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Mr. Norman Baker (Lewes): Before I come to the Queen's Speech directly, may I reflect on one or two comments by hon. Members, particularly Conservative Members? I have listened with great interest to contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the House--we have a come a long way from the packed House that we had earlier, when the three party leaders were making their contributions--but the Conservative contributions appear to fall into two camps.
First, there was a great defence of the unelected House of Lords, which appeared to permeate many of the speeches by Conservative Members. I found the defence of the House of Lords and the opposition to the Government's proposal to remove the voting rights of hereditary peers somewhat odd.
It is often said that the House of Lords is full of people who sit independently, think independently, speak independently and then independently vote Conservative; that has certainly been the case on recent occasions in that place. It is true that we have not had another example in which legislation from this Chamber overwhelmingly voted for on five separate occasions has been rejected by the House of Lords. It is not even legislation that is of overwhelming proportions, which might, in some circumstances, justify rejection; it is on the technical matter of open or closed lists. There can be no defence for the House of Lords behaving in that way.
Although it is preferable for the House of Lords to be reformed and for details of how it will be reformed to be coterminous with the removal of hereditary voting rights, by their behaviour on the European Parliamentary Elections Bill, their lordships have forfeited that right to hang on until the royal commission has reported; their behaviour can in no way be justified.
I am going to criticise the Government, by the way, just in case hon. Members think that I am not--I assure them that I will--but let us give credit where credit is due. We do not have a Government who are tearing up the fabric of the nation, or one of the other colourful phrases that come from Conservative Members. Silver Stick in Waiting has gone, but Gold Stick in Waiting is still there. The pace of reform is quite slow and some of us would like it to be speeded up, rather than stopped in its tracks.
The other element of the Conservative contribution is a depressing one not only perhaps for someone who is from a Liberal Democrat background, but for someone who has operated in the real world and on other elected bodies such as councils. It is nonsense to say that everything that
this Government do is wrong and everything that the previous Government did was right. Those two premises are wrong.
No Government are entirely wrong all the time; not even the previous Conservative Government were entirely wrong all the time. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, so it is nonsense to take the adolescent approach of saying that everything that the Government do is wrong, which we heard from the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), who is no longer in the Chamber, and from others. It is much more constructive to say that the Government are right on these particular issues and wrong on those particular issues.
That is one of the reasons why the Liberal Democrats in this Parliament are proving to be the sensible Opposition and why we have much more influence over the Government than the Conservative party, which is four times our size in the House of Commons. It is the art of opposition. The Conservatives have been out of practice for some time and have not mastered it.
Mr. Robathan:
I thought that there was a pact between the leader of the Liberal Democrat party and the Prime Minister and that there was a Cabinet seat, or a Cabinet Committee seat, here and there. Is the hon. Gentleman certain that he is still in opposition and that he is not an appendage to the Government? I ask that because Labour Members appear to be concerned that Liberal Democrats are just another arm of the Government.
Mr. Baker:
I am happy to give the assurance that we are not part of the Government; nor are we an appendage of any sort. There is no talk of Cabinet seats. I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that we are retaining our full independence. We will continue to do so and to lead the opposition to the Government, as we did on tuition fees, beef on the bone and a range of other issues, but we will also push them on areas where we can influence them and persuade them to move in the right direction.
Having talked about the Conservatives, I turn to the content of the Queen's Speech. As hon. Members on both sides of the House have said--though more, I confess, from the Conservative side--the Queen's Speech is notable for what is missing, rather than for what is in it. That is a great pity. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) said, in the second Session of the Parliament, with a big majority, a big mandate, a basically supportive public, a basically supportive House of Commons on all sides, apart from the Conservative side--I include the nationalists and many of those who represent Northern Ireland seats--the Government have not taken the opportunity to introduce a programme of radical reform.
It is a pity because the public wanted that radical programme, rather than this careful nudge, nudge approach of gradually removing problems, gradually rolling back what the Conservatives have done, and gradually moving forward on certain fronts. They wanted more than that.
My main criticism of the Queen's Speech is not that it is terribly wrong. It is not that there are things in it that we do not like; there are, but, by and large, it is harmless enough. But is that what we want to achieve? Do we want
a harmless Queen's Speech, or to do something that will transform the landscape of our country? It is a missed opportunity. I am sad about that. I would have liked the Government to be much more radical. They would have received support from the Liberal Democrats if they had taken that approach.
In an intervention, the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) made the point about draft Bills. I am in favour of such Bills because they allow mature reflection on legislation. They allow matters that are clearly wrong to be eradicated earlier, and the Government to back down, if the truth be known, without losing face. It is sensible to have such an arrangement, but I am against draft Bills on matters that have been subject to huge introspection and consideration already. As the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) has said, the freedom of information legislation is a case in point. The food standards agency is another.
Those two proposals have been well worked out. The right hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark), for whom I have much respect, did much work on that and said that the Bill would be ready by the end of September. I am sure that it was, but he was sacked for being too radical and the freedom of information Bill was transferred to the Home Secretary, who is known to be sceptical about it.
That is the reality. The Home Secretary wants some time to water the thing down; we all know that. It is pity that he has got away with that, and it is a pity when hon. Members who are radical, such as the right hon. Member for South Shields, are not allowed to bring forward legislation.
The story about the food standards agency--I would be interested if anyone tries to correct this--is that it was going forward and that members of the Government, including the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, fully supported the agency, but that the new Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has come in and his civil servants have tried to do a job on him to persuade him that the agency is not a good idea and that much of MAFF's empire will be lost.
That is the story in the papers. I do not know whether it is true, but I do know that a food standards agency Bill could have been introduced in this Session and has not been. No convincing reason has been given by any Labour Member as to why that has not been progressed in this Session of Parliament. Again, that is a great pity.
I want to spend the rest of my time talking about the environment, which is, after all, my portfolio responsibility. My greatest regret about the Queen's Speech and, indeed, about the Government is that sufficient attention is not given to the needs of the environment, despite the clear conviction politics of many Labour Members and their dedication to environmental issues, which I do not doubt; it was clear during their years in opposition. However, that commitment has not translated itself into action in the Government and particularly not in the Queen's Speech.
Mr. White:
The hon. Gentleman says that the Government have not done anything on the environment, but he ignores everything that has happened in Kyoto and
Mr. Baker:
I did not say that nothing was happening. I said that there was no Government commitment to environmental legislation in this Parliament or this Queen's Speech. I will come on to the work of the Deputy Prime Minister shortly. He has done a good job--credit where credit is due.
When I intervened on the Prime Minister some 35 minutes into his speech earlier today, he had not mentioned the environment once except in an oblique reference to a comment from the Leader of the Opposition about brown-field sites. The Government say that the environment is at the heart of their policy making. The Government's heart must be in their boots because the environment is nowhere near the centre. The environment is not mentioned until seven lines before the end of the Queen's Speech. That is all there is. It is an afterthought tacked on to the speech--we used to accuse the Conservatives of tacking on the environment. At the end of a long Queen's Speech it says that the Government
"will continue their leading role in protecting the environment, including the global climate."
It is a great pity that that is the only place where the environment is mentioned.
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