Michael Howard – 2003 Response to the Queen’s Speech in the House of Commons
The response made by Michael Howard, the Leader of the Opposition, in the House of Commons on 26 November 2003.
I begin by paying tribute to Paul Daisley. He came to this House with a formidable reputation as a reforming council leader.
Tragically, his election to Parliament was overshadowed by the diagnosis of his cancer. Obviously in pain, but with an equally obvious pride in his constituency, many remember the courage he showed when he delivered his maiden speech some eight months later. I am sure Hon Members in all corners of the House will join me in expressing the hope that his spirit will live on after him through the work of the Paul Daisley Trust.
And his spirit lives on in another way too. Paul campaigned vigorously for his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, to be readmitted to the Labour Party. It looks as though he’s going to have the last laugh.
On all sides of the House, Mr Speaker, we will miss Paul Daisley.
I warmly congratulate the proposer and seconder of the loyal address.
The Hon Gentleman the Member for Dumbarton spoke with passion. He always does.
Like the Prime Minister, he long had a passionate and principled devotion to the cause of unilateral nuclear disarmament – despite the fact that both Faslane and Coulport employ hundreds of people in his constituency.
Indeed, the Hon Gentleman’s constituency is undoubtedly one of the places in the world where even the Prime Minister could find weapons of mass destruction.
The Hon Member serves as the highly respected Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, where he has a fearsome reputation.
When he recently asked the Governor of the Bank of England the same question nine times, he was compared to Jeremy Paxman. Let me assure the Hon Gentleman. Nine questions are easy. Try fourteen, and then you really could move to Newsnight.
I am sure I speak for the whole House when I congratulate the Hon Member on his speech today.
The Hon Member for Gloucester spoke with the eloquence we have come to expect of him.
He must have been very surprised to be asked to second the motion today. For earlier this year, he voted against the war.
The website diary of the Hon Member gives a fascinating account of his private meeting with the Prime Minister just hours before the crucial vote. It is full of startling political insights.
‘The Prime Minister’, he said, `had obviously had a long and hard day’.
`His shirt, usually impeccably pressed, looked slightly creased’.
But `his eyes were bright, focussed and full of conviction’.
`Parmjit’, he said, `we are where we are’. The Prime Minister was clearly at his most persuasive.
`It’s a far from ideal position, I know, but I need your support’.
`A far from ideal position’. I don’t remember that phrase creeping into the Prime Minister’s speech in the House that day. Could he possibly have been saying one thing in public, and another in private? Surely not.
I hope all this hasn’t killed off the political prospects of the HM for Gloucester. For, on the basis of today’s performance, he has a great career ahead of him.
I also want to congratulate the English rugby team on their outstanding achievement in Australia. It is a great shame that the Sports Minister wasn’t there to see it.
There are different accounts of the Minister’s reaction when he was told to come back early. The Secretary of State said that was always planned. But the Minister’s Spokesman, when asked how he really felt, said `I can’t tell you. It’s before the watershed’. The Prime Minister was reported as being profoundly unimpressed by the Minister’s reaction. Indeed, a source close to the Prime Minister said of the Minister `I think he may regret it’. It may not be very long before the Sports Minister is proposing the Loyal Address.
Before I examine the Gracious Speech in detail there are certain matters that do not fall directly within the remit of the Government’s programme.
Today the people of Northern Ireland go to the polls to elect a new Assembly. On these benches we support the Government in its efforts to re-establish devolution in the Province and we hope that there will be a constructive and stable outcome to today’s elections.
In Iraq too the Government is engaged in a commendable endeavour to replace tyranny and terror with peaceful democracy. The Prime Minister has shown political courage in standing shoulder to shoulder with our allies in America and elsewhere and we support him.
We must also remember, in everything we say and do, that many British servicemen and women are demonstrating physical courage every day in Iraq. Their job is a dangerous one and I am sure I speak for the whole House when I express my gratitude to them. In that context I pay tribute to the two Members of this House whose duty as members of the reserve forces has taken them to Iraq: my Hon Friend the Member for Westbury, who has happily returned safely to rejoin us, and my Hon Friend the Member for New Forest West who continues to serve our country in Nasiriyah.
Many of us have constituents who have suffered the tragic loss of close family members in Iraq, and we owe it to them to ensure that their loved ones did not die in vain. The House will also wish to pay tribute to the three British citizens, including the Consul General, who died in the bombings in Istanbul, and to the many others who so tragically lost their lives there.
On these benches we welcome a number of the measures contained in the Gracious Speech. We regard them as constructive and will support their passage.
We are pleased to see the Government turn its attention to child protection and domestic violence.
We will study the draft Disabilities Bill, when it is published, and hope that it will live up to the billing which the Minister for Disabled People has given it.
And we support the principle of a Civil Contingencies Bill. Those recent terrorist atrocities in Turkey and elsewhere require us to do everything possible to protect British citizens and interests.
The Civil Partnerships Bill aims to address some genuine grievances that are acknowledged on all sides of the House. I believe we all have a duty to recognise and respect the fact that people in our society choose to live their lives in many different ways. I also accept that there are a range of sincerely held opinions on how the law should reflect this. Members on this side of the House will have a free vote, and I hope that will also be the position on the Government side.
But while we welcome some of the individual proposals in the Gracious Speech, the overall reaction to it – even, I suspect, on the benches opposite – will be one of disappointment.
And that sums up the general feeling of disillusionment which has built up over the last six and a half years.
This Government was elected with great promise and a sweeping mandate. It had the world at its feet and a vast Parliamentary army ready to carry forward whatever measures it proposed.
And what has happened? In the words of Paul Daniels: `Not a lot’.
We are, after all, about to embark on the seventh Parliamentary session since the RHG became Prime Minister. He’s been in office longer than Attlee. And what has he got to show for it?
During that time we have had seven education Acts. They promised in 1998 to cut truancy by a third. What’s happened? Truancy has gone up 15 per cent overall and 25 per cent in secondary schools. What hope is there for our future if so many of our young people don’t even go to school at all?
We have had five transport Acts. Yet we have more congestion, and twice as many trains run late as before.
We have had 18 Acts from the Health Department. None of them will be of any comfort to the million people languishing on waiting lists.
And we have had no fewer than 30 pieces of legislation from the Home Office.
But crime is up by 800,000, gun crime has doubled, and we have the
highest level of violent crime ever.
Are the major Bills in this year’s Speech likely to be any different?
The Asylum Bill, the third Immigration and Asylum Bill, is merely the latest chapter in the sorry story of incompetence and irresponsibility that has marked the Government’s attempts to deal with this problem.
Almost five years ago, the then Home Secretary said he was legislating to `provide the United Kingdom with a modern, flexible and streamlined [asylum] system’.
Whatever happened to that?
They have wasted the last six and a half years reversing the measures brought in by the previous Government – and then reintroducing them!
But this time they’ve gone further than any civilised government should go. Earlier this week we read in our newspapers that the Government proposes to use the children of asylum seekers as pawns to cover up their failure to get a grip on their asylum chaos.
Children of asylum seekers are to be taken into care in order to force their parents to leave the country.
The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary should be ashamed of themselves.
We shall oppose any legislative provision that seeks to give effect to this despicable provision.
And I have no doubt that when we do so we shall be joined in the lobbies by the many Honourable Members on the Government benches who, unlike the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, still retain their self-respect.
What about pensions? The Pensions Bill will do nothing to tackle the main causes of the pension crisis. Without reform of the State Pension and a reversal of the spread of means testing, the pension crisis will continue to get worse. Without new incentives to save, pension provision will continue to shrink.
What of the pledge in the 1997 Labour Manifesto to `make the House of Lords more democratic’? Well, we now know exactly what the Prime Minister means by democracy. `One flatmate one vote’.
And while we’re talking about Manifestos, what happened to the pledge in 2001 – just two years ago?
‘We will not introduce ‘top-up’ fees’, it said. And there was more. The Manifesto boasted that Labour had `legislated to prevent them’.
Perhaps the Prime Minister could tell us what exactly happened there.
Was it a misprint? Was it meant to say `we will legislate to introduce them’?
Or did the Prime Minister simply miss that line?
Was it perhaps sneaked in by the Chancellor at the last minute?
Is that why the RHG the Member for Hartlepool has been brought in to oversee the Manifesto? To keep an eye on any last minute changes from the Chancellor?
Isn’t it extraordinary. It doesn’t matter how many times the RHG is sacked from the Cabinet and forced to leave Downing Street by the front door, the Prime Minister will always find a way of smuggling him in through the back door.
Today there was no mention of the phrase top-up fees in the Queen’s Speech. It is the tax that dare not speak its name.
Mr Speaker, Government plans for regional assemblies will take the number of referendums held by this Government to 37. But there is also a Bill in this Queen’s Speech about a referendum they dare not hold. And that is the draft Bill for a referendum on the Euro.
There is one thing surely on which we can all agree. No one believes that the Government will call a Euro referendum before the next general election. So why on earth are we wasting any time on it?
On regional assemblies we are being given referenda we don’t want. On the euro we are being given a referendum that won’t be called. But on the new Constitution for Europe – a measure of the utmost significance – we are being given no referendum at all.
No-one could say that the late Hugo Young was a Eurosceptic. Indeed the Prime Minister recently paid a handsome and well-deserved tribute to him. But the Prime Minister would do well to listen carefully to the wise words Mr Young wrote in July when he said:
“..this change in the shape of the EU is indeed constitutional, does mark something pretty big, and merits the thumbprint of the nation to endorse it.”
There is now total confusion at the heart of his government. The Prime Minister said that the Euro Constitution is good for Britain. The Chancellor has said it’s bad for Britain. The Prime Minister has told us that the Constitution is essential for enlargement. The Foreign Secretary has now said that it isn’t.
That is why the Prime Minister won’t hold a referendum. That is why he won’t even try to persuade the British people that this Constitution is either good or essential. He cannot even persuade the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Foreign Secretary. No wonder he won’t allow the country a say.
After all, it’s not as though the Government is against consultation.
This evening the Prime Minister will be launching what is pretentiously described as a `conversation with the nation’.
It won’t come as much of a surprise to the nation to learn that this conversation will be rather one-sided.
On Sunday the Leader of the House was asked by Jeremy Vine what would happen if, in this conversation, the people said they didn’t want top up fees.
He replied:
`Well indeed but er…’
`Well the point I’m making is that top-up fees are an issue which are current now, today, this year, in this coming year, in the coming couple of years’.
So that’s clear then.
But what’s this conversation with the nation about?
Again the Leader of the House was crystal clear.
`Because’, he said, `in the context of a long term future… that is, that was what the Prime Minister was talking about and not in respect of you know, the need for reform’.
We all know the real conversation that the Prime Minister needs to have. He needs to have a conversation with his next door neighbour. The current situation makes you wonder who’s the leader and who’s being led. Real Prime Ministers lead their Chancellors. He follows his.
And what is the Prime Minister’s response? He can’t get his way on policy; he can’t get his way on strategy: all he can do is deny his Chancellor a seat on the National Executive.
The Prime Minister may strut his stuff on the world stage but when it comes to domestic policy, never in recent history has a Prime Minister been so weak, so feeble, so utterly unable to do what he wants. And all this with a huge majority in this House. How utterly humiliating for him – and how very damaging for our country.
“Outmanoeuvred” by a “politically obsessed Chancellor” – not my words Mr Speaker, but those of the RHM for Hartlepool, probably the world’s leading authority on his ten-year feud.
Is it any wonder that this Government has given up on delivery?
You don’t have to take my word for it.
We have it on no less an authority than the Trade and Industry Secretary. She has admitted – and these are her words –`when we talked about delivery, that may have been something of a mistake’.
`We are not in government’, she said, `in order to show that we can be more competent than the Conservative Party was’.
She knows – as we all do – that Labour promised far too much and has delivered far too little.
They know they can’t deliver. They know they are incompetent. They know they have failed.
And this Gracious Speech will do nothing to remedy that.
We could be doing so much better. After all, we are the world’s fourth largest economy. We are a nation of hard working, energetic and enterprising people. We have great potential. But this Government, which promised so much, has let our country down.
In the absence of real reform, its only answer is higher tax. When that fails, it can only turn to higher taxes still. They approach every problem with an open wallet and an empty mind. They are taxing and spending and failing.
After six and a half years, this is a Prime Minister who has lost his grip and a Government which has lost its way.
They are running out of steam and they know it.
We need better schools – but this Government gives us top-up fees. We need safer streets – but this Government just abolishes the Lord Chancellor. We need improved hospitals – but this Government gives us legislation on the euro.
This Prime Minister and his Government are simply unequal to the task.
They have run out of ideas.
They have run out of money.
And they are running out of time.
All they have to offer is open wallets and empty minds.
This Queen’s Speech should have included a programme that delivers real power to patients, to parents and to front line professionals. It should have included a programme that gives value for taxpayers’ money and security for the national interest.
But that programme will only be put in place by a different government.
A government that boosts the economy rather than chains it. That implements serious reform of our public services. A government that gives real power to people.
That government is the next Conservative Government. The sooner it comes the better life will be for the people of our country.”
