Speech must be about nation's circumstances not just pomp
THIS Wednesday, a detachment of the Queen's bodyguard, the Yeomen of the Guard, will conduct a thorough search of the House of Commons' cellars, looking for gunpowder.
Then, when the all-clear has been given, Her Majesty will descend on Parliament in a horse-drawn carriage escorted by the Household Cavalry – but only after a member of the Government has been carted off in the other direction, as a 'hostage' to guarantee her safe return.
And finally, when she arrives in Westminster and takes up her position on Pugin's throne in the House of Lords, she will send her parliamentary representative, 'Black Rod', to summon MP's from the House of Commons, only for him to find the door slammed shut in his face.
It is only after he has struck the door three times with his silver mace that MPs will finally agree to grace Her Majesty with our presence.
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Such ceremony can only mean it is time for the 'Queen's Speech', the State opening of Parliament, where all parts of our legislature gather to hear the Queen, pictured right, read the Government's agenda for the next 18 months.
And, after the monstering, the Coalition endured in last Thursday's local elections and with the economy in double-dip recession, this Queen's Speech comes at a crucial moment for David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Coming at the half-way point between elections it represents an essential opportunity for them to project their future vision. And for the Labour Party to begin to suggest an alternative.
So what might the new programme hold for Stoke-on-Trent?
Well, some business, carried over from the previous session, is guaranteed.
We can expect new regulations for financial services to try to prevent the kind of City-led crash of 2008, from which we are still recovering. Alongside that will come a reformed system of funding for local government in an attempt to grant local authorities more control over their own affairs – although this could come at a terrible cost in terms of social equity across councils.
We can also expect an important piece of legislation on energy planning, with a bill to spell out how Britain can generate and pay for its needs while tackling climate change.
It is vital for Stoke-on-Trent that the Government gets its plans for electricity market reform right as so many of our jobs, in the ceramics sector and at companies like Michelin, depend on high levels of energy consumption in their manufacturing processes.
However, rather than focusing on boosting growth and rebalancing the British economy away from an over dependence on financial services, it looks as if the Government's main focus for the next year or so is on constitutional reform.
At the heart of the Queen's Speech will be a raft of new measures focusing on political change – from individual electoral registration to reform of the House of Lords.
Few Conservative MPs are in favour of these changes – and even fewer members of the House of Lords.
So we face the prospect of unrelenting Parliamentary trench warfare, even as the needs of the country come ever more pressing. What makes it more frustrating is that I am in favour of many of these improvements, if implemented in an inclusive and intelligent manner. But now does not seem the moment.
Instead, I would like to see a very different Queen's Speech because what we need is legislation designed to increase investment and productivity in the economy. This might include a National Investment Bank that could lend to small businesses still starved of cash.
Or a jobs guarantee strategy that could guarantee the long-term unemployed a job or apprenticeship of at least six months, so we don't face the terrible prospect of Spanish-style unemployment.
I am also attracted to the idea of a Community Reinvestment Fund, a one per cent tax levied on the turnover of the financial sector used to give the poorest members of our communities access to small loans through credit unions and mutuals, and take them away from the payday loan sharks who prey on the vulnerable in Stoke-on-Trent as elsewhere.
And what about a proper higher education bill to sort out the fees mess? A decent pensions bill to confront the crisis of collapsing pension provision? And why has the Government still done nothing about trying to reform social care in an affordable and just manner for our rapidly ageing society?
These are the urgent challenges confronting Britain, which I fear will be ducked this Wednesday.
As ever with this Government, there will be too much pomp and not enough purpose.
Comments
by mole10
Thursday, May 10 2012, 2:56PM
“I had to laugh at Dr Hill's view.
I wonder where we have heard this before?
No business ac***en by Whitehall leaders and nil by Westminster MPs.
The task is to fill up these positions from where?
Little people from Stoke perhaps?
I agree that hi-tech manufacturing is the natural form of progression but the current situation is still the age old problem of supply and demand.
There is no demand and the supply network is stagnating under a mass of QE. We live with inflation about to rise sharply.
Stagflation in one.
Huge profits for the pots, says the headlines.
Really? How excellent. How does it compare to pre 2008?”
by Tonyjohnt
Thursday, May 10 2012, 12:53PM
“Lords reform, Cleggy has got his finger on the pulse as usual - to be honest, I think of nothing else!”
by bettysenior
Thursday, May 10 2012, 11:36AM
“Nick Clegg's and the Coalition government's call to give priority to manufacturing is a laudable and an honourable task (9.05.12). But unfortunately it will not work. The reason, government and especially 'Whitehall' do not listen to anyone else but themselves. In the Blair years I together with forty of the world's leading minds that included eight Nobel Laureates advised the DTI on competitiveness, innovation (the most important commodity that we have as a country) and the founding of the NESTA. This worldwide eminent group advised in 1997 and 1998 that the UK should adopt an economic strategy based upon 'high-tech export driven manufacturing'. Exactly I believe what Mr. Clegg is saying today, but 15 years later. Therefore I can tell Mr. Clegg from this experience that senior civil servants do not listen and just do as they wish to do; just another exercise to them but the future ramifications for the people of the UK is immense. The problem, as it will be today, is that the so-called 'twenty something wiz-kids' in Whitehall had not a clue up to assistant director level. They were supposingly the best from Oxford and Cambridge but what they lacked most of all was business experience and the ways of the world. Only theory came out of their heads, for that is all that they had to offer. You may ask why are these assistant directors so important? The answer is that they are the highest level 'doers' in Whitehall and it is their analysis and reports that ministers base their decisions ultimately upon. What did the Nobel Laureates and the other leading minds make of all this, they simply said at the end of the two years that they had been simply wasting their time, even after attempting to educate the uneducated. Therefore my advice to Mr. Clegg is to get real advisers advising government and not the Whitehall elite who think that they know best but clearly the last decade and a half has proved that they do not. Only then may he get somewhere, but if he keeps the status quo in Whitehall, it will lead him and thus the country to nowhere and probable ruin again in the long term. Our young deserve a great deal better, for these unseen senior civil servants are constantly dabbling with their futures and where they will no doubt get it so terribly wrong again. Therefore I say to Mr. Clegg, use your intelligence for a change and sort out Whitehall, for that is where a great deal of the nation's dire problems emanate in reality. Whitehall needs 'new blood' like nothing else as it is our future that they will in many ways determine through government economic and business policy.
Dr David Hill
Chief Executive
World Innovation Foundation”
by mole10
Wednesday, May 09 2012, 9:36AM
“Honest intent to restore Catholicism by murdering everyone whom is not?”
by Mr_Jingles
Tuesday, May 08 2012, 11:23PM
“Isn't it a bit dodgy searching the cellars with candles to look for gun powder – Kaboom !!!”
by E_D_Wivens
Tuesday, May 08 2012, 10:08PM
“"The last honest man to enter Parliament was Guy Fawkes"
Actually the maxim is that he was the last man to enter Parliament with honest intent, which is somewhat different.”
by mole10
Tuesday, May 08 2012, 10:56AM
“Tristram forgets that the Conservative and labour Pensioner care ideas were thrown out by their own repected parties because they were quite simply ludicrous.
I openly challenge Tritram Hunt to say how this provision should be provided.
You are telling us that we need such a plan, so please inform us what it should be.
I presented mine during the 2010 election and I stand by it as being completely correct and reasonable.”
by focusboy
Monday, May 07 2012, 4:03PM
“Reminds me of the old saying:
The last honest man to enter Parliament was Guy Fawkes.”
by truestokie
Monday, May 07 2012, 1:02PM
“Could they please take all of them, as they all have proved to be the most incompetant bunch of liars this country as had the misfortune to be saddled with for the last 40 years.
Never before have politicians been so hated and reviled as they are now, and its growing stronger by the day.”