King’s Speech
Baroness Crawley Excerpts(2 days, 13 hours ago)
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Baroness Crawley
That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty as follows:
“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.
Baroness Crawley (Lab)
My Lords, I have been asked not to be too controversial today as I might “spook the markets”. I cannot remember whether the Chief Whip said the gilt market, the bond market or the bear market, but I do not want to spook any markets. I enjoy a market, especially a farmers’ market.
What an immense pleasure it is to propose the humble Address. I say a huge thank you to our staff, including our security staff and our doorkeepers, for making sure we all scrub up well for His Majesty. A friend of mine—well, I say a friend—was explaining to one of our new Peers what takes place this afternoon. He said, “The mover of the Motion is the one on the way out, and the seconder is the one on the way up”. I cannot tell you how relieved I am that my seconder is my noble friend Lord Roe of West Wickham, a former firefighter—so he can give me a fireman’s lift on the way out. He is looking at me now, assessing the weight risk. Perhaps a firefighter’s carry: I think that means more specialist equipment.
About my noble friend Lord Roe, what can I say? He has already been singled out for great things, especially in the world of building safety, and I wish him well in the future. He has a serious record of service. He was the first London Fire Brigade commissioner to sign the Armed Forces covenant, and he was awarded the King’s Fire Service Medal in 2024’s New Year Honours List—so watch this space.
In my 27 years in your Lordships’ House, so much has changed. Social media did not exist in 1998—imagine life without TikTok. President Trump was still in real estate—happy days. The Archbishop of Canterbury probably did not wear nail varnish, and the Clerk of the Parliaments was not called Chloe.
My first proper conversation with Members of your Lordships’ House was on the day of my introduction. I sat at the Long Table for afternoon tea. On either side of me were Earl Grey and Lord Palmer, of the Huntley & Palmers empire. I realised I was having tea and biscuits with “tea” and “biscuits”—how mad is that. On the same day, I heard an elderly Peer say, “We had one of those Labour women in today. She was wearing slacks. It’s going that way, you know”. I am pleased to say, looking round the House at all my women colleagues, that it has gone that way. We now have 284 women Members, as of April, and I sincerely hope there are more to come. Anyway, they were not slacks; it was a rather nice trouser suit.
It is expected on this occasion to say something nice about the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip. I need no encouragement. Our Leader is passionate, intuitive, supportive of us all, wise and witty, and has given great service to the country in both Houses, especially with her work in Northern Ireland. We are blessed to have the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. As we say on these Benches, the only way is Essex.
I recently read the book by the noble Lord, Lord Hart of Tenby, about his time as Chief Whip in the Sunak Government. He writes hilariously about the misdemeanours of his MPs; a personal favourite was the 3 am phone calls to get them out of sticky situations. Thank goodness that we on this side of the House have all led completely blameless lives. When it comes to his time, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, will have nothing disobliging to say about us at all—well, virtually nothing. Some think that Chief Whips should be blighters and bullies, and other words beginning with “b”, but our Chief Whip is nothing of the sort. He is an utterly delightful man and I, for one, am only too glad to stay late into the night because it means we can spend more time with him.
Looking round the Chamber, I see our new-ish Lord Speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. He will merge humour and discipline with integrity, and a little promise to himself to be nicer to the Lib Dems—the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, take note. It is also good to see the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, in his new role, which I know he will carry with aplomb.
We all have our guilty pleasures. Some of us—they know who they are—like dressing up in “Harry Potter” costumes. But my guilty pleasure is that I like to have perfectly civilised conversations with the Lords Leader of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition, the doughty noble Lord, Lord True. They are usually about our diametrically opposed views on Brexit; neither convinces the other, but it is fun trying.
The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, esteemed Convenor of the Cross Benches, must be very proud of his flock. We do not need Google in this House—we have got the Cross-Benchers, and they know everything.
I see the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, in her place. Greens are good for us, she insists. Well, after last week, some of us may beg to differ.
To be serious, for many of us, the local elections have been an utterly bruising experience. For some—my Welsh colleagues—it has been blunt force trauma. For others, such as Plaid, it has been more positive. However, I am beyond upset that Reform, which is not fit to govern, has taken seats from hard-working local councillors, from parties across the House, who are the foundations of our democracy. We on this side have harsh lessons to learn from 7 May, but I will not take those lessons from Reform. I am proud of the measures we have already achieved in our Government: minimum wage up; child poverty down; rights for millions of workers up; jeopardy for renters down.
And so, we come to today’s gracious Speech. I managed to get in early today. With that famous revolving pod, none of us can ever again feel secure that we will get into the place. I dressed in the Library—I must stop doing that—and I waited in the Chamber for the gracious Speech, with noble Lords. While sitting there quietly, I thought about the uncertainty and the anxiety of the times we live in—internationally of course, with Gaza, Ukraine, and the Middle East, but also at home, where our Jewish friends are once again being targeted, and where flags mean division and intolerance. History, as we all know, is always closer than we think.
The gracious Speech outlined the Government’s determination to control the cost of living pressures that people are finding so hard to manage. It seeks to protect the energy, defence and economic security of the country. It shows determination to tackle antisemitism and to protect all our communities that are vulnerable to racism and prejudice. It builds on our new relationship with our European allies and confirms a route back to Europe for our young people—and I hope that means a way back for our artists and creatives, too. I particularly welcome our ongoing commitment to championing the rights of women and girls to live free from violence, wherever they are. While we of course welcome the renewed commitment to NATO, I believe that we need to set out a clear financial path to increased defence spending urgently.
People are thoroughly fed up—basically, they have been fed up since 2008, with the financial crisis, the years of austerity, Brexit, Covid, Ukraine and the current energy crisis. No Government can turn that round in TikTok time, but I believe that this Government will use every ounce of strength to wrestle these problems and regain the trust of the British people in doing so. I beg to move that an humble Address be presented to His Majesty.
UK-Mauritius Agreement on the Chagos Archipelago
Baroness Crawley Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Crawley (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Prentis of Banbury, on a fine and exhilarating maiden speech. She was my MP until regime change last year, so I personally welcome her to the House. We will certainly miss the noble Lord, Lord Boswell of Aynho. We will miss his consistent wisdom, especially, for me, on Brexit. I wish him all the best into the future.
As a member of the International Relations and Defence Committee, I participated in our short inquiry into the transfer of sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius. Our committee had the pleasure of two meetings with members of the International Agreements Committee, chaired by my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith, on the treaty. At one, we heard evidence from Stephen Doughty MP, Minister of State at the FCDO. Our inquiry centred on how the transfer of sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago could affect the UK’s strategic interests and obligations in four specific areas: the future of defence and security arrangements on Diego Garcia; the rights of the Chagossian people; the environmental protection of the archipelago, described by one of our witnesses as
“possibly the most important reef wilderness on the planet”;
and, finally, the cost of the agreement.
Before asking my noble friend the Minister some questions on these areas of concern, let me say for clarity that I agree overall with this treaty and support the Government’s rationale in bringing it forward. That was not always the case. I started out as something of a sceptic, hawkish about, as I saw it, current Chinese influence on Mauritius and the region, and wondering if settling the sovereignty issue with Mauritius now might increase that influence in the future. However, the more my committee looked into the context of bringing the agreement forward, the more I realised that it was a question of balancing any possible long-term future risk with the growing present risk that not settling the sovereignty question would bring for the UK and its relations internationally. I take the point of the noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord McDonald, on the influence of India as far as Mauritius is concerned.
I believe that the treaty resolves the risk that international law bodies such as the ICJ and the UN would increasingly find against the UK and in favour of Mauritius on the vexed question of sovereignty and post-colonial behaviour, therefore putting the base on Diego Garcia into a legal grey zone internationally. Diego Garcia was described by the Minister in his evidence as the UK’s vital contribution to the UK-US security relationship. It is vital. It could not have gone on operating on territory that was seen internationally as questionable legally. The last Conservative Government realised that this legal ambiguity needed fixing and entered into negotiations with Mauritius, as we have heard, holding 11 meetings, as I understand it, before the general election last year. The new Labour Government took on that work and the result is the treaty now awaiting ratification.
Finally, I wish to question the Minister on our committee’s four areas of concern. On the future of defence and security arrangements on Diego Garcia, some of our witnesses raised concerns that the termination clause in the agreement could be exploited by a hostile power to pressure Mauritius into ending the agreement prematurely, before the end of the 99-year period. How does the Minister answer such concerns? What lessons can we learn from the historic and shameful abuse of the Chagossian people? What degree of transparency and accountability will there be in the use of ring-fenced funding for Chagossians administered by Mauritius going forward? The track record, as we have heard, of the Chagossian people benefiting from past funding has been abysmal, as far as we can tell. Can my noble friend the Minister give us some more detail on the way in which the development grant is going to support marine conservation? How can we be sure that it will be used for that purpose? On cost, what can the Minister say to those critics of the cost? Can he say how the overall cost of leasing Diego Garcia has been arrived at?
None of us will be around in 99 years’ time to see how all this works out—except perhaps the Minister, who is of course for ever young. I am convinced that the future of the Chagossians and the base is more secure, not less, because of this treaty.
House of Lords Reform
Baroness Crawley Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Crawley (Lab)
My Lords, in a debate where roles and conventions have been constantly referred to, I know my role as the penultimate Back-Bench speaker: to get on with it.
I support my Government’s policy and Lords reform, and I congratulate the Leader of the House on her elegant introduction. However, as the third member of the Lord Speaker’s Committee on the Size of the House —we have already heard from the chairman the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham—I have to say that I am disappointed that, as a House, we could not have taken this reform into our own hands years ago. The report from the Lord Speaker’s Committee on the Size of the House was published in 2017 and has been updated every year since. As noble Lords have said, it concluded that, if the House agreed, we would work to
“reduce the size of the House”—
two out, one in—
“and maintain a cap of 600 members into the future”.
It went on to say that the proposal would have provided
“sufficient turnover of members to refresh the House and rebalance it in line with general elections over time, while also guaranteeing a sizeable fixed proportion of independent Crossbench peers”,
as well as a beefed-up HOLAC.
These proposals were supported by a significant majority of the House and would have gradually reformed it without the need for legislation. However, the then Conservative Government’s response was unenthusiastic, to say the least, and ultimately unhelpful. With the honourable exception of the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, Conservative Prime Ministers were unwilling to open up the discussion on the prime ministerial prerogative in appointments to this House. I really do think that, had the previous Government agreed to support the logic of the Lord Speaker’s proposals and my noble friend Lord Grocott’s Private Member’s Bill, we would not find ourselves in the present situation, as my noble friend Lord Murphy said.
We all have friends and colleagues across party and non-party lines in this House. We will of course be sorry to see people whom we like, respect and look forward to seeing each week leave us. However, the Labour Party’s manifesto, on which a decisive electoral victory was won, could not have been clearer, as was alluded to by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington: it was to introduce legislation immediately to remove the right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. I hope that, despite feelings running high—I understand this—the Government’s right to enact that manifesto commitment will be respected in this House.
I acknowledge that the noble Lord, Lord True, said that he respects manifesto commitments. Looking to future legislation, I say that it will be important for this House to work together, across party lines, on new reform; this was said by the noble Lords, Lord Jay and Lord Norton of Louth. I look forward to that collaboration very soon.