundaries. Currently, that would mean breaking up one of the most effective and high-performing ICS groupings—Frimley ICS—and doing that would adversely affect my constituents and others in east Berkshire or elsewhere, so I urge the Government, in looking at these issues, to allow for networks that make practical sense in delivering for people, rather than being hidebound by existing lines on a map. Groups that grow organically and work are surely of greater benefit than groups that happen to fit some bureaucratic idea of neatness.

Finally, I want to touch on—I recognise that today, particularly, this is a difficult issue—the references in the Gracious Speech to the Government’s intent to bring forward measures to deal with legacy in Northern Ireland. Today, we have heard—as the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) said—that the coroner’s verdict in the Ballymurphy inquest is that the 10 individuals concerned were all innocent victims, so this is a particularly difficult time to be looking at the issue of legacy in Northern Ireland. I grew up watching TV news reports of the troubles in Northern Ireland. Too many people died, the majority at the hands of terrorists. Too many were injured, too many lives were shattered, too many people lived in fear, too many families live wondering what has happened to their loved ones, and too many were left longing for justice. Today, as I say, the families of the 10 who were considered in the Ballymurphy inquest have learned what happened to their loved ones—that they were innocent victims.

The arguments in this place on the question of legacy in Northern Ireland have generally focused on the passionate arguments put by some of my right hon. and hon. Friends about the issue of veterans being prosecuted and brought to court years after the event. Of course we stand up for our armed forces, but as a country we live by certain standards and values, and by the rule of law. We should not wilfully ignore the breaking of the rule of law, including by members of the armed forces.

The argument for the protection of veterans has consistently failed to understand one basic point: we cannot legislate simply to protect British soldiers from prosecution; any legislation to protect British soldiers will cover terrorists as well. It is a very simple fact, but it seems impossible for many people to accept. Once we recognise the position, the options become clearer: either we continue to investigate, leading to prosecutions for everyone, including veterans, or we draw some sort of line.

I want to see Northern Ireland moving on, and I think that Northern Ireland will truly have a bright future only when it is able to look forward and not over its shoulder at the past. That is easy for me to say because I did not live there through the troubles—as I said, I just saw them on a television screen on the night, often night after night—and the reaction from politicians in Northern Ireland and the Irish Government to the proposals the Government have put forward have so far been negative. I simply say that our overwhelming interest, throughout this House, should be in a bright future for Northern Ireland. There comes a point at which we have to say, “Can we find a way to draw that line, to turn and look forward and to work together for a better future for all?”