King’s Speech

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th May 2026 Lords Chamber

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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.