It certainly is an opportunity to do that. I should declare an interest in this, by the way, because I’m a director of a company that specialises in sugar-free products, and so my interests are not actually prejudiced—. I’m not actually prejudiced by this measure, but I suppose technically I ought to declare that interest.

The second objection to the tax that is proposed is it will hit the poor hardest. Consumption taxes always do, of course, because the poorest 10 per cent of households already pay more than 20 per cent of their gross incomes in duties and VAT, which is more than double the average household, and this tax will only add to that burden.

Thirdly, the tax is poorly designed; it’s very crude because the levy is imposed per litre of sugary soft drink, not by grams per litre. So, it means that many drinks that are actually worse for you in terms of sugar content will be taxed at a lower level. The Institute for Fiscal Studies gives the example of Sainsbury’s orange energy drink and Coca-Cola, two drinks that are taxed at the higher rate of 24p per litre. Three litres of Coca-Cola contains 318g of sugar, the same as two litres of the orange energy drink, but because the tax is designed in this way, you pay 72p of tax on the three litres of Coca-Cola, and only 48p on the energy drink which is in two-litre bottles. So, there’s more sugar in the smaller bottle than there is in the larger bottle. So, that tax’s poor design also means it fails to penalise the drinks with the higher sugar content.

The First Minister also drew attention to the proposed changes in the Human Rights Act 1998 in the Queen’s Speech, and I agree with the First Minister that this is largely a cosmetic measure. It’s not going to make any real difference to the scope of human rights legislation, which is beyond the reach of parliamentary institutions in this country, which I think is an objection on democratic grounds. In fact, Lord Sumption, one of the most distinguished of our Supreme Court judges, in a lecture recently said that the European Court of Human Rights exceeds its legitimate powers, usurps the role of politicians and undermines the democratic process. And as the European Court of Human Rights has developed its own jurisprudence over the last 50 or 60 years, it’s aggrandised itself and has actually aggravated the democratic deficit, which, surely as parliamentarians, we ought to be concerned about. As Lord Sumption said:

‘It has become the international flag-bearer for judge-made fundamental law extending well beyond the text which it is charged with applying.’

And

‘has over many years declared itself entitled to treat the Convention as what it calls a “living instrument”.’

Therefore, judges from jurisdictions as far away as Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, who are members of this institution, are making the laws for this country, whether it be Wales or the United Kingdom. As the European convention is drafted in very wide and vague terms of principle—very different from the common-law jurisdiction and statutory law heritage of this country—it means that we have a legal system that is beyond democratic control.

Article 8, which refers to respect for family life, which none of us in principle could object to, has been interpreted in various ways, which we might object to. There’s no time to go into the details of this now, but as a matter of general principle, it cannot be right for judges to have the final say in what is the law of the land. There must be some democratic means of overturning them. In the United States, you have the Supreme Court, but a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Congress can overturn the decisions of judges. That is not possible under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights and the human rights legislation proposed in the Queen’s Speech isn’t going to make any difference to that. So, the country is being sold a pup if it thinks that as a result of what the Home Secretary—who may shortly be the Prime Minister—has been trying to tell us for such a long time.

So, the Queen’s Speech, sadly, is a great wasted opportunity. Now that we have taken the decision to leave the EU, perhaps this one should be torn up and a new one should be presented to Parliament in the autumn with some really significant measures that take us much further along the road to recovering our national independence and restoring the integrity of our parliamentary institutions.