Queen’s Speech

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, this really is a huge, wide-ranging debate—far too wide-ranging in my view. I do not know how on earth the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, will sum it all up, but I am sure all his skills will come into play. There is one thing, at least in my mind, that is very simple about today: there is one issue that is far more important than any of the others that have been discussed, and the issue we will shortly address, which is the future unity of our country.

Having said that, I suppose I should apologise in advance: that is not where I will focus my own few minutes, not least because of one of the contributions in particular, that from my noble friend Lord Reid—although there have been other very good ones as well. My noble friend has made many splendid speeches that I have listened to, but that one took some beating. It was on the weaknesses of the separatist case. It would certainly bear reading or re-reading, I should suggest to anyone who is thinking of doing so.

I am always amused when I hear my good friend Lord Reid speak, and I dare say I will feel similar when my noble friends Lady Liddell and Lord McFall speak. I assume they will address this issue. It is palpably ridiculous to suggest that any of those three and their predecessors, who have presumably been living under the yoke of the union, have somehow become any less Scottish or that their national identity is in any way diminished through all those years of oppression. Presumably I am one of the oppressors; I had not been aware of that, but maybe that is the case. How you can make my noble friend Lord Reid any more of a Scot than he already is is beyond me. Maybe some of the separatists could address those arguments in the period that lies ahead.

I want to use a text on other constitutional issues. My text is from the Queen’s Speech:

“My Government will continue its programme of political reform”.

What political reform? The grandiose schemes for political reform, as outlined by the Deputy Prime Minister shortly after the coalition agreement was signed, were,

“the most significant programme of empowerment by a British government since the great enfranchisement of the 19th Century. The biggest shake up of our democracy since … the Great Reform Act”.

I think that might have been a mild overstatement, but I am happy to say that his attempts at constitutional reform have been largely unsuccessful. I think, for example, of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act. Some people worked pretty hard not to get that on to the statute book. We would have saved a lot of money had people listened to us. I do not have a problem with equalising constituency sizes—that is a perfectly laudable, principled thing to do—but I do have a problem with telling the British people that at the next general election they will have only 600 and not 650 MPs. That would diminish democracy by increasing constituency sizes. I am glad at least that that has been postponed, I hope for good.

I am glad that in the end we had a referendum on the alternative-vote system. It cost £75 million, which we could have spent on other things, but at least the result was terrific and showed British support for the first past the post system. That is something we could certainly adopt for the European elections. Last month we saw the wonderful new PR system that was going to encourage people to flock to the polls as it would give them the chance to express their vote. However, yet again we saw a low turnout for a European vote. Maybe one little bit of constitutional reform that we could have would be to revert to first past the post, and perhaps then we would even get the turnout up to the 36.5% that was achieved the last time the vote was held on the first past the post basis. That would help to reconnect Europe with the people of Britain.

The other great constitutional objective was Lords reform. My word, we gave enough warnings on that, but still the Government ploughed ahead for two years, wasting a lot of money. I checked that in a ministerial Question. The amount was £620,000. Five to 12 civil servants worked on it flat out, all to no avail, and they could not even find an answer to the question, “What would a ‘democratically’ elected second Chamber do to relations between the two Houses?”. All the brains in the top ranks of the Civil Service and all the Ministers could not answer that fundamental question satisfactorily. That is why that reform fell and deserved to fall, and I was very pleased about that.

Given that constitutional reform did not happen at a national level, I am glad that at a local level the mayoral referendums flopped as well. They were an attempt to import some American system of government into this country. There were 10 referendums, which cost us a lot of money as well—£2.1 million. I am happy to say that in nine of those referendums the people, including the good people of Birmingham, sensibly said, “No thanks very much. We don’t want that”.

We have mentioned police and crime commissioners, but I will end on the one reform that is still, for my book, unfinished business: the fixed-term Parliaments legislation. What a disaster that has been. Here we are plodding along. If only the Prime Minister—he is not my Prime Minister, obviously—had the power to say, “Look, we’ve had enough of this. Let’s see what the people think”. However, as we did for the last six months of the previous Session, we have to plod on.

I think that the lesson on constitutional reform has been that all these grandiose schemes really were not worth the paper they were, rather expensively, written on. I am glad that there is nothing like them in the current Queen’s Speech, but I hope that future Governments learn that lesson.

Economy: Inflation

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

Indeed, my Lords. Whatever the forward guidance of the Bank of England, it does not detract from its basic purpose, which is to keep inflation at or around 2%. That is the position we are now in and we believe that it will be the position going forward.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope I will not alarm the Minister too much if I say that I have been listening carefully to what he has been saying and, if I had come from outside, I would find it impossible to answer the question as to whether the Minister was a member of the Liberal Democrat party or the Conservative Party. Bearing that in mind, does he agree that, come the next general election, if people want a Conservative Government, the best thing to do is to vote Conservative; if they want a Labour Government, the best thing to do to vote Labour; and if they are thinking of voting Liberal, that is probably a waste of time?

[Lord Newby]

The noble Lord knows that I speak from the Dispatch Box for the Government. I am sure that he will not be surprised to know that I am extremely proud of this Government’s record on the economy.

Public Sector: Debt

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord is an assiduous reader of publications by the IMF and will have seen that, within recent days, the IMF has upgraded its forecasts for growth to 2.4% next year and 2.2% the next year, which is higher than for France and Germany.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister recall that during the time when the economy was clearly not growing at all but flatlining, the Government repeatedly said that it was due to the eurozone or the weather but nothing to do with the Government? Can the Minister please confirm that it is his view from the Front Bench that, if there is any upturn in the economy at all at the moment, it will be nothing to do with the Government?

[Lord Newby]

It is not a question of whether there is any upturn in the economy; there is a very significant upturn. Government policy ensured that, when we were facing very strenuous headwinds, the economy did better than it would otherwise have done, and it will do better in the upturn now as a result of a whole raft of policies that this Government are pursuing.

Taxation: Income Tax

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

Can the Minister explain how it was that he was able to give a very positive answer to his noble friend about, as he described it, the benefits to the Exchequer of reducing the top rate of tax, but that when my noble friend Lord Eatwell asked him a very valid question about people who had deferred taking their bonuses from the high-tax period to the lower-tax period, he said that it was impossible to speculate about it? He understands the benefits but he cannot acknowledge the simple statistic that my noble friend put to him.

[Lord Newby]

The absolutely bald point that lay behind the question of the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, is that when you do this kind of thing at the top end of tax rates, very well-off people take evasive action. That is why it is an ineffective way of raising additional amounts of money. People do not just sit there and pay the tax: they forestall it, postpone it and avoid it. This is why it was a very ineffective way of trying to raise additional funding.

Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

That the Bill do now pass.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I rise only to reflect that if this were a fully elected House, the proceedings that have just taken us about 30 seconds would probably have taken us three weeks instead.

Bill passed.

Economic Policies

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My noble friend is completely right, and it would be a one-club game if we were not doing all sorts of things on the supply side, such as reducing corporation tax from 28% to 22%, the national loan guarantee scheme of £20 billion, cutting red tape for the first time in living history, enterprise zones, the Regional Growth Fund, the largest number of apprenticeships ever funded by any Government and completely overhauling the planning system, to name a few supply-side reforms.

[Lord Grocott]

Is it in any way conceivable that some of the responsibility—just a smidgeon—for the fact that we are in a double-dip recession lies with the Government?

[Lord Sassoon]

We are working extremely hard on the reforms that I have talked about to make sure that we have sustainable public finances and a more balanced economy.

Scotland Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

Perhaps I may ask about a matter of significance to this Parliament. Will the Minister clarify whether there will be just five or six days between Committee and Report on the Bill? The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is in his place, and he will know that the Leader’s report, which he commissioned, recommended very strongly that the minimum intervals between stages of Bills should be respected. As the House will remember, they were abused at the time of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, and I would be troubled—as the House should be—if they are being abused again now.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I hope that I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that this is not an abuse. The matter was agreed because we were meeting a legitimate concern and expectation, expressed by a number of your Lordships across the House, that we should defer some sittings of the Committee until such time as the United Kingdom Government’s consultation had concluded. That was welcomed at the time; and because of that, the timescales inevitably had to be short.

Banking: Lloyds and RBS Shares

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

Does the Minister think that the Deputy Prime Minister’s proposals for the banks are better or worse than his proposals for constitutional reform?

[Lord Sassoon]

My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister is always full of interesting, constructive and important ideas that deserve very serious consideration.

Currency Markets

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

I shall not comment on individual discussions about market matters, but I again note some of the positive developments in Europe collectively as well as the auctions since the beginning of the year by Portugal, Spain and Greece. However, we must recognise that the currency situation remains very fragile.

[Lord Grocott]

As the Minister is clearly pleased that Britain is not a member of the euro, would he like to remind the House which Government made that decision and would he like to join me in congratulating them on making the right decision?

[Lord Sassoon]

I am indeed content that we are not in the euro.