Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2021-05-12
Topic: Health
Patrick Cormack (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, in common with my noble friend Lady Fookes, I can look back at over half a century of Queen’s Speeches, and they have various things in common. They all remind me of that Punch cartoon of the curate’s egg: they are good in parts. They are rich in aspiration, prolific in generalisations and generally fairly poor on detail I had proposed to speak about the constitution, on which there is that wonderful sentence: "My Government will strengthen and renew democracy and the constitution." Well, you cannot object to that, but detail is there not. I was going to talk about that tomorrow, but my noble friends will understand when I say that that my wife has her second jab on Friday morning and the LNER trains are all to pot, so I cannot go back to Lincoln later than tomorrow, and so I will have to try to entertain your Lordships tonight The whole of this Queen’s Speech is, of course, in the shadow of Covid. I direct my brief remarks to two aspects, one general and one specific. First, on the general, I am sorry that my noble friend Lady Foster has left the Chamber, because she was very eloquent on the subject of travel. I believe that we have to concentrate on this country and making it safe. With all these variants in various parts of the world, we must be excessively careful as to how we compile any green lists. We have to make sure that, in this particular case, it is the United Kingdom first. It may be sad if people are not able to have the holidays they normally would—but not half so sad as a fourth lockdown, which would be totally devastating to our economy. I beg the Government, and my noble friend in particular when he replies, to reassure us that there will be ultra- caution on the travel front My specific point is one I have raised in your Lordships’ House before, and it concerns some of the most vulnerable people in our country. I refer to those who live in our care homes. I have raised several times with my noble friend Lord Bethell, and indeed other Ministers, the question of those who work in care homes. I have cited one example of a great friend of ours, whose mother is 99 and in a care home. Of course, she has had her vaccinations. Our friend has to put on, very properly, protective clothing and all the rest of it when she goes to see her, and she was not able to hold her hand until very recently—and yet, at least 30% of the workers in that care home have declined vaccination. I believe that the Government have to be a little bit authoritarian here. After all, they have been authoritarian in many other ways—we have not been allowed to have people in our homes or to do many things we would ordinarily do. It is crucial that we make sure that this sector of the community is given the full protection it needs and deserves I agree with something else my noble friend Lady Foster said earlier, when she talked about getting back to normal. There is nothing I want more than getting back to normal in your Lordships’ House. It is absolutely appalling that so few of us can be in the Chamber. I understand that the Commons intends to be normal after 21 June—well, so should we. The place of a parliamentarian is in Parliament, not on Zoom. Although I warmly congratulate both the maiden speakers today and hope to see much more of them, I was delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, spoke in the Chamber and I was sad that the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev, delivered his excellent speech on Zoom. We are colleagues; we are parliamentarians. We have to be together, working together. It is essential that we do, because otherwise the country suffers. Parliament is essential to the well-functioning democracy talked about in that vague sentence. I say to my noble friends in government: we have to get back to normal to hold you properly to account. If we do not, the country will be the poorer. If there are people working in Parliament who have not been given their jabs, they should be given them as a matter of total priority.