Missed opportunities in Queen’s Speech

Bill Jamieson’s alternative speech should certainly have been announced in May 2010, along with other genuinely radical measures, and including enough of the sensible Liberal Democrat’s’ wishlist to ensure their support.

Unfortunately, one such measure, simple to enact, and would have given the coalition the moral authority to justify its “we’re all in it together” mantra – namely, abolishing immediately the MPs’ and MSPs’ platinum-plated pension scheme and replacing it with a money purchase scheme – was omitted.

So they have now lost their initial momentum and missed the boat in many areas. Tom Miers rightly condemns the Blair/Brown years for fudging, inter alia, welfare reform during more than a decade in power in “boom” years with large majorities.

But he is too harsh on Blair as it was largely Brown who insisted Frank Field be sacked for “thinking the inthinkable”, to be replaced by his acolyte, the compliant Harman, and who caved in (with Alan Johnson) to union demands to maintain retirement at 60.

On the three areas Miers welcomes for their radical reform – welfare, education and health – the jury is still out and all are likely to require increased public expenditure before the cost savings and better results materialise.

On others, such as student finance and public sector pensions – highlighted by David Cameron as great successes – the coalition managed to botch both substance and presentation.

On executive pay, your editorial refers to the complications of employment contracts. But if we have to live with such high gross pay, we could have kept the 50 per cent tax rate for levels over £1 million, with fair thresholds for 40 per cent and 30 per cent, unlike at present where many SME industrialists – on whom all agree our economic recovery depends far more than large companies – bear 62 per cent income tax and national insurance contributions on the top tranche of their £110,000 income, more than those on £1m.

John Birkett

Horseleys Park

St Andrews