Labour turns annual Queen’s speech into party broadcast

David Sapsted, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 18. 2009 9:06PM UAE / November 18. 2009 5:06PM GMT

Queen Elizabeth, on the arm of her husband Prince Philip, on her way to deliver her annual speech in Parliament in London yesterday Carl De Souza / AFP / WPA

LONDON // Queen Elizabeth was put in the invidious constitutional position of effectively kicking off Britain’s general election campaign in favour of the ruling Labour Party yesterday.

Though strictly neutral in political matters, the queen had to fulfil the annual, historical chore of addressing both houses of parliament to outline “her” government’s legislative programme for the coming year.

In days of yore, of course, it really was the monarch’s own legislation. In these, more democratic times, the current occupant of the throne merely reads out the plans drawn up by whatever party happens to be in power.

What made yesterday’s seven-minute recitation different was that everyone in the United Kingdom knows that a general election must be held by June 3 next year, with May 6 the most likely date.

That meant that all the proposed laws outlined by the queen amounted to little more than a Labour Party manifesto, because there is so little time left on the parliamentary calendar. That means that few, if any, of the proposals have even an outside chance of being passed into law before parliament must be dissolved.

Hence, David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives, the main opposition party, dismissed yesterday’s Queen Speech as “little more than a Labour press release on [Buckingham] Palace parchment”.

Describing the whole exercise as a “waste of time”, Mr Cameron added: “This Queen’s Speech is not about the good of the country; this Queen’s Speech is about trying to save the Labour Party. It’s a whole lot of bills just legislating some intent but not actually doing anything.”

Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, went further and said the queen should not have been put in the position of delivering any speech and that, instead, parliament should spend its remaining time passing measures to clean up politics after a year of political scandal surrounding parliamentarians’ fiddling of their generous allowances.

Labour ministers tried their best to maintain that the speech represented business as usual, rather than setting the framework for the election. “The key message is the same as with every Queen’s Speech. This is about governing; it’s not about electioneering,” claimed Lord [Peter] Mandelson, the business secretary and Labour’s main political strategist.

“It will be for the public to judge whether they believe these policies are relevant, achievable and affordable.”

The policies outlined by the queen had a definite, populist feel to them, however, and included a promise of free personal care for 280,000 elderly and disabled people with the highest needs; new guarantees on health care and schooling, and a crackdown on bonuses paid to “reckless” bankers.

Additionally, there was a pledge to legislate to cut the UK’s record deficit in half within four years although there was no detail how this might be achieved.

The current, overall UK debt stands at £825 billion (Dh5 trillion) and the country is due to borrow a record £175bn over the next two years.

There was also a promise to work for peace in the Middle East and achieve an international ban on cluster bombs, plus action on more domestic matters such as anti-social behaviour, flood prevention, carbon capture, Scottish and Welsh devolution, child poverty and constitutional reform.

Harriet Harman, the deputy Labour leader, said “most” of the proposed bills would be passed before the next election, an undertaking that Mr Clegg pointed out was most unlikely to be honoured because there were only 70 working days left in the parliamentary calendar before the House of Commons must break up for the election.

Additionally, Thomas Galbraith, now Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative leader in the House of Lords, warned that peers could block much of the legislation in the upper chamber.

“We all know that this Queen’s Speech is all about better electioneering and politics rather than the better governance of the country,” he told The Guardian.

“If these measures were so important, they would have been in the legislative programme last year rather than being left to the last moment of the fifth term. That does not suggest they have the greatest priority or urgency.”

However, the prime minister, Gordon Brown, insisted that improving care for the elderly was a priority for his government “because our current system is simply not fit for purpose”.

He told the Daily Mail: “It is not right that people already struggling with the loss of independence, who have worked hard all their lives, saved for their retirement, are being forced to run down their savings or sell their homes to fund their care.”

Mr Brown said the proposals in the Queen’s Speech would “protect those with the greatest needs” from having to pay for their care while enabling them to stay in their own homes.

dsapsted@thenational.ae