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Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, like my noble friend Lady Noakes and other noble Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, on his elevation to the Front Bench. I wish him well, but not too well when I am on the opposite side of the Dispatch Box. At first sight, it was reassuring that the Government have made this important debate the first of the new Parliament in this House. However, after the previous Parliament was dissolved, a major motor manufacturing company went into receivership with the loss of thousands of jobs both directly and among its suppliers. My noble friend Lord Trenchard mentioned that. A major electronics firm, Marconi, has had to announce the loss of thousands of jobs due to the lack of orders from domestic telecom companies. The European Parliament voted to impose the 48-hour week on the United Kingdom, and high street retail businesses are now suffering a decline in trade described as the worst in 15 years. The foreign owners of Abbey bank are cutting 1,000 jobs in addition to the 3,000 that they have already announced. On taking office, what was the first action of the new Secretary of State? The noble Lords, Lord Tomlinson and Lord Wedderburn, both mentioned the change of name. I heard also what the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, said but my understanding was that they were going to spend, if they had not already done so, £500,000 on the change of name. What did our new Secretary of State have to say about the 48-hour week when challenged in a TV interview? He said that it was not government policy, and claimed that the fact that the Labour MEPs had unanimously voted in favour of it was due to, "the peculiarities of the European Parliament's voting system where Labour MEPs were bound to vote with the socialist group". The socialist group, my Lords? There we have it—the "s" word. It remains to be seen what more might happen. I know how pro-Europe many noble Lords are around this House, but I wonder if we were to give away much of our sovereignty what would happen if we had more things like that happening. Other noble Lords have reminded us of the stifling effect of the over-regulation that British industry and commerce have had to endure under this Government. Piled on top of the annual £7.6 billion of extra taxes—extra taxes, my Lords—that this Government have imposed on business since they took power in 1997, the cost of new business regulations comes to another £7.4 billion a year. That is a staggering additional £15 billion a year burden that this Government have imposed on business. Since 1997, the cumulative tax bill imposed on British business has reached £54 billion, and the cumulative regulatory compliance cost has amounted to nearly £40 billion since the same date. No wonder this Government have presided over the continuing decline of British industry. If you ever heard the sound "whoosh", that is the sound of British jobs disappearing in the direction of eastern Europe, India and China. You hear of call centres in India in particular where the work is going over there instead of staying here. We do not want this country to be a low-wage economy, but we do not want this country to lose its competitive edge with high business taxes and regulation piled on top of over-regulation. As if that were not enough, we have the constant gold-plating of regulations, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer. It is for that reason that we give a cautious welcome to the concept of the proposed new regulatory reform Bill. We Conservatives said that we would have done something fairly similar, but of course, like all the new Bills proposed, we will scrutinise it very carefully. Still on the subject of regulatory reform, I impress on the Government that the impact of the regulations that they have imposed on business in practically every area impinges disproportionately on small businesses. Large concerns can easily absorb the need to employ additional staff or to accept extra duties for the conduct of their business. In small businesses, those extra costs can be crippling. For example, only last week I received a letter from my local fishmonger in Marylebone. After three generations running their shop, they have had to close because of the impact of the congestion charge, which cost them over 20 per cent of their trade overnight. The shop has closed because they simply could not go on after 100 years in business. The young member of the family, the fourth generation, is out of work. The disaster that that little family business has suffered is a microcosm of what has happened to its larger neighbours in the once-prosperous West End shopping district. Of course, I appreciate that that is not all the fault of the Government. If they wish they can blame a large part of it on their comrade Ken Livingstone, who they conveniently welcomed back into the fold. I believe that the seven Ministers in the DTI should have a plaque on each of their desks to remind them that 99 per cent of United Kingdom businesses are classified as small businesses. On the basis of the Government's statistics, small businesses provide 46 per cent of non-government employment and 38 per cent of United Kingdom turnover. The Federation of Small Businesses estimates that small businesses employ 12.6 million workers. However, when the Government legislate and impose new regulations, they do not often distinguish between giant multi-nationals and the corner shop or the tiny business filling a niche market. Then there is the Government policy that is in the process of destroying the traditional village post offices at the hub of their communities by the way in which they will be paying pensions and other social security benefits. I appreciate that the Government say that they are paying subsidies, but the subsidies being paid to those shops are less than the Treasury is trying to save in its own overheads. Never mind about the regulatory impact studies. The Government should always consider the law of unintended consequences. Talking about the Post Office, even though, as the noble Lord, Lord Sawyer, said, there was no mention of it in the gracious Speech, perhaps the Minister can enlighten us on another topic. The noble Lord, Lord Sawyer, took a whole page of my speech. I thank him in a way; it is nice that I can be somewhat quicker. I confirm that in the manifesto we were assured that the Government had no plans to privatise the Royal Mail—in effect that the Royal Mail was safe in their hands. Yet, we hear about the chairman, Mr Leighton, running around the country trying to sell off bits of it, and we hear, as the noble Lord, Lord Sawyer, said, about them thinking of turning it into a John Lewis-kind of organisation. For the sake of certainty and for the sake of the peace of mind of the staff who work there and the customers alike, perhaps the Minister will tell us today what is going on in this area. Who is in charge of the policy? The Government? Or Mr Leighton? It would be nice to know. Various noble Lords have mentioned energy, which is one of the most important problems facing our country today. I remind noble Lords that during the passage of the Energy Act last year, we on these Benches with the assistance of the Liberal Democrats and many Cross-Bench Peers, forced an unwilling Government into a grudging acceptance of the fact that the ultimate responsibility for security of supply rests with them. I have searched in vain in the gracious Speech for any reference as to how they intend to implement that duty. It was in the Act. Where are we going? What will happen in this Session about it? I remind the Government of something that, on every occasion when energy has been debated in the past couple of years, does not seem to have penetrated their collective consciousness. Our domestic supplies of fossil fuel—oil and gas—are almost exhausted. The coal on which this island is virtually built is either uneconomic to recover or ecologically and environmentally unfit to use, especially in the light of the fact that there is lack of support from the Government for clean coal technology. I say that because China is developing its technology, but would cry out for information from us. That could very well be a huge, invisible export if we developed it in this country. Energy from renewable sources and our pledge to meet the Kyoto targets are all right and proper, and I applaud them, but the fact simply is that experts say that we will not reach those targets depending on present forms of energy alone. We have to go a little further. No other renewable sources, such as tidal power and biomass, are even properly off the drawing board. With what are we left? The Government are not pushing energy efficiency as much as we think that they ought to. Microgeneration could play a much bigger part. Indeed, heat and power—