Queen's Speech

My Lords, I share the universal delight in the ascent of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, who during the day seems to have risen almost to the status of sainthood. I only hope that her trademark cheery beam will be maintained in the white-water ride ahead. I offer a new Government my best wishes and my great hope, given the enormous challenges that they face, that in the national interest they will succeed. There is much of the new Government’s inheritance of which we may all be proud: our social, creative and academic vitality as a nation; our tolerance; our ease with diversity; our renewed spirit of enterprise; and the improving performance of our public sector. However, 2010 will surely come to be seen as a year, alongside 1945 and 1979, when a new Government faced the aftermath of a cataclysm: in this instance, the most severe economic shock of our lifetimes. The urgent task, as I think we almost all recognise, is the elimination over time of the deficit, our pressing need to return to a position where, across the economic cycle, we spend as a nation only what we earn and not what we can borrow. The politics of reducing that deficit will be severe and testing for the coalition. But it can be done; and it must be done. I have no doubt from my own experience of managing both in the public and the private sectors that the deficit can be eliminated with minimal material damage to critical public sector outcomes. Indeed, many private sector organisations, their very survival in question, have faced up to far bigger challenges and in shorter order. However, I do not minimise the particular challenges that the public sector will always present, not least the intensity of scrutiny and the readiness to protest of all the interests affected.