The Queen’s Speech focused firmly on delivery issues and had two main themes. First, the reduction of crime and anti-social behaviour and, second, further reform and renewal within our public services.
The speech contained nineteen bills and three draft bills, many packed with new mechanisms designed to give frontline service providers greater scope to exercise their own professional judgment in driving up standards.
The health bill has received most attention in this respect, since it combines a number of modernising assumptions which illustrate the way ahead across all the public services.
Foundation trusts will, for example, free up the best performing hospitals to make the most of their resources locally and, crucially, encourage them to develop other revenue streams to enhance further their own service standards. It also creates a commission for health audit and inspection, and one for social care, which will enforce standards and enable judgements to be made about where best practice is being applied and where local managers need more help.
The health bill will also introduce the new GP contract. This measure is still, of course, subject to negotiation following professional resistance. Scottish GPs, however, have already accepted the new contracts in principle and this will place their English counterparts, who are richer in private work, under pressure to agree to the new terms before the bill begins its passage.
The underlying debate around the health bill has been dominated by the Treasury’s insistence that the new resources put into health must lead to empirically provable improvements in output. It will be essential, therefore, that those establishments with strong track records lead the way in proving that local management can use these greater powers, both to deliver those outputs and to generate new revenue in ways which do not erode the principle of high-quality medical care, free at the point of use.
However, as a Scottish MP I am particularly interested in the communications bill and the EU accession bill. These bills deal with powers reserved by Westminster, over which the Scottish parliament does not have a say.
The communications bill, a monster on which I will sit for ten hours a week for many weeks to come, will introduce much lighter-touch regulation to the broadcasting industry. It will place telecommunications, broadcasting and radio spectrum trading onto a 21st-century footing, which recognises how technological development has blurred the boundaries between these previously discrete industries.
Most significantly, the five present regulators, including the ITC and OFTEL, will be merged into the new super-regulator OFCOM. And the rules on foreign ownership will be relaxed to provide interests outside Europe into the UK media market on equal terms with EU interests.
The EU accession bill will pave the way for the new member countries to join the EU, probably during next year in time for the 2004 European parliament elections. The ghost at the banquet here is Turkey, which will surely soon get a start date for negotiations on future accession. Membership befits this huge Islamic democracy on our doorstep, which has been an important security partner in NATO for many years.
There are many delivery measures within the Queen’s Speech which represent a step-change in modernising service delivery in England and Wales. They will excite both the political classes and the general public and they will be highly influential, I hope, on equivalent policies in Scotland. It seems to me, though, that the crucial moment in the UK public service dialectic, as old Karl Marx might have said, is now. For example, health is a devolved policy area, but policy decisions which enable employers to provide recruitment incentives not available in Scotland will have inevitable effects on recruitment and retention there. The implications for the whole UK, even for the bills which do not at face value apply to Scotland, are therefore both clear and profound.
Eric Joyce is MP for Falkirk West
I much prefer the American alternative to the Queen’s Speech: the President’s State of the Union address to Congress. Perhaps the British Prime Minister ought to kick off the parliamentary year with something similar. Now that we in the House of Commons have started to modernise our procedures, perhaps it’s time to look at modernising the Queen’s Speech!
Turning from delivery to substance, at the heart of this year’s Queen’s Speech was the reform of the criminal justice system, including further action against anti-social behaviour. If, as expected, the bill to tackle anti-social behaviour seriously restricts the use of air guns, so much the better. An increase in the age at which possession is legal, strict licensing and action against imitation weapons would all be welcomed in my constituency, not least by the police.
I also welcome the proposed change to the double jeopardy law so that serious criminals can be tried again if the evidence warrants it. I am unconvinced, though, that it is right to allow a defendant’s previous convictions to be disclosed to a jury as a matter of course.
The second theme of this Queen’s Speech was further public sector reform. This year’s public spending decisions have been defining moments for our Labour government. The Budget in March was the first for a generation in which a UK government has chosen to increase tax, not in response to economic difficulties, but to pay for better public services. Then the spending review in July, together with its predecessors, provided for the biggest increase in public spending for 30 years. Crucial though the level of public spending is, what you do with it is also important. Hence the importance of public sector reform.
I welcome the community care bill, which will ensure that local councils play their part in supporting older people and freeing up NHS beds. I also welcome long-overdue measures to give greater financial freedom to local councils but regret the fact that this may be restricted to a few ‘successful’ ones. If the present system is too restrictive – and it is – why should the benefits of greater financial freedom only accrue to the few?
Similarly, I am not persuaded of the need to create elite foundation hospitals. I cannot see how allowing only some hospitals to borrow money and keep the receipts from land sales will do anything other than benefit the better off at the expense of the rest. Nor does a general appeal to notions of choice and diversity provide any intellectual justification at all. My constituents in Bristol want more action to reduce waiting times. The choice of travelling to a foundation hospital in Gloucester is not at the top of their list of priorities.
I am delighted that, at last, we can resolve the issue of hunting with dogs. There is no doubt that the House of Commons will, for the umpteenth time, vote overwhelmingly for a complete ban. With the assurance that the Parliament Act would be invoked should the Lords continue to block the will of the elected chamber, I have no doubt that, at last, hunting with dogs will be banned. Bills to bring flexible opening hours and enable referenda on regional assemblies will also get my vote.
What would I have liked to see in the Queen’s Speech that was missing? Most importantly, I would have liked a bill to implement our 1997 manifesto commitment to introduce ‘enforceable civil rights for disabled people against discrimination in society or at work’. Labour has done a great deal to extend rights for disabled people but there is much unfinished business. There are significant areas in which disabled people still face discrimination on a daily basis – for example, in transport, housing and employment. We need a new civil rights bill urgently. The Queen’s Speech was not light on legislation. Nevertheless, time should be found for this.
Roger Berry is MP for Kingswood