UK Parliament / Open data

Debate on the Address

Well, on the immigration matters, let us see the detail first. We have got some initial inklings and there will probably be quite a lot of detailed and, I suspect, sticky debates to be had on some aspects of how this is going to be done. On Europe, the Prime Minister has made it clear in his letter to his parliamentary colleagues in just the last 24 hours that he cannot go in the direction many of them are urging precisely because it is a coalition Government. We can point to our presence having some constructive restraining interest, although I will enter one caveat, which is a challenge for the Liberal Democrat side of the coalition.

The snoopers’ charter is a controversial and high-profile issue, which has been fiercely argued in public, in this House and elsewhere only a matter of months ago—it is not in the Queen’s Speech. That is a significant example of the difference between having an unfettered majority Conservative Government and having a Conservative party in government that is having to take account of another set of views. Although Liberal Democrats are right to argue—my colleagues and I do so regularly—that we can temper this, prevent that, or perhaps improve on how something might otherwise have been done, the bigger challenge for us over the next couple of years, starting with this Queen’s Speech, comes from the fact that simply saying, “Vote for us. If you didn’t, it would be worse” is not the most persuasive of electioneering clarion calls. We have to turn that into a more persuasive pitch—we have two years in which to do so, and I am sure that we can.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
563 cc42-3 
Session
2013-14
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Back to top