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Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, this has been an interesting and lively debate, with many fine contributions from all sides of the House. In particular, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rana, on his maiden speech. We learned much about the economy and his views on Northern Ireland. I am sure that he will make valuable contributions and I hope that many of his suggestions will be taken up in future debates. However, I would like to begin my remarks by joining others and taking a brief moment to say a few words about the personnel changes on the Benches opposite. I, too, welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, on her deserved promotion to the ODPM. I have had the good fortune to work with her on several pieces of legislation in the past. She has always had a very quick mind and has adapted herself well to legislation. I am sure that she will be a great success and I hope that we shall work with her very well in her new role. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to his new job at Defra, and I look forward to forging a constructive and fruitful relationship with the noble Lord, Lord Davies, on transport issues, with which I shall be particularly involved. We have had a great deal of interesting discussion about the rural economy and the countryside. Yesterday I saw the noble Lord, Lord Bach, at the Chelsea Flower Show—a rather different economy and a rather different world from that which we have been debating today. I refer also to the contribution of my noble friend Lady Hanham, and I cannot speak at this stage without mentioning the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, whose refreshing candour and ability to cut through the civil service jargon will be sadly missed in these areas. I have no doubt that those qualities will serve him very well in his new role in Northern Ireland. I would also like to mention a former Minister for Local Government in another place. As most of your Lordships know, I am the leader of Essex County Council, and I have to declare an interest in that respect. However, I should like to mention the Minister for Local Government in another place, Nick Raynsford, who was a great friend of local government. We are rather sad that he has departed from the scene. I gather that some people fought to try to keep him. I have offered him a job in Essex, if he wants something else to do, to help us sort out local government there. In mentioning Essex, I should also add that we have two ports and an expanding airport—matters about which we have heard in some of today's contributions. In mentioning a few of the contributions to the debate, I begin with my noble friend Lady Byford, who speaks on rural affairs. She started the debate, which has continued throughout the day with many fine contributions, by speaking on the state of the rural economy, particularly farming—though many of your Lordships have said that the word "farming" was not mentioned very much. I especially liked what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich said about the fact that we keep creating rural bodies and changing them again. We really should allow such institutions to settle and work to sort out some of our rural problems. I hope that the Minister might comment on that in his response. My noble friend Lord Peel talked about a rural strategy. I hope that the House will support the Government in developing a rural strategy and taking on some of the farming problems that we have discussed today. My noble friend the Duke of Montrose mentioned animal health and bovine TB, following the contribution made by the noble Countess, Lady Mar. Those are important issues, on which I hope the Minister will feel able to comment. My noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith mentioned, as did many others, the problems associated with environmental issues, the fact that they are not being tackled by the Government at the moment and that perhaps we should have some more serious debate about them. The noble Lord, Lord Kimball, asked some very pertinent questions, which I hope the Minister will be able to answer. As always, my noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy defended Wales, ably assisted by the noble Lord, Lord Jones, who referred to the development of the aerospace industry. I believe that what he talked about started during the Conservative government's period of office, so perhaps he would like to give some credit to the Conservative government for the development of industry in Wales. We have had some very fine contributions and I hope that the Minister will be able to give answers to some of the questions that have been asked. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, talked a lot about the need for new housing. However, she did not say a great deal about an area that particularly concerns me—that is, the infrastructure that needs to go with them. I shall talk about that shortly. Even if we are going to develop along the M11 corridor, it will probably cost nearly £100 million to build a new roundabout. If we are to build new houses, somehow the money must be found for the infrastructure that goes with them. I know that some of the funding might come from within the development, but the Government will have to tackle seriously the costs of building these new houses if they are to build them in these areas. Before I turn to transport matters, I want to raise a few issues concerning the local government agenda. The Government's regional agenda was mentioned initially by my noble friend Lady Byford and it was very ably pursued by my noble friend Lady Hanham. Neither local government nor the public wanted it and yet we seem to be facing another round of local government reorganisation. Perhaps the Minister will be able to comment on that. We learn that the Deputy Prime Minister is considering the establishment of a strategic city region tier of government, despite, as we have heard from several noble Lords today, a massive rejection of regional government in the referendum in the north east. There was also a commitment in the Labour Party manifesto to let local communities do different things. If we are to have another round of reorganisation, we would like to know more about it, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, also raised that point. Several noble Lords mentioned the fact that, if regionalisation were to be rejected in a referendum, it would still be going on by the back door. Although it is not the Minister's area, perhaps he will comment on that. As regionalisation has been rejected by the public, we think that the Government should state clearly what they mean and why they are still setting up many regional bodies—a point made by many of my colleagues today. Therefore, there are questions to be answered. We in local government want to know whether there is to be a reorganisation so that we can have a proper debate about it. We want to get on and provide services. People in local government want to improve services to the elderly and to children and so on. They do not want continually to debate the issue of reorganisation. It costs money, it does not solve anything and we need to know in which direction we are going. I also want to mention an issue that was raised in only one contribution to the debate. My noble friend Lady Hanham fought a very valiant battle on postal voting. The intention to introduce a Bill on this matter was included in the gracious Speech, but it has now been referred to the DCA from the ODPM. It is a very important issue. It concerns the public and, if we are to have postal voting or other systems, proper control needs to be in place. Although my noble friend Lady Hanham does not like to say, "I told you so", she continued to say it throughout most of last year, and she has been proved right in that regard. Restoring trust and confidence in our electoral system is of paramount importance. As was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Byford and others, we also await the results of the Lyons review on the council tax. During the election campaign, one Minister, Charlotte Atkins, mentioned that the Government would abolish the tax if elected for a third term. She does not seem to have been re-appointed to a ministerial post, so perhaps the Government have changed their mind on that. Again, I hope that the Minister will comment on the likely timing of the council tax review. If the ODPM does not have any legislation planned in the next 18 months, how will any review be implemented? Will legislation be introduced later? Several noble Lords mentioned the revaluation exercise, which is to come into effect in April 2007. It could coincide with the review of council tax. We heard about what happened in Wales—revaluation reviews have always been unfortunate experiences. Every single government have lost an election after holding a revaluation review, so that may be an interesting portent for the future. Perhaps the Minister would like to comment on it. I now turn to the transport part of my speech. I followed my noble friend Lord Eccles in looking at the transport section of the Labour Party manifesto. It was not particularly easy to find, but we found it on one page. Although we have had several contributions about the importance of transport, rail, road safety, and other things, the manifesto was not particularly brilliant bedtime reading. Generally, the Government's record on transport has not been good. We had a 10-year plan, the desire for an integrated transport plan, and the Deputy Prime Minister's 1997 pledge to cut car use in five years. Obviously that has not happened; there is continued car use, which we all understand. The noble Lord, Lord Cobbold mentioned the need for investment in our road system, and I totally agree with that. Our transport system increasingly resembles that of a third-world country, and we have not done anything to bring our roads into the 21st century. The Confederation of British Industry has estimated that the cost of congestion is £15 billion a year, which damages the competitive position of British firms and makes Britain a less attractive country for investment. But it is not just business that is hurt—it is families too. If the trains do not run on time, or people are stuck in traffic jams, they get home irritable, and it destroys family life. That is something that really should be tackled. In Britain, the proportion of road links that are congested for more than an hour a day is three times greater than in Germany, and five times greater than in France. Our motorway provision per head of population is less than half the European average. We have a lower motorway density than any of our European competitors. This is despite the fact that motorists pay £8 billion more in excise and fuel duties than in 1997. Indeed, the Treasury now takes more than £40 billion a year in tax from road users, but the Government spend only about £1.6 billion on new trunk roads and motorways, and about £10 billion a year on all road infrastructure. Some of the extra tax goes on subsidised bus services, but, although they have doubled, they still cost only £1.4 billion a year. So less than half the money collected from the road user is invested back into the roads. We have had quite a bit of debate on the state of the railways, which is just as depressing. That leads us back to where I started. If we are going to have new houses and new developments, we need investment in infrastructure. We heard nothing in the gracious Speech that addressed that. The Crossrail Bill will have our support. However, as everyone knows, and as the Secretary of State has acknowledged, it does not advance the starting date. We must still go ahead with it, even though the Government are still dithering over the funding. It will be interesting to hear whether the Minister can shed any further light on either the funding for the project or the projected start date. Recent reports have suggested a potential shortfall of £4 billion at the heart of the project. We look forward to the imminent arrival of the Road Safety Bill. A lot of people have commented on that. The Bill has been around for a while, and I am sure we can support it across the House, although we shall do our bit to try and improve it. The measures in it include the introduction of variable penalty points, tackling drink-driving and other traffic offences. We want to make certain that the Bill does not have an anti-motorist agenda, but is something that will help the motorist and improve the safety situation on the roads in our country. In conclusion, the issues for which the Department for Transport, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister are responsible affect every family and every business in this country. We feel that there could have been much more in the gracious Speech to make more happen in these areas. We shall face these challenges in this House over the coming 18 months, and we on this side of the House look forward to every opportunity to debate with the Government and, we hope, to improve the legislation.