Queen’s Speech

My Lords, we are almost halfway through the list of speakers in this interesting debate. As with all debates where a series of subjects is put together, it has been rather ragbag, but, so far, it has been of extremely high quality. I have no doubt that it will continue to be of a similar high quality after I have spoken. I intend to be fairly discursive, because the two things on which I would have concentrated are the Bills coming to your Lordships' House very soon, the Marine and Coastal Access Bill and the other Bill for which the Minister could not think of a short title—I thought that it might be called the LocDemEdCon Bill, which sounds a little nonsensical. Whether that sums up the contents of the Bill we will find out. I remain to be convinced that it is a Bill in which I really want to get involved, but, as always with the Minister, I am entirely open to persuasion that it is excellent. We will find out. I very much welcome the Marine and Coastal Access Bill, which has been a long time in gestation. It has had a lot of consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny, from which it benefits. It is solid legislation, and I look forward perhaps to improving it even more in your Lordships’ House. As far as both Bills are concerned, we are like greyhounds waiting in the slips to unleash ourselves on the new legislation, but since their Second Readings are next week, I do not see much point in saying much more about them today. I was very interested in the previous speech, made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about housing. As I am speaking today from the Back Bench and do not necessarily have to parrot party policy, I can say that I agree with a great deal of what she said. It is a great shame that, following the previous housing legislation, which was mainly about public sector and social housing, the Government have not taken the opportunity to bring forward legislation on the private rented sector, because so many of the housing problems in this country rest with it. I hope that the Government are thinking hard about that and will consider seriously many of the proposals put forward by the noble Baroness. I thought of talking entirely about housing, because the current position is dire. The supply of mortgages has dried up for most people. House-building in the private sector has collapsed. The supply of social housing is collapsing on the back partly of the collapse of private sector housing and Section 106 schemes not going ahead, and of the shortage of investment capital. The Government are taking welcome action on repossessions, but, as my noble friend Lady Hamwee said, they do not appear to be facing up to the potential scale of the problem, which could turn into a flood. However, I then read the speech by my honourable friend Sarah Teather in the Queen’s Speech debate in the House of Commons a couple of days ago. I thought that I could not possibly match or better it and saw no point in just repeating what she said, which I hope the Government will take extremely seriously, as I hope they will listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. A few people have spoken about transport. The spokesman from the Conservative Front Bench mentioned the welcome conversion of the Conservatives to high-speed rail. I am never churlish when people are converted to a good idea, although I think that their proposal does not go far enough. What this country has to look forward to, over a period which may be beyond the lifetimes of many of us here, is a high-speed rail network of the kind which other European countries have. Just one line to the north of England which then zigzags across the Pennines is not enough, but, nevertheless, the Conservatives’ conversion is welcome. My noble friend Lord Mar and Kellie also mentioned the need for a high-speed rail line. He did not say so, but it is clear that he wants it to go as far as Scotland, which is quite right. My noble friend is very lucky in that he lives in a town in Scotland called Alloa. He will think that he is very luck for all sorts of reasons, but one of them is that Alloa has just been reconnected to the rail network of the United Kingdom, thanks to the foresight of the Scottish Parliament and Executive. I could make political comments about Liberal involvement, but I shall not—nevertheless, it is true. Noble Lords will know that I am a keen supporter of the campaign to reintroduce the missing rail link on the north of England trans-Pennine route between Colne and Skipton—there is a very active group called SELRAP. On Sunday morning, I had the great pleasure of being on Colne railway station to meet a train from Skipton, but instead of coming 15 miles along what would be the direct route, it had done a 75-mile diversion via Shipley, Leeds, Bradford, Hebden Bridge, Accrington and Burnley, finally arriving at Colne with 80 very happy people on it—perhaps there had been a bar on the train. It was the first ever excursion train to bring people to Colne; all those in the past took people away from it to places such as Blackpool. It was a good occasion. But there is a serious point here: there is a lot of expectation that government policy on the railways is changing; there is talk of a programme of electrification; and we hope that we will embark on a programme of reopening lines not just in Scotland and Wales but in England. I then thought that I would talk about the uplands, because, from an agricultural, tourism, economic and climate change point of view, there is increasing understanding that the uplands of England and the UK require more government attention. The noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, talked about agriculture, but my concern is agriculture in the uplands, because, unless hill farmers throughout the country can continue to carry out their jobs and trade, everything else that takes place there, from tourism to recreation and maintenance of the uplands in a satisfactory condition to prevent them degrading and contributing seriously to carbon dioxide emissions, will be of no avail. It is an important issue that some of us will want to come back to during the course of this Parliament. I look forward very much to discussion and debate on the two Bills. I was interested by the challenging comments of the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, on local democracy and community enterprise. I am not sure that I agree with him on everything, but if that is the standard of the debate that we are to have on the new local democracy Bill, it will be enjoyable after all.