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Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, I much enjoyed the rendering by the new economic choirmaster on the Front Benches opposite, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, of "For we are jolly good fellows". It was sung on a single note, but it was genuine, I appreciated it, and I did not disagree with much of what he said. However, I am a little concerned about how the Government change things around. This should be the defence and foreign affairs debate, on which I had intended to speak. Never mind. I was brought up in a now defunct business. I saw a little ticker tape the other day which said "Government abolishes trade". The next bit was missing. But since my life has been in trade and I have always been seated below the salt, I wondered whether it was necessary to trade any more. We are still perhaps the fifth greatest trading nation; we may have the fourth biggest economy; over 80 per cent of our imports and exports go by sea; but we do not make things any more and we believe in this lovely term "downsizing and outsourcing". I always wanted to be an engineer. I took over as chairman of the international side of the Engineering Industry Association from Sir Monty Finniston. He made a wonderful speech; he said that 50 per cent of all inventions in the world had been invented in the United Kingdom and only 10 per cent had been exploited. In what do we need to trade? It is no longer textiles or textile machinery or mining or mining machinery. In fact it does not really matter what we trade in as long as added value is created here at home. Where that added value comes is unimportant as long as there is a reasonable balance of payments, which there is. So what will be the powerhouse that drives the British economy in the next few years? As I look down from these great heights upon yesterday's men, thinking of yesterday but not yet worrying about tomorrow, I want to give them certain reassurances. In a way we are back in a form of Victorian England where wealth will drive infrastructure development and we will see the biggest recovery in our infrastructure in more than 200 years. But there is a worry. This is not, as government say, government spending, this is government commitment. Before I move on to the great and glorious future, I wish first to look at the three areas that are vital to our economy and to our people—health, education and transport. I start with health, at which I have been looking for some time. As old age approaches and your insurance policy costs get higher and higher, you start to wonder whether the facilities will be there to keep you alive when you decide you want to continue. So we look at our wonderful hospital building programme. It is strange that we are going to spend £16 billion on very much needed new hospitals, but to date the Government have spent only £300 million and are expecting the private sector in some way or another to pay the rest. I have to disclose an interest. I am the director of a construction company which has found that it is no longer economic to build hospitals, so we have had to pull out of building, as many building companies have. This does not mean that the hospitals cannot be built, but that there needs to be some new approach. One of my worries in relation to the spending programme is that the biggest growth area in this country has been the recruitment of people by the state. That does not necessarily matter if the economy can support it, but I want to draw a couple of comparisons. I was brought up, Florence Nightingale-style, to believe that we had the best health service in the world, and I genuinely believed that it should be a public service. Now, when I look at our industrial or economic competitors, I find that in the United Kingdom we are brilliant. We employ over 1 million people in the health service, who look after 200,000 beds, of which 40 per cent are occupied long-term by those with learning difficulties, mental problems, or the aged. Our competitors on the Continent—France and Germany—employ about the same number of people, who look after nearly 1 million beds. So we employ six to seven people for every bed and they employ between one and two. It does not mean that we should employ fewer people but that we should have the facilities for these people to be occupied more effectively. By the end of this year, in December—only five or six months away—it is said that 10 per cent of all operations will be handled by the private sector. The private sector does not have enough beds or the capacity for that. So we shall introduce a new arrangement—we will be exporting our people to the Continent of Europe for operations where waiting time may be a matter of only days or weeks. That is being done very effectively by Guy's and St Thomas', which are the lead commissioners of the NHS. There is nothing wrong in that. However, we have a problem with such things as education. As we know well, people who live in urban areas find it very difficult to get places for their children at a local school. There are plenty of stories about that and we all know how difficult it is, even with the new academies. One factor is our failure adequately to use modern technology. We have one of the worst transport systems in the world and the most expensive costs per kilometre for all forms of transport. Yet we have the potential with new technologies. Inevitably, as I often do in your Lordships' House, I have to go back to where it all began. I go to Ptolemy. Ptolemy said that the Earth was in the middle of an envelope and that beyond the envelope there was nothing. Aristotle also said something to the same effect. But then along came this great chap who was brought up in Krakow—where the former Pope came from—Copernicus. In 1530 Copernicus introduced a revolutionary theory called De Revolutionibus, which said that the Earth was not the centre of everything, but that it revolved around the Sun. He got into some trouble over that. A little while later Galileo agreed with Copernicus and got into trouble with the Church. The Inquisition was going to have him put down. In 1530 Galileo introduced a new theory of inertia which was later taken up by someone else. But in 1633 he was the first person ever to be interned in his home. The Church did not want to put him down so it adopted the same policy as the Labour Government has with doubtful criminals. His theory was then taken up by Newton, which was quite interesting as time went on. It was Newton's first law of motion. That theory moved on. The Minister knows exactly where I am going; I am going to his pet subject. It moved on to Einstein and his theory of relativity. Then we reach the wonderful system of space. Your Lordships will know that our scientists and technologists in this field are probably the best in the world. In this area of knowledge we can move on to great things. I remind your Lordships of the Cassini-Huygens probe that went to Saturn. Many of us are not sure where Saturn is, but we think that it is the one with the ring around it. The probe landed on Titan, which is, surprisingly enough, not far away from its own earth. On its front, it had a little probe the size of one's little finger. It took a quarter of a second to crash into the planet. The number of gigabytes of information that came back into the system in that quarter of a second has helped to make us the most advanced people in the robotics world. There is comfort for all those who believe that global warming will take place. I should declare that this is not based on personal knowledge. I am joint secretary of the Parliamentary Space Committee. Many of our members, of course, left in the last election. The Huygens project was fascinating. I was told that Titan is really the same as Earth. It has rivers, gulches, stones, rocks and dendrology which is all frozen. I was told, "So, Malcolm as the Earth warms up, Titan will also warm up and Titan will be an exact replica of Earth. We can assure you that our technology will be sufficient to transfer the entire population of Earth to Titan, where it will thrive". It should not take too long. That will possibly happen in about one and a quarter million years. But that is the sort of technology we have. Out of these developments from our space programme, jointly with others, comes Galileo, obviously named after the great man. Galileo is the new GPS system, which will be operational in 2008. It is a joint European venture. But it means that all sorts of new information will be available and new methods of location, which will help in health and safety. Every mobile telephone will be able immediately to transmit emergency signals. This could be a significant revenue earner. It relates, obviously, to navigation worldwide, even to farming in remote areas or the allocation of fertilizers to crops. The possibilities for development grow and grow. That is just one thought. The navigational system market will rise from about £13 billion to over £200 billion in the next 15 years. I want your Lordships to think back to mobile telephone licences the Government sold for £1 billion. I wish much of that money had been put back into science and technology, for our budget is far too small for a nation of our capability. I had rather hoped that the Minister would be sitting on these Benches—I still hope that he may with another hat on—but he deserves a lot of credit for what he did with very limited resources. He is highly respected throughout the industry. There were cries of "Thank goodness!" when he was reappointed and I hope that he will stay for a long time. At the end of this year, there is to be a space conference over here. Would he be willing to allow us to have a fairly extensive debate in this House on space, because it is an interesting subject? I leave your Lordships with two thoughts. The first concerns gravitational waves. I have been studying Einstein's theory of relativity, and I found that I could not really understand it until I went to the Internet to ask whether I could have a guide for 12 year-olds. Actually, there was only one for 14 year-olds. I then found that I could begin to understand it. We know that, in general, sound moves at the speed of sound but with electromagnetic communication the sound and everything else moves at the speed of light. You may see some broadcaster or a member of the Labour Party opening his mouth but the words come out later. That is the maximum speed of that communication, but most of the information that you get from space comes from light. Gravitational waves can provide additional sources of information that may be pretty helpful in the future. Scientists to whom I have talked explained to me that we are the most advanced in gravitational waves. A gravitational wave is like dropping a stone in a pond: the ripples get slower and slower as they reach the edge. Therefore, as from space the ripples come down here, they do not stop, they go round anything. I had thought that perhaps at some time gravitational waves might replace all communications frequencies and wavelengths, but I was told, "No, they make too much noise, although we cannot hear them". The United States want to, as I call it, power share with us. They have built an enormous tunnel to test gravitational waves and they want our technology. We should not give it to them except at a high price. I have so loved the advances in technology. I am pleased and proud that we are building helicopters for the United States President when we thought that our helicopter industry was dead. Our manufacturing sector must be technologically led. I end by returning to a religious statement—I hope that your Lordships will think about this because it caused me to think— "I am Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the ending". Does infinity come before alpha or after omega or between the two? Why is the symbol for alpha in the lateral plane half of the symbol for infinity and, in the vertical plane, half of the symbol for omega?