King’s Speech

We will therefore introduce a presumption in favour of suspending short custodial sentences. The offender would then serve their sentence in the community, where sentencers can impose strict requirements, such as electronic tags, curfews, exclusion zones, and bans on drink or drugs. If an offender breaches the terms of their suspended sentence, they could be recalled to prison to serve the rest of their sentence behind bars. As the Lord Chancellor recently announced, we will double the number of GPS tags available to the courts to ensure that relevant community sentence requirements can be electronically monitored to support compliance and help to deter further offending.

We will also expand the use of the successful home detention curfew scheme to allow more lower-risk prisoners on standard determinate sentences to be safely managed on electronic tags in the community, rather than in prison. Eligible offenders will be subject to strict curfews. When not at home, they will be expected to be at work or undertaking other core resettlement tasks, such as meeting their probation officer or attending addiction courses. This will enable them to reintegrate into law-abiding lives and even take up employment so that they can become contributing members of society once again.

These measures will also assist us in using our prison capacity effectively, ensuring that we can lock up dangerous criminals for longer without further criminalising redeemable offenders by trapping them in a cycle of reoffending. We also continue to make progress with our programme to build 20,000 new prison places—the most expansive prison build since the Victorian era. All these go together with other policies we have discussed previously in this House to provide more employment, training and education opportunities and accommodation for prisoners being released, which are contributing significantly to a reduction in reoffending rates.

However, we have been clear that safeguarding prison capacity in the longer term will require further changes to our approach. We will therefore establish powers to transfer prisoners detained in England and Wales to rented prison space overseas, subject to future agreement with a partner country. This has been done successfully in other countries, such as Belgium and Norway.

The Government will, of course, carefully use the experiences of our colleagues on the continent to understand how best the policy can be enacted, paying particular attention to calibrating it properly for those prisoners with close family ties in the United Kingdom. This will include ensuring due consideration of a prisoner’s rights in international and domestic law, and ensuring sufficient opportunities for family contact. No decisions have yet been made about the cohort in scope of any agreement. However, the Prisons Minister is working with His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and stakeholders to take account of this issue and others arising from this change.

Finally on this aspect, the Government are also determined to ensure that victims of crime see justice done. The appalling Lucy Letby case shocked the nation this year, and she compounded the pain she had inflicted by refusing to face up to her crimes and attend her sentencing hearing. We will therefore create a new power for judges to order offenders to attend their sentencing, with up to two years added to their sentence if they refuse. We will also make it clear in law that reasonable force can be used to make convicts appear in the dock to receive their sentence, as victims, their families and the general public would expect.

I move on to my second subheading: measures for safety and security. There are five different aspects to this. The first is knife crime. It is the case, perhaps contrary to public belief, that violent crime generally is trending down and has been for some years. In his 2023 report, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Andy Cooke, said:

“England and Wales are arguably safer than they have ever been”.

However, knife crime continues to plague too many communities. This is often the case in larger cities, London in particular. Indeed, just last month a 16 year- old boy was stabbed to death in north London. The entire nation was shocked when Elianne Andam, a 15 year-old girl, was brutally murdered with a knife in Croydon in September. Only yesterday, Alfie Lewis, aged 15, was stabbed to death in Leeds. The Government extend deep condolences to all those families affected.

We already have some of the strictest knife legislation in the world, but we could go further. We will therefore introduce measures to enable the police to seize, retain and destroy bladed articles found on private property; increase the maximum penalty for selling weapons to those under 18; and put into law a new offence of possessing a blade with the intent to do harm. This is a zero-tolerance approach which the public expect.

I move now, under this subgroup, to protecting victims. We will introduce new measures to protect more victims of crime and tackle crimes which disproportionately affect women and girls. We will update the criminal offences tackling the taking of intimate images without consent, expand the offence of encouraging or assisting serious self-harm to cover non-communication activity, and strengthen multiagency management of those convicted of offences of controlling or coercive behaviour. I have already mentioned the steps we are taking in relation to those convicted of rape and the other most serious sexual offences.

I next move to homelessness and begging. We are absolutely clear that no one should be criminalised for simply having nowhere to live. We are committed to repealing the outdated Vagrancy Act, passed only 199 years ago—possibly the last Act still in general use passed in the old Palace of Westminster before it unfortunately burned down. We are determined to update the framework and to end rough sleeping and prevent people ending up on the streets in the first place. Last year, we published our strategy to end rough sleeping for good and have already made available a £2 billion commitment over three years to accelerate those efforts.

As we set out in the Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan published in March, we want to go as far as possible to ensure that vulnerable individuals on the streets can be directed to the support they need, while cracking down on conduct that is anti-social, intimidating or criminal. This includes giving police and local authorities tools to tackle activity that is causing a public nuisance, such as obstructing doors and pavements.

At the same time, the Government are aware of increasing instances where begging is being organised by criminal gangs, with potentially trafficked people transported across major cities to beg and funds then used to support further criminal activity. We are determined to put a stop to this and will therefore introduce a specific offence of organising or facilitating begging for gain.

I move to the next group: tackling evolving criminal methods. The Government’s first duty is to keep the public safe, and we must be alive to constant advances in technology. We will therefore introduce new powers to tackle serious and organised crime, to render criminals’ toolkits ineffective, for example by prohibiting the templates used for the 3D printing of firearms and pill presses, and banning devices such as signal jammers used in vehicle thefts.

We will also limit the use of tools to carry out fraud and economic crime, such as SIM farms, which can hold multiple mobile phone SIM cards and are often used for scam texts or calls or to send phishing messages. We will prevent their supply, except where suppliers can show significant due diligence and a legitimate business rationale. We will also extend the powers to suspend internet domain names and IP addresses used for fraudulent purposes and create a scheme whereby government will work with the financial sector to use moneys held in accounts suspended on suspicion of wrongdoing to fund projects to tackle economic crime.

Another aspect of safety and security is bolstering investigatory powers. We must ensure that our intelligence and law enforcement agencies have the capabilities and data insights to respond to threats to the public from terrorists, hostile state actors, child abusers and criminal gangs, so we are bringing forward a targeted and limited package of reforms that will recalibrate the existing legislation on investigatory powers. This includes making certain changes to the bulk personal dataset regime to expand the oversight regime to support the Investigatory Powers Commissioner and to reform the existing notices regime so that the UK can anticipate the risk to public safety posed by the rollout of new technology, as well as updating the conditions for use of internet connections records. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich—I am not sure whether he is in his place—for his valuable work in reviewing these aspects of the Investigatory Powers Act. We are closely following his recommendations.

Finally, I turn to the union. The United Kingdom is the most successful political and economic union the world has ever seen. Together, we are much more than the sum of our parts, with each nation making an immense contribution which ultimately makes us all safer, stronger and more prosperous. It puts us in the best possible position to respond to the challenges we all share, such as the cost of living, public security, the international response to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and the ultimate defence of all corners of the realm.

The Government are working to deliver on the issues that matter most to people in every part of the United Kingdom. We are providing the devolved Administrations with a record block grant settlement over this spending review: £41 billion for the Scottish Government, £18 billion for the Welsh Government and £14 billion for the Northern Ireland Executive. On top of those funds, additional funds have been made available in the Autumn Statement, in the spring Budget and in levelling-up funding.

The devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland already have significant powers to make important decisions closer to their communities and we are rolling out devolution deals in every part of England that wants one so that there is more local decision- making through local mayors and local organisations.

Devolution is, however, not a single moment in time. It must be nurtured if it is to carry on working effectively at all levels of government in the interests of people, businesses and communities, and that work of nurturing continues. In particular, for far too long, power sharing at Stormont has been suspended, and we are determined to see its return so that devolution can carry on developing and delivering for the people of Northern Ireland.

In conclusion, the measures in the gracious Speech build on the Government’s record so that we can reflect modern needs and the opinions of the British public—so sensible as they are—and bend and use evolving technology in the national interest. The changes are designed to ensure that our law and regulatory frameworks are up to date in this changing world, so that the United Kingdom remains a safe, modern and forward-looking country. My colleagues and I on the Front Bench representing departments greatly look forward to the debates over the coming days. I commend the measures that I have outlined to the House.

Stronger sentences for rape and child sexual abuse and tougher powers to retrieve stolen items are welcome. But they mean little when only 2% of accused rapists receive a court summons, two-thirds of child abuse cases are closed due to evidential difficulties, and arrests for theft are down 40% on just a few years ago. Recorded serious violence is up by 60% since 2015. Knife crime, gun crime and robbery have all increased, with over 50,000 knife crimes this past year alone and a 70% rise in recorded knife crime since 2015. But there was no mention of tackling this in the King’s Speech.

Under the Tories, shoplifting has reached record levels, driven by organised criminal gangs, with a 25% surge in recorded crime over the last 12 months alone. But the Tories’ shoplifting charter means that offences under £200 are rarely enforced and town centre police patrols have been cut, as there are still 10,000 fewer neighbourhood police officers than in 2015. There was nothing in the King’s Speech to turn things around.

Near record numbers of victims are dropping out of criminal proceedings—1.6 million last year alone. Record numbers of crimes are being dropped due to no suspect being identified—2.3 million last year. The proportion of crimes charged has dropped by 60% since 2015, and the average time it takes for a crime to be charged has trebled since 2016, from 14 to 42 days. Regarding victims, I look forward to the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, and to working with her and other colleagues on the forthcoming Bill.

So, what will Labour do? We will put 13,000 more officers and PCSOs on our streets, with guaranteed town centre patrols, and give every community a named officer they can get in touch with. We will reverse the Government’s decision to downgrade the response to shoplifting under £200, which will make it easier to take action against repeat offenders. We will also create a specific new offence of assault against retail workers. Our ambition is to halve violence against women and girls after the next election. We will put domestic abuse specialists in police control rooms and set up dedicated courts for rape trials.

We will get tough with those who blight our towns, with new powers to ban repeat anti-social behaviour in town centres and stamp out public drinking and drug use. Over the summer period, I travelled to the United States and visited Portland, in Oregon, and Seattle, in Washington state. The level of public drug use and homelessness, and the lack of medical care for homeless people, was truly shocking. I have never seen anything remotely like that in London or other British towns and cities. But the message I took from that trip is that things could get worse here if we do not provide homes and medical treatment for the homeless, and action to stamp out public drinking and, in particular, drug use.

Turning to asylum and migration, the Prime Minister promised to stop the boats, yet the asylum backlog has surged to a record high of 175,000, and 33,742 people have come across in 708 small boats since he has been in power. Spending on hotels has reached £8 million a day, and convictions of people smugglers are 30% lower than under the last Labour Government. During the passage of the Illegal Migration Act, the Government voted against amendments proposing tougher action on criminal gangs. Already, £140 million has been sent to Rwanda to fund an extortionate deal that is currently stuck in the courts and is likely to be ineffective.

The Labour Party would crack down on criminal smuggler gangs through a new cross-border police unit and deeper security co-operation with our European friends; end hotel use, clear the asylum backlog and speed up returns to safe countries; reform resettlement routes to stop people being exploited by gangs; reach new agreements with France and other countries on returns and family reunion; and tackle humanitarian crises at their source by helping refugees in their regions.

I return to my noble friend’s tests of how our country can thrive: good governance, competence, optimism, confidence and vision. The record on good governance and competence speaks for itself. The degradation of our criminal justice system has led to a lack of trust that undermines our communities and fails my noble friend’s tests. But what of optimism, confidence and vision? Where are they? Where are the optimism, confidence and vision for our Probation Service, which is surely at the heart of any strategy to contain our ever-growing prison population? Where are the optimism, confidence and vision for our courts service, with victims, witnesses and defendants too often feeling poorly served and lacking confidence that justice will be done in a timely manner? Where are the optimism, confidence and vision for our Prison Service, as we lurch from one predicted crisis to another, and the core purposes of security, rehabilitation and protection of the public are barely met? No, the party opposite has failed my noble friend’s tests. But we on these Benches will scrutinise the Bills to the best of our abilities while we wait for the election to come.

The Victims and Prisoners Bill, expected from the Commons soon, could have been so much better. Giving the victims’ code the force of law would be excellent if the proposal had teeth. My noble friend Lady Brinton has been at the forefront of a long campaign for such a measure. But the Bill is insufficiently robust. There are, for example, no protections for victims of stalkers. The victims’ code is liable to be revised by the Secretary of State, and there is no redress for victims in the event of non-compliance with the code.

On Part 2, it is right that we should have independent public advocates for victims of major incidents but, again, this proposal is not tough enough. Truly independent advocates must be able to hold the Government to account. That may be uncomfortable for government, but it is all the more misguided then that the appointment of advocates by the Secretary of State is purely voluntary—and how can it be right that the Secretary of State can dismiss independent advocates at will?

Part 3 of the Bill weakens the role of the Parole Board in releasing offenders serving life and longer-term sentences and gives powers to the Secretary of State to overrule Parole Board decisions. Strangely, it also permits the board itself to refer decisions to the Secretary of State. Then there is a right of appeal from the Secretary of State to the Upper Tribunal, which is hardly a body suitably equipped to take this kind of decision. Indeed, that right of appeal appears to have been inserted to avoid the decision-making power of the Secretary of State being found in breach of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights—the right to liberty and security, and in particular the right to have the lawfulness of detention determined by a court and not by a Minister. Then, disgracefully, it is proposed to disapply Section 3 of the Human Rights Act in respect of release on licence, so that there would no requirement to construe the legislation compatibly with the convention where possible. That would undermine one of the fundamental protections of the convention in our domestic law.

I turn to the centrepieces of the proposed legislation—the criminal justice Bill and the sentencing Bill, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, called sentencing and offender management. In both Bills, we have what Christopher Grayling, when Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor, used to call “throwing red meat” to the Conservative Party conference. The Prime Minister’s introduction to the briefing for the King’s Speech said:

“We are keeping people safe by making sure the police and security services have the powers they need and that criminals receive proper punishment”.

Frankly, that is just the Grayling formula in slightly more restrained language.

The briefing on the sentencing Bill puts it more starkly:

“This Government will make sure that the prison estate is used to lock up dangerous criminals for longer”.

But there is no evidence that longer sentences keep people safe, beyond the limited point that keeping offenders in prison keeps them out of the community while they are still in custody.

There are some redeeming features of the proposals. We have long called for a presumption against short immediate sentences, so we welcome the proposal for such a presumption. All the evidence demonstrates that short sentences are useless at preventing reoffending, proved by appallingly high reconviction rates, as mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy. Such sentences disrupt family and community ties, wreck chances of re-employment, leave no time for rehabilitation, education and training, or for addressing mental health issues or addiction, while they create damaging opportunities for low-level offenders to make criminal contacts to support a future life of crime.

Also welcome is the commitment to increase the use of home detention curfews, and technology makes that an achievable ambition, but the overwhelming direction of travel is to lock people up for longer, in many cases without hope of release, blind to the facts that hopelessness, by definition, leads to despair and that redemption then ceases altogether to be a purpose of punishment. The proposals for imprisonment without remission completely ignore the needs for recognition and reward for good behaviour in prison and for sanction for bad behaviour. Remission and the threat of its loss fill those needs.

The criminal justice Bill continues the theme. True, there are some welcome proposals. These include: compulsory reporting of sexual abuse concerns; multi-agency management of offenders convicted of coercive control; criminalising the sharing of intimate images—cruel and humiliating behaviour. But the general trend is just for tougher punishment, fortified by measures that are, frankly, purely symbolic, such as forced attendance of offenders at sentencing hearings.

This programme fails lamentably to address the crisis in our penal system. Our prisons are overflowing, even into police cells. The building programme, as the Minister acknowledged, is stalled. The Government rely on sticking-plaster pre-fab extra cells, without additional services, so that these are no more than prisoner containers. They double up cells, increasing overcrowding and violence. They bring back into service squalid cells that were supposed to have been taken out of service for the maintenance required to relieve dire conditions. The pitifully small number of available spaces are scattered around the prison estate, so prisoners are sent to where they fit and not to where they need to be, disrupting training and education, continuity of care and links with families and communities, particularly approaching release. We have desperate staff shortages, low retention rates and insufficient recruitment, all caused by low morale. The continuing plight of IPP prisoners is a stain on our penal system.

What we needed was a new approach: lower prisoner numbers; statutory minimum prison standards; a fully resourced Probation Service for prisoners, pre and post release, and to make community sentences work; a comprehensive, multi-agency approach, co-ordinating efforts to promote rehabilitation, involving prison and probation services, local authorities’ housing and social services, training providers, health and addiction services and potential employers. We must replace the mantra, “Lock them up for longer”, with a new and constructive emphasis on supporting rehabilitation and reform. I fear we will not see that change while this Government survive.

However, my impression is that this is unfinished work. Some of the ministerial strands—Defra should be complimented here—have got to something akin to what was hoped for by the parties as the IGR review was settled; others have not. The suspicion is that dialogue has been wanting. I dare say that the blame for this lies with more than one party.

Our work as a House on common frameworks has not ended. Although the committee—which I warmly salute, along with its doughty chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews—has now stood down, these frameworks replicate similar arrangements that existed in the EU when we were a member and which were scrutinised by the EU committees of this House. I know therefore from long experience that the common frameworks will necessarily change over time—perhaps quite often, as was the case in the EU—and this House will inevitably continue its scrutiny.

I say all this without even having mentioned the devolution difficulties posed by the situation in Northern Ireland, which others will no doubt cover fully in their contributions on the gracious Speech. The Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, with the Windsor Framework agreement that so welcomely surfaced in February this year, presents further devolution complexities. Here I salute the work of our Select Committee so ably chaired by my noble friend Lord Jay.

It is against this background that we are now starting out on the road for devolution in England. The White Paper of February last year set out the goal of every part of England having a devolution settlement by 2030 and that there would be three general levels of devolution deal on offer. That is a lot of complexity.

The trailblazers—deals for Greater Manchester and the West Midlands—were announced in March this year and their full implementation is expected by the end of 2025. The enabling measures for all this are in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act which spent so many months going through your Lordships’ House until very recently. I fear this Act is hard to construe, even though I have spent much time in the Chamber, and indeed in the Chair, and with the Act’s written materials. This would seem to me to make consistency and clarity in new devolution under the LURB, as I still think of it, a challenge.

So many Bills that come before us contain important elements of devolution. Just as much as we patrol Henry VIII clauses, we must patrol these elements. Clarity, consistency and lack of complexity will remain the enablers of successful devolution, underpinned by dialogue and good dispute resolution mechanisms. Parliament and Government together should look to these principles in the new Bills that will be put before us.

I know today’s theme is not transport but that is inextricably bound up with the conversation about devolution. I welcome the designated powers and funding allocated as part of the deal that have been a success in other cities. However, transport is the most contentious part of all devolution work and, to state the obvious, the failure to join up the east and the west in national-scale transport projects remains a very serious issue for all of us who live in, but sometimes struggle to travel across, the north. The Network North proposals given in lieu of HS2, and announced yesterday, feel like an afterthought. They were announced so quickly that they eluded consultation. They do not seem to point to a well-measured decision that prioritises levelling up or investment in the north. Although the gracious Speech said that the most frequently taken journeys are prioritised, it is unfortunate that those journeys are mostly and most frequently made by car. Whatever anyone feels about HS2, I suggest that the contrast in functioning transport systems within regions and between them demonstrates a problem with the length of our view.

We have heard in the gracious Speech the legislative ambitions of the Government for this forthcoming Session, many of which I look forward to engaging with, as do my fellow Bishops on these Benches, including the Media Bill. Although I am glad to see that the measures trailed over the weekend around homelessness were not brought forward, there are other worrying inclusions, such as the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill and the announcement of new oil and gas licences. We on these Benches will be looking at all this in detail as it emerges.

What is missing is any recognition of the serious hardship that families are currently facing. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s most recent statistics note almost a million children in destitution, triple that from 2017. The Trussell Trust is expecting its worst winter ever and is planning to provide more food parcels than ever before. We need to take a longer view. We need to stay awake to the persistent and debilitating inequalities that exist in our nation, and to the danger of dividing communities with polarised voices. These things will get better only if we take a longer view, build cross-party consensus and change the way we do our politics. We look forward to taking opportunities to work together in this House and in other places to engage with this as we move forward.

That leads me on to the role of the Cross-Benchers, who play an important part in this House. But I wonder how many of us realise that, during the previous Session, the average Cross-Bench Member voted only 28% of the time in favour of the Government and 72% of the time against the Government. I suppose that we should be grateful for that. I wholly expect that sort of behaviour from the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, who are accountable for what they do, in a tangential way, through their representation in the House of Commons, but that is not true for the Cross-Benchers, who should perhaps keep a watchful eye on their voting records before people outside this House ask, “What are Members of the Cross Benches for?” A few weeks ago, my noble friend Lord Roberts of Belgravia wrote an extremely well-researched paper criticising, in the Spectator magazine, the right reverend Prelates for their voting records; I would not want him to cast his eye, or his pen, over the role of the Cross-Benchers. This makes it so much harder for those of us who have, in the long term, been great defenders of the role of the Bishops in this House and the role of the Cross-Benchers.

My real role today is to talk about conventions of the House. Yesterday, my noble friend the Leader gave us the example of the Attlee Government, who managed to govern radically and successfully at a time when they had such a small percentage in this House. Out of that was born one of our premier conventions, the Salisbury/Addison convention, which regulates our ability to vote down manifesto Bills at Second Reading—although it does not, of course, stop us from suggesting amendments. A few years ago, I chaired a report on conventions and secondary legislation, and I am glad to say that was unnecessary. But if we are going to develop increased anti-government activism—in relation to any Government—against the elected House, perhaps it is time to look again at these conventions and see whether we should continually, again and again, vote for amendments and send them back to the House of Commons when the Government clearly have no intention of accepting them.

This is a great and noble House, and long may it continue in that manner.

There were many things in the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, with which I agreed; I will not repeat them because we have an indicative time limit. I will say just this: we have had so many Justice Secretaries that it is hard to keep count of them. The present one is a great improvement on the last, and I hope that he will be able, over the next nine months or so, to demonstrate that still further. The Crown Prosecution Service is in meltdown—there are 75,000 outstanding cases, the courts are under enormous pressure and the Prison Service is on the edge of collapse—so what we need is decisive action to ensure that we get this right. Of course we need tough sentences for those who commit the most horrendous and heinous crimes, including those spelled out by the Minister at the beginning of today’s debate, but we also need to use common sense.

My noble friend from the Front Bench mentioned something as simple as shoplifting causing havoc to both retailers and the public, such as in the small shop in south London that last week put up a notice saying, “We are sorry we can’t put the goods on the shelves any more. You will have to ask at the counter”, because of the number of organised thefts that had taken place and the inadequacy of the police to deal with them. These are issues which, alongside the very big ones, affect people day in, day out in our communities, so we should take them seriously.

I will say something about the current Home Secretary. Floating the idea that you should punish those who are homeless on the streets, or even to suggest that those charities which befriend and try to bring some comfort to those on the streets should be prosecuted, is an outrage. I know that many Conservatives agree with that. In fact, the twist here is that the Leader of the House yesterday reminded us of the returned convention of the Lord Chancellor walking backwards. If I were the Lord Chancellor, I would not turn my back on the present Home Secretary either. It is quite clear that some parts of the briefing on the King’s Speech were more about future elections within the Conservative Party than the well-being of the British people—that is very poor. For a Government who may be on their way out, they could at least, in their last breath, show that they care about the real issues affecting the British people.

I support and commend the recent recommendation from the House of Commons Justice Committee, which I used to chair, that there should be an independent sentencing policy council to provide policy advice to Ministers. We might get some evidence-based policy then. I also look forward to the forthcoming report of this House’s Justice and Home Affairs Committee, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. We have had witnesses in front of us complaining about the fact that community sentences are underused, partly because of lack of information and partly because the Probation Service is so badly understaffed. We must end the weaponising of sentencing policy. Claims that one party will lock up more people than another really do not contribute to sensible, evidence-based policy.

My second point is about migration. The gracious Speech skates over the chaos of policy and administration in this area. Thankfully, it does not repeat the Home Secretary’s inflammatory language about multiculturalism. We are simply told that the Government will deliver on the Illegal Migration Act and stop illegal channel crossings. That is a triumph of hope over experience, particularly the experience of the Home Office. I fear that we are in real danger of losing our values and sense of proportion in all this. I mention our sense of proportion because the small-boat people represent a tiny fraction of the half a million net inward migrants we currently accept. We have to go after the criminal gangs who exploit desperate people, but those who take risks in search of a new life should not be treated as criminals. Their asylum claims may well be valid—currently, about 82% of claims are found by the Home Office to be valid in that category—and those who are economic migrants are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families. Why do we deny asylum seekers the opportunity to work while their claims are considered, so that they can contribute to the society they want to join? Why do the Government disapprove of and disparage economic migrants?

For poor and desperate people to seek opportunities in another country used to be seen as a sign of initiative and enterprise, not a disqualification from welcome to a new country. The Prime Minister ought to know that from his own family experience. Like most developed nations, we need migrants, because we will not have enough younger people to care for our elderly, maintain our public services or expand our economy. That is why we have quite a high rate of net immigration. It is why we invited the Windrush generation to come to Britain and accepted substantial inward migration from the Indian subcontinent. From Britain, we populated large parts of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Population movement is not new. It has been part of the human condition throughout history. It will continue to be. We should manage it as far as we can, in harmony with our basic values. If we want to reduce the growth in population movement, we must address the problems of poverty, warfare and oppression in the countries with the greatest outflow. If we fail to address the problem of climate change, we will see even greater pressures where countries disappear underwater or can no longer support food production because of the effects of climate change.

This has already been said by noble Lords: the gracious Speech and the legislative programme within it are really all about the election. The Conservative Party will not be judged on the slender legislative programme of this gracious Speech but by what has gone before—the chaos of years of dysfunctional government under a bitterly divided party. I think they know that.