LONDON
British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged a fresh clampdown on immigration in the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday, seeking to bolster his right-wing credentials against the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).
The measures were at the heart of a string of solidly Conservative proposals in the speech, which sets out the British government’s legislative plans for the year ahead but is read out by Queen Elizabeth II in a ceremony full of historical symbolism.
Heir to the throne Prince Charles and his wife Camilla attended the state opening of parliament alongside the queen in a sign of their increasing role as the 87-year-old monarch scales back some of her duties. Ministers drew up the address before the anti-immigration, eurosceptic UKIP won a quarter of the vote in local elections last week, but its key themes still appeared designed to confront the growing threat to Cameron’s Conservatives from the upstart party. “Our resolve to turn our country around has never been stronger,” Cameron and his Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said in a foreword to the speech.
The speech itself referred several times to “people who work hard” and offered a strong conservative message to appeal to the traditional and often older voters who have flocked to UKIP, many of them former Tories alienated by Cameron’s shift to the centre ground. Read out by the queen in a stately monotone, the address restated the government’s commitment to restore Britain’s faltering economic growth, slash the deficit and boost jobs through investing in infrastructure and helping small businesses.
And it set out plans for an immigration bill that would aim to “ensure that this country attracts people who will contribute and deter those who will not”.
The bill would restrict migrants’ use of the free-to-access National Health Service (NHS), tighten the use of human rights law to make it easier to deport people, and introduce fines for landlords who rent homes to illegal immigrants.
As expected there was no mention of the European Union, an issue which has shot up the political agenda following the crisis in the eurozone and has contributed to UKIP’s surge in support.
Cameron has been resisting pressure to bring forward a promised referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU to before the next election in 2015.
That pressure was stepped up this week when former finance minister Nigel Lawson became the first senior Tory to call for Britain to leave the EU - something UKIP has long been urging.
The Queen’s Speech takes place every year or so at the start of a new parliamentary session, and contains all the pageantry expected of a state occasion.
The monarch arrives at parliament in a horse-drawn carriage, dons a crown and sits on a throne to deliver the address to elected lawmakers and peers clad in scarlet, gold and ermine robes.
This year’s speech was relatively short, containing proposals for 20 new laws, and opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband said it fell short of what was required to address Britain’s problems.
“Today’s Queen’s Speech should respond to the deep problems the country faces. On the evidence so far, it is not up to the scale of the task,” Miliband said.
His party added that the measures on immigration were likely to have only a limited effect. One trade union leader, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, said the measures were “more about trying to head off UKIP and quell a backbench revolt than deliver a legislative programme to get Britain back on track.” Cameron’s government claims it has already slashed net migration by one third, but the issue is gaining ground ahead of an expected fresh influx of eastern Europeans after the EU lifts work restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians in 2014.
The British government warned Argentina on Wednesday that it is determined to protect the Falkland Islands, in a rare mention of the territorial dispute in the Queen’s Speech.
Setting out the government’s priorities for the year in a speech written by ministers, Queen Elizabeth II said: “My government will ensure the security, good governance and development of the overseas territories, including by protecting the Falkland islanders’ and Gibraltarians’ right to determine their political futures.” The Falklands have not been mentioned in her speech to parliament for at least two decades, but in recent years tensions have risen between Britain and Argentina over the windswept islands in the South Atlantic.