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Mr. Tony Blair (Sedgefield): It is traditional at the beginning of our debate, before commending the right hon. and hon. Members who have just spoken, to note the deaths of hon. Members in the past year. I am sure that the House will want to record its appreciation of the work of Sir James Kilfedder, Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, Geoffrey
Dickens and Derek Enright--different characters, but people who all, in their different ways, brightened the dullness of political life. They will be missed. In particular, perhaps I may be permitted, on behalf of the Opposition, to express our grief at the tragic and very recent loss of Derek Enright, who will be long remembered and deeply mourned.
I am delighted to commend the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd) and the hon. Member for City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth). The speech of the right hon. Member for Witney was, of course, as elegant as ever. As Northern Ireland Secretary, Home Secretary and, indeed, Foreign Secretary, he was never less than decent, assiduous and honest--and, on occasions, he was far-sighted, courageous and successful. He served no fewer than three Prime Ministers and was totally loyal to all three, which I would take as a compliment.
After the election, of course, the right hon. Gentleman will have more time for his own writing and Conservative Members will find food for thought in at least two of his earlier offerings. Written in the 1970s, they tell of a rather different age and, indeed, a different Conservative party. One is called "Truth Game" and the other "An End to Promises"--probably not many sales among the Cabinet nowadays. The best testimonial to the right hon. Member for Witney, whose speech I enjoyed and I commend him for it, was that offered by his friend and colleague the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir J. Critchley), who said that he is
That charge has never to my knowledge been levelled against the hon. Member for City of Chester, but I greatly commend him for his speech. I mean no offence when I say that I greeted the end of it with some relief since I gather that he holds the world record for after-dinner speaking. It is recorded that he spoke for 12 hours and 32 minutes, though sadly it is not recorded how many of the audience stayed to the end of it.
The hon. Member for City of Chester came to the House with a great reputation for loudness; indeed, that was only for his sweaters. He also runs a teddy-bear shop, I understand, in Stratford, so who says there is not sufficient diversity of experience in the House today? He is also a past winner, I am told, of the world Monopoly championships. No doubt there is a place on a board of the utilities waiting for him. More important, he is the author of a book called "Great Sexual Disasters". The remarkable thing is that it was written before he came to the House. I have no doubt that a sequel is well on the way. He made a highly witty and amusing speech and I commend him for it, as I do the right hon. Member for Witney. They have lived up to our usual standard of speeches before the main debate begins.
Before I come to the main part of the Queen's Speech, I should mention the issue of Northern Ireland, which was mentioned in the Queen's Speech. The Labour party will continue to back the Government in their efforts to secure peace in Northern Ireland, and we will do so even when progress is difficult.
All of us know that for the current ceasefires to be turned into a lasting peace, there must be all-party talks with a view to a negotiated, constitutional settlement that has the support of both communities in Northern Ireland. Those talks can take place only in an atmosphere of trust where all parties are committed exclusively to the
democratic path. That is why we have supported the establishment of an international commission to look at arms decommissioning in parallel with preparatory talks that could lead to substantive all-party negotiations. We very much hope that the two Governments can proceed in this direction as soon as possible. It will be a hard road ahead.
We appreciate the enormous pressures on all involved in the search for peace--pressures that are often conflicting. From the first, we have supported the Government and we will continue to support them while we believe that they are acting genuinely and in good faith in the search for peace.
On the rest of the Queen's Speech, I cannot, of course, comment--it would be quite improper--on how Her Majesty responded when it was first put before her, but I think that the reaction of most people would be, "Is this it?" Indeed, she could be forgiven for fearing that she was the victim of another hoax, but this time it was not a joke by a DJ pretending to be the Canadian Prime Minister but the British Prime Minister presenting her with a joke of a Queen's Speech. It is utterly irrelevant to the interests of Britain. It is the programme of a party that has ceased to have any real vision or purpose in government at all. It is about the interests of the Tory party, cobbling together any old bric-o-brac of legislation that can keep the Conservative party in one piece. Because that can be done only by appeasing the extreme right-wing members of the party, it is they who have determined the small substance of the programme, which is as far from one-nation politics as it is possible to imagine. There is nothing about jobs, nothing about reducing inequality and insecurity and nothing about helping those in poverty. Indeed, there is the opposite.
The programme has another purpose. In an extraordinary move--and an extraordinarily inept one-- an advance press briefing on the Queen's Speech was given yesterday, not by the Leader of the House, as is traditional, and not by any of the Ministers who will implement the Queen's Speech, but by the chairman of the Conservative party. What did he say in what journalists call an "unprecedented" eve of Queen's Speech briefing? He gave the game away. What did he say the purpose of the Queen's Speech was? He said that it was
"to smoke out" the Labour party. He did not say that it was to provide new energy, ideas or vitality for Britain, but that it was to smoke out the Opposition. He did not say that it was to help the people of Britain, but that it was to play a game in the run-up to the election. I say that a Government's job should be to govern. If they cannot govern in Britain's interests, they should not be governing at all.
Let us look at the problems that our country faces. They demand a radical Queen's Speech, a giant of a Queen's Speech and one that matches its ambitions with the nation's problems. Instead, we get a rag-bag of right-wing ideas, fiddling around at the edges of Britain's problems--a pathetic mouse of a Queen's Speech that is designed not to help Britain, but to secure the survival of the Tory party. There cannot be any more eloquent testimony to the state of today's Conservative party than this.
Let us look at the problems that we face. There are the scandals in the privatised utilities; there is nothing in the Queen's Speech about that. One in seven 21-year-olds is unable to read properly and one in five cannot count.
There is drug abuse and violent crime. One in three people is on welfare benefits under this Government. The national health service is under strain and has been turned into a two-tier system. Public transport is crumbling and pollution is rising. Does the Queen's Speech address any of those questions? It is utterly irrelevant to the problems of Britain and shows no real recognition of the state of Britain today.
Britain is 35th in the world standard of education-- 35th Britain. To be 35th may be good enough for the Conservative party, but it is not good enough for this country or for our children. Can the Conservatives not see that it is, in part, because of our slide in the education league that we have slumped in the economic league too, from 13th to 18th? They are not the only team to have slumped to 18th in the league; Wolverhampton Wanderers has as well, but at least Graham Taylor did the decent thing--he resigned. He will be at home now, watching our proceedings on the TV as many unemployed people do, and he will be speaking for the nation when he says,
"Do I not like this Queen's Speech."
It is extraordinary. Britain is 18th in the league of prosperity--18th in the national income per head. Over 16 years, Britain has had the lowest growth rate of any G7 or European Union nation and the deepest recessions--two of them. Even at the current point of the economic cycle, investment is below what it was in 1989. According to the Bank of England, it is 20 per cent. below what it was at previous similar stages in the cycle. Between 1979 and 1993, the level of investment in the United Kingdom was the lowest of that of any of the 18 countries of the G7 and the European Union. There has been record borrowing, a decaying infrastructure and a 20 per cent. devaluation. All that has happened after the Government have had £120 billion of North sea oil and
£80 billion of privatisation money, which they have taken and spent. People often say of the Conservatives that they may be cruel, but that they are competent. This is an economic record of shame. They are cruel and incompetent in equal measure.
Of course, what happened to the great relaunch of the Prime Minister--relaunch No. 19--when he came back from his holidays? We all remember the press briefings, do we not? The leadership election was won. We were told that he was "brimming with energy" and "fizzing" with new ideas. Perhaps what will worry the Cabinet as much as it worries us is the report that the Prime Minister was making a Cabinet "in his own image". He was looking at all areas of policy, and he was going to "stamp his personal authority" on every area.
That bit at least we can accept: this Queen's Speech has the Prime Minister written all over it, with the imprint of the last person who sat on him. It is a Queen's Speech designed to appease those who kept him in his job. It has been dictated by his party's craving for survival rather than this country's need for change.
We will, of course, examine each Bill on its merits. Some Bills are likely to be uncontroversial. There must, of course, be a broadcasting Bill. We have accepted the principles of the White Paper, and we shall examine the contents of the Bill with care. There must be legislation on defence, the reserve forces, Army discipline and chemical weapons. Some of the housing proposals in the Queen's Speech are those that we urged on the Government. We
will scrutinise carefully legislation on the disclosure of evidence in criminal cases to see that it is fair, although we have supported the royal commission's recommendations on making the system more open.
The divorce and domestic violence legislation is now back on the agenda, but where is the scope and the vision that matches up to the problems of Britain today? Surely that is the point that Conservative Members should understand. In so far as there is an agenda of substance, it is one dominated by the right--for example, vouchers for nursery places. We know that the Secretary of State did not want them, nor did her Ministers. We know that she was overruled by the Prime Minister, and why?
Because, as The Sunday Times put it,
"a touch too clever for the Tory party."
"a powerful coalition of Tory right-wingers, including Michael Portillo and John Redwood" leant on him: they who must be appeased, and appeased they have been.
There will be no choice when the nursery places are not available. A huge bureaucracy is to be created and £5 million will be needed to administer the pilot projects alone. Many local authorities--including the chairmen of Conservative local education authorities--are already saying, and it has not been denied either, that they fear that they will lose funding. All that will happen when the
£165 million could provide a real guarantee to all four-year-olds of a proper nursery education.
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