The lack of resolution of the US Iran war and closure of the Straits of Hormuz is driving energy and food costs higher with shortage of fertiliser and major restrictions on movements of oil.

The government’s response of lifting sanctions on foreign refineries using Russian oil to make jet fuel and diesel show they are rattled, but once  again coming up with  the wrong response. They close our refineries and stop us getting our own oil and gas out of the ground when there is a world shortage. This  makes us more vulnerable.

They need to lift bans on new UK oil and gas, take down taxes on energy and help re open the two most recent refinery closures. Why do they always back imports and stop or overtax UK activity?

They are now asking supermarkets to freeze prices on 10 or 20 products out of the 30,000 they sell. What nonsense. It will not stop food inflation but will create shortages of the few selected. Do they not understand it is their National Insurance, their farm tax, their industrial closures, their energy taxes that are much of the problem of food prices?

When Gordon Brown proposed the HS2 nationalised new railway line project it was to go from London to Birmingham and on to both Leeds and Manchester, creating a Y shaped new railway between major cities in England. It was to cost £37 bn and was to get the UK up with or ahead of Japan and France with their fast trains running on straight track between major cities.

Labour, Coalition, Conservative and now Labour governments have all wanted the project to work, and have all ended up cutting back the ambition in the face of runaway costs  and endless delays. Ministers rightly get the blame, but Ministers just asked senior managers and officials to do it better and cheaper and each time ended up with its considerably dearer and slower. Each enthusiastic Minister wanting to help deliver a success was faced with yet another list of undesirable cuts and options as they wrestled with the absurd and unacceptable budget overruns. The highly paid consultants and senior managers have some questions to answer.

HS2 has become a warning to all those who think a nationalised railway will be so much better. Here is a fully nationalised railway which has  had access to an effectively unlimited budget of subsidy and free money paid for by taxpayers. No one can tell us when anyone will be able to travel from Old Oak Common to Birmingham on it, let alone from Euston. All agree we will never travel to Manchester or Leeds on it as promised originally.

Some say it will now cost £100 bn to just do the Birmingham to Euston part of it that remains, three times original costings for well under half the railway. There needs to be much thinking by the government about how it has come to this. We need to see a new business case for what they now hope to deliver. We need a more demanding timetable for the completion to lower the extra time costs. Maybe the railway should end at Old Oak Common, as the costs to complete new track  into Euston will be large.

This is a most inauspicious start for an all nationalised railway. As they cut the speed it can attain it loses its original main selling point. It will increase capacity on a route which currently does not lack capacity, so getting any financial return now seems impossible. No wonder growth and productivity are so disappointing when a major project like this hits the buffers. This is the first railway massively delayed and part cancelled by too many twenty pound notes from taxpayers on the line.

The current confusion over the leadership of Labour reminds me of the troubles that faced John Major. John Major’s blunt language telling his party to put up or shut up was his response to continuous briefing from undeclared people that the government would be much more successful if it were led by Michael Hesletine or Michael Portillo. Much newsprint was used running fantasy leadership elections in the names of the two favoured replacements, rather like Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting today.

When is a coup not a coup? When will a Labour MP who wants a change of PM get 80 supporters and start the contest? If they are waiting for Andy, they may have a long wait if the voters of Makerfield say No.

Labour need to change course to win back voters. They are  holding a shoot out between four or five wannabes who come to it without  guns only to find it is delayed. What they need is  a proper debate about what changes of policy and approach  could do better for the country and could win back some lost support.

They keep on about how they need to change more, without seeing that most of the changes they have made so far are changes for the worse. The public who voted for them or who did not vote against them did not want higher taxes. They did not  want dearer energy. They did not want higher unemployment. They did not want young people to be priced and taxed out of jobs. They did not want our overseas territories to be given away. They did not want more inflation. They did not want more factories and plants closed by net zero zealotry.

The government was elected on three  reassuring main wide ranging  promises that it would achieve faster growth, it would not put up taxes (except Vat on school fees), and would smash the gangs (end illegal migration). It has broken all three promises . Its specific offer of £300 off fuel bills has also been illusory, and the promised  1.5 m new homes will not materialise.  Trying to deliver these should be the changes Ministers want to achieve. Running off to nationalise more industries, to regulate and tax more drivers off the road, to make life more difficult for landlords to cut the supply of rented homes, to regulate and tax small businesses and farms to death, to abolish juries and create monster regional governments will just make things worse. Any further lurch to the left will see Labour scrapping for under 20% of the vote against the extreme Greens.

You can see the government has lost the plot as they think they need to engage more strongly against Reform and copy more of the Green agenda. These are the thoughts of a struggling minority party, not the thoughts of a government with a  majority. Their duty should be to govern better. That means reaching out to the voters they have lost, not intensifying their anger  by doubling down on more extreme left policies. The UK does need changes of policy, but back to the more moderate Manifesto, not forward to the Corbyn/Green agenda that will  destroy growth, deter investment and boost unemployment.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, is right to warn us all that our relative prosperity and power is waning.

I have always been happy to fully support this Government’s main aim, as set out in the general election and repeated in all the economic speeches that I have heard them make. They are right that this country can achieve so much more. It can grow much faster. It can unleash enterprise and develop more business. However, I fear that my noble friend Lady Finn set out in her brilliant speech just how, for almost two years now, this Government have done everything wrong if we wish to promote growth. They have clobbered entrepreneurs instead of praising them; they have taxed people instead of rewarding them; they have taken incentives out and made it more difficult to employ young people—they seem to have a grudge against young people. Now we are presented, in this gracious Speech, with what they think is one golden thread that I think will turn out to be leaden and depressing: the idea that an EU reset will somehow promote trade, which in turn will give us that missing growth.

Let me try to help the Government think this through. Quite often, Ministers here and elsewhere tell us that we have suffered a 4% GDP loss as a result of Brexit. But all the graphs and charts of what happened to GDP between 2016 and today, in the leading European countries and here, show that there is absolutely no sign of an extra 4% drop as a result of either our voting to leave or actually leaving. If you ask Government Ministers why they think there has been a 4% drop, they say that the OBR has said it. But the OBR report is a forecast, which says that between 2020 and 2035, the British economy might grow its productivity 0.25% per annum less than if we had not left the EU. It is not forecasting any drop in GDP at all; it is not even forecasting a drop in productivity—it says that it might grow a bit slower, and if you compound out 0.25% for 15 years, you get to roughly the 4% they all wrongly cite. Ministers must be honest with themselves and the public: there was no 4% drop, and their reset will not recover the 4% that they wrongly allege has disappeared.

Let us explore the idea that increasing trade would uniquely provide growth. I fear that Ministers are again mistaken, because our trade with the European Union results in a very large trade deficit, particularly in goods. It sells us a lot more than we sell it, so if we could agree a set of policies with the EU that might increase the exports of each side by, say, 10%, which is quite a sizeable number, the deficit would rise and our GDP would fall, because the EU would export much more to us than we export to it and we would have to close down things in Britain to receive the exports we decided were cheaper or better as a result of the changes. To have the same volume, we would need to grow our exports by 17% to match the 10% growth in

the EU’s exports. If you wanted to get more GDP, you would have to grow our exports a lot faster than the European Union because—I repeat to the Government—exports add to our GDP, but imports do not. If we import more German cars and close a UK car factory, our GDP goes down; it does not miraculously go up because our trade figures with the EU have gone up.

That is exactly the Government’s strategy, thanks mainly to their net-zero policies. My noble friend Lord Lilley set it all out very well. They are literally going to ban us making any diesel or petrol cars from 2030, five years earlier than they would stupidly ban them on the continent. Do they not see that that means that we would close our factories first, and definitely lose all the jobs, while Europe was still thinking about making more of these cars that people want to buy? The Government will say, “Well, we’re going to buy battery cars”. Yes, some people will buy battery cars if they cannot buy diesel or petrol cars, but most of them will probably be imported from China, or they might be made in eastern Europe and imported via that route, so the Government will not get more jobs, growth or economic activity from that source.

Here is my friendly proposal. I really want this country to do well; I want this Government to do well. I know that they are not about to fall—Prime Ministers might come and go, but they will presumably carry on governing—so I say to them: please govern well. Instead of having the wrong idea that promoting more imports from Europe and perhaps a few more exports to Europe will miraculously transform the position, I want them to put in place in Britain a series of policies for import substitution.

It is much easier for small companies to sell to people, shops and businesses near them than to go through all the hassle of exporting, however much red tape the Government think they can reduce. That would give our small businesses more chance by creating more opportunity for British production. It should be much cheaper and easier to replace imports than to try to develop exports to markets with different languages and customs which may not like what you are doing or offering. I know this well from my experience running industrial businesses, when we found that by far and away the most difficult markets to export to were France and Germany, although they were geographically much nearer. We always hired staff who loved the countries and spoke the language, but it was still much more difficult to sell there than it was to the English-speaking world, including America, or to Asian countries where English was the common business language.

We need to lift the ban on making our own petrol and diesel cars, because they have always been one of our leading exports to the continent. We need to lift the ban on getting our own oil and gas out, because they too have been leading exports to the continent. We need to get energy prices down, as my noble friend Lord Lilley rightly said. We have in the past exported a lot of petrochemicals and refined oil product, and if we are shutting all our refineries, petrochemical works, ethylene plants and so on, we will not export anything like that volume in the future.

The Government need a dose of reality and common sense and an examination of the data. It is not good enough for Ministers to say, “We will get the British economy to grow as soon as we have signed away our powers to make our own business laws and given some more money to Brussels”. They cannot identify billions of pounds of extra exports we can make at a time when they, through their policies, are ensuring that we export fewer and fewer cars and chemicals and less and less oil, gas and refined product, and are in the process of closing 21 plastics recycling plants.

As my noble friend Lord Hunt set out in another brilliant speech, there is no plan to save steel. Indeed, I heard the Minister say in her opening remarks that it is still the Government’s policy to go over to electric arc furnaces. They need to be honest to the workers in Scunthorpe: the Government are not going to permanently save the Scunthorpe jobs. They still want to sack all those people, but just a bit later, after they have wasted billions of pounds of public money on keeping open a works that is struggling to compete, in the way that my noble friend set out. I ask the Government to please level with the workers in Scunthorpe about the fact that their plan is anti-blast furnace and anti-burning coal in any sense, and to come to a decent settlement with them. The workers should not think that the Government have a solution to steel, because they clearly do not.

I have some questions for those tipped to contend the   Labour leadership. My worry is any one of them could make things worse.

Angela Rayner

Why did she fail to pay her tax on time? As she lectures the rest of us to pay more taxes and to refrain from trying to find ways  to reduce tax bills, surely she should have paid up to start with, or as soon as she knew she had made a mistake? Isn’t it one  rule for her and different rules for others?

Why did new housebuilding fall whilst she was responsible for delivering 1.5 m new homes this Parliament? Does she now accept that target is a unattainable? When will she tell us the truth about new homes?

Will she accept that the Employment Rights Act has destroyed many new job opportunities for young people and helped drive unemployment up?

How would she describe Tories?

Ed Miliband

Is he proud of his accelerated closure of the North Sea oil and gas industry? What does he say to all those losing their jobs?

Why does he think we should import Norwegian gas instead of getting our own out of adjacent fields?

Why is it right to burden the world with 3 x as much CO 2 importing LNG than using our own gas?

Does he admit that for the next ten years we will have less nuclear power as he closes old stations and fails to bring any new ones on line apart from Hinkley he inherited?

Why has he been unable to cut our energy bills by £300?
Does he agree the UK will not be generating only carbon free power in 2030 but still needing gas power  stations?

Wes Streeting

Why has he not made it easier for more people to get a GP or hospital  appointment?

Why are Drs still going on strike after the big pay awards he made them to end the strikes?

Where is his alternative King’s Speech programme?

How would he get  the UK back to work?

Andy Burnham

Why would he  give up the big job of Mayor he  said he  wanted? Why should anyone believe his promises, as he promised to serve a full term and offered things he has not delivered?

Where is there a seat you could win in a by election? How does he win Makerfield with its small majority in 2024?

Why should the National  Executive change its mind over telling him to do the job he has  got?

Does he  have so little belief in 403 Labour MPs that he  thinks none of them could be PM?

Conclusion. So far a badly organised coup . None of the front runners have a good alternative programme to get people back to work, to control the cost of living and to smash the gangs. Pity the poor country with months of uncertainty and a badly damaged  PM who might now survive.

What a mess! The PM agrees to a short meeting on King’s Speech day with his Health Secretary. Someone tells the Times Streeting will call a contest today. We read he did not want to  go public yesterday to overshadow the Speech, yet someone in the know tipped off the papers to ensure the Speech was overshadowed. There was no early or any denial  from Streeting which any loyal Cabinet member would immediately put out.

So the King read out a turgid long list of lifeless Bills, many of them repeats of old  themes whilst Ministers had their minds on questions of whether to run, who to support, how to keep  their jobs.

Many of these Bills if pursued are troubled. What can another Steel nationalisation Bill do to correct the folly of the last one  that failed to agree transfer of the plant from the Chinese owners or agree to who has to pay off  old debts?

What will a new Water Regulator do differently to the current one? Why cant the government just issue better instructions to Ofwat? Why  persist  with widely loathed digital ID, a solution in search of a problem? What will be yet another Criminal Justice Bill?

The worst Bill and the centre of the economic  and constitutional struggle is the EU re set Bill.  Based on the wrong notion that we could boost trade with the EU to boost growth, it will lock us into more bad laws, put  up energy prices and taxes, invite in many more young people in need of jobs and hones we do not have, and put up spending to give them money we cannot afford.

The PM is allowed to use the full dignity of the sovereign to launch his programme for the next session of Parliament. Lords and Commons have to listen without comment, before the PM sets it out in more detail to the Commons at the start of a five day set of  debates in both Houses, when the Opposition can reply.

This year the King has been placed in a difficult position setting out a programme for a PM struggling to keep his job and to keep a majority of votes for his plans. It will be made far worse by having at its heart a dangerous constitutional Bill seeking to give back control over many of our laws and some of our money to the EU against the clear mandate of the referendum.

The PM wants the EU to take much of our fish, to decide on student support to allow more EU students to come to the UK at our expense, and to require us to adopt many of their farming, trade and business laws. He wants us to face higher energy costs  by adopting the EU carbon tax and emissions trading scheme, He wants us to impose an EU like tariff or carbon border tax on non EU imports. He wants us to accept more people under 30 to come here looking for jobs, homes and benefits. He wants us to pay them  for this by sending money to the EU.

No wonder Labour lost so many seats and votes in Brexit favouring parts of England. The PM should not be giving our sovereignty away. This is an abuse of our King in Parliament.