Debate on the Address

Debate between Elfyn Llwyd and Stephen Dorrell

Wednesday 9th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) was on stronger ground when he talked about the importance of policies and opportunities to create growth to address the unemployment that affects his constituency and many others. Although I did not agree with many of his policy prescriptions, I agreed with his definition of the challenge—I think, from his speech earlier, that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did, too. However, I did not follow the hon. Gentleman into the closing stages of his speech because he is simply wrong to say that the Government do not have a clear view about what they are trying to do.

I welcome the Queen’s Speech precisely because it refocuses the minds of hon. Members and supporters of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, and more importantly, of those beyond the political world, on the objectives that we set ourselves when the coalition Government were formed. To me, that is the key win in the Queen’s Speech.

Some members of my party have, in the past few weeks, and particularly in the past few days, sought opportunities to strengthen the Conservative flavour, as they see it, in the coalition. I want to offer one or two responses to that, based on the Queen’s Speech, and comment on one or two specific proposals.

As a lifelong Conservative, I have no problem in arguing the case for Conservative ideas. However, I have a problem with those who seek to reinterpret the Conservative case excessively narrowly. There is nothing in the Queen’s Speech that cannot be argued full heartedly as a mainstream Conservative proposal. All the measures can be traced to proper Conservative roots and, indeed, to roots in the Liberal Democrat tradition.

There has been much debate, including in the House this afternoon, about House of Lords reform and whether there is a proper Conservative narrative for it. I argue strongly that there is. I intervened on my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) to remind him that it is nearly 50 years since Lord Hailsham, who happened to be Margaret Thatcher’s first Lord Chancellor, described our system of government as possessing inadequate checks and balances on the powers of the Executive. He described it as an “elective dictatorship”, so when my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House of Lords is quoted in today’s Financial Times as arguing the case for reform of another place on the ground that it will make that Chamber,

“‘stronger, more independent’ and better able ‘to challenge the decisions of the Commons’”,

I allow myself a gentle cheer. I think that Lord Hailsham, from his grave, would cheer the prospect of our seeking a structure that allows Parliament to be a more effective check on the Executive.

We either believe in the case for less and better government, and more checks and balances in government —as a Conservative, I do; that Governments should be subject to checks and balances and accountability is a core Conservative belief—or we do not. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House of Lords clearly does. I am delighted that the Government, from both Conservative and Liberal Democrat traditions, believe in the case for more effective checks and balances and accountability to Parliament. I look forward to the conversion of that big idea into precise legislation as the Session goes on.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I am listening carefully to the right hon. Gentleman, who makes a strong case. I do not know what we will end up with, but does he agree that one way of improving the checks and balances would be through avoiding the strict timetabling of every single measure that comes before the House?

[Mr Dorrell]

I have much sympathy for that point of view. I have been here for perhaps rather more years than I should, but I remember long debates when parliamentary scrutiny was more effective than it often is now. Before the last general election, there were repeated occasions on which complex legislation passed through on a timetable that suited the Government rather than provided for proper parliamentary scrutiny.

There will be those—I am certainly among them—who will look for ways to strengthen the voice of the House of Commons, as we should. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who referred to the strengthening during this Parliament of the Back-Bench voice, which has been a step forward and a good thing. However, those who look for effective checks within the legislature on Executive enthusiasms do well to look at another place as part of the answer to that, in addition to reform of House of Commons procedure.

Therefore, to those in the Conservative party who ask, “Where is the Conservative provenance for House of Lords reform?” I say, “Read the history books.” I will certainly be uncomfortable if we are manoeuvred into a position in which we appear to defend what I regard as a wholly unacceptable Blairite compromise, which we opposed vigorously at the time of the legislative proposals at the beginning of the Labour Government.

Having said all that, it is clearly true that such reform is an important internal process within the Westminster village, but not the key issue that our constituents look to the Government, the Queen’s Speech and the House to address. To again pick up a theme developed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, we should remind ourselves that the Government are a coalition. Because they are a coalition, they have a large working majority in the House of Commons, which is a good thing in terms of the stability and strategic purpose it provides. However, the majority is more important in another respect: the two parties that make up the coalition have a broader electoral base in the community outside Westminster than has been the case for any recent Government. We have a stable Government with a clear purpose, which was redefined and re-emphasised in the Queen’s Speech and in the speech of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and not just a Government cobbled together in the immediate aftermath of the last general election.

At the very heart of the purpose of the coalition Government is the intention to create a stable economic base not merely to address the deficit, but to move on from that to create the environment in which growth begins to re-emerge, as the hon. Member for Hartlepool said. The purpose of economic policy is not to make the books balance—as the Prime Minister said over the weekend, it is not an exercise in accountancy—but to create the environment in which interest rates are low, confidence returns, and growth starts the process of creating jobs in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and elsewhere.

I find the argument of the shadow Chancellor wholly unpersuasive. He appears to believe that we lack a Government appetite to borrow. How a British Government deliver stability in the Europe of 2012 by building on their already excessive borrowing rate and building more borrowing into our public finances is simply beyond me. I believe that that is unrealistic, but more seriously, I also believe that the shadow Chancellor knows it is unrealistic. If he does, it is not only unrealistic, but dishonest.

The purpose that brought the Government together, which enlists the support of every Conservative and Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, is the prime objective of recreating economic stability to create growth, so that we can deliver the wealth required to deliver improving standards of living and improving public services. How do we do that? The hon. Member for Hartlepool argued that what we need is a state bank that would make better investment decisions than the private banking sector. I do not agree with that.

What I do agree with are the two key Bills in the Queen’s Speech, one of which is the Bill on banking reform, to address some of the failings that have been identified, not just by politicians but by the Governor of the Bank of England last week and by many commentators. One of the learning experiences of the events of 2005-09 was that the banking system did not have proper risk assurance to reduce the risks that the taxpayer ended up picking up. The process of banking reform is important and I welcome the fact that the Government are pressing forward with it.

I also welcome the fact that the Government are pressing forward with the reform and accentuation of competition policy, because I strongly believe that, once the Government’s finances are under control, the real answer to the question of how to recreate growth, confidence and prosperity in the economy is through a banking system that works and a competitive, free-enterprise economy. That is at the heart of the Queen’s Speech. It has obvious provenance in the Conservative tradition, and it has equally obvious provenance in the Liberal Democrat tradition, and that is why this stream of ideas comes together to create a strong coalition Government.

The Government are not, I am pleased to say, just about economics. They also have a broad-based programme for the reform of public service delivery—in which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education in particular is carrying forward a programme of reform that will deliver strong improvements in our school system and our wider education system as a result of the ideas that we share across the coalition. We also have a shared commitment to the promotion of environmental policies through the Green investment bank. That such ideas are shared across the coalition is the key point that I want to draw out of the Queen’s Speech.

I wish to focus on one specific policy—social care. This is a more techy point than a political ideas point, but it is an extremely important point from the perspective of the people who rely on our health and social care system. There was, of course, an expectation of legislation on social care reform in this Session. What we now have is a commitment in the Queen’s Speech to a draft Bill reflecting a continuing thinking process within the Government—I am pleased to see that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), the Minister with responsibility for social care, is in his place. I shall not seek his comments on what I am about to say, but I am glad that he will hear it.