Contribution
This is a complicated set of issues. There has been a genuine change in the structure of the industry because of the legal cases to which the hon. Member refers. Over the years, out-of-area working has particularly troubled me; I hope we can address that and make it safe. The hon. Member is absolutely right that the squeeze on drivers has been harsh, so I hope we can address that too.
I am delighted that more than a quarter of a century after I led a debate at the Labour conference on lowering the voting age, it looks as if it is finally going to happen. It is ironic that it has taken 25 years to lower the voting age to 16, but I am really pleased. While I am on constitutional reform, I suspect that there is still some unfinished business relating to the second Chamber. I would love to see that addressed.
Most of all, like one or two others, I welcome the proposals to bring us closer to the European Union. One of my happiest days as a Minister last year was the day of the agreement that we had started to develop. I remember the celebrations that evening in the Downing Street garden, where pieces of cake with Union Jacks and EU flags on them were being passed around. Our phones had been confiscated, unfortunately; I would have loved to send a picture back to my constituents in Cambridge. I understand that not everyone would have been celebrating, but I can tell the House that my constituents would certainly have been delighted. I was very pleased to hear the Prime Minister’s comments on that in his speech on Monday.
There is a paradox here, is there not? I think most people in this country can now see that there was a problem with the Brexit process and that what was promised at the time has not been delivered, and yet the very people who led the campaign have been surging in the polls. They are the people responsible for the damage, and frankly I think we have been a bit too cautious about pointing it out. The argument goes that we should not be telling the electors that they are wrong. That is absolutely right, but it is not the electors who were wrong; it is the people who, frankly, misled them. They were shamelessly misled, and frankly I think they are being misled again. We should repeat the message endlessly: “Be warned—do not listen to these people.”
In his speech on Monday, the Prime Minister explicitly chose Europe. He also chose young people, and in doing so he chose the future. I was genuinely thrilled to hear it because, as far as I can see, my generation and the generation above it have run off with all the money. The only way in which that will change is through explicit political choices.
There is a feeling that politicians cannot say anything about the pensioner generation for fear of upsetting them, because they vote. Well, I think it has gone too far, quite frankly. It is time to recognise the very real intergenerational unfairness that has emerged. I hope not only that we will see schemes to help young people working and travelling in Europe, but that every policy will be examined and the question asked will be, “What impact will this have on the younger generation?”
Let me make one final point. In my speech during the Budget debate a few months ago, I railed against what I called the “fragmentation and privatisation”—the decay—of the public realm. In retrospect, I think that was a rather Cambridge way of putting it, because frankly I needed to be a bit more blunt. The question is: why are so many areas around the places where people live in such a state? That point has been made by a number of hon. Members. It is no wonder that people are fed up. Whether it is graffiti, fly-tipping or potholes, we need to tackle those issues with an urgency that for too long has been missing. Yes, local government has been hollowed out and under-resourced, but just saying that will not reassure angry voters; we need to actually fix those problems and show that we are fixing them. When we had the pandemic, it was a national emergency, and I think we need to take a similar approach to address problems of this scale.
I wish the Prime Minister well as he tries to make the national machine work. Frankly, the Labour party needs him to succeed, but, even more, the country needs him to succeed.