Queen Speech 2009

David

Comment on Queen's Speech is just another Labour press release (November 23rd, 2009 at 15:09)

David Cameron Queen Speech 2009 : Queen’s Speech is just another Labour press release

Before turning to the Queen’s Speech, can I turn to two other international matters: Afghanistan and Copenhagen.

Last weekend, we had two further reminders of the sacrifices our Armed Forces are making on our behalf.

We all want to pay tribute to Rifleman Andrew Fentiman from 7th Battalion The Rifles. He was a member of the Territorial Army who volunteered to serve in Afghanistan.

We should also pay tribute to Corporal Loren Marlton-Thomas from 33 Engineer Regiment.

They both died serving our country.

We should honour their memory.

We should look after their families.

We should never forget what they have done for all of us.

We not only support our Forces in Afghanistan. We also support the reason they are in Afghanistan – and that is to help deliver security and stop Afghanistan from once again becoming again a haven for terrorists.

But I believe we must be clear about the future – and the different options we face.

One option, favoured by some, is an immediate withdrawal.

I do not believe this would be in our interests.

The Taliban would take over a large part of the country.

There would be a danger of new terror training camps coming back.

It would imperil Pakistan, after all a nuclear power.

And it would be incredibly damaging to NATO and our vital alliance with the United States.

But the second option – the status quo – is also unacceptable.

We cannot go on as we are.

Taking ground, sometimes at great cost, only to relinquish it later to the Taliban.

Over a year ago the Prime Minister told us how our troops had heroically delivered a generator to the Kajaki Dam.

But 15 months later that generator still isn’t working and frankly that dam is almost as dangerous as ever.

So more of the same – two steps forward, one and a half steps back – is just not tenable.

We cannot carry on doing for the next eight years what we have been doing for the last eight years.

So isn’t the right option, as General McChrystal recommends, a military surge, to protect the populated areas, and increase the rate at which we train up the Afghans, combined, vitally, with a proper political strategy?

That political strategy must place a much greater emphasis on dealings with provincial and district leaders, as well as a much tougher approach to President Karzai.

It must be accompanied by the appointment of a strong international figure to help drive it forward.

And it should be combined in our view with the establishment of a permanent group of Afghanistan’s regional neighbours.

Last week the Prime Minister said he expected an announcement from Washington within the next few days.

This was immediately corrected by the White House.

I hope the Prime Minister will tell us when he now expects this announcement to be made, and that he is being fully involved in all the consultations.

On the vital matter of climate change, we desperately want the Government to succeed at Copenhagen.

I believe the Prime Minister is right to go personally to Copenhagen, and I hope other world leaders will do the same.

Does he agree with me that what is required is not a partial accord or a political declaration, but a full agreement with immediate practical effect?

Mr Speaker, let me turn to the Gracious Speech.

Now, there were some good things in the speech – like home-school contracts and transparency over pay – not least because they were proposed from these Benches.

The Gracious Speech even says the Government will “respond” to proposals on high speed rail.

I was glad to see that – as, after all, they were our proposals in the first place.

But what is most striking about this speech is what is missing.

The Prime Minister has just made a great long speech on immigration.

But where is the Immigration Bill in the Queen’s Speech?

Last year he promised regulatory budgets to relieve the burden on business.

He told us they could “transform the culture of Whitehall”.

Where are they?

The highlight of last year’s programme – once again taken directly from the Conservatives – was directly elected police representatives, which the Prime Minister promised would “give local people more control”.

Where have they gone?

They are not in the Queen’s Speech.

And what about the three letters that I believe should be in any Queen’s Speech: NHS.

Not a mention.

It is clear: the NHS is not this Government’s priority.

What the Prime Minister is trying to do here is basically legislate a whole series of ideas saying that virtue is good, and then try to dare his opponents to vote against them.

We’re not falling for that one.

So his election campaign has just collapsed; perhaps we could now get on with the election.

If this “dividing line” is so important, why isn’t it in the Queen’s Speech?

No mention of the NHS. No mention of this vital dividing line.

This Prime Minister is so incompetent he failed to put his own dividing line in his own Queen’s Speech.

Then there’s the biggest omission of all, and frankly it will infuriate the British people who we are here to represent.

The Prime Minister said the whole reason for delaying the election, the whole reason he couldn’t go to the country this summer, was because he wanted to clean up the mess of MPs’ expenses.

Yet there is no mention of expenses or the Kelly report in the Queen’s Speech.

To implement Kelly, to clean up expenses, there are 11 separate measures that still need to be passed into law.

So where is the legislation?

Where are the laws that we were promised?

Why aren’t they in the Queen’s Speech?

Let me make this offer to the Prime Minister.

If he brings forward legislation to implement the rest of Kelly, we will support it and help him pass it through this House and the House of Lords.

I will give way to the Prime Minister so he can stand up and say that he will bring forward this legislation and together we can take it through Parliament.

Will he do it?

No one watching will understand why this vital work isn’t being done in this Parliament.

Why don’t we show them that we meant what we said?

Instead of the measures in the Queen’s Speech – most of which won’t become law by the next election – the expenses changes, the Kelly changes, could become law by the next election.

So let me give him another chance.

Let him stand up now and tell us that together we can pass the laws to implement Kelly in full.

He tells us he is serious about cleaning up politics, but when it comes to the crunch, absolutely nothing.

What is the point of this Government?

What else has he got to do? This is the shortest Queen’s Speech since 1997. They’ve run out of money, run out of time, run out of ideas. And we’ve just seen from the Prime Minister they’ve run out of courage as well.

Mr Speaker, the background to this Speech are the most difficult circumstances for our country for a generation.

More than anything else, there is an economic crisis, with the longest recession since the war and the worst public finances in living memory.

The budget deficit poses the greatest threat to our economy, to the recovery, to the future.

All he says in this Queen’s Speech is that he will legislate to halve the deficit.

But there’s not a single new measure to make this happen.

So how’s it going to work?

As an economist who served the Bank of England says on the front page of the Financial Times, his plan to half the deficit by passing a law is a complete “con”.

To address this issue directly would have been in the best traditions of his Party.

In the past, Labour Prime Ministers – like Callaghan – and Labour chancellors, like Roy Jenkins, did in the end try and do the right thing – not the popular thing. They actually started to try to mend the country’s finances after the irresponsible spending spree of a Labour Government.

Why won’t this Prime Minister do the right thing?

We won’t he think of the national interest.

One Cabinet Minister this week boasted that this was intended to be the most political Queens Speech in the last 12 years.

This lot are actually proud of the fact that, instead of trying to govern in the national interest, or pass laws to improve the lot of the country, all they are trying to do is embarrass the Conservative Party.

What a pathetic way to run a Government.

The great irony is that they are not even very good at these dividing lines.

Remember what happened to the last one in the summer.

Week after week they boasted about Labour investment versus Tory 10 per cent cuts.

Then we saw their own leaked Treasury documents and what did they have plans for? 10 per cent cuts.

Only this Prime Minister could draw a dividing line and find himself on the wrong side of it.

This Queen’s Speech is a time to judge the Government – not only on the last 12 years, but the last two and a half years when this Prime Minister’s been in charge.

And there can only be one conclusion: this Government has been a monumental failure.

Every promise he’s made has turned to dust.

He promised “full employment”.

In fact unemployment is almost half a million higher than when he became Chancellor.

He promised to make Britain “the great global success story of this century”.

Our economy has just been overtaken by Italy.

And he promised three million new homes.

That was his boast when he became leader.

In fact house-building in England today is at its lowest level since 1947.

Think back to those big promises on the steps of Downing Street.

That his Government would be a government of all the talents.

That he would always be prudent on the economy.

And that his moral compass would guide him in everything he did.

Each one of those claims has been completely discredited.

Take the Government of all the Talents.

Where are they all now?

No longer tethered to the Government – they’ve wandered off.

Lord Carter – the digital guru – now a management consultant.

Lord Malloch-Brown – the UN expert – now an adviser to Global Redesign.

And there’s Lord Digby Jones – now back in business.

But at least he’s still making speeches.

I have, for the sake greater accuracy, obtained a copy of his latest effort.

This is what the minister who the Prime Minister appointed had to say.

“Today we have a tired, stale Government”.

“It’s a big, big six months ahead… a General Election… cannot come too quickly”.

Then, looking back on his period in Government, he had this to say: “The trouble with Socialism”, he said, now having seen

it work from the inside, is pretty soon “you run out of spending other people’s money”.

I couldn’t have out it better for myself.

Darzi. Carter. Vadera. Malloch-Brown. Digby Jones.

All gone.

The only jobs this Prime Minister has created are for his cronies – all of whom have repaid his generosity by leaving his Government at the first opportunity – but of course keeping their well-upholstered seats in the House of Lords.

Never has so much ermine been wasted.

Never have so many stoats died in vain.

Never mind jobs for the boys – under this Prime Minister it’s stoats for the goats.

The Prime Minister’s main promise on the steps of Downing Street – indeed his whole qualification for the job – was his economic stewardship.

But everything he told us has turned out to be wrong.

He promised to end boom and bust.

In fact he’s delivered the longest and deepest bust since records began.

He said we were best prepared.

He said we would lead the world to recovery.

In fact the rest of the world – America, France, Germany, the Eurozone – are out of recession and we’re still in it.

His whole specialism was supposed to be financial services, regulation, the future of banking.

Yet in this country we’ve had the biggest bank bailout in the world; the biggest bank run in Europe; and, proportionate to the size of the economy, more support pumped in from taxpayers into the banking system than in any other major economy.

And, after all this, the Governor of the Bank of England’s verdict is there’s been “little real reform”.

What was supposed to be this Prime Minister’s greatest strength has turned out to be his greatest weakness.

The Financial Services Bill in the Queen’s Speech today will not help, as it keeps the failed tripartite system in place.

That system needs to go – and with a Conservative Government it will.

And what about the great moral compass we were promised?

In the last three years we’ve had slogans borrowed – taken directly – from the BNP about British Jobs for British Workers; the Prime Minister’s own personally appointed Downing Street spokesman smearing members of the opposition; and the abolition of the 10p tax band – a Labour Government hitting the lowest earners in the country.

And I have to say to Hon Members opposite: if you thought the abolition of the 10p tax was bad, wait for the small print of the Government’s new care service.

Those benefits that millions of elderly people rely on – Attendance Allowance, Disability Living Allowance – their Government is planning to scrap them.

We will fight that every step of the way.

The last two years have not just been a moral failure for the Prime Minister.

They have been a monumental failure for our country.

And if we’re going to make sure this failure is never repeated we need to understand the reasons behind it.

There’s the Labour belief that the answer to every problem is just more big government and more spending.

We’ve seen the welfare budget rise but the poorest have got poorer and there are more of them.

We’ve seen the budget for affordable housing quadruple, but the number of new social homes built has been cut in half.

The next failure is that Whitehall always knows best.

We’ve had nearly 50 Criminal Justice Acts, and over 3,000 new offences, but violent crime is up by nearly 70 per cent.

We’ve seen nearly £1 billion spent on truancy initiatives, but the number of children skipping school is up by 45 per cent.

And the greatest failure of all can be traced directly back to this Prime Minister: political calculation dressed up as a moral conviction.

When you look behind the curtain at the great clunking machine of this Government, all you see is someone frantically pulling levers and pushing buttons – not trying to improve the country, but desperately trying to relaunch his failing political career and somehow get one over on his opponents.

Instead of some half-baked Queens Speech and delayed general election, we need an immediate election and a real Queen’s Speech.

A real Queen’s Speech would acknowledge how broke the country is, and have a proper plan to reduce the deficit.

We aren’t just talking about the deficit.

But setting out what should be done about it.

Yes we will take out the waste, the bureaucracy, the ID cards, and all the Labour nonsense, but we have made the tough choices too.

A real Queen’s Speech would acknowledge the tragedy of unemployment, with one in five young people not getting a job, and introduce proper welfare reform involving the private and voluntary sectors and paying them by results.

A real Queen’s Speech wouldn’t tinker with the education system, but would break open the state monopoly, allowing new schools to be set up, and giving parents more choice.

A real Queen’s Speech would mean real reform of the NHS – real choice for patients, real transparency, with health outcomes published online so that doctors are accountable to their patients.

Instead we got a Queens Speech which is just a Labour press release on Palace parchment.

He’s not legislating on the measures the country needs. He’s desperately trying a few tricks to save his own skin.

And when the country is crying out for real change, are we really going to be subjected to six more months of endless relaunches, bogus legislation, these fake dividing lines he keeps on going on about.

The simple fact that even this Prime Minister cannot ignore is that some time in the next six months he is going to have to stop dithering, leave the bunker, go to the Palace and finally ask what we’ve been calling for the last three years – a dissolution and general election.

Instead of wasting the country’s time and inflicting further damage, why doesn’t he just get on with it?”

Queen's Speech is just another Labour press release