It is a great privilege to be called to speak in this debate at this particular juncture. You will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that sometimes Mr Speaker teases me a little about my long service in the House. I, in turn, accuse him of being slightly ageist. Well, I have to say that of all the maiden speeches I have heard, the speech delivered to the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) was one of the best. It was delivered with passion, knowledge, experience and wisdom. She will be a first-class Member of Parliament representing her constituents, because she knows her community. She has lived and worked in her community. We are all proud of her, and Harry would be proud of her, too. I look forward to her brilliant career. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
Some of us will have been a little hurt by the remarks of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), who was very keen to tell us that he is passionate about freedom and liberty. I do not mind him using his speech to say how passionately he is against the European Union, but to seem to suggest that we who oppose that view and who believe our liberties work better as members of the EU do not care about freedom and liberty is a little hurtful. As I said to the Prime Minister on an earlier occasion, I was born the day before the worst day of the blitz. German bombers bombed the street in which I was born. Seventy years of peace and prosperity can be too easily taken for granted.
When looking at a Queen’s Speech, it is important to track what has been left out or forgotten. There are some high-flown ideas at the beginning of the speech:
“My Government will use the opportunity of a strengthening economy to deliver security for working people, to increase life chances for the most disadvantaged and to strengthen national defences.
My Ministers will continue to bring the public finances under control so that Britain lives within its means, and to move to a higher wage and lower welfare economy where work is rewarded.”
The Secretary of State for Health, at the beginning of his speech, said that he did not believe in private wealth and public squalor. I do not believe that he believes that and I do not believe that the Government believe that. What they do believe is in some ways more insidious: private sector good; public sector bad. That is the message I get all the time from Government Members. Those of us who have worked in education, health, welfare, transport or housing know that lurching towards the private sector for an answer is not always the right or most efficient way. I feel embarrassed to hurt the feelings of those sitting on the Government Front Bench, but I mention in passing the botched rail privatisation that nobody wanted and which was executed badly. We now spend more money on trains, which are normally run by foreign-owned companies, than any other country in Europe—and to provide what? A very poor service.
We have heard a very large number of long speeches about health. I represent the constituency of Huddersfield. It looks as though we are going to lose our hospital and
A&E not because anything is wrong with it—it used to be very high performing and financially sound—but because of having to absorb a weaker health trust next door, the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, and because we are imprisoned by a PFI contract that we cannot deny or modify. That is a real threat.
The elephant in the room is that the health service is struggling to make ends meet. It is underperforming not because we do not have amazing and dedicated staff, but because we do not have enough of them. We do not have enough doctors, nurses, A&E specialists or people supporting doctors. The fact is that the NHS needs more resources and investment. I will say this a number of times in my speech: it also needs more imagination to deal with new demands. Yes we have an ageing population and need to deliver health care in a different way, but that needs leadership and imagination that does not exist at the current time.
Members on all sides complain about the health service lacking resources, but they go through the Lobby to vote for High Speed 2. On the latest figures, HS2 will be three times more expensive than it was predicted to be: £138 billion and rising. The Cabinet Secretary has now been drafted in to look at this, because even the revised costs are out of control. It seems strange to be ploughing money into HS2 when, according to the Queen’s Speech, we will very soon end up with driverless cars. We will have the ability to dial a number and have a pod arrive outside our house and take us anywhere in the country. I predict that by the time we have completed HS2, in 2033, it will be redundant, because driverless cars and the new generation of transport will have wiped out the need, just as the invention of the railways did away with the effectiveness of, and the investment in, canals.
As you would expect, Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to hone in on education and skills, on which subject the Queen’s Speech gives me great cause for concern. First, enforced academisation will diminish local education authorities’ role in education and so take away a great deal of wisdom and resource that we have relied on for many years. I can see academisation being a very disabling influence on the whole of our education system. In one small paragraph, the Queen’s Speech also makes reference to new private universities. The Government are persistent in their ideology—ideology with a little i not a big I. In almost everything they touch, we see not big, bold privatisation but back-door privatisation. Academisation will lead to a greater role for the private sector. The changes to the BBC, under the new BBC charter, will mean much more privatisation by the back-door. The same will happen with private universities. Will they train doctors, engineers and those in the high sciences? No, they will go for the low-hanging fruit—for legal degrees and accountancy—that cross-subsidises the difficult stuff in our universities.
I want to end on two little things. The Queen’s Speech referred to the northern powerhouse, but we see not the resources or the knowledge to take us forward on that course. Lastly, I want to say something about defence—something the House would not expect from me. Today, we could get the whole of our defence forces—100,000 men and women—into Wembley stadium. If anybody wants to read the truth about our lack of preparation
for defending this country, they should read Max Hastings in The Sunday Times this Sunday. We are struggling to maintain a credible force for the defence of our country and the maintenance of our liberties. At this time, the EU is a bedrock of our freedoms.
6.12 pm