Queen’s Speech

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for opening the debate and I look forward to hearing your Lordships’ contributions. This broad debate covers many important areas, as the extensive speaking list shows. I shall spend most of my speech on the first two of the topics up for discussion; that is, local government and equality. I shall briefly touch on transport. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Taylor will give us the benefit of his experience on agriculture and the environment. The Minister naturally focused on local government. As she mentioned, this Session we will have the opportunity to consider the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill, which has already had its First Reading in your Lordships’ House. When the Government first gave notice that a Bill along these lines would be introduced, there seemed to be much more emphasis on community empowerment. After speaking with the Minister, I understand that the Government have chosen to drop some of the more controversial community empowerment elements but that they believe the gist remains much the same. The Government claim that the focus of the Bill is to, "““devolve more influence, power and control over local services to citizens, communities and councils””." At the same time, the Bill establishes even more remote quango-like bodies to take control of regional development. I do not wish to stray into Second Reading territory, but I will say that it has not gone without note that this Bill, which has not only a long and disjointed name but a somewhat ramshackle air, has lots of motherhood and apple pie and a whole load of nothingness. It adds to the overall impression that not only have the Government run out of good ideas, they have no big vision for Britain and cannot bring the long-term change our country really needs. The Government continue to cling to their belief that the unelected, unaccountable and inefficient regional bureaucracies can somehow empower communities and bring about the change that we need. The most significant element of this Bill seeks to transfer the functions of the ineffective and unaccountable regional assemblies to regional development agencies. But the musical chairs of passing their functions from one regional quango to another will do nothing to give local communities a greater say on where, for example, new homes should go, nor speed up the planning system. This Government may claim to be committed to devolving power away from the centre and to local people but this is nothing more than hollow words. It is clear from this Bill that devolution to this Government is little more than a desire to have loyal political appointees at every level of government who are willing to carry out Whitehall’s commands. The Government introduced this regional bureaucracy and they should take the blame for its failure. This side of the House believes that, rather than passing the functions of the regional assemblies to another unelected and unaccountable regional quango, the first step should be to scrap the whole tier of regional planning which, on top of local and national planning policies, has created a quagmire of red tape and complexity. We believe in giving real power back to local people. Despite housing supposedly being a priority for Her Majesty’s Government, the housing provisions in the draft legislative programme have been dropped from this Bill. This is a lost opportunity to introduce practical measures to help kick-start the housing market and protect families from having their houses repossessed. On transport, too, the Government fail to deliver the change that people really want. Their approach on transport appears to be directly opposed to their desire for more citizen involvement. For example, what role did local communities play in the recent decision to allow the expansion at Stansted? How well is Labour listening to those who oppose the third runway at Heathrow? How have the Government responded to the finding in a recent poll that only 4 per cent of businesses thought that the third runway at Heathrow would be of economic benefit to them? Even on railways, the Government are trying to solve overcrowding by pricing people off the most popular routes and on to the roads. Then they seek to price people off the overcrowded roads with national road pricing and unpopular congestion charges. This is not a sustainable transport policy. By contrast, the Conservatives would seek to give the rail industry the freedom from micro-management it needs to invest in the network and develop the capacity needed for the ever-rising number of passengers. We would also seek to provide a high-speed rail link to replace domestic flights, deal with overcrowding, release capacity on existing lines, and aid the economic and social regeneration of the Midlands and the north. It will be a genuine low-carbon alternative. The noble Baroness also made optimistic statements about equality, especially about the Bill that has been introduced for this Session, and I hope that it will indeed live up to her predictions. I am immensely proud that it was a Conservative Government who introduced the Sex Discrimination Act in 1986, the Race Relations (Remedies) Act in 1994, the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, and the Employment Rights Act in 1996. Equality law currently involves nine pieces of legislation, more than 100 regulations and over 2,500 pages of guidance and codes of practice. Simplification will make it much easier for both employers and employees to understand their rights and responsibilities in this area. But good words and positive noises will not achieve equality; therefore we will be looking carefully at the Bill to ensure that it is an effective and practical piece of legislation. In this important area I hope sincerely that this time the Government have not just indulged in another round of tweaking and targets that do nothing to address the root causes of the problem. It is clear, after all, that there is still a problem. Equal pay legislation was first introduced more than 35 years ago and there is still pay inequality between men and women, some unfortunately in our public bodies. While I welcome the Bill’s intention to increase transparency in public bodies and thus to highlight hidden inequality, I hope that the Government will lead by example by getting their own house in order. The failure of so many government departments to reach the targets last April do not give us much hope that the extension of the three current equality duties covering gender, disability and race will lead to any significant change. Many of the Bill’s provisions addressing inequality in the private sector are equally lacklustre. It is very disappointing that the right honourable Harriet Harman was unable to include compulsory pay audits for companies which have been found guilty at an employment tribunal, and we hope that the Government will reconsider this matter. There is also a great deal of confusion about what some of the provisions will in fact do. Ensuring no discrimination when providing services looks fine and easy on paper, but such promises run into genuine difficulties when applied to the real world. For example, what do the Government expect the effect to be on adoption agencies seeking to match a child with ethnically similar parents? Of course, the Welfare Reform Bill, whose White Paper has just been released and which contains so many Conservative policies, is also to be introduced in this Session. As with the Welfare Reform Act 2007, which this Bill continues, we give our full support to the overall aims of the Government’s reforms. Just imagine, though, how many disabled people, single parents, or long-term unemployed would have been helped by now if Labour had understood earlier the Conservative conviction that allowing people to remain dependent on state handouts rather than encouraging them to develop the confidence to get back into employment is not in anyone’s interests. It remains to be seen whether the Government have understood the warnings from these Benches that imposing centralised targets and obligations on employers is useless if legislation is not matched by an understanding of and support for the changes that many businesses must make before they can offer equal job opportunities. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale will seek to ensure that businesses are not blamed when they find themselves unable to live up to the expectations that the Government are unable to meet. On race equality, the Government prefer to make soothing blanket statements rather than genuinely thinking about what equality means and how to ensure it. I have spoken on this before, but I wish once again to emphasise just how damaging the Government’s use of the fuzzy vagaries of state-driven multiculturalism is to the opportunities of so many of this country’s most vulnerable people. While girls of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin are able to be pulled out of British schools in their early teens without any questions being asked by the appropriate authorities, this Government cannot claim that they are affording the same protection to women of all backgrounds or offering them equal opportunities. Similarly, the continuing failure to bring forward the same protection of the law to bear on drugs which are considered to have prevalence only in East African communities, means that the Government are willing to consign large numbers of a whole community to long-term underachievement and associated health problems. Cultural sensitivities should not be an excuse for turning a blind eye to a drug habit that is destroying a community. Let us be honest: we would not hesitate to legislate and prosecute if the users were not confined to a single ethnic or racial group. The Government have finally accepted the Conservative policy to reclassify cannabis and I hope that very soon they will also accept our arguments on khat. The Government occasionally seem to have given up trying to ensure meaningful equality in some of the harder to reach communities. The now infamous letter from Jacqui Smith, which my honourable friend Damian Green made public, showed that the Government were fully expecting increased racism as a result of the economic downturn. When he replies, I should be interested to know whether the Minister agreed with her analysis on that point and what steps the Government intend to take to counter this worrying problem I have only touched on the Conservative policies in these three areas because I am aware that many of your Lordships wish to speak today. I look forward to hearing the response of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, as well your Lordships’ contributions on these very important issues.