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- [00:00]
A
Hello. Welcome to the Hot Seat. I'm Martin Rogers, here with Professor Simon Hicks to discuss the recent Queen's Speech. Welcome, Simon.
- [00:06]
B
Hi.
- [00:07]
A
So, first of all, what's in this Queen's Speech?
- [00:09]
B
Well, we've got an unbelievable number of bills that have been put forward by the Conservatives or they're going to be put forward by the Conservatives. A lot of them relating to constitutional questions, some relating to economics, some relating to social policies. And we're going to see a very active Parliament in the coming year.
- [00:24]
A
So for the first majority Conservative government since 1997, have we seen more of a return to Thatcherism rather than the moderate position that the Conservatives have taken in the last 10 years?
- [00:36]
B
Yeah, the Conservative Party, of course, has been in government with the Liberal Democrats and so in a sense it's been rather a centrist government. We've not seen radical free markets, we've seen radical cuts to public spending, but we've not seen sort of Conservative social policies. We've seen gay marriage, for example. We've seen quite a Liberal government with both liberal and free markets and liberal and social issues. And now what we're seeing in this Queen's Speech is echoes of the 1980s, echoes of the fact that when you think about Thatcherism as a combination of radical free markets plus social conservatism, we can see elements of exactly that platform in this Queen's speech. So we're seeing a series of bills relating to economic issues which relate to cuts in public spending, commitment not to raise taxes, an enterprise bill that would cut red tape for small businesses. We're seeing restrictions on trade unions and the ability of trade unions to call strikes. And on the social side, we're going to see an immigration control bill, snoopers charter to allow the police to monitor what we do, an anti extremism bill and an anti drugs bill. So, you know, some sort of classic Conservative social policies that I think we wouldn't have seen had the Lib Dems been in government with them. The big difference with the 1980s is on the constitutional side. So when we think about Thatcherism in the 1980s, it was about centralization of power in Westminster, taking power away from Labour led councils. What we're seeing is radical devolution plans here. We've got bills for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, a bill for devolving powers to English cities, the prospect of English votes for English laws, and of course the fourth area that is front and center. The number one, the first item is the EU referendum. So we've got an EU referendum bill. So this could be. If a lot of this stuff gets passed, we could look back and see this is quite a radical government on lots of fronts.
- [02:27]
A
So immediately after the election victory, Cameron presented this new Conservative government as more of a one nation, centrist Conservative government. Is this a return to the more traditional parliamentary workings of a government with a small majority forced by its backbenchers to throw some red meat out?
- [02:49]
B
That's a good question. So there's two possible interpretations of this. One is that they fought the election in the center with quite a moderate manifesto. They portrayed themselves in the election as we are the moderates, labor are the left wing loonies. And then on the day after the election, we saw David Cameron Outside number 10 saying that he would govern in the interests of everybody, of all of the people of one nation. He talked about saving the nhs, he talked about lowering taxes on lower income groups in society. And I thought at that time, people, this is going to anger some of his backbenchers. For a lot of the backbenchers, it's now the gloves are off. And so you can either interpret this as maybe the true Conservative Party is revealing itself and they were being a bit misleading in their manifesto and the way they fought the campaign, or it could be the fact that he's having to form a deal, a coalition, inside the Conservative Party. Cameron himself and some of the people around him, like Osborne, are actually quite moderate on economics and moderate on social questions. But there's a lot in the party who are real social conservatives and real free marketeers and libertarians when it comes to economics. And is this an internal coalition he's had to put together because he has a very small majority and because he needs to hold the party together for an EU referendum bill, Is this the price he's having to pay? We don't know yet. This is going to be revealed in the coming months.
- [04:08]
A
So there's been talk that Britain may withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights in favour of British Bill of Rights. How does that which has been dropped from this Queen's speech play with the promise of a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union?
- [04:23]
B
Another good question, because one thing that of course is conspicuous by its absence is there isn't an English Bill of Rights. And our understanding of that is that it's too early for them to actually try and bring something forward. They realise this is far more complicated than they originally thought because the Human Rights act introduced by labor is part of the devolution package for Scotland. It's part of the Good Friday Agreement. For the settlement for Northern Ireland. If we pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights, would this jeopardize our membership of the eu? You have to be a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights to be a member of the eu, even though the EU and the European Convention are separate institutions. So now they're having to realize we cannot rush something through. We could have the prospect at some point of an English and Wales, England and Wales Bill of Rights separate from the existing Human Rights act applying in Scotland and Northern Ireland. We don't know what's going to happen with an EU referendum. If we vote to leave the eu, it would be much easier to have a British Bill of Rights completely separate from the European Convention on Human Rights. I doubt very much we will pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights until we have had that EU referendum. If there's an EU referendum and if the public votes to stay in the eu, then, then I think the debate about the European Court of Human Rights and the Human Rights act could change quite quickly.
- [05:44]
A
Great. All right, thank you very much. Simon, you're off the outset.
- [05:47]
B
Thank you.