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Home Affairs and Justice

With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall range a little more widely through the Queen's Speech and speak not only to the Bills covered by the Departments represented on the Front Bench today. I should like to start by picking up on a remark made yesterday, not by the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition—with all due respect to them—but by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Ms Butler). Towards the end of her speech, she said:"““If anyone…questions whether politics works or whether it matters, I say to them that cynicism did not create the welfare state, indifference did not introduce the minimum wage or bring peace to Northern Ireland, and apathy did not end debt slavery for the world's poorest people or give our most valuable pensioners dignity in their retirement. It was politics that did all that. That is the difference that politics makes.””—[Official Report, 6 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 14.]" That observation memorably and beautifully provides the counter-argument to the cynicism that is all too prevalent in our society today when people talk about politics. I did not attend the Gracious Speech. I watched it on television, and the BBC did a number of vox pops. Almost all of them were of a cynical nature, with people saying things like, ““Oh, it doesn't have anything to do with us”” and ““Nothing makes any difference.”” My hon. Friend's point deals perfectly with comments such as those, and I shall quote it when I am next confronted by such cynicism about politics and the political process. If my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench will forgive me, I want to touch on one or two of the Bills in the Queen's Speech that are not within their remit. There are many things in the Queen's Speech that my constituents will welcome, including the Climate Change Bill and the energy Bill. At long last, we are getting serious about the environment, although there is still a long way to go. I note that many of the most respected experts suggest that we should aim for a 75 per cent. reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, and I hope that the Government will keep that matter under review. I appreciate, however, that there is a fine line to be walked between what is deliverable and what is desirable. Our targets on renewables are very modest, and I wonder whether we could be a bit more ambitious in that regard. I note that the new Co-op headquarters in Manchester is 98 per cent. energy self-sufficient, and that ought to serve as a role model for other business developments. On recycling, despite undoubted progress we are barely scratching the surface. The amount that we throw away remains astonishing to me, and it is still impossible to recycle plastic in many parts of the country. We seem depressingly reluctant to take on the supermarkets and the packaging manufacturers, and it is a mystery to me why we cannot require a deposit to be paid on bottles and plastic bags. I welcome any measures in the Bill on pensions and employment to improve the lot of agency workers and those who are on the minimum wage. There is a growing divide in this country between two classes of employee: those who qualify for holiday pay, sick pay, occupational pensions and all those other things that we used, quaintly, to associate with civilisation, and those who do not. Increasingly, many of the latter are immigrants, and nothing causes greater resentment among the indigenous population than to see their once secure jobs undermined by the cynical importation of labour from cheap labour economies. Those of us who have done well out of the past 20 years need to bear in mind the fact that there is a class of people whose standard of living has not improved in that time. A bus driver told me recently that his earnings had not yet got back up to the level that they had been in the late 1980s before the deregulation of the buses. The planning Bill makes me a little nervous. There might well be a case for modernising the planning process, but, as regards housing, airports and roads, we seem to be returning to the discredited ““predict and provide”” model instead of looking for ways of managing demand. I speak as one who once had some responsibility in the Government for aviation, and the aviation industry in particular has had its own way for far too long. There is almost no limit to its demands. It wants more terminals, more runways and more airports, and it is time for the Government to muster the courage to stand up to it. I hope that this Bill is not intended to pave the way for a return to ““predict and provide””. I look forward to the Bill on party finances. We have to close the so-called Ashcroft loophole. It is urgent that we stop the Americanisation of politics, in which political parties are increasingly becoming beholden to individual rich men in the way that premier league football is becoming the playground of billionaires. We need issue-driven, rather than money-driven, politics. Nor do I accept the argument that there is a legitimate parallel to be drawn with trade union political funds. Between 3 million and 4 million people voluntarily paying four or five pounds a year is the nearest thing that we have to mass politics in this country, and there is no comparison between the political levy and a multi-millionaire writing out a cheque for £2 million, £3 million or even £5 million to the political party of his choice. I do not know whether the Government have plans for this, but I would also like to see a tighter cap on the amount that can be spent nationally. In my view, we missed an opportunity in 1998, important though the legislation that became the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 was. In 1998, the Opposition were short of money, so they just might have been prepared to negotiate more seriously on lower limits. When we have closed the Ashcroft loophole—I appreciate that this may not be too agreeable for my right hon. and hon. Friends—perhaps we could take another look at the so-called communications allowance that we awarded ourselves earlier this year, which I found hard to justify as it gives an unfair advantage to incumbents. I notice that it is attracting increasingly unfavourable comment. I turn now to the counter-terrorism Bill. As we have just heard, it seems that it will include yet another attempt to increase the period for which terror suspects can be held without trial. In my time, it has gone from three, to seven, to 14 and to 28 days—to say nothing of the abortive attempt a while ago to raise it to 90 days. I shall listen to the arguments, as I did last time, but they are going to have to be a darn sight stronger than they were last time before I become convinced of them. As I said in an intervention, I cannot understand the origins of this obsession with increasing the length of time for which terrorist suspects can be detained without trial. I quoted what the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, told me in front of an audience of 200 lawyers. I believe that the only possible conclusion is that it has more to do with politicians than with the needs of practitioners. I have no doubt that a policeman or someone from the security services can be wheeled out to say that the extension is absolutely necessary, but the case has not been demonstrated. I also noted the quotations cited by—was it the right hon. Member for Goole?