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12.48 pm
Mr. Peter Brooke (Cities of London and Westminster): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mrs. Gilroy). She comes from a city with a notable naval tradition.
My uncle, who served in the war, used to go to Plymouth every year for the reunion of HMS Norfolk. In the days immediately after the war, it was still possible for clergymen to have maids. My aunt's maid revealed that her brother, who was doing his national service, was serving in HMS Abominable. My aunt constructed an entire class of ships to go with HMS Abominable--HMS Intolerable, HMS Impossible and HMS Unspeakable. The marvellous thing about them is that they all sound like 18th-century warships.
The debate on the Queen's Speech was opened for the Government in time-honoured tradition by the Prime Minister, just as he drew down the curtain on the last Session at Prime Minister's questions on 18 November. On that occasion, he rehearsed among his defences of the closed-list system the argument the majority of other EU states used it for the European parliamentary elections.
I was brought up on the thesis that the two great contributions that this country has made to western civilisation were political wisdom and lyric poetry--strands that happily come together in that other distinctive British contribution, the game of cricket. When I think back over the past two centuries, I cannot imagine Pitt the Younger or Palmerston, Beaconsfield or Bevin, Churchill or Gladstone arguing that the British should adopt a
particular stance simply because others were doing so. That is political imitation, not political initiative. Its lacklustre quality as an argument was a harbinger of the Queen's Speech.
To return to lyric poetry, the language of the Most Gracious Speech has shown no evidence of deriving from the language of Shakespeare or Wordsworth. Its three watchwords, no doubt honed by some spin bowler, are "modernise", "reform" and "pursue". Most of the modernisation occurs in the first third of the speech. After
In paragraph 12, we have "the challenges of modernisation", and in paragraphs 13 and 14 the Government are modernising the welfare state and benefits for widows. Exhausted by this frenzy, all they can do in the remaining two thirds of the speech is to modernise local government--although not too fast, as if fatigue were striking--and the law on immigration and asylum in paragraph 28. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes) for his references to those measures.
The role of reform is the mirror image of modernisation. There are only two references to it in the first half of the speech. International financial institutions receive reform in paragraph 3, and benefits for long-term illness and disabilities in paragraph 14, but where modernisation flagged in that same paragraph, reform strides forward with what is euphemistically described as a process of reform of the House of Lords in paragraph 24, party funding in paragraph 25, the appeals system on immigration and asylum in paragraph 28, the common agricultural policy and structural and cohesion funds in paragraph 32, economic reforms in paragraph 34, building up to the climactic reform of the United Nations in paragraph 36.
Pursuit follows reform in its place in the speech, but is used more sparingly, as if the Government were getting more and more tired. They pursue "sound public finances" in paragraph 5, but cannot summon up the energy for pursuit again until they
In paragraph 35, the Government
The effect of all that verbal energy has been to leave the Government looking exhausted 18 months into their term. There was admittedly one moment of animation during the opening salvoes of the debate on Tuesday. On
the Friday of the previous debate on the Loyal Address in May 1997, I concluded my speech by quoting the surrender of the last royalist army in the field in 1646, when Sir Jacob Astley handed over his sword to the parliamentarian commander with the words, "You have beaten us. Now go fall out among yourselves." As we know, that has happened in the past 18 months.
This week, the animation occurred when the Prime Minister said something with which his colleagues on the Treasury Bench could at least agree. A nodding of heads occurred along the Bench, in a Mexican wave suggestive of small dogs in the back windows of hitherto stationary cars in a jam on the M25 that are suddenly hit by a gust of Hurricane Mitch proportions, so that all the dogs start nodding at once. It was a vivid index of relief at an issue on which the Government could be in agreement.
I hope that I have not been out of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, by referring to the Queen's Speech as a whole. I am conscious of the fact that, just as Winston Churchill said that a pudding must have a theme, so today's debate has departmental themes. In that context, I comment on certain ironies in the Queen's Speech relating to the outside world. In paragraph 3, the Government believe that their economic policies will make
Similarly, part of the golden legacy bequeathed by the previous Government was a massive magnetism of London as a tourist destination. It is a little surprising that the present Government have so devastated that reputation that, in paragraph 22, they have to justify the range of powers for the Greater London Authority by saying that they will
In paragraph 32, there is a reference to ensuring
As for EU policies, for which the Government have the same ambition, I congratulate the Government on their resolution in relation to the London art market, not least in my constituency, to which I make unpaid reference in
the Register of Members' Interests, but I despair of the European Commission's actions, through the introduction of droit de suite and VAT on works of art imported into the EU, in driving the art market off shore from the EU and, incidentally, driving the EU's supporters in this country to despair.
The Queen's Speech does not often dwell in detail on defence matters, and this year's is no exception. Like the hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell), I want to allude to the recent debates about the Territorial Army and, in a narrow constituency capacity, to thank the Secretary of State for Defence for his eventual dispositions towards the Territorial Army centres in my constituency. I will acknowledge that his overall decisions caught me a little by surprise, but surprise is the essence of most successful gifts and, perhaps more relevantly, it is a military virtue.
I am more sceptical about the virtues of surprise in the field of diplomacy. Whatever the downside of perfidious Albion as a soubriquet down the years, there is no shortage of contemporary suitors for our hand in temporary and longer-term alliances, not least perhaps because of our military prowess in its widest sense. It does seem important in this context that the world should know clearly where we stand on a wide range of issues, as I acknowledge that it does on the issue of Iraq.
Lip service is paid to clarity elsewhere in the Queen's Speech. In paragraph 13, the Government could not make it verbally clearer where they stand:
I cannot improve on my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary's dissection of the Foreign Secretary's personal conduct of affairs abroad, but whenever he goes abroad I am reminded that his namesake Thomas Cook's first commercial initiative was to build a funicular railway to the summit of Mount Vesuvius. Our Foreign Secretary, and thus our foreign policy, live similarly dangerously. Incidentally, I do not begrudge him the obvious satisfaction that he derives from the extra resources at his command, and I am delighted by our greater representation in the Caspian basin, but I notice that he switched from fractions to percentages to disguise the fact that we shall still have only a quarter of the combined representation of the French and Germans in that quarter.
Words uttered in battle are rarely recorded for posterity, but, by chance, we have both Sir Colin Campbell's orders at Balaclava in 1854:
I add a footnote about General Pinochet, who was recently my constituent at the London Clinic. Like the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn), although perhaps for more pastoral reasons, I visited the demonstrations against the general outside the clinic. I had reservations about demonstrations outside a hospital where some other patients were dying, especially when some placards that were visible from the windows of the clinic said, "We will drown the dictators in their own bloodbath," but I had a mild sense of deja vu: other placards stating "Smash imperialism" seemed to have been recycled from earlier campaigns.
The heart of my concern in the debate is that the world should not be left in doubt where this country stands and that we should ourselves not be surprised. Not for us the dying words of General Braddock when ambushed by the Iroquois in 1763:
"the modernisation of the country"
in the opening paragraph, the Government are modernising our welfare state in paragraph 2, the law of electronic commerce in paragraph 6, and the justice system and the youth courts in paragraph 10--although another Department is overhauling the justice system in paragraph 11 at the same time as it is modernising legal aid.
"pursue their initiative to make the European Union's foreign and security policy more effective"
in paragraph 33--although we have good reason to know, from its absence from the strategic defence review debate, how elusive that initiative was and is.
"will also actively pursue a resolution to the problems in Kosovo."
That must at least promise to represent an advance on their policies in the previous Session. In paragraph 36, the Government
"will pursue reform of the United Nations."
I note that, by omission, foxes, too, will not go unpursued.
"the United Kingdom well placed not just to weather the international financial storms but to emerge stronger from them."
That robust consequence reminds one of the legendary Provost Phelps of Oriel college, who was overheard on the rim of a cold bath saying, through chattering teeth, "Be a man, Phelps, be a man"; but the Government's hope that they will emerge stronger from the international financial storms presumably carries the correlation that others will emerge weaker, which does not sound wholly communautaire.
"help make London a world class city"--
a condition that Londoners have long believed we already possess. I realise that only two London Members sit in the Cabinet, supported by just two London Ministers of State, but I do wonder whether those members of the Government personally cleared that humiliating wording.
"that . . . EU . . . institutions meet the concerns of our citizens."
I do not know whether small focus groups have been consulted on that ambition, but one has only to look at dedicated opinion polls to see how large that ambition is, when confronted by the exasperation of so many of our citizens at how the existing EU institutions work.
"My Government has made clear its determination to modernise the welfare state upon clear principles".
One might say that that was as clear as could be, until one realises that the fog has not yet lifted for the clarity to be visible. I have previously quoted to the House Balfour's verdict on Asquith that his well-known lucidity of style was a positive disadvantage when he had nothing particular to say. Because the dilemma that the Secretary of State for Social Security has in making himself clear has a read-across into clarity in foreign affairs, I remind the House that, in J. M. Barrie's "Peter Pan", Mr. Darling starts out as a benevolent father--Barrie's stage direction at Mr. Darling's first appearance, in Act I of the play, is germane to the DSS, for it describes Mr. Darling holding Mrs. Darling's hand while he calculated whether they could afford to have Wendy, and coming down on the right side--but, by Act V, Mr. Darling has been relegated to the dog kennel. We must hope that the Secretary of State does not reach the doghouse too before the Session is out.
"93rd! 93rd! Damn all that eagerness"
and his orders at the relief of the Lucknow residency a few years later:
"Lie down, 93rd! Lie down! Every man of you is worth his weight in gold to England today."
It is that sort of consistency that should inform our face to the outside world and communicate to that world the issues on which we can be relied upon, not least because, again, our military resources, so well husbanded by Sir Colin Campbell, are so well respected in the world.
"We shall know better how to deal with them next time".
The Prime Minister, whose European Union policy was described by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the shadow Foreign Secretary, as going with the flow, is said to admire Baroness Thatcher. No one was ever in any doubt where she stood. Just as she did not surprise others, nor was she ever caught by surprise. This country earned the world's respect as a consequence.
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