Queen’s Speech

My Lords, it is a pleasure for me to speak as we come towards the end of a wide-ranging and fascinating debate. I offer my congratulations to the episcopal brace of Bishops, the right reverend Prelates the Bishop of Lichfield and the Bishop of Blackburn, on their maiden speeches. How much we enjoyed the keen observations of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield on the dairy industry and the excellence of Harper Adams University College. His comments were reinforced by my noble friend Lord Plumb in his customary, powerful overview of agriculture and by my noble friend Lord Inglewood. As a grower of potatoes—I must declare my interest as a farmer and grower involved in a number of aspects of the industry—I hope that the right reverend Prelate has been able to reassure his granddaughter that potatoes come out of the soil. It was an additional delight to be able to take an allegorical trip on the Blackpool tram with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn. We look forward to hearing very much more from both of them in the future. It is good to find myself reunited in debate with the Minister. I was reminded by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, of our association with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who along with other noble Lords reminded us of the Copenhagen climate change conference and the pursuit of a low-carbon economy. It was also a pleasure to hear the debate being opened by the Secretary of State, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who is greatly admired around the House. He has done his best to inject his usual enthusiasm and common sense into the Government’s programme, but I fear that not even he can disguise a rather meagre legislative offering. I pay tribute to the 34 noble Lords who have come between the Secretary of State’s speech and my own and found so much to say on so many issues, particularly railways from the Lib Dem Benches. Today’s debate is entitled, "Environment, Energy, Agriculture, Local Government and Transport", but we have but two Bills to discuss. My noble friend Lady Wilcox dealt in some detail with the Energy Bill. I shall come again to that and to the Flood and Water Management Bill. Meanwhile, I am sure that the Secretary of State will accept our commiserations that he was unable to persuade the rest of the Government to allow him a Bill in his own area of expertise. We in this House like his style and we are pleased that he has managed to persuade his colleagues in government to accept the need for new high-speed rail links, following my honourable friend Theresa Villiers, who demonstrated a need for them in another place. As for the Queen’s Speech, we see the Government’s latest wheeze of attempting to legislate for targets—and as my noble friend Lord Bates pointed out, wishful ones at that. I should have thought that the noble Lord would have had no problem in getting a Bill into the gracious Speech to create binding rules to make trains run on time by 2012. There is no local government Bill in the great baker’s dozen announced by Her Majesty in the gracious Speech last week. That may be to the considerable relief of the Government and opposition parties alike, given the rather sad local democracy Bill, which was produced to a great fanfare last year to little or no noticeable effects in the last Session. Indeed, the only effect appears to be to have highlighted the enormous stamina of my noble friends in withstanding many days of Grand Committee in the Moses Room. Why does the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, come to mind in recollection? I found much to agree with, however, in his critique of what he called the "madness" of current local government, with its quangos, forums and partnerships, talk and box-ticking. He has given up on the Government doing anything about things, and he is not the only one. But it was my noble friend Lord Bates who gave voice to the views of these Benches on the matter in a most entertaining speech, which conveyed a very powerful criticism of this Government and this gracious Speech. For a party committed to localism, as we are on these Benches, there are plenty of measures to be concerned about. I have taken a look at the Infrastructure Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2009, which came into force on 1 October. I was astonished to discover that the developments that fall under the remit of the IPC will include installations for the intensive rearing of poultry or pigs, with more than 60,000 places for hens and 900,000 places for sows. Under Schedule 2, projects for restructuring land-holdings have to go to the IPC, along with packing and canning of animal and vegetable products and plants for tanning hides and skins, as well as ski runs, marinas, holiday villages, camp sites, golf courses and much else besides. What, if anything, will be left in the hands of local communities to decide? That brings me to the wise words of my noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy. The complexities of devolution are often overlooked in the big picture, but the House should be grateful for the penetrating analysis of my noble friend in this and other debates. Certainly my noble friend Lord Reay and perhaps other noble Lords will have been amused to have seen the letter in today’s Telegraph from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. He claimed, rather bullishly in my view, that 80 per cent of people would be happy to live within five miles of a wind farm. I would very much enjoy examining the methodology of that survey and hearing how much DECC paid to commission it. But I am concerned under the new IPC regime that anyone unhappy with what turns out to be an exceedingly broad list of projects and developments in their area will have no other recourse but to write impotently to the newspapers. That is, if the Minister leaves them column inches. As my noble friend Lady Wilcox said, we are pleased that we finally have provisions for dealing with carbon capture and storage and a social tariff for consideration. It is sad that too many of the Government’s proposals to safeguard this country’s energy needs have come so late. We first heard about their support for carbon capture and storage in the Budget speech of 2006. While that support was very welcome, we are still waiting for any tangible results. I sometimes think that the Government are adrenaline junkies, desperately leaving decisions to the last minute to avoid a crisis on which they are hooked. Indeed, we know that my noble friend has been calling for a decision on nuclear energy, as has my noble friend Lord Jenkin. Some people would say that leaving decisions to the last minute in this way was a form of dithering. We on these Benches, having urged the Government, want them to get a move on. The number of people living in fuel poverty has tripled in the past five years, and the House will forgive the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan, for his Second Reading speech, which so strongly argued on that topic. His comments were opportune, given the alarming figures from the Office of National Statistics on excess winter mortality that were published today. We will of course work constructively with the Government to achieve what must be done to stave off an even greater energy crisis. The whole House will have enjoyed the challenging speech of the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, who put the issues that the Government need to address against the background of the economic crisis and the dire state of the public finances. Just as we seek to secure energy security, so, too, we must not neglect food security. We have heard nothing from the Government about their plans, if they have any, to encourage research and technology in the agricultural sector in this country. They lack any coherent strategy in this area. As my noble friends have asked, where is the food labelling Bill? Do the Government think it unnecessary? There are myriad issues that the Government have too long neglected. The story of our whole rural economy over the past decade is one of frustration, lost chances and indifference from Whitehall. As many of your Lordships will be only too aware, many rural communities suffer from poor transport infrastructure, a lack of affordable housing and hidden poverty. We have heard too little from the Government for too long, and I look to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to redress this.