House of Lords
Visas
(14 years ago)
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Lord Clement-Jones
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have reviewed the process of issuing visas for Iraqi nationals and the location where they are issued.
Earl Attlee
The UK Border Agency has reviewed the visa service for Iraqi nationals, in consultation with the FCO and UK Trade and Investment. From early 2011, it will be implementing a limited expansion of the categories of applicant who may apply in Iraq, to include UKTI-sponsored business visitors and students coming to the UK under the Iraqi Prime Minister’s scholarship initiative. For ongoing security, financial and logistical reasons, Amman will remain the main decision-making centre.
Lord Clement-Jones
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply but I must confess that I am not even sure that it is half a loaf. I am pleased for the British businesses that are sponsored by UKTI, which was extremely helpful in the recent trade delegation to Iraq. However, will the Minister ask the Home Office further to review the situation because Amman is not at all convenient for the vast bulk of Iraqi business people who have to wait there for up to two weeks? Will the Home Office and UKBA assist UKTI in its future efforts rather than hinder it?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, in principle my answer is yes to everything. I pay tribute to the noble Lord for his persistence in this area. We would like to do more as it would benefit UK business but the noble Lord, who has looked into this matter, will also understand some of the difficulties involved.
Baroness Afshar
My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl why students from the Middle East—that is, Iraq, Kurdistan, Iran and Afghanistan—are facing such difficulties? I declare an interest as somebody who teaches undergraduates and graduates at the University of York. We admit brilliant students who could be our best allies in the Middle East but then they cannot get a visa. Is there any way that we can recognise that we need good minds and allow them to come over?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an extremely important point. It is obviously in our interests to encourage foreign students to come to the UK to study. Our customer service standards show that, in September, 99 per cent of tier 4 student visa applications were processed in Amman within 10 working days. That is well within the service standard to process 90 per cent of such applications within 15 days.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, the Minister’s Answer is very welcome as far as it goes, but will he undertake to look at how our commercial competitors compare in visa application issuing arrangements? Is he aware that the United States already has a full and normal visa issuing service, the French and the Germans are pretty much getting there and the Swedes, for heaven’s sake—if I can put it that way—are issuing 5,000 visas to Sweden every year, which is at least three times what the United Kingdom is able to do at the moment? As he rightly said, it is not just business but scholarship exchange programmes which are being prejudiced. When can we get a full and normal visa service for all incoming Iraqis to the United Kingdom?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, we will provide a full and normal visa service when the situation in Iraq allows it. It is obviously in our interests to do so. The noble Lord talked about the Germans. Following an expansion of German visa facilities in Iraq, suicide car bombers targeted the German embassy in Baghdad in April this year, killing a security guard. We will not take any unnecessary or avoidable risks with our personnel, whether UK or foreign.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, this is a problem that does not apply just to Iraq but throughout the Middle East, including Libya. Can the noble Earl say a little more about his department’s approach as it applies to other countries in the Middle East?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, unfortunately not. I am briefed about the problems in Iraq, not the rest of the Middle East.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter
My Lords, the Minister will no doubt be aware that, following the terrible Baghdad atrocity of last month, al-Qaeda has issued a warning that it intends to turn its fire particularly on Christians and the Christian community. What will be the implications of this for British policies towards Iraq, particularly for those who will feel compelled to flee from such violence directed towards them?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, we are obviously extremely concerned about these developments and we will be monitoring the situation very carefully.
The Earl of Clancarty
My Lords, will not this Government see fit to make a proper public apology to the great Iranian film maker, Abbas Kiarostami, for the humiliating treatment he received in Tehran last year, when he tried, but failed, to obtain a visa to come here to direct the English National Opera, caught out as he was by immigration rules that are doing enormous cultural damage to this country?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I believe that this happened under the previous Administration. I am not aware of the case, but I shall write to the noble Earl.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, does my noble friend, in the context of Amman, recall the exchange in 1918 in a military hospital between a visiting general and a Scottish private? The general asked the private where he had been wounded. The private replied topographically, rather than anatomically: “Three miles the Ardnamurchan side of Baghdad, sir”.
Lord Tebbit
My Lords, will my noble friend ask his colleagues who deal with visa applications more generally, particularly those for students, to look at these applications more carefully? When I advertise for staff to help look after my wife, we frequently get applications from people who are here on student visas and who simply disappear when I advise them that they should not, therefore, be available for full-time work.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the noble Lord puts his finger on an extremely important point. One of the key roles of UKBA is to ensure that when people apply for a visa, they are genuine applicants and that they carry out the visit in the way that they said they would.
Roads: Charging
(14 years ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they will implement their commitment to introduce lorry road-user charging.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, heavy goods vehicle road-user charging is being introduced to ensure a fairer arrangement for UK hauliers. The details of the scheme and offsetting measures to help UK hauliers are still to be finalised. It must operate within relevant EU legislation and apply to both UK and foreign hauliers. New legislation will be needed.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to the noble Earl for that Answer, but my Question asked how the Government were going to do it. Will the Government go for time-based or distance-based charging? As regards coming to that decision, is he aware that time-based systems are fully open to fraud—30 per cent of revenue in Switzerland is lost through fraud—and that the costs of implementing them are about 40 per cent of the revenue, compared with 10 per cent for those that are distance-based? Can the noble Earl assure me that he will take that into account when coming to a decision?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, it may be helpful if I run through the options. The Government are looking at options that are simpler and cheaper than the satellite-based lorry road-user charging system that the previous Government failed to implement. A time-based charge would be the simplest option, but it has the difficulties that the noble Lord outlined. Distance-based charges based on tachograph readings, or roadside equipment detecting vehicles as they pass, have advantages, but they are more complex and significantly more expensive to implement. The Government expect to be able to give more details in the spring.
Lord Bradshaw
Will the noble Earl also consider the number of accidents that are caused in this country by foreign-registered vehicles? They of course pay no tax, they use fuel from outside the country and they burden the health service with a lot more work.
Earl Attlee
The noble Lord makes an important point, of which my department is well aware. However, the objective of the lorry road-user charging scheme is to ensure a competitive and free market for all operators, whether UK or foreign.
Lord Kinnock
My Lords, I strongly welcome the action being taken by the Government in pursuit of an entirely necessary policy. In view of the various complications, could not the Government, so far as concerns both heavy vehicles and other vehicles, pursue the cruder but nevertheless effective course of abolishing road fund licences and heavy goods licences and replacing them with fuel charges, which would at least produce an equitable and economic relationship between road use, the nature of vehicles and the effect on the environment?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the noble Lord makes an interesting point. One problem that we experience is foreign vehicles coming in with very large fuel tanks, sometimes containing in excess of 1,000 litres of fuel, which enable them to travel all around the UK and then leave without buying any fuel here. There is also an EU directive on the minimum vehicle excise duty rate.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
What does the Minister think of the German satellite tracking scheme? It is more expensive than some of the alternative systems that are available, but does it not provide an investment that could be built on in future and used to track all traffic?
Earl Attlee
The noble Lord makes an important point. We are looking very closely at what our European partners are doing. It is important to remember that their problems are slightly different from ours. European states have a lot of through traffic. We do not have so much through traffic, but we do have lots of foreign vehicles coming to deliver to the UK.
Lord Dykes
Will the Minister confirm that the plans will include a close look at the prepaid plastic card system for distance travelling, which is likely to be gradually and increasingly adopted in all European member states and will create a single market in road haulage costs?
Earl Attlee
The noble Lord makes an extremely good point. It is one of the obvious options to look at.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, what is the Minister’s explanation for the length of time that is being taken over the introduction of the scheme? The Government courted the heavy goods vehicle industry in this country by saying in their manifesto that they intended to introduce a scheme. The coalition agreement and the business plan of the department stated that the scheme would be introduced, and yet we are now looking at a delay of at least four years before a scheme is introduced. Why is this, and will the Minister also rule out a charge that must be paid not just by foreign heavy goods vehicle operators but also by home-based hauliers?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, on the noble Lord's substantive point, we are anxious to avoid making the mistakes of the previous Government, who spent £60 million of public money on a satellite lorry road-user charging scheme that achieved absolutely nothing.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Why is the tachography option more expensive—which is what the noble Earl said—when all it would require would be an entry reading and an exit reading to provide a calculation based on a multiplication of the cost per mile?
Earl Attlee
The noble Lord is quite right: it is an option that we are looking at very carefully. However, he will also be aware that it is quite easy to interfere with the operation of the tachograph—for instance, by placing a large magnet on the transducer or an illegal switch in the electrical circuitry.
EU: Defence Pact with Russia
(14 years ago)
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Lord Giddens
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of a possible defence pact between the European Union and Russia.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government believe that increased engagement between the EU and Russia is a positive development. There are several strands of discussion on developing and enhancing security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area, including in the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe—the OSCE—and the NATO-Russia Council. There is, however, no proposal for an actual defence pact between the EU and Russia, and we do not consider such a pact either desirable or likely.
Lord Giddens
I thank the Minister for that Answer and for the positive note that he struck—at least, at the beginning. Does he agree that collaboration to contain international terrorism could be one basis for future further collaboration between the EU and Russia?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Yes, I certainly do. I think that these issues will come up at the NATO summit, which is beginning on Friday, and indeed we look forward at that summit to the possibility—indeed, the probability—of a text that will reflect a new era of co-operation and engagement between the whole of NATO and Russia. Therefore, the problem that the noble Lord has referred to is very relevant and it will be at the centre of our discussions.
Lord Judd
Does the noble Lord agree that, however important the negotiations with Russia about defence and security matters—and no one discounts that—it is crucial constantly to keep in mind the behaviour of Russian military in places such as the North Caucasus, where, with insensitivity and brutality, they have arguably accentuated the problems of world security by driving people into the arms of extremists?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The noble Lord is absolutely right and I expected that kind of profound comment from him. We are under no illusions about the human rights situation in Russia and in relation to the various operations of the kind to which he referred. Human rights and the progress of Russian democracy are high on our agenda, and we certainly do not shy away from making our concerns known on all these aspects at every opportunity.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, does the Minister not agree that the key point in this area is that the autonomy of decision-making by NATO and the EU should not be impaired by any agreements or arrangements made with Russia? It is highly desirable to consult more with Russia and it may be highly desirable to work with it on missile defence, but it would be a great mistake if we allowed the autonomy of decision-making of those two organisations, on which our security depends, to be impaired.
Lord Howell of Guildford
I agree with the noble Lord, and indeed that was the implication of my first Answer. We do not look for an actual defence pact or any kind of development which would, as the noble Lord says, impair the integrity of NATO operations. Nevertheless, there are all sorts of strands of increased co-operation. I have mentioned the NATO-Russia Council. There is also the Meseberg initiative and the modernisation pact, and there are other opportunities in fora where we can carry forward good relations with regard to that part of Russian policy with which we can work in a positive way.
Lord Addington
Does the Minister agree that, when the general normality of relations is based on dialogue, we should really be looking at a few areas where we do not talk so as to avoid misunderstandings in the future?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Yes, I agree with that. I repeat that we would like to see operations such as the Meseberg initiative developed, as they are fora where that kind of approach can be adopted.
Lord Dykes
Does my noble friend agree that the sombre reality is that there is also a need for good EU relations with Russia partly because, sadly, the United States is recklessly destabilising the Middle East as a result of its amazingly obsequious attitude to Netanyahu?
Lord Howell of Guildford
With respect to my noble friend, that point is slightly “yesterday”. There are definite signs of an improvement in US-Russian relations. Of course, there are all sorts of collateral issues, of which he has mentioned one, but the general trend is in a positive direction with the START negotiations moving to a signature and a whole variety of other developments. Therefore, I do not think that the situation is quite as bad as my noble friend suggests.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, I believe that there was a suggestion a while ago that there would be Russian observers or visitors to the forthcoming NATO summit. Indeed, I think it was even suggested that the Russian President might be invited. Can the noble Lord tell us whether there will be any Russian observers at the summit? Can I also press him a little further on his answer to my noble friend Lord Judd? He talked about the importance of human rights. Can he tell us whether that issue has been raised specifically in the context of security discussions? It is in the balance between security and human rights that the problem so often lies.
Lord Howell of Guildford
The answer to the noble Baroness’s second question is yes, we do combine. Concern for human rights and the rule of law are two facets of the same issue. Upholding the rule of law and the broader security issues are all one ball of wax, if I may use that phrase. As to Russian involvement, President Medvedev has said that he will go to the NATO-Russia Council summit in Lisbon on Friday. So, he will attend—that is what my brief says and I am glad to learn it.
Lord Lea of Crondall
Is another area of potential mutual co-operation, although with some difficulty, the Arctic and the whole question of the North East Passage and mineral resources in that area?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Yes, this is a vast and vastly important area in which of course our partners and allies such as Norway and indeed, Canada, as well as Russia are involved. There have been extensive disputes over the years, particularly in Russia and Norway, as to which parts of the Arctic are under which territorial direction, and there was the dramatic planting of a flag at the North Pole by some Russian underwater vehicles. I understand, although it is not in my brief, that considerable advances have been made in agreeing the border lines between Norway and Russia, which opens the way, provided that costs and technology allow, for a vastly greater exploitation of the huge oil and gas resources—mostly gas—under the Arctic Circle.
Burma
(14 years ago)
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Lord Faulkner of Worcester
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to promote democracy and human rights in Burma, following the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
The Prime Minister spoke to Aung San Suu Kyi on 15 November, making clear our determination to support her efforts to promote democracy and national reconciliation. We will continue to work with our international partners and in UN bodies to press for progress. We will maintain pressure on the regime following Burma’s recent sham elections and continue to highlight its appalling human rights abuses, including the continued incarceration of more than 2,200 political prisoners.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that positive and welcome reply. I am sure that the whole House will wish to pay tribute to this brave and remarkable woman whom I had the good fortune to know as an undergraduate studying PPE at Oxford 45 years ago. Can I ask the Minister a little more about setting aside the results of the elections and pressing the Burmese authorities to hold fresh elections to ensure that the National League for Democracy can play a full part and that Aung San Suu Kyi can be leader of that party in those elections? What pressure can our Government and others place on governments in the region who have been somewhat supportive of the Burmese junta until now?
Lord Howell of Guildford
We all share the noble Lord’s absolutely correct assessment of our sentiments. We salute this very brave woman and want the world that he described to come about, with her at the centre of it. The situation is delicate in that how investigations into these sham elections can be made is still obviously in the minds of Aung San Suu Kyi and her party. I believe that she has authorised her party to look at irregularities, but we must be guided by her approach as she is in the midst of it while we are on the sidelines.
As to the other countries that have somewhat ambiguous relations with Burma and who have not been as strongly critical as we would like against this unpleasant regime—India is the obvious example—we are in discussions with them. I am not sure that we will make much progress with Beijing which seemed to welcome the elections and thought they were okay, so there is not much progress there. Other countries are united in recognising that this was not a serious election. It was rigged and there was all sorts of evidence of irregularities. The day will come, if we can keep up this pressure, when Burma can again join the comity of nations and be a prosperous, free and open place.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
My Lords, in the days before her telephone was cut off I used to be able to speak to Aung San Suu Kyi on the phone but that has not been possible for the past 10 years. Does the Minister agree that we should couple tributes to her with tributes to her late husband, Michael Aris, because when he was dying of cancer they refused him a visa to visit her, in the hope that she would leave and not come back? They were a remarkable couple, dedicating their lives to the furtherance of democracy. Will he press on regarding the question of the release of the other 2,000 political prisoners?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Most definitely yes to all those observations. We salute not only this remarkable lady and her husband, but the way in which she now comments on what must have been the appalling experience of her imprisonment over the years. As she rightly says in a remarkable interview in the Times today, revolution takes place in the mind, and her mind is a wonderful mind to be playing on this situation.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
My Lords, if, after 15 years and 20 days, Aung San Suu Kyi’s release is to be a Mandela moment for Burma, will it not require the ethnic minorities and the National League for Democracy to enter into real dialogue and reconciliation with the military junta? Will it not require their reciprocity, and must we not do all we can, through the United Nations, engaging the Secretary-General directly in these negotiations, to bring that about? Can the Minister say something more about the ethnic minorities and their plight, given the information I gave him last week and the subsequent letter about the fighting in the Karen state and now the repatriation of those refugees across the border into an area where fighting is still under way?
Lord Howell of Guildford
On the last point of the noble Lord, who follows these things very closely, we are worried about what has been happening on the border and the signs that the Royal Thai Government may have been returning refugees across the border back into Burma, or Myanmar. Our ambassador spoke to the Foreign Minister of Thailand this morning about the need to look at this situation and prevent undue suffering where these refugee pressures have been building up. As to the broader question of ethnic groups, we continually condemn the human rights abuses that ethnic groups continue to suffer. Our embassy in Rangoon regularly makes representations; we think that the elections were a missed opportunity to unite armed and non-armed ethnic groups, but I am afraid that we have to strike a pessimistic note in saying that there is little prospect of national reconciliation without their involvement and not much prospect while the generals are in charge. However, we will keep this matter very much to the fore, properly urged on by the noble Lord’s remarkably persistent concern.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that now is not the time to consider weakening the EU sanctions against Burma, since nothing has fundamentally changed, as the Minister has said? Secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, we need to see clearly a UN-led effort to ensure that Aung San Suu Kyi gets what she wants, which is a dialogue between the genuine ethnic representatives, the military and democracy activists, such as those in the NLD. Thirdly, last week the Minister said that there was insufficient support for a commission of inquiry and therefore it was not something that the UK would press for. Will he give me an assurance that at the meeting on 22 November in the Security Council, when there will be a discussion on the protection of civilians, the UK Government will lead on this and press for a recognition that the UN special rapporteur on Burma has asked for such a commission of inquiry?
Lord Howell of Guildford
As the noble Baroness knows, because she follows these things closely, we support the idea of a commission of inquiry, but we are anxious not to rush into it and have an early failure. We also note the view of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is slightly cautious about the pace of such an inquiry; but that there should be such an inquiry is, in principle, right and is, indeed, government policy. It is the pace and the approach that we have to watch. As for EU policy on sanctions, the EU has expressed its very serious concern about the elections and has made it clear that sanctions should be eased only in response to tangible progress, which we have not really seen yet. So there is an agreed EU position on Burma: the sanctions are tough and we are totally in support of them. On the noble Baroness’s middle point about the role of the UN, I will look further into it, but we are broadly in support of the activities that she mentioned. I shall elaborate on that in a letter to her.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
Does not the Minister agree that one thing that we could do is to increase our aid projects in Burma to non-governmental organisations and those who work for humanitarian purposes in medical and educational areas? That would be a good way to show that there is an alternative to the sort of regime that Burma has now.
Lord Howell of Guildford
I agree; indeed, the UK is one of the largest bilateral donors to Burma. We have significantly increased our humanitarian assistance from £9 million in 2007-08 to £28 million in the current year. Our aid focuses on health, basic education, rural livelihood, civil society and helping the refugees. I add as a personal observation that China is deeply involved in Myanmar, getting more involved all the time, pouring in vast sums of money for schools, infrastructure, and so on. We have a real problem considering aid—which is right—against the apparent determination of the People's Republic of China to have a massive involvement in Myanmar in every conceivable way.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, I am very pleased to hear about the Prime Minister's call; that is something to be very well regarded. Can the Minister tell us whether other EU leaders have made similar calls to Aung San Suu Kyi? Can he also tell us whether there is now an EU resolve to re-engage with the ASEAN countries? After all, they value the EU-ASEAN relationship very highly, and were the countries of the European Union really to make a push on that at the moment, there might be a realistic possibility of getting more positive engagement.
Lord Howell of Guildford
I certainly hope that that will be so. It obviously makes complete sense that the EU must be extremely vigorous in such an approach. As to who has been making telephone calls to Aung San Suu Kyi, I have absolutely no idea; but I bet people have.
Arrangement of Business
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, after the debate in the name of my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart, my noble friend Lady Verma will repeat as a Statement an Urgent Question on the socioeconomic equality duty.
Business of the House
(14 years ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
That the debate on the Motion in the name of Lord Greaves set down for today shall be limited to one and three quarter hours and that in the name of Lord Maclennan of Rogart to three and a quarter hours.
Common Agricultural Policy
(14 years ago)
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Lord Greaves
To call attention to proposals for reform of the Common Agricultural Policy; and to move for papers.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, this is a good opportunity to start a parliamentary debate on the reform of CAP, which is clearly going to last over the next two to three years while the decisions are being made. Today is particularly opportune, as we understand that the Commission will publish its proposals today.
The long and tortuous history of the common agricultural policy is approaching one of its periodic turning points. A new phase in the CAP to the end of the decade is due to start in August 2013. The details of that have not yet been agreed in any shape or form, so the next two years are going to be interesting. In introducing the debate, I want to give a fairly broad-brush overview. I am not going to talk about much of the technical detail. I am grateful for all the briefings that have come from various organisations and bodies and I hope that other noble Lords will fill in some of the detail. I want to put forward a series of propositions with which I have considerable sympathy and which I think should form the basis of a great deal of the discussion that is taking place.
The European Parliament has already agreed its position, based on a report from my Liberal Democrat colleague, George Lyon MEP. I am grateful for the many insights of what I am saying now, which are based on discussions with him. The Commission communication is due out later today. There has been a well leaked draft from commissioner Dacian Ciolos and I have no reason to doubt that the communication will be based on his views. However, there could be changes, so I do not want to talk about that in detail until we see exactly what is said.
Legislative proposals are due in 2011. There obviously will be interesting discussions during that time in the Council of Ministers. The CAP is subject for the first time to co-decision between the council and the European Parliament. Decisions have to be made by the end of 2012 or in early 2013 in order for the new system to come into operation in 2013. Clearly, a major part of deciding what will happen will be the overall European budget and the size of the pot, which will be decided by member states in the mean time.
My first major issue is the urgency for the United Kingdom Government, working with the devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales, to negotiate. It is clear that the line that was taken by the previous Labour Government has been abandoned—rightly so, because it isolated this country in the discussions on the future of the CAP within Europe. Will the Minister give me some idea of what the Government see as the timetable for coming to views on UK government policy with a view to negotiation and discussion with the other European countries and, as part of the Council of Ministers, with the other European institutions?
In trying to give an overview of the position, I will try to avoid using as much Euro-jargon as I can. It seems to us that sustainability and fairness have to be at the heart of a new CAP. The CAP has to be economically and environmentally sustainable at global, European and local levels. It needs to be socially sustainable, particularly in what Ciolos calls,
“areas with specific natural constraints”,
which may be the new Euro-jargon for less favoured areas, or it may be a little wider than that.
Food security is increasingly important and it has to be politically sustainable across the EU. In particular, we need to refocus CAP towards creating a sustainable agricultural system that meets the challenges, first, of climate change and other environmental challenges and, secondly, of the increased demand for food, which will occur across the globe and will require a large increase in food production. All that will be within a highly imperfect global market in which the patterns of demand and need for food are at variance with each other and in which the systems and patterns of trade reflect the demand rather than need.
Climate change makes the necessary increase in production more difficult due to scarcity of new land, water and energy. Increased demand is due to more people, an estimated 9 billion of us by 2050—or 9 billion others, because I do not think that I will be around in 2050—and demand for more varied and westernised diets.
George Lyon has identified four key areas of fairness: fair trade with major trading partners, most of whom support their agriculture; redistribution of direct payments under CAP to meet demands of new member states; support for local food production for local communities in less favoured areas or areas with specific natural constraints, as we might now call them, particularly upland and more remote areas throughout Europe and in this country; and a fair food chain through the strengthening of the negotiating power of farmers against multiple retailers.
My second proposition is general and relates to the way in which CAP has evolved in the decades that it has been in existence. Should we continue to phase out remaining export subsidies, as the Commission and the Parliament are suggesting? To what extent should we continue to phase out the remaining elements of market intervention? Most of them have gone and we do not have beef mountains or wine lakes any more. Also, to what extent should we attempt to get rid of coupled direct payments altogether, or should that be an option for member states? If the last two are to remain in place to some degree, at what level and on what basis would that be acceptable? This is fundamental to reform in the next phase.
The third proposition is the clear need to move towards a fully area-based system throughout Europe by 2020. Payments under the present phase have been decoupled, but in many places they are still being paid on an historical basis, so that, although they have been decoupled from existing levels of production and stocking, they are still linked to former levels. The longer that goes on, the more unfair it is. It does not represent the current realities.
The fourth proposition is the redistribution of payments in Europe. There has to be a rebalancing of area payments away from the old members of the EU—if I can put it that way—particularly in western Europe, to the new member states, which are mainly in eastern Europe. When the new member states joined, it was on the understanding and belief that, over time, there would be a more equalised system of area payments. A useful graph in the Lyon report from the European Parliament sets out the 2008 payments. If we ignore Greece, which is right at the top, but look at western European countries, we see that Belgium and the Netherlands received payments that averaged over €400 per hectare. Germany received over €300, France around €300 and the United Kingdom over €200. Romania and two other countries received less than €50 per hectare, while Poland, the largest of the eastern European countries to join, received around €80 per hectare. That is clearly not fair, as it denies countries in eastern Europe funds to support the restructuring and modernisation of agriculture that for many of them is absolutely necessary. People used to talk about inefficient French farmers, but they do not do that any more because in the 1950s and particularly the 1960s France reorganised substantial parts of its agriculture, as did southern Germany. That kind of process now has to take place in eastern Europe.
My fifth proposition is that there has to be a significant further greening of the system. Both the Lyon report and the Ciolos paper substantially go along with that. Is it not clear that the purpose of farm support—the reason why it exists—is to support the producers of food? It does not exist to achieve environmental public goods, but those goods are vital, so green outcomes need to be embedded throughout the system. Different ways to further strengthen the greening of the CAP are set out in the two documents. I do not want to go into those details at the moment, but other noble Lords may do so. However, whether that is done by amendments to the two existing pillars or in some other way, it has to happen.
That leads to the last two fundamental propositions. The first is the absolutely vital need to maintain a common European agricultural policy and to resist nationalisation of the CAP either by the patriation of significant parts of it or by resistance to further moves towards co-funding. These are simply attempts to undermine the whole basis of a very necessary system.
The final proposition is the size of the budget. If the aims set out in the Lyon report and what we expect to see in the Commission report are to be achieved—indeed, if the CAP is to do what it has to do—it will not possible to make any significant further reductions to the proportion of the EU budget that is allocated to the CAP from 2013. It was 75 per cent in 1984; it is now about 43 per cent, while the projected level for 2013 is 39.6 per cent. However, if we are serious about food security in Europe, climate change, fairness to eastern Europe and all the other issues—never mind sorting out the political problems—the projected level in 2013 is probably inevitable. My advice to the Government is to accept that, more or less. They should not spend their energies arguing about it; they should argue about the important thing, which is what the CAP has to do. I beg to move.
Lord Plumb
My Lords, in declaring my farming interests and involvement with agricultural policy and development over many years, I welcome every opportunity to look to the future—recognising, as I hope we do, that farming is part of a global industry as well as a major part of our national economy.
Many noble Lords will remember that the UK’s farm policy changed from the price guarantee and efficiency payment system when we joined the European Union in 1973—a policy which farmers were beginning to realise was creaking at the seams as production and costs increased—and moved, in six steps over a period of five years, into the common agricultural policy. The CAP has faced a lot of flak over the years, and some of the criticism has been justified, but those who wish to scrap it should understand, as my noble friend Lord Greaves has recognised, that it operates in the long-term interests of consumers.
The CAP has been regularly reformed over the past 50 years and, despite its often perceived failings, reliably fulfilled its primary role of providing high-quality food throughout Europe. It has also delivered the current standards of environmental management, food hygiene and animal welfare. However, this more modern food and farming industry has become energy intensive, requiring oil to produce fertilisers, agrochemicals and fuel. Agriculture uses 70 per cent of the world’s water and is responsible for 14 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture and the food industry—which now employ 14 per cent of our nation’s workforce—are therefore very much part of the global climate change problem. The demand for more renewable energy sources also means that the food processing industry now has to compete with the biofuel industry, which uses sugar, maize and wheat, for example, for raw materials. As that demand increases, the cost of food will rise.
Before I raise the issues that the reformed common agriculture policy will have to confront, your Lordships may wish to consider the reply I received from my noble friend Lord Sassoon in response to questions I posed, following the spending review debate, about Defra’s position. After recognising that Defra’s running costs would be reduced by £174 million, he stated that, by the end of the spending review period, a saving of £66 million will be made right across the rural development programme for England. The document which my noble friend supplied said:
“However, by making the most effective use of the European funding available to the programme and by taking advantage of movement in Euro/Sterling exchange rates, funding on the Higher Level Scheme will rise by 83% by 2013-14”.
Where hedging risks from exchange rate movements represented good value for money,
“Defra, Natural England and the Rural Payments Agency will work to ensure RDPE payments are made promptly and accurately”.
I welcome that.
The CAP will be reformed in 2012-13. As to its cost, many figures are quoted and misused, but they are spread across the lands of 500 million people, and I am told that €50 billion—£40 billion—is equal to 23p per day to consumers.
A reformed CAP has to confront five new issues; my noble friend has already mentioned them. They include food security, price volatility, climate change and rural degradation. The intensification of farming, as it has changed over the years and continues to change, threatens the viability of extensive regions of moorland and forest. There are three conflicting demands: the price of food against the background of budget control and the effect of the recession on consumer spending; globalisation and the liberalisation of world trade as we try to feed 9 billion people in the world; and the long-term trend in energy costs and the incentives for growing energy crops. The Commission’s proposals as we have read them in their leaked form are a little like the curate’s egg.
With all the development that is taking place, I am optimistic about a future in which science and technology, including GM crops, will become more important. In order to feed the world’s growing population, we need to double the output of food. We need a progressive common agricultural policy. It should be clearer, simpler and less confusing. It should involve less risk and be more market-focused and competitive in spirit. It should offer incentives to improve environmental performance. Above all, a common agricultural policy has to maintain productive capacity.
I hope the Government will oppose a renationalised policy giving more flexibility and possible co-financing by member states. I hope the Minister will also look further at the regulation payment rates for agri-environment schemes, as set out in his letter following our debate on the Prince’s Countryside Fund.
Baroness Trumpington
My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him whether he includes the valuable research done under the heading of “general agricultural policy”, which is of benefit to the entire world?
Lord Plumb
Of course I value the tremendous research done both privately and publicly. Without it, we would not have seen the growth that has been delivered through science and technology. That development is not only important but has been taken on with enthusiasm by people who realise that, in the long term, the food industry is probably one of the most important industries that we have in this country and throughout the world.
Lord Wills
My Lords, this issue is of considerable importance, not just to the agricultural sector but to consumers and taxpayers throughout Europe, as well as to developing countries and to all those who cherish our countryside. I start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on securing this debate. As he said, it is a timely one, and I join him in hoping that this will be the first of many occasions on which the House returns to this subject as this latest bout of reform unfolds, in what will undoubtedly be a long and tortuous process. Although the subject is of such importance to so many people, it is an opaque, complex and technical one, which therefore often does not receive the proper scrutiny that it should. I see a list of distinguished speakers with a great deal of experience in this matter, so I shall confine my remarks to a plea to the Government for greater transparency in the way the policy operates.
As is well known, Europe has gone through profound changes since the end of the Second World War. We have seen Germany divided and reunited and the Union grow from the original six members of the EEC, almost inexorably, to the current 27 members of the European Union. Globalisation has transformed the world economy with great social and political consequences, yet in the midst of this profound change—one of the most profound and rapid periods of change in human history—this one institution sails on. Occasionally it is buffeted by reforms, and it has changed quite considerably from the original conception, but it is still recognisably the same institution. Its flaws have been well rehearsed, and I do not want to go into them in great detail today, but it is worth just remembering that the combined costs in the most recent estimate that I have been able to find for the British family of four is £10.40 a week in terms of a direct subsidy with the increased costs to the consumer.
This policy still occupies more than 40 per cent of the European budget. The OECD has estimated that the cost to the European consumer in higher food prices due to the CAP is around £39 billion. The policy has done considerable damage to developing countries in the past, although I recognise that there have been considerable changes in recent years which have mitigated those problems. The figures are very complex and it is difficult to secure any kind of unanimity on them, and the impact on developing countries clearly depends on where the countries are and what period we are talking about, but it is generally accepted that this process of agricultural subsidy has done great damage in the past to some of the world’s poorest people.
The CAP has not really even benefited the farmers that it was most meant to protect. Because payments remain linked to production, 85 per cent of aid still goes to the top 17 per cent of recipients. In 2008, Prince Hans Adam of Liechtenstein got nearly €1.6 million in subsidy, while Prince Albert of Monaco got €250,000. In 2009, Tate & Lyle received more than £250,000 in subsidy. As with all agricultural subsidies throughout the developed world, these represent a form of welfare for agri-businesses. This flawed policy costs a great deal of money to administer—about €175 million. For 2004, which is the latest year that can be considered as finalised, which is a statement that in itself speaks volumes, around €100 million was taken up with fraud and so-called irregularity. So far as we can tell from the leaked documents, it looks as if support will continue to be linked to the size of the farm rather than to incomes, so this kind of skewed distribution is likely to continue.
I hope that these remarks, which will be familiar to all Members of this House, will not be construed as me attacking farming. They certainly should not be, because I believe that agriculture is far more than just another business. Among other things, it sustains our countryside, which is so precious in so many ways to all of us. The need for food security is indisputable, and I see the need for some form of stable support. All I would ask is whether this antiquated system of centralised, bureaucratic state subsidy is really the best way forward. I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and I will have occasion to return to this debate in the coming months.
Before I move on to my final point, I recognise that there have been significant improvements in this policy over the years. Every bout of reform has seen considerable improvements and I pay tribute to the huge efforts that have been required, as everyone in the House will recognise, from large numbers of dedicated public servants across the European Union. Yet all of that effort has still been what I regard as a patch-and-mend operation on what remains, at root, a flawed policy. If I am right about that, how is it that such a policy, which costs so many people so much, has persisted without really radical reform for so long?
It is a textbook example of how the politics of subsidy work. There are institutional handouts and bureaucracies that perpetuate themselves managing them, obfuscating the process and making it opaque for the general public—the voters—to understand. Above all, the fundamental problem is that the costs of this policy are spread thinly across all the people of Europe, whereas the benefits are concentrated on a happy few so that they have a far greater incentive to keep the system going than those who pay the price, largely in ignorance of what is being done to them.
I recognise that there is no possibility of scrapping the CAP and starting again from scratch. The political costs of any such transition would be impossible. But if we are to see progress in reforming this policy, in the direction in which I think most people would want to see it reformed, we need to have a much better informed public debate. Transparency is absolutely central to that. That is why I read with some depression a judgment by the European Court of Justice, published on 8 November, which said that the current EU laws and regulations on disclosure of beneficiaries of farm subsidies are “invalid”. Those regulations about transparency have been responsible for the pressure continuing for reform of this policy. Whatever the legal justifications for this decision, it is clear to me that the public interest must lie in greater transparency.
It must be right that the public understand, as fully as possible, the policy for which they are paying. It is a safeguard against fraud, which has been endemic in the operation of this policy. It should also enable the public to see the counterbalancing advantages of this policy, which previous speakers have already described. I know that the coalition Government are in favour of the Freedom of Information Act. Their Bible, the coalition agreement, says:
“We will extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act”,
to promote “greater transparency”.
To conclude, what steps are the coalition Government going to take to persuade the European Commission to change the way that its obligation to transparency is discharged in a way that is compatible with that European Court of Justice ruling earlier this month?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I respectfully draw the attention of noble Lords to the fact that Back-Benchers’ contributions are time-limited to seven minutes. If they exceed that, they may limit my noble friend’s ability to respond to their questions.
Lord Dykes
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Greaves for initiating this debate with what might be really perfect timing, in view of the impending announcements. We will obviously have to study the Commission’s proposals in great detail and very carefully indeed. My thanks also go to the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, the great expert on this subject, for his wise words. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, was perhaps a bit too gloomy because there is a general feeling everywhere that there needs to be thorough reform to have a modern structure for the CAP for the future, in the next financial perspective period.
I think I am right in saying that anyway, on the latest figures, the United States farm support system, overall, and the Japanese one cost far more than the CAP. The CAP is reducing both in absolute amounts, in certain sectors, and relatively. I have noticed a general will everywhere, in Brussels and Strasbourg and in member states, that it may go down to about 35 per cent eventually—at least, in the foreseeable future. The budget restraints that all national member states, including Britain, are obliged to follow nowadays because of the financial crisis mean that there is general public opinion in support of this. It therefore has to be structured in a modern way.
I have some questions for the Minister which I hope he will have time to answer in this debate, because we are reaching towards sensible, rational conclusions. However, they have not been reached yet. First, should all farm-support outlays be CAP-only or partly national? I know that it is a difficult question and that there are differing opinions. If it is national, should it be just for the non-farm aspects such as carbon emission reductions and environmental improvements?
Secondly, I agree with others that we need to progress to more market-driven policies, as the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, said, especially to avoid artificial overproduction. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that excessive payments to large farmers should be avoided in the modern system; it is objectionable that it produces the amassing of extra wealth as a result of the support, and that is not the real intention behind it. The United Kingdom is in an embarrassing position because we have a number of very large farmers who get huge amounts of subsidy, whereas in France the total is greater but the support for individual farmers is much smaller. I declare an interest in that I live in France, and I notice how the farm sector there has reduced, as my noble friend Lord Greaves, said, to almost the same proportion of the population as in this country now.
Farmers require public funds if they are enhancing the collective public environment, especially where they allow footpath access to their sites. The issue of healthy food needs separate public funding when budget pressures allow in coming years, although there might be a period of restraint before we reach that.
I strongly agree with the intervention by the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, who has now left the Chamber, when she stressed the importance of R&D. The noble Lord, Lord Plumb, endorsed that as well in his response. It is legitimate for part of the EU budget to be used to fund agricultural R&D. One cannot just leave it to the private sector—technical companies and the farmers themselves.
On the attitudes of the European Parliament, there appears to be strong support in that institution for the main First Pillar payments to be preserved, especially because of food security as well as efficiency without overproduction, and I agree with that. However, the objective criteria for any national payments in all countries to maintain the genuine single market have to be very carefully worked out by Governments, and again I would welcome it if the Minister felt able in today’s debate to reach any provisional putative conclusions on this extremely complicated and, to some people, provocative subject.
I welcome the ideas that have been mooted in various places, such as in the NFU briefings that we have received and among other bodies in Britain that are concerned with the future of this whole complicated area, about the notion of the staged convergence of current payments per hectare, to be reached, I hope, over the next perspective period that we are talking about, which ends in 2020. Real social dislocation and political unease arise when manifestly unfair differential payments are being made in different countries, particularly in the newer, poorer member states. The example of Poland has been mentioned, where there has been a great deal of understandable indignation. If we change the basis of the LFA payments, would they be pushed into Pillar 1? Would that be the logic? I imagine that that could possibly be the response of the British Government as these ideas unfold.
It is important psychologically for the British Parliament strongly to support the putative proposals as they are brought out and the final decisions that the Commission reaches in Brussels after the Council of Ministers has had time to discuss these matters and the Agricultural Council in particular reaches its own conclusions. That is important because of the unfair press in Britain about Europe in general—we remember with affection the legendary tabloid headline 50 years ago, “English student killed by German thunderstorm” to underline that position—and it is getting worse now among the tabloids, particularly the Murdoch ones. I include the Times in the category of “tabloid” nowadays, only without so many photographs. Their position is totally unfair, usually based on supposition and pretence rather than on actual fact. This poison of anti-Europeanism is affecting us in all sectors, and the CAP in particular has always been the whipping boy. If the UK Parliament, particularly in the other place, can show the courage to support enthusiastically the new, modern, reformed CAP structure, that would be a good thing.
As I said, if the proportion is going to fall, the amounts of money will still gradually rise once the present period of austerity has passed over. That means that some scientific and careful decisions have to be reached over the coming years. I believe that this debate today will help to guide some of our colleagues and experts in the other place as well to reach the right conclusions.
Lord Williamson of Horton
My Lords, I declare an interest as I spent many happy years in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and some years also in the European Commission. Some of what I say will be of historical interest, but it is important to know how we came to where we are if we are to consider what changes and improvements we might seek.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is right to refer to the reform of the CAP because that phrase is widely used. However, I would not wish to assume, as many people do, that there has been no effective reform of the policy. On the contrary, the EU’s agricultural policy bears little resemblance to the policy we adopted when we entered the European Community 37 years ago. To a large degree, the CAP as imagined by its critics is ancient history.
The CAP which became our policy when we entered the Community was designed to keep up and increase production, and to create a single market. With some difficulty, mainly because of currency, the single market was achieved. Where it was not achieved—sheep meat, for example—it was subsequently achieved. The UK is the principal beneficiary of the Common Market for sheep meat; we are a substantial exporter to other member states. It is worth noting that, from the historical survey before we entered the Community, British national policy was to increase production. We had subsidies to take out hedges, convert grassland and so on.
The old CAP was based on market management, through which prices paid by consumers were sufficient to ensure broadly that agricultural producers received the support prices that Ministers had decided. Direct payments for farmers played little or no role in the product market system. When I was in Brussels I once had in front of me practically all the officials responsible for running the CAP. I asked them if they had ever seen a cheque to a farmer. They had not. There were no cheques to farmers. Prices were maintained at the level decided by the Ministers through variable import levies—sometimes high, sometimes zero, depending on world market prices—through export refunds to clear the market and, most importantly, through purchases of a number of major products such as wheat, butter and skimmed milk powder by the intervention agencies.
What really mattered, of course, were the prices set by the Ministers. I believe that I attended about 100 meetings of the Council of Agriculture Ministers and about eight price-fixing marathons. Despite evidence of surplus or incipient surplus, the Governments, through their Ministers of Agriculture, were absolutely and obstinately determined to hold price levels up. I speak from personal experience, as I was present.
Of course, if Ministers had agreed some reduction in prices, there would have remained some disadvantages for consumers—as prices were still perhaps too high—and some distortions of world trade as a result of levies and export and refunds. However, the budget costs would have been substantially reduced because of the elimination of stocks in intervention. In any event, it was clearly the way to go. That was recognised in the European Commission from an early stage.
Then the steps were taken to get us where we are. First, elements of market support were reduced in 1992. Farmers were compensated by direct grants. In subsequent years, support prices were frozen or reduced. Land was taken out of production by set-aside. Agricultural surpluses fell. Farm incomes rose. The important Uruguay round of trade talks was successfully completed, partly because of the reduction in EU export subsidies.
With the arrival of the new member states, the substantial part of their workforce being in agriculture—and for other reasons, too—Heads of State and Governments kicked off again in March 1999. Prices were again cut, with compensation through direct payments for farmers. Support prices for wheat, other cereals and beef were cut by more than 15 per cent. Our then Government estimated that the overall economic benefit to the United Kingdom of the full-price cuts was about £1 billion.
In 2003, of course, we had the single farm payment. This marked a definitive change, away from support linked to the quantity of a product to a system of financial support directly to farmers, with requirements related to the environment, animal health and so on. Whatever problems we have had in England on the payment of the single farm payment, in policy terms this decoupling is a measure that reversed the philosophy and practice of the former CAP. We are now firmly set on this course. Already, by 2008 90 per cent of EU producer support was separate from any decision as to how much to produce. That is the last year for which I have figures; it is probably higher now. Thus the market- distorting element has largely disappeared. This continued with the proposals in 2008 which involved lifting tariffs on imported cereals, abandoning set-aside and scrapping milk quotas as a change in the world market situation influenced decisions.
It remains true that direct payments to farmers may be more expensive than the former system when there is an upward movement in world prices. There is some disadvantage to that degree. However, it is important—this is my final point—to keep in perspective the cost of the agriculture and food policy as it has now developed in the EU. The total budget of the EU in the most recent year represented 2.1 per cent of the public expenditure of the member states and less than 1 per cent of Community gross national income. The agriculture element—what is generally referred to as the CAP—represented slightly less than 1 per cent of public expenditure. I am talking not about GNP but about public expenditure by the member states. That is not bad value, although we should always try to keep unnecessary expenditure down.
As to the future, we should continue broadly on the line on which we are set. We should continue to phase out the things we set out to phase out. There is still some room for greater differentiation in favour of the less favoured areas, some of which are under pressure. Generally, we have set ourselves on quite a good track and we must not go backwards.
Earl Cathcart
My Lords, I declare that I farm a few hundred acres in Norfolk and therefore receive the single farm direct payment and environment grants.
My first point is that this is a common agricultural policy, but it is not common in the sense that all 27 states are not treated financially equally, as has already been said by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. The EU 12—that is, the last 12 countries to join the EU—received only around 25 per cent of the subsidy on joining, with the amount increasing until they are fully phased in by 2013. Even then, the EU 12 states will still average out considerably below the EU 15 states. This has led to demands from the EU 12 for an EU-wide flat-rate payment from 2013 onwards. However, those original EU 15 states, which have been getting a larger slice of the cake, believe they should continue to do so. It will be interesting to see who wins.
The Common Market was set up originally to have a level playing field for trade. Here we have the largest single expenditure item of the EU so I cannot see how anything other than equal treatment for all member states can be the answer. However, the French farmers are excellent negotiators and they, no doubt, will argue that some states are more equal than others. We will have to see.
Secondly, this is primarily an agricultural policy. The most important thing that a farmer does is to grow food. As such, food production must be the top priority in any CAP reform. Having said that, alongside food production can come the environmental role, including development and climate change schemes. Britain and Europe must improve their self-sufficiency in food production and food security. With the explosion in the world population in our lifetime, there is an ever increasing need to produce more food. The top priority for CAP reform must be improved efficiency in food production.
My next point, or rather question, is: will Pillar 1 payments—the direct payments or the single farm payment, call it what you will—continue post-2013? I believe that they will as they are seen as a very important safety net for farmers by the vast majority of member states and their MEPs, who now, for the first time since the Lisbon treaty, have to vote to approve the CAP reform package post-2013. But not all member states take this view. It is interesting that President Sarkozy of France wants a return to support payments according to the volume of food produced rather than direct payments. If that happens, we may return to food mountains and wine lakes. The journal Agra Europe wrote:
“The President’s argument has little to do with maintaining the incomes of small, poverty-stricken peasants and all to do with maintaining the incomes of France’s large agribusiness industry… In income terms French agriculture is dominated, not by small peasant farmers of popular myth, but by large scale cereal, dairy and beef farmers”.
Perhaps Sarkozy has started the awkward phase of France’s negotiations already.
Last month the Commission’s draft document The CAP Towards 2020 was leaked, as has been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Greaves. There are two things in it that I find curious. In fact, there are lots of things but I will mention only two today. First, the document considered limiting support to active farmers. What is an active farmer? We need the Government to keep an eye on what the definition of “active” is. Am I an active farmer if I engage in contract or share farming arrangements with my neighbour? Although I supply the land and pay for the input costs, I do not actually sit on a tractor on a day-to-day basis. If this is the definition, it will catch out a great many British farmers. Or is “active” meant to exclude the owner of land that could be used for farming but who chooses another non-farming use?
The second thing that I found curious was the reference to payment ceilings. This presumably means that no one farmer can receive more than, say, €100,000. I know that my noble friend Lord Dykes and the noble Lord, Lord Wills, argued the other way, but the contra argument is that this is illogical as the larger the farm, the larger the successful food production, which is what we need, but also the larger the capital outlay, the larger the overheads, the larger the cost of production, and, all in all, the larger the risk, and, therefore, it would follow, the larger the payment. Farmers are not fools, and they will reconstruct their businesses to avoid this ceiling. For example, if a farmer now receives €300,000 from the single farm payment, rather than be capped at €100,000, he might divide his farm into three separate legal entities and businesses—one part he farms as a sole trader, the second in partnership with his wife, and the third in partnership with his children, thus ensuring that he continues to receive the ful1 €300,000 as before.
There are two things that have not received nearly enough prominence and which the Government should ensure are given a much higher profile post-2013. The first is forestry, which seems to be almost forgotten in the commissioners’ thinking altogether. Britain imports 90 per cent of our timber needs and there are vast forestry interests in mainland Europe. The CAP should support the planting of woodland and responsible forest management so that people are encouraged to enhance the environmental value of forests. Secondly, as has already been mentioned, not nearly enough attention is being paid to science, research and development, not just for food production but for horticulture. My noble friend Lady Trumpington asked a very good question, which was ably answered by my noble friend Lord Plumb: if Britain and Europe are to produce more and more food because we need to feed an ever increasing population, then we forget science, research and development at our peril. There should be a level playing field for member states financially; food production should be the priority for the CAP, post-2013; direct payments will remain, because most member states want them to; and let us not forget forestry and science.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I regret having to intervene a second time in this debate, but we are already six minutes over time at this relatively early stage. This debate will end at 1.23 pm, so we are now substantially constraining my noble friend’s ability to answer.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
My Lords, I declare an interest as the half-owner of a 40-hectare vineyard for which we do not receive any subsidies. I am very grateful to my noble friend for not only bringing this debate before us but his broad-brush approach. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Williamson of Horton, for reminding us of some of the history, especially given his insight into it.
I want to concentrate my remarks on why I believe that the greening of the CAP is not just an option, but an absolute necessity. There should be a mandatory greening component of direct payments right across Europe. That is essential because the CAP is supposed to enable us to move towards a future with food security, but all the threats to that security lie in four areas: soil; water; plant and animal diversity, and hence resilience of species; and pollinators.
We need area-based payments that recognise the urgent need for land management that can serve and build on the ability of land to continue producing food—not just in 10 or 20 years’ time, but in 100 years. I shall talk first about soil. Historically, soil management was maintained by techniques such as crop rotation and using manure, which allowed soils to regenerate naturally. I was disturbed at the call by the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, for farms to grow larger and larger and be more monocrop-based, because I believe that to be one reason why we have such difficulty with our soils. Over time, technological advances such as artificial fertilisers and huge compacting farm machinery have allowed production on poor-quality or degraded soils. That approach, as Defra now recognises in its soil strategy, published last year, is no longer sustainable in the long term—not only because the cost of inorganic fertilisers has increased steeply but because our soil is washing straight off the land into streams and rivers at an alarming rate. Can the Minister provide the latest estimate of soil loss in this country?
As I have said, Defra has made a good start with its soil strategy, but there is an awful lot more that the CAP could do to underpin the cross-compliance approach. We are in the very early stage of this. Under the entry-level scheme, a farmer has to do his own assessment of his soil and say what he is going to do to solve the problem. He receives a 52-page soil protection review assessment form, which states:
“Please note that you do not have to return your completed SPR”—
the form—
“to … Defra. You must keep your completed SPR on farm. You will be asked to show this to an Inspector on an inspection”.
The difficulty with that approach is that it leaves very much in the air Defra’s assessment of what is happening on each farm, but, worse, it does not provide the urgency that is needed for new thinking and training for farmers to put into practice essential soil management techniques.
I turn to the issue of water. Of course, the CAP is not designed to address any of this, but nevertheless, catchment management—now recognised as being essential to the quality of our water—is all about land management. The truth is that land management equals water management. Without a certainty of water supply, food production will not be possible. Intensive irrigation has led to very poor soil, and the issues of soil and water are so intertwined that they must be addressed equally.
When you consider climate change and you discover that UK soils contain 10 billion tonnes of carbon—more than all the trees in the forests of Europe and equivalent to 50 times the UK’s current annual greenhouse gas emissions—you realise that well managed soils have the potential to sequester more carbon than we can imagine. However, much more needs to be done to understand and optimise this process. The CAP needs to be linked into the EU’s efforts on climate change. We cannot regard it as being simply for food production, when the land itself will be such a key element in our fight against climate change. Of course, climate change will drastically affect our ability to produce food.
I do not believe that there is much time to get round to the enormity of the changes needed, and the CAP needs to be designed to lead to agri-ecology, as opposed to agri-industry.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, I, too, shall hurry to get us back up to time. I do not have many points to make, but I should first declare an interest because I am married to a farmer, whose farm is medium-sized. As support has moved from production—Pillar 1, as the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, said—to Pillar 2, the environmental stuff, she has taken land out of economic production and moved to high-level and entry-level agri-environment schemes and so on. That shows that, if you put incentives in the right place, people will respond. That is the important thing. If you had a bit more carrot and bit less stick, you would get a better response. It is also a lot easier to administer; it is how we used to do things.
I read some of the discussion about this issue. There is a very good section of the Defra website, which is full of laudable and good intentions. How could we fault the provision of something that states aims such as,
“internationally competitive without reliance on subsidy or protection … rewarded by the market for its outputs … and by the taxpayer only for producing societal benefits … environmentally sensitive … socially responsive to the needs of rural communities”?
All of that is up there on the web if you want to read it; it is good stuff. However, the problem is how you translate that through a bureaucratic system and inspire lots of people across Europe. There are different cultures and objectives, economic differences, differing awareness of the rule of law and different levels of willingness among people who run the system to co-operate with the farmers.
I listened, for instance, to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about fairness to eastern Europe and providing a flat rate. We are going to transfer money from our taxpayers to eastern European landowners. I think that I shall get myself a bit of land out there and then sit back and get all that lovely money for doing very little. I do not know if that is what will happen, but if you do not get your incentives in the right place, you can end up with unintended consequences. That is the biggest danger of doing things that way.
The biggest cost is in administration. I was delighted to read that the Luxembourg farm council in late June heard calls from member states,
“for EU rules to be simplified across all legislative areas affecting farming—including health, food safety and environmental rules”.
They stressed the need for the simplification of EU regulations. That is one of the most important things.
At the sharp end, farmers used to be people who loved the land and loved their animals. That is why they farmed. It was not because they wanted to sit and read papers. Why should a farmer need a degree in paperwork—you now need one—to run his farm? To release ourselves from paperwork, we need someone with the mindset of an auditor, accountant or actuary. They must be very precise, because they must reconcile large areas to 0.01 of a hectare. They must make sure that all the boxes are ticked correctly. When they have cows that live out all year round because they are a native breed and very hardy, they must know how to respond to questions such as, “Do you have animal housing?”. The answer is no. They are then asked: “Do you have adequate ventilation in your animal housing?”. If they answer no, they fail; they have to tick yes to say that they have adequate ventilation in their non-existent housing. There are many such things. Someone who is used to ticking boxes can do it, but farmers cannot, because they think properly and logically and deal with the real world.
Every two or three years, thick booklets are issued. They get bigger and bigger. It is a challenge to wade through them and spot the changes. A lot of it stays the same, but there is always change. It does not make it easy to plan and manage. With uncertainty, you cannot plan. You read up on new schemes, but will the money be there? The goalposts move and suddenly there is no money. If you do not get into a scheme by such and such a date, you will not get the money. Is it worth trying to change? We were lucky. We got on with it just in time and hit the window by a few days. You cannot get into the HLS scheme until early or mid-spring of next year. The money that is being taken out of modulation is going into that. Where has it gone? Probably in administration.
Another thing that I have noticed is that on the whole there should be light-touch inspections, unless you have caught someone who is deliberately abusing something—tearing it to pieces and trying to make too much out of it. Most mistakes are inadvertent. Someone is ill, ear tags fall out of cows and calves, things happen and people get muddled, but for minor infringements there are now heavy fines, because the EU is fining Defra for not enforcing hard enough. That is madness, but the bigger madness is fining Defra, a government department that has budgeted to produce an administration in order to run this thing efficiently. What happens? The first year, the EU fined us £70 million or £80 million, which was taken from flood defences. What happened a few years later? We had flood problems.
What happens now? We have too few people on the mapping side. I suspect that money has been taken from there. I have just redone the mapping for the fourth time since 2004. The first lot of mapping was when things went digital—we covered just the cropped areas. Then we spotted that environmental stuff was going on, so we remapped the land to the field boundaries—the ditches and hedges—because we were going to get paid for that. Two years later, the decision was made to go for a more accurate master-map system, so we remapped all the areas because it had been decided that all the field sizes had changed slightly. Last year, the EU changed the definition of boundaries, which led to fields being amalgamated or changed around. It sounds great, but we have to change fields and field names and synchronise with the agronomy system, as we use agronomists. Multiple systems are involved and it is a nightmare. I still have not finished doing it properly.
I have another point. We are encouraged to make the single farm payment online, but when we want to make sure that we do our entitlements properly—under Defra’s “use it or lose it” principle—we have to do it on paper and make sure that it gets in on time by snail mail. It is dotty. Why is there not another box on the end of the form? If Defra cannot get the systems right, it should fire the people who are writing them—and fast. My advice is: keep it simple, stupid—or KISS.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Greaves for initiating this debate and declare my interest as a board member of the Countryside Alliance, a member of the National Farmers’ Union and a partner in a family farm. It is intriguing that the European Commission communication on the future of the CAP has been published while your Lordships have been speaking today.
The CAP began more than 50 years ago. It was set up to increase agricultural productivity by promoting technical progress, to ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, to stabilise markets and to ensure the availability of supplies at reasonable prices to consumers. While the CAP has undergone substantial and radical reform since its creation, the founding principles are as relevant today, and will be in the future, as they were 50 years ago.
Farming is undeniably important to the British economy. It utilises three-quarters of the land area of the UK, employs 500,000 people and in 2009 contributed approximately £6.2 billion to the UK economy. New challenges facing the agricultural sector, such as food security, climate change and the ever increasing need for energy, are likely to be even greater in future. It is estimated that farmers worldwide will have to produce more food in the next 50 years than they have in the past 10,000 years. Goodness knows what we were hunting then, but it is a sobering thought.
British farmers are capable of playing an important role in meeting this demand and increasing agricultural exports. They will also need to ensure that domestic food supply is secure and that they can continue to deliver affordable produce to consumers. The CAP remains important in aiding farmers to meet these new challenges and is valued by farmers. A recent survey of NFU members showed that 90 per cent of respondents indicated support for retaining a common EU agricultural policy, with 88 per cent indicating that the CAP was important to their business.
Over the past 50 years, the application of science to the production of food has enabled farmers to feed rapidly growing populations and it will be crucial to increasing future food yields and enhancing environmental protection. I take this opportunity to recognise the excellent review on agricultural research and development undertaken by my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach. It is important to remember that, while funding for scientific advancement is needed for farmers to meet future challenges, British farmers are already expected both to produce food to some of the highest standards in the world and to maintain the landscape for which Britain is famous. Our farmers have had more regulations imposed on them than non-EU producers. If we want high-quality food and we also want farmers to maintain the countryside and biodiversity and meet the challenges of climate change, energy supply and food security, we will need to back them.
While we all aspire for farmers in the future to be less dependent on public support, we must not forget that the single farm payment is often a lifeline. It is crucial that the CAP retains this element of support. I was therefore concerned that early analysis of this report, in particular from the National Farmers’ Union, suggested that the proposals announced today could create a more complicated, less market-oriented and less common agricultural policy.
We should remember that in the forthcoming negotiations we in Britain need to secure a common policy, where agriculture remains at the heart of any changes, with farmers across the member states competing on a level playing field. British farmers already comply with many regulations and reforms, which ensure that we have the highest animal welfare standards and environmental benefits in Europe. The CAP should be a mechanism to help farmers to prosper in the world market; it should not hinder them. I am confident that, with a fair policy, British farmers will rise to the challenge and meet the many demands that we place on them.
Lord German
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Greaves on the timeliness of this debate. There cannot be many people who can co-ordinate a major announcement by the European Commission and a debate in Parliament on the same day and almost to the same hour.
My understanding of the agricultural community in Wales leads me to counterbalance some of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, about the current nature of agricultural payments. I refer also to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, about the need for payments to be a central part of the future CAP for farmers because of our interest in food security. By way of illustration, in 2008-09 almost 90 per cent of average farm income in Wales was provided through the single farm payment—the reason being, of course, that we have a large number of hill farms and less-favoured areas, and the average age of farmers is increasing, with their sons and daughters saying that it is not worth farming and the consequent danger of land abandonment. In addition, there is the burgeoning of other industries in a rural economy to match the changes that are occurring in our rural environment. Looking across the European Union, it is interesting to note that the share of subsidies in total agricultural income, in both old and new member states, is between 30 and 40 per cent, whereas in regions and countries with an extensive livestock sector, it is close to 100 per cent. Therefore, we must be capable of having a policy that distinguishes between need and future food security.
As we have heard today, the central arguments on the future of the common agricultural policy are coming nearer to a conclusion. We have heard from the Government of a future decision on the overall European budget, and the Commission is currently putting forward proposals on the overall architecture of the future programme. However, what will remain unclear for some time yet is the size of the slice of the cake that the common agricultural policy will have within the overall budget. Although it might be tempting to dwell on that, it is likely that it will not become clear until the ink is finally dry on the overall budget. It is worth noting, as other noble Lords have mentioned, that the gradual reduction in the size of the CAP’s slice of the budget is expected to continue. That is certainly the view of officials in the Commission.
It would be interesting to dwell on those issues, but I should like to spend a few moments developing the arguments about the architecture of a future common agricultural policy. We know that this will be a much more complicated exercise than in past spending rounds because the final decisions will be made by co-decision between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. That will be a complicated political process—perhaps one of the most testing and demanding of the co-decision-making processes that we have seen in the current round. Different national and regional policy interests will need reconciliation. Of course, it is only by being at the heart of the debate that the UK Government can exert their influence. I should be interested to hear from the Minister what level of discussion is currently taking place between the UK Government and the European Parliament on trying to find common ground.
The current debate centres around the policy’s core aims and objectives but there are reformers in this debate who would like to see further objectives in addition to the original ones, such as the provision of environmental security, so ably discussed earlier by my noble friend Lady Miller, with a move to a land management policy focused on the delivery of social and environmental goods.
It seems that there is no inherent conflict between the original and the proposed objectives. Food security and environmental security go hand in hand—they are dependent on each other in many ways. By contributing towards both, farmers can both increase and diversify their income, particularly in areas considered to be less favoured. The common agricultural policy is one of the main mechanisms for providing strong incentives for good environmental behaviour. Therefore, the current debate provides an important opportunity to deliver on many of the social and environmental goals that the United Kingdom and Europe share.
Placing those two goals into separate funding pillars, therefore, seems to be an artificial division. Surely it is possible for agri-environmental and less-favoured schemes to sit alongside the single payment scheme, perhaps with a new enlarged Pillar 1. I understand the complications and difficulties involved in that, especially in relation to matched funding, but those are technical arguments. We should concentrate our arguments mainly on the objectives and policies that we want to see, and the architecture should be led by the policies which seem to work and which would make those objectives much more favourable.
The issue of modulation tends to become the argument by moving between Pillar 1 and Pillar 2, rather than the overarching use of the resources available. Concentrating too much on the structure results in an artificial and unhelpful distinction between agricultural support and rural and environmental development. In fact, it can lead to polarised opinion and an unfortunate skewing of the debate. Perhaps an extended Pillar 1 would lead to a clearer Pillar 2.
In conclusion, the Government and the European Commission need to do far more to promote the purpose and benefits of the CAP. It undoubtedly has a bad name, typified by the commonly heard statement that it is simply about subsidies for farmers. However, there are powerful arguments in its favour, not least of which is food security in a world where shortages are anticipated. However, it is also a system that has given us strong local and regional diversity, developing small producers and primarily ensuring high-quality produce. I would welcome such support from the Minister for promoting the CAP in his reply to the debate. After all, the CAP is not just for farmers; it is for our citizens as a whole.
Baroness Quin
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on introducing this debate today. Like many noble Lords, I agree that it is timely, although it might have been even timelier tomorrow after having a chance to look at the Commission’s latest communication. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, and others have reminded us, we helpfully had a leaked version of the paper some time ago. I do not know whether the Minister can inform us how similar the new document will be to the old one, but I imagine that there is a great deal in the leaked version that will continue to be in the version published today.
It has also been a very well informed debate with many Members of your Lordship’ House showing their knowledge of the subject, which in many cases goes back a long way. There has been reference to the past and the history of this policy. The noble Lord, Lord Williamson of Horton, gave us a particularly knowledgeable account of that. Certainly, he reminded us of some of the worst aspects of the old policy, particularly in terms of export subsidies, which harm third-world countries, surpluses and the environmental negative effects of many of its aspects.
We know, of course, that some farmers benefited very much from the old policy but I am also aware that many farmers in sectors such as the pig and poultry industries and horticulture not only did not receive support but frequently found themselves exposed to the full blast of EU competition rules limiting state aids and so on. Therefore, traditionally one aspect of the policy was that it was highly discriminatory, even within agriculture, and that often had very unfortunate effects.
My noble friend Lord Wills quite rightly said that often there is insufficient opportunity to scrutinise the policy as much as we would like. I certainly share the frustration of some noble Lords that, particularly in certain parts of the press, the debate seems not to have moved on at all and that the policy is frequently described as though it has not changed, whereas in fact many considerable changes have taken place over the years. Some of those changes have involved a significant switch away from production support—the decoupling process that has been referred to—and the emergence of the Second Pillar. That was a very important development in shaping people’s attitudes towards how the CAP might evolve in the future—certainly in terms of it being more of an agricultural and rural development policy, a way of rewarding and incentivising good environmental practice, supporting modernisation and diversification, helping farmers to develop new markets, bringing farmers closer to existing markets through marketing and commercialisation help, promoting energy crops and alternative energy systems, and in general promoting agricultural and rural development in a way that did not discriminate against certain sectors of agriculture and did not have the ossifying tendencies that the old agriculture system certainly had. We have also seen a reduction in export subsidies, although some of those regrettably persist and have negative effects. We have also seen a declining share for agriculture in the overall EU budget, and I hope that that process will continue.
We have to look at the Commission’s proposals in the current context, the first aspect of which is the financial crisis and the budgetary crises that Governments across Europe are facing. I think that the public are willing to pay for environmental and countryside policies, but they want to see clear benefits and a clear delivery of public goods in the process. Obviously they want a policy that helps meet the overall environmental commitments that we have entered into. Food security is another important issue, as the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, said; and the need for increased food production if world food needs are to be met is a very important aspect of this debate.
In the few minutes that I have, I would simply like to press the Government on their view as they approach these negotiations. I rather agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, when he says that people’s ideas on the future of agricultural policy are increasingly coming together. I think that there is more consensus than there used to be, and looking at some of the briefing provided to us today by the NFU, the CLA, the RSPB and so on, I was struck by many of the common aspects. There are certain differences, but there is more of a common approach than I recognise from the past. The Minister is therefore in a more fortunate position in starting these negotiations and finding an outcome which we hope will suit the UK and its needs.
In the leaked document—and I think it is likely to be maintained in the document today—there are basically three options, moving from an approach of very little change to one of more radical change. To which of the three approaches are the Government attracted at the moment?
Like one or two other speakers I would also like to raise the issue of co-financing. I understand that there is nervousness among our own farmers as well as farmers elsewhere that it could mean that if Governments do not put in their own share, funding could be at risk and there could be discrimination between countries of the EU. Yet at the same time we have seen some co-financing of regional and other schemes in the EU that can be successful. What is the Government’s thinking on this issue?
A number of noble Lords referred to large farms. I believe that we have to consider this question in a fairly subtle way. It is not just a question of big farms versus small farms but also of whether the subsidies to particular farms can be justified given the overall circumstances. I agree with my noble friend Lord Wills and the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, about what the public regard as unfairness in excessive payments. At the same time I would not want to say that it is the fault only of large farms as such. We have to look at this in a more subtle way and decide what should be supported and what should not.
I agree strongly on the point about agricultural research which a number of noble Lords mentioned. I hope the Minister will address that point. I would also like him to address the future for hill farmers and the LFA, a subject which I know is of great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and many others around the Chamber. We would like the Government’s view on whether these new areas of natural constraints are the same thing, or whether this is a definition that might go wider. I would also like to say very strongly that we do not want any of the environmental payments to be jeopardised. I hope that the funding cuts for Natural England which the Government are introducing will not undermine the good work that Natural England is doing with farmers in delivering environmental benefits.
I wish the Government well in these negotiations because they are important to our consumers, our farmers and indeed to all of us who love and value our countryside and who want to see a thriving rural economy within the overall economy of our country.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)
My Lords, I join others in offering my compliments to my noble friend Lord Greaves on his timing of this debate. As has been mentioned, it is only today—it has just been published—that we have seen the real, and not leaked, document on the common agricultural policy from the Commission. I am advised that it has considerable similarities with the leaked document, but I cannot comment on that now as I have not been though it in detail as it was only published this morning. I offer my compliments to my noble friend on having this debate but suggest that it might be somewhat premature. No doubt there will be comments that I can address.
I offer my thanks to all noble Lords who have spoken for the thought that has gone into their contributions, particularly given that we have had no time to look at the Commission’s proposals. As all noble Lords will know, we have waited for them a long time and there has been plenty of discussion over the past year or two across Europe about what we hoped to see in this communication and to assess whether it meets our expectations and those of farmers, consumers, taxpayers and, of course, the environment. I endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, said. I can offer reassurance to my noble friend Lord German that my honourable friend Mr Jim Paice has continued discussing these matters at a European level. He visited the European Parliament pretty early on in his time as the Minister responsible for agriculture, has had discussions with George Lyon MEP, who wrote the report, and has engaged with others on this matter.
I shall try to respond to all relevant comments raised in the debate but there will be more time to reflect on the proposals in the coming months, and no doubt there will be other opportunities to debate these matters. I want to say from the outset that the Government are committed to ambitious reform of the common agricultural policy. We also recognised, as my noble friend Lord German said, that it might be quite difficult. There are 27 countries involved and because of co-decision, matters become even more difficult. Although we are committed to ambitious reform of the CAP, we also accept, as the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, put it, that already a great deal has happened over the years. We no longer have the wine lakes, the butter mountains and other topographical features composed of different foodstuffs of one sort or another. However, in view of the significant challenges and opportunities ahead, we believe that reforming the EU framework so that farmers can be prepared for the future is essential. We shall continue to push for that in the coming months and years.
My noble friend Lord Greaves mentioned, for example, that by 2050 we must respond to the need to feed a world population of 9 billion people—3 billion more than at present. That means that worldwide food production must be increased by about the same amount as in the whole of last century, if not more, if we are to see an increase in living standards. That will certainly present a great many market opportunities and productivity challenges for United Kingdom agriculture. By removing unnecessary barriers to agriculture’s ability to respond, such as the market distorting subsidies in the CAP, is a starting point. Alongside that we need to invest in skills, training, research, as mentioned by my noble friends Lord Plumb and Lord Cathcart, and innovation which will increase productivity and enable farmers to become resilient to future market and environmental fluctuations. Indeed, improving productivity is a central element of the challenge, delivering dual benefits. Reducing farming inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides relative to outputs is not only good for farmer profitability but would reduce the impact on the environment. Here too we believe that farmers can play an important role.
In an earlier debate in this House, I outlined the important role that farmers play in managing the natural environment. The House will be aware of that, aware of our commitment to encourage that and of the emphasis that we place on the role of agri-environment schemes delivering a range of important environmental benefits. Farmers have a key job to play in managing the land so that it can continue to produce foods sustainably as well as help it to adapt to the changing climate and environment.
Sustainable management of soil and water, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, forest management, as mentioned by other noble Lords, and protecting the biodiversity of landscapes are just some of the interlinking components of a much larger picture within which farmers work. Future agriculture policy needs to be better focused on supporting these sorts of objectives, rather than stagnating existing structures and encouraging ongoing dependency on expensive subsidies that deliver little in the way of outputs for the investment being made. That is why we continue to see a very valuable role for Pillar 2 of CAP in the future, delivering targeted, measurable outputs that offer value for money.
This brings me to an issue that we must have in the forefront of our mind when we assess the proposals on CAP. This must be seen against the significant economic challenges that face the whole of Europe. The CAP represents over 40 per cent of the EU budget, Pillar 1 alone accounting for 33 per cent, so it cannot be immune to the hard choices that we are making elsewhere in the UK and we hope are being made in the EU. Indeed, the CAP budget in 2009 was €55 billion. I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, implied that this was a very small percentage—I think he used the figure of about 1 per cent—but I remind him of the quotation from the American senator:
“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon we are talking about real money”.
That €55 billion is a rather large sum of money—roughly equivalent, I am told, to the total spending on healthcare in all the new member states. No other EU sector receives this much support.
We need to be clear about where our priorities are and where money is best spent to stimulate competitiveness, sustainable growth and environmental public goods, contributing to the wider EU economy. The agriculture and food sectors have an important role to play in that. In Europe, they are particularly well placed to respond, with their high-value, high-quality produce, if farmers have the right framework to enable this. Therefore we need to use the next period—the period we are discussing, 2014-20—to help farmers adapt to a future that will be very different from today and enable them to respond to as-yet unforeseen challenges ahead. Fossilising existing structures will not help in this process; we need a new approach.
Our responsibility, along with the other 26 member states, is to set the direction of travel for our farmers. Our clear priority for this Government, and one that must underpin the Commission's approach, will be to reduce unnecessary red tape for farmers and simplify delivery of the CAP. I give that assurance to the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, in relation to his comments. The question that we now seek to address is whether the Commission's proposals establish the framework to enable this to happen.
Noble Lords raised a number of specific issues, and I would like to address one or two of those. First, the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, on the impact of the CAP on developing countries. I agree fully with him that we need to pay particular attention to that and we will want to ensure that any reform focuses on that. I have taken on his concerns, but I assure him that Her Majesty's Government share them.
Secondly, noble Lords—including my noble friends Lord Dykes and Lord Cathcart, who disagreed—asked whether we should be reducing payments to the larger farms. I do not fully agree, I take the point made by my noble friend; we do need to ensure that we do not find ourselves discouraging business structures that are going to be competitive. There are also legal problems—I see that this is a debate in which many lawyers are involved—and this might be a matter where we create a lot of business for the lawyers, and accountants, for that matter, when we come to definitions and the problems of restructuring businesses to get round the CAP.
On the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, about transparency in relation to the EU judgment, we will look very carefully at it—I have not done so myself—but a new legal framework is likely to be needed and we will be very keen to ensure that it delivers greater transparency and openness, in line, as he put it, with the coalition document, which is our Bible in all these matters.
We will obviously consider these proposals in considerably greater detail and respond to the Commission in due course. Noble Lords would not expect me to make a response today, when our document was only published earlier today on the web and I have not yet seen it. We will not, at this stage, want to set out our negotiating position. I think it was again the noble Lord, Lord Wills, who sought a degree more transparency on this issue, but I think he will accept that, in terms of our negotiating position, we would not want to set our cards out on the table at this stage, facing upwards. That comes later on in the game of poker. There is still a very long way to go and negotiations are only just beginning. We will work with all interested groups, we will be listening to all Members of both Houses and all others who have an interest over the coming months, but we will continue to press for ambitious reform.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, it falls to me now only to thank everybody who took part in the debate with some very expert and interesting contributions. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Wills, who put a very different point of view from that advocated by most speakers, including myself, which was extremely welcome. I also thank the Minister, who did his best to give a very careful response to the debate in quite difficult circumstances, because he has not actually seen the document which we were all trying to talk about on the basis of its leaked version. I thank him for that. We wish him and his colleagues well in the discussions on this matter in Europe in the next couple of years. I am tempted, slightly naughtily, to wish him well in his discussions within the Government on this matter, but if I pursue that too far, I shall get into trouble and I would never want to do that. So thank you to everybody who took part and I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Active Citizenship
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
To call attention to the role of active citizenship in society; and to move for papers.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
My Lords, I beg leave to call attention to the role of active citizenship in society. I begin by expressing my appreciation of the opportunity to raise this subject and to all those who have indicated an interest in it. There is no monopoly of wisdom on this topic and I very much look forward to hearing the views of the contributors to the debate.
It is my view that active citizenship is for everyone. It is a privilege to be a citizen—a privilege that carries responsibilities as well as rights. The fact that it extends so widely was brought home to me as recently as a few weeks ago by my six year-old grandson, Hector, who told me that he intended to stand for the school council—he attends a primary school in the centre of London. I asked him what he would be announcing that would attract the votes of those around him and what he would want to do to improve the primary school. He said: “While we have a lot of Chinese children, I think we should have plenty of Chinese meals for lunch”.
Active citizenship can be encouraged and manifested in very different ways, which are not always recognised as such in the reportage. I think particularly of the 52,000 students who congregated in Parliament Square and nearby recently to express their views about the proposals for higher education. Whatever view one may take about it, that was a demonstration of active citizenship and, as such, I believe, entirely appropriate.
Everyone in society must feel that they not only belong to society but can influence decisions and contribute to the betterment of the society in which they live. Many, perhaps most, people feel that the opportunity to do that is at local level: in parish councils—or community councils in Scotland—in local government and sometimes in local associations not set up under a formal structure.
If we as a society are to encourage such activity and the promotion of voluntary help and organised local activity, we must address the issue of funding. I welcome the Government’s decision, announced by the Prime Minister as long ago as July, to establish a national citizen service, which is targeted at enabling 16 year-old schoolchildren to perform societally useful tasks in their summer recess, with the possibility of following up in organising local activity.
The issue has come to the fore because of the Prime Minister’s discussion of the big society, or at least his announcement that that is something that the Government want to promote. I welcome that statement. It is not so long since a Prime Minister of this country denied the existence of society. I think that it is fair to say that we have lived through two decades of rampant individualism, when the motto of the 19th-century French statesman Guizot, “Enrichissez-vous”, seems to have been the mantra of too many people.
I was very struck by the last book written by Tony Judt, a New York University political philosopher of British background, entitled Ill Fares the Land. It was in praise of social democracy, a philosophy to which I adhere and which, I am bound to say, I have not heard trumpeted so clearly or so persuasively for a long time. Sad it is that he died as soon as he finished the book. At the beginning, he cited lines from Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village”:
“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay”.
We need to have that motto in our thoughts at this time.
The promotion of active citizenship is not and must not be a cover for slimming down the state. The state is an essential part of the protection of society, the opening up of opportunities for people and the dialogue in which we engage with other societies and other states. There has been rather too much emphasis on the appropriateness of slimming down the state. It was that libertarian, Adam Smith, who said that there are certain public institutions that a society needs and of which,
“the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals”.
Individuals, however, are citizens and can as individuals make massive contributions to the well-being of our community and philanthropically. We have heard recently of the gift of £10 million by Lloyd Dorfman to the National Theatre—coming at a time when we see the cultural life of our country at risk due to intended public spending cuts. Within the past year, we have had the magnificent donation to the nation of the art collection of Mr Antony d’Offay, worth, it is estimated, £100 million. That follows in the tradition of the Victorians—such as Andrew Carnegie’s endowment of public libraries, now seen to be at some risk—but we must recognise that Victorian society was extremely unequal and that only by the creation and recognition of the role of the state have we overcome the problems of inequality, although we still have a long way to go.
It is not only individuals who can make their contribution to active citizenship. I am impressed by what has been done by some businesses. For example, we have had 25 years of the Lloyds TSB Foundation in Scotland promoting the local needs of many communities by donating to charities—small and medium-sized—in communities from which the Trustee Savings Bank had drawn its customers. Sadly, the downturn in the profitability of the Lloyds Banking Group—admittedly momentarily—resulted in an attempt to cut off the Lloyds TSB Foundation at the knees. The matter is not yet resolved. As a result, £3.5 million per annum from that business is at risk. I profoundly hope that it will be saved. This is a matter of parliamentary interest, as it was set up as a result of the intervention of this House in bringing forward legislation in 1985.
Education in citizenship is recognised by the Prime Minister’s proposal, to which I referred, but I have heard—perhaps it is a black rumour—that the Department for Education is planning to remove education in citizenship from the secondary school curriculum. The subject was instituted only as a result of a cross-party inquiry in 1990, which was headed by Sir Bernard Crick and of which my noble friend Lord Baker was a distinguished member. The introduction of citizenship education between the ages of 11 and 14 and 14 through to 16—key stages 3 and 4—seems to me to have worked extremely well. I very much hope that it will not be tampered with. Indeed, I would like to think that it will be amplified and built on, because it is a possible avenue to universal provision and understanding of what these issues are about.
We know how interested young people can be in citizenship. A recent survey for Girlguiding UK, carried out by Populus, interviewed 981 young women between the ages of 14 and 25. The Active Citizenship: Girls Shout Out! report has been very revealing about their sense of the impossibility or difficulty of influencing public opinion and politics, but also of their desire to do so. As many as a quarter of those interviewed wanted to participate in national or local politics; as many as a third wanted to be more involved in campaigning; and as many as half were keen to be further involved in volunteering, although a large number of the girls already were. Their concerns included domestic violence, gangs and knife crime, equality for women in the workplace, preventing bullying and the pressure on young women to have sex before they are ready for it. These all seem to me to be useful comments about pre-eminent problems in our society today.
Girlguiding UK is not alone. The British Youth Council has been working in these fields for many years and has helped, through the provision of training, workshop programmes and events, to promote active participation in decision-making and democracy. I suggest that we in Parliament have a particular responsibility. We are capable of providing a rather greater direct interface with the public in order to give greater information to people about what decisions are waiting to be taken and in order to engage with the young, and with people of all backgrounds and all ages, to find out their priorities.
Through the efforts of our Lord Speaker, which are highly commendable in this field, we have the presence of the Youth Parliament in this Chamber. We could have other public discussions similarly, but we must not lecture the public. We must engage in dialogue, which would help to promote a higher rate of participation. Similarly, I believe that lowering the age of voting to 16 would engage more people at school in discussions about how they can influence events. That would not observe the practice of sofa government that we have had but assist in informing Members of Parliament and those who participate in decision-making at all levels—local, national, European and international.
The Lisbon treaty has provided for public petition to Europe and has undertaken that, if 1 million people sign up, the Commission will consider the recommendations and the Union will go into action. That seems to me to be recognition that, although most people are operative effectively at their local level, the challenge is much wider. I appeal to the Government and invite the Minister to give his thoughts in winding up—I am very glad that he is—on the need to recognise that this subject is much bigger than we have acknowledged to date and that it would not be a bad idea to reappoint a commission of the kind that Sir Bernard Crick presided over to hear views from across society and to consider the implementation of effective measures over the course of this Parliament.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, first, I offer my appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, for ensuring that we have this debate today. The number of noble Lords who have indicated that they wish to speak shows the importance and commitment of this House. I place on record that we have not in modern times invented the concept of active citizenship or big society. As the noble Lord has indicated, including the example of Hector, his grandson, campaigning at his local school, it has been going on for many years.
Perhaps the earliest recorded examples are in health and social care. In 597 AD King’s School, Canterbury, was formed and in 1136 Bishop Henry de Blois, a grandson of William the Conqueror, founded the Hospital of St Cross, Winchester. That hospital still cares for the elderly and I am told, although I have not tried it, still offers bread and ale to passing travellers. So neither the concept nor the practice is new. It is testament to the effectiveness of charities and the wider voluntary sector that we continue to recognise this form of enterprise, service delivery and campaigning, which is so relevant and so welcomed today.
Active citizenship is a much more accurately descriptive term than big society, which I struggle to define. Whatever it is called, it, the good society or, in terms of the structures, the third sector—that term is used to recognise that it is different and independent from business and the state—have all been with us for a long time, and we continue to benefit enormously.
I shall comment on two issues. The first is the role of government in active society and the other is a specific aspect of the role of an active society. The Government have responsibility to support active citizenship, but not to control or attempt to manage it. That is a quite difficult concept for the Government because wherever they spend money they want to direct and control. That is understandable because of their responsibility to the taxpayer to ensure effective use of their resources. But I do not want to dwell on funding.
The relationship between the state and the voluntary sector has changed. I would recommend the lecture on rediscovering charity made by Stephen Bubb on the anniversary of his decade as the chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations as an illuminating view of how the role has and has not changed over the years. We know that the welfare state has taken on many roles previously undertaken by the charitable sector, but even in 1948 Lord Beveridge wrote that social security must be achieved by the state and the individual, and that in organising security the state should not stifle incentive, opportunity or responsibility.
Since that time, it is clear from the growth of charities, voluntary and community organisations that it did not, but neither did it replicate. We no longer rely on charity for healthcare and education but in those fields, especially in health and social care, we see many charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises working alongside government. They are not seeking to replace government. Both are doing what they do best. I get concerned when I hear it sometimes claimed that state provision has curtailed citizenship and has given us a passive rather than an active citizenship. The growth of charities, the work that they do and the number of people involved evidence otherwise.
I shall give one example, which I choose for no particular reason other than that it is an organisation known to everyone and which, I suspect, few of us are aware of the extent of the role that it plays in our communities. Many will be aware of the WRVS trolleys and shops in our local NHS hospitals. But are we also aware that they have 45,000 volunteers who are not just working in the hospitals, but are undertaking meals on wheels, community transport, providing support in emergencies and in times of crisis, and in providing their wonderful “good neighbour” service of visiting people at home?
What has changed, particularly in the past 20 years, is the nature and professional standing of organisations and their relationship with the state. Part of that is due to the Government seeing the wider third sector as integral to the economy and service delivery—not just as an add-on or an optional extra—and, in more recent years, its working with the Government, and being paid by the Government, to provide some services.
I have had two ministerial roles, aside from my working life in the third sector and volunteering over the years. Those two roles really impacted on me. One was when I was Victims Minister in Northern Ireland for approximately three years and the other was my last ministerial role as the Minister for the Third Sector. I never ceased to be amazed and delighted by the scope, reach, professionalism, innovation and ideas from this sector. While it became very professional, it did not lose the very ethos from which the sector and charities drew their support.
The Government have established the big society as their big idea, which has received a mixed response. None of us would disagree with the concept, but Sir Stuart Etherington of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations said in his lecture to the Cass Business School that:
“The Big Society needs to be more than hot air”.
He articulated the fears of many, also indicated by the noble Lord, when he raised concerns that the big society concept must not be used to plug the gaps as the state withdraws from social provision through government cuts. The Office for Civil Society must ensure that it is not just an arm of government established to work with the sector and volunteers to take on government responsibilities, but that it is also the voice of a genuine big society. There will be times when it has to say no to other arms of government in the interests of the wider civil society and active citizenship. My fear is that if the Government seek to direct civil society to plug the gaps made by cuts, they will lose the very qualities of the sector that have allowed it to grow and be creative and supportive.
My final point is about listening to the voice of those who are active citizens and involved in civil society or the big society. I know that there is a view in some quarters of the Government that such organisations should not be allowed to campaign or even lobby their local councils or the Government. If that were to take hold in any meaningful way, we would be deprived of a real opportunity to use the skills and expertise that come with the active society. If we do not listen to what they have to say and allow them to lobby and campaign, we will lose the opportunity to make effective changes in society and to identify the problems and unintended consequences of policy and delivery. Many charities can articulate the concerns of those unable to do so themselves. They may be vulnerable, elderly or have disabilities, or they may be inarticulate and scared of speaking out. Whatever the reason, those that have the knowledge and experience of issues should not just be allowed to speak out—they have a duty to do so.
When Oliver Letwin stated at the NCVO conference in February this year that what he treasures about the voluntary sector is not its campaigning role but its special contribution to doing something to change things and solve problems, he fundamentally misunderstood the inextricable link between the two. My own view is that such groups not only have a right to speak out, but have a duty to advise the Government, to seek changes where they can see improvements that can and should be made, and to use their experience and expertise to assist the Government in policy-making. It is a wise Minister who listens to them.
There are many issues I have not touched on, but the value of the active society today is almost immeasurable. I welcome and congratulate the noble Lord on today’s debate.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for introducing this subject. I want to say a word about the Gresford War Memorial Trust as an excellent example of active citizenship and to draw one or two conclusions from its history. The mining village of Gresford was devastated by the Gresford Colliery disaster in 1934 when an explosion took place in the Dennis section of the mine some 690 metres underground, about the same depth as that from which the Chilean miners were recently rescued. Only six miners on the shift escaped while 266 miners lost their lives, three of whom were from the brave Llay No. 1 rescue team. Only 12 bodies were ever recovered. The wages of the dead miners were docked by a quarter for their failure to complete the shift. My father, as a young policeman, was present at the pit surface with the grieving families who waited in silence during the days and nights that followed the explosion.
Only 10 years later, in 1944, Gresford people decided to institute a welcome home fund for returning servicemen, and in 1948 the fund was used to purchase 18 acres of open fields at the centre of the village. The Gresford Trust was formed, with a committee of six elected members and representatives of every sports and social organisation in the village, including the churches. Currently, there are 18 to 20 such representatives, but any new community organisation can join. By its constitution, there could not be any dealings with the trust land without the consent of the people of Gresford and the adjoining village of Marford, as expressed in a local referendum.
In 1970, a prefabricated hall was built for community use, the mine owners never having provided a miners’ institute, as had happened in other villages in the area. After 20 years, however, it was not in a good state of repair. We had a playground that was dangerous, buildings that were badly maintained, a potholed road, 18 acres to look after, and mature trees and extensive boundaries to keep safe. I became involved at about that time as chairman, and in 1993 we put forward a scheme for selling a small part of the land for starter or retirement homes, which were much needed, with a view to using the money to rebuild the hall. There was a three-week long public display of our proposals and I addressed two packed and passionate public meetings that resulted in a referendum in which our proposals were soundly defeated by two to one: no way was any of the trust land to be sold. I was then translated to the less active role as president of the trust, which I remain, and declare an interest accordingly.
We started fund-raising, led by an excellent committee of local people under my successor as chairman, Viv Davies. Many contributed and continue to contribute, but I must single out Margaret Heaton, a local architect who became the project co-ordinator and, in time, an expert in applying for grants. Many individuals and organisations helped with capital funding, including the Sportlot Capital Programme, the Foundation for Sports and the Arts, the Community Council of Shropshire and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. We raised over half a million pounds. To date, with extra fundraising and grants, we have raised in the region of £800,000.
The excellent new hall, with its adjoining meeting rooms, kitchen, changing rooms and showers, was opened on 8 August 1998 by Ron Davies, then the Secretary of State for Wales. The clubs that use the trust property include the 125 year-old Gresford Cricket Club, which runs three senior teams in the North Wales Cricket League, and four junior teams. The Gresford Athletic Club plays senior football in the all-Wales Cymru Alliance League, and the Marford and Gresford Albion Football Club has 10 teams for youngsters from the age of seven and over, which numbers over 200 boys and girls—here I declare a further interest—including my grandson Angus.
There is on the trust land a tennis club, for older people a bowls club with a newly opened club room, a snooker club, a skateboard facility and a practice basketball area. The hall itself is used by a large variety of people for playgroups, line dancing, private parties, and even by the Welsh Assembly when its committee came to sit in the Wrexham area. Our mission statement is,
“run by the village for the village”.
All the work of running the complex is voluntary, apart from a part-time helper who has recently been employed to take on certain administrative duties. I have to mention Janet Holmes, the secretary, and Jenny Dutton, who have been hugely active throughout. Of course if you mention some names, you leave out others, but all who have been and are involved are heroes. This is what active citizenship is all about. We are grateful for support and advice from AVOW, the Association of Voluntary Organisations of Wrexham, but I do not think people realise that we ourselves have to generate the income to keep the trust afloat.
What problems does this experience throw up? One is vandalism, although fortunately there is not a great deal of it. But you can imagine the shock to the community when, shortly after the new cricket square was laid, someone thought it appropriate to drive a car over it and churn it up. The wicket was then attacked and burned with a caustic chemical. I offered a substantial award for information, but the offender was never brought to justice. So vandalism is a small problem. Continuity is important because we are not getting any younger. It is not easy for a younger generation to match the drive and enthusiasm of those who pushed the development scheme through, although we have had some great support from newer trustees, particularly the current chairman, Emlyn Jones. But we do need to put in place succession planning and training.
I turn to cash. We pay our way but we are running a large enterprise. Our income has covered our annual overheads so far, contrary to some of the pessimists who thought that we would go broke when we started, and we have a serious sum of money put by for future requirements. But just as the council-owned sports and community centres in the area are envious of our independence and community spirit, so we are envious of their security and ability to employ full-time caretakers and staff. It is possible to win grants for capital spending but almost impossible to secure the income stream. If the Government are serious about their big society policy, they should urgently consider the need for supporting the income of voluntary organisations.
The message from Gresford is that it can be done. There is an abundance of talent and drive in our communities which, if it comes together, will achieve great things. We are sure that the men whose names are inscribed on the memorial fashioned out of the colliery winding gear would have been proud of the achievements of their successors, the people of Gresford and Marford.
Lord Bannside
My Lords, I should like, first of all, to say how deeply I have been touched by the kind words of welcome, both verbal and written, extended to me since my introduction to the House in July. My gratitude is also due to my two sponsors, the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, and to the officers and staff of your Lordships’ House, whose help and patience know no bounds. Of course, I sent a John the Baptist before me—my good lady—and I pay her the tribute that I need always to pay her.
I am a great believer in being active but—hold on to your seats—I am not going to be too active today because I have other things in mind. This marks an important episode for me. When I made a maiden speech in another place not far from here, I did not think that I would be there for 40 years. However, hold on to your seats again, I have no intention of staying in this place for 40 years. In fact, through the grace of almighty God, I will become a really active citizen and take my place in a place where no mistakes are made, no arguments are argued, and where there is nothing to spoil the peace and calm of eternity and God Almighty, who I love through His Son, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. In case any of the right reverend Prelates thinks I might steal his job, I shall cease from that subject. However, one day perhaps I may have an opportunity of speaking on this matter in another place not so far from here.
Active citizenship is really a debate about rights versus responsibilities. Our rights are easy to list and are enshrined in law, whereas our responsibilities are not so well defined. I therefore welcome the fact that the sponsor of this debate has brought our attention to this very important matter. This generation needs not only to study citizenship but to make it practical and applicable to where they live. As noble Lords will know, by profession I am a minister of the Gospel. The church is the world in microcosm. I have served as a minister for more than 60 years and during that time I have learnt that there are church members and there are church members. There are those who want the privileges but do not want the responsibility; and there are those who are dedicated to the cause they espouse. These are, indeed, second milers; they go beyond in order that the church has a heartbeat and not just a structure. The same principle should apply to society.
The term “active citizen” did not exist when I was a young man—or, indeed, when I was a lot older. It is today’s buzzword for activities such as volunteering, donating, not being wasteful, sharing and generally helping the less fortunate. I appreciate the motive behind the probationary period that is needed for new immigrants who come into our country to carry out their responsibilities. They must know that the country to which they come is only as it is because others in times past took up these responsibilities and involved themselves to make this land better than it was.
I noticed an interesting letter in the Irish Independent today in which one of the members of the south has invited Her Majesty to come over and take the whole of Ireland under her control. I shall not throw a bomb such as that into the House today, but it is a good thought. If we all came together with Her Majesty at our head, we would do well. After all, another crowned king did that at a certain famous watering place, which I will not mention today.
The greatest commandment of all is to love our neighbours and to treat them the way we would like to be treated ourselves. If we replace the benefits system by teaching the real benefits that flow from our personal commitment to hard work, I believe we shall see our country come out of the terrible situation in which it finds itself today. There is hope where there is dedication; and there is hope where that dedication is employed with all the strength that we have. We need to open our doors to newcomers. What a sad country this would be if all the newcomers who did so well in helping us in the past had been closed out. It would be a very poor country.
I am delighted to put on record today the welcome I have received. I have not much time and I must finish. However, when I next come to speak, perhaps I will not have to finish so quickly—because the more argument we have here, the less trouble we will have in settling things outside. I trust that we will argue our way through the present situation towards a better country for us all.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bannside, and to congratulate him on it. When it comes to active citizenship, few can surpass the noble Lord’s record in Northern Ireland as co-founder of the DUP, as First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly and as a past Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. I am sure the noble Lord will be relieved to hear that he and I would not share precisely similar theological convictions on every matter, but I am sure that we do share a conviction that the Gospel speaks powerfully into the organising of human society, and the noble Lord has demonstrated that with his customary energy, persuasiveness and passion today. I know that the whole House looks forward to hearing his voice more frequently in the future.
To pray in this House each day for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven is to attend to the ordering of human society as the place in which individuals and communities find their full potential, work for justice and experience the life abundant which the Gospel promises. This debate is an opportunity to ask what is the soil in which trust and the building of relationships can grow, what is the place of government in enabling civil society to flourish—a concept which is, of course, essentially organic and not official—what is the nature of the transfer of power from the centre to the local that is required for this, and how can government both national and local contribute to active citizenship, which is essentially an untidy, non-conformist and often passionate concept.
The Economic and Social Research Council’s report on faith-based voluntary action observed in 2006:
“It is accepted that individuals are more likely to get involved and act collectively when they have something in common. They may, for instance, live in the same area or have similar interests, or be motivated by shared identities, values and beliefs”.
It is clear that one of the most important motivators for civic and social participation is religious conviction. That is why at the opening of the new quinquennium of the General Synod of the Church of England next week the first major debate will be about the big society and about the contribution of the Church of England, with partners from other Christian denominations, other faiths and wider civil society, to making the big society work.
I shall be privileged to lead that debate and I am delighted to do so, because my home city of Leicester provides so many examples of the priceless work of active citizens. The FareShare project sponsored by my diocese distributes food from supermarkets which has come near to the ending of its shelf life. Through a network of 20 projects in the city and the county, some 2,000 people receive regular donations of high-quality food which would otherwise be thrown away. These are people—the homeless, single-parent families, asylum seekers, the mentally frail and confused—for whom the experience of hunger is not unfamiliar. The St Philip’s Centre in Leicester has worked for five years to develop relations between people of different faith communities in one of the most diverse cities in Britain. This is the hard labour of building dialogue groups, of developing meaningful interactions and trust between very different communities, which led to a strong show of solidarity against the English Defence League in its recent disruptive visit to the city.
Those who engage in civil society know that the capacity of citizens’ groups to develop their members’ skills, to mobilise volunteers, to provide staff and venues and to reach the most socially excluded groups requires committed resources beyond the fragile short-termism of the grant-making culture. They know also that such groups require good governance, excellent leadership and sufficient and appropriate infrastructure to enable outcomes to be sustained.
For that reason, it will be important for the House to hear from the Minister about this Government’s commitment to the strong intermediate institutions which a strong civil society requires. Not all such institutions will follow government policy slavishly. If the intermediate institutions required for the strengthening of civil society include the churches, the universities and the trade unions, can Her Majesty’s Government really be sanguine about a strong civil society which may require the strengthening of such intermediate bodies over which the Government should not and could not seek to exercise final control?
Secondly, much has been made of the recruitment of many community organisers as part of the big society vision. More than 20 years ago, I attended a training course in the United States designed to enable potential organisers to understand the techniques and principles of organising established by Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was clear that organising is about enabling local communities to find the muscle and the potential to confront powerful institutions which may control their lives and to secure a shift of power towards the local. How is that to be done by community organisers who are government-sponsored and may find themselves accountable to government policies and programmes?
Thirdly, if the Government’s consultation document, Supporting a Stronger Civil Society, leads to a higher expectation of the ability of corporate social responsibility, employer-supported volunteering, pro-bono work and business mentoring to underpin the voluntary sector, how will we avoid a more uneven distribution of social capital and the possibility of the big society becoming a postcode lottery in which areas with strong existing social bonds benefit the most?
It is upon the answer to that question that so much of the church’s enthusiasm for the big society will depend.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart for introducing this important debate. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bannside, on his maiden speech, and I look forward to that of the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton.
I would like to concentrate my remarks on active citizenship as it relates to young people. In our schools, we should be preparing children for their future lives, not just stuffing them with facts which they might need for any particular job. We should also be giving them a love of learning, stimulating their curiosity and teaching them how to learn. None of us can look in our crystal balls and see what our career pattern will bring us. I had three careers before I had the surprise of coming to your Lordships’ House. That is why I believe it is crucial that we continue, nay improve, the courses in schools which prepare children to lead a happy, fulfilling and active life both within their families and in their communities. Both national curriculum citizenship and personal, social, health and economic education—PSHE—courses fall into this category.
As my noble friend Lord Maclennan said, citizenship was first introduced as a cross-curricular theme by a Conservative Government and became a statutory subject under the previous Government, giving all children an entitlement to the only curricular subject that encompasses politics, economics and the law and that teaches children about their rights and responsibilities as citizens. We may not know how a child will earn his living when he leaves school but we do know that he will eventually get the right to vote—unless he is sectioned or becomes a Member of Your Lordships’ House. We want him to make a positive contribution to society.
In these days when politics is in disrepute, we need to do everything we can to encourage young people to learn enough about politics to be able to make up their own minds and use their vote when the time comes. I often ask young people when I go into schools as part of the Lord Speaker's outreach programme whether they agree, as I do, with votes at 16. Not all of them do. I usually ask those who do not why that is. They tend to say, “I don't know enough about it”, to which I retort that I know a lot of 40 year-olds who don't know much about it either but they still have a vote. Many citizenship teachers do a great job and our own Parliamentary Education Department offers excellent materials and events to help them. But there is always room for further improvement and support from the Government.
Citizenship is important because it provides young people with the knowledge and skills they need to become employable and to make an effective contribution to public life. Surely that is part of what the Prime Minister means by the big society. Citizenship is intellectually rigorous and children see it as relevant to their lives, which is more than can be said for quadratic equations in most cases. That is why young people find it interesting and engaging.
PSHE also develops the skills that children need in life and in employment, and many schools also introduce an element of volunteering in the community. This often lays down an attitude of being willing to help others, which follows people into adult life. In my own school, long before citizenship or PSHE were invented, we went to visit elderly housebound people and did jobs for them. I think that my disabled old lady enjoyed my visits and I certainly learnt more about betting on horses than I would ever have learnt at school, because she was brought up near Aintree racecourse. Seriously, it did me a lot of good. Can my noble friend the Minister assure me that there are no plans to downgrade either of these important subjects from the school curriculum?
Of course, schools do other things to develop young citizens, such as in the school councils. From the very early years in primary school, they teach children about decision-making, how to make their voice heard and how to negotiate for what they want. When my step-granddaughter was elected to her school council, we mused at home that it was the first time that any of the family had been elected to anything, however hard her grandfather and I had tried. Many schools testify to the benefits of these school councils in developing responsible young people.
Community activities need somewhere to take place, and not every town or village has a lovely community hall such as ours in Gresford. Section 4 of the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010 takes effect from next April. It enables schools to use their delegated budgets for community facilities. Schools have had powers to provide community facilities or services since the Education Act 2002, but there were restrictions whereby they could fund services only when they directly supported the curriculum or were of direct educational benefit to pupils. Services such as adult learning or sports activities for the local community could be funded only by certain grants, charges or other external income. Schools will soon be able to use this power to allow their facilities to be used for those things. Can my noble friend the Minister confirm that the Government have no intention of restricting the scope of this funding, since it has the potential to provide great opportunities for community action in many places that do not have other facilities and to make better use of the buildings and equipment for which our taxes have already paid?
Finally, I join my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart in welcoming the national citizen service. When I first heard about this idea, I was slightly sceptical that it might be just for the middle-class children for whom there are already many opportunities. However, following a meeting with my right honourable friend Tim Loughton, the Minister for Children, my mind has been set at rest. He told me that the pilot schemes were measured on their effectiveness in ensuring that there was inclusiveness and that young people who were hard to reach were actually reached by those schemes. The first organisations that have won contracts for the first year have been told that their success will be measured on that basis. It is very important that we involve young people who do not have other opportunities. I was very interested to hear that a group that is very well represented in applications to take part in the national citizen service is young Muslim teenage women. That is an excellent thing. I wish the scheme a fair wind, but I hope that my noble friend can set my mind at rest on one or two other matters.
Lord Blair of Boughton
My Lords, I am acutely aware of the honour implicit in rising to address your Lordships for the first time. As other speakers have been, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, for introducing this important debate, enabling the House to consider a subject of enormous importance. Before I say anything further, like the noble Lord, Lord Bannside, before me, I place on record how much I have appreciated the warm welcome that I have received from all sides of the House. I particularly thank my sponsors, the noble Lord, Lord Hurd of Westwell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, who currently presides as Deputy Speaker. I further express my personal thanks to all the staff of the House with whom I have come into contact, who could not have been more courteous. I should also add that I am sorry that pre-planned and fairly extensive engagements abroad have and will prevent me from participating this autumn in the work of the House as much as I would have liked to do, a position which I hope to rectify in the new year.
I declare interests in two organisations to which I will subsequently refer. First, I am president of the Oxfordshire battalion of the Boys' Brigade and, secondly, during a relatively long career as a police officer, I had, at different times, responsibility for and pride in the special constabularies of a number of police forces in England. Although others have, this is not the occasion for me to comment on exactly what is meant now by the big society, or what it will come to mean as the present Government's term of office unfolds. In general, I want to place on record my wholehearted support for the appropriate engagement of citizens more closely in assisting their neighbours and communities. More specifically, this afternoon I shall reflect on active citizenship in two ways—first by commending to your Lordships, in particular, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, the inculcation of active citizenship in young people, which is so powerfully represented by uniformed voluntary associations such as the Boys' Brigade; and, secondly, by considering briefly what might be the limitations of active citizenship in a modern and ever more challenging world.
I begin with that second thought. As you will know, the Metropolitan Police force was founded in 1829 by Sir Robert Peel, then Home Secretary, subsequently to become Prime Minister. In founding it, Sir Robert reflected coincidentally on both the concept of active citizenship and—by founding a professional police force for the first time—on the limitations of such a concept. He remarked that,
“police are the public and the public are the police: the police being only members of the public that are paid to give full time attention to the duties which are incumbent on every citizen”.
Alongside the reserve and territorial forces of the Crown, there can be no more striking example of active citizenship than membership of the special constabulary, some members of which have given their lives for others in that endeavour. But there is a reason why there are professional police officers as well as special constabularies, just as there are professional nurses and social workers alongside the St John's Ambulance Service and the legions of carers across the land. Their jobs are to deal with issues of complexity, often caused by deprivation, poverty and social exclusion. Even though civil society now has its own office in government, as other speakers have recognised in different ways, we must continue to value and support those professionals, of all disciplines, whose job will increasingly be to take the difficult decisions implicit in prioritising needs over wishes and in ensuring due process, equality and fairness in the allocation of scarce resources, as we increase the empowerment of citizens actively to support their neighbours.
Beyond those comments, I merely make an observation with which I think the majority of police officers, past and present, would concur, which is that in my experience the nobility implicit in actions intended to support and improve our communities and neighbourhoods is not necessarily innate in every human being. However, it can be learned and can and should be taught. In this, I commend to the House the sterling contribution of those many individuals who work without payment of any kind to lead young people towards active citizenship—in the Scout Movement, for instance, which, at nearly half a million young people, now has more members in its ranks than for many decades, and in the Girl Guides, the Sea Scouts, the Boys' and Girls' Brigades, the cadet forces of the police and the armed services and many other groups too numerous to mention. Such organisations are the seed corn of an active citizenry in future years. Those who give voluntarily and generously of their time to run them need support and, where possible, the reconsideration of a number of the ever-increasing bureaucratic burdens laid upon them.
Lastly, I ask your Lordships to consider what I observed when I had the privilege of taking the salute some three years ago at the annual parade of the London branches of the Boys' Brigades, which was the significant number of young people from minority ethnic backgrounds within the ranks of those parading before me, an indication that active citizenship, encouraged and fostered, can draw together the different communities of this multicultural nation. I hope you will agree with me when I suggest that, for that development, this nation should be very grateful.
Baroness Neuberger
My Lords, I am delighted to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton, on his perceptive and compelling maiden speech. It is a real joy and privilege to have him in this House. I am personally so delighted as he and I have worked together on many issues to do with volunteering in the police in particular and the criminal justice system over many years. He will bring his wisdom and energy to this House and contribute not only on issues of crime and justice in which he has such expertise, but also on wider issues to do with the role of the citizen and the state. I look forward, as I note that all sides of the House do, to the major contribution that we know he will make over the coming years.
I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bannside, on his maiden speech and I was pleased to hear the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester teasing him very gently about a slight difference of theological perception. Wearing for one moment my rabbi’s hat, in so far as I believe in heaven at all—we Jews are very easy on the subject—we do not think that there will be no arguments there. We think that the debates which go on about the meaning of the law in this place will also go on up there. It will not be quiet at all. Two Jews with three opinions: that’s the way it goes.
I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart on securing this debate. It is one about which I care passionately. We all want to see active citizens. We all know that we need our citizens to be more involved in shaping their own lives and local institutions. The questions that lie before us now are just how we should be doing that and, indeed, what the Government can do to promote active citizenship—and what they should not do if they want active citizenship to flourish. I declare my interest as the volunteering champion for the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, until 2009; as chair of the independent Commission on the Future of Volunteering, supported by all three major parties, which reported in 2007; and as a former trustee of the Citizenship Foundation.
To start, the Government’s big society agenda is welcome. It intends to put power back in the hands of the people with the ambition that every adult will be an active member of an active neighbourhood group, but what will every adult need to do to achieve that? Does that mean voting and participating in political parties? Is it about being on school governing bodies or parochial church councils? Is it about being trustees of local charities? Is it about volunteering regularly in some way? It is all of these although, personally, I believe that volunteering time to help others in some way is an important part of active citizenship. I so agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blair, about that. As the Commission on the Future of Volunteering had as its strap line, we want to get volunteering into the DNA of our society.
We need people to volunteer and to discover what makes people want to do it, despite relatively high rates of volunteering in our society already compared with other countries. We know that active citizens build a stronger society. Active citizenship helps to foster trust in communities, creates a shared sense of values, increases personal satisfaction in influencing change and, as we know, increases self-esteem. As you make new friends and contacts, you strengthen your CV and find a reason to get up in the morning, and so on—we know a lot about it. We know quite a lot about what volunteering provides to those who do it, but we need to know more about how it provides it, what people want to give to it and what they want to gain from it, particularly if the Government want more of us to be more involved.
It is with growing dismay that I heard that the Department for Communities and Local Government has launched a consultation outlining its intention to cancel the citizenship survey, which provides by far the most rigorous, regular and reliable data on citizen engagement—specifically, on volunteering—in England. Both Volunteering England and the Institute for Volunteering Research have told me that they believe it is vital for the volunteering sector that the citizenship survey continues, because the survey provides national data on a range of citizenship issues including volunteering, cohesion, empowerment, values, racial and religious prejudice and political participation, as well as providing detailed demographic data. The citizenship survey provides a foundation for a huge amount of work on volunteering and active citizenship, and we need it. We need to know the answers to those sorts of questions, which are core questions for the big society. If the survey disappears, we will not know any more.
There are other national surveys which ask questions on volunteering, but their data sets, and their rigour and regularity, are far below the quality of that offered by the citizenship survey. We are trying to create the big society. Surely this is therefore not the time to cancel the citizenship survey for the future. We need to find out more about what goes on. It is also, surely, not the time to allow the volunteering infrastructure at national and local levels to face such severe cuts as it is doing at present, when it has never been more needed.
I am also hugely disappointed, personally, given everything that the Government have been saying about getting all sorts of people who have had huge difficulties of one sort or another into work or meaningful activity, that the access to volunteering fund which we called for in the Commission on the Future of Volunteering, which I chaired, will not be extended after the end of its first-year pilot this coming March, when there cannot possibly have been any meaningful evaluation of whether such a fund has improved access. It is particularly disappointing when the Government are calling for red tape and barriers to volunteering to be dismantled—precisely what the fund was set up to do. I cannot see that it makes sense.
What should be happening, then? We should be making it easier for people to volunteer. We have to deal with CRB checks—I can almost hear a collective groan around the House, as we have talked about it so often—which are still, ludicrously, not portable. Even if a volunteer has been checked by another organisation recently, each organisation has to organise for a fresh check, which has considerable administrative cost even if the check itself is free—not to mention that there is quite considerable confusion among volunteer-involving organisations over who needs to be checked. As far back as 2008, the Commission on the Future of Volunteering raised the need for CRB-checking processes to be simplified and for portability to be introduced, yet nothing has happened.
I could continue by raising the issue of citizenship education, as many noble Lords have done. I could discuss the issue of how compulsory community service should in no way be confused with true volunteering. I could praise the Government for their emphasis on encouraging people to take part in civil society, which I gladly do. However, I would be grateful if the Minister could give me some answers about CRB checks, the access to volunteering fund and supporting the infrastructure for volunteering, when the big society relies on all those for it to work well.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I join others in thanking my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart for introducing this important debate. I, like others, declare an interest as a long-time volunteer in various activities; I think that I must have had at least three separate CRB checks done on me in the past year. I want in particular to pick up on the remarks made by my noble friend Lady Walmsley about citizenship education for young people and to endorse her remarks about hoping very much—I hope that the Minister can reassure us —that the curriculum for citizenship will not be downgraded. It is extremely important that our young people get that introduction to what it means to be an active citizen, which the curriculum offers them.
I also worry about the fact that for many of our young people, their community today tends to be what is called the social networking community—one that comes from the internet, not from active interaction with friends. One benefit of active citizenship is that it is interactive with people and means linking up closely with friends. It gives a great sense of happiness and well-being because you are making friends and because you get the feeling of being a wanted and valued member of the community. I shall spend the time that I have today talking about not the curriculum for our young people but another aspect of education that picks up on the whole notion of citizenship. That is: adult education and the degree to which it opens doors not only to new opportunities and jobs but, in fact, to self-fulfilment. There is a sense of self-worth and self-confidence and of participation in society.
We had a short debate in this House a few weeks ago about adult education, which I led. In that debate, I instanced the case of Irene, a young woman who was a single mother but whose own education had been very limited. She became very worried about the fact that she could not help her daughter with her reading when she came home from school with a reading book. Somewhat reluctantly, she went along to classes, not because she wanted to admit that she could not read but because she wanted to help her daughter. She found that she enjoyed those classes and went on to take further classes. She eventually took an English course, then an IT course. She then found herself volunteering to run a group for parents with disabled children. That led to her standing as a school governor. Then she started being an active member of the tenants’ association and found herself running it. Having myself spent the past 30 or 40 years active in politics, I can see that from that point it is quite likely that she was then asked if she would stand as a local councillor. This experience over a five-year period illustrates how people, as the result of an introduction—often completely by chance—into adult education, can become active citizens and get a great sense of self-worth from their participation in society.
I congratulate coalition Ministers on the skills strategy, which was published on Tuesday and incorporates a commitment to maintaining some £210 million which is known as the safeguarded adult education budget. They have maintained it in money terms, not in real terms, but, given the degree to which other budgets are being cut, it is excellent that this particular budget is being maintained. It gives priority to basic skills and to training for those without qualifications, in recognition of the wider benefits that flow from adult education. We know from all the work that has been done that those who participate in adult education are healthier and happier and live longer than others, and that they are more likely to vote, to volunteer and to participate in society.
The danger with the developments that we are seeing with the big society, and with the concept of the big society, is that it feeds into what I call the self-organising middle classes. Guildford is well represented here today; following me will be the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford, and the noble Lord, Lord Blair, spent many a long year in Guildford as head of Surrey Police. We have a thriving U3A—a self-organising middle-class organisation—which does an enormous amount and is very important.
It is vital, however, that we do not just look to middle-class self-organisation but maintain within the broad adult education spectrum those organisations, such as the City Literary Institute, which provide a much broader perspective on adult learning. Some 18 per cent of the City Literary Institute’s learners pay the concessionary fee and 7 per cent are over 65 and on a very low income, while 30 per cent of its working-age learners are unemployed. Currently it gets 47 per cent of its expenses from the Government. It has 57,000 enrolments and 4,100 courses, including special courses for those with learning difficulties, for the deaf and for those with speech impediments, as well as outreach work to families and the homeless.
As I have been indicating, adult education opens doors to active citizenship, and it is vital that we keep those doors open.
The Lord Bishop of Guildford
As the third of the Guildford trio, my Lords, I warmly welcome this debate. If we are to discover the meaning of the big society, we shall also have to look at the meaning of civil society. A society can be inward-looking, even a club—one of the meanings of the word is one group of people over and against another. Civil society, however, is about civilisation, being civil to one another and living together in civitas—a city. Active citizenship is about learning to live together in the city that is our society, whether we live in London, Guildford, Addlestrop or Zennor. I am therefore supportive of the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for the retention of citizenship education in the core curriculum in secondary schools.
I want to make two observations on active citizenship from the point of view of a bishop. The first is an almost unnecessary apologia, though no apology, for why people of faith—specifically, members of the Christian churches—should be engaged in constructive citizenship, and the second will be to illustrate to your Lordships’ House, as others have been doing in this House today, how this is actually happening on the ground.
First, why should a bishop be bothered about citizenship when we read in sacred scripture that our citizenship is in heaven or that here we have no abiding city? Certainly, some Christians and other religious groups have been so otherworldly as to be of no earthly use. Not so, I trust, the church. Such disengagement with the city that is our society is a false spirituality. Yes, we look for a city to come, and here I am delighted to be in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Bannside. The great St Augustine wrote his eternal City of God as he saw the civilisation of late antiquity crumbling around him, Rome itself overrun by barbarian hordes. But he and bishops after him have always looked to the present city as well. In the Book of Revelation there is the new city, the new Jerusalem. It comes down indeed from above, but it is not out of this world. Visionaries and prophets have prayed for the coming of the kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven”, as we have already prayed in your Lordships’ House this morning. William Blake—not a comfortable conformist believer, I grant you—gives us “Jerusalem” to sing:
“Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land”.
As we sing that to Hubert Parry’s marvellous tune, that means Wales as well.
Secondly, what are we actually doing about it? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester has already spoken in strategic and national terms and in relation to Leicester itself. Every Bishop in your Lordships’ House could list numerous local projects and partnerships in their dioceses, either initiated by the churches or where the churches with other faith communities are willing and constructive collaborators with all of good will in their local communities. Such lists would be very extensive. I flag some that I am personally aware of as Bishop of Guildford.
Street Angel Groups are mushrooming all over the country. In my diocese, for example, they are in Guildford, Staines, Epsom, Aldershot, Camberley and Fleet. On Friday and Saturday nights, trained groups work closely with clubs, pubs and the police and are on the streets from about 10 pm till the early hours of the morning. Street crime actually plummets—that is official. In Woking last week, the first Muslim volunteers joined their emerging team of Street Angels.
There are after-school groups for children, parents, carers and teachers. There are Sure Start groups, including various community networks. Poverty groups such as the Besom tackle isolation and abuse as well as homelessness. Debt counselling is offered in Guildford by the churches through the instigation of the court services. Churches in Farnborough and Guildford have long-term investment in local community action groups. Town-centre chaplaincies and outreach centres are developing. Woking People of Faith involves the oldest mosque in England. Family support groups are emerging through the churches. The Mothers’ Union supports chaplaincy and support for families in prisons, not only women’s prisons. Elsewhere in the country, as well as in my part of the world, police chaplaincy supports community policing.
In Surrey we have a long-standing volunteer scheme with Surrey Police to provide adults to attend custody suites for interrogation at any time of day or night, where minors or vulnerable persons are not supported by parents or carers. This has been in operation for over 15 years, and last year there were more than 1,000 responses. For 35 years the dioceses of Guildford, Portsmouth and Winchester have also co-ordinated Hampshire volunteer care groups, and this is matched in many other parts of the country.
The South East England Faiths Forum has just published a survey of the economic contribution of faith groups to society throughout the region, Faith Communities: The Hidden Contribution. I repeat that my diocese is not untypical; the other Bishops in your Lordships’ House could all tell similar stories.
Behind this long and emergently tedious catalogue lies independent research indicating that about 10 per cent of adults in Surrey—I believe that the figures hold elsewhere in the country—volunteer for community-building activities. Of such volunteers, 70 per cent are motivated by their faith. To illustrate this, I relate a conversation I had only last week with one of my clergy about a community development project in Cobham. Working with their local Member of Parliament, Dominic Raab, the local community groups developed a project with the county council. It is not badged as a faith project, but the churches are the most active participants and active church members are key to all the community groups.
To conclude, my point is simply that in the creation of the big society, active citizenship is, of course, essential. Within the faith communities and the churches—and the Church of England therein—up and down the nation, there is an almost limitless reservoir of active citizenship, not only potentially to be tapped but actually getting on with doing the job and building civil society. We are not only singing Jerusalem.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, last night I had the privilege of attending a visit to Parliament by the Bite the Ballot campaign. Around 100 young people were here in the House to campaign and encourage other young people to get involved in the political process. It was an uplifting event.
However, some stark figures were presented to us by Bob Worcester from Ipsos MORI. At this year’s general election there was a 65 per cent turnout overall, but of young people under 25 only 44 per cent turned out to vote: 50 per cent of men, but only 39 per cent of women, which itself demands some deeper understanding. Of course, active citizenship is not just about voting every so often, but voting is nevertheless the cornerstone of our democracy, which is why citizenship education is so important in our schools, to help to reverse that decline in turnout.
For more active citizenship to be achieved, local neighbourhoods are the place to start. That is where most people are interested and confident in getting involved. There are three ways to encourage active citizenship in the neighbourhood that I should like to draw to your Lordships’ attention. The first is participatory budgeting, which we brand in Newcastle upon Tyne as “U decide”. It was launched four years ago by the Newcastle Partnership, with £280,000 of neighbourhood renewal cash. Now in our fifth year, there have been some 20 projects involving 11,000 people with more than £4.5 million of public funding allocated. “U decide” is used to address issues from community cohesion to open space improvements. It is used with communities of geography, interest and identity. Some examples from recent projects include an environmental improvement project in the Lemington area of Newcastle, which engaged more than 600 people in considering environmental issues and then went on to involve more than 800 people, including 400 pupils, in decision-making on which neighbourhood projects to support, all through a public ballot. Another example from “U decide” is a project to engage the city’s unpaid carers of adults in defining actions and interventions to improve their quality of life and then allocating resources to meet those needs. There has also been a project using police authority funding to build trust and confidence in one of the most deprived and disaffected estates in the city. The outcomes here have shown that, given real voice and choice, people will engage, and that there are tangible outcomes to be achieved in terms of improved relationships and better service delivery.
For me, the outcomes of participatory budgeting are that it builds social capital, targets spending more effectively and leads to closer working within a neighbourhood by public and third-sector agencies. In the context of reduced public spending, it is extremely important that more citizens become involved because they will understand better what is and is not possible, what things cost and how things should be prioritised.
My second example is volunteering in neighbourhoods, with the particular example of public libraries. I remember some years ago a county councillor in Bedlington, Northumberland, Ellen Mitchell, telling me how she led a group in establishing their first local library in the late 1940s. They found a room, they built the shelves and donated their own books as stock to get things started. It was the equivalent of the big society in those days. There are many similar examples from an era when Governments tended to match-fund voluntary effort, rather than do everything themselves. In the context of spending cuts over the next few years, we could find that we need to encourage volunteers to work in our local libraries in support of trained staff. This could keep libraries open when they might otherwise be closed. It would also provide experienced people to help in, for example, IT training and local and family history. We should remember how that library service started. It was not all about big government, but about voluntary action supported by the state. This is increasingly the way in which we may need to go to protect the library service and several other, similar local services, perhaps in the leisure field.
Is it possible to engage people? I think it is. School governing bodies explain how they have been heavily supported by volunteers over the years and are a model that can be followed. More people will volunteer if it is clearer to them how to do so.
A third way to increase active citizenship in neighbourhoods lies in neighbourhood planning across public services as a whole. Getting people involved in thinking about health services, community safety, job creation, leisure facilities and housing needs can lead, in turn, to neighbourhood-based problem solving, setting priorities and creating stronger community life through more citizens simply being involved in the process and then supporting each other. Engagement and capacity building starts at a local level, but has to be led by local government, as the only body with a democratic mandate to draw in other public sector and third-sector bodies alongside it.
That is why I am worried by any trend towards the atomisation of public services, and their delivery, rather than localism. Localism brings public services together under one umbrella, led by local government, which derives its mandate from the ballot box. Atomisation gives greater control to Whitehall in allocating budgets, through its system of budgetary silos. That is why I believe we must empower our neighbourhoods to define those public services that they need and then see them delivered through devolution of power. That would encourage more active citizenship which, in turn, will help to create stronger communities and neighbourhood and, one hopes, the rise in turnout at formal elections that we seek so much.
Lord Addington
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for initiating this debate. It will surprise nobody that I will concentrate on the sporting sector, particularly voluntary sports clubs.
The amateur sports sector is one of the most established parts of the big society or voluntary sector that there has ever been. It embodies the idea of doing something for yourself, and then gaining a benefit from something you enjoy doing. A lot of people ask why people get involved in various types of voluntary activity, and we usually then hear a long list of things with songs about the benefits. Sport is something you get involved in because you enjoy the process, and you get something good out of it for yourself. However, to do this, you need to bring other people with you. Effectively, it is a voluntary thing that is quite selfish but is hugely beneficial at the same time; an odd dichotomy.
The amateur sports clubs and the British mania for regulating sport have led to sport being a growth area. In many sports, groups often provide their own facilities, structure and coaching. They get involved across the board and are self-sustaining and self-generating. What do they need from the state? Some would say they need very little and should be left alone. Others would say the state should get involved in pump-priming. The question we must ask is: what is available at the moment?
Despite the fact that past Governments tried—the previous Government tried very hard—to provide better facilities, we are in a situation where what the state can most immediately do is probably to look at where it can reduce the burden of activity on these groups, and where we can pull away and allow them to function better. Effectively, if you make the lives of secretaries of sports clubs easier, you will make the lives of sports clubs much easier. Those volunteers have to deal with the paperwork and go through the checks. CRB checks have already been mentioned but there is also the regulatory and licensing process. If you make that easier, you will guarantee that they get more involved.
There are two ways of doing this. One is to get the Government to do it for you. The other is to strip away the regulations to the bare bones of what is acceptable in our society. I know that the current Government are starting to look at this. I know because certain organisations that, two years ago, helped me to present a Bill that did some of this have been talking to them. When will we establish exactly what is the minimum of regulation and responsibility that we want for these groups? I encourage my Government to answer that question clearly. Also, I expect the Government to assist by checking what works within this sector.
Those who have heard me often will start to get feelings of déjà vu here. There have been many schemes to do with recruiting youth. When politicians get involved in sport, they say, “Let’s get the kids involved”. They forget that getting kids involved is very easy. You simply do it in school time and organise it through the school. It is dead easy; we have done it dozens of times. The problem is not school-age sport or sport in schools; it is sport when people hit the age of 16 or 18 or 21. That is when it matters. We have not really addressed the problem of the drop-out ages from education. That is when it happens. Unless we address that, we will have problems.
Can the Government look, as they have looked at what has happened in the past few years, at which of the schemes for recruitment, retention and reinvolvement have worked properly? Enough groundwork has been done by the previous Government. They may have been looking for a magic bullet. They may have found a decent gun with which to fire it. We do not know. Let us have a look at what has been done and build on it. Can we have an answer as to what has been the best scheme at certain points? With fewer resources available, targeting or showing people models around which to build their work is something that could easily be done. If we do not have a system for retrieving that information, God help us.
Finally, when we deal with this process of stripping away various areas in which clubs find their lives being made difficult, can the Government assure us that they will try to co-ordinate what is required to get people trained and functioning in these groups? That is, will we get a system that makes it easier to get, for instance, good coaching qualifications? Will we address ways to make it less expensive to do this? It could be done either by governing bodies purchasing services en masse or by trying to get some reduction in cost for those that are taking it on. If we want society to function properly in its voluntary groups, the Government have a duty to make sure that they do not put any impediments in the way. If we can take such impediments away, we will go some way towards achieving a good big society.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Maclennan on initiating this valuable debate. Like others, I will focus on citizenship education. In a free society, citizens are able to participate in public affairs. They may come together to organise or they may contribute in a purely individual capacity to the affairs of the community. An active citizenship is a sign of a healthy democracy. It underpins the Prime Minister’s idea of the big society. My purpose is to call attention to the potential contradiction between government aims and apparent government intentions.
The most consistent and productive means of instilling awareness of the value of engagement in public life is through citizenship education. One cannot force people to engage in public affairs but one can make them aware of the value of getting engaged. Awareness of how society is organised and how one can make a contribution and influence what goes on is a form of empowerment and is to the good of society. There is therefore a compelling case for citizenship education. As we have heard, that was recognised in 2002, when citizenship education became part of the national curriculum. If people are to take responsibility for their own community, they need to be aware of the values of so doing and the structures within which they are operating. Citizenship education can therefore be seen as a prerequisite to achieving the big society.
However, as my noble friend Lady Walmsley said, there are concerns that citizenship education may not survive a review of the national curriculum in England. That would be a great mistake—one that derives from a misunderstanding of what is happening. There have been criticisms of the quality of teaching of citizenship. Some people, not least in my own party, are suspicious of the teaching of citizenship, seeing it—as they sometimes see the teaching of politics—as a means of indoctrination and of instilling particular political values in young minds. I do not deny that there are problems with the teaching of citizenship, but they derive not from the vigour or extent of such teaching but from the fact that it is underresourced and undervalued. Though part of the national curriculum, it has not had the resources devoted to it that are necessary for it to be taught thoroughly. There have not been the necessary incentives for schools to take it seriously and invest time and effort in making it a success.
I was once interviewed by an MA student for his dissertation. At the end of the interview, he asked me my views on citizenship education. I explained that I was a strong supporter. He revealed that he was a trained citizenship teacher. He had been hired by a school but, the moment there was pressure on the school budget, he had been the first to be let go. I suspect that he was not the exception. Without teachers trained in citizenship education, the danger is that responsibility is given to teachers who are free on a Wednesday afternoon or do not have the heaviest teaching load. In such circumstances, the danger is that the subject will not be taught as well as it should be. That is a reflection not on the teachers but on the situation in which they find themselves. It is also a situation where bias may creep in, because teachers are not tutored in how to ensure neutrality in delivering the subject. In such circumstances, one can see how critics will be wary of citizenship education.
What is needed is not the ending of citizenship education but rather the opposite. It needs to be taken seriously by schools. Head teachers presently have no incentive to take it seriously. The Department for Education needs to address how to ensure its more effective delivery, and a prerequisite to that is enhancing its status. If citizenship education disappears, we will end up with a massive divide between those who understand how our political system works and how they can contribute to it and those who have a limited awareness and for whom the political system may be a closed book.
Only a limited number of schools offer politics at A and AS-level. Where it is taught, it tends to be taught extremely well, often by teachers who have degrees in politics and entered teaching through the history route. The teachers are keen and know how to teach politics. Pupils who study politics end up having some understanding of the community around them and how to influence it. They are the ones in a position to make the big society a reality—except, of course, they are in a minority. We have the potential not for a big society but, rather, for a small one if we exclude most of our young people from being able to get a good understanding of the society that they inhabit.
The schools that we really need to get to are those which are not necessarily the most successful and which are not able to offer politics. These are the schools where pupils, without citizenship education, may end up with little awareness of their local community and how they can contribute to it. We need to help them, not work against them by contemplating the removal of citizenship education.
Enhancing citizenship education does not necessarily entail investing substantial sums in it—I appreciate that the money is not there—but rather is about enhancing its status and giving greater incentives to schools to take it seriously. There are resources available, not least on the internet—the Parliament’s Education Service, for example, does a fantastic job in generating material for schools—but the challenge is to ensure that those resources are exploited to their full extent and, indeed, to ensure that schools are aware of them and want to make use of them.
I conclude as I began: it is essential that the aims of government are consistent with its intentions. Getting rid of citizenship education would undermine the Prime Minister’s aim of achieving the big society. If we want citizens to understand Parliament and take it seriously, we could do little better than put our weight behind enhancing citizenship education in this country.
Lord Clement-Jones
My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Maclennan on initiating today’s debate. Inevitably, when talking about active citizenship, we need to examine the credentials of the big society as a concept. I confess that, when reading books and articles recently about the virtues of big society policy, I feel a little like Monsieur Jourdain in Molière’s “Bourgeois Gentilhomme”, who realises from his conversation with the philosophy master that he speaks in prose. I apologise to my noble friend for not reciting the original French. Monsieur Jourdain states:
“Well, what do you know about that! These forty years now, I’ve been speaking in prose without knowing it! How grateful I am to you for teaching me that”.
Being an active citizen is something that many of us do, and have done instinctively, for most of our lives. I am sure that there is a great danger in this debate of giving too much autobiography, but the fact is that volunteering in the first neighbourhood law centre in north Kensington in the early 1970s helped me to define my politics and seeing the local housing and welfare issues from that perspective led to my joining the Liberal Party, as it then was. Of course, many things then fell into place in terms of political philosophy. My motives were to ensure that people had more control over their own lives. Through community politics—my noble friend Lord Greaves was a notable exponent of that in the Liberal Party—we had the makings of a tool to do so.
As a Liberal, and then a Liberal Democrat, I have never really questioned the value of the active citizen. Gladstone described the great fault line in British politics perfectly, and it is still there: some parties and people have trust in the people tempered by prudence whereas others have mistrust of the people tempered by fear. Gladstone applied this to the concept of the Tory/Liberal divide but it could have applied equally well to the division between Fabian and neo-liberal in the last century. Indeed, it is evident today in those who want to further the enabling and empowering society as opposed to those who simply do not want to take the risk. JS Mill summed it up well in his Principles of Political Economy. He said:
“A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest have their faculties only half developed”.
Of course, the balance between state and voluntary action has changed over the years since he wrote that work and the importance of the concept of the big society—a terrible name, especially for followers of Edmund Burke with his “little battalions”, or for devotees of Schumacher—lies in the way in which it has made us examine whether that balance needs to change.
In his stimulating new book, The Big Society, Jesse Norman, the newly elected Conservative MP, engages in an argument essentially directed towards Conservatives—namely, that the balance needs to change again. There is little reference to the great Liberal thinkers but his thesis essentially expropriates traditional Liberal and neo-liberal principles in the name of compassionate conservatism.
Should we Liberals care that our approach to the concept of the enabling state is now being annexed by Conservative think tankers? I do not believe that we should at all, provided that the limits of the big society are recognised in terms of its not being able to deliver the bulk of the welfare state. The coalition Government are prepared to act to make it a reality. Many colleagues have said today how that could be done, particularly through the encouragement of volunteering and the assumption of responsibility.
Over the years, I have been involved in many different bodies in the voluntary sector: Crime Concern, Cancerbackup and TreeHouse, the autism education charity. In my experience, voluntary organisations cannot just be left to get on with it; the big society has to be paid for. Particularly at a time of deep cuts to central and local government, government itself has to be reinvented to give space to voluntary organisations. Here, the issue of core funding is crucial. We need to alter the historic Fabian mindset that the man from the ministry or the person from the local government department knows best. Yes, of course, it is perfectly proper for organisations to have to compete for project funding, but over the years, even in the good times, while local government budgets have expanded, core funding of many organisations has gone down and down, which means that many small but effective voluntary organisations find it difficult to survive.
I am the trustee of an organisation that specialises in community development with young people in the inner city. It has highly innovative ways of tackling issues such as knife crime and gang involvement by stimulating creativity. Many projects are funded, but core funding has gone down inexorably from year to year and there is no real headroom for development. As a result, we are having to wind up the organisation. This is a deeply sad outcome. I strongly believe that our organisation in Brixton, and many such as ours, gained the trust and respect of young people in a way that no central or local government organisation could. That is a key feature of active citizenship in my view. There have been some good developments as far as capital funding is concerned. The establishment of Futurebuilders by the previous Government ensured that TreeHouse was able to finance an essential part of its new £11.5 million school building.
It is sad that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, cannot be with us today. He is a friend whom I have admired for many years, as he is the most active citizen I know. He founded the Legal Action Group and the Citizenship Foundation, both of which are immensely valuable and influential. The great achievement of the foundation was to secure citizenship education, as my noble friend mentioned earlier, as part of the national curriculum. This appears to be in danger. If we are serious about the big society, we should be enhancing this element, not diminishing it.
Finally, there is nothing genteel or safe about the big society. If we truly believe in empowerment, we need to take the political and social consequences. That is where trust is so important, sprinkled, of course, with a bit of prudence.
Baroness Barker
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Maclennan for initiating this debate. I pay tribute to the two excellent maiden speakers in our debate today. The points made by the noble Lord, Lord Bannside, about the strength of societies which are diverse due to people migrating to them were particularly moving and I congratulate him on them.
I declare an interest as an employee of a new organisation, See the Difference, which trains and enables charities to seek support, whether money or volunteering, by making films and putting them on the internet. I shall return to the importance of the internet and social networking. I have also been involved in the voluntary sector for more than 30 years, either as an employee of various organisations or as a consultant. It is with that historical perspective that I want to approach today’s debate. In preparing for it I was thinking about what it is that makes a society a good society. I have concluded that size does not really matter: a big society is not inherently any better, qualitatively, than a small society. We all live in a number of different societies at the same time. A good society is open, transparent and inclusive, and has strong foundations. A good society is one where individuals within it know where the focal points of power and organisation lie, and are able to change it and make a difference.
The most compelling factor in active citizenship is that an individual can see the difference that he or she can make, or that he or she has made. When we discuss this subject, it is therefore important to look at the focal points in societies which endure. GPs’ surgeries, the health service, churches, different faith groups, synagogues, mosques and schools are all places to which people can come and influence the society in which they live. I, too, put in a plug for libraries. Those that are run with the assistance of professional librarians make for good focal points in a good society—as do voluntary organisations.
I want to talk a little about some of the things that have been said about the big society. There is great enthusiasm for it at the moment, but it brings with it a great deal of challenge to the voluntary sector at a difficult time. Noble Lords will have noticed what happened in Somerset last week, when, of necessity, funding was withdrawn from the entire voluntary sector. It is important, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, that we recognise that it is the enduring role of local government which underpins an active and coherent society in any locality.
I have a concern. In my work in the voluntary sector, I have come to learn that voluntary organisations’ biggest currency is novelty. When an organisation is new and what it is doing is innovative, it is at the height of its powers; but when it is not new and has become part of the landscape, but is no less effective or worth while, it begins to struggle. My concern about the big society and the things that I believe lie behind it, is that while it is about encouraging innovation and challenging the corporate world to take part in its communities, all that I have seen about it so far is comparatively short-term. I do not want us to look back in four or five years’ time on a range of wonderful initiatives which burst like bright stars upon our firmament and then died away.
I hope that with the resources they intend to put behind the development of the big society, the Government do not do what the previous Government did and set up a number of new bodies to administer it. They were cumbersome and they brought unnecessary competition to an already crowded field. I hope that the Government and the resources they deploy centrally—for example, community organisers and the citizenship organisations—will look to existing organisations within the voluntary sector, albeit with a new set of criteria attached to the money, and use the existing knowledge and expertise which is out there in the voluntary sector and deserves to stay and to be used.
Finally, my noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford talked about social networking. Twenty-six million of our compatriots are on Facebook. At least 13 million of them use it every day. The internet is changing. It is a place in which people have an engagement. It is no longer a place where people go simply to find information. It is a place where people set up and run campaigns, and they engage and challenge organisations. I have absolutely no doubt that, just as in the Obama campaign in 2008 and the Unlock Democracy campaign during the last election, there has been a sea change, and younger people will pursue that in all aspects of their lives, particularly in their civic lives, via the internet. We ignore that at our peril. If we do, participation rates, as my noble friend Lord Shipley said, will simply reduce. Social networking is where young peoples’ civic life is conducted. That is good and healthy. We in this House should not fear it. We should learn about it, understand it and encourage it.
We should enable voluntary organisations that are struggling to tackle the financial problems that they will undoubtedly face to look towards new kinds of support. For many of them, it will not come through taking on large-scale provision of public services, but it will be about engaging the enthusiasm of new supporters via means such as social networking.
Lord Parekh
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, for securing and introducing this debate. Citizenship is obviously about rights and obligations, but active citizenship is about much more than that. It involves taking an active interest in the life of the community, participating in its affairs, criticising it when it is acting unjustly, and protesting when the Government will not listen. In other words, active citizenship has a strong political dimension. It is certainly about the voluntary sector, but it should not be limited to it. It is supportive of the social order as well as critical of it. It is about charity, philanthropy and helping local causes, but it is also about evaluating and challenging the established social order—and, from time to time, raising one’s voice against it.
There is a danger, certainly in our country, of understanding citizenship almost entirely in terms of what goes on in civil society and the voluntary sector, and ignoring what happens at the wider political level where interests and ideologies clash. It is on this political dimension of citizenship that I want to concentrate.
Active citizenship requires three things: institutional spaces for opportunities to participate; skill and knowledge to be able to make use of those institutional spaces and participate intelligently; and motivation or disposition to participate. Why spend one's energy debating public affairs? Why protest?
Most of the presentations today, and the literature on citizenship in general, have concentrated on institutional mechanisms or citizenship education. They have tended to ignore the larger question, what are the psychological dispositions or motivations that persuade people to go out into the public realm and use their time and energy to pursue worthwhile causes? I will say something about this.
Active citizenship obviously means that I care for my country, that my country means something to me, that I identify with it, and, therefore, that I cannot bear to see it defaced by acts of injustice. Active citizenship is ultimately about identity—about defining myself in such a way that how my country is organised matters to me personally, so that political responsibility becomes a matter of my own integrity and moral responsibility.
Citizenship is about identity and belonging. The question we should ask is, how can we cultivate a sense of belonging? Once you have a sense of belonging and recognise that a community is yours, you will obviously want to participate in it. You will not wish to harm it and you will do everything you can to promote its well-being. Active citizenship follows almost automatically, as night follows day, from the idea of being committed to one's community, belonging to it and identifying with it.
How do we secure this identification and sense of belonging? Belonging operates at two levels: at the local level, relating to the area in which we live—I will call that civic belonging; and at the national level, where it relates to a country, which I will call national belonging. Both are equally important for active citizenship. Local or civic belonging is easier to cultivate, because that is where most of us spend most of our lives. It is perfectly possible to have a sense of local belonging, but no sense of national belonging. For example, many Muslim youths, when asked, say that they do not feel British, but that they feel deeply rooted in Bradford or Birmingham. They could not imagine themselves living anywhere else, yet they feel alienated from Britain. Civic belonging of this kind sustains national belonging and provides a default position when national belonging is not available, so that even if some groups of people feel alienated from Britain, they remain rooted in their local community and therefore can be depended on not to engage in unacceptable activities. This civic belonging requires that there should be citizens’ forums where people have the opportunity to interact with their elected representatives, with advisory councils and with all sorts of other things that noble Lords have talked about.
I will say something about national belonging, which interests me a great deal. National belonging means that I see my country as mine, I care for it, I love it, I have affection for it and I would not dream of harming it. The question is, how does one cultivate a sense of commitment to a country? It is a reciprocal process. I cannot love my country unless my country loves me. I cannot belong to a country unless the country wants me to belong to it. It is a matter not quite of a contract but of some kind of moral understanding between the individual and the community. When John F Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, he was engaging in a very one-sided form of political rhetoric, because what my country does for me is just as important as what I do for it. If it does nothing for me but excludes me, it cannot expect me to make a commitment to it.
I will end by saying that in order to cultivate a sense of national belonging, there must be equal respect for all citizens. The definition of the nation must include everybody and it must have equal regard to the interests of all its citizens. It should seek and value the opinion of everyone. Freedom of speech is not enough, because I can speak to my heart’s content, but if nobody listens, it has no meaning. Listening can stop in a variety of ways. People can filter out my views or close their minds to what I say. Therefore, freedom of speech on my part implies an obligation on the part of others to open their minds to what I say.
In this context, it is very important that we realise that sections of our country are deeply alienated from the wider political system. They feel neglected, ignored, disempowered and angry at their unfair treatment; and they wonder why, when the bankers made a mess of our economy, the ordinary folk have to pay the price. Some of them sulk and withdraw into their own unhappy world. Others provide combustible material for extremist individuals, ideologies and organisations. How do we bring in alienated ethnic minorities, the working classes on council estates and other sections of people who feel resentful at the way in which they have been treated? How do we foster in them a sense of belonging? When we do that, we will have begun to address the question of active citizenship.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, on debates of this nature, and I agree with every word that he said. He asked what motivates people to become active citizens. A fact which is not universally acknowledged at the moment, although I believe that it will be in two years’ time, is that this Government are going to make the greatest contribution of any Government in recent times to people becoming active citizens. However, the reason for that will be not the big society but the spending cuts. People get involved in things when they get angry, when they want to change something and when they feel that a protest has to be made. That is a fact of life. When people in positions of authority set up schemes to involve people, they usually achieve it to a reasonable degree and sometimes they are outstandingly successful. My noble friend Lord Shipley talked about Newcastle, where there are good schemes, but ultimately most people get involved when they are angry. I do not think that we should criticise that or worry about it; we should welcome it. However, we should have political structures that allow people to take part and put their views forward.
In view of one or two things that I shall be saying, I should declare an interest as a member of Pendle Borough Council and of all sorts of bodies which I attend locally and which come into the general category of public involvement.
One area where public authorities can, and must, make a real contribution is in changing structures to enable involvement in the existing structures of decision-making to take place. It is hoped that they are democratic structures but, even when they are not very democratic, people can be involved. However, that is not always the case and in some areas there has been a long struggle to bring about changes to structures. That applies far more nowadays in local government than used to be the case. For example, when I was first on Pendle Borough Council, which was a very long time— about 35 years—ago, we struggled year after year to allow members of the public to attend planning committees. I am talking about members of the public simply attending and listening to what was going on. I and my colleagues took 10 years to win that battle. Nowadays, people can attend planning committees; they can speak; they can be applicants who put the case for their development; they can be objectors; or they can simply be neighbours who want to find out what it is all about. That is now quite common in local government but it took a cultural shift over a long period for that to happen. However, in many cases, it is just a question of being involved in the community outside the formal structures of local and other public authorities. We have heard about the magnificent work done by the Gresford Trust, described by my noble friend Lord Thomas. We have also heard that there seems to be an absolute ferment of people in Guildford who are organised by the adult education system on the one hand and by the churches on the other. I hope that they are all working together; no doubt they are.
Now, we are being told that the future lies with the big society, and I hope that I will be forgiven if I sound a little cynical and weary. Not long ago, we had another Government talking about double devolution. I have not yet discovered the difference between that and the big society but perhaps there are subtle differences, or perhaps it is just a different Secretary of State or a different political party that wants a new, trendy idea to put forward.
I have been active as a local authority councillor in my own patch of Waterside in Colne off and on for nearly 40 years. It is an area of terraced housing and comes within the bottom 5 per cent of deprived wards in the country. I suppose that after 40 years I should have done something about that but unfortunately government keep getting in the way. The latest instance of that has been the big increase in private landlord properties in the area, thanks to buy to let and so on, which is a huge problem. Nevertheless, it is an area of traditional terraced housing and local mills, some of which are still standing.
Forty years ago, I was involved in a local residents’ action group. It was set up by local residents because much of the area was going to be knocked down and they did not agree with that. It was a very oppositional and overtly political, with a small “p”, organisation. Then we took over the council and set up general improvement and housing action areas, which were in the legislation in those days. As part of that, resident participatory structures were set up, with local residents’ meetings, committees and so on—there is nothing new about all this—and they were very successful in improving the area. Following that, we had something called community economic development—I am not sure whether it came and went—which resulted in a new community centre being set up. However, as my noble friend said, the problem is always one of revenue, and the centre then closed down. I was not on the council at the time, I am pleased to say—at least, I am not pleased that it closed down but pleased that I was not involved in its closure. Now we have neighbourhood management, set up in a big way. These are highly successful schemes that are very expensive but which result in a lot of local people being involved. We have local community policing systems and meetings called PACTs—police and communities together—involving local policing teams. All these are now under threat with the new Government because they are old things and affected by the cuts. But we are being promised the big society and community organisers coming in to set it all up again.
My plea to central government is that when you have good things working on the ground, do not throw them away. It takes a long time to build active community structures, but they can be thrown away with the stroke of a pen by a Secretary of State. Please build from what there is on the ground. There is a huge amount of good work and good things happening all over the country, but every time there is a new Government or a new Secretary of State the old is swept out and they start to build again. They call it different names but, in practice, it turns out to be the same thing. When projects are closed down, the people who have been involved become that much more cynical and unwilling to get involved again. It is a real problem that I hope the current Government will consider seriously.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, the debate is extremely timely when the role of the state is under such hot discussion across all parties and within all groups in society. I shall not attempt to summarise on behalf of the 10 colleagues who have been speaking in this Liberal Democrat-led debate, but I am sure that the Minister will have listened carefully to all the contributions. They have been extremely thoughtful, based on hard evidence and experience. They also reflect a debate that is going on, not least in the voluntary sector, in all corners of the land.
Contrary to popular philosophising, this Government are not determined to demolish the financial size of the state. The public sector spending component will be much the same at the end of this Parliament as in 2006. I do not think that everybody realises that, but we as Liberal Democrats know that, whatever the money, the reach of the state—particularly a centralised state—can go only so far. That has been an element throughout our discussions this afternoon.
The question is how, in 2015, the state will function in relation to its citizens when the proportion of GDP spent by the Government will still be at historically high levels. Will it simply peel away, hoping that a so-called big society will take its place, or will it remain not as a controlling force but as an enabler, empowering citizens and communities to help themselves? That surely is the challenge for the Government, not least because it is thought, particularly among Conservative—with a big C—pundits, that somehow the people are just waiting to launch into all sorts of community initiatives if only the Government would get out of the way. Frankly, it is not as though the sick would be healed, the ignorant educated or the poor assisted if only the dead hand of state interference would simply clear off. That is extraordinarily naive. That is the fantasy that is entertained by the worst American Republicans in their tea parties and which causes millions of citizens in the United States not only to do without health insurance but to drop way below the poverty level.
The big society, the liberal society, active citizenry—whatever you choose to call it—needs a state. That is not in dispute. It just does not need a very large and all-consuming state. We have heard today from across the House how important in that context local government is. I note, incidentally, that our colleagues at the other end of the building in the Constitutional Reform Select Committee are looking at the possibility of codifying the relationship between central and local government. The talk of a concordat that we had under the previous Government must come back into play.
There is clearly a real concern across the House about the extent to which local representative government is likely to be affected by what are necessary spending cuts. Councils’ natural reaction is to avoid cutting their own employment and expenditure and instead to cut their discretionary grants to the voluntary sector. That is a serious problem. It may create a new postcode lottery between the best-funded and worst-funded areas, but that will sever not strengthen the links that bind our communities together. There is a real problem that money and the capacity for making the big society work will simply be starved by those who are in a position to make it happen.
I want to say a word or two about an organisation that has demonstrated, over the decades, its potential to help our society to pass that test. That organisation, which saves huge sums for the public purse, is the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux. I confess an indirect private interest in that my wife was for 10 years a CAB manager, which means that I have nearly first-hand experience. However, I think that anybody who has had any role in local communities, particularly those who have had a constituency MP responsibility, will know how incredibly important the CAB is. The achievements of CABs are remarkable. They not only give nuggets of advice to every citizen who comes to them, but they overcome whatever the problem is. They have an incredibly important role in helping the state and society generally.
The most recent CAB impact report gives a compelling case study, showing how a simple intervention at a relatively low cost can save the taxpayer thousands of pounds. I commend the report to Members of your Lordships’ House. None of this is done by accident. To get these extraordinary outcomes out of the CAB, something has to be put in, too. Frankly, I think that there is a real problem, as the CABs have already advised me, because 43 per cent of their funding—their core funding, if you like—comes from local authorities. It is an absolutely vital role, but it will be a very easy discretionary grant to cut. If all the active citizens in our society are the tiles in a mosaic, local government is the glue that holds them together; it is what ensures that all parts of the community are represented and that the loudest voices are not the only ones heard.
Some interesting evidence has been provided by Dr Adam Dinham of the Faiths and Civil Society Unit at Goldsmiths, which I chair. He says:
“There is a strong chance that visible (ie large and established) organisations, for example large charities, NGOs and the Church of England, will take responsibility for active citizenship in their fields ... this raises questions about how small and less visible voices can be heard”.
He goes on:
“The Big Society is in danger of reflecting the interests of the most powerful”.
He asks:
“How can active citizenship in the Big Society ensure fairness?”.
I am sure that that is an important lesson for us all.
A state without society is simply controlling, but surely we need both to be effective. The Deputy Prime Minister said in a speech to the Hansard Society on Tuesday:
“Politics is not just what happens here, within these walls. Political life is every time a citizen comes into contact with the state, every time a community feels the effect of a decision taken on their behalf. I believe passionately that it is in that space that the gulf between politics and society is at its widest”.
He went on:
“Yet our political system hoards power at the centre. It denies communities their differences; it stifles their self-reliance, their sense of communal responsibility”.
In those circumstances, active citizenship is a real challenge to our Government. It is a challenge, first, to distinguish clearly between empowering citizens and simply walking away; secondly, to ensure that the big society is about giving a voice to the voiceless, not simply an amplifier to the already articulate; and, finally, to recognise that funding local authorities is not engorging a wicked bureaucracy but sustaining the very groups that are the bedrock not just of a big society but of the fair, active and liberal society that we all want to create.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, for calling this important debate. I want to continue the theme, which he began and to which the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has just referred, of the need for both state and society if we wish to live in a civilised community.
I begin by joining the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, in thanking Her Majesty’s Government for maintaining funding to adult education. It makes a huge difference for mothers and fathers that they can help their children with their writing, reading and arithmetic when they themselves did not succeed in school. The evidence is clear that parental interest and support are the most important factors in the successful education of children.
Speaking as a vice-chair of the associate parliamentary group for children and young people in and leaving care, I hope that many of your Lordships will join me in asserting that our foster carers and adoptive parents are among our most important active citizens—the heroes who have been referred to. They can redeem a child’s life. They can spare a young person failure at school, incarceration in prison and the prospect of teenage parenthood and of having their children removed from them. I hope that your Lordships will join me in thanking foster carers and adoptive parents for being among our most important active citizens. They make a huge personal commitment, often at considerable cost to themselves and often without concomitant commitment from local authorities.
According to Fostering Network, we are short of 10,000 foster carers in England and Wales. An important factor in this is lack of access to support from social workers. This is often due to local shortages of social workers and the failure to attract and keep the best practitioners in social work. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blair, for referring to social work in his contribution.
I hope that we can all agree that, where citizens make the commitment to benefit their fellows, we should do all in our power to ensure that they receive proper support—often, appropriate professional support. I hope that we can also agree that we need to continue to strive for a far better deal for our child and family social workers, so that our foster carers and adoptive parents are well supported and can commit with confidence.
The Adolescent and Children’s Trust, TACT, is an outstanding not-for-profit adoption and fostering agency, operating in England, Wales and Scotland. I recently attended the opening of its head office outside Glasgow and heard from foster carers who were fostering for the first time how much they valued their child and family social workers. One of them emphasised to me how vital it was to her that her social worker was always just a phone call away, day or night.
I pay tribute to the Minister and his colleagues for their attention to child and family social work and for addressing the long-standing deficits in social work. I pay particular tribute to the work of the Children and Families Minister in the other place, Mr Tim Loughton: in his support for the Social Work Task Force, set up by the previous Administration; in the review of the bureaucratic burden on social work that he commissioned from Professor Eileen Munro of the London School of Economics; and in his preparedness to listen and learn from the experience of those at the front line.
However, the severe cut of 28 per cent in funding over four years that Her Majesty’s Government have imposed on local authorities raises considerable concern about the future health of child and family social work. I hope that the Minister will take back to his colleagues in the Department for Education our concern that improvement in the quality and quantity of child and family social workers should not be allowed to be undermined by the recession. It is simply too important. If he and his colleagues say that this is now the responsibility of each local authority, I draw their attention to two documents. The first is the front page of this Tuesday’s Times in which—I paraphrase, and I apologise to him for doing so—Mr Loughton says that he is going to make local authorities improve the adoption process. The second is the review of efficiency savings in government by Mr Stephen Green, now to be Lord Green, which called for a team of four super-bureaucrats—again, I paraphrase—to be appointed so that they could implement efficient commissioning across all government departments.
There are occasions when a top-down approach is an important complement to one from the bottom up. I beg the Government to take a balanced approach, not to move from one extreme of centralisation to another of liberalisation and laissez-faire. There is always a balance to be struck, as I have learnt in the past 12 years in your Lordships’ House. There are no eloquent middle-class parents to stand up for the interests of child and family social workers. I hope that the Minister can assure me that he and his colleagues are watching carefully the impact of cuts on these vital professionals and will consider further appropriate intervention where necessary. Foster carers and adoptive parents deserve the very best professional support. We simply will not recruit and retain the carers whom these children need unless we offer such good support.
I conclude by praising the Government’s development of a social work first programme along the lines of the highly successful Teach First programme of the noble Lord, Lord Wei. I would be most grateful if the Minister could write to me with details of the progress in this initiative. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, like virtually everyone who has spoken, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, on his initiative in bringing this debate and on his most thoughtful speech. As a recent maiden myself, I should like to congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Bannside and Lord Blair, on their first contributions. It is understandable that this House should have a debate of this kind. It complements the recent debate on the charitable sector. After all, this House has many Members who personify active citizenship and bring their enormous experience to bear. Sometimes the form of the debate focuses on individual roles and how they might be fostered.
There is something of a myth about the presumed wish of many people to control and to manage services. There is little evidence of such a desire, although there are many examples of local facilities—we have heard about some of them today—being run by people from local communities. However, in general, there is not that wish to control services, nor is there any real sign of that insatiable desire to participate in elections, which is invisible to all but the odd coalition eye. I cite in evidence of that the difficulty in recruiting parent governors by election; the rather unfortunate decline of interest and participation in neighbourhood forum elections; and, perhaps particularly, the position of foundation hospitals. Foundation hospitals were conceived by my old friend Alan Milburn when he was Secretary of State for Health. To take Newcastle as an example, the reality is that, at the most charitable estimate, only 3 per cent of the potential membership of foundation hospital trusts signed up to it. In fact, it could have been on a much wider canvas given the regional status. The effect is that only 1 per cent of the adult population of Newcastle who would be entitled to participate did participate in elections. There does not seem to be the commitment that perhaps some people imagine.
Alan Milburn has moved on and has been a social mobility adviser to the previous Government and the present Government. Those of us who knew him in his very left-wing days on Tyneside—I look at the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—might think that he would be equally well qualified to advise on political mobility. But having said that, looking at the government Benches, perhaps that would be superfluous.
The reality is that a huge amount of invaluable work is done by rather small numbers of people. Over the country as a whole, of course, many people are involved. But when I preside over the annual general meeting of Age Concern, Newcastle, a wonderful organisation, or I go to important tenants’ committee meetings in my ward, I find relatively few people participating at that level. But they are important, they need support, as so many of your Lordships have said, and they need funding. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, referred to that rather sorry straw in the wind of Somerset County Council’s decision of this past week.
As other noble Lords have implied, local authorities are now facing a significant reduction in revenue support grant—36 per cent in cash terms over the next few years and front-loaded at that. These have been offered up as a sacrifice on the altar of deficit reduction by the high priest of localism himself, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. I must ask the Minister whether the Government have made any estimate of the effects of such drastic reductions on the voluntary and community sector.
On the other hand, I must congratulate the Government on their proposals for a big society bank. The £60 million to £100 million which it will generate for the sector is indeed to be welcomed. However, I understand that the increase in VAT in January will cost the sector £150 million a year. Perhaps the noble Lord will indicate whether the Government would consider exempting charities and the sector from that additional impost.
There is a temptation to look at this question from the perspective mainly of service delivery, but we need to consider, as my noble friend Lord Parekh rightly said, the wider implications of engagement and governance in politics in the broadest sense. I endorse all those who referred to the need to promote citizenship education. They include the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, himself, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Norton. Democratic Life, an organisation committed to promoting this agenda, has rightly said that:
“Citizenship education is an essential tool for preparing young people for our shared democratic life”.
I hope that the Minister will be able to give some assurances in that respect.
The key point is that civil society and citizen engagement need to extend beyond the immediate locality and the visible problems that are apparent to everybody. In the case of Newcastle, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, rightly referred to interesting experiments in participatory budgeting. For many years, under both the main political parties, the council has conducted surveys asking residents what is important to them. It is quite striking and slightly worrying that on the high side of concerns are the perfectly proper concerns around graffiti, the condition of the streets and so on, which are clear to everyone. The less visible services, notably child protection, come pretty low on the graph. It suggests that people are more comfortable with what confronts them daily and less engaged with what are perhaps at the very least equally important—some of us would argue that they are even more important—issues of the kind referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel.
A critical role of government, especially local government, is to mediate between competing and perhaps conflicting interests and aspirations, not least at a time when distributional issues are so significant. We hear much about the difficult choices that have to be made, but as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, implied, who is better to make them if not democratically elected councillors, after consulting widely in what an interesting document recently produced by IPPR North calls “good conversations”? How are people to be informed and involved? At the moment a rather peculiar consultation document is going around containing proposals to restrict councils’ publicity publications going well beyond any legitimate concern to avoid their use as party political propaganda, which of course would be quite wrong. The assumption is that somehow the local media will step in. In my now long experience, the attention of local media, their coverage of local government and their willingness and ability to hold local government to account have much declined. The local press and broadcasting media are simply not able or willing to take on that responsibility. It seems to me to be unfortunate that, particularly when we want to encourage people, there is not an independent source prepared to do that.
For our part, and speaking as a local councillor, we need to encourage involvement in the scrutiny process of as wide a range of participants from the voluntary sector as possible. I hope that that will remain the case in the pending reorganisation of the health service where scrutiny at the local level by council scrutiny committees appears to be very much under threat.
I was interested in the remarks of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, partly because I was born in the city of Leicester and partly because I hang my coat on the coat hook downstairs next to that of the right reverend Prelate. The adjoining coat hook belongs to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle, so I am quite well placed in that respect. I was also interested in his speech because, without mentioning it, he reminded me of an important document published some 25 years ago entitled Faith in the City. It may be that we will have to revisit the tenor of that document, unfortunately because I suspect we are revisiting the conditions which gave rise to it. It was an important document and it did speak to the wider aspiration for engagement, based in that case on a particular religious faith, that we certainly need to see engendered today.
Active citizenship is not an alternative to active government, whether local or national; it is the other side of the same coin. I entirely endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, said about the need to avoid reductions in expenditure and the like being a cover for slimming down the state or, as Friedrich Engels would have said, the withering away of the state—a slogan which the Tea Party might adopt as long as it was not aware that Engels conceived it. It was adopted by Lenin in theory but not in practice and I am sure that the Minister, in replying to the debate, would not wish to pray in aid Engels. However, I would be reassured if he adopted the maxim that the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, pronounced to us.
We need to recognise that a healthy politics must embrace individuals both doing things for themselves and their own communities and interest groups, and also engaging with the wider strategic agendas of the areas in which they live—the town, the city, the county—and the nation as a whole. That way lies a productive relationship and a productive politics in which everyone can feel confident that their voice will be respected.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for a typically interesting and high-value House of Lords debate and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Maclennan on securing it. I am sure that he and the whole House will agree that it has been a particular pleasure to hear the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Bannside and Lord Blair of Boughton. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for what I believe is his debut on the opposition Front Bench. I am sorry that he cast a somewhat uncharacteristically jaundiced eye on the case for voluntary participation. He should be more upbeat.
It is clear that there is a great deal of support for the notion of active citizenship—individuals and groups taking it upon themselves to get involved in their communities and to tackle the issues that they face. It is right to point out that active citizenship is strong in this country and always has been. I see examples of it all the time. We have been able to see it for ourselves this week in this House. As we have walked along the West Front Corridor, officials in the Government Whips Office have so far raised more than £1,000 for Children in Need. The House should commend that effort.
I thought of giving examples from my own experience. However, that is not necessary in this place because, as the debate has shown, noble Lords have experience of their own. My noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford graphically narrated how the community from which he takes his title has, against the odds, demonstrated active citizenship. So did my noble friend Lord Greaves, who also combines the right sense of idealism and scepticism, founded in practical experience, from which it is important for government to listen and to learn.
However, many of us recognise that, over the years, the state has overextended itself. Much of this has been well intentioned but it has begun to erode individual and social responsibility. It can seem that society is increasingly looking to the state to solve its problems. I think the whole House will agree that my noble friend Lord Tyler made an excellent speech analysing this conundrum. He emphasised the need for consistency and a “voice to the voiceless”, not the amplification of those already with a voice. There can be no future in the state walking away from its responsibilities. I note his comments on the citizens advice bureaux, what an asset that organisation is and the need for local government to maintain its support for it.
Of course, the Government continue to have a major role in providing core services and supporting the most vulnerable. I was grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for telling the House of his support for the work of my honourable friend Tim Loughton. He pointed, quite rightly, to the considerable pressure being felt by local government in its children’s support services. I was grateful also for the tribute that the noble Earl paid to foster carers and foster parents, which I think the whole House would endorse. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Wei, was unable to speak on his project. I will make sure that the House is provided with an update on it. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, reminded the coalition of the important and essentially different roles of both government and voluntary organisations.
It is clear that active citizenship is not spread uniformly across areas or groups. There are places where community participation and social capital are very low. There is a danger that it becomes the exclusive preserve of those who have the commodities of time, money and mobility. I hope that noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton, can be reassured that the Government are very much aware of the need for the big society to recognise those inequalities. It was useful to be reminded by my noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford of the role that adult education can play as an agency for developing a sense of self-worth and for giving people, especially those with a disadvantage, an opportunity to engage in active citizenship. I share her applause for the skills policy developed by my honourable friend John Hayes.
In order to play an encouraging and enabling role, it is important that we develop our thinking on what we really mean by active citizenship—or social action, as we describe it in the big society vision. In recent years, active citizenship has been conceived in a relatively narrow context, such as political engagement, attendance at public meetings and volunteering. However, in introducing this debate, my noble friend Lord Maclennan showed how much broader should be the vision of active citizenship. I will note his positive ideas.
Active citizenship is of key importance in reinforcing the essential values of a society. The big society vision brings all these ideas together, but it goes much further by working to establish an environment where people feel that they can and should get involved. It does this by proposing a more integrated partnership between society and the state. It reduces the dominance of the state in public services, devolves real power to the local level and establishes mechanisms through which people can take more control over their lives. I was interested in the contributions of both the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester and the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, on how faith is the foundation for much active citizenship and how important that foundation is in encouraging individual and collective commitment to voluntary involvement in community activity. The noble Lord, Lord Bannside, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford reinforced those views. If we are to bring about real change, it is also important that we are not half-hearted in our intent. We must make active citizenship a central part of the Government’s mission.
My noble friend Lady Barker sought to define a good society, reminding the Government of the need to apply consistency of effort to sustain the big society over time. This is not just a project for now or for the next day; it is to be durable over time. We have therefore defined social action as being one of the three key principles of the big society. They include community empowerment, giving local councils and neighbourhoods more power to take decisions and shape their area. I assure the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester that the Government are aware that localism and empowerment mean what they say—devolving power and leaving decision-making at a local level, accepting the responsibility for delegating power down to local communities. The principles also include opening up public services, enabling charities, social enterprises, private companies and employee-owned co-operatives to compete to offer people high-quality services, and social action, encouraging and enabling people to play a more active part in society. Together, these will put more power into people’s hands and represent a massive transfer of power from Whitehall to local communities.
A lot of work is going on around each of these pillars. For example, on community empowerment, our planning reforms will replace the old top-down planning system with real power for neighbourhoods to decide the future of their area. We will de-ring-fence more than £1 billion of grants to local authorities in 2010-11, promoting greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups. I agreed totally with my noble friend Lord Shipley in his determination that community activity needs to support local services and neighbourhood planning. I like his concept of neighbourhood problem-solving and his advocacy of local government and democracy working together. Those were points that were similarly picked up by my noble friend Lady Barker. On opening up public services, the welfare to work programme will enable a wide range of organisations to help get Britain off welfare and into work. Commissioning reform will enable the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector to realise its potential role in public services.
Turning to something more central to the theme of today’s debate, I shall proceed by giving more detail on what the Government are doing to support social action. I start with the national citizen service. I am pleased to hear of the widespread welcome that the project has received from noble Lords. The service will help to build a more cohesive, responsible and engaged society by bringing 16 year-olds from different backgrounds together in a residential and home-based programme of activity and service. As part of the experience, participants will spend two weeks away from home to give them the opportunity to develop life skills and resilience and to serve their communities. This will be a life-enhancing experience for all those engaged in it. We are planning to run two years of NCS pilots, starting in summer 2011, and, building on that, to learn from another pilot in 2012. Some 10,000 16 year-olds will have the opportunity to take part in summer 2011, and 30,000 in summer 2012.
A theme that ran through this debate, which I shall have to take away and reflect on and discuss with my noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford, was that of citizenship education. Many noble Lords mentioned this in their speeches, and I have had a letter from my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, who could not be here today, reinforcing this point of view. I reassure the House that I will communicate the sentiments of this debate to my noble friend.
Over the lifetime of this Parliament, the community organiser programme will train and support 5,000 people who want to make a difference to their community. The organisers have a strong understanding of local needs and will catalyse social action through creating and supporting neighbourhood groups. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester should know that the Government are currently procuring a national partner to run the programme and to train community organisers. That will maintain the integrity of the programme and we imagine that, in time, the programme will indeed take on a life of its own. The Government will also develop a match-fund programme, targeted to communities with high deprivation and low social capital. The targeted Community First fund will encourage more social action by new and existing neighbourhood groups, and enable areas to articulate their needs and influence decisions made about their community.
Of course, volunteering is a key part of social action. We know that bureaucratic burdens can sometimes create barriers to volunteering and other forms of social action. My noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts is therefore leading a government task force to help cut excessive red tape in this sector. We are also reviewing the criminal records regime to ensure a more suitable balance; several noble Lords referred to the enormous burden which that can have on voluntary and community organisations.
It was very useful to get other points from my noble friend Lady Neuberger, who asked specifically about Criminal Records Bureau checks and talked about the citizens’ survey. CLG is consulting on the potential impact of cutting the survey; concerns should be put to it before the deadline of 30 November, but the Government are aware of the importance of gauging levels of volunteering and the Office for Civil Society is talking to CLG about appropriate ways to measure social action. On access to volunteering, which the noble Baroness also mentioned, that programme was always intended to end at the end of the current spending period, but we are looking at new ways to encourage social action. Learning from the access to volunteering programme will be fed into the development of programmes to ensure that disabled people are enabled and, indeed, encouraged to volunteer.
Volunteering levels in this country remain high and we have one of the highest rates of volunteering in the world. However, more can be done to move us towards a culture where volunteering is the norm and, indeed, to raise the numbers of people. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred to that in his analysis of some figures that he had from his experience in Newcastle. In particular, we want to encourage and enable people from all walks of life to be a part of this. The giving of money is also an important form of social action. We will be publishing a Green Paper shortly to set out a vision for how we can boost already high levels of generosity, both in the giving of time and money, among the British public. It will incorporate insights from behavioural economics to examine ways in which we can incentivise giving.
I was grateful for the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. I acknowledge that she has enormous knowledge and understanding of the subject of this debate. She emphasised the degree to which the Government have to be constantly aware of their role in encouraging active citizenship.
Several noble Lords talked about the impact of the CSR on the voluntary sector. We acknowledge this, and a transition fund has been announced as part of the spending review. It will provide a £100 million grant over this and the next financial year, funding voluntary and community organisations, charities and social enterprises in England. This will give them the breathing space that they need to help them manage the transition to a tighter funding environment and take advantage of future opportunities presented by the big society. I was grateful for the welcome that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, gave to the big society bank.
I turn to a few points that I have not covered in the general text of my speech. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton; it is important that we recognise that professionals are an essential part of an effective volunteering structure. I liked the points that the noble Lord, Lord Bannside, made about responsibility in society.
Once again I thank noble Lords who have been present for today’s debate. Active citizenship is incredibly important to our society. It is at the heart of the big society, and I encourage all to draw on their understanding of society at its best and use their creativity to help to build the stronger society that we are all keen to see.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
My Lords, I thank all those who have participated in this wide-ranging debate. A wealth of experience has been brought to bear upon the subject. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Bannside and Lord Blair of Boughton, on their fascinating contributions. I was particularly interested in the constitutional aspirations of the noble Lord, Lord Bannside, for the emerald isle. I invite the noble Lord, Lord Blair, to visit me on the north coast of Britain and familiarise himself with the birthplace of the founder of the Boys’ Brigade, to which he has shown such attachment.
I believe that there has also been a strong message for the coalition Government: within the framework provided by an enabling state, active citizens can greatly enhance the life of all those whom we are proud to call fellow citizens. I appreciate very much what the Minister said in conclusion in answering the particular points made by many colleagues on all sides of the House.
Socioeconomic Equality Duty
(14 years ago)
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Baroness Verma
My Lords, with the permission of the House, I would like to repeat a Statement made in another place by my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Equalities and Criminal Information. The Statement is as follows:
“Equality is at the heart of what this coalition Government are all about. We have come together as a coalition to govern on the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility. In Britain today, those growing up in households which have fallen too far behind still have fewer opportunities available to them and they are still less able to take the opportunities that are available.
So we need to design intelligent policies that give those at the bottom real opportunities to make a better life for themselves. That is why we are devoting all our efforts and all our energies to policies that can give people real opportunities to make a better life for themselves, not just on new and unnecessary legislation. You do not need new laws to come up with policies that open up opportunities, and you do not need new laws to come up with policies that support and protect the most vulnerable—we have already begun to implement them.
That is why over the course of the spending review we will spend over £7 billion on a new fairness premium. That will give all disadvantaged two year-olds an entitlement to 15 hours a week of pre-school education, in addition to the free entitlement that all three and four year-olds already receive.
It also includes a £2.5 billion per year pupil premium to support disadvantaged children. These measures, combined with our plans for extra health visitors and a more focused Sure Start, will give children the best possible start in life. That is why we are extending the right to request flexible working to all, helping to shift behaviour away from the traditional nine-to-five model of work that can act as a barrier to so many people and that often does not make sense for many modern businesses. And that is why we will implement a new system of flexible parental leave which will end the state-endorsed stereotype of women doing the caring and men earning the money when a couple start a family.
You also don't need new laws to make choices that protect the most vulnerable. So when we have had to make difficult choices about how to deal with the record budget deficit left by Labour, we have done so in a way that protects the most vulnerable. So we will increase child tax credits for the poorest families, protecting against rises in child poverty. We will increase spending on the NHS and schools in real terms every year. We will lift 880,000 of the lowest-paid workers out of income tax altogether. And we will protect the lowest-paid public sector workers from the public sector pay freeze.
All of these policies were designed by the coalition Government to protect those at most risk and to give opportunities to those in most need. They are real action, not unnecessary empty gestures. That is why we are scrapping the socioeconomic duty. I said at the time that this was a weak measure, that it was gesture politics and that it would not have achieved anything concrete. All the policy would have been was a bureaucratic box to tick. It would have been just another form to fill in. It would have distracted hard-pressed council staff and other public sector workers away from coming up with the right policies that will make a real difference to people's chances in life.
You cannot solve a problem as complex as inequality in one legal clause. And you cannot make people's lives better by simply passing a law saying that they should be made better. We believe that real action should be taken in order to address the root causes of disadvantage and inequality. You do not need empty gestures, and you do not need the socioeconomic duty to do so”.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement on the socioeconomic duty made in the other place by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary. In thanking the Minister, I note that the Statement is not being repeated by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, who of course was the principal shadow Minister when, in government, we took the Equalities Bill through your Lordships’ House. The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, made it clear throughout that she supported the Bill. She now seems to have done a virtually complete disappearing act from your Lordships’ House, especially since she made her allegations that three Members of the other place were sitting unlawfully as MPs. This Statement might indeed have been an occasion when she wished to make one of her rare appearances at the Dispatch Box.
I thank the Minister, for whom I have very high regard, but I am sorry that I have to do so. I am sorry that the Government are taking the step they intend in relation to the socioeconomic duty in what is now the Equalities Act. In a speech last night in London, the Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities signalled her intention towards this provision of the Act—a provision which, I remind your Lordships, this House voted for, as did the other place. Because she had not informed Parliament first, as she is required to do under the Ministerial Code, the Parliamentary Secretary was dragged into Parliament this morning to give the grudging little Statement—sadly, not a Statement from the Home Secretary herself—which the Minister has just repeated here. The Home Secretary had time to make the speech last night but clearly did not have enough time to make a Statement in the other place today. In claiming they would do politics differently, the coalition Government promised they would place Parliament first. Yet again, they have not done so. Yet again, they have been dragged into Parliament to do so.
The Statement from the Minister attempts to make considerable play of what it claims to have done in the name of fairness. It makes no mention of the Home Secretary’s speech last night. Perhaps I could help the House by informing it of some of the things that the Home Secretary said last night. She said:
“Equality is not an aside for me; it is not an after-thought or a secondary consideration … For this government the equalities agenda is about fairness: that is, equal treatment and equal opportunity … in recent years, equality has become a dirty word because it meant something different. It came to be associated with the worst forms of pointless political correctness and social engineering”.
The Home Secretary has said that, in relation to the socioeconomic duty in the Equalities Act, my right honourable friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham had,
“slipped it into the Equalities Act at the last minute”.
What the Home Secretary called the Harman law which had been slipped in “at the last minute” was Clause 1 of the Bill that this House considered. I was proud to take the Equalities Bill through this House with my noble friend Lady Thornton, and I was proud of the socioeconomic duty. I assure noble Lords that it was not an empty gesture but a sensible and proportionate way of ensuring that the most disadvantaged people and deprived communities had some protection when strategic decisions were being taken.
The Home Secretary, perhaps inadvertently, then revealed why she was announcing that she was,
“scrapping Harman’s law for good”.
She said:
“Many have called it socialism in one clause”.
The Home Secretary once characterised the Conservatives as the nasty party. Clearly, describing the socioeconomic duty—passed, as I say, by both Houses of Parliament—as “socialism in one clause” shows that, for the nasty party, nothing much has changed. The Home Secretary’s remark shows the real intent behind this move. It has nothing to do with equality, the most disadvantaged in our society or opportunity, but everything to do with ideology, politics and prejudice.
The socioeconomic clause in the Equalities Act is a far cry from socialism in one clause, as the Home Secretary seeks to characterise it. It is a measure aimed simply at getting public organisations to think about the impact of their decisions on people who are disadvantaged. Many of these organisations already do so, and this mean-minded little announcement will in all probability not change that. Good public organisations will continue to pursue good policies regardless of what the Home Secretary says, and I am pleased that they will.
The shame of it is that both during the passage of the Equalities Bill and in remarks made since by the Prime Minister and others, senior figures from the party opposite made it clear that they supported many provisions of the Bill. Indeed, I am both grateful for and pay tribute to the principled way in which the Conservative Party in this House enacted the support for the Bill. In this I pay particular tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, who, with her normal constructive and gracious approach, showed real commitment to equality issues, which I know continues.
I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us precisely how the Government intend to scrap the so-called socioeconomic clause “for good”, as the Home Secretary said. Will they do it openly and transparently by bringing forward primary legislation aimed at removing this section from the Act, so that this House and the other place can debate and consider it? Or will the Government do it covertly and furtively by simply not implementing this section so that it cannot be debated properly by your Lordships’ House? Despite the Home Secretary’s lengthy speech, could the Minister confirm that the coalition simply does not care about equality? The Minister has said that the socioeconomic duty is bureaucratic, but the truth is that the Government have the power to decide how the duty would be implemented. Did they attempt to draw up a flexible way of introducing the duty? Despite the Home Secretary’s claims that the Government are all about fairness, is it not the case that the Government do not believe that they have any responsibility to deliver a fairer society?
The duty would have helped to make our society fairer and would have given disadvantaged people a fairer chance. The fact that the Government are scrapping the duty because it is “socialism in one clause” shows, in reality, precisely how little fairness actually means to them.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I have huge respect for the noble Baroness and feel rather saddened and disappointed at her response to the Statement. I should clarify to the House that, in this House, I am the lead spokesman on equalities and women. Therefore, I would repeat the Statement in this House. I am disappointed that the noble Baroness feels that I may not be up to the job.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
I did not say that. I have the utmost regard for the noble Baroness. She does a splendid job and I am delighted that she is the Minister responsible for women and equalities in this House. I was making quite a different point, as the record will show.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I will come back to some of the points that the noble Baroness raised. First, I should say that I have understood what equality means from a very early age. I understand very much what is needed to ensure that everyone in this country has access to opportunity and equality to enable them to reach their full potential. However, the clause that we are discussing did none of that and was unenforceable. Local authorities could consider it but did not need to implement it. It comprised an exercise in bureaucracy and box-ticking and imposed an extra burden on local authorities which are already struggling to manage within the constraints of budget reductions. Therefore, I do not agree that it was a useful part of the Act. Ninety per cent of the provisions of the Equalities Act were introduced in October. The remainder, including the public sector equality duty, will be introduced in April, although we are still debating parts of the Act. However, this particular part is not helpful or useful in terms of what the noble Baroness wants to see happen. It will not aid equality of any kind but will add to bureaucracy. We are helping the most vulnerable people. It is important to make this point. The public sector equality duty will ensure that local authorities and public bodies respond to inequalities of gender, race, disability and all the other inequalities that people face, so I do not accept the argument put forward by the noble Baroness. I hope that she realises that this tiny clause is nothing more than a gesture and will only add to the burdens and bureaucracy of local authorities.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton
My Lords, I should like to ask the Minister some questions about points that she has raised today and about what her right honourable friend said at the reception. Her right honourable friend cited as a reason for getting rid of the duty the fact that public sector spending is skewed towards certain parts of the country. I do not know what that means. I could understand its meaning if she was referring to certain parts of communities, but I do not know what is meant by certain parts of the country. She then went on to refer to bin collections and bus service redesign. Neither of those things has anything to do with equality. The socioeconomic duty would help to meet that practical need, whereas talking about dustbins and buses has absolutely nothing to do with it.
The Statement referred to compensating measures to make up for the drastic cuts in benefits and services. For some, that might sound like big and impressive figures. However, I should like to quote again from the comments of the End Child Poverty campaign, which identified many of the things that the Minister talked about. It said:
“The compensating measures don’t go nearly far enough to stop this being a dark day for any family struggling to stay out of poverty”.
It also talked about householders falling behind. My goodness, a lot more of them will be falling behind. The socioeconomic duty is even more important as a result of the cuts that are coming.
I have another question regarding the sums available. Will those be ring-fenced? How will the Government ensure that they go to the poorest families? What process will make that happen? It is a key part of the Statement.
I am fully in favour of the concept of increasing flexible working—I would not disagree with that one iota. However, many more families will need support, because a large number of them will be unemployed. As for the half-million unemployed public sector workers, I have no doubt the Minister will say that many of them will go into private sector jobs. However, PricewaterhouseCoopers has warned that almost half a million private sector jobs could be lost as a result of the spending squeeze. Are we talking about more families in need of support? The socioeconomic duty would have been invaluable in helping to ensure that support went to the right people.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
Perhaps I may remind noble Lords to make their comments as brief as possible so that we can fit in as many people as possible.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Baroness asks a lot of questions and I am not sure that I will be able to answer them all. We are looking at how we can manage the budget deficit so that the most vulnerable are least of all affected. That is why we have taken 880,000 people out of the tax system altogether and that is why we are introducing increased child tax credits for the poorest families to mitigate some of the things that they are going to have to face, because for the 13 years that the party opposite was in government poverty increased. We did see an increase in the numbers. So I am sorry to say that this is not an issue on which the party opposite can boast, say that they addressed it and that we are not now addressing it. We are all trying to address this serious problem.
We supported the Child Poverty Act and we were committed to implementing it. The Labour Government repeatedly missed their targets. It is very easy to sit here and say that what we are doing is gesture politics and that what the previous Government did was right. What we have to take on board is that we have huge deficits that we must respond to. We have a duty to support the most vulnerable people and we as a Government take that very seriously. In her speech yesterday morning, my noble friend pointed out that local authorities are best placed to know where and how to spend their resources. They are best placed to know how to react to the needs of their local communities. I do not think that we need a diktat from central government through some clause that will force local authorities into a tick-box bureaucracy that, to be truthful, does not answer any of those questions.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, I am sure that it was not impoliteness on the part of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, that she made no mention of the contribution of the Liberal Democrats in getting the Equality Act through Parliament. I pay tribute to her for the major part she played in that. But she will know of course that the original impulse for the statute came from us. I am sure that she will also remember that when we discussed the socioeconomic duty, I explained how it was a piece of political window dressing and windy rhetoric that was unenforceable in practice. I made it clear in Committee that we would support it only if the government of the day were able to give it practical meaning. Is the Minister aware that Article 45 of the constitution of the Republic of Ireland, as I pointed out in Committee, contains equally windy stuff about socioeconomic whatnot, which no Irish person whom I have ever met knows about or has derived the slightest practical value from.
I would have expected Labour to commend the Government for having on 1 October brought in almost all of the Equality Act, which I support, and for being committed to bringing in the public sector duty after proper consideration. The Statement repeatedly says what the limits of law are, which I agree with. Am I correct that the policy of the coalition Government is that equality law is a necessary but not sufficient condition for attaining proper equality of opportunity and treatment, that it requires the voluntary action of public authorities, the private sector and ordinary men and women to make it happen, and that the coalition is committed to achieving that?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I could not have put it better than my noble friend Lord Lester.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I was disappointed in the Minister's Statement. I remind her, given her response to my noble friend, that the previous Government lifted 500,000 children and close to a million pensioners out of poverty. Therefore, for her to claim that we did nothing about poverty is at best disingenuous—I say this despite the respect that I have for her.
The Minister mentioned the pupil premium. Perhaps she saw that yesterday in the other place the Liberal Democrat MP David Ward walked out when it became clear that the pupil premium will not give a per-pupil increase in real terms. It is a sham. She will have seen in yesterday's unemployment figures that the number of unemployed women went up by 31,000 while the number of unemployed men went down by 40,000. Does that not show that we need legal duties in place as safeguards to ensure that we continue to address inequality?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I do not need to take lessons from the noble Lord. However, I will add that the gap between those who have and those who have not has widened—and it widened during 13 years of the noble Lord’s Government. The noble Lord highlighted the issue of legal duty. That is why we supported the Equality Act.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
The Government have stated that their welfare reform proposals will help tackle poverty. This socioeconomic duty may have been able to assess whether this was accurate. It would have obliged authorities to consider changes to policies, and how they could improve or worsen disabled people's chances of living in poverty. Disability organisations have highlighted risks in the government agenda, including in the proposal to cut access to ESA, which could impoverish thousands of disabled people. Are disabled people's organisations right to fear the worst from this announcement; namely, that the Government's abolition of the socioeconomic duty suggests a lack of confidence in their welfare reform agenda?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I assure the noble Baroness that the public sector equality duty will do that: the obligation is there in an enforceable Act. It will ensure that local authorities will have to be accountable and able to show what they have put in place to ensure that there is equality for people with disabilities, and for people of different genders, races and religions. It is all there and enforceable. This little clause was a consideration, but not enforceable.
Baroness Seccombe
My Lords, having listened to the Minister outlining the good work that is going on, it saddens me deeply to see noble Lords opposite criticising the abolition of a small clause which, as my noble friend has just said, would not have been enforceable but would have caused utter confusion for local authorities, which would not have known how to interpret it. Surely that is something we can do without.
Baroness Verma
I absolutely agree with my noble friend. We know that local authorities are already under great pressure and therefore they do not need another box-ticking exercise. They can consider doing it but are not obliged to do so.
Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, I am sure that no noble Lord on this side of the House is sufficiently naive to think that social change can be achieved through one change in the law, as was referred to in the Statement. None the less, can the Minister tell the House of any single piece of social change, particularly in the equalities area, which has not been underpinned by appropriate legislation?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I repeat that the Conservative Party supported much of the Equality Act, and we tried very hard to ensure that it would deliver the best outcomes for all groups. No one is more passionate about equality with regard to gender, race or disability than I am. I have been the recipient of discrimination, so I know exactly what it is like to fight for equality. Therefore, I know what I want to see in legislation, and I know what is good and what is bad. I think that this is a bad piece of legislation that would waste the time of local authorities.
Baroness Morris of Bolton
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, for her kind words to me. I also thank her for acknowledging that we were behind getting this legislation on to the statute book and that we worked exceptionally hard to make sure that it did. We had good and long debates about the difference between socioeconomic inequality and socioeconomic disadvantage. However, throughout the passage of the Bill we also made it clear that there was a problem with socioeconomic disadvantage that we did not think would be tackled by this duty, which is at best aspirational and at worst vague. We also made it clear throughout the passage of the Bill that, were we to be in government, we would not implement it.
Baroness Verma
I thank my noble friend for that. I was not involved in the Equality Act, so I do not know the minute details of it. However, from the start, there was always a clear understanding that the Conservative Party would not proceed with this part of the Act if we got into government.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, I regret that the clause is going but, contrary to any contributions made so far, I commend the Government on their honesty in deciding to abandon it for the very simple reason that the other policies that they have announced, particularly in relation to downsizing the public service, mean that, as the noble Baroness said, they would not be able to implement the policy. Is it not true—I look to her for an honest answer—that the bulk of the half a million people whose jobs are to go will be the low-paid and women, and indeed many, particularly in London and the south-east, will be from ethnic minorities?
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
Can the noble Lord explain which part of Section 1 of the Act would in his view be violated in a way that would lead to legal consequences?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, I try to answer as honestly as I can. I simply reassure him that we believe firmly in the Equality Act. We supported the then Government to ensure that it got through, and we have put into place as many protections as we can for the vulnerable and the low-paid.
Baroness Thornton
I am not surprised that a Conservative Government are rolling back this aspect, as they told us that that is what they would do. I am surprised at the extent to which the Liberal Democrats roll over again from pledges and promises that they have made to the electorate—on NHS reorganisation, tuition fees and so on. We are getting used to it. For the record, will the noble Baroness say what other measures in the Equality Act the Government intend either not to implement or to delay? I would be pleased to see on the record what those are.
The noble Baroness and the Government are confusing two things: first, putting money in to help the vulnerable—we will see whether or not that works, although many people have their doubts—and, secondly, the issue of equality. The point of this duty was to ensure that somebody in the public sector was paying attention to, for example, the socioeconomic prospects of groups such as Muslim women, Travellers, the Jewish community, girls in sports, the Dalit communities and older Afro-Caribbean communities. Somebody was to pay attention to those communities and their socioeconomic prospects. Are the Government saying that they do not care about that duty? How will they ensure that those communities are taken into account? That was the point of the socioeconomic duty. If the Government want to get rid of that duty in the Equality Act, why are we not having a debate and a vote?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I will repeat it yet again. We supported much of the Equality Act. If local authorities are worth their weight in gold, they are already doing all the things that the noble Baroness is hoping for. While 90 per cent of the Act has been in force since 1 October, further announcements will be made in due course. The noble Baroness will just have to wait and see.
Lord Liddle
My Lords, I understand what the Conservatives said before the election about not liking these clauses, but does the noble Baroness accept that we are now in circumstances of drastic economies in public finances and that tough choices must be made by the public sector? Is not this environment precisely the time when we need a socioeconomic duty to ensure that the poorest in our society are protected?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the relevant clauses have not commenced. The Conservative Party made it clear that it opposed them, so we do not have to act further. As I have said repeatedly, we supported a large part of the Equality Bill. We worked incredibly hard with the then Government to ensure that it had a safe passage through this House.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
With respect, the noble Baroness rose on the 19th minute.
Baroness Hussein-Ece
Thank you. This is a quick question, but I have been thinking about it. We know that the gender pay gap has widened. The Equality Act was a long time in gestation and the pay gap is a central tenet of trying to reduce inequality in our society. What parts now being enacted will help to narrow that gender pay gap? That in itself would mitigate so much inequality in our society.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Baroness raises some important points. These are issues that we will follow through.
Council of Europe
(14 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Howell of Guildford
That this House takes note of the work of the Council of Europe.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, we are now entering what I understand is to be a relatively short debate and I thought, as that is so, that it would be right to limit my opening remarks on the work and activities of the Council of Europe to a few key points and give maximum time to the discussion itself. I shall then cover as much as I can in the wind-up at the end.
I want to make one general observation, which is simply that the Government regard the Council of Europe in its work as making a major contribution to the stability and peace of Europe. We are proud of its provenance, the part played by our nation in its history and evolution and its qualities as a supremely effective international organisation.
I want to make one more preliminary observation and I do so with some hesitation. The Council of Europe is much misunderstood, although not by your Lordships, or those who are active and have played a leading part in it, of course. However, many outside the House and maybe some in another place as well confuse the Council of Europe with the Council of the European Union. I have heard comments in which some even seem to assume that the Council of Europe is part of the European Union. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I feel that I should put on the record the truth of the matter, which is that the two organisations are completely separate and serve very different purposes. The European Union is concerned with the economic and social progress of all its member states, but for over 60 years the Council of Europe has existed to promote and protect human rights, the rule of law and democracy across the whole European land.
The United Kingdom will assume the chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe and therefore, in effect, of the Council of Europe next November—about this time next year. It is a little too early to set out what the United Kingdom chairmanship’s specific priorities and objectives will be, but I thought that it might be useful to share with your Lordships some thoughts on what, at this stage, we think the chairmanship objectives are likely to take into account. This divides into three areas.
The first area is budgetary considerations. We are looking to push down the costs of the Council of Europe, to make efficiency savings where possible and to ensure that work undertaken by the organisation is essential and relevant. Negotiations are well advanced towards agreement on a Council of Europe budget for 2011. We believe that the outcome may be a small net reduction in the total that the United Kingdom pays, relative to 2010. My honourable friend the Minister for Europe, Mr Lidington, has told the Secretary-General that the United Kingdom will be pushing for an overall reduction in the Council of Europe budget for 2012.
The second area is reform of the European Court of Human Rights, which is, of course, a central part of Council of Europe activities. The court serves a valuable purpose, but it is essential that it be reformed. It is overburdened and weighed down by a staggering backlog of over 140,000 cases. This cannot carry on. We will fully support and seek to advance the court reform process, which came out of the high-level conference at Interlaken in February 2010. We are also considering ways in which we might make the court more nimble in its operation in both the consideration and the judgment of cases brought before it.
Thirdly, the organisation and its work must continue to focus on what it does best: it must continue to protect and promote human rights, the rule of law and democracy in Europe. Therefore, the organisation’s work must reflect and contribute to these areas of strength and expertise. We oppose the Council of Europe straying into other areas of work for which other international organisations are better equipped. We also intend to maintain pressure on fellow member states to sign up and adhere to legally binding conventions and agreements to further safeguard Council of Europe standards and values in their country.
Europe is a better place for the Council of Europe and its work and those who dedicate so much time and effort to it, including Members of this House. It was born of the ashes of the Second World War and the defeat of the ghastly spectre of fascism. It has grown and flourished in an ever changing Europe. It has absorbed and welcomed into its midst almost all European countries, including those that lived under communism for many decades. By and large, it has indeed realised Winston Churchill’s dream.
I am delighted to have the opportunity to say those words about this apparently effective international organisation. Its work contributes greatly to the promotion of UK foreign policy objectives. A peaceful, stable Europe promotes security, international trade and safer travel abroad for all its citizens. I commend the Council of Europe and its work and I greatly look forward to your Lordships offering their views on its experience, needs and possibilities for the future. I beg to move.
Lord Prescott
My Lords, I think that the House will be grateful for this opportunity to discuss the Council of Europe. Neither House of Parliament has spent a great deal of time talking about the Council of Europe. As the noble Lord pointed out, people often get confused between the European Union and the Council of Europe. I think that Ministers must get confused, because the same Ministers sit on both councils, which creates a certain amount of difficulty and misinterpretation, to which I shall refer. I agreed with a great deal of what the Minister said.
I was first a member of the Council of Europe 35 years ago. When I went there during the past two years, I was given a report that I produced 35 years ago on multinationals. I did not dare read its conclusions. I have seen considerable changes in the Council of Europe over that time, not least its growth in size. The noble Lord referred to the countries of eastern Europe. Now, with about 23 new countries, it has grown to a size of 47—20 nations greater than are in the European Union. I make that point because we are talking about the European context. The European Union is much more limited in its coverage, and I want to come to some of its actions, institutions and the difficulties that it may create. Nevertheless, instead of me describing what it does, a very good Library document has been produced for us that explains exactly its function and role.
I want to express some of the concerns that I have found since I have gone back to the Council of Europe. Clearly, the setting of standards—democratically, socially, economically and on human rights—has been an important function of the Council of Europe, and I think that it has performed well in that. Certain concerns are beginning to develop on human rights, but the countries newly in the Council of Europe have come from the eastern European bloc. We have a job of monitoring; it is one of the important challenges that the Council of Europe has. The members of its Parliamentary Assembly appoint the judges to the European court. They are the monitoring process to see whether people are observing the obligations that they entered into when they became members of the Council of Europe.
I was given the job of being the rapporteur to observe elections in Armenia. That was quite an experience, particularly on the day when the election came. I discovered that there was a riot; 100 people were thrown into jail; 10 people were killed; people were charged with usurping the power of the state. Some things from the eastern European communist states tend to hang on. There is constant complaint about whether the media is independent or whether the electoral laws are fixed against the opposition. A number of charges are made, and we found them to be so.
I am glad to say that the Council of Europe intervened. It got an amnesty from the Government to release the people from jail. It changed the law, so that you could protest without being thrown into jail for usurping the state. It changed the electoral law. That showed that when a country wants the endorsement of the Council of Europe and has to live up to its obligations when it signed, the Council of Europe can have a tremendous influence on government policies in countries that are causing great concern. That was a success, with the Council of Europe operating in an area where 35 years ago it did not operate, but now, with 23 eastern European countries, it does.
Out of the 23 countries, about 10 have not had much monitoring; we do not need to, because they observe the democratic practices which they signed up to. The other 13, we have been monitoring for 14 years. You can imagine what countries they are. They have the same common complaint about the nature of democracy in those countries, about how they operate, and about what is the role of an opposition. The Council of Europe has had tremendous influence on that important work.
The noble Lord referred to the European Court of Human Rights. There is no doubt that its work is very important and we are the only body to appoint the judges, which is to our credit. We often find that the Government appear before the European Court of Human Rights. I have given the noble Lord early indication that on 11 January it will deal with the Max Mosley case, which has had considerable publicity here. Our courts ruled that his privacy had been interfered with, which is what the highest court in this land confirmed. It went to the courts, but the Government are now opposing any changes in our legislation when our judges have said that it is a breach of privacy. Will the Minister give our position on that? Are we continuing to oppose it? There is no doubt that the previous Government agreed to oppose it; it is not something that I lay just against this Administration. But since they are in charge, I should like to hear from the Minister the line that we are taking on that. There is the big issue now of privacy, about which we will hear more in this Chamber in the future.
I am concerned about duplication. The noble Lord referred to having too many institutions. The Council of Europe has found that the Council of Ministers of the European Union has set up another body called the Agency for Fundamental Rights. What the heck is that? There is no power. It is supposed to look for breaches of human rights, and pass them to the Council of Europe. The fear is that it is another human rights body being established within the European Union. The Ministers are providing all the money for it and telling us that we have to have cuts for human rights at the Council of Europe, but not for the European Union. The concept of disconnection, which means that European Union legislation will have primacy over any treaty obligations, is also being looked at in Europe. The court of human rights will still protect human rights, but concern and duplication has been caused. Will the Minister give us an opinion on what we feel is a lot of money going to the European Union body, which has no powers? The one that we have all signed up for, and includes more nations than the European Union, is now being restricted in its powers and operations and being challenged by this other body, which was a political deal to put some agency in Austria if we are honest about it. Basically, that is the kind of horse-trading that goes on in negotiations from time to time, but it creates a problem.
Without a doubt there is a difference between us and the Europeans on the issue of the global solution to the global problems of climate change. I am glad to say that the Council of Europe adopted its own resolution as to what it thought was a proper global solution. In this case also, we are different perhaps from the Government, although I should like to hear what the Minister has to say about that.
I was the negotiator for the European Union during the presidency at the Kyoto negotiations in 1997. It was difficult to get an agreement, but we got one, which was an important step forward. Of course, that involved only 47 nations; now something like 197 have to come to an agreement. The real difficulty is the belief that you can have a legal framework as we had at Kyoto. The agreements at Kyoto will end in 2012. At Copenhagen, there was a hope that there could be another legal agreement, which would carry on from 2012. Quite frankly, there was no chance of getting an agreement. I tried to convince my own Government—Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister, and everyone—that we would fail at Copenhagen if we tried to enforce a legal agreement. Of course, that is what they tried to do.
Now we are going from Copenhagen to Cancun, which I shall attend on behalf of the Council of Europe. I want to plead with this Government and to say that they could make a difference. In the G20 Statement, the Prime Minister made clear that he wanted to use all efforts to get an agreement. Perhaps I may say to him and to this House that if you try to enforce a legal agreement at Cancun, it will be failure. I have just returned from a week in China and a week in Japan. Japan was a strong advocate of Kyoto. I can tell you that Japan does not dare to talk about a Kyoto 2. It wants to find a means of allowing progress to continue without assuming that it is Kyoto 2.
The Americans were great advocates of a legal agreement, but there is no possibility that the President, even before the election, can get a legal agreement through Congress, so they cannot go for an agreement. I notice that it is the coalition’s policy in the document to go into Europe aiming for a 30 per cent cut in emissions. There is no chance at all of getting the eastern European countries to agree to that. The legal framework is falling apart. Let us be practical, recognise that it has happened, and go for an alternative. What the Council of Europe has done in its resolutions before Copenhagen and now ready for Cancun is to appeal to nations to find a common-sense agreement. Forget the legal framework; let us hope for it in perhaps five or six years’ time. If Kyoto ends in 2012, let us adopt the good old European practice of stopping the clock. Let Kyoto stay in place and continue with the Copenhagen accord. The appendices contain a voluntary statement on actions and policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If you accept the science, it is an essential thing we have to do. In the four or five years up to 2015, we can find an agreement. Of course, we have to be absolutely clear about the principles.
The Government could argue this case, and I hope that they will. That is because people are looking around for a common-sense solution, whether they are in Japan or China. Indeed, China is not going to accept a legal agreement. I hope the Government will take on board my suggestion that they should say a voluntary agreement should build on the Copenhagen accord. The appendices set out commitments to action plans towards cuts in gas emissions in the programme.
We must have central principles, the first of which is a Copenhagen voluntary framework which is embodied and continued in the Copenhagen accord, with targets and action plans as set out in the appendices. We should stop the clock on Kyoto 2012 so we have some years to build up trust in order to negotiate a new Kyoto agreement. By then it may well involve a legal framework, but not now. If we fail this time, it will be disastrous, so we must find an agreement. The second principle is that this has to be applied universally. We cannot pick out certain countries like we did with the first Kyoto agreement. Whatever the agreement is, it must be a consensus for all.
The third principle is that the targets for greenhouse gas emissions must be expressed per capita. It was a nonsense for America to come to Copenhagen and say, “Well, China produces as many greenhouse gas emissions as we do, and therefore it is a mathematical problem, not a moral one”. But expressed per capita, America produces 20 tonnes of gas emissions per person. In China it is 5 tonnes and in Europe it is 10 tonnes. If this is going to be acceptable to the developing world, it has got to be fair. Consensus is necessary to bring those countries on board. So let us start from a fair and equitable basis, which is to use emissions per capita for the agreement.
The fourth principle is to add accountability and transparency. I have had some arguments with Premier Wen in China, who says that he does not like the idea of people outside China on the international stage telling him what to do. I can understand that although I am bit confused because he has just joined the IMF, but we will leave that to one side. What he can do is recognise that there could be a voluntary agreement which says, “You should have a domestic programme and develop it”. America has got one, Japan has got one, so let them do it at the domestic level. But there must be a universal system for verifying what they have done or else there will be no trust. There has to be accountability and transparency in verification; that is necessary.
Finally, there has to be sufficient money to allow countries to adapt their systems to low-carbon economies. That was what was said in Copenhagen, and I think that that is what they should be committed to doing. It will take quite a lot of money, but if we are to move to low-carbon economies, whether in the rich or the developing countries, a considerable amount of money and new technologies will be needed to make the changes.
I hope that the Government will consider and then give a lead to adopting a common-sense approach in Europe. If we do that, we will reach some sort of agreement. It will not be the grand agreement we got at Kyoto, but it will be a small step for mankind. It will be a step towards progress and continuing to accept the science of how the temperature is being affected and the consequences that we are all aware of. That is what we need to do, and I am glad to say that the Council of Europe is at the forefront of arguing for a good and sensible resolution that can provide the kind of halfway house, if you like, towards an agreement. Britain could lead the way both in Europe and internationally. I know that the Prime Minister had talks in China about it. Let us find a consensus and agreement—it is possible—and I am so pleased that the Council of Europe is playing its part in this.
Lord Dykes
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, speaks with a great deal of authority on this subject; he has become one of its leading experts and I am sure the House is grateful to him. He has spoken against a background, I would imagine, of more or less unanimity in this Chamber about the value and worth of the Council of Europe and all that it has achieved over the years. There is, however, the special anxiety that he has expressed about dealing with climate change—one of the most serious matters facing the entire planet.
He did not say so, but I assume from his analysis that the factors behind this anxiety include fears that the international financial crisis has caused great psychological depression in many countries: the recession that people now face; the threat of unemployment in different countries and the fact that, if they adjust to climate change requirements, jobs may be lost in the immediate future through that process as well; and that the emerging countries in the third world are now coming into the first world—very rapidly in the cases of India, China and Turkey. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, and I have just visited Turkey, and what an advanced country it is now becoming in all relative terms. As the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, said, they have become tired of the finger-wagging that has always been the habit of the West vis-à-vis these countries. It appears to be beginning to decline now, psychologically and politically—at least I hope so. When I was on a recent visit to India, which has naturally friendly relations with Great Britain as the former imperial power—I am glad to say there is a great relationship—one of the first things that was spontaneously said to me was that it did not want any lectures from the West on what to do about these matters; it will deal with them urgently as well and there has to be a fair international agreement. Legal force may be possible later, as the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, implied.
He was reminiscing about his history in the Council of Europe and I began to think of our history together in the European Assembly, as it was then, but the European Parliament as it is now. We both began at more or less the same time in the early 1970s when there were 184 members and a dual mandate, in all respects, of all the members from all the different countries. It was a very different, weak body. Sometimes the Commission did not bother to turn up if it was a bad day and the Council of Ministers sometimes did not turn up either or came late. Nowadays the European Parliament has developed into a powerful and impressive institution, as has the Council Europe, which is an entirely different organisation based on totally different premises.
I refer to the words contained in one of its recent publications. It states:
“The Council of Europe occupies a unique place in the international political landscape of Europe—the guardian of human rights, a symbol of hope, with the task of cultivating a Europe where democracy and the rule of law flourish and the mistakes of previous decades cannot easily be repeated. Its work is more important today than ever, covering almost the entire continent, in 47 member states and among 800 million citizens”.
We on these Benches enthusiastically support the work of the Council of Europe, based as it is on the bedrock of the four basic treaties. We need to constantly think about the treaty dealing with torture because there is far too much going on in that terrible field in the world still and the Council of Europe has a great role to play.
We have noticed the enthusiasm of the more recent members of the Council of Europe for the body and the role that they can play there. I hope, too, that the Council of Europe will play its own particular definitive role in helping towards a resolution, at long last, of the tricky Northern Cyprus/Republic of Cyprus problem. There is now a great will between Greece and Turkey, particularly, to see this problem solved and, like other bodies, the Council of Europe can make a great difference.
As my noble friend said in his opening remarks it is depressing that there is still—even among well educated politicians, including in the other place—confusion between the European Union and the Council of Europe. I was disturbed to see in recent exchanges in the Commons that some fierce, deep-seated anti-European Tory Back-Bench MPs, some of them new Members, were also getting mixed up about the Council of Europe. When someone said that it was a totally different body, they said, “Let us leave that as well as leaving the European Union”. This kind of thing is a disturbing manifestation of the modern, more brutal, politics in Britain, where socioeconomic pressures cause people to go back into atavistic thinking and nationalism of one kind or another.
I am sure that my noble friend will return to some of the points made in today’s brief debate. I conclude not by embarrassing him but by paying tribute to him on the way in which he has always sought to interweave into his ministerial answers a concentration, which I detect he feels personally, on human rights and its abuses in the world and the need for the international community to deal with them. That has been noticed in all parts of the House and we thank the Minister for his attitude, conduct and repeated assurances that that is a priority for the Government.
The Earl of Dundee
My Lords, this is a timely debate. Membership of the new UK Council of Europe parliamentary delegation was announced only a few days ago and, since coming to power last May, the Government are still at an early stage of forming general policies for Europe.
However, many of us will have already become much heartened by the concession that our Prime Minister has recently won. This is to downsize the EU’s annual budgetary increase from 6 per cent to 2.9 per cent. That in turn serves to reduce any inconsistency between control of the EU economy and that currently deployed by and within each of the 27 member states. For our European partners and us together, it also inspires a common resolve for improved management.
Yet, although extremely important, the EU is only one of the necessary considerations. For Europe as a whole, we may well believe that the Government should focus on three separate yet related forms of security and their interaction. The first is defence and the maintenance of European peace. The second is the goal of effective political and economic delivery towards and within nation states. The third is the collective task of building up the confidence and well-being of families and communities within the Council of Europe’s wider affiliation of 47 states.
Among those three aspirations, the common factor is perhaps economic stability. That is so even though military defence and economic management are always different endeavours. Nevertheless, since the formation of NATO in 1949, the two have become ever more closely connected. Nor do we have to look far to find evidence that, since then, defence policy in Europe has borne the most fruit through a strong and healthy link to democracy and economic stability. NATO could hardly have been formed without the disbursement of Marshall aid the previous year, in 1948. The Cold War would not have ended as it did in the late 1980s had not the arms race come to exert unacceptable pressure on the economies of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact states.
At that time, as a result, the Soviet bloc decided to elevate the concerns of its own economy above ideology and empire. By 2000, it appeared that the former Yugoslavia had done the same, in its case by putting economic stability before territorial acquisition and ethnic cleansing. In both examples, the change of heart had been precipitated by successful NATO containment or intervention, although it may be regretted that the international community, which through NATO in 1999 acted decisively at last, did not do so at the outset of the conflict in 1991, when it could have done, thereby saving countless lives.
If in Europe, through NATO and to good effect, military defence has facilitated economic stability, the corollary to this is that economic stability has also assisted military defence. Through the EU, its manifestation and prospect continue to inspire European peace. Not least is that so in the case of former Yugoslavia. In that part of south-east Europe, lasting peace can best be secured through eventual EU membership of the states concerned. Clearly, it will take some time for all of them to accede. However, Croatia is expected to become a full EU member quite soon. Here I declare an interest as chairman of the UK parliamentary group for that country.
In the development of peace and economic stability in Europe since 1949, what then have been the achievements of the Council of Europe? How have these enhanced or complemented the work of NATO and the EU? And, following the Lisbon treaty, what is the Council of Europe’s future role?
Since 1949, the political experiment in Europe has been how to combine solidarity with national independence. From the 1990s, that formula has received greater credence. This is through subsidiarity and other safeguards. The notion seems strange, nevertheless. How can the citizen build up rights and duties within his state and within Europe at the same time? At least, how can he do so without conflicting loyalties?
Yet here already, through the European Convention on Human Rights adopted in 1950, the Council of Europe began to make sense of that apparent anomaly. The Court of Human Rights which followed in 1959 set the precedent for the European individual to be protected in his own right, irrespective of the particular state to which he belongs.
This precedent has also enabled a fresh background for European idealism. The Court of Human Rights puts state and citizen on an equal footing. Hitherto, and by contrast, a previous background had permitted the opposite extremes of harmful ideology. Such were the versions of communism or fascism prevalent in the 20th century. Those creeds either discount human rights altogether or else render them subservient to the state.
In terms of idealism, the Council of Europe has therefore produced a great victory for pragmatism and common sense. The citizen need no longer become prey to the whims of ideology; instead, his rights can be protected through the objective standards of democracy and the rule of law.
Arising from this, the Council of Europe has acted to foster legal co-operation and to safeguard the rule of law. It has done so through conventions and treaties including conventions on cybercrime, prevention of terrorism, against corruption and organised crime and trafficking in human beings, on the prevention of torture and on human rights and biomedicine. If, in the first place, state and citizen are perceived to be on an equal footing, it follows that these measures then stand to benefit each of state and citizen in its or his own right.
The same focus is shared by the various arms of the Council of Europe—its Parliamentary Assembly, Committee of Ministers, Congress of Local and Regional Authorities and Commissioner for Human Rights. The targets and beneficiaries of their combined work are individuals, families, communities, regions and states of Europe.
However, out of context, such work and its results might always be suspected to duplicate, double-handle or conflict with efforts made elsewhere, or in the first instance even to upstage or undermine the agendas of nation states or the EU. Yet with a few exceptions, this is hardly ever the case. That is so since, on the continent, the Council of Europe is the only institution that relates to 800 million people within the affiliation of 47 states.
If, then, to date the Council of Europe has already much assisted Europe, what should become its future role? One paradox is that this institution should have managed to be so effective without wielding any executive power at all. Another, to which the Minister has already referred, is that so much of its important work goes unnoticed and unrecognised. A further anomaly reflects the respective costs of the Council of Europe and the EU, since the former costs roughly in one year what the latter does in one day.
On the scope for improved co-operation between the EU and the Council of Europe, the recent Juncker report has recommended a number of expedients: EU accession to the European Convention on Human rights, a joint legal and judicial system and EU acknowledgement of the Council as an expert authority on human rights in Europe. Does my noble friend agree with these aims? If so, can he say what progress is being made to advance them?
The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights was launched in 2007. Yet, while costing a great deal, it may not have added very much to existing Council of Europe delivery. In view of that, does my noble friend consider that this EU agency should now be wound down?
Until recently, the European Court of Human Rights has had pending more than 140,000 cases. Compliance to protocol 14 by Russia and certain other states may well cause this backlog to be eased. My noble friend also mentioned the resolve to reform the Court of Human Rights in the longer term. In the shorter term, what recommendations can he make to reduce the current burden of the court?
If the future preference of EU member states might be to get things done much less through Brussels and much more through intergovernmental channels, the Council of Europe provides an opportunity. This thought revisits expediency. The Council of Europe upholds moral principles; that is its chief function. At the same time, however, it happens to operate through an intergovernmental process as well. By contrast, the EU does not. Thus, to circumnavigate red tape and to achieve certain purposes, our Government may wish to make further use of the Council of Europe for its flexibility and expediency.
Today is far too soon to identify such purposes. Be that as it may, does my noble friend agree that the next 12 months, until and in advance of the beginning of the British chairmanship of the Council of Europe in November 2011, is the right time to analyse and study a number of options? From this institution there is a unique opportunity to improve standards, as there is to encourage best practice throughout Europe.
Meanwhile, the Council of Europe’s contribution continues to be of incalculable value: to steer Europe away from misleading ideologies and, instead, towards a pragmatic idealism. Such is democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, the Minister made a positive and welcome speech on the Council of Europe. Last year the noble Earl, my noble friend Lord Prescott and I were in Strasbourg celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Council. Over the 60 years, the Council has defended common European values, worked as a pan-European organisation and monitored member states’ compliance with obligations on human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Even though the treaty was signed in London in 1949, it was not welcomed at the beginning, when Ernest Bevin, the then Foreign Secretary, said:
“I don’t like it. When you open that Pandora’s Box, all sorts of Trojan Horses will come out of it”.
I do not believe that Trojan horses have indeed come out of it, but the statute of the Council of Europe refers, of course, to the unity of Europe but not to European Union. It has always been apart from the federalist tradition of Europe, which ultimately led to the Rome treaty and the European Union.
In 1960-61, my first job was as a foreign office adviser to the Council of Europe Assembly. At that time, there was a great deal of despondency because the Council of Europe, which was founded before the Common Market, as it then was, had been overtaken by it. I was told by our then ambassador John Peck that at the meeting of Ministers’ deputies in 1959, when they were discussing how best to celebrate the 10th anniversary, Tommy Woods, the Irish Minister’s deputy, had suggested 10 minutes’ silence. Since that time, the Council has indeed found a role but it has not been really well recognised in the member countries.
Certainly, its low profile has led to all sorts of distortions. Members of this House may have noticed an article in the Sunday Times of 7 November, headed:
“Kennedy joins EU drinking group”.
It said that Charles Kennedy, the former Liberal Democrat leader, who quit because of an alcohol problem, is to join a European Union delegation notorious for its drinking culture. Not only is that a nasty slur on a highly respected Member of Parliament, it is wholly inaccurate and very much in the Sunday Times tradition of seeing the Council of Europe as another awful European Union institution.
Over the decades since 1959, in my judgment, the council has gained a new self-confidence. During the Cold War it was a bastion of democratic values; it was a model, a bulwark, against totalitarianism. After 1989 and the year of revolutions, it was a school of democracy for countries of central and eastern Europe, the former Soviet satellites. Now it has become a place of reconciliation for other conflicts, based, of course, in Strasbourg, no better symbol of reconciliation in the post-war world. Germany joined, then Austria, then the neutral Switzerland, then the newly independent Malta and Cyprus. As has been mentioned—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, who made this point—there is a real role for Turkey. Not only is the president of the assembly currently a Turk but, from this month, Turkey holds the presidency of the Council.
The Council was involved in mediating last week in Moldova, as I learnt this morning when I was in Paris at a meeting of the Council. It has tried to moderate the Russian/Georgian confrontation, and at least there is jaw-jaw between the Russian and Georgian delegates in Strasbourg.
Over the years UK politicians have played a sterling role. I have just had a telephone message from the noble Lord, Lord Roper, who says:
“My father in law was the first British president”
of the Assembly. As one looks through the roll call of British participants, one sees Winston Churchill, Jim Callaghan, Rab Butler, George Brown, Alec Douglas-Home, Roy Jenkins, my noble friend Lord Healey and so on, and of course the previous Secretary-General, Terry Davis, is British.
By far the greatest contribution of the Council, though, has been in the field of soft security generally and human rights in particular. It has been the conscience of Europe or, as the current Secretary-General, Thorbjørn Jagland, has said,
“the lighthouse of Europe, a house for early warning”.
It has institutionalised human rights, including minority rights, and brought 47 European countries together in defence of the rule of law, fundamental rights and democracy.
The point in relation to the European Convention of Human Rights and the European Court has already been made, that Europe’s 800 million-plus people are able to seek individual redress when states violate their basic rights. In this it is assisted by a commissioner for human rights, who will be in this Parliament next week. The problem, as the Minister pointed out, has been the tide of applications, with an enormous backlog, and the misuse by certain states. How confident is the Minister that the Interlaken agreement, with the sifting mechanism, will lead to a reduction in that backlog and allow the court to get on with its proper work?
For time reasons, I will not go through in detail the other key conventions and human rights, but they include the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. One achievement has been that since 1997 none of the Council of Europe’s 47 member states has enforced the death penalty. There is the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance. There are conventions on cyberspace, on medical ethics and on social rights. The monitoring activities, including those of the Venice Commission, have been important.
I shall conclude with some observations. The Minister is well thought of in the House because of his reflective view on the future of Europe. As he knows, institutions are extremely slow to change even if the context changes. I therefore question him on how he sees the developments on the European landscape.
It may be said that the European landscape is just too full of institutions, some of which may well have served their purpose. The Western European Union is coming to an end next June. How does the Minister see the possible integration of some of the work? My noble friend Lord Prescott made the point very well that the European Union is going into the field of human rights like an imperialist. Now that it has become a member of the convention, is there not an argument for aligning policies more closely? Perhaps the European Parliament should have a role with the Council of Europe in the election of judges. Perhaps the European Union should leave this field to an organisation which is of not 27 but 47 members and, therefore, rather more important in seeking to promote human rights Europe-wide.
President Medvedev floated the idea of a new security structure in Europe two years ago. At that time, in June 2008, the whole élan was overtaken by the Russian invasion of Georgia which violated the very principles that President Medvedev had enunciated. Now, perhaps, we can sit back in a more calm and reflective way and see—given that we have the OSCE, formed at a particular period of time in the Helsinki accords—whether there is still a role for national Parliaments meeting together to have some security responsibility now that the Western European Union is about to be wound up. How does the Minister see how the various European institutions can work together?
What better time to do so, when all Governments are looking at ways of cutting expenditure in the current global crisis? The Council of Europe is extraordinarily cheap and modest in its expenditure for the work that is done. The Minister will be well aware of politicians’ temptation to roam and extend their remit more widely. This is currently very much the case in the European Union. How does the Minister respond to the new Secretary-General’s initiatives announced following his appointment? The first stage—the internal governance of the Council—has almost been completed, and the process is now moving on to the more difficult and political stage.
Clearly, there is an area in which the Council of Europe adds value more than any other institution: human rights. How does the Minister see the relationship with the European Union after the Lisbon treaty? How does one prevent the overlap and duplication of work of several institutions? How do the Minister and the planners in the Foreign Office see the best form of European architecture, in both security and human rights, given the changes that are coming about?
I end on this note: the Council of Europe has played a key role as part of the institutional landscape of Europe after the Second World War. Rather like Voltaire’s God, if it did not exist we would have to invent it. Its development was blocked prior to 1989. I recall the phrase of President Gorbachev about our “common European home”. We could say at the time, “How can we possibly have a common European home when there is a wall”—the Berlin Wall—“right through the front room?”. Now the Berlin Wall has gone, we can look a little more objectively at how Europe might develop. No institution or landscape is static. All are dynamic.
I shall be interested personally in how Her Majesty’s Government and the Minister view the development and rationalisation of organisations and their prioritisation. Certainly, it is the wish of the new Secretary-General and Ministers not to clip the Council’s wings, but to recognise the sterling work it has done, particularly on human rights, and to ensure that that area is allowed to develop. It is a good time for radical thinking about our European institutions.
Baroness Stern
My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for arranging this debate and for his opening remarks, which are enormously welcome. He is right that few people have the remotest idea of the work of the Council of Europe or its beneficial effects on the lives of the 800 million people in Europe. This debate gives us a rare opportunity to highlight those benefits. The work of the Council has affected not only individuals in Europe but has been substantial in strengthening the human rights framework of the whole world. I have had the privilege of many years’ involvement with the Council of Europe, although my involvement has not been as long or as deep as that of other noble Lords who have spoken today. I will concentrate on the role that the Council of Europe has played in the rule of law and human rights—a role that the Minister commended so highly. I declare two interests. I chair the All-Party Group on the Abolition of the Death Penalty and I am a trustee of the International Centre for Prison Studies.
The basis of the human rights work of the Council of Europe is the European Convention on Human Rights. There is much that is overwhelmingly positive to be said about the effect of the convention and the case law of the court on making it clear what respect for the human dignity of each individual means, and how it affects the daily practice of many who work for the state—for example, police, prosecutors, prison officials and many other public servants. Out of that framework has come a body of instruments that set out in considerable detail how people should be treated when they are subject to the coercive power of the state. These are considerable achievements and I will highlight two particular developments.
In 1989, when the Soviet Union came to an end, the Council of Europe was crucial in bringing so many new countries into the framework of democracy, the rule of law and human rights. It was a remarkable time and remarkable work was done. One of the substantial achievements was to eliminate the death penalty, either by statute or by a moratorium in every country, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has mentioned. Europe, with the exception of Belarus, is now a death penalty-free zone, which is an enormous achievement.
I will say a little about the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. From now on I will refer to it as the committee for the prevention of torture, or the CPT. The Council of Europe emerged from the barbarity of the Second World War years, when torture and violent death became the fate of millions. It is clear why so many people saw it as a priority to construct a framework that prevents torture. Many years of work went into drafting the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which came into force in 1989. I was privileged to be at a meeting in Strasbourg when the draft of the document, setting out the working methods of the new convention, was being discussed with experts on torture prevention from around the world. Shortly afterwards, the text was accepted and the committee was established. It was the beginning of a new era in torture prevention. Places of detention in all member states were opened to visits from the committee, which then produced reports and recommendations for member states on action to be taken to prevent torture.
The United Kingdom played a large role in the successful implementation of this convention. From 1997 to 2009, the UK member of the committee was Dr Silvia Casale. From 2000 to 2007, she was the president of the committee. She chaired it with great distinction and during that time it developed its practice considerably. In 1998, the committee visited Russia for the first time. One should reflect for a moment on the significance of a visit in 1998, only seven years after the country came out of totalitarianism, of a group of international monitors to prisons and labour camps. These establishments had been secret; the prisoners in them were not seen as people with rights but as enemies of the state. The penalty for coming within a few metres of the perimeter wall was to be shot. Such a huge change has occurred in such a short time.
But the committee for the prevention of torture did not examine just the most recent member states; it has found something wrong with all of us. The UK Government were criticised for the way in which detainees were held in Belmarsh Prison under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. Their detention had seriously damaging effects on their mental health. The Swedish Government were criticised for the way they treated their remand prisoners and the Dutch Government for the treatment of people in their high security units. The Czech Government were criticised for allowing a vulnerable prisoner to be raped repeatedly. Today there is a report of the committee’s visit to Greece, where it found cases of detainees being punched, kicked and beaten with clubs. All these reports are published by the Government concerned and are in the public domain, as should be the case in democratic societies. From these 20 years of inspections, the committee for the prevention of torture has produced a set of standards which have shaped expectations across Europe of how detainees should be treated. Furthermore, the experience of the committee has led to the establishment of a similar body under UN auspices, the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture.
I have gone into detail on this one aspect of the work of the Council of Europe to make the point that it has been tremendously effective in changing the landscape of Europe and its values, and in establishing a common European legal space, with 47 countries agreeing to and accepting, if not always implementing, the validity of certain standards for the treatment of those living within their borders. Within this framework, the Council of Europe has brought together richer and poorer states, long-term democratic states with more recent ones, countries which see themselves as mainly Christian with those which see themselves as predominantly Muslim, and a variety of legal systems. As the Minister said, this has led to a stronger, more stable and more peaceful continent.
I end by raising a point about the future of the Council of Europe. This year is the 60th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights. Obviously, times have moved on. The immensely challenging task of bringing into membership the countries that were formerly behind the Berlin Wall has been completed but Europe now faces other huge challenges, particularly intolerance, racism and the rise of political parties espousing such views. Who would have imagined, for example, a Government in the Netherlands ruling with the parliamentary support of the Freedom Party led by an MP who has called Islam a fascist religion and appeared in court last month accused of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims? The economic conditions in many member states are also worrying and can feed resentment of people from cultures other than the majority. In the Council of Europe the new secretary-general has launched a reform programme to ensure that the council remains relevant and cost-effective, and has particularly mentioned the rise of racism and discrimination in Europe as a new danger. While welcoming the Minister’s preview of the priorities for when the UK takes over in a year’s time, I ask him whether the Government will support the new secretary-general in his reform efforts and in his highlighting of the dangers of an increase in racist attitudes and racist politics in Europe.
Lord Sheikh
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Howell for his initial remarks, which were very relevant.
Sir Winston Churchill was the first to speak about the benefits of creating a Council of Europe, so it is fitting that the Council was established by the treaty of London. The Council of Europe was founded upon the principles of upholding democracy and civil liberties. Since its creation, the Council has continued to adapt and expand as a means of tackling the common challenges facing the continent. The Council of Europe promotes and supports human rights, the rule of law and democracy. I have spoken in your Lordships’ House on humanitarian issues and I appreciate the work done by the Council. It is, however, important to make sure that the expenditure of the Council is controlled and that the organisation is cost-effective.
Turkey currently holds both the chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers and the presidency of the Assembly in the Council of Europe. The Turkish Government have recently ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime. It is the first international treaty of its kind relating to crimes committed using the internet and other computer networks. The treaty is comprehensive in the sense that it deals with a number of offences, including infringement of copyright and online fraud. It aims to ensure that countries that sign up to the convention implement common criminal policies in relation to cybercrime. In our debate last week on the strategic defence and security review, I made reference to the growing dangers of cybercrime.
It is encouraging that with this development Turkey has become the 43rd country to sign up to the convention. The Turkish Government have also signed into domestic law the convention’s additional protocol on the transfer of sentenced persons. Turkey’s ratification of this convention is an important step towards the country’s ambitions of accession to the European Union, which I continue to support.
I recently attended an event to celebrate the achievements of the Turkish community in Britain where I made a speech and presented an award. This year, I visited Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, where I met government Ministers and leaders in commerce. I continue to support a peaceful solution to the tensions in Cyprus. I am pleased that leaders of the Greek and Turkish communities are today meeting the Secretary-General of the United Nations in New York to progress negotiations for a settlement.
The Turkish economy is the fastest-growing in Europe and provides a wealth of opportunities for increased trade. I should be grateful if the Minister could inform your Lordships’ House of the steps that Her Majesty's Government are taking to strengthen our relationship with Turkey. Due to the economic downturn and increased migration, there have been electoral successes across Europe for political parties with extremist views. The current state of affairs is particularly worrying as support for far-right parties has increased markedly in Sweden and the Netherlands—two European countries famous for their reputation as tolerant societies. The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party now has seats in the Swedish Parliament. A greater concern is that the Dutch coalition Government are reliant on the support of the extremist politician Geert Wilders, who is facing trial on charges of inciting racial hatred.
It is with regret that I refer to the recent desecration of 37 Muslim graves at a cemetery in Strasbourg. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident. A number of other Jewish and Muslim cemeteries have been vandalised in the region this year. In response to these developments, the Council of Europe has set up a group of eminent persons which has been tasked with preparing a report on how to combat the rise of extremism and promote tolerance in Europe. The group, which is chaired by the former Foreign Minister of Germany, Joschka Fischer, will submit its report to the Council of Europe's Foreign Ministers in May.
I fully support the Council of Europe in its goal to combat trafficking in human beings. The European Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, and the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, highlight the importance of a multiagency approach in the Council to ensuring the safety of victims and the prosecution of the perpetrators. I have raised the issue of human trafficking on a number of occasions in your Lordships' House: it is a subject that I feel passionately about. This abhorrent practice is equivalent to modern-day slavery. It is encouraging to see that the Council of Europe is taking action to address this important issue.
I strongly welcome the Council of Europe's campaign against domestic violence. Research suggests that between 12 and 15 per cent of European women are subjected to domestic violence every day. The topic is something on which I feel strongly, and about which I have also previously spoken in your Lordships' House. The nature of the crime suggests that the number of female victims could be higher than this statistic, as incidents of abuse are not always reported. The Council's campaign is directed at all levels of government, as it recognises the important work carried out by local and regional authorities across member states in preventing domestic violence and in offering support to victims. A British councillor has recently been elected as president of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities in the Council of Europe. The congress represents local authorities across all 47 member states, and this is the first time the presidency has been held by a Briton.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe played a vital part in contributing to peace and stability on the continent after the Second World War. The assembly was instrumental in preparing the European Convention on Human Rights, which established the European Court of Human Rights. The court has concluded that the general, automatic and indiscriminate restriction on voting by all prisoners was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. I find this decision hard to reconcile, and share the frustration of many law-abiding citizens. This ruling has several implications for our country and requires thoughtful consideration. I sincerely hope that it does not have an adverse impact on our judicial system. Perhaps it would be appropriate to look at revising the powers and activities of the court.
The Council of Europe has undoubtedly enriched the lives of many European citizens. Membership of the Council has been extended to almost every country in Europe. It serves as a constant reminder of the progress that this continent has made since the Second World War. We should continue to play a leading role in the Council in order to further our national interests. Most importantly, we should seek to create and strengthen existing relationships within the group. Europe is facing both social and economic challenges. I conclude by saying that the challenges now are less onerous than those we conquered in the past. However, we must continue to uphold our democratic and social values in all undertakings.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I crave the indulgence of the House in speaking for a moment in the gap to bring to your Lordships’ attention a disturbing development of which I learnt only last night. I apologise to the Minister for the fact that I missed the first few minutes of his speech.
Among the many valuable things that the Council of Europe does, one of the most valuable is its support for a Conference of International Non-Governmental Organisations enjoying participatory status with the Council of Europe. This conference is one of the four pillars of the Council of Europe whose role is to strengthen respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law throughout Europe—something that has always been at the heart of British foreign policy. Council Resolution (2003)8 bestowed participatory status on selected international NGOs in recognition of the critical role that they can play in fostering dialogue between civil society and the other Council institutions, and in promoting participatory democracy and fundamental rights in member states—in forwarding the core work of the Council of Europe, in other words, to which many other noble Lords have attested.
The conference has taken a particular interest in the rights of disabled people, which is how I come to know about it. I am president of the European Blind Union, which is a member of the conference and thus has participatory status with the Council. I declare my interest accordingly.
The Council is distinct in granting participatory status to the NGO community. This has given civil society a voice and a stake in Europe—something which should be seen as being of prime importance at a time when we are all concerned about democratic deficits in Europe. However, we have just learnt that the Council is now proposing major cuts in the conference’s budget, which would significantly erode its effectiveness, if not neuter it altogether. The conference’s budget for 2010 is a mere 0.52 per cent of the total budget of the Council of Europe. That proposed for 2011 foresees a reduction in excess of 50 per cent but could, we are told, reach 80 per cent. Such a saving would be just a drop in the ocean so far as concerns the Council of Europe, but it would surely spell the end of the crucial work of the Conference of International NGOs in contributing to the effective implementation of Council programmes and in drawing up and implementing legal instruments which ensure the protection of human rights, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter, the convention on combating the trafficking of human beings and the proposed convention on combating violence against women.
In 2009, the Committee of Ministers declared that one of its priorities was,
“to develop, with the assistance of the Conference of International Non-Governmental Organizations, interaction with civil society, whose grassroots work we salute”.
Given that the Council states that its proposals for reform are aimed at refocusing around its fundamental values of democracy, human rights, the rule of law and areas in which it enjoys a real comparative advantage in doing what others are not able to do, the effective disablement of the Conference of International NGOs through the proposed cuts would surely be counterproductive. The Council’s budget will be discussed and adopted by the Committee of Ministers next week, and I hope very much that the Minister will do whatever he can, through the Government’s representation on the Council of Ministers, to see that this disastrous and self-defeating cut is significantly attenuated, if it cannot be wholly reversed.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the debate so enthusiastically and all noble Lords who have participated. They demonstrated the considerable expertise in this House on the Council of Europe, not least through the direct experience of many of your Lordships of how the Council works, some I note going back more than 50 years, as my noble friend Lord Anderson ably demonstrated.
Without exception there has been huge appreciation of everything that the Council of Europe has achieved in the past almost 60 years but your Lordships have also asked pertinent questions about future priorities. Foremost among those are the questions raised a moment or two ago by the noble Lord, Lord Low, about the funding of the international NGOs. We all look forward to what the Minister will say about that.
I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, for her exposition on how the Council of Europe has been pivotal in establishing what she called a common European legal space in terms of its framework on issues such as torture and the conditions in which prisoners and detainees are held. I thank her most warmly for the excellent work that she has done and continues to do in this field.
I turn first to questions about the institutions and the Council of Europe itself. As I understand it, the Parliamentary Assembly includes 18 British parliamentarians and 18 substitute British parliamentarians whose advisory function is not binding on the Committee of Ministers—the ministerial council—which is, in effect, the executive body of the Council of Europe as a whole. I think that that distinction is right—the relationship between the Parliamentary Assembly and the Committee of Ministers is, I think, on the one hand an Assembly that makes recommendations and on the other a decision-taking body.
The Minister talked about looking at these issues when the British chairmanship begins in November next year. My question is born of genuine interest—I am not trying to put forward any particular agenda. Will the Minister say whether any thought has been given to trying to ensure that when the Committee of Ministers does not agree with the recommendations put forward by the Parliamentary Assembly there should be an obligation to explain the differences between their thinking and the thinking of the parliamentarians who are there to advise them?
The Council of Europe has a number of different bodies, some of which are well known, such as the European Court of Human Rights, while others, such as the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, are perhaps much less well known and their functions rather less obvious. That raises more tangentially the same sort of point made by my noble friend Lord Prescott. Presumably, we send representatives to all these bodies, but will the Minister say whether that is the case? I am sorry not to know, but these are pertinent questions that all lead to the same point, which is inevitably about the way in which the Minister thinks that the British chairmanship will scope its review of what the Council of Europe should do in future.
I am sure that many of us read the interesting article in today’s Financial Times, entitled:
“Leaner Foreign Office sheds jobs and sites”.
It went on to quote an interview with Simon Fraser, the Permanent Secretary at the FCO, about the projected 10 per cent reduction in the FCO workforce over the next few years. We discussed the resourcing of active diplomacy in the FCO in the excellent debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, last week. In terms of today’s debate, I wonder how much the FCO is currently paying towards the running of the Council of Europe, both in the subvention that is made directly and in support of MPs and Members of this House who go to the meetings in Strasbourg. Can the Minister please supply the House with figures on the subvention and separately on the costs that I have mentioned? I do not expect him to do that today but I hope that he will put some figures in the Library in due course.
The Council focuses much of its efforts and discussions around an agenda which is of enormous interest generally across this Parliament but particularly in this House, such as the European Court of Human Rights and, of course, the issues of the political focus on those human rights with the accession of Europe’s post-communist democracies, so ably described by the noble Lord, Lord Dykes. Moreover, there is now, of course, a well-scripted agenda around terrorism, organised crime, money laundering and, as the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, pointed out, human trafficking, as well as the environmental issues about which my noble friend Lord Prescott spoke. All these issues play to the heart of the agenda which Foreign Office Ministers have very ably laid out in the business plan that the Foreign Office has published. It is, indeed a familiar agenda to all of us.
I now raise some specific issues which, if the Minister is not able to answer now, he may be able to answer in writing later on. The first concerns the discussions in Paris on 15 November on the social charter and the relationship between poverty and human rights. What is the Government’s view on the best way to mark the 20th anniversary of the European Social Charter next year? Do the Government agree with the view of the Social Affairs Committee of the Council of Europe that the year should be marked by an assertion of what it called the indivisibility of social rights and civil and political rights? If so, how does he answer the very clear and unambiguous points put just a moment or two ago by the noble Lord, Lord Low?
The Paris meeting put forward trenchant views about the relationship between poverty and the denial of human rights. Do the Government agree, for example, that bad housing, poor education and job insecurity lead directly to social exclusion and therefore undermine human rights? When we talk about human rights, the rule of law and democracy, many of your Lordships spread the definition of these concepts. How far does the Minister take the definitions of what the Council of Europe should be looking at in the future?
During the Turkish chairmanship of the Council of Europe, their priorities were reform of the Council, reform of the European Court of Human Rights, strengthening independent monitoring mechanisms and the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights. Those are pretty comprehensive objectives for the Turkish chairmanship over the current year, but I was pleased to note that they were, to some extent, picked up by what the Minister said he thought the priorities would be when this country takes over the chairmanship in November next year. He specifically asked us to think about the budget and pushing down costs, saying negotiations were well advanced on that; he talked about reform of the European Court of Human Rights, another recurring theme in this debate; and he also said that the British chairmanship should focus on what the Council does best, in terms of human rights, the rule of law and democracy. These are all laudable objectives, but the whole point is how we define them.
For example, what view do Her Majesty’s Government take on the paper, prepared in June this year, Democracy in Europe: Crisis and Perspectives, which stated clearly that the recent world economic crisis has accentuated what it called a crisis in democracy? In particular, the report cited what it described as,
“highly centralised executive decision-making and global negotiation mechanisms with little parliamentary control and insufficient transparency”.
It went on to talk about,
“a disinterest in the current institutionalised procedures of democracy and a crisis in representation”.
I could not help reflecting on that in terms of some of the constitutional issues we have recently discussed in your Lordships’ House, particularly, I am bound to say, in relation to government plans for what I think is an extravagant use of Henry VIII clauses to overturn some primary legislation which has passed through both Houses in this Parliament. Is not the real test of the Council of Europe not so much what the Council of Europe has done, but what it should do now?
We all agree that it has had a hugely influential—a crucial—role in establishing democracy, the rule of law and human rights throughout Europe. The question now is: how do we define what it should do next? There is the debate about society's security versus personal freedom; women's rights versus what some people conceive to be the right way to approach medical ethics; the important questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, on domestic violence; and the vital question of the relationship between poverty and civil rights.
The British chairmanship of the Council of Europe next year is a real opportunity for the United Kingdom. It is a real opportunity for the coalition Government to shape the future functions of the Council and to press the Government's stated ambitions for security and prosperity through the spread of the values of human rights—which are, of course, the bedrock of the Council of Europe—but also to look at other questions: poverty, social inclusion and civil rights. The Europe that most of us have grown up in is so much better than the one that our parents grew up in, in the rights that we have as individuals and our place in society. Now is the opportunity to look ahead at what mechanisms we have to ensure that the Europe that our children and grandchildren grow up in is better than the one that we inhabit today.
Lord Howell of Guildford
My Lords, this has been an illuminating debate. I think that that is the right adjective, as it has brought out so many fascinating aspects and dimensions of the work of the Council of Europe and its various committees in ways that are not widely appreciated. I fully agree with those who made that point. I have listened to an enormous range of points and questions, some of them very big questions. I shall try to answer as many of them as I can, but I fear that I will not succeed in answering all of them. Nevertheless, I will do my best. I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, for her final remarks, which seemed to me to be extremely profound and well aimed, about the role of the Council of Europe and the endless search to uphold human rights in all their aspects—women's rights, and so on—in the modern world, where these things are always in danger and one cannot rest; one has to keep eternal vigilance.
We started the debate with a splendidly wide-ranging and powerful speech by the former Deputy Prime Minister and fairly new attendant in your Lordships' House, whom we are very glad to see, the noble Lord, Lord Prescott. I start with a small question first, which is an easy one to answer. I will get on to the much bigger and immensely important issues that he also raised. He asked me about the Max Mosley case: will the UK contest the case brought to the European Court of Human Rights by Max Mosley? Answer: yes. A hearing is scheduled for January and it is inappropriate to comment further. That is about the best I can do on that. I promise to try to do rather better on the much bigger issues that the noble Lord raised.
The noble Lord then raised an issue that has been something of a theme throughout the whole debate, which is where the Council of Europe fits in with the activities of the EU in setting up the Fundamental Rights Agency. Several noble Lords asked whether it duplicates the work of the Council of Europe.
The proper answer is that the objectives of the two bodies are different. The Fundamental Rights Agency is indeed well funded. I hope that it is attending to the necessary degrees of economy and austerity that everyone else throughout Europe and everyone throughout this kingdom is attending to; none of us can stand back from that need for economy and efficiency. The FRA assists the European Union institutions in implementing EU law and the member states with fundamental rights issues arising within EU law. That is what it does; that is its remit. The Council of Europe is the primary source for and interpreter of European human rights standards. In a sense, the FRA is intended to fill a gap in monitoring fundamental rights issues arising from the implementation of community law. That is the difference of task, which is intended to avoid duplication between the agency and the Council of Europe. I suppose that the answer is that the work of the agency is intended to add to the work carried out by the Council of Europe, and we need to ensure, by monitoring these things, that it does so and complements it. I have here some examples of this complementarity, but I do not want to go into great detail at this stage because of timing factors.
The noble Lord, Lord Prescott, referred to the essential link between the need to establish durable and robust legal frameworks on a supranational scale and the central issue of climate agreements, and the work to prevent desperately destructive climate change, in which he of course has played a major role in past years. Just as he has played a major role in the Council of Europe in the past three years, he also played a major national role in our nation’s affairs in his previous incarnation. He asked whether it is possible for the Council of Europe to play its part in establishing the necessary legal framework, which we hope lies ahead, for tackling the global climate issue, and which Copenhagen—possibly too boldly—tried to leap towards and failed. He also asked whether we can have high hopes of Cancun.
Cancun has to be seen as a stepping stone towards that still important objective of a global legally binding agreement, but we must be realistic. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, was utterly realistic. If we can get a balanced package as a further step, a further paving stone, towards a global agreement on carbon emissions, that will be a triumph. But the difficulties are there. On the one hand, a great nation like the People’s Republic of China speaks of its ambitions for a low-carbon economy. Whole cities in China, the size of London and bigger, decide to go for low carbon—just like that. But at the same time, between now and 2035, China will triple the output of its electricity from burning coal, which is working in the opposite direction.
I hardly need to tell the noble Lord this because he knows these things. They create a conflict, a challenge, of an enormous size. I do not have an answer to his question as to whether the Council of Europe can establish or help establish a robust enough legal framework to contain these conflicting pressures. All I can say is that somewhere ahead lies this ambition. It remains the ambition of HMG, but we are realistic about how far we can advance towards that at Cancun. If we can get a balanced package, that is fine.
Turning from these very central issues on which I would be delighted to dilate at far greater length if we had the time—but they lie a little outside the immediate future for the Council of Europe—my noble friend Lord Dykes spoke eloquently about the Cyprus issue, which the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, also raised. We all hope that a proper respect for human rights and legal standards can play its part in ending the agonies of that divided island.
The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, also made some kind remarks about the theme which my colleagues have tried to bring into dissertations on foreign policy about the importance of human rights and responsibilities on the one hand, and economic growth and prosperity and expansion of our trade and our interests worldwide on the other. Of course, the two are two sides of the same coin. That is what we believe in Europe, where, without the work and underpinnings of the Council of Europe and the commitment to human rights, the economies of the Europe of trade and the Europe of industry and expansion would not really exist. The same applies to the Commonwealth of 54 nations, where it is being increasingly realised that the commitment to the core principles of human rights, rule of law and good governance are the other side of the coin of high investment and expanding trade. They all go together and if you try to separate them, disaster follows.
My noble friend Lord Dundee spoke comprehensively about the work of the Council of Europe and asked about its future role and activities on the Junker report, which proposed a joint Council of Europe/European Union legal and judicial system. The question is whether it did that. My briefing says, and I think this is right, that it did not call for a joint EU/CoE legal system but for a European judicial area, which means a Europe of common legal standards. That is relevant to the profound comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, which I shall come to in a moment. My noble friend also asked about the immediate priorities in the future work of the council. The working group of the Council of Europe on reform of the European Court of Human Rights is very important and has been mentioned by several noble Lords. That is an area where we need to make a real effort when we reach the point which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, reminded us, lies ahead—that of the chairmanship of the Council of Europe beginning this time next year.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, returned to the theme of what the different bodies as between the EU and the Council of Europe do, and even hinted at whether there might be a case for bringing the two together. I think the answer to that is no. They are separate organisations with entirely separate missions. The Council of Europe performs a unique role in the promotion and protection of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, whereas membership of the EU is crucially dependent on meeting very precise economic criteria which not all states in the wider Europe are able or willing to meet. I do not see integration lying ahead either as one of the objectives or as one of the possibilities. However, he was right that a tidying-up is always required. The WEU is coming to the end of its active life and the whole European structure, including that of the European Union, is one that I have always viewed as a constantly evolving element. I have heard the phrase “a Europe of constant struggle”. None of us should ever be too ready to say, as some have been in the past, that we have reached the final pattern for Europe, that everything is fine and we have a settlement and order that will not change. Of course it will change because events will arise and the patterns of our institutions will have to adapt at the European level, as they have to at the national level, if we are to make sense of the future and manage it for ourselves and our children.
The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, rightly reminded us that what the Council of Europe did was help to bring all those satellite countries into democracy in the most effective way. She also mentioned the pressure to get rid of the death penalty throughout Europe except for Belarus, which I totally welcome, and the valuable work done on torture prevention. The really glittering point of history is the one we all lived through, which as a younger man, frankly, I never thought I would see in my lifetime. It was when all these nations, one after the other, emerged like figures in the Beethoven opera from their caves and caverns of imprisonment into freedom. It was an amazing time in all our lives, and bliss it was in that moment to be alive.
The noble Baroness asked whether we will support the Secretary-General in his tasks ahead. I want to say a bit more about this before I sit down, but the answer is most certainly yes. My noble friend Lord Sheikh returned to the Cyprus issue among many of the profound observations he made on the work of various committees. I have said a word about that already, and I am always willing to discuss it further with him and other colleagues.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, talked about the question of apparently cutting the budget of the Conference of INGOs, and rightly argued that of course it is the NGOs that create the substratum of civil society which actually glues our nations and societies, as well as the world, together. I do not want to bring in the Commonwealth too often, but it is an amazing amalgamation of non-governmental, civil society organisations that create an extraordinary network across the world, just as the non-governmental organisations of Europe create a network that is not necessarily visible to Governments or the focus of public debate, but is invaluable none the less. He was obviously concerned that if the budget was cut, that would undermine the work of NGOs particularly concerned with the rights and status of disabled people. I will ask my ministerial colleague to look into the matter, and I am advised that the Secretary-General is reviewing these issues, although final decisions have not been made. It is an important issue and I am glad that he raised it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, asked a whole range of further questions in the time available, which allowed no time at all to get every one of them down on paper. She asked whether the Committee of Ministers—which, in effect, is the key committee of the Council of Europe—explains its decisions. I hope it does, I believe it does, it should do—and it should certainly be urged to do so. She touched on the slightly broader issue of the finances of the Foreign Office and mentioned a report in the Financial Times this morning. As I understand it, the real hit for the Foreign Office was when the foreign exchange deal was undermined and the Treasury pulled off a fast one, if I may put it like that, in persuading the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—I am afraid this was under the previous Government—to abandon its foreign exchange protection. That swiped 20 to 25 per cent straight off the Foreign Office budget—and that is what led to the first talk about pulling in horns and a 10 per cent reduction in personnel. We have had to adjust to that, as the Permanent Under-Secretary, a brilliant new addition to our team in the Foreign Office, rightly was trying to explain in the Financial Times this morning.
As to the comprehensive spending review, as I told the House on Thursday, its impact in addition to that nasty blow has been fairly limited, amounting to a flat cash settlement over the next four years, or a 2.5 per cent cut in real terms over four years. This has, in turn, been offset by moving the budget of the BBC World Service to the BBC proper, and some funds of a development nature have been made available, not from DfID but via the Treasury, which has certainly helped our budget. We believe we can deliver a highly efficient, leaner but very effective, foreign policy administration, a policy leading for all departments, with the still very considerable resources that we have at our disposal.
The noble Baroness asked about the figures for the Council of Europe’s budget. The immediate figure I have is that our contribution is €24.8 million for its running costs. A more general question was about where we stand on the purposes and activities of the Council of Europe. I said at the beginning, and I say again, that we believe very strongly that it should stick to its lathe, where it has brilliant mastery of its craftsman-like skills in promoting human rights, democracy and the values which bind our societies together.
The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, is right that the United Kingdom chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers beginning next year will present us with many challenges and opportunities. There will be a major opportunity for us to place our mark on the work and future direction of the organisation and I hope that we can do so. In my opening comments I said that the Council of Europe and its work are often misunderstood and several of your Lordships echoed that point. I hope—perhaps it is too ambitious a hope—that this debate has served a little to put to rest all this confusion about the work of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights on the one hand and the EU on the other; they are different organisations.
The Council of Europe, of course, cannot work in isolation; it must work alongside all the other international organisations in Europe. However, we remain vigilant that the Council of Europe sticks to what it does best—and does very well indeed—including the prevention of unnecessary overlap and duplication with the work and activities of other international organisations, and ensuring that work is carried out efficiently without wasting resources.
I said that I would come back to the work of the Secretary-General, who faces a delicate task. The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, asked whether we will support him. Yes, we will. Genuine reform will involve some difficult decisions on programmes and organisational structures and we will continue to support him fully in his efforts to reform the Council of Europe. A well run, well structured Council of Europe will offer maximum efficiency at minimum cost, and that will be to the advantage of the whole organisation, whose credibility rises along with its efficiency. Indeed, the opposite can be said: its credibility is damaged—as with all organisations—if it is seen to be inefficient. It will also be to the advantage of the foreign policy interests of this country to have the organisation working efficiently and effectively, as it will be to the interests of the UK taxpayer, who has the right to demand optimum value for money, particularly at the present time.
The debate has provided a fruitful exchange. Many of those working for the Council of Europe have been able to explain more of what they have done and what they believe should be done in the future. To them we are extremely grateful. We are also extremely grateful to the whole delegation, both your Lordships and those in the other place. The Council of Europe—unsung, in many ways, but quietly carrying forward and upholding the tenets, standards and requirements of a civilised society—is a fine institution. We support it and we want its work to prosper in the future.