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Queen’s Speech

My Lords, I begin by drawing attention to my interests as set out in the Register. I thank the noble Lord the First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and Lord President of the Council for introducing this very important debate. I also welcome the latest expansion of his portfolio. I know that his role as Minister for Information has not yet been publicly confirmed but, having presumably become dissatisfied with the domain temporal, I understand that the First Secretary of State has now extended his remit into the domain spiritual as well. I apologise to him for not mentioning this before, and I sense a slight flurry of unease on the Bishops’ Benches, but the noble Lord is to be congratulated on becoming a Church Commissioner. I should also say how much we are looking forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Sugar and Lord Martin of Springburn, who we all welcome to this House. The noble Lord, Lord Martin, is an old friend and was briefly my pair in the other place—an arrangement that suited us both very well indeed. He has already attended debates in this House assiduously, including virtually every speech that has been made in this debate since it started a week ago. We all look forward to what I suppose must be his first full parliamentary speech in almost a decade. The House will also be looking forward with great and special interest to the maiden and subsequent speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Sugar. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, confirmed on 12 November, when the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, speaks on business matters, he speaks with the full authority of the Government, not that this Government have much authority left these days. I do not think that this country has ever been in greater need of a clear and effective legislative programme. Consumers, entrepreneurs and businesses need confidence, and today’s news about the covert—not my adjective of choice, but that used by the noble Lord, Lord Myners, in answering John Humphrys on the "Today" programme this morning—dealings with certain banks can serve only to undermine fragile confidence even more. There will have been much spluttering of cornflakes at breakfast tables across the land when the noble Lord asserted his view that the banking system had worked in the past couple of years—an interesting description of a sector that has seemed to be lurching from crisis to crisis from day to day, or even from hour to hour. It was demonstrably clear by the end of 2008 that Labour’s policies had failed, and failed miserably. Ever since, Ministers have sought to exculpate themselves. Their favourite scapegoat, which we heard again in the noble Lord’s speech, rapidly became the rest of the world—anyone but themselves. We have been subjected to the endless repetition of the phrase "global economic downturn". It is astonishing that Ministers have continued to use this excuse even when it became blindingly obvious that the problems with which we are struggling are far more entrenched and pervasive in this country than elsewhere. There is an old trade union phrase with which noble Lords—particularly those on the Benches opposite—will be familiar, which is first in, last out. That sums up this Government’s economic record—first in Europe into the recession and now last out of it. Ministers are driving us into eye-watering levels of debt to fund an unprecedented fiscal stimulus, but what do they have to show for it? Almost 5,000 companies went bust in the third quarter of this year, and every day nearly 400 people declare themselves bankrupt. One in five young people is unemployed and one child in six is growing up in a household where no one works. On both counts, we have the worst record of any of the 27 countries in the European Union. Just as they did in the 1960s and 1970s, Labour policies have brought our country’s private sector to its knees, and still the First Secretary of State persists in maintaining that the traditional Labour mantra of spend, spend, spend is the answer. What has happened to the money that the Government have so recklessly borrowed and spent? The successive, snappily named schemes announced earlier this year have evidently not provided what businesses need. The enterprise finance guarantee scheme, which by the way is just a pale shadow of the far more robust Conservative policy, has only managed to persuade businesses to draw down some £340 million out of a potential £1,300 million. That poor uptake rate is apparently being repeated in the capital for enterprise fund, the trade credit insurance top-up scheme and the automotive assistance programme. If you ask businesses why they are not taking advantage of these offerings, the answer is plain and forthright: the restrictions, requirements and red tape involved are so burdensome that it is simply not worth the time, trouble and effort. So the much-needed, much vaunted flow of liquidity—the lifeblood of business—is simply not coming through yet. The idea of enmeshing struggling businesses in yet more red tape when the burden was already dangerously onerous in the good times is one that could occur only to this Government. This legislative programme shows a consistent lack of comprehension. It does not recognise the cold reality that prevails outside the cloud-cuckoo-land that Ministers seem to inhabit. We have a Bill that criminalises the sort of reckless fiscal behaviour in which only this Government would ever dream of engaging. I shall leave it to my noble friend Lady Noakes to give the Financial Services Bill and the Fiscal Responsibility Bill the treatment that they deserve. We have deafening silence on so much that really matters to our economic well-being. The failure of this Government can best be summed up in the short, troubled life of one Bill—the Postal Services Bill. Where is it? We have a company in difficulty, facing identifiable problems and offering a feasible solution. It is being denied the opportunity to reform and modernise itself purely because of political manoeuvring and the Prime Minister's characteristic refusal to face facts. I recognise the personal commitment of the First Secretary of State to that essential legislation, and I will spare his blushes by not quoting back at him now all the statements he once made about how important it was to get that Bill to Royal Assent as quickly as possible. I fear that he has several notable failures to his name, but the failure to deliver on the Postal Services Bill may come to be seen as the most abject of them all. I could almost feel sorry for the First Secretary of State—almost. There is, however, one Bill that I am happy to welcome. An effective Digital Economy Bill is, as the First Secretary of State said, a necessary step in the right direction. We shall be looking closely at it as it passes through the House to ensure that it really encourages investment, innovation and modernisation within sectors crucial to our economy. However eye-catching that Bill may be, with all its modernistic bells and whistles, it cannot address the fundamental economic weaknesses that this Government will leave behind. In a country that appears to be ready for change, many people have drawn parallels with the situation in 1997. Those parallels are highly questionable. For a start, in 1997, my good friend Kenneth Clarke—a star who continues to shine brightly in another place—left behind him what everyone has always described as a golden economic legacy, the result of firm, calm, responsible stewardship of the economy. How wise it is for the leadership of my party to draw on his wisdom once again. Back in the late 1970s, we did not have the benefit of such stewardship of the economy. It is a time that the First Secretary of State and I recall well, because we were both involved at the time in the leadership of the British Youth Council. I am certainly not going to quote his words at him—I know him too well for that—but together we had to lament and to suffer the social and economic crisis that, by 1979, had left this country all but ungovernable. Now we are reliving the worst aspects of those dark days. My noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford wrote at the time in his excellent book, Freedom and Capital, about how social tensions and economic strife feed off each other. He wrote: ""Quality of life ... has deteriorated. Fewer families feel they ever have spare cash to spend or put aside … Household budgets get tighter, family arguments more tense, under economic strain … Outside the front door the surroundings are often getting scruffier, not cleaner, and life outdoors certainly more dangerous and violent after dark … Public services have been getting worse, not better"—" et cetera, et cetera. How prescient my noble friend was, for could not that charge sheet have been written only yesterday? Every day that the last Labour Government remained in office was, for this country, another day wasted. How history repeats itself. In their justly celebrated book Britain’s Economic Problem: Too Few Producers, which was published in 1976 and updated in 1978, Robert Bacon and Walter Eltis vividly and stoutly demonstrated how weak political leadership and the growth of the corporate state were stifling the life out of the free enterprise economy: ""With growing public expenditure and taxation, profits can become so low that the market sector will generate insufficient investment ... Economists … can support the allocation of investment resources through the market, or they can support policies of higher public spending, but they cannot have both"." New Labour was elected on the false premise that this country, and the state, in particular, could have its cake and eat it. Perhaps there is indeed nothing new in heaven and earth because that is exactly the old Labour message. Sooner or later, it always turns to bust, or dust. As my noble friend Lord Patten of Barnes once put it, the facts of life are Tory. Like the Bourbons, the First Secretary of State and his colleagues forget nothing but they also learn nothing. Another Labour Government, another fine mess. Fortunately for us, once in every generation there comes a leader who can rise to the Conservative Party’s historical role: namely, putting right what Labour has got so patently wrong. My noble friend Lady Thatcher was such a leader, and I was proud to serve her for 11 years. She was certainly the greatest peacetime Prime Minister of my lifetime. She rescued our economy, she revived the spirit of free enterprise and entrepreneurship and she restored our national pride. I strongly believe that David Cameron will be such a leader. What a challenge he will face, if and when he becomes Prime Minister. Labour is now the party of unemployment, and we have to be the party of new jobs and new opportunities. We shall also be honest with the people of this country about the challenges we face. We shall toil, not spin. Nothing in this legislative programme should give us the slightest confidence that this enfeebled Government can answer any of our problems, the problems that their own wilfully self-indulgent policies have caused. This programme contains 13 Bills. If this Parliament runs, as expected, until the end of March, we shall have about 13 weeks to consider them, and we shall then be looking back over 13 wasted years. Thirteen Bills, 13 weeks and 13 wasted years are unlucky for some. They are unlucky for all of us. They are unlucky for this great country of ours. This legislative programme is a feeble attempt on the part of a dying Government to embarrass the Opposition when there are real problems demanding serious policies. The countdown to change has begun. I hope it is the countdown to the arrival of a fresh new Administration that will deliver much-needed hope, energy and inspiration to government and to our country.