It’s almost impossible to describe the gorgeous mediaeval flummery of the State Opening of Parliament and the fact that Her Majesty carries off the whole occasion with such immense dignity and sheer class makes it hard to criticise.
The order of service is magnificent and, inter alia, instructs the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms and the Captain of the Yeoman of the Guard to follow the Master of the Horse, Gold Stick in Waiting and other grandees wearing robes over full dress uniform with Stars of Orders limited strictly to two in number.
My favourite instruction refers to the Crown, the Cap of Maintenance and the Sword of State to be carried under escort to the Sovereign’s Entrance after the Gentlemen arms have handed in their axes.
After all this wonderful ritual we get down to the actual Queen’s Speech and this spells out the government’s priorities for the next session of parliament (the Parliament that was prorogued last week ran from May 2010 until the end of April 2012).
Her Majesty spoke for seven and a half minutes by my reckoning and – like most people – I immediately clocked what was left out as much as the included content.
This was a thin, anorexic, Queen’s Speech that sharply demonstrated the tensions between the yellow and blue wings of the Coalition Government.
An Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill is promised and this will not address the issue of directors’ pay but make it far easier for employers to sack their staff.
The Bill should contain measures to introduce the Green Investment Bank that the last government brought in before the election – it is welcomed!
There will be a Banking Reform Bill that should require retail banks to hold funds within a fixed ratio of capital to lending. This is already very much watered down by rapacious banking lobbyists and I don’t see it bringing about a sea change in the attitudes of the bankers.
Implementing the Vickers Report does not address the crisis of lending to small businesses and the coalition has sold the pass on this one. Labour’s proposals for a British Bank for small businesses look a lot more positive to me!
One juicy proposal is the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill which one the one hand creates yet another tasty quango and on the other seeks to legislate against supermarkets retrospectively changing the contracts with food suppliers and farmers.
With no apparent sense of irony the coalition have announced a Small Donations Bill to build on Gordon Brown’s Gift Aid policy which has proved so popular and successful.
This will help those giving up to £5,000 but the same government is calling large charitable donors tax dodgers and bringing an end to the major donations that have done so much for the nation until now.
The Energy Bill looks interesting but – lo and behold – it not only creates yet another quango but makes it far more financially viable to build nuclear power stations.
An ending of the “big six” monopoly of energy supply would have been a far better option but this is clearly got the fingerprints of the blue end of the coalition all over it. The people who sold off our utility companies to France and Germany now seem hell bent on smoothing the path for French nuclear power stations.
If anyone has trouble sleeping I’ll go through the details of the Pensions Bill with you but – in essence – it merges the basic and second state pensions into a single £140 pw flat rate pension but brings forward the date of increasing pensionable age to 67.
Nothing to correct the horror of the “Granny Tax” and the abolition of Savings Credit. I see much debate ahead!
I’m writing this in my Westminster office as what looked like nearly half a million public servants from police officers and paramedics to nurses and UK Border Force staff protesting bitterly at the implications of the Public Services Pensions Bill and the unilateral increase in pension contributions.
We will speak later of this as I have to meet a group of police officers from Ealing North – and they are not in a good mood.
The Queen’s Speech also abolishes the Audit Commission but sets up at least two new quangos which may provide succour to those Liberal Democrat MPs bound to lose their seats in 2015.
The Children and Families Bill contains a classic piece of political double speak. It refers to support for separated fathers to be able to have a relationship with the children of the relationship but then confirms that this must only apply when safe and in the child’s best interests.
Exactly what the position is at the moment - or did the coalition really believe that contact time was freely approved when it was not safe and not in the child’s best interests. Heaven help us.
The Office of the Children’s Commissioner will be expanded – as all quangos do – but the remit is not fully defined.
There is one foully insulting section which suggests that local authorities like Ealing delay approval for fostering and adoption out of some irrelevant impetus of political correctness.
Ealing’s Fostering and Adoption service is simply one of the very best in the land and to suggest that they would ever deny a child a safe and loving home because of some prejudice is not a suggestion that will be made within my hearing without a very sharp reaction indeed.
Over the years I’ve seen scores of people complaining that Ealing will not approve them as carers or adopters. A little investigation swiftly reveals why they have been turned down and I dread this issue being viewed through a “Daily Mail” prism instead of in the light of serious, sensible and caring professionals of whom we are immensely fortunate to have such a fine group of in Ealing.
The much trumpeted House of Lords Reform Bill has as much chance of coming into law as I have of filling the right back slot at Craven Cottage.
This is a dog biscuit for the Liberal Democrats and will be hoofed into the long ermine with scarcely a second thought. A British FBI is intended to be set up and this means yet another change of direction from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency brought in ny the last government. The headline refers to a new offence of drug-driving (already an offence but not drug specific) but the major impact will be the establishment and huge employment possibilities of the new National Crime
Agency. Let’s see how the staff numbers stack up!
The Communications Data Bill now appears as a downgraded draft Bill which will please those constituents who have been sending me identical e-mails underlining their fears of intelligence agencies accessing communications data. Another u-turn but I suspect we’ll see this emerge from the grave one moonlit night.
Croatia will join the EU with UK support and – you will be mightily relieved to hear – “My Government will work to support a secure and stable Afghanistan”.
There’s even a hint that the succession to the Crown legislation could be amended to remove the bar on Roman Catholics and women becoming Head of State.
What’s missing?
Well – after all the hoo hah about same sex marriages there’s nary a word in the Queen’s Speech.
To those of us in Northolt, Greenford and Perivale there is one massive, glaring echoing omission. There is no mention at all of High Speed 2! By not announcing this in the Queen’s Speech the timetable for the biggest and most disruptive infrastructure project in the history of this nation just became a little less likely.
Should we be delighted? Absolutely not.
The threat of HS2 causes the shadow of blight that lies like a storm cloud along the Central Line. Delaying the matter makes matters worse and gives no certainty.
Like most of us I wanted a Queen’s Speech to give hope to the unemployed, the homeless and those struggling to make ends meet.
I was disappointed – not for myself but for the thousands of decent people in Ealing North who don’t buy the hollow rhetoric of “we’re all in this together” and who don’t see any return on the cutting of the 50p tax rate to the benefit of millionaires who trouser an additional £40,000 each.
This was a missed opportunity of a Queen’s Speech that will do nothing to move us out of the double dip recession that we are languishing in.
My respect for Her Majesty the Queen increased when I watched her read this anaemic litany of platitudes and malice with a straight face.
She is a star – this speech fails to shine.
