Debate on the Address

Before I go on to comment on the proposer and seconder of the Gracious Speech, I wish to pay tribute to the four service men and women who were killed in Basra on Sunday, Lee Hopkins, Sharron Elliott, Ben Nowak and Jason Hylton. I also pay tribute to Jamie Hancock, who was killed in Basra last week. Our thoughts are with their families. They died serving our country and we honour their memory. I also pay tribute to those Members of the House who have left us since the last Gracious Speech. Patsy Calton lost her courageous fight with cancer shortly after the general election last year. In spite of her illness, she came back to the House to continue her work and none of us will forget her bravery in doing so. Rachel Squire will be sorely missed by Members on both sides of the House and by her constituents. I believe the whole House will miss Peter Law. As a Labour man for decades, he will be fondly remembered on the Government side of the House; for overturning one of the biggest Labour majorities in the whole country, in the seat of Michael Foot and Nye Bevan, he will be fondly remembered on this side. Since the last Gracious Speech, the House has lost two of its greatest champions in Eric Forth and Robin Cook. It was a measure of Robin Cook’s effectiveness that, on this side, we can still remember his brilliant attack on the arms to Iraq issue, and who on the Government side of the House can forget his withering criticism of the decision to go to war in Iraq? My first job in Parliament was as Eric Forth’s deputy. I remember being summoned to his office to find that while he was not there, a life-size cut-out of Elvis Presley was. One never knew quite what to expect with Eric. Once again, both sides of the House have cause to remember him. He had complete scorn for everything done by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor and only a little bit less than complete scorn for everything done by me. We will all miss him. Let me congratulate the proposer and the seconder of the Loyal Address on their speeches. I thought that the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) demonstrated some wonderful pronunciation that I will not even attempt to follow. He told us about the Co-operative party. The right hon. Gentleman will not have seen it, but at that moment the Prime Minister turned to look at him but his gaze fell on the Chancellor. I am not sure that the word ““co-operative”” was the first thing that came into the Prime Minister’s head. Some have said, unfairly, that the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth lacks charisma. After his speech today, I say that I profoundly disagree. He may not actually look like it, but the right hon. Gentleman is the Labour party’s answer to Tom Cruise; he is always being sent on mission impossible. The Prime Minister sent him to Wales as the Downing street choice for First Minister. Nobody told him that the job would self-destruct in about ten seconds. I think he was the first Minister in history whose resignation was announced by the Leader of the Opposition during Prime Minister’s questions. No sooner had the right hon. Gentleman stepped free from the wreckage than he was sent on mission impossible II. As the countryside rose in revolt and anger and as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, he was made Minister for Rural Affairs. The right hon. Gentleman should take heart. He has always been called for when the Government have faced a crisis; I think, today, his career opportunities must be almost limitless. I also congratulate the seconder of the Loyal Address, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna). It was an excellent and witty speech, and an important one about the role of a Member of Parliament. It also passed two vital tests for me and the Prime Minister; it was on-message and it spoke about his legacy. The only trouble was that the message was that it was time for a change, with which I wholly agree, and the legacy was that we now have a tights machine in the House of Commons. I have done my research. The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East is a staunch Blairite and I gather that her favourite album is ““Saturday Night Fever””. When the Chancellor takes over, for staunch Blairites like her ““Staying Alive”” will not just be a song on their iPod; it will be a daily challenge. [Interruption.] It is good to see the Prime Minister and the Chancellor talking together; a good moment. The proposer and the seconder have upheld the traditions of the House and I congratulate them both. There are things in this Gracious Speech that we very much welcome; in fact, we proposed some of them. I am delighted that the Government are going to link the basic state pension to earnings; that is something that we had in our last manifesto. The Treasury has finally been forced to make the provision of statistics independent—again, a Conservative proposal. There is also the Climate Change Bill; that has been proposed over and over again by the Conservatives, and opposed by the Prime Minister. I am delighted that it is in the Queen’s Speech. I hope that it will be a proper Bill, and not a watered-down Bill. Government have got to give a lead by setting a proper framework; that must mean an independent body with annual targets and an annual report from Government on its progress. Let me turn to foreign policy. I welcome the specific mention of Darfur in the Gracious Speech; the Prime Minister will be acutely aware that what is happening there is a political crisis and a humanitarian disaster, which is now crossing international borders. Much of our discussion on the Gracious Speech will inevitably be on Iraq and Afghanistan. I supported both actions, I support both democratically elected Governments, and I support the troops and the work that they are doing. What matters now is that, with our allies, we take the right actions to maximise the chances for stability and progress in both those countries. Having been to Afghanistan, I have seen for myself the extraordinary work that our troops are doing as part of a NATO operation—now involving 37 countries—that is backing a democratically elected Government, entrenching stability, ensuring development and thwarting the Taliban. Those are legitimate British interests, and I hope that the Prime Minister will tell the House in his speech today how those efforts will be better equipped and, with our allies, strategically reinforced. We have a profound interest in preventing Iraq from sliding further into bloodshed, and so does the wider world. The options are stark. Simply cutting and running would cause mayhem, but the prospect of an open-ended commitment serves neither Iraq’s interests nor our own—and, anyway, it is simply not practical. There are no easy options. Militarily, we must do all that we can to build up the Iraqi army, and, diplomatically, we need to involve the regional powers. While there is merit in contact with Syria and Iran—after all, the whole point of diplomacy is to talk to countries well beyond the sphere of our traditional friends—it is on the moderate Arab Governments that our efforts should concentrate. Their support for stability in Iraq is what we most need, and the key to securing that support is a fresh and unremitting push to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. I hope that the Prime Minister will press President Bush to use America’s influence to the full to achieve that, as well as enlisting the support of Europe. Taking those steps and maximising stability is the right background for bringing our troops home, but we should not set an artificial timetable. I hope that the Prime Minister will be able to tell us today how he hopes to make progress towards achieving those goals. I also hope that, during the course of the coming Session, the Government will think again about how we can best ensure that the lessons are learned from that conflict. After the Falklands war, a committee of privy counsellors carried out that task in the Franks report; the same should happen again. On Northern Ireland, we back the efforts to restore power-sharing and devolution. We are clear that if that is going to succeed, Sinn Fein must support the police, the courts and the rule of law—and it can start by telling its supporters to co-operate with the police investigation into the brutal murder of Robert McCartney. When people look back at the Prime Minister’s time in office, they will give him enormous credit for his unstinting efforts to bring peace in Northern Ireland. This will be the Prime Minister’s last Gracious Speech; indeed, it will be the 13th time that the Prime Minister has taken part in a Queen’s Speech debate as either Leader of the Opposition or Prime Minister. Many members of his party are, I know, relieved that he is going, but they are not half as relieved as we are. I have to say to the Prime Minister that I did check that he was going before I applied for the job. A couple of days ago, the Prime Minister and I were talking about his first response to a Gracious Speech of 12 years ago—yes, the Chancellor has been sitting where he is sitting now, scowling and waiting, for that long. I have read that speech from 1994, and so should the Prime Minister, because back then, when he was Leader of the Opposition, he said:"““Millions of people are desperate for changes in the Child Support Agency””," yet today, under his Government, that situation is more chaotic than ever. Twelve years ago, as Leader of the Opposition, he said that the pension system was a scandal, yet it is his Government who have taken from every pension fund in the country. Twelve years ago, as Leader of the Opposition, he said that the Government "““are so riven by faction…that they cannot address the interests of the country””.—[Official Report, 16 November 1994; Vol. 250, c.14-15.]" What better description could there be of our Government today? The tragedy of this Prime Minister is that he promised so much, and yet has delivered so little. The tragedy of this Queen’s Speech is that all that his successor offers is more of the same: more laws on crime, yet violent crime up; more laws on health, yet hospitals closed; more laws on immigration, yet our borders still completely out of control. Every year, the same promises; every year, the same failures. The paradox of new Labour is that, 12 years on, the Prime Minister is still desperately looking for this legacy. Three massive majorities, a decade in power, 10 Gracious Speeches and 370 pieces of legislation, and the question that they have to answer is: why has so little been achieved? It is because they have put headlines above delivery; they believe in centralised power, not social responsibility; and all too often, they pass laws just to make political points, rather than to deliver real change. This Queen’s Speech is no different. It is so repetitive and hollow that people feel they have heard it all before, and it is so depressing that they might think that the Chancellor had already taken over. The Labour party gave the game away when it said that it is all about smoking out the Opposition. That is what it said—it is not about keeping hospitals open or keeping the streets safe; it is about trying to keep a tired and discredited Labour party in power, and the truth is that it has failed to deliver. Nowhere is this failure to deliver more clear than in the two vital areas of health and crime. Nine years ago, the Prime Minister claimed that there were 24 hours to save the NHS, yet today, 20,000 jobs are being cut in the health service. The Government never had a clue how to reform the health service. They scrapped GP fundholding; now, they are bringing it back. They abolished the internal market; now, they are bringing it back. [Interruption.] The Health Secretary shakes her head, but she is the one who said that the health service had its best ever year. We have had 16 Acts and nine reorganisations. Health authorities that were abolished are being brought back again. Community health councils were scrapped and patients forums were brought in; barely are they up and running when they are all being abolished. Morale has been sapped and money wasted, and deficits are at record levels. The chief medical officer tells us that in public health there are"““declining numbers and inadequate recruitment, and budgets being raided to solve financial deficits””." The Royal College of Nursing says that staff are being placed under intolerable and unsustainable pressure, and the chairman of the British Medical Association says that he is dismayed by what he calls the"““incoherence of current Government policies””." So much for 24 hours to save the NHS! All over the country, we are seeing departments closed, hospitals threatened and staff being sacked. To paraphrase a former leader of the Labour party, we have ended up with the grotesque chaos of a Labour Government—a Labour Government—scuttling around the country handing out redundancy notices to their own NHS staff. No wonder they are not trusted any more on the NHS. Failure on health is matched by failure on crime. After nine years, every part of our criminal justice system is in a shambles. The chairman of the Youth Justice Board—let us listen to him. He says that the juvenile system is in danger of meltdown. The chief inspector of prisons says that the system is approaching breaking point. The Lord Chancellor—the man in charge of the whole legal system—says that there is ““general chaos””. Even the Home Secretary says that the probation service is poor and mediocre, the immigration service is dysfunctional and the Home Office is not fit for purpose. Just today, we have found that Islamic extremists are apparently working in the immigration department. Hizb ut-Tahrir abandoned Egypt; in Britain, they seem to be running our immigration policy. Now, we have the extraordinary sight of the Chancellor and the Home Secretary squabbling about how best to make this the election-winning issue for Labour at the next election. If they think that they can win an election on this record, let us get on with it. We have had 50 Home Office Bills, some of which were completely contradictory. Let us take just one Act—the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000. Six years on, 110 provisions are not in force. Seventeen were repealed even before the Act was brought in, and another 39 have been repealed subsequently. The Government like to talk tough, but they have just been acting dumb. That is the story of this Government.