Debate on the Address

I will address some of the points made by the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey) on carbon abatement, but first I want to express on behalf of the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru our condolences to the service families who have been mentioned by hon. Members on both sides of the House. Our thoughts are with those families and all those who have experienced recent losses in the current conflict. Our thoughts are also with the families of all right hon. and hon. Members who have died since the previous Queen’s Speech, and I hope that the House will forgive me if I mention just three of them. First, Rachel Squire was an outstanding Member of Parliament. I never heard her in or outwith this place make a cheap political point in any political discussion—that can be said of few of us in our political careers—which was remarkable. Secondly, I had many conversations with Robin Cook about horse racing, and I wish that I had had more conversations with him about other matters. Thirdly, I think that I disagreed with every single thing that Eric Forth ever said politically, but I find myself missing all those comments that I disagreed with. We offer our condolences to all those families. Some have looked for the mark of Brown—the influence of the Chancellor—in this year’s Queen’s Speech. It is difficult to detect in most of the legislation, some of which seems familiar—the Government are going round and round in a ““Groundhog Day”” process. However, I detected the hand of the Chancellor in the two opening speeches of this debate. The first speech was made by a Welsh Member, who had a lot to say and who bemoaned Plaid Cymru and all its works—he did not like the Conservative party either. The second speech was made by a Scottish Member, who bemoaned the SNP and all its works, so it seems to me that there was an element of Brown management in the Queen’s Speech debate. The speech by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna) had the virtue of being humorous, and it was successful for that. However, I was puzzled by her point that she has relatives in England, Wales and Ireland, which she claimed is an argument for the United Kingdom. As I understand it, her relatives are in the Republic of Ireland, which is an independent country, but I do not think that the hon. Lady’s contact with those relatives has been inhibited as a result of Irish independence. A few years ago, the Prime Minister addressed the Dail, where he pointed out that Ireland is an outstanding example of a small nation that leads Europe in so many ways. He received a standing ovation, which he is unlikely to receive ever again—at least in this House. I have often wondered why the Prime Minister cannot see his way to making the same point about Scotland’s potential as a small European nation. In so many things, there is one rule for Ireland and another for Scotland. I agreed with the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) about his proposal for a freedom Bill—I call it the ““Braveheart”” Bill—that the Liberals intend to introduce. I am sure that I will avidly support that Liberal initiative, which I might take in directions not suspected by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife. There is no absolutely pleasant way to say this, so I shall say it anyway: I want to defend the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife against the attack made by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell). For those hon. Members were not present at the time, the suggestion was that the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife was lessening support for service families because he was arguing a case against the war in Iraq. I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman is not present to hear this directly. I doubt that there is a family in Scotland—even more so perhaps than in many other parts of this kingdom—and certainly not my family or that of the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife, who have not had immediate relatives killed in action or indeed serving in the armed forces. The right hon. and learned Gentleman’s family member may be known to many of us, because he was played by Sir Sean Connery in ““A Bridge Too Far””; that was his father-in-law. The reason why some of us are so hostile to what we regard as avoidable conflict is that very many of us see the consequences of such conflict. One of the proudest moments in my recent life occurred during the play ““Black Watch””, which took this year’s Edinburgh festival by storm. It was the huge success of the festival, performed in a drill hall in Edinburgh. It was a squaddie's-eye view of the history of the regiment, throughout the conflicts of previous generations right back to the foundation of the regiment. It was an outstanding production by the National Theatre of Scotland. The company was kind enough in that production to show an extract from a parliamentary debate, from one of the speeches that I made about the war in Iraq. Those of us who argue that position really need no lectures from the hon. Member for Middlesbrough about our support for service people and service families, or our support for troops in action. And if people cannot argue a position in favour of a conflict without recourse to that sort of cheap argument, they would be better not to argue their position, against the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife or anyone else. In my opinion, one of the outstanding television moments of the 1980s was the confrontation between John Nott, as he was then, and Sir Robin Day on the Falklands conflict. Sir Robin asked why anybody should believe the then Defence Secretary because he was going to be a ““here today, gone tomorrow”” Defence Secretary. I remember it perhaps because John Nott, who was about to retire from politics, in a live interview flung off the microphone, said ““I have had enough of this”” and stomped out of the television studio. As I watched the here today, gone tomorrow Prime Minister during today’s debate, I was dying for him to suddenly say, ““I have had enough of this”” and march out of the Commons. But no such luck. Chance would be a fine thing. He is clinging on by his fingernails, but we are in an unprecedented situation. As far as I know, never before in the history of this place or politics has a Prime Minister introduced a Queen’s Speech when everyone knows that he will not be around to see the legislative programme through. There are a variety of opinions about how soon that departure should be. The Scottish First Minister revealed to the Financial Times, and indeed on television at the weekend, that his preference was now for the Prime Minister to stay in office. I am sure that the Prime Minister will take that submission carefully into account when he decides his time scale for leaving either before or after the Scottish elections. Despite my best efforts to accelerate the departure in recent weeks, it looks as though the Prime Minister is clinging on there. So we are on unprecedented ground. We are also in uncharted waters because, as I understand it, the current position of the Prime Minister is that when he is interviewed, perhaps under caution, by the Metropolitan police he still intends to stay in office in Downing street—no doubt on the grounds that everybody must be innocent until proven guilty. If things come to such a pretty pass I think that Opposition Members will insist on a jury trial, because a jury is an essential defence of people’s rights, even up to the Prime Minister. We are in unprecedented times and in uncharted waters, but no one can underrate the Prime Minister’s determination to stay in office. Of course he could claim that these things illustrate that he has not lost his appetite for constitutional innovation; certainly it is innovative constitutionally for a Prime Minister to stay in office under these circumstances. As I promised, I shall say a little about my hopes for the climate change Bill. It is remarkable that, on a measure that I thought would obtain consensus across the House and given the scale of the challenge that is faced, the front page of today’s Independent should point out that all the political parties in these islands are on one side and the Prime Minister is standing on the other, shoulder to shoulder with the United Kingdom Independence party, in opposing an annual register of the impacts of carbon emissions. I am not certain why the Prime Minister is so adamant about that; no doubt we shall find out during the passage of the Bill.