This is a Queen’s Speech devoid of content which offers no solutions to the pressing issues facing Britain today. I have been in the House now for 20 years, never have we seen such a threadbare scrap of a document as this Queens Speech.

Despite being promised in the Conservative manifesto, we have heard no plans for legislation to end the triple lock. We have heard nothing about legislation to end winter fuel payments. We have heard no legislative plans for the so-called dementia tax. Nothing of the policy to take food from the mouths of infants and younger primary school children. Even the flagship grammar schools policy seems to have been ditched from the Queen’s Speech.

This could have been the Queens Speech that ended austerity once and for all. It certainly doesn’t. So we have a government that can’t feed our people, can’t house our people or protect our children and older people from poverty. It cannot ensure that when people go to work they earn enough to live on. And it can’t maintain our basic public services. That’s a government that doesn’t deserve to remain in office.

This is a Queen’s speech which is devoid of any serious measures to address the economic challenges facing this country and the pressures ordinary people and our public services are under. Austerity continues to impact on our schools, health services, emergency services and peoples living standards.

This Queen’s Speech does nothing to solve our problems. It confirms a Government isolated from the real world in which our people live. Labour’s amendment today sets out the alternative our country so desperately needs.

The full debate can be accessed by clicking http://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2017-06-29/debates/D199DEF4-2B92-4D43-BF7D-01F7D98591A3/EconomyAndJobs