Queen's Speech

My Lords, it has been quite a long time since my noble friend Lady Wilcox opened the debate, since when we have heard from some 52 or 53 speakers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kingsmill, said, we have seen the House of Lords possibly at its best and certainly at its widest in terms of the number of subjects we have covered. It is now my job to try to respond to the wide range of subjects before us, covering a whole array of different departments: the Treasury, transport, energy and climate change, business and my own department, Defra, which I shall get on to in due course. I shall start by offering my commiserations to the noble Lord, Lord Myners, because he told us that this was his swansong on the Front Bench. As many other noble Lords have said, we will miss him and we look forward to seeing him on the Back Benches. I think it was his noble friend Lady McIntosh who suggested that possibly it was the first of many swansongs and that he was going to become the veritable Frank Sinatra of the Opposition Front Bench by making repeated final speeches. I look forward to those. I also offer my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who offered me some very useful advice from Defra, the department in which he has held office, as has the Lord Speaker and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. The noble Lord made the simple point that nothing is quite as complicated as people tell him. I shall start by saying a word or two about my own department. As my noble friend Lady Wilcox emphasised in her opening speech, it is the Prime Minister’s ambition that this Government should be the greenest Government ever. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, care for the environment and understanding the value of our natural resources should inform all that we do, and it is the responsibility of Defra to ensure that this imperative is understood by government and all others. We are there to explain and promote the economic value of natural resources so that they are managed better and so that those who come after us do not face hardship and disaster through their growing scarcity. We work to ensure a thriving biodiversity and wildlife by preventing habitat loss and degradation; we act to prevent deforestation and to protect the marine environment; we help businesses and communities to adapt to the effects of a changing climate; and we help those sectors for which we are responsible to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to contribute to the fight against climate change. However, Defra is not only concerned with the environment; it is also an economic department. In fact, our departmental remit shows that you cannot separate the two. Therefore perhaps our most important job is to show just how the economics and the environment are intertwined. During the course of the debate I heard repeatedly from this or that noble Lord that they hoped the Minister would in due course comment on their own particular issue. However, that will simply not be possible. I jotted down a range of different subjects, some of which were raised repeatedly, and I hope I will be able to comment on some of the bigger issues. I think noble Lords will understand that I shall not be able to answer every question that was put to me but, as the noble Lord, Lord Myners, put it, I shall do my best to write to all noble Lords—as I did in my previous incarnation as a Minister and as I am sure all Ministers do—in due course when I have collated all the responses from the different departments. However, as I said, I shall try to deal with one or two of the concerns that have been raised today. I shall start with the Office for Budget Responsibility because that is where the noble Lord, Lord Myners, started. He asked a number of detailed questions which he would not expect me to answer at this stage and which I shall deal with by correspondence. However, I can give him the assurance that it will be independent—that is important—and that independence will derive from it having complete control over the forecasts it will produce. I was grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, saw that that was a positive step. On the detailed questions, as I said, I shall write to the noble Lord. Turning to the deficit, the subject most mentioned by noble Lords—indeed, so many noble Lords raised the subject that I cannot list all their names—there were varied views on what to do about it but everyone accepted that it had to be tackled. Even the noble Lord, Lord Myners, accepted that the deficit had to be tackled but felt, as did others—but by no means the majority—that it should not be tackled too quickly. I shall quote the views of the Governor of the Bank of England on this subject. He said: ""The bigger risk at present would be for a new Government not to put in place clear and credible measures to deal with the deficit"." We are currently running one of the largest deficits in the world. That is simply not sustainable and the longer we delay action the greater the risk of a loss of market confidence, which would mean higher interest rates for all. I will give way to the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, just this once, but it is his third intervention in the course of the debate.