Debate on the Address

We want a referendum now, and the hon. Gentleman can help us. He and every one of his colleagues at the last election promised a referendum. If he can stick to his promise and vote with us in the Division Lobby, we can have the referendum that he promised his constituents. We have been told—the Prime Minister, having said that he would not brief the media, has briefed the media—that the one thing that would be in the Prime Minister's speech today was the right for anyone with children to request flexible working. Yet again, that is something that we announced, at our conference last year. Yet again, we are leading and they are following. A member of the Prime Minister's own Cabinet said the other week:"““We've had Downing Street on the phone asking us to do statements when we haven't really got anything to say.””" No wonder the Prime Minister did not want an election. Listen to what a Labour party spokesman said recently:"““The manifesto was thin. The Labour 'war book' for the election was empty. The truth is, we have no new policies…The fact is that if we had called the election, we were intellectually as well as financially bankrupt.””" One cannot put it better than the Prime Minister's good friend and old Cabinet colleague, Lord Falconer. He said that if this Government do not"““set out…our vision for the future of the UK…then we will be offering drift not leadership, and the past not the future.””" I could not have put it better myself. No wonder he is not getting his pension. We now see a Prime Minister bereft of vision, bending with the wind, buffeted by events. There is day after day of dithering. One minute, school surpluses are going to be confiscated; then, they are not. One minute, bins are going to be taxed; then, they are not—then again, perhaps they are. Entrepreneurs are going to pay capital gains tax; no, they are not. Look at the small print—they still are going to pay capital gains tax. Then, the biggest U-turn of all, with the Prime Minister inviting a hand-picked journalist into the bunker of No. 10 Downing street to tell the nation that the general election that he had planned for, prepared for and paid for was off. Say what you like about Tony Blair—at least he was decisive. Has not the only change been to swap a strong Prime Minister for a weak one? This lack of vision, this weakness, would not matter so much if the Government were halfway competent, but this is a Government who are letting 2,000 prisoners out of jail early every month. This is a Government who allowed 8,000 people to die from hospital infections. This is a Government who somehow lost track of 300,000 migrants inside a week, so we were all pretty astonished to read from one of the Prime Minister's spin doctors in a Sunday paper:"““We've established our competence at running the country””." Hold on a minute—these are the people whose own laboratory caused the outbreak of foot and mouth. These are the people who have seen the first run on a British bank for 140 years. These are the people who cannot tell us from one day to the next how many migrant workers there are in the UK. If we want just one example of the absolute bankruptcy of this Government, let us take the slogan that the Prime Minister wheels out every week: British jobs for British workers. Yes, if only he could see how embarrassed his Labour MPs are, how they shudder when he utters those words. I have done a bit of work on this little slogan of the Prime Minister's. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions told us that there should be no doubt. It is, he said,"““explicitly a British jobs for British people campaign””." We asked the House of Commons Library, and it said:"““There is apparently nothing in the detail of the proposals to suggest that foreign nationals will be excluded from any of the initiatives if they happen to live in the area where the locally based schemes operate.””" So there we have it: the reality is that the Prime Minister has no intention of providing British jobs for British workers, because he knows that it would be illegal under EU law. His proposals will not help British people working in Britain any more than they will help Italian people working in Britain or Polish people working in Britain. That is the truth about British jobs for British workers. I did a bit more research to find out where he got his slogans from: he borrowed one off the National Front; he borrowed another off the British National party. Where was his moral compass when he was doing that? I will tell the House what should have been in the Queen's Speech. In this new age of freedom, we need to give people more opportunity and power over their lives. That means a supply-side revolution in our schools; cutting stamp duty to help people on to the housing ladder; and more power for local government. In this age of unease, we need to strengthen families and make our society more responsible. That means ending the couple penalty in the benefits system; backing marriage in the tax system; and radical welfare to get people off benefits and into work. In this age of new insecurity, we need to make our country safer and greener. That means proper prison reform; it means real police reform. That is what Britain needs: solving long-term problems, not short-term political tricks; a clear vision for the future, instead of a tired and cynical Prime Minister who has forgotten what he is trying to achieve; and consistent, strong leadership, instead of a weak Prime Minister who cannot stick to anything for longer than five minutes. That is the change that people want, and that is the change that our party will deliver.