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9.39 pm
The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett): It is customary when winding up on the final day of debate on the Queen's Speech for the Leader of the House to make some reference to House of Commons matters. Like the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire(Sir G. Young), I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan (Mr. Turner) and for Hamilton, South (Mr. Tynan), who made impressive first contributions. I should also like to highlight an important feature of our programme--this did not come out in the right hon. Gentleman's remarks--that shows how we are modernising and reforming the legislative process.
Five of the Bills in the speech have been published in draft and undergone some form of pre-legislative scrutiny. We have set the important precedent of carrying over the Financial Services and Markets Bill by agreement. The draft Bill received scrutiny from an ad hoc Joint Committee of Lords and Commons that was chaired by the former permanent secretary to the Treasury, Lord Burns, and included distinguished members of both Houses. It is an important, although highly technical and
complex, measure and there can be no doubt that it has benefited from that practical and worthwhile extension of our methods of handling legislation.
Our local government legislation was also considered by a Joint Committee. The draft Freedom of Information Bill was examined by the Lords Delegated Legislation and Deregulation Committee, a Lords ad hoc Committee, and separately by the Commons Public Administration Committee, which took evidence from my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, among others.
The limited liability partnership proposals have been examined by the Select Committee on Trade and Industry and our proposals for the railways, now subsumed into the transport Bill, were considered at an earlier stage by the Transport Sub-Committee.
That shows the development of how we are handling the House's work and casts light on the remarks of the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire about the scope of our programme. Much of it has already been before the House. I strongly believe that continuing to expand the drafting programme, as we have made it clear that we shall do, is a much more efficient and effective way of preparing legislation and leads to the better use of one of the scarcest resources that we have--Members' time. It should also produce better legislation, as well as encouraging attention to be focused on our core necessities or priorities.
Today's debate offers a final opportunity to assess the overall shape of the Government's programme for the forthcoming parliamentary year. I assure the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire that it is not the last of this Parliament. It is fitting that we have concentrated on the economy, because the Gracious Speech has to be seen and judged alongside my right hon. Friend the Chancellor's pre-Budget report of two weeks ago.
We began with a typically ungraceful contribution from the shadow Chancellor. I recognise that he is facing real problems. Apart from the fact that he knows that somebody is after his job, this time last year he prophesied economic doom and gloom. Fortunately for the country, he was wrong. This year, he made the same prophesy. He could see nothing good in the Government's handling of the economy and claimed that the business community felt the same. He spoke about our pre-election consultations, and he claimed to know what resulted from them and that the business community felt betrayed.
The first request of the business community was stability in economic management, together with increased investment in education and training and in Government support for research and development and a programme of investment in transport infrastructure. The business community recognises, even if the shadow Chancellor does not, that all of that is being delivered, as well as significant cuts in corporation tax, particularly for smaller businesses.
Unlike the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude), the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Mr. Taylor) welcomed the Government's handling of the public finances. Unfortunately, like his hon. Friends the Members for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) and for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) later, he then reverted to type and called for far greater public expenditure without the faintest adequate explanation of how it would be funded.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton- under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) spoke with enthusiasm about the need for Britain soon to join the euro, and was followed smartly by the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor), who disagreed with my right hon. Friend and with the right hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor). The latter referred to many issues, including pesticides, an issue to which the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire also referred.
Both right hon. Gentlemen said that they were seeking the Government's view. However, it was clear that the right hon. Member for South Norfolk knew the Government's view--indeed, he quoted the Government's observation that the matter was under consideration. He sought not the view of the Government, but a commitment not to pursue the matter. He knew the Government's view--he just wanted it to be different.
Mr. MacGregor:
The point is that Government have simply said that they will have further discussions. Given the desperate state of agriculture, it would be so much better if the Government made their view known now.
Mrs. Beckett:
I recognise that that is the view of the right hon. Gentleman. I simply say that he does know what the Government are saying on this matter, and he knows that it is being considered by my right hon. and hon. Friends.
The right hon. Member for South Norfolk highlighted the long-term impact of changes in pension provision, and he made a number of points about the contrast between defined benefit and money-purchase schemes. His concern about attitudes to pension provision would be shared by many hon. Members on both sides of the House.
Unfortunately, the right hon. Gentleman's concerns concentrated entirely on the last two years. He failed utterly to acknowledge that all the changes that he deplored flow directly from the approach and record of the Government in which he served. Nothing in the recent history of this country has done more to undermine sound pensions policy than the pensions mis-selling over which the Conservative party presided.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) spoke of the need--especially among women--to be able to exercise choice, and about how Government policy is promoting such an approach. My hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) and for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) talked about the concerns in their areas, and both of them are well aware of how much the Government have done to try to tackle their concerns.
My right hon. Friends the Members for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) and for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) applauded the goals of high and stable levels of employment, but both expressed some concerns--one about world poverty, and the other about the framework of fiscal and monetary policy. That framework, and its impact, was welcomed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Ms Kelly).
The shadow Chancellor, the Opposition amendment and the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Page) referred to the Government's "golden legacy"--a legacy,
they said, left by the Conservatives. Surprisingly, they seem to be unaware of a report published this morning by the IMF, which observed of the UK economy that
The "golden legacy" to which the amendment refers was, of course, fool's gold, shielding the enormous debt built up as a result of the Conservatives' incompetence. As a result of our policies, we have been able to begin to repay the debt that their policies created and, in addition, to set out a huge programme of investment in public services--particularly in our top priorities of health and education. In the pre-Budget statement, taken alongside the Queen's Speech, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has made it clear that he is now bringing forward further measures. Those measures will stimulate further action and support for enterprise. They will not sacrifice fairness, and measures such as the working families tax credit, free television licences for over-75s and the earnings link for the minimum income guarantee for pensioners will actually enhance it. That was recognised in a moving speech about her area by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble).
A key purpose for the Government is to pursue the twin aims of enterprise and fairness side by side and to make them not separate but joint endeavours. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor identified in his pre-Budget statement and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister highlighted in the opening debate on the Queen's Speech, that is in recognition of the stark reality that, in the next century, those purposes must be inextricably intertwined, because the one cannot succeed without the other.
Successful pursuit of the knowledge economy requires us to develop and nurture the creativity, skill and talents not only of a lucky few--as Britain, especially under Conservative Governments, has so often done in the past--but of all our citizens. For example, the reshaping of post-16 education, itself long overdue, will make an important contribution to achieving that goal. We have taken a further step in the direction identified and pursued in the first two Queen's Speeches of this Parliament. We must not only invest in education but use that investment specifically to raise standards. That is equally long overdue.
Comment from Conservative Members, in this as in previous Queen's Speech debates, has typically missed that point altogether. There has been much contradiction in what they have said. They went straight from saying that there was nothing in the speech to bemoaning the fact that it contained too much.
The right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) said that the Government had "run out of steam" and the right hon. Members for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) and for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) and the hon. Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) said respectively that the speech was "thin gruel", that it was "a thin speech" and that there was "nothing new" in our programme.
Within 24 hours, however, the shadow Leader of the House thought the speech substantial enough to be
There was a further example tonight when the shadow Leader of the House spoke about the attitudes that the transitional House of Lords might take and invited me to speculate on how we might handle such attitudes. During all the days when we discussed House of Lords reform, Conservative Members claimed that there could be no problem for a Labour Government in the transitional House of Lords because it would be packed with "Tony's cronies" and we would have a majority. The shadow Leader of the House betrays the fact that they took their criticisms with as little seriousness as we did--indeed, with as little seriousness as they merited.
There is still a reality gap between the world as Conservative Members see it and the real world of the British people. We had an insight into the illusions--or perhaps delusions--still afflicting Conservative Members in a throwaway line by the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) earlier in these debates. He added a new dimension to the Tory party's continual complaint that everything that the Government do--down to their sheer existence as a Government--is evidence of arrogance. He told us that to claim that Britain as the Tories left it in 1997 had any need to be modernised or reformed was in itself arrogant. That is an extraordinary judgment, and it was clearly not shared by the British people, or they would have seen no need for change.
I see that the new Tory slogan is that we now need a common-sense revolution. I fear that it would take a revolution to give today's Tory party any common sense. As we have seen in these debates, they still operate by knee-jerk reaction and still oppose unthinkingly whatever the Government suggest that they are going to do. The Tories opposed giving control of interest rates to the Bank of England; cuts in the VAT on fuel; the new deal; the national minimum wage; the working families tax credit; and the extra investment in health and education. Those are things that they are against, but we have tried to discern in these debates what it is that they are for.
Contributions from Tory Front Benchers have given us a bit of a clue. They are for privatisation of the Post Office; privatisation of the tube; privatisation of the welfare state; and privatisation of health care. What we have heard in these debates is not the common sense of the British people or anybody else: it is Tory party extremism run riot, without justification, restraint or sense--never mind common sense.
Common sense and, indeed, basic arithmetic are most conspicuously lacking in the Tories' proposals on public expenditure and the economy, where their record exposes their rhetoric. The British people have not forgotten that, in 1992, the Tories promised tax cuts and spending
increases. Although they got away with it in the election, they were exposed when they could not deliver the reality and, as a result, they will never again be trusted on tax.
It has been fashionable in these debates, and recently in the media, to bewail what is seen as the lack of a single big idea. I find that odd and ridiculous. This Government have set themselves to achieve the long-sought transformation of our country so as to liberate the talents and support the endeavours of all its citizens, and, in the process, to use the fruits of those endeavours for the good of all. The pursuit of such a purpose demands action on a myriad of fronts. It cannot be pinned down to a single, all-transforming piece of legislation, or the outcome of a single Queen's Speech or even a single Budget. It calls for a series of separate, sometimes even disparate actions, undertaken over time in many different areas, without ever losing sight of that overarching and vital purpose.
To modernise Britain, as we seek to do, and to foster a vibrant and successful economy is the work, not of years, but of decades. To harness that prosperity to the relief of poverty is a worthy end in itself. As my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North pointed out, to harness it to the relief of child poverty is an especially worthy aim, although that will take time to achieve. Importantly, that can also contribute to our achieving our economic goals.
Our third Queen's Speech shows this Government to be clear about their goals, steadfast in purpose, and resolved on the steady and resolute pursuit of the policies required to reach those goals. I commend it to the House.
"this strong performance is in good part owing to the improved policy framework which has fostered sound monetary and fiscal policies and significant structural reforms."
The report goes on to speak approvingly of the supply side measures taken by the Government, and of the potential of the new deal and the working families tax credit. Although we were unable to extract anything clear from the shadow Chancellor, we think that the Conservative party continues to oppose those measures.
"more than the House is able to chew"--[Official Report, 18 November 1999; Vol. 339, c. 118.]
and the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) said:
"In the number of Bills they plan to introduce, the Government appear to have bitten off too much".--[Official Report, 19 November 1999; Vol. 339, c. 281.]
From the outset, the comments of many Conservative Members have been inconsistent and indeed downright contradictory; so what else is new? Contradictory themes have run throughout their contributions, with calls for mutually incompatible tax cuts and spending increases on specific items in their constituencies.
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