House of Lords
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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EU: Budgets
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Campbell of Alloway
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the grounds on which the European Union Court of Auditors has withheld approval of European Union budgets.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
My Lords, the Government are concerned that the European Court of Auditors has been unable to provide a positive statement of assurance for the 16th year in succession. The Government support the ECA’s work but are concerned at the slow pace of reforms to EU financial management. The European Commission and member states are responsible for disbursing EU funds, and share responsibility for sound financial management. The Government take financial management seriously and will shortly publish a consolidated statement on the use of EU funds in the UK.
Lord Campbell of Alloway
I thank my noble friend for his surprisingly encouraging exposition. There is no need on that basis to delve into the grounds of the assessment, because that has been covered. May I by leave ask a question that perhaps the Government may accept? At their behest, by dint of diplomacy, will they seek an arrangement, be it by treaty or by some other means, to ensure that the ECA’s decisions are always reflected, and that they are the only decisions reflected, in the contributions of all member states to the budget?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I reiterate that we take the situation enormously seriously. It is deeply unsatisfactory, but progress has been made. In their latest report, the auditors have been able to certify a greater percentage of EU expenditure as satisfactory than before. There are significant complications with anything that goes to changes in the treaty arrangements in this area, but the UK is leading by example by, for instance, producing this consolidated statement, which a number of other member states are now producing and which is welcomed by the Commission. We are adopting every route to try to get improvement. We are by no means complacent, nor should the European authorities be.
Lord Williamson of Horton
My Lords, this is a good report. Does the Minister agree that, in relation to all the administrative expenditure of all the EU institutions, the court concludes without qualification that transactions were free from material error and that the supervisory and control systems complied with the financial regulation? Does he also agree that, in relation to other policies, the court rightly points out that there are some accounting errors and, in agriculture for example, some incorrect claims from member states, which the Commission will no doubt seek to correct and recover, but that this is not a finding of fraud?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I can certainly confirm what the noble Lord says. This does not necessarily excuse anything. If around 50 per cent of expenditure nevertheless does not meet the standards, whether through laxities in accounting or administration of the expenditure, it excuses nothing. Indeed, the level of fraud itself, which has been much discussed, is nevertheless at a very low level. According to the work of the European Anti-Fraud Office, OLAF, the level of fraud has decreased from 0.2 per cent of expenditure in 2007 to 0.07 per cent in 2008.
Lord Kinnock
My Lords, will the noble Lord further confirm the satisfactory rate at which the statements of assurance can be offered in respect of different parts of the budget? Secondly, will he also confirm that in areas where there is effective measurement of payments in and payments out, statements of assurance—as in administration, as the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, just said—have consistently been given? Will the Minister therefore encourage the Government to try to spread the good habits that have been developed in this country over recent years so that other member states, where there is a higher incidence of error and fraud, conform to the highest standards so that both the Commission and the Court of Auditors can undertake their work at a much more satisfactory level? That would please everyone.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I am happy to confirm that the consolidated statement that the UK and a handful of other member states are producing is the most useful practical way of demonstrating that the EU funds that the UK administers are well under control. There is little reference in the auditors’ reports to any matters in the UK. Leading by example is the way we should do it.
Lord Dykes
My Lords, can the Minister confirm again that these are overwhelmingly technical, clerical, administrative and operational mistakes, and not to do with fraud, which accounts for a tiny amount; and that fraud has also occurred regularly in the United Kingdom?
Lord Sassoon
I do not want to go over old ground; I have talked about the fraud issue, which we should not get out of perspective. We nevertheless should not be complacent about any of this. There has to be a formal vote each year to discharge the Commission in respect of the audit qualifications. The previous Government never used their vote in this respect when the annual discharge was voted on. As my honourable friend the Economic Secretary has said, the Government plan to be ready to use our vote if the accounts fail to meet the standards that we think they should. We have to strike a balance here and be seen to take tough action if that is appropriate.
Lord McNally
I think we have to move on to the next Question. There will be other opportunities.
Immigration: Sham Marriages
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Sharples
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce the number of sham marriages.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are working closely with civil registrars and members of the clergy to identify potential suspicious marriages at the earliest opportunity and prevent these marriages taking place. We will seek to disrupt a marriage if we cannot prevent it taking place. We are also taking a more rigorous approach to caseworking, interviewing more applicants to refuse and remove those who seek to gain an immigration advantage from a sham marriage.
Baroness Sharples
I thank my noble friend for that reply. Are any checks made when a wedding licence is applied for? What is the estimated cost to the country as a result of such sham marriages?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the previous Government introduced the certificate of approval scheme in 2005, which led to a substantial drop in suspected sham marriages, from thousands to hundreds per year. That scheme has now been disallowed by the House of Lords on the grounds that it was discriminatory between civil marriages and Church of England marriages. In July, the Government laid a draft remedial order, which will be compatible with the court’s ruling and will come into effect next year. It will require that, if it is deemed necessary by a caseworker, both potential marriage partners must swear affidavits, which must be clearly signed and dated.
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
My Lords, the Church of England deplores any abuse of the marriage service for immigration reasons, whether in a civil or a religious setting. We are committed to working closely with the UK Border Agency to prevent such incidents happening in future. The bishops will be meeting in a few days to assess whether the clergy need to be given further guidance. Will the Minister give us an assurance that the border agency will make available to us as much support, guidance and advice as necessary? Will he also assure us that no action will be taken that will make it harder for parish clergy to conduct genuine marriages?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for that supplementary question. UKBA is working closely with the Church of England, briefing clergy and raising awareness of this increasing problem. I stress that this is a criminal activity by organised gangs, working transnationally. The discovery that the Church of England had a different arrangement from civil registrars was part of what led to a diversion of activity to try to exploit that gap. Noble Lords will be aware of two high-profile cases in the past year that involved this, and which reflect the actions that UKBA has been taking. We are grateful for the co-operation that the Church of England has given in raising awareness among the clergy of these attempts.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that when the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, made her recent Statement on changes in the Immigration Rules, she agreed that there should be more rigorous checks at the end of a two-year period to ensure that marriages were still subsisting. How can this be done if the number of personnel in the border agency is to be reduced?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, as the noble Lord will know, these are all very difficult areas. The evidence suggests that these gangs have been switching in the past two to three years from sham marriages with British nationals to sham marriages with eastern European nationals—again, doing their best to exploit loopholes. There is some evidence that they have been using vulnerable young women from eastern Europe. UKBA is doing its utmost in this regard. We are attempting to make—I hesitate to use the phrase—efficiency savings without damaging the effectiveness of UKBA.
Baroness Hussein-Ece
My Lords, on 23 November, in response to a question on a Statement, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, said that the Government were looking at a possible extension of the period that a marriage should subsist for it to be demonstrated not to be a sham. Will my noble friend give an assurance that this will not disadvantage legitimate and freely entered arranged marriages, which come from a culture different from that of the UK?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, again, these are very difficult areas. The figure for people who gain the right to settle in Britain through marriage is of the order of 30,000 to 40,000 per year. The vast majority of these cases are genuine. I declare an interest: my sister is married to an American citizen, who has the right of abode in Britain because he has married her. The countries from which applicants most frequently come, as the noble Baroness will know, are in south Asia. The top five countries from which applicants through marriage come are Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, the United States and Thailand.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall
My Lords, given the noble Lord’s last remarks, does he agree that UK nationals who wish to marry a foreign national have considerable obstacles put in their way that they have to overcome in order for the marriage to be allowed? We should not imagine that it is an easy matter, nor that the majority of marriages that take place between UK and foreign nationals are shams.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I thought I had just said that the majority of these marriages are clearly genuine but there is a problem with the minority and a severe problem with people-trafficking gangs operating transnationally who attempt to use sham marriages as one of the ways to get people into this country.
Lord Dholakia
My Lords, all of us condemn anything to do with sham marriages but is the Minister aware of recent high-profile cases of border service staff raiding genuine marriage ceremonies, thus upsetting a large number of people? What sort of training and intelligence is being given to border service staff so that such harm is not done to genuine marriages?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I was not aware of that but I shall investigate and write to the noble Lord. Operation Golding, which took place over the summer, has led to a substantial number of arrests, some discovery of the network of criminal gangs and an indication that these gangs have all sorts of associated criminality. Sham marriages are a part of what they do as well as money laundering and people smuggling. In one case, someone involved in a sham marriage was discovered to be wanted by the police for violent crime using another identity.
Public Libraries: Funding
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Harrison
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the implications of the Spending Review 2010 for the funding of public libraries.
Baroness Rawlings
The responsibility for policies relating to public libraries in England lies with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport but how local government chooses to fund and deliver library services is in the hands of individual authorities. This summer we launched a future libraries programme to help councils make the best use of their library budgets and, where possible, avoid cutting front-line services.
Lord Harrison
My Lords, given the closure of libraries, reduced opening hours, as well as cuts in book funds and information services, will the Minister ensure that local authorities have the opportunity and resources to protect the most vulnerable who use our libraries, such as the unemployed, elderly people and those seeking to train and educate themselves back into the market? Will she think about issuing a Statement, or indeed initiating a debate on the modern library service, perhaps using the March 2010 document from DCMS on modern libraries and new challenges, such as the use of volunteers, e-books, and so on? We need to protect and enhance the libraries for our children: three out of four use our libraries regularly and increasing numbers of them borrow books. Children using libraries is our future.
Baroness Rawlings
The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, was a most effective chairman of the Cheshire county council library so he knows that at times of economic challenge people need the library service more than ever. Libraries have an important role in encouraging reading. They also help people to return to work. They are essential for the unemployed, children and students to help them access learning and entertainment because they attract people from all walks of life and can build community cohesion. Among the new ideas being explored in the 10 pilot projects, there are many different governance models looking at the possibility of charitable status and transferring control of library services to communities. I am aware of the March 2010 modernisation review and all the progress with computers. As for the Statement and debate that he asked for, we will feed that request into the usual channels.
Lord Shipley
I declare an interest as a member of Newcastle City Council. Does my noble friend agree with me that the digital divide remains a serious barrier to social and educational inclusion in that one in four households in the UK does not have access to the internet? Does she agree that libraries will continue to play a critical role in reducing that digital divide? Is she aware of the forecast by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, which estimates that the service could lose up to 6,000 jobs over the next four years? Will she comment on that very, very high figure?
Baroness Rawlings
I agree with my noble friend Lord Shipley about the importance of the digital divide. The three-yearly public library user survey found that 25 per cent of library users surveyed in 2006-07 intended to use computers during their visit to the library. It found that 16 per cent of users had used a library computer when visiting the library. DCMS does not hold centrally the number of visits made to libraries. A digital section for libraries, too, is more and more important, as we heard on the wireless this morning.
Lord Howarth of Newport
The Minister said, quite rightly, that discretion as to how to provide a public library service is largely in the hands of local authorities. Will she say how, in the context of the Government’s requirement that local authorities should reduce their spending by 28 per cent—and a substantial proportion of that in the next financial year—Ministers will interpret and invigilate the statutory duty of local authorities to provide a comprehensive as well as an efficient public library service?
Baroness Rawlings
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is right: it is all important that the library service should continue. However, a number of authorities, I am afraid, are currently considering closing libraries. Before doing so, it is important that they should consider other options for delivering a more efficient service such as the future libraries programme. For example, authorities might consider bringing other council services together with the library service; merging parts of the library service; sharing staff with neighbouring authorities; using volunteers; and delivering library services in other community buildings.
Lord Walpole
My Lords, I remind the Minister of the importance of mobile libraries in the countryside, where they are absolutely essential. Does she agree that one way of economising would be to have them call less often—not removing them, as appears to be the problem at the moment?
Baroness Rawlings
The noble Lord, Lord Walpole, is right about the mobile services. It is an issue which is very much in the Government’s mind. There are more than 2 million talking books in stock as well as collections of large-print material, which are also used for the blind. Libraries also provide a valuable home service to those who are not mobile enough to travel to library buildings. In 2009-10, nearly 88,000 housebound readers benefited from this service. The Government are very much aware of this issue but, in the end, it will be a local decision.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in my immediately adjacent county of Oxfordshire there are to be significant cuts in the full force library service? However, the news is not all bad because there is to be a conscious attempt to involve volunteers and other groups. Will she agree to commission some kind of inquiry or conference to share good practice so that the service we all value can be maintained in its civilising influence?
Baroness Rawlings
I am aware of the Oxfordshire closures. Over the past 10 years the number of volunteers in libraries has increased. They regularly help to deliver homework clubs for schoolchildren, contribute to projects to digitise items in library collections and provide buddy support for new users of computers. It is important to remember that authorities remain accountable to their communities for the changes they make.
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, a former Secretary of State at the DCMS, appointed me as the first chair of the Library and Information Commission. Our first project, realised later by the Labour Government, was to put a computer network—known as the people’s network—into all public libraries at a cost of £120 million. What is the status of the library network, given the proposed cuts at DCMS? What provision has been made in public libraries for e-book technology, given the rapid growth in books being delivered electronically?
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Evans, for his question as he has great knowledge and experience in this area. I congratulate him on being the first chairman of the Library and Information Commission. DCMS has responsibility in this area for policy but not for funding. The cuts at DCMS will not affect library services as they are funded by local government from Treasury funds. The decision to use e-book technology is determined by local authorities. That said, DCMS appreciates that e-book technology will play an ever important role in the future.
Standards in Public Life
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Tyler
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will publish any evidence submitted to the Committee on Standards in Public Life on party political finance.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, the Government welcome the review of the Committee on Standards in Public Life into party funding. My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister discussed the issue with the committee at its annual open meeting in September, but the Government have not submitted any evidence to the committee. I understand that the major political parties have done so.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I am sure that Members on all sides will be anxious that progress on this issue is made as quickly as possible, not least because there was a strong degree of consensus across the parties in the previous Parliament on donation caps and regulations on campaign spending between elections. However, that progress did not complete the process because, as the general election approached, it became clear that it was very difficult for the parties to make firm decisions. Can we be clear that the Government will be pressing the committee—and thereafter, whenever decisions are taken by Parliament—to try to deal with the issue of the 55 months before a general election, and that it will not be left to the very end of this Parliament as, at the bitter end, it is very difficult to reach agreement?
Lord McNally
My Lords, my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister has made it clear that he gives high priority to party funding in what he has described as the second wave of constitutional reform that we are planning. Therefore, it has high priority. People in all political parties with experience of this matter have given me the same advice—that is, to deal with this matter early in a Parliament. That is what we intend to do.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, does the noble Lord recall that, following the Hayden Phillips proposals, cross-party talks were proceeding well until the Conservative Party walked away from them? Now that he is in the comforting position of sitting with the Conservative Party, will he ensure that there is a future programme of cross-party talks to reach consensus?
Lord McNally
As I have said in answer to other questions, I think that what happened in the past is best left to the memoirs, and I can tell noble Lords that mine will be very readable. But in the mean time, I take encouragement from what my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister said at the City and Islington College on 19 May. He said,
“David Cameron and I are determined to reform party funding”.
That is good enough for me.
Lord Campbell-Savours
How do we know that the Liberal Democratic element in this coalition will not simply roll over and allow the Conservative element of the coalition to dominate the debate?
Lord Desai
My Lords, surely we have a very good method of dealing with party funding, and that is to nominate the donors to the House of Lords.
Lord McNally
I am very pleased that the Labour Party is approaching this very serious issue with all the necessary objectivity. I do not mind the little bit of knockabout that occurs at such questions, but, seriously, I think that we have all learnt the hard way that to maintain the integrity of our politics it is imperative to get big money and big money donors out of our political system. The building blocks for an agreement are around. I pay tribute to the party opposite for taking some very significant steps during its time in office to help clean up our politics. I assure this House that this coalition is determined to carry on that work, and to do so with a sense of urgency.
Lord Ryder of Wensum
My Lords, my noble friend has just mentioned big money donors. Does that include the trade unions?
Lord McNally
Of course it includes the trades unions. Again, when we look back at the Hayden Phillips discussions, the Labour Party has a historic link with the trade unions. We must approach this in a way whereby all parties enter into this recognising our respective histories, and understanding the need to get a settlement which will be seen as fair. If we go for a settlement that looks like it is aimed at hurting one or other of the parties, it will be difficult to get a settlement. The Committee on Standards in Public Life is carrying out a study on this. I hope that it will report by early spring and, when it does, it will enable us to get our ducks in a row to make a proper and comprehensive system which will get big money in politics out of our system for good and all.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I am very grateful for my noble friend’s statement, but does he recognise that this House has a particular interest in terms of its reputation, because in the past there has been a perceived connection between large donors and membership of this House?
Lord McNally
Well, we all read the newspapers, so I cannot deny that. But as I said before, there is a real opportunity when the Committee for Standards in Public Life brings forward its report. Let us all—all the political parties—grab the opportunity that that offers with a real sense of urgency and a determination to succeed.
Business of the House
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord McNally
That the debates on the Motions in the names of Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Janvrin set down for today shall each be limited to two and a half hours.
Human Rights
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Alton of Liverpool
To call attention to human rights abuses worldwide and to the recommendations of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission on how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office pursues human rights questions; and to move for papers.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
My Lords, perhaps I may first thank my noble friends on the Cross Benches for providing time today for this debate, which focuses on human rights abuses worldwide and looks at the thoughtful recommendations put forward on this important question by the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.
It is self-evident from the list of speakers that our debate will be enriched by huge and varied experience. In particular, I know that we will await with eager anticipation the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Hollins.
It is also self-evident that, in too many countries around the world, people are denied basic human rights to which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts they are entitled. From Burma and North Korea to Iran and Saudi Arabia, from Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to Cuba, Colombia and many other parts of the world, people face the risk of imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, forced labour—which is modern day slavery—displacement or disappearance if they attempt to express their views openly or to practise their religion freely, or even, in some cases, if they mistakenly say or wear the wrong thing or are in the wrong place.
Terror, ideology, caste, ethnic superiority, systematic abuse of women and children and the brutal violation of minority rights in countless situations and places disfigure humanity. For Jews and Christians, with a belief that each person is made in the image of God, imago Dei, and for secular humanists, who insist on upholding the innate dignity of every human being, there is common ground.
At this time of Chanukah, the festival of lights—we will greatly look forward to hearing later from my noble friend Lord Sacks—it is worth remarking that, earlier this year, 52 rabbis, as part of the Yom HaShoah, the annual commemoration of the Holocaust, wrote that continuing atrocities and conflict in the Congo,
“has produced a terrible humanitarian crisis … This is a moral outrage which the international community must act to help put right”.
An estimated 6 million people have died in the DRC, a country which I have visited. The situation in neighbouring Southern Sudan, where last year more people died even than in Darfur, is equally perilous.
Two nights ago, in a Committee Room of your Lordships’ House, I hosted a meeting attended by Mende Nazer, a young Sudanese woman abducted from her home in the Nuba Mountains and turned into a slave. Her story was movingly re-enacted by Feelgood Theatre Productions. After seven years, she was passed to a London family and escaped, only to face a new struggle for political asylum. Women like Mende Nazer look to us, who enjoy democratic liberties and freedom of speech, to ensure that their stories are told and their rights defended.
Modern human rights discourse is rooted in our fearsome experiences of the 20th century. The horrors and degradations of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen gave birth to the rich language of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights which asserts that,
“disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want”.
The first three articles of the declaration make it clear that human rights are not subject to territoriality. Article 1 unequivocally states that:
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”.
Article 2 states that:
“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction ... or … any other limitation of sovereignty”.
Article 3 insists that:
“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”
These articles and the 27 articles that follow remain the basis for our discourse on human rights today.
During the Cold War years which followed that declaration, it would once again be the plight of European Jews—Russia's refuseniks—and the Helsinki Final Act, promulgated in 1975, which began to challenge consciences and rouse nations. Points 7 and 8 of the Act bound the 35 states that signed it to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief, and equal rights and self-determination of peoples. According to the Cold War scholar John Lewis Gaddis, the Helsinki accords,
“gradually became a manifesto of the dissident and liberal movement ... What this meant was that the people who lived under these systems—at least the more courageous—could claim official permission to say what they thought”.
In every generation, the challenge is to consider how best to turn those great declarations into policies and initiatives and to give hope to benighted people whose human rights are violated daily, to create as William Hague, our Foreign Secretary, has put it, a foreign policy with a conscience, an approach one might anticipate from the biographer of William Wilberforce.
In opening this debate, I want to explore some principles and practices that should commend themselves to the Government and to give two examples of countries where those principles and practices might be applied—North Korea and Sudan—both of which I have visited in the past three months. Let me refer to the excellent proposals developed during the five years preceding the 2010 general election by the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission. My noble friend Lord Hannay of Chiswick, who cannot be present today, has particularly asked me to commend the United Nations Association of the UK for the work which it undertook in assisting that commission. It produced some incisive reports, complete with recommendations for policies to address sexual violence as a weapon of war, the implementation of the United Nations’ “responsibility to protect” mechanism, child soldiers, press freedom, religious freedom and reform of the United Nations. The reports contain practical and worthwhile mechanisms for putting an aspiration into effect. I am conscious that many members of the previous Government, not least the former Africa Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, have a long and distinguished record of championing human rights, and it seems to me that this is therefore an approach around which political consensus can be created.
Let me illustrate this by highlighting the commission's recommendations for how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's institutional capability to address human rights can be strengthened and, in doing so, I ask the Minister to share with the House the stage of implementation or consideration that these proposals have reached. The most important recommendation made by the commission was for the appointment of a Minister of State for International Human Rights within the FCO with an ability to focus solely or primarily on human rights. Currently, the Minister responsible also has several other responsibilities besides human rights, including south-east Asia, the Far East, the Caribbean, Central/South America, Australasia and Pacific, consular, migration, drugs and international crime, public diplomacy and the Olympics. The commission proposed that a Minister of State for International Human Rights would be able to give human rights concerns greater attention if they could focus solely, or at least primarily, on human rights.
The commission also suggested that a Minister for Human Rights should be invited to attend relevant Cabinet meetings and security and foreign policy Cabinet committees to co-ordinate policy with other appropriate Ministers and departments. The commission proposed that the Minister could be supported by an ambassador-at-large for international human rights, with responsibility for co-ordinating the work of embassies and the Diplomatic Service on human rights issues. This could either be an experienced diplomat with a proven commitment to human rights or a human rights expert with an understanding of international foreign policy and diplomacy. In turn, the ambassador-at-large could oversee a number of thematic portfolios—special representatives or special envoys responsible for issues such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, religious freedom and women’s rights. The United States has an ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom and several special envoys for thematic human rights issues. France and the Netherlands have made similar appointments.
The commission proposed that the ambassador-at-large and the special envoys could work in a strengthened human rights and democracy unit, which would oversee the continued publication of the annual report on human rights, which I hope the Government will today assure the House will continue. Interest in today’s debate underlines the appetite for this, as do repeated all-party calls for the establishment of a House of Lords Foreign Affairs Committee, a proposal supported, I know, by the Minister. Simply shining a light into dark places and reminding perpetrators that one day they may be made to answer for their actions, as in the case of Liberia’s Charles Taylor, or Slobodan Milosevic, challenges a culture of impunity.
The commission also recommended that the Government provide time in both Chambers for an annual debate on the international human rights situation and the findings of the FCO annual report. Religious freedom is one such vital basic human right, enshrined in Article 18, which underpins and intersects with other freedoms: freedom of speech and assembly, to name just two. It is estimated that more than 200 million Christians in over 60 countries face some degree of restriction, discrimination or persecution while Baha’is in Iran, Rohingya Muslims in Burma, the Ahmadi Muslim community in Pakistan, Sufi Muslims from the Sunni tradition in Somalia and Tibetan Buddhists, among many others, all face serious violations of human rights.
The commission recommends, and I endorse this proposal, that the current FCO freedom of religion panel should be expanded, made permanent, and convened regularly, and that reporting of religious freedom violations be given greater prominence, either in the annual human rights report or indeed, as in the United States, in a separate report. I commended this recommendation during the debate on the Queen’s Speech in May and I wonder whether we are any closer to doing it. I also wonder whether it is still the case that the FCO, which the Minister inherited in May, with its vast team of officials, has only one person in its human rights team who is responsible for religious liberties issues. While in some parts of the globe religious liberty is suppressed, elsewhere—in a country such as Iran, for instance—theocracy executes, amputates, tortures and imprisons. The struggle for religious freedom and democratic freedoms are stable-mates, and contempt for either can have calamitous consequences.
The final set of recommendations to which I draw the attention of the Minister and the House are these proposals: that Foreign Office staff receive training in understanding the key human rights issues in countries on which they are working; that a code of conduct should be drafted setting out the expectations and requirements with regard to human rights promotion for each ambassador, for all key embassy staff, including consular staff and visa application officials, and for London-based heads of section and country desk officials; and that diplomats who display outstanding commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights should be recognised and rewarded. By championing in-country the cause of brave dissidents as, for instance, we have consistently done in the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, and by marking key anniversaries, such as the international Human Rights Day on 10 December, we can make it clear that British foreign policy truly has a conscience.
In the few moments that remain, perhaps I may refer to two countries which I have visited recently: North Korea and Sudan. I declare a non-financial interest as chairman of the All Party-Group on North Korea and as an officer of the All-Party Group on Sudan. During my visit to North Korea with my noble friend Lady Cox, who at the moment is returning from the Burma border, we were accompanied by Mr Ben Rogers, who is vice-chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and kindly acted as secretariat. We have documented our visit and recommendations in a report, Building Bridges, Not Walls: The Case for Constructive, Critical Engagement with North Korea, which is available on the web. In that report, we suggest that, as well as raising security issues, which has been a one-track approach during the six-party talks, it is imperative that we adopt, as it were, Helsinki but with a Korean face. We also put firmly on to the agenda human rights questions in North Korea, where the United Nations estimates that as many as 300,000 people are currently languishing in its camps. We desperately need a new peace conference to bring an end to a 60-year war which is neither a war nor a peace, merely an armistice. The events on the Korean peninsula last week underlined how often we are simply waiting for a Sarajevo moment to occur, sucking us all into the vortex which 60 years ago this year claimed nearly 3 million lives. We have to engage constructively but critically with North Korea, and the approach adopted during the Helsinki years—the Cold War—is the one that we should be adopting in North Korea today. The Minister has seen the report and I hope that, when he comes to reply, he will be able to respond to that.
Perhaps I may also briefly mention the situation in Sudan. In just a few weeks’ time, in January, there will be a referendum there to determine its future. I was surprised to find that Mr Henry Bellingham, the Minister from the Foreign Office who led a trade delegation to Khartoum, recently said:
“We want to see more UK banks taking a positive view towards Sudan”,
adding that it would be “wrong” for Britain,
“not to encourage the trade”.
Omar al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, is indicted by the International Criminal Court on genocide charges. Anyone who has visited Darfur, as I have, where 200,000 people have been killed and 2 million displaced, will wonder why we would be conducting business as usual.
All of this points, as do many situations in other parts of the world, to the need for Britain to have a clearer policy and approach to human rights. One size never fits all but over-reaching principles are crucial: adumbrating our own nation’s belief in the articles that form the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and attempting to live up to them; patiently engaging, cajoling and constructively criticising where necessary; and linking development and key foreign policy objectives to human rights goals. These are the things that we must do. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, this is a very popular debate with 19 speakers in two and a half hours. I ask noble Lords to bear in mind that, when the clock says six minutes, they are into their seventh minute.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, such is my admiration for the noble Lord, increased by today’s debate, that he has persuaded me to read a number of the Conservative Human Rights Commission reports, which I found very valuable. My only comment is that those recommendations did not come from year zero; the previous Government made a substantial contribution to human rights, and there is a case for going ahead on the basis of consensus, as the noble Lord said. They are extremely useful recommendations. My only criticism of the commission report is its failure to mention, for example, the work of the Council of Europe in the human rights field, particularly in respect of the European convention and the Commission on Human Rights for the 47 countries, and the Conservative commission’s curious reluctance to mention the European Union, save in its criticism of its role in the United Nations Human Rights Council.
I hope the Minister will agree that it is important that there are conditionality clauses in EU association agreements, that these clauses are implemented, and that there is collective action so that individual countries such as Denmark cannot be picked off. Collective action is far more valuable. There is a potential role for the European External Action Service, which was inaugurated yesterday. I hope the Government will insist that there is a human rights dimension, including in the Cabinet of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, and that that is not neglected by the EEAS.
The noble Lord also mentioned the excellent speech by the Foreign Secretary at Lincoln’s Inn. My only fear is that, rather like Robin Cook’s ethical dimension, which the Daily Mail called a moral foreign policy, there are potential hostages to fortune. There is an abiding temptation in foreign policy to be strong against the weak, such as Burma, and weak against the strong, such as China. The Government have already responded to at least one of the recommendations: the convening of an advisory group on human rights that brings in key NGOs, which is to meet regularly. There is, of course, already a panel concerned with religious freedom, which was set up by the previous Government, but I did criticise them for not allowing the body to meet sufficiently regularly. The point is also made about debates on the Foreign Office annual human rights report in which I played a little role when I chaired the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, as it was the response to one of the recommendations made in our first report.
The commission is also right to point out the need for a more effective UN Human Rights Council. All too often there is a blocking group, which responds by omitting Iran from monitoring, for example, and which is, of course, overtly anti-Israel and pro-Arab. So there is a basis on which it is hoped we can all agree in the field of human rights.
I raise only one part of the vineyard because it is, as the noble Lord has illustrated, a very extensive field and hardly any Governments are not subject to criticism. I think it was Gareth Evans, the former Foreign Minister of Australia, who said, “How can we plausibly talk about human rights, we Australians, if we are bad to our Aborigines?”. We should also ensure that we look into our own practices so that we can be a model, a lighthouse, in our position abroad. So I join the noble Lord in asking the Minister also to respond to various other recommendations made in the commission’s report, including training for our foreign service personnel and special envoys, whom he listed.
My specific point relates not just broadly to freedom of religion but to the freedom to change one’s religion. I commend the Christian Solidarity Worldwide booklet, No Place to Call Home, which sets out the various obligations, which are very clear indeed. First, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—I stress “universal”—states, among other things, that:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”.
Equally, Article 18 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states:
“No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice”.
There is also, of course, the 1981 declaration. The booklet goes through the various international—indeed universal—obligations which some Islamic countries have sought to qualify but which in my judgment are extremely clear.
Practices in certain countries against apostates are set out very clearly in the report. Those countries include, alas, a number from the Commonwealth such as Malaysia. In most states in Malaysia, apostasy is punishable by fines, imprisonment and lashes, and in some states by death. In general, the ways in which apostates are treated include extrajudicial killings by state agents or mobs, honour killings, detention, imprisonment, torture, denial of access to judicial and social security, and the withdrawal of employment and education rights. Such experiences are blatantly at odds with international obligations.
I end with a final thought. Yesterday’s edition of Libération mentioned the case of the Afghan, Musa Sayed, who has been in prison for six months for apostasy. It is said that western diplomats have tried, not always successfully, to visit him. I hope that those diplomats include those from the UK. We shall wait to see whether the Government honour their welcome promises and whether there is any difference in practice. I hope that in the debate we can create and build on a consensus in the very important field of human rights.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, in my three minutes’ worth in Tuesday’s debate on Iran I gave notice of two issues for today. The first was the advice given by the UN rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, on how to improve the special procedures system of communication, a matter that I do not think was dealt with by the Conservative Party commission. I mentioned then his proposal for dealing with countries with consistently poor levels of co-operation or meaningful engagement, to which I added an alternative on which I would like an answer from the Minister today.
Mr Alston made five other proposals, including an examination of the effectiveness of the communications system, better integration of the work of the SPs and modernisation of their technology of communication. There is not time to mention them all but they are all worth consideration. Can we urge the Equality and Human Rights Commission to pick them up and, now that Mr Alston has ended his six-year stint as special rapporteur, to put him on a list of potential candidates to carry out the work? How else does my noble friend think that we might go about improving the sclerotic and byzantine edifice of the special procedures?
The second issue that I left for today was that of Iran's minorities. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, concentrated on some aspects of the treatment of minorities. The Kurds have always suffered extreme persecution in Iran, as in other parts of the region. Agents of the regime assassinated their great leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou at a meeting to discuss peace in Vienna in 1988, and then his successor Dr Sadegh Sharafkandi was killed at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin in 2001. In September I asked the Minister, Alistair Burt, if he would press the Austrians to release the files on Ghassemlou’s murder, as the Germans did in the case of Sharafkandi. I would be grateful if my noble friend could tell me what progress is being made on that issue.
Regarding the situation of the Kurds, there are 21 Iranian Kurds on death row today, including a woman, Miss Zeinab Jalalian, who was convicted of “mobarabeh”—“enmity against God”. The Kurdish Human Rights Project—I declare an interest as president of that organisation—says that after her arrest in 2008 she was held incommunicado in a Ministry of Detention facility for eight months before being sentenced to death by the Kermanshah Revolutionary Court. During her brief trial, which lasted for only a few minutes, she was barred from access to her lawyer and was told to “shut up” by the sentencing judge after making a plea to say goodbye to her family.
On the Baha’is, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, the High Commissioner for Human Rights wrote personally to the Iranian authorities asking for an explanation of the circumstances in which seven members have been held on trumped-up charges from May 2008. They have now been sentenced in totally irregular court proceedings to 10 years’ imprisonment, in effect for being members of the Baha’i faith. I declare an interest as acting chair of the Baha’i All-Party Parliamentary Group.
In another case, of many, three Baha’is have recently begun a fourth year in detention for the “crime” of their participation in an education programme for underprivileged children in Shiraz. They were sentenced despite a report by an inspector of the Office of the Representative of the Supreme Leader that pointed to their innocence. They have been held for three years so far, not in a regular prison but in the holding cells of the Shiraz office of the Ministry of Intelligence where they have no windows, beds or chairs and have only recently been given mattresses. All three have injuries for which they have received inadequate medical attention.
Minorities in Pakistan are having an extremely hard time also. The Parliamentary Human Rights Group has just published a report on the situation of Ahmadis in Pakistan, which presents a stark picture of the discrimination against that community and the lack of protection from the state against their enemies, the extremist Khatme Nabuwwat, an organisation that openly incites religious hatred, creating an atmosphere that leads to assassination and even to well organised massacres of Ahmadis at Friday prayers in their mosques.
Bodies such as the Sipah-e Sahaba and Lashkar-e Jhangvi are violent anti-Shia organisations that were banned by Musharraf in 2002 but are still freely operating in Pakistan, in spite of their known associations with al-Qaeda. They relentlessly target minorities such as the Hazaras, a small Shia minority in Baluchistan, in killings and suicide bombings. An estimated 400 of the Hazaras have been killed and 1,000 injured in the last few years. Thousands more have abandoned their homes and businesses and sought asylum abroad in places such as Canada and Australia.
In Karachi, too, there is a wave of violence, directed against the Ahmadis, Christians, Shia and the MQM, a political party representing the descendants of those who crossed over from India at the time of partition. Nobody is ever arrested for these crimes. We need to know whether the Government, the European Union, the UN or, better still, all of them, will persuade President Zardari and the federal Government to act firmly on the impunity that has been enjoyed by terrorist groups and their extremist ideological allies.
Lord Sacks
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating this important debate, which touches the very core of our humanity, transcending all differences of colour, culture, class or creed and sets moral limits to the use of power. It took great crises to make people aware of human rights. The wars of religion in the seventeenth century which led Milton and Locke to formulate the doctrine of the rights of man proclaimed, in the next century, the American and French revolutions. It was sustained reflection on the Holocaust and on the Nazi programme to eliminate whole classes of humanity—the physically and mentally handicapped, homosexuals, Roma and Sinti, and Jews—that led to the great 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was a way of saying that what happened in the Holocaust should never happen again, and that those who died should not have died in vain.
It remains a testament to the human spirit that, at that time of Cold War and tense conflict in the Middle East, the nations of the world were none the less able to come together in collective affirmation, whether through religious faith or human reason, of the inherent dignity, and the equal and inalienable rights, of all members of the human family. That remains—despite the genocides and abuses that have happened since, of which we have heard so powerfully today—a signal of hope and a template of aspiration that must continue to protect us against cynicism and despair.
On this vast subject I wish to make just one point. Rights depend not only on declarations but on education. Rights are lost when one group within a society, usually the dominant group, sees another group as a threat to its freedom and its own dominance. Threat becomes fear, fear becomes hate, and hate becomes dehumanisation. The Nazis called Jews vermin and lice. The Hutus of Rwanda called the Tutsis inyenzi, or cockroaches. When this happens—when we dehumanise the other—evil follows, as night follows day. The only way to stop this is through education. I am deeply concerned at the teaching of hate that exists in some parts of the world and among some groups today. That teaching is poisoning the minds of young children and other vulnerable individuals, condemning them to a future of conflict and hostility from which they themselves will lose. Hate harms the hater no less than the hated; and when I diminish others, I am myself diminished.
Article 26 of the universal declaration covers education. Paragraph (2) states that it should,
“promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups”.
How good it would be if we could find ways to make that a reality and not just a pious hope. Today, as the noble Lord has mentioned, is the first day of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah—the anniversary of the time 22 centuries ago when Jews fought and won their right to religious freedom. Shall we not work together—Jews, Christians, Muslims and those of all faiths—to teach the world's children to see God's image in people who are not in their image, whose colour is not theirs, whose language is not theirs, whose face is not theirs? The principle is shared, if differently expressed, by secular humanists of all kinds, for human rights begin with the way in which we teach our children to recognise the humanity of others and the dignity of difference. The rights of tomorrow are born in the education of today.
The Earl of Sandwich
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord and to join in the debate. My noble friend has chosen an interesting subject, but in a sense it is a non-story. No one should be surprised that the Conservative Party is engaged with human rights—but it has taken some time. When I was at school and my father was a Suez rebel in Parliament, you did not interfere with other countries unless you had invaded or colonised them and they were coloured red on the map. Fortunately, the US got us out of the Suez Canal and eventually blew both political parties toward the winds of change of the early 1960s. After that, our entry into Europe helped to define our legal commitment to fundamental human rights, which has now become a sine qua non of foreign policy. It is a way of thinking about foreign policy.
We still think we know better. We even have the right to interfere now under various UN and EU conventions. In the 1991 Harare Declaration, the Commonwealth emphasised fundamental human rights and the equality of women. However, since then it has stepped back from grand statements and seems more content with quiet diplomacy, aid, trade and education. I know that the Minister agrees with that approach. I welcome the latest statements of the Foreign Secretary and look forward to many initiatives in future.
“Human rights” means different things and we have to be careful how we influence other countries in this field. Human rights work can be very dangerous for the individuals and aid organisations concerned. I hope that my noble friend agrees that it is not just a matter of applying the universal declaration: every state will interpret rights in its own setting and background. In India and Nepal, for instance, there is a strong tradition of NGOs campaigning with impunity. This is not the case in Sri Lanka, Burma or Zimbabwe. However, reformers in those countries have been encouraged by outside pressure and sanctions, and this can be a justification for those sanctions.
Human rights can be seen as a mirror that is held up, rather than as a policy. The Minister said this week that lecturing will do no good. I assume that he was referring to Governments. Obviously, Beijing does not take kindly to our complaints about its treatment of Uighurs, any more than New Delhi enjoys our protests against its failure to protect the Dalits. Both countries are in a formal annual intergovernment dialogue with the European Union on human rights—occasions at which nothing happens to improve the plight of the Uighurs or Dalits. It is left largely to campaigners.
Perhaps the most effective dialogue is through different channels such as trade and economic relations. One obvious example from China is the continued existence of Hong Kong as a refuge and as a beacon of international norms. In the case of India, there is great potential, for example, for more corporate responsibility in large international companies.
The Conservative Party lost some of its pre-election momentum with the scrapping of its plans to repeal the Human Rights Act—a clear casualty of the coalition. Its human rights commission is still in business and has just published a first-rate report proposing reforms to the UN Human Rights Council, a body whose membership and credibility have been questioned for some time, as has been said.
Let us be clear: we will continue to use human rights when it suits us. Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and his fellow combatant Paul Kagame in Rwanda were both supported for many years by the British aid programme at a time when they ignored opposition and the needs of their large minorities. Those two men have been very effective leaders but I hope that we will never give up cajoling them—often through aid conditionality—into better governance and human rights. Sudan, which was mentioned by my noble friend, is currently a good example of our foreign policy. I congratulate the FCO and DfID on putting so much effort into this with the help of at least three former ambassadors in Sudan and Egypt, so there can be no doubt about our commitment.
As the referendum goes through we have to be very cautious about our relations with Khartoum. The US made bad mistakes in the past about terrorism in Sudan when Osama Bin Laden was training there. It is now rightly pressing the north to support a peaceful transition in the south. Human rights have certainly become an issue. Unlike my noble friend I support the Government’s new emphasis on trade and improving commercial relations, which have been at a low level for much too long. If we see human rights in the context of sticks and carrots—let us face it, most of it is in that form—it may not please the purer forms of campaigners but it will be more effective diplomacy which could achieve a better result in the long run. At least, that is how the real world looks to me.
The Lord Bishop of Wakefield
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating this debate. In my maiden speech in this House I spoke on the United Nations doctrine of responsibility to protect. As the debate proceeded, it was clear that human rights stand at the centre but never in an individualist sense of that word. In other words, we are talking about not my rights but rather the rights of all humankind seen in social solidarity.
Some 15 years ago, with the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, I remember looking with others for ways of safeguarding entire communities at the height of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. That is, of course, still a part of the world where these tensions remain latent. More recently, in September I delivered to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office a letter addressed to the Prime Minister and signed by a coalition of some 30 Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops, and by Jewish rabbis. The initiative was taken by Vava Tampa and the Save the Congo Campaign. Those of us with long memories will know that the Congo has been a human disaster area for more than half a century—ever since independence. The situation in the Congo amounts to a permanent state of crisis with ever renewed spates of atrocity. It requires concerted international effort to counter this.
In the light of those issues, and particularly with the comments of the Foreign Secretary on a foreign policy with conscience, this debate is timely. That concept of a policy with conscience has a long history, under different names. It brings into focus both national enlightened self-interest and a concern that the more powerful nations have a responsibility to defend those who are weaker, especially when human rights are flagrantly ignored or even despised. In his recent book reviewing a selection of British Foreign Secretaries in the past 200 years, the noble Lord, Lord Hurd of Westwell, pointed to two contrasting approaches. The first was rather more swashbuckling and interventionist and the second was more reactive or responsive. My instinct is that in the context of this debate we are looking for a responsive approach, tempered by both conscience and a proper political pragmatism. It echoes that stamp of Christian realism established by the American theologian and political theorist Reinhold Niebuhr.
The Congo focuses that dilemma most sharply at present. In his reply to the coalition of religious leaders that I led recently to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Prime Minister stated unequivocally that,
“human rights abuses, sexual violence and impunity continue to threaten civilians on a daily basis in the DRC”.
He outlined some of the efforts that Her Majesty’s Government are making at present. These crucial efforts have, happily, continued throughout both the present and previous Administrations in Britain.
This debate also follows closely on from the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, focusing world attention on the endemic levels of rape and violence against women in the Congo. The use of rape to punish, displace or destroy women and communities in times of conflict has been well documented in recent conflicts around the world. The catastrophic abuse of an individual’s body is used to discipline or consistently undermine the social body. Fear produces control. The rape of women allows for the rape of a country and the taking of its easily appropriable natural resources by destroying the social fabric. The question is one of education and of teaching people to lay hold of their rights. Women human rights defenders are, as the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission’s recent report Supporting Women Human Rights Defenders says, some of the most effective campaigners, and they need our support.
I welcome the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission’s recommendations based on the doctrine of the responsibility to protect. It is a responsibility placed not only on Governments and international bodies but requiring something from every one of us. It is a common responsibility based on a common humanity.
None of this is easy, of course. Indeed, it cannot be transformed immediately into a foreign policy which is both effective in combating brutality, human rights abuses and genocide without direct military intervention. Earlier I referred to a responsive approach tempered by both conscience and a proper political pragmatism. This will require initially intelligent and politically targeted diplomacy. It will also mean similarly targeted approaches to aid.
The situation in the Congo makes it only too plain that the continuing catastrophe is made worse by the collusion, and even intervention, of some neighbouring states. Her Majesty’s Government are clearly aware of this and I would press for an even greater recognition of the need to put pressure on other states. I am glad to pick up the image used by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich—that of stick and carrot. The stick will, I hope, be diplomacy and not military intervention; the carrot will be careful placing of aid programmes. Ultimately, there may tragically be the need for a military intervention, but that can happen only when it is prosecuted by an internationally legitimate authority. In most cases this will be the United Nations following through its responsibility to protect—the place from which I began.
Looking back to the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson reflected:
“During the late war I had an infallible rule for deciding what”,
Great Britain,
“would do on every occasion. It was to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived”.
I hope that is not a comment that a statesman should ever make of Britain today.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for drawing attention to the Conservative Human Rights Commission. Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield, I was particularly interested in its report, Supporting Women Human Rights Defenders. If human rights defenders are front-line people in the fight against the kind of abuses that noble Lords have referred to today, then women human rights defenders are doubly under threat. If people are recognised as human rights defenders they are already pledged to be non-violent, and yet they face violence, torture and death for trying to defend the rights of their communities. Of course men face those issues, too, but, as the right reverend Prelate said, women also face the challenge of rape. They are often the primary carers of their children and, as such, have to worry about them at the same time as standing up for rights. That all occurs in a society whose status quo means that women are not heard, and sometimes not seen, too. Therefore, it is very hard to be a female human rights defender in such a society.
I declare an interest as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary British-Latin America Group, and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Bolivia. I shall concentrate my remarks on that region of the world. In doing so, I pay particular tribute to four organisations that have acted as my ears and eyes on the ground in Central and South America in between my visits there. Peace Brigades International is a network of international observers of the work of human rights defenders, thereby ensuring—it hopes—that they survive another day to carry out their work. It is an incredible organisation and I know that it talks to other parliamentarians about what is happening on the ground. Without that organisation, it would be much harder to know what is going on.
The Latin American Mining Monitoring Programme is a small charity dedicated to supporting Latin American women and their communities in their campaigns for human rights. It is particularly involved, as is the London Mining Network, in what the right reverend Prelate referred to as the rape of resources—that is, mining. Mining so often constitutes the front-line abuse of human rights—the right to land, to your home and to being able to grow food for your family. The Central America Women’s Network gathers together women from countries across that region to share effective measures, best practice and their stories and passes on that information to us so that we may take action.
Between them, those organisations have introduced me to a breathtakingly brave network of women who face daily threats to themselves and to their families, which, in many ways, is much harder. The Conservative Party’s report, at page 31, gives an example of a woman we will never meet as she was shot when she was eight months pregnant. Her two year-old child was shot at the same time.
Mining companies have a particular duty to do something about human rights, and I accept that some of them may be trying to do so. However, as consumers and shareholders, we also have a responsibility in this area. We cannot ignore that fact. Many noble Lords will have attended the recent event hosted by the noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown, at which George Soros talked of what we could do about this matter. We could enact the same legislation as the United States did in July this year. That legislation included a landmark provision requiring oil, gas and mining companies registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to publish how much they pay to foreign countries. It is known as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. If we are serious about human rights, we need to introduce a similar provision. As long as Governments can receive unknown amounts of money for the rights that we are discussing, corruption can, and does, follow. The communities affected cannot even know what compensation they might reasonably be entitled to. Just before Congress voted this measure through, President Obama said:
“We know that countries are more likely to prosper when governments are accountable to their people. So we are leading a global effort to combat corruption—which in many places is the single greatest barrier to prosperity, and which is a profound violation of human rights”.
If we are to take any action as a result of today’s debate, let us press for our own form of this legislation for companies registered here.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, it is a privilege to be able to address your Lordships on the subject of human rights, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Alton for initiating this very timely debate. But first I would like to thank everyone, especially the staff, who have been so welcoming and so patient in showing me the ropes, making my first weeks in this House such a positive experience. With this marvellous support, and the collective expertise of noble Lords, I anticipate a stimulating and enjoyable membership of this House.
Today I will share my concerns about the rights of people of all ages who live with learning disabilities, previously known perhaps as mental handicap: people who are seen as different, and whose humanity is often not recognised. I know that many Members of this House, including my noble friend Lord Rix, became powerful advocates for people with learning disabilities because of their own family experience. I am grateful to them for the leadership and the inspiration that they have shown.
Much of my life’s work has been informed by family experience. I grew up in Yorkshire watching my father cope with the consequences of war injuries, injuries which eventually caused his death 50 years after D-day. And while this experience set me on a medical career, it is the experience of my son’s learning disability which has inspired me to try to make a difference in the lives of people with learning disabilities. My family experience has had a strong influence on my clinical work, my research and my teaching at St George’s University of London, where for more than 30 years we have been trying to ensure that, at least in the practice of medicine, people with learning disabilities receive appropriate and equal treatment.
I know that my concerns are shared by many parliamentarians, as shown powerfully in the 2008 report on learning disabilities, A Life Like Any Other?, published by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. This report painted a shocking picture of the denial of fundamental human rights to adults living with learning disabilities in the United Kingdom.
I have just returned from Romania, where, as chair of the steering group, I was invited to introduce the Bucharest declaration and action plan at a WHO Europe high-level conference. The declaration is called Better Health, Better Lives, and is about improving the health and well-being of children with learning disabilities and their families. It was co-signed by the regional director of WHO, the regional director of UNICEF and the Romanian Minister of Health on behalf of Ministers of Health from across the WHO region, which comprises 53 countries. The iconic image, which will remain with all of the participants, is of six people with learning disabilities standing and waving the easy-read illustrated version of the declaration after their own presentation to the conference and saying, “We want things to change now”.
In many ways, this declaration was an unlikely occurrence. Noble Lords will have heard about the terrible conditions in which thousands of abandoned babies, disabled children and young people live. Noble Lords may also have seen pictures of children being kept in caged beds, in buildings which are little more than warehouses for abandoned children. Media attention in recent years has focused particularly on Romania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, but these countries are not the only ones that are failing children.
There is still poor practice in many parts of our region. As many as a third of a million disabled children and young people still experience discrimination, neglect and abuse in institutions in Europe as well as in other countries throughout the world. Most disabled children, young people and their families are poor, with little formal support being provided for them. Negative attitudes and stereotypes are the norm, and they experience barriers in gaining access to healthcare. These are human rights issues.
The first priority of the Bucharest declaration—to protect children from harm and abuse—recommends that legislation should be reviewed to ensure that it meets human rights standards, especially those set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the United Nations convention on the rights of disabled persons, both of which this Parliament has ratified. I do not have time today, nor would it be appropriate in a maiden speech, to share the other priorities or the detailed action plan which accompanies the declaration, but these are available on the WHO website.
I am pleased to report that our Government were represented at the Bucharest conference by Dr Roger Banks, a senior psychiatrist working in learning disability services. The UK’s progress in planning for and meeting the needs of these children and their families offers some important lessons for elsewhere in Europe. Take, for example, the 2001 English White Paper, Valuing People, about the needs of people with learning disabilities, and the independent inquiry, of which I was a member, that the Secretary of State set up at the instigation of MENCAP, to examine whether and why people with learning disabilities are discriminated against in our hospitals. Two important monitoring projects have also been established: a confidential inquiry into avoidable deaths and a learning disabilities observatory to collect monitoring data.
I am encouraged that the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, has convened an advisory group on human rights challenges to inform his work at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I sincerely hope that this group will have regard to the human rights abuses affecting disabled children and young people in many parts of the world. I should like to ask him to convene a round table to discuss how expertise in this country can best be used to improve the human rights of children and young people with intellectual disabilities internationally.
I conclude my comments with the following aphorism. If we can get it right for people with learning disabilities, we can get it right for other citizens. I hope noble Lords will join me in promoting policy that makes a real difference in people’s lives, by putting disabled people at the centre of the human rights debate. Thank you.
Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick
My Lords, it is a huge privilege and honour to be able to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and to congratulate her on her very powerful maiden speech. She began her great life of compassion and commitment before she went as a VSO volunteer to Nigeria in the mid-1960s to work as head of science in a girls’ secondary school. Her litany of responsibilities, duties, commitments, committees and professional obligations make absolutely the embodiment of the big society and allow us in this House to receive her wisdom, which she will give to us over many years. She has continued in those roles while being a school governor of many London schools and, in her professional expertise, while sitting on committees that have brought her to the place of being a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and now a professor of psychiatry and disability at St George’s, University of London.
We should also note that she is a prolific author, as I discovered from her CV. She has had published 200 books, chapters and articles on learning disabilities. This is an issue on which she cares deeply, emotionally, practically and professionally. For that we are deeply grateful. That is why, if I may say so, we need quality people such as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on the Cross Benches and in this House.
I move on to the subject of this debate. I want to respond to the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Sacks, who rightly pointed out that we need to go beyond declarations into education. Perhaps I may add another “E” and move beyond education into enforcement.
For a poor person in the developing world, the struggle for human rights is not an abstract fight over political freedom or over the prosecution of large-scale war crimes, but a matter of daily survival. It is the struggle to avoid extortion or abuse by local police, the struggle against being forced into slavery or having land stolen, or the struggle to avoid being thrown arbitrarily into an overcrowded, disease-ridden jail with little or no prospect of a fair trial. For women and children, it is the struggle not to be assaulted, raped, molested, or forced into the commercial sex trade.
Efforts by the modern human rights movement over the past 60 years have contributed to the criminalisation of these abuses in nearly every country in the world. However, the problem for the poor, however, is that those laws are rarely, if ever, significantly enforced. At the same time, this state of functional lawlessness allows corrupt officials and local criminals to block or steal many of the crucial goods and services provided by the international development community. These abuses are both a moral tragedy and wholly counterproductive to the foreign aid programmes of countries in the developed world. Helping construct effective public justice systems in the developing world, therefore, must become the new mandate of the human rights movement in the 21st century.
In June 2008, a report was published by the United Nations that estimated that 4 billion people live outside the protection of the rule of law. As the report concluded,
“most poor people do not live under the shelter of the law”.
Instead, they inhabit a world in which the perpetrators of abuse and violence are unrestrained by the fear of punishment. In this world, virtually every component of the public justice system—police, defence lawyers, prosecutors and courts—works against, not with, the poor in providing the protections of the law. Take, for example, the police. For most of the world's poor, the local police force is their primary contact with the public justice system. The average poor person in the developing world has probably never met a police officer who is not at best corrupt, or at worst gratuitously brutal. In fact, the most pervasive criminal presence for the global poor is frequently their own police force. A 2006 study in Kenya, for example, revealed that 65 per cent of those citizens polled reported difficulty obtaining help from the police, and 29 per cent said they had had to make “extraordinary efforts” to avoid problems with the police in the past year. According to a 1999 World Bank study, poor people in the developing world view the police as a group of “vigilantes and criminals” who actively harass, oppress and brutalise them. Many countries in the developing world do not recognise a right to indigent legal representation, leaving those who cannot afford a lawyer to navigate the legal process without an advocate.
If the first stage of the modern human rights movement was largely intellectual, the second has become political. During the past 25 to 30 years, the movement for human rights has embedded the growing body of international norms into national law, and for that we should be profoundly grateful, but two generations of global human rights efforts have been predicated, consciously or unconsciously, on assumptions about the effectiveness of the public justice systems in the developing world. Those systems clearly lack effective enforcement tools. As a result, the great legal reforms of the human rights movement often deliver only empty parchment promises to the poorest people on our planet. In large part, the human rights community, which includes various UN bodies and agencies, government offices, non-governmental organisations and individual jurists and scholars, exists to defend the victimised, particularly where more powerful actors have little incentive to act on their behalf. Yet throughout the history of the modern human rights movement, this community has largely neglected the task of helping to build public justice systems in the developing world that work for the poor.
In conclusion, I advocate that if we add to education, let us also add the right of enforcement.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this debate. He promised us an interesting and engaging debate and it has been both of those thus far. On the subject of interesting, engaging and educative, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on her maiden speech and I look forward to her contributions in future. It is perfectly clear that a substantial part of our community now has a very eloquent advocate in the House. I am sure that she will talk knowledgably and interestingly on many other subjects.
I commend the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, on using his comparatively short time in a characteristically valuable way. I have had recent experience of the organisation that he speaks of and I share a lot of his observations in practice, particularly in relation to Sri Lanka. While I am addressing contributions, because I found them all valuable, I shall express a prejudice to the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, put before your Lordships’ House. From my experience in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I might find some opportunity in future to show where the international community has failed in doing just what the noble Lord described in conflict resolution.
I do not envy the Minister in responding to this debate, given its diversity and the interesting nature of the speeches that have been made so far. There are more to come and while I have no intention of adding to his challenges, I intend to draw him on the coalition Government’s policy and proposed actions on the continuing human rights challenges faced by the people of Sri Lanka in particular.
I do not think that this is a declaration of interest but I remind the House that I was the special envoy of the previous Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to Sri Lanka. I was privileged to hold that job from early 2009, when more than 100,000 people were trapped at the height of the end of the conflict, until the general election. I suppose that I do not need also to remind the House that, as has been recorded, my appointment, although initially agreed to by the Government of Sri Lanka, shortly became an issue of division within their coalition Government, resulting in a lamentable lack of public co-operation with me in that role. Privately, however, I had numerous meetings with representatives of the Government and their emissaries. I do not consider the public posture that they adopted to me to be in any sense personal, because they have adopted that posture to a significant number of emissaries, including most recently the three-person panel of experts appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General.
Despite the vanquishing of the LTTE and the apparent end to 30 years of the most atrocious violence and abuses by all sides to the conflict in that beautiful island of Sri Lanka, despite the renewed and increased electoral mandate that the Government of President Rajapaksa enjoys, which was gained on a manifesto of reconciliation and respect for minority rights, among many other arguments that he put forward, despite a personal commitment that he gave to the United Nations Secretary-General in May 2009 that he would take measures to address possible violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, and, despite the repeated but often rebuffed efforts of the international community to support an agenda of reconciliation and respect, there are in Sri Lanka, as Alistair Burt, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, told the other place on 16 June:
“widespread and persistent allegations of”,
continuing,
“human rights abuses by both state and non-state actors”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/6/10; col. 166WH.]
My observation on the pervasive propaganda of the media in Sri Lanka is that there are, as the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, identified, the beginnings if not the developing evidence of a culture of hate there against the Tamil minority, which will lead inevitably to just the sort of consequences that we have seen all too often around the world.
Reports of the Government of Sri Lanka and their agents committing arbitrary and unlawful killings, including credible reports of the police and other security forces killing detained suspects, are all-pervasive. I remind the House that successive commissions of inquiry under the warrant of the President have all run into the sand and lack credibility. There have been disappearances, many of which can be brought to the door of paramilitary groups operating on behalf of government military forces. Civil society groups and former prisoners report several torture cases, involving beatings with bars or bats, electric shocks, suspending victims in contorted positions, asphyxiation and many other horrible acts. Yet because of restricted access for humanitarian organisations, the evidence of that sort of behaviour is very difficult to find.
I could go on but I am conscious of the time. The point I wish to make is that there has been no lack of engagement by the international community or by successive Governments, including this Government, in trying to deal with the issues on that island which is, I remind your Lordships, a holiday island for many of our fellow citizens. There have been many assurances and substantial rhetoric from the Government of Sri Lanka but very little evidence of any improvement. In the debate that I referred to in the other place the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, a Minister for whom I have the enormous respect, assured that House that this Government were convinced that the present Government of Sri Lanka intend to deal with those issues. That assertion, in my view, is denied by the facts that are known more broadly.
On a note which is slightly inconsistent with the rest of this debate, I say to the Minister that I regret the fact that during the visit of the President of that country over the past few days, the Secretary of State for Defence chose to meet him in a private capacity. I anticipated that the meeting would be used for propaganda purposes and, this morning, I see on the front page of the Government of Sri Lanka’s website them doing just that. I encourage Ministers to meet members of the Government of Sri Lanka but I would much prefer that it was done openly and reported in a very transparent fashion. I thank noble Lords for listening with respect to my observations.
Baroness O'Loan
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has served this House well in seeking today’s debate on human rights abuses worldwide. I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on her powerful maiden speech and I look forward to further interventions.
Much has been achieved in the United Kingdom through its actions to protect human rights. However, much remains to be done both domestically and internationally. Parents are often told that children learn effectively from the behaviour of their parents and that one should model the behaviour which one seeks to secure. That adage, it seems to me, is equally applicable to the role of governments internationally and in particular to the British Government, who have exercised such a prominent position on the international stage for centuries. However, so many issues cause concern.
I think, for example, of the issue of the UK making arrangements to allow the United States to store cluster bombs here on a “temporary” basis, despite the UK's ratification of the international convention on cluster bombs. Cluster bombs, as we all know, have the potential to cause massive injury to the civilian population. In all our actions, that which we do privately must be consistent with that which we do publicly. Otherwise, in this modern information age, we will be rightly shamed and our reputation damaged.
The Conservative Party commission on human rights refers to mistakes made in the past and says that,
“it is by questioning the humanitarian contradictions and misguided motivations behind events, like the Iraq war and Afghanistan, that we learn from our shortcomings”.
We have much to learn from the experiences of armed conflict over the past 50 years—conflict in which we have been directly engaged and conflict in which we have adopted the role of negotiator, mediator, peacemaker, peacebuilder or peacekeeper—but sometimes it has seemed to me that each generation and group needs to be reminded of our history and of global history. I associate myself with the remarks of various noble Lords, in particular those of the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, on the protection of the right of freedom of religion.
I shall allude first to the difficult issue of the methods used by countries fighting what is generally referred to as the war against terrorism. We saw the decision by the Government just two weeks ago to pay compensation to 12 men who alleged that the UK was involved in their transfer to the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, in which they were interrogated and tortured. This is not the first time that a claim of UK government complicity in torture has been raised. The Prime Minister rightly contradicted the recent claim by President Bush that controversial interrogation techniques had protected the UK from further terrorist attacks. The experience in Northern Ireland and across the world is that the use of such techniques creates hostility to the Government and increased recruitment to terrorist organisations.
During the early years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, a number of techniques were used by state interrogators to secure information from detainees. Five of those techniques—wall-standing, hooding, noise, sleep deprivation, and food and drink deprivation—were routinely used. Until 1975, officials denied that these techniques, described by detainees, were used, referring to the allegations of torture as IRA propaganda. However, they were not propaganda. Ultimately, the European Court, although not finding torture, announced that the techniques,
“undoubtedly amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment”,
in breach of Article 3 of the European convention. On 8 February 1977, the UK announced to the European Court:
“The Government … have considered the question of the use of the ‘five techniques’ with very great care and with particular regard to Article 3 … of the Convention. They now give this unqualified undertaking, that the ‘five techniques’ will not in any circumstances be reintroduced as an aid to interrogation”.
However, in March 2007, the judge presiding over the court martial of seven UK military personnel charged in connection with the torture and death in September 2003 of Baha Mousa and the treatment of eight Iraqi civilians arrested and detained in a UK military base in Basra stated that hooding detainees, keeping them in stress positions and depriving them of sleep had become standard operating procedures within the battalion responsible for detaining the men. Following a number of court hearings, the then Defence Secretary admitted substantive breaches of the European convention and the Armed Forces Minister apologised. The Government paid £2.83 million in compensation.
As we contemplate the announcement last month of the payment of damages for further alleged breaches of human rights, it is obviously profoundly important that the Government ensure that in all their dealings with other states in connection with any of their international activities in conflict zones there is a clear understanding that such techniques will not be used. Equally, it is fundamentally important that British personnel serving abroad, whether in a military or a peacekeeping capacity, are reminded of their obligations to adhere to all the relevant standards of behaviour. There must be a commitment to punish those who act in breach of particular codes of conduct and, in particular, in breach of the criminal law of the host country. The United Kingdom should use its influence to ensure the regulation of the activities of international peacekeeping forces.
I want to contemplate also what the United Kingdom can do to enhance the position of women caught in conflict and, in particular, to enhance their roles as peacemakers and negotiators, because without peace there can be no effective protection of human rights. Many women caught in conflict work for peace long before the international peacemakers arrive. In a context of seeing their children taken as child soldiers, of experiencing rape used as a tool of war, of being displaced and of being forced to flee as refugees, there will be women who strive for peace. Their primary need is for security, which is more important even than food and water. Notwithstanding that, women will get together in small groups and begin to try to find a way to peace. They will care for each other’s children, mind the market stalls and share their few goods with each other. They will need help from the very beginning, and government can assist in these matters. Thus will human rights be protected.
The process of nationbuilding/peacebuilding is one in which women have a minimal role in most cases. In many instances we are not able to achieve sustainable peace agreements, and I suppose my question is whether the absence of women at the peace table is a factor and whether their presence would enable such agreements to be achieved. In this context, I think that the UK must ensure that it does all it can to put women at the heart of any peace process in which it is involved. Failure to do so will mean that our calls for the involvement of women will be rejected.
I have run out of time but I should like also to call for enhanced articulation of the United Kingdom’s opposition to the death penalty and to draw attention, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, did, to the issue of slavery.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating this debate, and it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. As we have heard, she is a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and I know that the House will be greatly helped by her long and very distinguished career in the field of learning disabilities and mental health.
I am also very pleased to note the report of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and I very strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has said about its recommendations.
I am of course aware that this debate has already covered a wide range of human rights issues, in all of which your Lordships will have a proper concern because human rights are indivisible. If I had time, I would certainly mention a good number, not least the increasingly tense situation in West Papua, where human rights are being ever more violated. Just recently there was a film on television of an indigenous West Papuan being brutally tortured. However, because of time, I am going to focus on only one concern—the situation of the Dalits in the world, and I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group.
Recently I claimed that the struggle to support the rights of Dalits was comparable with the struggle to end apartheid in a previous generation, and I was publicly challenged over that comparison. I am glad to be challenged because it enables us to think more clearly about the exact nature of this issue, and of course it is a great help to be forced to think more clearly.
The struggle to support the rights of Dalits is not like apartheid in one respect, in the sense that the Indian constitution, to take one example, is in principle admirable, respecting the rights of all peoples, whereas apartheid was of course a state system. However, I suggest that the oppression of the Dalits is worse than apartheid in a number of respects. The first is the sheer scale of the problem. It has been reckoned that there are 250 million Dalits in the world—one in 40 of the world’s population—and their oppression is a blight that affects not just India but surrounding countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, and sadly even the Asian diaspora in this country. Secondly, it is difficult to imagine any form of social rejection more degrading or humiliating than that experienced by the Dalits. The caste system is complex but the point about the Dalits—the former untouchables—is that they are outside it altogether. They have no assured place and are regarded as less than human, so that those of so-called higher castes are unwilling to be touched by them, to have any social intercourse with them or even, for example, to touch a dog that has been touched by a Dalit. They are relegated to jobs such as manual scavenging—that is, clearing out human excreta by hand from dry latrines.
The psychological effects of that, together with the economic and political implications, are not difficult to imagine. As Christian Solidarity Worldwide has put it, the impact of the caste system on the Dalits is,
“connected with almost all human rights concerns in India”.
One issue with which another organisation, the Dalit Freedom Network, is particularly concerned is the trafficking of Dalits, whose marginal and vulnerable position in society makes them the main victims of all forms of trafficking, leading to bonded labour, sex trafficking and ritualised prostitution. As we know, women and, in particular, children are especially at risk in these areas.
The Dalit issue raises one very fundamental aspect of human rights—the role of the wider society in economic, civic and social aspects. Human rights, when first formulated after World War II, were primarily concerned to protect the rights of the individual against the state, and that remains fundamental, as we have heard on many occasions this morning. However, the position of the Dalits highlights that society as a whole has a role and a responsibility in ensuring that basic human rights are recognised. For example, British foreign aid to India does, I understand, recognise the oppressed position of the Dalits and ensures that aid is significantly directed towards bettering their position, but what about the employment practices of DfID offices, embassies and other government agencies working in India and other parts of the world? Do they make provision for the employment of a fair percentage of Dalit personnel? Do they monitor their employment practices with a view to that end? I should particularly like to pose that question to the Minister. Then there are the employment practices of British companies working in that part of the world.
Finally, when it comes to this country, some of us were greatly surprised and shocked to learn that discrimination against Dalits had travelled here with the Asian diaspora. That is why we sought to put a clause in the Equality Bill which outlawed discrimination on the grounds of caste. In the event, the Government decided to introduce an order-making power, pending evidence of discrimination in the areas of employment, education and the provision of goods and services. I know for a fact that there is such discrimination, but we are still awaiting a report commissioned by the Government on this issue. Again, I look to the Minister to see when that report is going to be produced.
The position of the Dalits is a scandal in the modern world. It is one that needs to be addressed in different ways by all elements in society—by the Government, of course, but also by companies, civic leaders and religious leaders.
Baroness Morris of Bolton
My Lords, this is an important moment in the development of what the Foreign Secretary, my right honourable friend William Hague, has termed “foreign policy with a conscience”. I pay tribute to noble Lords, Members of another place, the Diplomatic Service, NGOs and all women and men who are working tirelessly and with deep commitment to advance human rights in remote corners of the earth, and who keep human rights abuses on the agenda of Her Majesty’s Government. In this respect, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on her maiden speech and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on his dedication and passion in standing up for the oppressed and dispossessed. I, too, am full of admiration for the noble Lord, and I thank him for giving us the opportunity to debate these vital issues today. Lastly, I pay tribute to my party’s human rights commission on its excellent work.
For the purpose of this debate, I declare my interests as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council, vice-chairman of the Britain-Palestine All-Party Parliamentary Group and a trustee of UNICEF UK. I will focus my remarks on two areas in which I have a particular interest and where the plight of the people should make us all stop and think. They are the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gaza. These two places face very different conditions, but each tells a tale of the crushing of human spirit and the waste of human potential. Each requires immediate, collective and effective measures by the humanitarian community and major aid donors.
The situation of women in the DRC, which was recently described as the rape capital of the world, is dire. From the start of the war, Congolese women and young girls have been systematically targeted by all parties to the conflict. It is so bad that Vava Tampa, the founding director of Save the Congo, has said that every woman is a rape victim in waiting. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield stated so powerfully, the use of rape to punish, displace or destroy women and communities in times of conflict is well documented. However, what makes the raping of women and girls, and sometimes of men and baby boys, in the Congo most tragic is its blood-chilling scale, its effect on the social fabric of Congolese society, and the disastrous consequences for the Congo and the Great Lakes region for many years to come. I hope my noble friend the Minister can tell us what we are doing to ensure that appropriate mechanisms are put in place to end the growing culture of impunity that lies behind the cycle of atrocities in the Congo.
John Ging, a most inspirational man and director of operations in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency, said recently:
“We have run out of words to describe how bad it is here”.
A month ago, I returned from a trip to Gaza. I was enormously moved by the plight of the people, and three things I saw have made a lasting impression. The first was a visit to the al-Shifa hospital, where vital medical equipment lies idle because of a lack of spare parts, and where we met patients denied permission to leave Gaza for life-saving treatment, often without any explanation given as to why that permission had been denied. I implore the Government to use all the diplomacy at their disposal to ensure that the medical needs of the people of Gaza are met.
The second visit to make a lasting impression was to an UNRWA food distribution centre where proud, well-educated men and women were queuing for their quarterly rations of food. Eighty per cent of the population of Gaza receives food aid, yet there has been no flood, no failure of crops and no earthquake, just a shutdown of the system that denies the people the chance to work because there are no jobs, and there are no jobs because they cannot import materials, they cannot manufacture goods and they cannot export. Nor can they travel to Israel any more to the jobs they used to enjoy. I have to tell your Lordships that I felt deep shame, and I pay tribute to the decency, good humour and enormous resilience of the Palestinian people, who wish to be good neighbours to Israel and who have so much to offer to the world.
Finally, I visited a human rights class in an UNRWA school in the Beach refugee camp. There, despite their circumstances, the 15 year-old girls were beautifully dressed. They were attentive, clever and articulate, and their grasp of human rights and the attendant responsibilities to people of all backgrounds and all religions or none would put most grown-ups in the western world to shame, and would have gladdened the heart of the noble Lord, Lord Sacks. At the end of the lesson I was asked by one of the girls whether I thought they had a future to look forward to. I hope I was right when I said yes.
Lord Luce
My Lords, I, too, have great admiration for my noble friend Lord Alton for the way in which he most vigorously, consistently and courageously pursues human rights issues in the world. We owe him a lot for that. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Hollins on her excellent maiden speech and for the distinctive role that she clearly has to play in this House. We also owe gratitude to my noble friend Lord Alton for the fact that so much attention has been drawn to the Conservative Party today for its work on human rights. As a result, I have read two of its commission’s documents, which were produced this year and which are of excellent quality and make a major contribution to the debate on human rights.
I wish to make three points, of which the last is the most distinctive. First, in dealing with human rights, we need to be pragmatic. We need to use our influence in whichever ways are the most sensible for each country. How we deal with Russia, China, Burma, Zimbabwe—or indeed Sri Lanka, which we have heard about this afternoon— must vary according to our level of influence, our interests and our general relationship. We can pursue these issues bilaterally or multilaterally. As an example of the latter, I cite the Commonwealth as one of the best because we are all committed as members of it to respect for human rights, democracy, a free press and the rule of law. There is also a practical way of moving things forward through the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, which intervenes when there is evidence of serious abuses in Commonwealth countries.
Secondly, we need to be concerned about how we exert our influence on human rights. I am glad to say that this has not happened in today’s debate, but very often we still have from a lot of people, although not from this House, a rather patronising and lecturing approach towards other countries. That is something that we really must do away with once and for all. The Empire ended a long time ago, and we need a continuous dialogue with other countries about how and why we see respect for human rights as the best way to move to a more civilised way of life.
My third point is about making sure that our own house is in order when we talk about human rights in other countries. Whether we are dealing with the management of democracy or the rights of the individual, we cannot really stand up and talk to other people about these issues unless we are credible at home. I shall highlight that with one illustration only, which is the way in which we have treated one small group of people in the Indian Ocean. The Chagossians were expelled from the British Indian Ocean Territory in the late 1960s by the then Labour Government. To my mind, that was a gross injustice. While it was perfectly reasonable to set up a naval base for the United States in Diego Garcia, that should not have been at the expense of those islanders, who were dispatched to Mauritius and the Seychelles. Now, surprisingly, many of them are living nearby in Crawley. No Government since, including the one of which I was a member, have rectified this injustice.
Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says:
“No one shall be subject to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile”.
There have been endless court cases and judgments in the past few years on the question of the Chagossians and I will not weary the House with the details. At the moment, the Chagossians are appealing to the European Court of Human Rights for their right of return to be restored. There are many related issues. There is now a marine protection area in the Indian Ocean around the islands. I strongly support that—it is an excellent idea—but it should not be at the expense of the Chagossians playing a part and having jobs relating to those environmental issues.
Like others, I have no doubt that the Foreign Secretary is strongly committed to human rights. When he was in opposition, he called for a fair and just settlement to this issue. In September this year, in setting up the advisory body to identify human rights abuses, he said:
“we will not apply double standards … where problems have arisen that have affected the UK’s … standing we will deal with them patiently and clearly”.
My appeal to the Government is to work out—over the next four or five years, not in the immediate future—a strategy to find a solution to this. That must be done in conjunction with Mauritius, as we have agreed that Mauritius has the right to restore its sovereignty over that territory once it is no longer needed for military purposes. I am not expecting the Minister to give a response today and I very much respect the fact that the Government are trying to find a way forward. We need to look at this in a longer-term way.
The 1966 exchange of letters between Britain and the United States led to the present arrangements, which are due to be reviewed by 2014, prior to the renewal of the exchange of letters for another 20 years after 2016. This seems to be the opportunity for the British Government to work out a strategy and find a way to do justice to these people, who have been extremely badly treated. It will involve working out with the Mauritians some compromise proposals for the outer isles, which are well away from Diego Garcia and where problems of security can be overcome in discussion with the United States. In terms of the economy, we need to work out how we can deal with the resettlement of the probably not many people who want to live and work in the area. Prime Minister Ramgoolam of Mauritius told me this summer that he looks forward to working constructively with the British Government for a fair solution. I appeal to the Minister and his colleagues to look at this seriously in the lead-up to the review of the exchange of letters and to find an answer that will do justice to these people and enable us as a nation to hold our head just a little higher when we are talking with other countries about human rights.
Lord Bates
I, too, pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for giving us the opportunity for this debate. He is a rare champion for human rights, on which he has been consistent and persistent. In the role that he performs in this House, he is remarkably similar to Gary Streeter, my honourable friend in another place, who was the first chairman of the Conservative Human Rights Commission, set up in 2005 by William Hague. He, too, speaks up on these matters and has been a quiet and persistent voice representing the conscience of the Conservative Party and Parliament more widely. The commission’s work is to be approved and built on.
As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, it is no surprise that the Foreign Secretary should, as William Wilberforce’s biographer, find inspiration in Wilberforce—I know that my right honourable friend was moved by researching his life. My right honourable friend had the vision to ask what Britain can do that is similarly ambitious. He arrived at the area of human rights, about which he feels deeply passionate. When we as parliamentarians talk about the effect of Wilberforce, I am always mindful of the story that, although after many attempts he got the abolition of slavery through this House, it required policing by the Royal Navy to uphold the legislation. I think I am right in saying that that is still the most costly campaign that the Royal Navy has ever undertaken. Upholding the law is critical to our declarations of human rights, which are otherwise mere aspiration—there is no rigour to them.
It was not by accident, perhaps, that the Foreign Secretary should choose Lincoln’s Inn as the place in which to espouse his vision of a new impetus in the push for human rights. He said:
“The law is central to our values and is also the product of the same steady process of accumulation. The principles of due process and of no punishment without the law are both found in Magna Carta. The law is the ultimate guarantor of the rights of individuals”.
That is a powerful point. We need a degree of humility here. If we want to espouse human rights, we also have to be prepared to subjugate ourselves to the law, particularly the international law set up and articulated in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. We have to say that we are subject to that law. We have to behave accordingly and respect those institutions. If not, you end up with a kind of Melian dialogue in which, as has been said, the great powers do as they will and the weak suffer as they must. That is no fair world, whatever the aspirations. We all have to be subject to the law. Following the law and institutions is critical in this.
I illustrate that by talking about an opportunity that is coming up, although it may seem tangential to this debate. I have been rattling on—without a great deal of support from my own side, it has to be said—about the campaign for the Olympic Truce. Why do I mention the Olympic Truce? I do so because it is backed by a United Nations resolution, which says that during the period of the Olympic Games, in London in 2012, all member states will take initiatives to pursue peace and reconciliation. The resolution is signed by all 193 member states, but there is no record of any Government or signatory taking any initiative for peace and reconciliation during any Olympic Games.
I know that there is a technical argument about General Assembly resolutions and Chapter VII United Nations Security Council resolutions but, be that as it may, my view is that the United Nations is our only hope for a rules-based international system. Therefore, we should take it seriously. When this Government, as the Government of the host nation, propose the resolution to the United Nations that we will pursue initiatives for peace and reconciliation, it behoves us to take that seriously. When we start taking seriously what we say in such fora, the message goes out and adds weight to the other excellent things that we are doing in the field of human rights and about which we have been talking.
Lord Wright of Richmond
My Lords, I shall briefly pursue two themes in the short time that we have available to us in this debate. The first relates to North Korea. My noble friend Lord Alton of Liverpool called for a new peace conference to be jointly convened by Switzerland and Britain and held in Beijing to enable North and South Korea to conclude a formal peace treaty on the precedent of the Helsinki process. Having attended the Helsinki conference in 1976, I am as aware as anyone—although perhaps we were not all fully aware at the time—of the extent to which that conference was to lead to the collapse of the totalitarian system in the Soviet empire, ending much of the violation of human rights that went with those systems. My noble friend’s proposal is one that deserves serious and urgent consideration and support.
My second theme is to draw attention once again, as I have so often in this House, to the appalling abuse of the human rights of Palestinians in Gaza, in the occupied West Bank and in east Jerusalem. I submit that this is, in some ways, even more shocking than many of the human rights abuses to which noble Lords have drawn attention in this debate, since they are violations committed by the Government of a self-proclaimed democracy who pride themselves on the rule of law, and who should be ashamed, as many of their citizens and supporters are, to have their human rights record bracketed with the monstrous regime of North Korea. Leaving aside the illegality of the growing settlements in the West Bank, and the increasing violation of human rights to which various independent reports have drawn attention during the past year, there is continuing destruction of olive groves and other means of Palestinian livelihood in the West Bank, and the destruction and blockade of roads that enable West Bank Palestinians to move from the West Bank to Jerusalem. Then there is the treatment of children in Israeli military courts, the eviction of Palestinians and the demolition of their homes in East Jerusalem and the extension of the wall, which blocks access for Palestinians to their homes, to medical care, to their place of work and, often, to their schools, thereby depriving them of their right to education, to which the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, referred so eloquently. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure the House that Her Majesty’s Government continue not only to protest to the Government of Mr Netanyahu about these violations but to join our European partners in drawing them to the attention of our American friends.
Only the United States Government have unique potential influence on the Israelis to stop these abuses, which represent a serious, and probably fatal, block on any progress towards a two-state settlement of this long-running dispute. Since this debate falls only a few days after the opening of the new European Delegation Office in Washington, I hope that this provides an opportunity for our embassy in Washington to work even more closely with our European partners to persuade the United States Administration to recognise that Israeli violation of human rights risks destroying any hope of achieving a situation whereby Israel and her Palestinian neighbour can live together in peace and mutual respect.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating this debate today and attracting such a very impressive list of speakers. I offer my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on her maiden speech. It was a remarkably powerful and memorable maiden speech. She will be an enormous asset to this House.
I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s commitment in his speech of 15 September at Lincoln’s Inn, when he said:
“There will be no downgrading of human rights under this government”.
I welcome his important acknowledgment that:
“Where human rights abuses go unchecked our security suffers”.
But I was sorry that he decided to repeat and misquote the speech by my late right honourable friend Robin Cook in 1997. In that speech, my late right honourable friend made points that were very similar to those made by the Foreign Secretary some 13 years later. He said:
“Our foreign policy must have an ethical dimension and must support the demands of other peoples for the democratic rights on which we insist for ourselves”.
An ethical dimension to foreign policy is really not so very different from—as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, acknowledged, and as the Foreign Secretary says—foreign policy with a conscience.
I go to a point from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and her contention about the report in today’s Guardian concerning the story of cluster bombs on UK territory. It is inaccurate—and I think that examination of the leaked document itself shows that it is an inaccurate report.
Most of us have an inherent sense of what human beings are entitled to in terms of certain protections and freedoms. Clearly, our support for democracy and the freedom of expression that is an inalienable part of the democratic process is one of the bedrock principles. Whether it is the brutal suppression of protesters in Iran after the elections this year, the murder of human rights workers in Russia, the attacks on brave women who assert their rights on the streets of Sudan or Afghanistan, or the abuse of the rights of gay people in some African countries, we acknowledge that we have a duty to help and defend those who ask only for what we enjoy ourselves every day in this country.
On this side of the House we recognise the practical implications of such a position. For example, there is the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which supports such efforts in Ukraine, Georgia, Lebanon, Uganda, Mozambique, Kenya and many other countries. Can the Minister explain why the foundation’s funding is to be cut by the coalition and how such a cut is comparable with the Foreign Secretary’s right-minded pledge to improve and strengthen the FCO’s work on human rights?
Noble Lords, in covering the ground that they have covered very ably today, have often gone into the details of human rights abuses themselves, notably the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in his masterly overview in his opening remarks, as well as the noble Lords, Lord Avebury, Lord Sacks, Lord Trimble, and many others. Like the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Luce, I found the papers from the Conservative commission very interesting and agreed with much that it recommended. But in looking at how its proposals fit in with the Government’s plans for the coming year, I was concerned about the practical steps that the Government might be able to take to bring them into effect. Debates and speeches, however well intentioned, have to be matched by policy in action. When we have the high principles that we espouse, we have to know how the Government intend to take that forward.
I shall concentrate in my remaining time on the mechanisms which we have that the Government might deploy in relation to human rights. Like the noble Baronesses, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer and Lady Morris of Bolton, I applaud much of the work done on human rights for women. The commission’s work on women’s human rights is in many ways admirable. Indeed, the annual report from the FCO on human rights sets out a comprehensive view on what has been done and what remains to be done. Can the Minister confirm that there are no plans to stop the work in producing this annual report each year, as it is such a very important and valuable guide to what is happening around the world?
Unfortunately, the only places where I could find any indication in the Government’s business plan on what was going to happen with human rights was in relation specifically to the Commonwealth and the Eminent Persons Group, in the section on so-called soft power. Indeed, I think that it was the fifth point of the fifth item of the fifth priority. That point made the assertion that the work has actually started. Can the Minister tell us what has been achieved so far?
As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, suggested, I turn to the Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission report’s recommendations on how the Foreign Office should take matters forward. As the noble Lord said, an important recommendation is that of the appointment of a Minister for human rights within the FCO, who would be a sort of director with an overseeing role along with a group of human rights ambassadors. Surely such a Minister should also have a role in DfID and the MoD and, indeed, in UK Trade & Investment. As the noble Lord pointed out, trade can often make an uneasy bedfellow when considering human rights issues. Do the Government plan to create such a post? If so, when is that likely to happen?
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield raised an enormously important point about the responsibility to protect. I think that we can all agree that, when human rights abuses culminate in violence, peacemaking should be done, wherever possible, through dialogue, through peace treaties and through peace negotiations, as the report suggests. However, that point is axiomatic—in a sense, it is a very easy point to make—but what happens when we find that we are unable to act through the United Nations? What is a Government’s responsibility to protect in those circumstances, when such endeavours are blocked—as, for example, over Kosovo—by a clear and potentially catastrophic failure to reach agreement in the UN? Frankly, the Conservative commission sidesteps what we all know is the crucial question—which the coalition Government may have to answer—which is whether we should intervene to halt or avert human rights abuses when there is no agreement at the United Nations.
As the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, mentioned, the report also makes recommendations on how the FCO should deal with the UN Human Rights Council meetings next year. That is an important issue, so I was glad that the noble Lord concentrated on it. Frankly, I agree with a great deal of the report’s recommendations on that, including on the universal periodic review, membership elections, bloc party politics, agenda setting and the way in which some allegations against Israel are dealt with. However, I find it hard to believe that any Government will be able to act on the recommendations in the near future.
Indeed, where I think that the report falls down is in its possibly laudable but quite unrealistic notion about taking politics out of the UN. Culturally, we are years away from doing that, even if it were desirable for human rights priorities. As yet, we are not at that ideal position. It is almost as if the Conservative commission’s members spoke only to academics and experts like themselves. I do not know whether the commission members have been to the West Bank or Gaza, as the noble Lady, Baroness Morris, has. I do not know whether the commission members have witnessed the visceral fury of the Palestinians at what they perceive—and which many agree—to be the systematic undermining of their human rights. I do not know whether the commission members have had direct contact with North Korea or engaged in discussions with Chinese officials about the pressure that could be exerted on that country. It is simply unrealistic to expect to be able to take politics out of human rights discussions at this stage in international relations.
Over the years, I have travelled and talked about human rights in many different parts of the world. I have talked in the US about capital punishment and the evidence of its use in that country on people of very restricted intellectual ability, including the pathetic case of a man who was saving the ice cream from his last meal until after he came back from the execution chamber. I have discussed prison conditions in Japan and women’s rights in the Arab world. However, all Governments—elected or unelected—react strongly and with great hostility to public criticism, whereas they can often be persuaded to shift their position through private persuasion. Progress is achieved not by the protocols and the mandatory measures that the commission advocates but by persuasive discussion in private and with honesty that returns to the same issue over and over again. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, was entirely right that we must be practical and choose the right route for each country.
My Lords, I will end on that note.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, first, not only should we congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on initiating this fascinating and enormously wide-ranging debate but we can see that the House owes him a lot for his persistent work and the marvellous and tireless way in which he brings to the attention of your Lordships, and to the public, the worldwide problems of the human rights abuses that confront us today. Indeed, I notice that my brief refers to no fewer than 38 countries where there is immediate concern that human rights abuse is prevalent. Of course, if I tried to cover all of those, I would take far longer than the time available.
Secondly, I want to congratulate most warmly the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on her very instructive and interesting maiden speech on children’s rights and on their harrowing experiences in Romania, which we have read about but she has seen at first hand. Given her expertise in the field of children’s disabilities and the challenges that they face—which we must help them to overcome—we obviously hope to hear much more from her on those issues.
Thirdly, with the kind understanding of the Opposition, I undertook to say a word about a particular tragedy of human rights relating to a life denied—there could be no clearer abuse of human rights than that—on which my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has made a Statement in the other place this morning. It concerned the investigation into the death of the British aid worker Linda Norgrove, who died during a US-led rescue operation on the night of 8 October. In fact, Her Majesty’s coroner for Wiltshire and Swindon is legally responsible for determining the cause of death, so any comment by my right honourable friend—or, indeed, by me—today must not in any way prejudice the course of those inquiries. However, let me just briefly share with your Lordships what has emerged.
On 8 October, a rescue attempt was launched by US forces after intensive efforts to locate Linda Norgrove. The soldiers came under attack as soon as they left their helicopter. A grenade was thrown by a member of the rescue team who feared for his own life and for those of his team. When the grenade was thrown, no member of the team had seen or heard Linda Norgrove; she was found by the soldiers later. The provisional post-mortem results conclude that Linda Norgrove died as a result of penetrating fragmentation injuries to the head and chest. After the investigation, it is clear that those injuries were caused by the grenade. The rescue attempt was an incredibly difficult operation that was carried out with the utmost courage by US elite forces, to whom we are very grateful. Either way, Linda Norgrove’s death was a terrible tragedy. Her parents have paid tribute to her inspiring devotion to the people of Afghanistan and to her love for the country, and have set up a foundation in their daughter’s name to fund projects that support education and health for Afghan women and children.
I am sure that noble Lords will want to join me not only in paying tribute to all those working to support the people of Afghanistan in extremely difficult circumstances but in sending deep condolences to Linda Norgrove’s family as they come to terms with their irreparable loss. Her death is an example of the high price paid by brave people, particularly those who seek to uphold human rights and bring freedom around the world.
Turning to the debate, which has been of an excellent quality and very educative due to the experienced speeches that have been made, I acknowledge that the theme of the debate has been built around the Conservative Human Rights Commission report, which has recommended a number of measures to strengthen the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s institutional capability to address human rights. As that has been the central theme, that is what I will speak on mostly, although I will also seek to address a number of other issues raised by noble Lords.
In response, I want to reaffirm the Government’s view that human rights are essential to, and indivisible from, the UK’s foreign policy priorities, just as the Foreign Secretary said very clearly in his speech of 15 September, to which several noble Lords have referred. I can report that a number of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission’s institutional recommendations have indeed been taken up, which is what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, rightly asked about. In particular, I refer to the Foreign Secretary’s decision that there should be an annual Foreign and Commonwealth Office Command Paper on human rights along with strengthened lines of reporting. That is the first issue that I was asked about. We have changed the annual report a bit, as it will now be published as a Command Paper—possibly, it will be a rather bigger and glossier document—and will come forward in that form. Also, and even more significantly, we have established the Foreign Secretary’s advisory group, which is holding its very first meeting this afternoon; indeed, it may be taking place while we talk.
Those are two areas in which we have taken up what the commission rightly suggested. There is in general an excellent story to tell about the way in which we have adopted the organisational approaches put forward in the commission’s proposals. We have not translated its proposals in every degree, but we have followed the pattern; for example, freedom of religion will be discussed by the Foreign Secretary’s advisory group rather than by the lower-level freedom of religion panel that existed under the previous Government. Reporting of religious freedom violations, to which several noble Lords alluded, will be covered appropriately in the new arrangements for human rights reporting. The Foreign Secretary and Foreign and Commonwealth Ministers, including me, champion human rights, which are mainstreamed throughout the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s work. An approach which integrates human rights across FCO priorities both in London and overseas is an effective way of focusing attention on the human rights aspects. That is an important point to make because there have been a number of suggestions that a Minister should somehow take charge of the whole issue. My experience in government—which has been patchy, and others may have more—is that if you assign a particular issue to a particular Minister, it does not necessarily enhance the issue. On the contrary, it can mean that it is put aside from all the concerns of other Ministers and departments and gets buried. We are dealing with human rights, which come into almost every aspect of government. They should be the concern of every Minister, not just of those in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. That is why we are not so keen on one of the commission’s ideas for ministerial commitment in the way that is described by some noble Lords. The same goes for ambassadors and special envoys. They are some people who do good work, but their efforts can get lost if we do not ensure that the human rights commitment is embedded in the work of all of government and all Ministers at all times.
I turn to the many fascinating issues that have been raised by noble Lords today. I shall not be able to cover everything. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, in a tremendous and magisterial speech which I cannot possibly emulate, raised his unease as to whether we were putting commercial trade before human rights concerns in Sudan. No, we are not; there is no question of that. Human rights issues have been raised again and again by Ministers, including my honourable friend Mr Bellingham when he was in Sudan the other day, and we will continue to press these matters extremely hard.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, talked interestingly of persecution of converts and apostasy. He raised the case of Musa Sayed, who is accused of Christian conversion. We are aware of this and are monitoring developments. We continue to remind the Afghan Government of their duty to abide by their national and international commitments on freedom of religion and beliefs. The noble Lord was quite right to raise that case; it is very much in our minds.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, spoke about a range of issues—in particular, the persecution of the Baha’is, which has concerned me personally for many years. One has always been appalled at reports of endless persecution and worse of the Baha’i community. We have repeatedly expressed our concern at the shocking sentences of the seven Baha’i leaders in Iran to 20 years’ imprisonment. The Foreign Secretary said on 11 August that we find these sentences entirely unacceptable and that we see them as a despicable attack on the Baha’i faith by the Iranian state.
The noble Lord spoke also about the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan. I am advised that my honourable friend Alistair Burt has spoken regularly on this subject to the Pakistan Minister for Minorities. He has also met the leadership of the Ahmadiyya community in the UK and outlined the UK’s concerns at ongoing discrimination in a debate in which he took part on 20 October.
The Dalits were raised by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries—the former Bishop of Oxford—and others. We are obviously concerned by reports of discrimination against Dalits and other minority communities in India. We discuss these issues with the state-level authorities, drawing their attention to British parliamentary and public concern. Those discussions will continue. In addition, minority rights, including those of Dalits, are among the issues raised via the EU-India human rights dialogue. There are many more things that we also do on this front, but I do not have time to enumerate them now. I think that I have demonstrated that we have this matter very much in our sights.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield turned to the sickening and horrific accounts of rape and torture in the Congo, as did my noble friend Lady Morris. One can only say that we continue trying to bring these things to a halt and to draw them to the attention of the world, so that these horrors somehow be contained. It is an unrewarding task, but we should never rest on it for one moment.
My noble friend Lady Miller talked about women’s rights. We support and fund projects run by Peace Brigades International. This is a central issue in our human rights work, as again my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has made clear.
My noble friend Lord Trimble spoke about the undoubted weaknesses that we have seen in the work of the United Nations Human Rights Council. I am advised that there has been some improvement recently, but we shall want to keep pressing on this matter because it is clear that there were considerable weaknesses in the past and a failure to tackle the most glaring examples of human rights abuse.
The noble Lord, Lord Browne, spoke with the great authority that he has gained from his experience. He mentioned Sri Lanka. We have raised, and continue to raise, our concerns with the Sri Lankans about the situation there. I do not want to elaborate on it now, but it is very unsatisfactory. I myself have had talks with the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister recently and have not minced my words.
The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, mentioned cluster munitions. I joined with the previous Government—I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, was also involved—in getting rid of cluster munitions; we have done our work. This is an example of how the WikiLeaks are both going back into the past and, on the whole, covering a lot of irresponsible trivia. The whole exercise should be condemned, not only for the danger that it causes but also for the triviality which it injects into public debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Luce, kindly warned me that he would raise again the difficult question of the Chagos Islands. We continue to engage with the issues seriously. I cannot, at this stage, in the time available, go into all the aspects but it is very much in our minds. Our policy continues as before but our attitude to it and our determination to find ways forward is reinforced.
My noble friend Lady Morris and the noble Lord, Lord Wright, raised the very unsatisfactory situation in Gaza, where pressures must obviously be lifted to enable the abuse of human rights that goes on there to be eased. We are pressing the Government of Israel on that point all the time. I do not think that that benefits the Government of Israel. We want to see Israel and its existence secured as a nation, but that is not to be done by the path of the restrictions on Gaza that we have seen recently.
The shadow of North Korea came into our debates. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has reminded us again and again of the atrocities and abuses there, and has sought a commission. On the whole, we believe that the first task is to get the six-party talks going. Some interesting comments have come out of Beijing recently on its attitude to both the six-party talks and the whole future of the Korean peninsula. It may be that there just a chink of light is coming in an area which is otherwise very dark and worrying.
My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has committed the Government to improving and strengthening the UK's human rights work, and has made clear that human rights will be woven deeply into our foreign policy decision-making at every stage. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, mentioned the Commonwealth. We see it as a valuable network to help to carry forward our human rights policy. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, asked about the current programme of Commonwealth reform. The current programme is led by the Eminent Persons Group. Our hope is that it will reinforce the potential of the Commonwealth in upholding core values. That is my personal hope, and I have great confidence that progress will be made.
The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have described a policy of practical promotion of human rights, where we work with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, as being the right way forward. They argue for adapting our approach for each context while pursuing our goals with determination.
There is no one model for promoting human rights in our foreign policy. Each context will demand a different approach. Promotion of human rights implies making robust commitments to the realisation of economic as well as social and political rights— including the rights of women, which are vital and central—and those of minorities and disabled people. It means commitment to enhancing the role of opposition political parties—always difficult for some countries to understand. It means commitment to devolving power to local and regional government, promoting substantive gender equity, addressing the rising tide of religious intolerance, championing efforts to democratise international institutions, and providing effective avenues to enhance the participation of youth. Those are the requirements.
I repeat that, in addressing those requirements, the Government will be guided by four themes. The first is dealing patiently and clearly with the problems that have arisen and that have affected the UK's moral standing. The second is being candid—without hectoring—with countries that do not fully share our values or are violating their human rights obligations. The third is powerfully advocating British values, such as democracy, tolerance, and the upholding of human rights and the national responsibilities which go with them. The fourth is strengthening the rules-based international system.
I end by again thanking the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for enabling us to express those sentiments and to have this debate. It has been a good debate and, I hope, has carried forward the ideas and values to which we all adhere.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
My Lords, anyone who doubts the purpose or point of your Lordships' House would be well recommended to read the Hansard of today's debate. There have been many thoughtful, powerful and insightful speeches made by noble Lords from all sides of the House. I thank everyone who has contributed, but particularly my noble friend Lady Hollins for her maiden speech today, which reminded us of the importance of not overlooking the human rights of people who are less advantaged than us—people with learning disabilities. I thank the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford—for the comprehensive way in which he dealt with what was inevitably a panoramic and wide-ranging debate.
I close the debate with just two quotations. The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, stated:
“While human rights are not the only consideration in forming a nation's foreign policy, if we allow human rights to suffer while we pursue our legitimate national interest, we will in the long term have failed”.
He wrote those words in the foreword to the annual report of the Conservative Party's Human Rights Commission in 2007. It is a high bar—a good bar against which to be judged. In conclusion, I give the last word to Aung San Suu Kyi, who said, “Please use your liberty to promote ours”. That is precisely what we have done in your Lordships' House today. I beg leave to withdraw the motion.
Philanthropy
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Janvrin
To call attention to the case for encouraging philanthropy; and to move for papers.
Lord Janvrin
My Lords, I am most grateful for the opportunity to introduce this debate today on the case for encouraging philanthropy. At the outset, I declare an interest as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery and of the Gurkha Welfare Trust, the chair of the trustees of the Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry and of the Entente Cordiale Scholarship Scheme, a member of the development committee of St George's Chapel, Windsor, adviser to the Parthenon Trust and deputy chairman of HSBC Private Bank (UK).
I want to use my speech to explain why I think that the need to encourage philanthropy is both relevant and timely and then set out some ideas of what could be done to achieve more giving in our society. I should preface what follows with two acknowledgements. First, I pay tribute to those many individuals, organisations and foundations who give generously and regularly to charitable causes at home and abroad. My contention is certainly not that we are a mean lot, but rather that we as a society—particularly the more wealthy among us—could give more, and now is the time to work out how best to encourage that. Secondly, I acknowledge those who lead thinking in this field—for example, New Philanthropy Capital, the Institute of Philanthropy, the Charities Aid Foundation, Philanthropy UK, and many others—who provide the research and intellectual underpinning on which I have drawn liberally and which is vital if we are to change attitudes.
Why do I think this debate important and timely? The starting point is obvious. It goes without saying that there is a real need both in our society and globally. We cannot be indifferent to the needs of others, and we—government, business, charities, media, and individuals—must all be looking for new ways to address that challenge.
Secondly, and more topically, the current public spending cuts will inevitably affect the charitable sector. Some 13 per cent of charities in the United Kingdom receive over half their income from the Government, and many more will be affected by reductions in public expenditure. In the excellent debate on the charity sector in this House on 5 October there were many references to the serious implications of this.
Thirdly, donors large and small have also inevitably been affected by the economic downturn. Figures from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and the Charities Aid Foundation suggest that the total amount donated by individuals fell 11 per cent between 2007-08 and 2008-09. Certainly, the anecdotal evidence—shared, I have no doubt, by others here—is that it is a tough environment for fundraisers at the moment.
All, however, is not doom and gloom. Those in the fundraising business should take some comfort from the fact that there is still considerable wealth around. Much of the wealth is self-made. Over 15 years ago, 75 per cent of the Sunday Times rich list was inherited wealth and 25 per cent self-made, but today those figures are reversed. Many, in financial terms, have done well in recent years. The nature of philanthropy has also been changing in recent years. New philanthropists are more likely to be closely engaged in ensuring the effectiveness of their giving, more likely to be co-operating together and more interested in looking at innovative ways of charity financing. Despite, or perhaps because of, present economic circumstances, there is much creative thinking going on. Indeed, I understand that an independent group of leading figures from the world of philanthropy, business and charities is at present discussing how best to give a lead on some of the issues that I hope this debate will cover.
Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, the present coalition has expressed an interest in encouraging philanthropy. Since I originally tabled this Motion, we have had an undertaking that the Government, bringing together the Cabinet Office, DCMS and, crucially, the Treasury, intend to publish a Green Paper on giving by the end of the year and a White Paper by the end of March next year. I very much welcome that commitment and I hope that this debate will contribute to their thinking.
I have a few suggestions on what I hope is now being considered. First, the Government should set their sights firmly on the fundamental challenge of changing public attitudes to giving. How can they do that? Above all, the Government need to find ways of getting across the idea that philanthropy is fundamentally something to be encouraged, recognised and supported, and is not inevitably some form of personal aggrandisement or, at worst, a potential tax scam for the rich. They need to explain that private philanthropy can complement government priorities, not replace them, particularly by investing in those innovative, risk-taking and high-impact charities that are so often at the forefront of social change. That general message can be reinforced by looking at new ways in which donors can be recognised—for example, through schemes like the Beacon Fellowships and indeed through the honours system, which is obviously a very sensitive area, although philanthropists have rightly been recognised in that way in the past. The message would also be strongly underlined if there were moves to revise regulations, such as the substantial donor legislation, which sometimes seem designed to make the relationship between recipient and donor awkward, if not discouraging.
Secondly, a major signal of commitment and support of philanthropy and the charity sector generally would be given if gift aid could be simplified and made more efficient. That can be presented, rightly, not as an additional tax break but as streamlining the existing tax regime. In particular, I hope that the Government will consider allowing charity aid providers to reclaim higher-rate gift aid allowance on behalf of donors. Apart from anything else, that may encourage more people to set up charity accounts, so making their giving a more regular and structured part of their financial arrangements.
Thirdly, I hope that there will be at least some consideration of further so-called “lifetime giving opportunities”. There are three areas most often advocated. There is the extension of “acceptance in lieu” rules on works of art gifted to recognised museums during a person’s lifetime as well as on death, as proposed in the Goodison report. There is the extension of existing tax breaks on gifts of listed shares to unlisted shares. The argument that it is not worth extending the scheme because few people make use of it probably has more to do with lack of knowledge of the scheme rather than anything else. Then there is the whole area of lifetime legacies—for example, in the form of charitable remainder trusts, which play an important part in the philanthropy scene in the United States. While I accept that this is a very difficult moment for the Government to be introducing tax incentives, I hope that the Green Paper can have something positive to say about these ideas, not least as a most powerful expression of support for philanthropy and the charitable sector.
Fourthly, I hope that the Green Paper will address ways of supporting new forms of charity financing—for example, through social investment models like the East London Bond, the social impact bond, online giving vehicles and matched funding. It seems to me important that the Government look for ways of incentivising these new ways of funding where they have the potential to be effective.
If the Government can do much to encourage philanthropy, so too can other interested parties. I shall mention three in particular: the corporate world, charities themselves and the media. The business world can and should do more to encourage philanthropy. In the past 20 years or so, it has recognised that corporate social responsibility is in fact good business. Within this evolution, straightforward philanthropy has obviously played a part, as has volunteering—giving time rather than money—but much more can be done. There is little doubt that more corporate encouragement for payroll giving would be an effective way to encourage greater employee giving, as would the increased use of matched funding for employees’ own fundraising activities. Both schemes would have the potential to introduce younger people to giving and philanthropy.
Charities themselves need to take a hard look at their own activities to assess the effectiveness of their fundraising, however hard their development and fundraising teams are working. There are many lessons to be learnt about the need to look after donors, to have a greater understanding of what motivates them, to work out how best to recognise them if they so wish and generally to make donors more central to the activities of the charity itself.
It is difficult to exclude the media from this list of those organisations that might have a material bearing on how much is given in our society. Many media organisations now very effectively promote their own charity campaigns; for example, at the moment through Christmas appeals. However, considering the number of people who are actively involved in the charity sector and the philanthropy world, their coverage of these areas is sometimes pretty limited. Local media in particular have an important role to play in encouraging community philanthropy and recognising local giving at that level.
In conclusion, the case for encouraging philanthropy is clear. It is important, it is timely and there are things that can be done. We would be building on the policies of the previous Administration and embracing the thinking of the present coalition Government. Indeed, this is an issue on which the House of Lords is well placed to take a lead, not least because I would guess that so many in this House are engaged in this sector and in raising funds. Now, I believe, is the time for government, business, charities and the media to make a concerted effort to change attitudes to philanthropy at every level so that it is seen as part of life, particularly for those fortunate enough to have done well in recent years, to give something back. Our objective should be as simple as it is ambitious: to make a step change in the culture of giving in this country.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, I first declare the same interest as I did in the charities sector debate on 5 October. I have set up two trusts, one for lay causes and one for ecclesiastical causes, under the Charities Aid Foundation’s admirable and efficient umbrella. It is a happy element of our conventions in your Lordships’ House that on occasions such as this we thank and congratulate the initiator of the debate on securing it for us, and on his or her opening exposition of the issues. I do that unreservedly in the case of the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, whose introduction was exemplary. In the words of Milton’s “Lycidas”, he and I—though not simultaneously—were,
“nursed upon the selfsame hill”,
at a school in Wiltshire, founded in 1843 for the sons of clergy. It is a felicitous coincidence to follow him on this subject.
I also congratulate the House of Lords Library on the comprehensive briefing it produced on the very large subject for this debate. It is a rich quarry for the future, as well as for today. The depth and quality of the Library note’s bibliography is an index of the increasing global attention being given to this subject, although it is a marginal coincidental disadvantage that the CAF and NCVO’s annual research report, UK Giving 2010, will be published tomorrow, rather than yesterday. We are rolling the pitch for tomorrow’s news.
Six-minute speeches on such a subject tend inevitably towards a scattergun technique, but the variety of components that this debate will generate will also constitute a rich quarry for your Lordships’ House’s continuing dialogue on these matters. The Library note was particularly helpful in demonstrating how multifaceted is the projected agenda, with genuine arguments on either side of particular developments. Thus, I shall identify sub-agendas still ahead of us as well as asking some questions.
I am familiar with the growing need for increased capital, as well as revenue, to enable charities and causes to pursue particular projects imaginatively. I recognise the importance of lifetime legacies as a topic. That seems a particularly good subject for a Question for Short Debate in your Lordships’ House, unless it falls outside our rules. Another such is the present state of payroll giving within the corporate framework, as the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, mentioned, the origins of which now go back some 25 years. The present national revenue outturn of £9 million a month might seem modest, but since the number of payroll givers is approximately the same as the overall shortfall in donor numbers in the UK between two recent years since the recession began, the fact that payroll givers are individually contributing £12 a month is a good base on which to build this philanthropic conduit, especially as its nature implies sustainability.
At the level of SMEs, when I was in a privately owned firm, we set aside a proportion of profits for charity, with the whole membership of the firm—one man and one woman, with one vote each—voting on what we should spend the outcome on. I like the look of the Government’s intentions towards increased giving set out in the DCMS business plan, which was published in November in advance of the Green Paper from the Government as a whole. Although the DCMS business plan I allude to understandably did not major on online gift aid, which is primarily a Treasury issue, I detect that on this matter, which is so important to increasing the gift aid yield, movement may be occurring in Whitehall.
I can foresee for intellectually respectable reasons that we shall be revisiting the arguments about additionality, which fuelled the lottery debates in the early 1990s, in the context of the relationship between increased charitable giving and the spending cuts, and, indeed, in the context of the big society itself. It seems particularly important that we should secure the same common ground that changed the position on the National Lottery etc. Bill 17 years ago between Second and Third Reading, so that at least the Front Bench of the official Opposition voted in favour of the Bill at Third Reading.
On the Government’s new agenda on personal and national well-being, the CAF’s World Giving Index has demonstrated a clear correlation between the giving of time and money and overall well-being. It would be no bad thing if this effect of philanthropy being a contributor to personal well-being became a focus in the new campaign, with its relevance to social capital. I hope the Government and the Office for National Statistics will accede to the CAF’s suggestion that charitable giving becomes one of the indicators for well-being in the planned index.
Finally, beyond or within the debate on additionality, I hope we can also pay attention to whether philanthropists working with the third sector can provide more flexible and responsive targeted public services. I give an example from rural housing. There is a putative scheme in the south-west where a social entrepreneur has seized on the problem by securing house-by-house projects in pockets of land at odd corners of like-minded landowners’ land, to be developed in line with increased local employment opportunities. It is a case of “many a mickle makes a muckle”, but in a genuinely sustainable direction. However, it is also clear that it does not readily fit into the public housing arrangements of the previous Government’s most recent Housing Act. I am not making a partisan point but I seek to get houses built in a part of our economy that is badly in need of them. While on the rural economy, has the Prince’s Countryside Fund now become a cause to which we can contribute across a post office counter?
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, for securing this debate and giving us the opportunity to focus on this important topic. I declare two interests: I chair the advisory body for the Office for Civil Society, which funds Philanthropy UK, the leading resource for free and impartial advice to aspiring philanthropists; and I am married to the chief executive of the Association of Charitable Foundations, which manages the project.
Is there anybody who is not in favour of encouraging philanthropy? You can hardly be against it, even though, in the United Kingdom, it can have negative connotations of the very rich patronising the poor for their own ends—a hangover from Victorian times, perhaps—or, nowadays, of very rich people taking advantage of tax loopholes or just offsetting their guilt about being rich. Even with those negative associations, it is generally thought to be a good thing for the individual or foundation doing the giving, for the recipient and for society at large. However, it has its complications. Your Lordships may be familiar with the quotation from Edith Wharton, the American novelist:
“There is nothing like the exasperation of the would-be philanthropist when he first discovers that nothing complicates life as much as doing good”.
Many philanthropists have echoed the words of the founder of Sears Roebuck when he said that making his first million dollars was a lot easier than giving it away wisely.
Of course we should encourage more philanthropy, but I will sound some notes of caution. First, we should not be tempted to go too far towards the American model, in which giving is seen much more as the ordinary expectation when an individual makes money, and in which being acknowledged publicly is much more acceptable. We have a different tradition and culture in this country, and the difference is crucial in how we handle philanthropy.
Secondly, there is no possible way that, however well intentioned and well managed, philanthropic giving can replace or match government funding that is being withdrawn—the numbers simply do not stack up. For example, last year government spending on education, welfare and health was more than £300 billion, while all philanthropic giving—donations, legacies, corporate spending and trusts and foundations—only came to £16 billion. Philanthropists are funders at the margins and do not have the capacity to support even the whole of the charitable sector, let alone replace government funding on a wider scale.
The Government’s focus on encouraging philanthropy is much welcomed by foundations and by individuals, but there is suspicion about it being politically motivated. Philanthropists want to make their own decisions and lead from the front, and the benefits of family foundations cannot be turned on and off like a tap. Of course, they want to work in partnership with government—they can see the benefits of that—but their motivation is to give, not to substitute for government funding. They give precisely because of their independence of action and their scope to drive their own visions. It is extremely important to remember that when engaging with philanthropists.
I am not suggesting that the Government’s attitude to philanthropy should be totally hands off. On the contrary, they should make it clear that the promotion of philanthropy is a critical component of their infrastructure plans, and should support the development of a structure to co-ordinate the growth of philanthropy in the United Kingdom and ensure that it is focused on donors. Too often, for example, fundraising is seen to focus on recipients and on the funding of special projects. To encourage philanthropy, we must view it through the eye of the prospective donor, as the noble Lord who introduced the debate reminded us, and must understand what information and support they need in order to decide to give, and to do so confidently and effectively. There is currently a daunting array of choices facing a potential giver, with much duplication and potential waste and a worrying lack of oversight or accepted good practice. Donors and their advisers would benefit from a common code of practice that ensured the best interests of both donor and beneficiary.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, about the Government taking a lead in encouraging people to develop the habit of philanthropy. While we may say that this is not a good time to do it, when times are so hard, let us not forget that the poor have always given proportionately more of their income to charity than the rich. Tax relief is also important. Let us remember the differences between the United States and the United Kingdom in this regard, too. While gift aid is welcome, I agree that the cumbersome process of claiming back has a negative impact on givers and receivers. Transferring a higher percentage of the benefits of major gifts back to donors is strongly to be recommended. I look forward to the Minister’s response to those ideas.
There is evidence of untapped philanthropic potential in the United Kingdom, but it will not be fulfilled, either in money invested or in results achieved, unless there is great assistance to philanthropists to direct their wealth in a way that satisfies both them and the big society. We need more philanthropists, great and small; more widespread philanthropy; and more thoughtful and effective philanthropy. There is a case for establishing a single body with the overarching purpose of increasing philanthropy in the United Kingdom that would inspire and guide new philanthropists, and help donors make effective choices. Again, I hope to hear the Minister's response to that.
We should remember the benefits of giving. Citizen engagement benefits civil society. Giving connects people to society, and by encouraging all scales of giving and philanthropy, we develop society. While spontaneous philanthropy of the sort that we have seen lately in big gifts to the British Museum and the National Theatre is much to be welcomed, the true potential of philanthropy will not be realised if it is simply left to happen.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, for securing this debate. I also thank the Library staff who produced an excellent note. I declare an interest: I am a long-in-the-tooth solicitor whose firm, Bates Wells and Braithwaite, acts for most of the charities already mentioned in the debate. Therefore, I have an intimate involvement and connection with charity.
Of course, the philanthropy is not just charity. The definition in the Oxford English dictionary is:
“Concern for the welfare of mankind, especially as shown by acts of benevolence”.
Benevolent is defined as:
“Wishing to do good; actively friendly and helpful”.
I will concentrate on the non-financial philanthropy that can easily be overlooked in a debate such as this. Money is an easily measured commodity, the giving of time and compassion is not. I will also say that philanthropy is the heart and soul of this country. It represents the very best of our culture, our history and our traditions. One of the finest reflections of that is that the Statute of Elizabeth 1601 is the only piece of British law that survived the American declaration of independence. Its preamble is still the foundation of American charity law, as it is of our own.
I return to the giving of time, skill, wisdom and compassion. One of the unfortunate consequences of the development of our society and culture over the past 40 years is the removal of a greater proportion of what one might call the natural elite, or middle classes, from practical, active engagement with communities and society. In my profession, if you were to compare the amount of time and engagement with his or her community of a solicitor in 1950 or 1960, with that of a solicitor today, you would be shocked. Many of my professional brethren do not have the time or energy to devote any of their remarkable intelligence and experience to the public realm. That is a sadness for them and for our society, because there is no more useful person in civil society, at whatever point or level, than a solicitor, accountant or banker, who can bring to the deliberations of whatever body they are concerned with the skills and experience that they have garnered in their professional life. If nothing else, I hope that we as a society will think more about how we can do something to reverse this malign trend.
In so doing, I would like to think that we would learn to celebrate again men and women who give no money—because they have no money to give—but give of themselves in a practical, informal way that is the lifeblood of our communities. Although she will certainly not thank me for so doing, I hold up to you Mary Tatum, a lady of advanced years in my home town of Sudbury, whom I have known from boyhood. She has no money, no influence, no power and no position; yet she has devoted her 70-plus years to a philanthropic way of life that is a shining beacon to anyone in this Chamber and beyond. She will help the needy, the oppressed and the confused in any way that she can and at any time, with little regard to her own needs and financial wealth. But my goodness, she has immaterial wealth: in that, she is a billionaire.
I would also like to think that the great professions in this land, and the great business organisations, will do a great deal more than corporate social responsibility has yet delivered to fill the gap. It is astonishing that less than a handful of law faculties—fewer than five out of more than 100—set ethics as a necessary component of a law degree. It is shameful that of the 200 business schools, only two have a compulsory ethical component. If ever one wanted to inculcate, or re-inculcate, a sense of wider philanthropy among those who will be tomorrow’s leaders, surely it must start at that point.
I wanted to throw into the rich stew of today’s debate the thought that the philanthropy of time, skill, compassion and experience is not only wonderfully beneficial for those to whom it is given but inestimably beneficial to those who give it.
Baroness Prashar
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, for securing this debate and for his masterly introduction. I also declare an interest: I am honorary president of the Community Foundation Network. This afternoon I will be speaking mainly about community philanthropy, which I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, mention, and the importance of harnessing local capacity to increase giving and its effectiveness.
Community philanthropy is planned, strategic giving, made with a specific end goal in mind. It recognises that philanthropists are most likely to be motivated to engage with recipients, and continue to extend their support for them, when they share with them a common interest, may that be geographic, ethnic, social or cultural. That is what community foundations are engaged in. Community foundations connect doers with donors at local level. They offer expertise in a specific locality, identify common interests and develop strategies and ways of bringing philanthropists closer to the work of the recipients. More importantly, they embrace not just charities but all organisations that work to benefit their local community without the motive of profit.
The foundations’ work demonstrates that strong local communities provide a framework within which many social problems can be addressed; that small amounts of money applied in the right place can have a disproportionately large effect; that connecting donors with community groups creates social capital as well as financial support; and that communities are strengthened by relationships between rich and poor, the haves and have-nots. The activities of the community foundations include raising new philanthropic funds, identifying the groups that deliver change, investing in organisations through grants and monitoring subsequent progress, and developing endowments to create permanent and independent funding.
The Government want to empower people and communities and develop a culture of responsibility, an objective which I fully support. But to give effect to this vision we need to engage the full range of resources available to us centrally and locally. We need to build on and support existing initiatives which have been successful in encouraging philanthropy. One type of infrastructure of which I have personal knowledge is the Community Foundation Network, a membership body of 50 or so accredited community foundations located across Britain. CFN has been supporting local community foundations to realise their full potential. Over the years community foundations have undertaken a range of grant programmes for government and the lottery which has enabled them to develop a unique capacity to identify and fund local groups based on local knowledge provided by an army of volunteers.
There are not many organisations that have this level of knowledge drawn from the community. While giving has, as we have heard, been declining elsewhere, the community foundations have grown. This movement is supported and led by the CFN, which has managed a range of successful private sector and government grant programmes to unlock the potential of community foundations to deliver. CFN is an enabling body. It is not just another intermediary organisation. Its work is closely aligned with the Government’s big society agenda. Community foundations are one of the most valuable tools in our armoury to help the Government realise their aspiration of the big society.
If the Government are to achieve the culture of responsibility and encourage philanthropy they should be supporting not only centralised organisations but organisations that have an extensive local reach. The community foundation movement is an existing infrastructure with a proven track record and a local, decentralised delivery capacity. It was therefore disappointing that when the list of organisations through which the Government might choose to deliver grants—that is, the grants administration framework—was announced, none had a local delivery capacity, a local reach or a track record in developing new giving. Can the Minister assure the House that the forthcoming community first programme will include organisations with local reach and that this dimension will not be overlooked? If this does not happen we are in danger of damaging rather than harnessing the infrastructure that has proved itself capable of developing innovative community philanthropy. It also runs contrary to the Prime Minister’s desire to unleash community engagement. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Janvrin for calling this timely debate. Over lunch my noble friend Lord Northbourne reminded me of Coram Family and the establishment for children in Holborn, which was endowed by Hogarth and Handel in the 18th century. Because of that endowment it has become a centre of excellence, and the model on which the previous Government based their children’s centres. Those centres are highly successful institutions that serve the most vulnerable families in society. They are immortalised not only in their art but in their philanthropy in standing up to the experience of orphans in London in the 18th century. I was also reminded of Toynbee Hall, a similar institution that enabled women and men such as Attlee to move from their privileged backgrounds, to learn what it was like for people living in the east end, and to change their political beliefs, the institutions and the direction of this nation.
Only on Tuesday evening I heard from a director of children’s services that he would have to end a training programme for his foster carers. The programme had significantly improved the literacy of his local authority’s children in care and reduced the number of foster placement breakdowns. His local authority simply could not find the funds to continue the project. Money is very short, as my noble friend said.
I am also prompted by what my noble friend said to think about corporate social responsibility, and I declare an interest as the recipient of hospitality from the National Grid. I have been very impressed by its programme for young offenders in the past several years. Beginning in Reading young offender institution, the Grid offered young people a three-month training programme and guaranteed a job at the end if they were successful. At the start those jobs were fork-lift driving and laying pipes. Since then it has successfully trained up 2,000 trainees, and its record is of reducing reoffending from 70 per cent in the general population to 7 per cent, or probably less. That is a good example of philanthropy from business. It has been led by Sir John Parker, the chairman, who has now reached out to many other companies across Britain to support this initiative, which has been developed by Dr Mary Harris of the National Grid.
I strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley said, about the state not being able simply to offload its responsibilities on to philanthropists. Furthermore, matched funding from local and central government will be crucial to encourage giving.
I wish to highlight an excellent programme for vulnerable children, and I ask the Minister what means are currently available to make it easy for this and other services that make a difference in helping children to find philanthropic support. I am thinking particularly of the online giving vehicles to which my noble friend referred. What should the first port of call be for philanthropists looking to support specific projects for vulnerable children—not big name charities, as important as they are, but individual projects that may appeal to particular donors with particular interests?
My example is the charity Siblings Together, which sets up summer and Easter camps each year for children in local authority care and their brothers and sisters. The charity’s founder, Delma Hughes, is a registered art therapist who experienced local authority care as a child and grew up without the opportunity of knowing any of her brothers or sisters. With the help and support of Hilton Dawson, then the chief executive of a children’s charity and now chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers, she visited America to work in one of its Camps to Belong and to learn from its experience. Mr Dawson also made available his charity’s venture facilities for Ms Hughes’s first camps.
For three years now she has been organising camps, enabling brothers and sisters separated in care to be reunited on holiday and to share exciting experiences together. The staff are all volunteers drawn from social work, youth work and related childcare professions. The children speak movingly of their time together with their siblings. This year the charity ran one of its schemes at a theatre, thanks to the Young Vic, and currently has a very attractive venue in the far west of Wales, thanks to the Dandelion Trust. The largest sibling group it has brought together is a group of five.
The trustee board includes David Holmes, chief executive of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering. Each camp costs £12,000 and this summer one of the camps was funded by a trust, the other by the children’s local authorities. The Who Cares? Trust publicises the schemes free of charge in its magazines for young people in care. Delma Hughes would welcome philanthropic support for next year’s camps.
Surely there should be some vehicle to enable philanthropists to search for specific projects relating to their particular interests. Ideally, it should also connect them to other donors so that they can find donations to match their own and leverage their giving. Ideally, it would also be available to children in school to enable them to get into the giving habit.
I am running out of time. Is the Minister aware of the charity The Big Give, which seems to do all these things? I confess that I discovered this organisation only yesterday, but I have found it a useful tool. I would be grateful to hear from the Minister the Government’s assessment of The Big Give’s contribution to encouraging philanthropy.
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, for initiating the debate. At first sight, the title, “The case for encouraging philanthropy”, is a proposition from which few, if any, could dissent, although I realise it might just be possible to read between the lines and discern a subtext that might become a substitute for government funding and allow government to escape from some of its responsibilities to the citizen. However, even if that were anyone’s intention—I do not believe that it is—and if anyone wanted to suggest that encouraging philanthropy is a way of dismantling some parts of the welfare state, we should remember that Beveridge’s plan took for granted the existence of strong local communities, mutual relationships and support and sheer good neighbourliness. Philanthropy is an essential component of a civilised society, and the mixed economy of individualism, community living, organised philanthropy and state action is surely the key to societal well-being.
I have used the words “organised philanthropy” because I wish to speak about one example of that from my own experience. I declare an interest as one of the vice-presidents of the Community Foundation that serves Tyne and Wear and Northumberland. I shall take further one or two of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. The Community Foundation is one of the best examples of organised philanthropy. It began in 1988 and now manages over 250 donor funds. Last year it made 1,700 grants totalling £6 million, and it is the largest of the 57 Community Foundations in the UK. It is the hub for social philanthropy in the area and inspires, encourages and supports giving, which strengthens local communities, including some of the most depressed and disadvantaged communities anywhere in the country.
Individuals, families, businesses and companies can set up a named fund that supports the needs of the causes that match the interests of the donor. The foundation is a kind of philanthropic dating agency; it matches applications from groups and individuals with the wishes of the donor, and then does the rest. It has been successful for three reasons: it has attracted a diverse membership of individuals, voluntary groups, public bodies and businesses, all of whom are engaged in local society; the genuinely strong sense of community and identity at the heart of the north-east; and the sheer generosity of the donors, who have inherited a long tradition of supporting local people, communities and causes. On Tyneside there is a great tradition of generous giving going back generations.
In Victorian times, of course, charitable trusts were set up by the very wealthy, many of whom were paternal employers who cared for their workforce. They knew that their livelihood depended on their workforce and local community and were very aware of the human destructiveness of poverty and hardship. Today, successful business people have increasingly recognised that their success and their wealth carry with it a responsibility to give something back. That has often been done through vehicles such as the Community Foundation.
I am humbled by the sheer generosity of people to those less fortunate than themselves. Initiatives such as the Grassroots Endowment Challenge of the previous Government, together with the launch of Acorn funds, have helped immensely and have brought organised philanthropy within the reach of most people. For example, a donation of £20 a week—£1,000 a year—will build up a fund over 25 years.
Yet there are still challenges to overcome. There is a good deal of evidence of philanthropy among the wealthy, but how do we encourage it, in an organised way, among those who are less wealthy but still comfortably off? How do we shift from spontaneous giving to appeals such as Children in Need to a more organised giving because of the values that we hold about our mutual belonging and commitment to one another and for the well-being of the society of which we are a part?
Somehow we have to encourage and develop a whole new culture of giving. How do we do that? There have been a few suggestions, and I support many of the things that the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, said. We need to recognise our philanthropists more positively and in new ways; we need to start the educational process in our schools and build up the pioneering work of the Institute for Philanthropy; we need our banks to play their part by setting up charity bank accounts to make it easier to give; we need more challenge funding such as the Grassroots Endowment Challenge; and we need perhaps better tax incentives and a much simplified gift aid system. All that should encourage a culture of giving.
Philanthropy needs and deserves greater encouragement, but it is not and can never be a replacement for public sector funding. It is unlikely that donors will ever give to unfashionable projects or to unappealing and unglamorous but necessary work. I am thinking about three very small charities that are trying to do heroic work by giving care and emergency payments to destitute asylum seekers. Where do such bodies go for funding? They do not get it from government and they certainly do not get it from some donors through bodies such as the Community Foundation. Philanthropy can go only so far. It will always need the support of an active Government, and an active Government need to do all they can—along with the rest of us—not only to support the case for encouraging philanthropy but to be active in encouraging it for the well-being not only of our society but of each other.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I am delighted to add my congratulations to the noble Lord who introduced the debate. I am particularly pleased to do so as I share his view that there is a moral duty on each of us to put something back into society, particularly those of us who are fortunate. It is important to do so whatever the economic weather; when the economic weather is stormy, as it is at present, it is doubly so.
My noble friend Lord Phillips said that giving something back could be a matter of time as well as money—of course, he is absolutely right about that—and the pressures of modern life have made that more difficult. However, I regret to say that there has also been a growth in what I call the selfish gene. The tendency to ask “What’s in it for me?” has become more prevalent in our society. We need to think about what has made people less responsive to their wider responsibilities. My noble friend referred to business schools being asked to provide courses on ethics. I am not against that but business schools could perform a more important task in undertaking serious intellectual analysis of what one might call a social return on investment. If we could find a way to analyse and measure what the social return of these various projects could be—in the way that we have accounting standards now—it would be an extremely useful way of developing alternative ways of measuring what is going in on our society at the grass roots.
The challenges have been laid out. I wish to concentrate on three brief points. How do we encourage the extremely wealthy and the moderately wealthy to contribute, and how do we encourage the 30 to 50 year-olds, who are probably rather below par in the giving arena, also to do their bit? I declare my interests, which are recorded on the Register, as president of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and chairman of the Armed Forces Charities Advisory Committee. As regards encouraging the wealthy, we need to do more to find ways to encourage people to set up grant-giving foundations. This is critical because they provide long-term dedicated funding, which is much needed by charities and which is not really available through the gift aid programme. They do so often in areas that are edgy and not immediately populist, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle said. We know that charities concerned with children and animals are appealing. That is absolutely splendid; I am all for that; but we need to find ways to encourage giving to more difficult, less popular, causes, which none the less have an important role to play in our society.
There are three things that we could do to encourage people to set up foundations and to participate in this way. First, we could look at the bureaucracy of reporting. The accounting SORP—statement of recommended practice—has expanded year by year and could, and should, be cut back. We should look at the Trustee Act and laws on diversification, which are more of a concern in theory than in reality, but nevertheless lead people to believe that they may lose complete control of the way the foundation they have established operates. Referring to a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, we need to reflect on the difference between the US and the UK in balancing the right of society to have transparency about what is going on with the right of privacy for someone who is giving a great deal of money to charitable causes. I have said in the House before that the British disease is not idleness but envy. This means that some people are frightened to establish a foundation because they think that it may open them up to adverse criticism.
The second point I would like to make concerning the moderately wealthy is to support the remarks made about the importance of establishing a regime for charitable remainder trusts. The great concern of the moderately wealthy is that their circumstances may change and therefore the gift that they gave irrevocably to a charity may leave them short of funding in their old age. If we had a charitable remainder trust regime, they could give the capital to the charity, which is what it needs, and at the same time could have some form of income flowing from it for their lifetime and that of their wife or husband. That would encourage people of moderate means, particularly those whose assets are tied up in a single asset such as a house, to be more generous during their lifetime.
Thirdly, I turn to venture philanthropy, which may appeal to 30 to 50 year-olds. All the evidence I have come across shows that web-confident 30 to 50 year-olds are increasingly disinclined to contribute to a huge, anonymous pool. They want to see how their money is being used and its effect, and the more specific that is, the better. It is a real challenge to the sector to find ways to connect means with ends. I am glad to say that the NCVO is doing some creative thinking on this and I think there is quite a lot going on in the sector generally. Examples of this are emerging. My noble friend Lady Barker, who will be speaking in a minute, has pioneered—I am glad to help that in a small way—a project called See the Difference. I will not spoil her thunder as I am sure that she will wish to refer to that project but it enables people to give money through the web to a specific cause and see how a difference is being made. I am sure that this idea will be very important in the future. This is just one example but there are several others out there in the marketplace. They ought to be encouraged and we ought to try to find ways to be as creative as possible in linking people’s funding with specific outcomes which makes them feel that they have made a real difference.
This is a critical debate and the noble Lord is to be congratulated on it. I hope very much that we can follow up some of the ideas that have been put forward.
Baroness Coussins
My Lords, in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, on securing this debate, I should like to say a little more about the role of business in encouraging philanthropy. In modern terms as we have already heard from several noble Lords, this is part of what is now generally known as corporate social responsibility. I declare an interest as an independent adviser on CSR to various global companies listed in the Register of Interests, all of which commit significant resources to charitable activities around the world. CSR is, of course, about much more than donating to charity or bestowing patronage on the arts. Cynics might say that it is just a way of reducing corporation tax or a relatively cheap way for companies to feel virtuous. However, I would argue that it is a mainstream business driver and a very important aspect of how the success of a company should be judged in the 21st century.
There are various indices and awards that measure and publicise aspects of a company's CSR performance, such as FTSE4Good and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. The pioneering organisation, Business in the Community, has been mobilising its member companies for nearly 30 years now to work collaboratively in disadvantaged communities. BITC publishes the CR index and in 2008 launched the community mark initiative, which is designed to set a new standard of excellence in community investment.
The word “sustainability” sums up why CSR is important to business. As I said, it is not just about charity, it is also about the way the workplace is run and the workforce is treated; it is about the impact of the business on the environment; and it is about the social impact of its products or services in the marketplace. Unless a business gets all these things right, including the charitable side, its brand image and corporate reputation could suffer. By contrast, we know that new cultural norms and expectations about corporate responsibility are influencing consumer purchasing patterns. We know that FTSE 350 companies that are active in corporate responsibility outperform their peers by between 3.3 per cent and 7.7 per cent a year, so CSR can help give business its competitive edge.
The element of charitable giving or community support should be one of the building blocks of any company's CSR programme. Although its effect and impact may be philanthropic in the traditional sense, it is enlightened self-interest rather than pure altruism which motivates it—and it is none the less welcome or worthy for that. The opportunity for the entire workforce to have a say in which charity should be a company's charity of the year is a good example of how the workforce, as individuals, can feel engaged with the company as a whole. The benefits to the business include positive attitudes towards the employer, team-building and co-operation and, of course, good external publicity. Some companies agree to match-fund what their employees raise and also allow work time, venues and facilities to be used for charitable fundraising activity.
Another example of what might be termed philanthropic business action is volunteering. This features increasingly in companies’ CSR strategies. This might involve carrying out repairs and decorations at a local school, clearing rubbish from rivers and ditches, or giving children one-to-one reading practice. Some companies have enabled employees to participate in mentoring schemes for older children or for ex-offenders. These activities provide a win-win situation for everyone concerned, with the company benefiting from the reputational capital built up in the local community, which, after all, is also its recruitment ground. Then there are the initiatives which involve in-kind support, whereby a company might donate its product or services, facilities or venues for the benefit of a local or national charity. This might include offering work placement or work experience to students or ex-offenders. It could also work the other way around, with professional accountants, lawyers or marketers spending time with a charitable body showing it how to professionalise or scale-up its operations.
Some strands of CSR have a very obvious business case. Measures to reduce energy consumption, waste and packaging, for example, are good for climate change, but they also, self-evidently, reduce costs—just what every shareholder, board member or chief executive wants to hear. Beyond that, there are still too many businesses which think that the rest of CSR is a bit of a luxury or an optional extra—unaffordable in an economic downturn. They need to be encouraged to understand the business case, but they also need the regulatory and administrative obstacles that can sometimes block a good initiative to be removed. This is where the Government should step in to facilitate the progress of enlightened self-interest.
The barriers, from a business perspective, include the time taken and the cost of obtaining repeated CRB checks. The regime for protecting children is absolutely necessary, but is overly cumbersome, time-consuming and costly. I ask the Minister to look at how this could be streamlined, as well as at other aspects of the red tape which often inhibit businesses from embarking on volunteering programmes.
Another example is the difficulty that can be encountered in obtaining professional insurance cover for employees who donate their time and services. The Government could and should do more to provide incentives to businesses to engage with ex-offenders and other socially excluded groups. I ask the Minister to look again at all these issues and to ensure that the role of corporate giving within the broader context of CSR is fully acknowledged in the forthcoming White Paper.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury
My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, for the opportunity to debate this important topic. I will concentrate on philanthropy from the perspective of the arts, culture and heritage and so this debate is also very timely because, next week, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport will be launching the department’s philanthropy strategy.
The coalition is strongly committed to the arts and heritage, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State fought long and hard to achieve what he could against the background of a very tough spending review. This includes National Lottery funding being restored to its original good causes. However, this debate is about philanthropy, and we on these Benches believe—as did the previous Government, the former Minister for Culture, Margaret Hodge, being a particular champion—that philanthropy plays an extremely important role in providing funding and support for the arts and that the role philanthropy plays can and should become even more important.
There is much to celebrate about the state of philanthropy in the UK today and we applaud the generosity of the British people who support countless good causes. Only a couple of weeks ago, more than £18 million was raised for Children in Need. So far as the arts, culture and heritage are concerned, I shall provide a few facts and figures. The sector received £126 million in donations of more than £1 million in 2008-09 and was the second most popular destination for million-pound donations after higher education. Overall, private investment in the arts and culture stood at £655 million in 2008-09. The Art Fund has saved more than 860,000 works of art through its campaigns directed at a public who have responded with their all-important pounds and pence.
The noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, mentioned the need for innovation and imagination. New and exciting forms of private support for the arts are emerging, such as All Visual Arts—set up by hedge fund billionaire Mike Platt—which aims to reinvent the age-old tradition of artistic patronage by investing in artists up-front. The artist receives money in advance that is offset against the final sale price of his or her work, with any profit split 50:50. Art dealers habitually take up to 70 per cent of the sale price, with no advance involved. This way of proceeding means that very few artists can make a living. At All Visual Arts, patrons receive a return on their investment, but the financial arrangement is much more favourable to the artist. This kind of social investment—sometimes called blended-value investment, because there is some financial return and a measurable social return—provides a different kind of support from government and should be encouraged further.
Another scheme at the other end of the philanthropic scale is called crowd funding. It involves encouraging large numbers of people to give small amounts of money through the web. My noble friend Lord Hodgson has already mentioned my noble friend Lady Barker—here I declare an interest, because she is a real friend as well as a noble friend—who is involved in a website called “See the Difference”, which is dedicated to the charity sector. In the arts sector next year there is to be launched a site called “We Did This”, which will focus on the arts. This is citizen philanthropy, and may have been inspired by the Art Fund’s brilliant campaign back in 2007, which successfully saved Turner’s “The Blue Rigi” for the nation, when members of the public were asked to pledge their support by buying “a brushstroke”. Both schemes promote the involvement of the giver with the cause they are donating to.
The Government need to do more to help organisations raise money so I make some suggestions, some of which have been mentioned. As a nation, we are not good at celebrating private giving. More should be done to make donors and their contributions more visible, which would demonstrate publicly the impact that they have on the organisations and individuals who receive them. The director of development for the National Galleries of Scotland has found that donors need to see a link between their gift and the projects that get released in the country. Gift Aid has been mentioned, as has the acceptance in lieu scheme being extended to cover lifetime gifts of works of art. We should also look at match funding, which has been hugely successful in helping to raise money for UK universities. Organisations that are looking to reduce their reliance on public funding by expanding their activities and developing their business models will need help during the transition period. Returning to universities, a crucial lesson learnt was the importance of investing in fundraising skills at all levels from vice-chancellors to new graduates.
The role of philanthropy in the area of arts and culture is emphatically to complement, rather than to act as a substitute for, government funding. Public money dispensed by arm’s-length bodies free from political or commercial considerations is a key part of the equation, and one that the generosity of individuals cannot and should not replace. Different sources of funding will work for different organisations, and we want a funding structure for the arts and culture that enables the greatest variety of artists and art forms to flourish. This includes supporting the risky and challenging and allowing the right to offend. With that thought in mind, I end with Oscar Wilde:
“Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic”.
Lord Ramsbotham
Like other noble Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Janvrin on obtaining this important debate and, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said, on introducing in an exemplary manner his case for encouraging philanthropy. Like other noble Lords, I am also extremely grateful to the Library for yet again turning up a marvellous briefing for us, including the definition of philanthropy as being,
“practical benevolence towards people in general”.
I was also glad that it included the statement by the Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd, that he is trying to create new social norms around higher levels of giving of both time and money because for me, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said, the philanthropy that we are talking about, particularly in relation to working with the public sector, is giving time, skill and experience as well as money. Some people give time and some people give money, and both have to be enabled.
In that connection, I agree with my noble friend Lord Janvrin who said that the Government need to explain how philanthropy can complement what the public sector is trying to do. In particular, turning to the criminal justice system, which I know is not the Minister’s field, the problem faced by the voluntary sector working in the criminal justice system is trying to come to terms with exactly what “payment by results” means. If small voluntary sector organisations, of which there are myriad, have to wait for six years until the result is proved to get their money, they will go under and disappear.
I am very interested in an increasing tendency for donors to come together to fund projects, including in the venture philanthropy area. In this, they are extremely fortunate to be helped by the admirable briefing that is available from an organisation that the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, has already mentioned, New Philanthropy Capital. Over the years, it has produced a number of extremely carefully researched reports pointing out to donors where their funding would be particularly valuable. That idea has been picked up by Philanthropy UK.
If I may for a moment concentrate on why I think that is important in the criminal justice system, it is because 50 per cent of all work done to rehabilitate offenders is done by the voluntary sector. Therefore, it is extremely important that that work is maximised, taken on board and enabled by government. I remember that during my first visit to Feltham I asked to meet the voluntary sector organisations that were working there. Forty-three organisations turned up to meet me. Many of them were doing exactly the same work, but with boys from different parts of London. None of them knew that the others were there, and there was no organisation by the Prison Service to make a note of what they were doing or to go out and find people who could come to do work that was required. I am very glad that that has now been rectified and, in addition, there is at last a recognition that the foundations and trusts that provide this money must be included in planning. There is a now a group that meets Ministers to make certain that foundation trust money is included overall in planning and is not wasted.
I mention that because at the same time there is another increasing trend that I welcome. It is the coming together of groups of people who give time, not just money. The Arts Alliance, which is a group of all the organisations bringing arts to offenders, was formed to try to maximise what they can do, to represent them to government and to act as a conduit to pass the Government’s views down to the sector. At the same time, another group of foundations and trusts has come together to maximise the recommendations for the voluntary sector that were included in the Corston report for women, because they felt that the Government of that time were not maximising or moving them forward quickly enough and that that again endangered the money that they were putting into it.
At the same time, I have another example—not from the criminal justice system—where this coming together of donors is achieving results. Many noble Lords will be aware of the large numbers of casualties coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and of all the veterans from the Armed Forces facing other problems. There is the beginning now of a number of personnel recovery centres being established around the country to which they and their families can go for help. The help provided there on mental health, on employment and with practical help in other ways is being funded by collections of charities coming together. It seems to me that if there is to be a sort of new philanthropic movement in this country, it is very much spread around. Rather than small organisations doing wonderful things all over the place but in isolation, as we come into the increased financial stringencies it might perhaps make sense for them to come together and maximise what they do.
In that connection, I conclude by telling the Minister that, to me, if the public and voluntary sectors and philanthropy are to come together, the key word in it all is partnership. In order to maximise the extraordinary vibrancy and depth of philanthropy in this country, partnership is crucial. In doing that, however, I echo the words of my noble friend Lady Coussins in asking: please, please, will you do something to eliminate the bureaucracy, the red tape and the dangers of the things that the health and safety debate exposed last week which are inhibiting the ability of the voluntary and charitable sector to do all that it does so well for this country?
Lord Best
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, for allowing us to have this excellent debate. I declare the interests that I have on the register, which include acting as chair of the giving forum, which brings together a number of interested parties to increase giving within the UK. Like the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, I declare an interest in having a charitable trust of my own. It is a very small one, and is administered by the Charities Aid Foundation. Perhaps it might be of value if I highlighted some advantages of creating those small trusts, or even of opening a simple account with the Charities Aid Foundation and of combining it with the use of the payroll-giving arrangements.
I want to explain to your Lordships why combining a CAF account or trust with payroll-giving—the CAF administers one of those schemes, called Give As You Earn—has huge advantages. Let me see if I can spell out those advantages. They will, I hope, appeal to that new group of people in the 30 to 50 age group whom the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Ashley Abbots, pointed out—they are, not least, in the City and earning money in the financial sector or the legal profession—and who may be in a position to make a monthly donation to the world of charity. Using the payroll-giving instrument and a charitable foundation—a small trust, or simply by opening an account there—has the following seven advantages.
Payroll-giving allows you to plan the amount that you are going to give each month, and then forget about it. When appeals come out of the blue, you do not have to put your hand in your pocket; you take it from the account that you have already established and into which your monthly payment goes. You have the satisfaction of watching the funds accumulate there until such time as you wish to spend them. You also get automatic tax relief paid into that account. It is not only tax relief at the standard rate, which is what happens with gift aid, but an automatic credit to your account of tax at your highest rate. If you are a 40 per cent tax rate payer, 40 per cent is credited to the account; and if in the future you are a 50 per cent tax rate payer, 50 per cent will accrue to your account. If you do not want to get some of that money back by reclaiming it from the Revenue by filling in a lot of forms, it is a very simple and straightforward way to give all the money that you wish to give and of having it all credited against your account for additional tax.
You can be generous when the office marathon runners all suddenly decide that they wish to approach you for sponsorship in a month when you have had rather a lot of other expenditure, because it is going to come out of your separate account. You can change the charities that you support at whim. You are not boxed into a monthly payment to the same charity month after month. You can do as you please. If, as I suspect some Members of this House do, you receive occasional fees for lectures or conferences, you can ask for the cheque to be made payable to your charitable account instead of to yourself, and in that way you do not have all the hassle of remembering to declare the money, pay tax on it and then perhaps donate it to charity; the cheque can just be made out to your charitable account. No administration is involved, there is no tax return entry to make, and there are no setting-up costs, so the lawyers get nothing out of this arrangement at all. Finally, and most importantly, it is hugely rewarding to be able to make your cheques out to local charities.
Nowadays, I am afraid that I am approached by charities that are struggling, perhaps because their statutory funding has been cut back, but it is important to be able to assist without damage to one’s own finances. I am sure that I shall be more than tempted by the See the Difference programme, which I think the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, will tell us about later.
For all those reasons, the combination of payroll-giving and opening a CAF account has huge advantages. I ask the Minister to consider ways in which the corporate sector—businesses and companies—can be helped to foster arrangements of this kind, making it as easy as possible for people to sign up to payroll-giving and making it part of the culture of the workplace. People in a company simply sign a form and the payroll-giving system allows them to opt to donate so much per month, which they can always top up. If the tsunami appeal comes along, you can donate through payroll-giving just by dropping a note to the HR department. Companies can make this extremely easy for everyone, and I believe that Nick Hurd, the Minister in the other place, is looking at potential incentives for companies to do more. This is one way in which businesses can be very helpful—not least with auto-enrolment, whereby people are included almost whether they like it or not. Everything is made so easy that the process happens almost automatically.
In conclusion, I very much support the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, that we have a debate on another occasion about charitable remainder trusts—the lifetime legacies to which the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, also referred. I think that these trusts were first dreamt up in about 2001 by the Institute for Philanthropy, and they were the subject of a debate that we had in 2006—a debate in which some noble Lords here took part. I think that we are now ready for lifetime legacies; they, too, could make a big difference.
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Best. The only thing that he did not mention was the gift of shares, which is an even sharper way of getting your marginal tax relief out of the CAF. I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, and the Library.
My theme, briefly, is philanthropy and the church, and I am very conscious that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle will be listening. I am prompted to speak on this subject by reports that the Church Commissioners are again considering the sale of the Zurbarán pictures—Zurbarán being a famous 16th century artist who painted Jacob and his children—which hang in Auckland Castle, the seat of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. I live in the north-east of England, which is an area of amazing Christian heritage. I live more or less equidistant from Durham Cathedral and York Minster, slightly closer to Ripon Cathedral and not far from Whitby and Jarrow. Many churches in the north-east of England are old and famous. Escomb and Lastingham, for example, have Roman parts.
The church has always been incredibly philanthropic from the very earliest days of the monasteries and the foundation of schools and university colleges. It is incredibly philanthropic today, as indeed we heard from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. It is involved in the academy movement, for example. However, the church, too, depends on charity. It depends on collections and on the famous diocesan quota, and it is dependent on appeals. Durham Cathedral, York Minster and Ripon Cathedral all have appeals. Every noble Lord will know of a church not far from where they live that has an appeal because, for example, the roof needs mending.
Why do people give money to these appeals and contribute to church collections? It is always true to say that there is an emotional connection in the giving of money, a feeling that it should be done and that we benefit not only the person to whom we give the money but ourselves. That has been mentioned by several noble Lords. If you go to an advent service in Durham Cathedral, you are much more likely to give money to the cathedral appeal.
This takes me back to the Zurbarán pictures, which were given to Auckland Castle by Bishop Trevor in 1756. He did up a room and put them in it, and they are still there today. It is necessary to think very carefully about selling them. The Church Commissioners are probably seen, quite correctly, as a business, since they manage some £5 billion of assets. If they were to sell the Zurbaráns, the paintings might go for £12 million, which is the figure that is being bandied about. I will not speculate on their destination. There is an idea that they should stay in the north-east, but maybe they will go somewhere quite different. Presumably the money will be added to the endowment of the Church Commissioners. It would yield an income at 4 per cent, which is roughly the yield on the commissioners’ portfolio of around £500,000 a year. The question then, if they are sold, is why I need to give money to the local church for repairs if the church has just raised £12 million.
At the same time, we have heard about community foundations and giving money to the church to organise a community foundation or a school. The two-way street has been a consistent feature of the church and needs to be thought about very carefully. It might be better to go the other way around with the Zurbarán pictures in Auckland Castle: that is, to raise money from charitable sources to keep the castle and its pictures as they are.
Baroness Barker
My Lords, I begin by declaring some interests. I am the owner of a consultancy called Third Sector Business, which works in the charitable sector, and, as a number of noble Lords have said, I also work with See the Difference. I put on the record the organisation’s thanks to the many Members of your Lordships’ House who over the past two years have shared with us their wisdom and support. We are immensely grateful for that. In a moment I shall talk about what See the Difference does in some detail, because it points the way forward for many of the issues which the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, raised so eloquently in his speech.
Christmas is upon us and I have a gift for Members of your Lordships’ House. It is a sure-fire way to get through the Christmas shopping crowds in Oxford Street. It is very easy. All you have to do is put on a fluorescent jacket with the name of a charity on it and carry a clipboard. The waves will part and people will avoid you. That is because “chuggers” encapsulate what is wrong with the relationship between charities and donors and why that has to change. Currently we have a situation in which charities engage with people in a conversation about money. We Brits do not like talking about money. The Americans do—that is why they are different—but we do not. We shy away from it, so the way in which charities ask for support and engage with their donors needs to change. Why is that? It is because some 16 million of our compatriots aged 25 to 50 are frustrated givers, and they conduct much of their life on Facebook. They are very interested in and concerned about issues. They want to engage with charities but they want that engagement to be fulfilling, rewarding and fun; they want it to be something that they can share with their friends and family. Above all, they want to see the difference that their input will make.
My charity and others—I name-check AliveandGiving and the Pennies Foundation—are waking up to that and are trying to find ways in which we can use the internet, films and videos to make the connection that people want between their act of philanthropy and the output. That may involve Durham Cathedral or, in the case of Bill Gates, delivering malaria vaccines to Bangladesh. We know that seeing the difference that you make is the most inspiring thing and it is inspiration, not obligation, that drives philanthropy. Our charity trains UK-registered charities to make little films that make a specific ask for money. If you or I or anyone gives any amount of money, the undertaking is that we will receive feedback that shows exactly what difference our money made. That is immensely powerful.
Why am I raising this issue in this debate? The lives of the next generation, particularly the younger end, are in many ways organised around the internet. For 20 year-olds these days, if something goes wrong with their mobile phone, that is it; life comes to a grinding halt. Yet in the charitable sector we think that mobile phone technology is new. We need to get the expertise from the private sector and other places to help us to develop apps and so on, so that giving to charity becomes part of the culture of that generation. People from that generation are, I believe, very generous, but they want to give in a way that is different from the way in which the older generation give.
I believe—and I would love to debate CSR at considerable length with the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins—that some of the biggest contributions that our biggest companies, particularly retailers, could make to the charitable sector would be to share their wisdom about IT, social networking and management information. More than anything else, that would be an enormous help to the voluntary sector, not least because in many ways—the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, alluded to this—charities will have to become consumer-led organisations. We know that consumer-led organisations can meet the expectations of their consumers only if they have good systems behind their work to deliver. We expect private companies to have good systems, but we expect charities to run on thin air. That does not work.
My question to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, is whether there will be a digital strategy in the Green Paper and the White Paper. If we do not deal with issues such as the need to increase digital giving, as discussed in the recent ResPublica report, we will continue to exclude that generation from something that we all take for granted as a rewarding part of our lives. There is a great deal of hope in the work that we and organisations such as the Pennies Foundation and AliveandGiving are doing. It enables small charities, in particular those working with unpopular causes, which will never have the resources that the big 10 or 20 have, to reach out to a whole load of people whom they would never otherwise meet. People out there are willing to support unpopular causes, such as working with drug addicts and offenders, if they can see what is being done. This is an immensely exciting time for charities, and I believe that the Government have an important role to play in bringing together the best of the private sector and the best of the voluntary sector to ensure that we make this huge leap towards engaging a new generation in a new way of handling philanthropy in society.
Lord Fellowes
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Janvrin on and thank him for initiating this debate, which is on an increasingly important subject. I declare an interest in having connections with various charities as trustee.
No one would doubt that the encouragement of philanthropy is a thoroughly good thing, but in my view the tax incentives for personal giving are about as good in this country as anywhere, although the business of claiming tax deductions seems more convoluted here than necessary and conspicuously more so than in the United States.
The charitable sector is at present suffering a double squeeze. First, many endowments and private resources were decimated in the dramas of 2008, from which they have not fully recovered. Secondly—and this is a more recent pressure—many public bodies have recently had their grant in aid severely cut. Those with charitable status will inevitably pursue with increasing vigour the pool of money from foundations and individuals which the traditional charitable sector has hitherto had pretty well to itself. Here I must declare a particular interest as a board member of the British Library. Many such public bodies have been operating in the commercial field and in the search for philanthropic donors for years, and with some success, but those efforts will now have to be stepped up, and there is no easy way for them to do it. They cannot just flick a switch and say, “We’ll make up the gap by getting £X million of philanthropic giving” and launching a few eye-catching exhibitions for which they can charge. In today’s world, that just will not work.
So where will they go for honey? There has been a surprising and distinct trend over the past five or 10 years showing a sharp decline in corporate philanthropy, also known as corporate social investment, relative to individual giving. That says much for the generosity of the individual, but also much about shareholder power, which nowadays is seldom supportive of corporate philanthropy in the old form, giving with no dividend expected. They want their company to get a bang for its charitable buck in the shape of profile, reputation and business advantage.
While corporate philanthropy in the old sense is increasingly rare, the alternative—corporate sponsorship and partnership—is growing, albeit slowly. But it is still in its infancy as a major force in the philanthropic market, by no means correcting the imbalance between corporate and private giving. To help this correction along the way, I should like to see tax incentives for corporate support and charity in all its forms increased to reverse the trend whereby the individual is bearing the brunt of charitable demand. I am happy to say that the individual will always be the beating heart of real philanthropy, but that nowadays will never be enough.
Sponsorship or partnership—call it what you will—between major companies and charities, whether public or private bodies, is very much part of the way forward, but I hope that the Government see fit to give the tax system a nudge or two in the right direction to make it easier and more attractive to the donor and the recipient. That could change the present trickle of help into a constant and benevolent stream. The burden on the individual will be lightened and the recipient body will benefit, not only financially but in the long-term relationships built up between it and the corporate sector. That sector will acquire an understanding of a world outside its normal ken. There should be no losers in this, but possibly prizes for all.
Lord Luce
My Lords, I am not sure whether being last in the debate is an advantage or disadvantage. One can say without hesitation that the range of knowledge and experience that we have heard in this debate has been quite remarkable. The sense of timing of my noble friend Lord Janvrin is also just right, given that we all agree that we face a traumatic period because of the dramatic reduction in public expenditure over the next four years. With much of the taxpayer support that has been going to charitable bodies due to be reduced, there is an opportunity, as well as a challenge, for this country to find a way of improving the culture of giving.
As a former Arts Minister and a former university vice-chancellor, I have found that this country lies somewhere between the United States and the continent in respect of the balance between public and private financing. Of course, the United States has a long history and tradition of generating a sense of duty of giving by private individuals, along with a kind of anti-state sense—no doubt fostered more recently by the Republican Tea Party. An interesting point to observe is that, as a proportion of GDP, individual giving accounts for 0.14 per cent in France, 1.7 per cent in the United States and 0.73 per cent in the United Kingdom. That rather bears out the idea that we lie somewhere in the middle.
Listening to many of the comments of noble friends in the House, I found it interesting to hear about some of the new characteristics in giving. For example, 75 per cent of all high-net-worth individuals take the view that they want to give more during a recession. Even more significant, the younger generation—classified as the 18 to 34 year-olds—feels a growing responsibility to share wealth. I recall from talking to Dame Alison Richards, who was the successor to my noble friend Lord Broers as vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, that 33 per cent of the undergraduates at Cambridge are thought to be actively involved in participation in charitable work. That is very different—and a big improvement—from my day.
The characteristics of the donors are also interesting. As my noble friend Lord Janvrin said, many more of the givers now are business owners or businessmen rather than people who have inherited wealth. It is interesting that their motives for giving, according to the studies, come from wanting to give something back to the community, which gives them a sense of personal fulfilment. I think that all that is encouraging. Donors also desire to be involved in anything to which they give money, such as social ventures or whatever they happen to be. They want to help to make the charities more efficient, which in many cases is much needed.
Therefore, an immense challenge faces the coalition to produce, after an intense study, a broad range of measures and incentives that will encourage greater giving in this country. We must give credit to the previous Government for the work that they did, not least in introducing gift aid and in setting up organisations such as UK Philanthropy. The coalition must build on that.
I found that, after some experience as an Arts Minister—I should also declare an interest as president of the King George V Fund for Actors and Actresses and president of the Voluntary Arts Network—I could prove to the Chancellor, which was an important thing to be able to do in seeking more taxpayers’ money, that every £1 of taxpayers’ money would generate £5 in the private sector. I think that a large amount of that was due to the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts, which raised money from employers through challenge funding and match funding. The association also enabled employers to be more involved with the arts organisations, which also gave pleasure to their employees.
For universities, matching funding can also be a great help, particularly when raising money from alumni. From my experience at the University of Buckingham, I also know the value of local community philanthropists, such as Evelyn de Rothschild, who was generous enough to give money for a new building for business studies. But the Government’s review must range broadly from lifetime legacies to endowments—which we have not discussed very much—and bequests. It must cover local community foundations, corporate and payroll giving, and innovative funding of one kind or another.
There has been some suggestion that gift aid might be replaced by some other tax incentives. If that is the case, gift aid still has a long way to go. It is a marvellous incentive, but only 68,000 out of 162,000 charities participate in the gift aid system. A 1 per cent increase in gift aid would produce another £45 million for charities. I hope that we do not undermine gift aid, but find ways of improving it.
This is a real chance to try to help change the climate for giving, but none of us has any illusions that it is a gradual and long-term process. The Government need to take a strong lead in this area. I hope that the Minister will reassure us that they will do so.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
My Lords, I shall speak in the gap for no longer than a minute. I very much agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Best, said about the Charities Aid Foundation. He listed many of the benefits which that body confers, but he missed out perhaps one. There may be others who like me inherited a very modest portfolio—which is probably the wrong word—of shares. Those shares increased so much in value over the years that I would not have been able to sell them without paying a very hefty sum by way of capital gains tax. I therefore transferred them to the Charities Aid Foundation, which is able to sell the shares at their current value. Far from being a pain, it turned out to be a positive pleasure to do so.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, on initiating this debate. I also congratulate other noble Lords on their contributions to what has been a fascinating debate, with each contribution serving to illustrate the knowledge and experience that resides in your Lordships’ House.
The great philanthropist Andrew Carnegie said that the man who dies rich dies disgraced. Without doubt, the history of giving and philanthropy is ancient and honourable—there are records of generosity and civic and monumental good works that go back hundreds if not thousands of years. In medieval times, giving to the needy—and the endowment of monasteries, Barts hospital, universities, cathedrals and schools—was one way of ensuring of your place in heaven. Ironically, the schools thus endowed, established originally to educate the humble and less well-off, included some which are now our most expensive public schools—but I do not intend to go down that road today.
Today there is probably a less clear line to the Almighty. It is difficult to explain, for example, why Michael Jackson was the most generous giver to charity of all rock stars, or why Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett give through their foundations the equivalent of the budget of a small state for the eradication of some of the world’s most horrible diseases in the poorest countries. Carnegie’s maxim is as true today as it was when he made his huge bequests in 1901, which were the equivalent of £7 billion today. As the noble Lord, Lord Luce, said, people want to give something back. Indeed, what else should you do with such huge amounts of money when you reach the point that you want for nothing and there is nothing that you cannot afford? I echo the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, in asking who is the greater philanthropist, the person who gives £1 billion from a fortune of many times that size, or the old lady who finds £20 from her weekly state pension for the homeless or the Haiti disaster?
Several questions have been explored in the debate, the first being how to encourage philanthropy at all levels. Does our tax system encourage or make giving difficult? What are the barriers? I hope that the Minister will be able to tell the House what progress is being made in that direction.
I was told a few days ago by the director of one of our great arts and heritage institutions that it is easy to donate a valuable work of art after you are dead but, because of the suspicion and bureaucracy of the Inland Revenue, you have to be very determined to do it if you are alive. Another leader of an arts institution has said that, while endowments have their place, tax incentives for giving are a matter of urgency in this period of savage cuts.
On that theme, the Charities Aid Foundation, which has been mentioned many times today, estimates that almost £750 million is lost to the charitable sector in unclaimed gift aid. Maximising donor usage would compensate for the fall in overall donations of more than £700 million. I urge the Government to continue the work of the previous Government to raise awareness of gift aid among the public through creative, widespread campaigns. We know that incentives exist within the tax system for higher earners to give. Some donors can claim tax relief for themselves at 20 per cent of their gross donation, or redirect any tax refund to charity. However, recent research by the Charities Aid Foundation revealed that 50 per cent of higher rate taxpayers are unaware of that tax incentive. When unaware respondents were informed of the option, more than half said that they would be willing to give that personal relief to charity, but the current processes are a barrier to doing so.
The second question that this debate raises is where the balance lies between philanthropic giving and the provision of, say, education and health, through taxation and democratic accountability. Like other noble Lords, I turn to America to explore that question. The point can be illustrated by the example of the chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, who has recently set up a foundation with $100 million worth of Facebook stock to be used to improve education in America, with the primary goal of helping children being educated in Newark.
Mr Zuckerberg has had a long-standing interest in education, particularly in the low salaries of teachers, and the donation comes at a time when the foundations and wealthy investors in America are increasingly funnelling large amounts of money to public education—but, I have to say, with strings attached. In Washington DC this year, foundations have pledged millions of dollars to pay for an increase in teachers’ pay, which is tied to teachers’ ability to show that they can help students improve. It is clear that that money is at least in some part substituting for state funding to ensure the fabric and standards of those maintained schools. Who can say that that is not worthwhile philanthropy? However, in the UK context, it raises some interesting questions.
What does the Minister think about that as a direction, and is it the direction in which the Government intend the big society to progress? I note that Sam Middleton, of ResPublica, states in an article on the very useful Philanthropy UK website:
“In this age of austerity, where unprecedented levels of public debt mean less money for the state to spend, the Big Society, far from asking philanthropists to blindly step in to fill the gap left by the removal of government funding, provides the opportunity to revolutionise fundraising and the interactions between donors, civil society organisations and communities”.
That is interesting and, to a certain extent, reassuring, but I am not entirely sure what it means. Perhaps the Minister could explain and give us some examples. I agree with my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley that charity giving, voluntary work and philanthropy are not substitutes for adequate public provision.
In exploring those matters further, I have reflected on the role of the cancer charities, Macmillan and Cancer Research UK. Macmillan raises millions to support people with cancer, particularly by the employment of Macmillan nurses in the NHS. Cancer Research UK also raises millions to conduct vital cancer research—importantly, within the NHS. I hope that no one is suggesting that those organisations could possibly provide NHS cancer services. That works, I suggest, because the balance is right. It works best because the public sector and the charitable sector are working in harmony.
I have worked in and with the charitable sector all my life. I started my working life working for Gingerbread. I worked for Citizens Advice and then for the late and distinguished Lord Young of Dartington, then Michael Young, at the Institute of Community Studies at Bethnal Green. Indeed, I remain a volunteer, and I have never doubted that I gain much more from being a volunteer than I give.
The charitable sector in the UK is one of our national treasures. One of the strengths of the sector is its relative flexibility and agility. Given the right leadership, a charity can innovate and adapt more quickly, more easily and with more creativity than large public or corporate bodies. We need to celebrate that.
It is interesting that family foundation giving is defying the economic downturn and making a substantial and growing contribution to tackling society’s ills. That is in a report produced by the ESRC Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy at the Cass Business School. It lists lots of the established charities of which your Lordships will be aware: the Wellcome Trust, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, the Wolfson Foundation and the Monument Trust. It also talks about the new family foundations that have been established over the past couple of decades, largely funded by the successful entrepreneurs of an era of expanding global markets: the Waterloo Trust, set up by the owners of Admiral Insurance; the Volant trust, set up by J K Rowling; the Foyle Foundation; the Martin Smith Foundation; and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.
I conclude with some more questions for the Minister. The Government have been vocal in their promotion of and support for philanthropy, charity and volunteering, but we have to judge actions not by words but by what actually happens. We need to say that many charities are experiencing huge anxiety about their future. ACEVO estimates that charities face £3 billion in cuts, and I wonder why the Charity Commission is facing a 33 per cent cut over the next few years. I am great admirer of the Charity Commission; it is one of our best and most effective public bodies. I am concerned that the strategic review that it is bound to undertake as a result of the cuts that it faces will lead to a diminution of its effectiveness and, therefore, the support that it can give the charity sector.
We have had a wonderful debate, and I look forward to the Minister’s remarks.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, on securing this debate, as I think all the participants have done. It has been an interesting debate, but the noble Lord’s introduction of the topic was a tour d’horizon of the world of philanthropy and was a superb introduction for our debate today. I am sure that the whole House is very grateful to him for his contribution.
I think I have everything here; I have been making notes as I have been going through and I hope to insert them in the right places in the order of events. If I may, I will just make sure that I have them in place to do just that.
Philanthropy has played a very important role in our country for a very long time and continues to do so. All noble Lords have spoken from their own experience. Tributes have been paid to the Library, and indeed it produced a jolly good brief, but in fact it is the experience of noble Lords that has provided the quality to this debate. It was particularly useful to be able to hear about the direct experience of noble Lords such as my noble friend Lady Barker, who told us about her work in this field.
Occasionally the generous acts of a major celebrity philanthropist hit the headlines. Recent examples include JK Rowling and Ricky Tomlinson, but there are millions of acts of generosity every year, from multi-million pound gifts to smaller acts of kindness that never attract any headlines. As a society, we need to do more to celebrate these acts.
My noble friend Lord Brooke drew attention to the link between giving time and money and a sense of well-being. My noble friend Lord Phillips pointed out the way in which social action and philanthropy define our society’s values. Philanthropy can epitomise social responsibility. People willing to invest their resources for the good of others and the society around them can have a real impact. Independent sources of income from individuals, companies and charitable trusts can help communities to solve problems and improve things themselves.
Philanthropy can also have a wider benefit by enabling individuals to learn more about their communities and encouraging integration. It is, therefore, very good to know that we are one of the most generous nations in the world when it comes to giving. As a proportion of GDP, we are second in the developed world after the United States. According to the citizenship survey that covers 2009 to 2010, 72 per cent of adults had given to charity in the previous four weeks, with £17.70 being the average amount given. This is a very good starting point as we turn our vision for a big society into a reality.
The big society aims to build on and develop all forms of social responsibility. In particular, it is about community empowerment, giving local councils and neighbourhoods more power to take decisions and shape their areas. It is about opening up public services and enabling charities, social enterprises, private companies and employee-owned co-operatives to compete to offer high-quality services. Most of all, linked to philanthropy, it is about social action—encouraging and enabling people to play a more active part in society, because philanthropy without engagement does not succeed. However, if we want philanthropy to play a major part in all of this, we must recognise that there are challenges. It appears that while the amount of money given to charity is stable, the number of people who give to charity is declining, or has declined over the past five years.
Giving could also be more tax-effective. Many noble Lords focused on this and rightly so; it is an area of considerable concern. The Charities Aid Foundation estimates that £750 million of Gift Aid goes unclaimed annually. Noble Lords know how difficult it is to note Gift Aid at the time of giving. Many noble Lords have also pointed out that higher-rate taxpayers are often ignorant of the fact that there is extra money that they can either give or receive themselves, if that is what they would prefer. Certainly, through CAF giving, they could add that to their charitable giving. It presents an opportunity for people to be more generous and to find mechanisms whereby the provisions that the Inland Revenue makes for philanthropy can be turned to good causes.
There were many ideas on this front. When this debate is studied, I hope many of them will be taken up as a result of what has been said. I liked in particular the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Best, who spoke from his own experience of the practical arrangements that he had come to. We know also that there is room for increased giving in some segments of the population. The rich give less as a proportion of their income than the poor. The richest 20 per cent give 0.7 per cent of their income to charity, while the poorest donors give 3 per cent. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked who was the more generous. If we could encourage a greater percentile of generous giving from the richest 20 per cent, we could transform the landscape of arts and charities in this country. I think that that was the message from the introductory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin. Government must take action to support philanthropy. We know that there are high levels of social responsibility in our country, but it needs to be cultivated and facilitated to become something more than good will.
Several noble Lords talked in depth about practical matters. I was very grateful for the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, on corporate responsibility. She portrayed an environment in which there was a link between ethics and business, and where altruism and self-interest could coincide successfully to build up businesses and the workplace as a philanthropic community. Her contribution in that area was particularly important. The noble Lord, Lord Fellowes, talked about growing corporate partnerships, and about the ways in which tax incentives in this area could produce a considerable dividend for philanthropy.
My noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts—I will return later to the work that he is doing in this area—talked about trying to identify why people are not more generous, given that the reward for giving, namely, a sense of well-being, is considerable. He felt that we should encourage the wealthy through structures that ensure that less popular causes also receive charitable support, and pointed out that populism and philanthropy do not necessarily produce the most satisfactory outcomes overall. He posed a number of interesting questions about privacy and transparency, and I am sure that his contribution will be read with great interest by those who are producing the White Paper.
I am very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for talking about the way in which charitable action and giving combine. It is true that the Government are providing less funding to voluntary groups. However, the big society provides an opportunity for these groups to access a greater proportion of government spending. We hope that they will be in a position to do this. There is a transitional fund of £100 million, which is designed to capitalise these projects and so enable them to do that. I had not heard of The Big Give. Perhaps the noble Earl will advise me on it, because it sounds interesting. We do know about sites such as Localgiving.com, which are also of interest. It is interesting how much we ended up talking about modern technology and philanthropy. This is something that we cannot ignore.
I can reassure the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Pitkeathley, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle that we do not see philanthropy as replacing the Government’s role in the wider society. That is not the thrust of my contribution to the debate, nor, I suspect, that of anyone. We recognise the role of government as the major provider of public service, but as a driver for priorities in social engagement, philanthropy can be an extremely important factor.
As many noble Lords said, the Office for Civil Society is developing a Green Paper on giving, which will draw on thinking from across government. The Green Paper is due in December and will be followed by a White Paper in March 2011. It could be said that we are having this debate just a little too early. On the other hand, let us hope that we can have a debate after these papers are produced, as many noble Lords would like the opportunity of comparing the papers with their ambitions for this topic.
I am limited in the detail I can provide before the Green Paper is published, but I will talk about it in general terms. The Government have a clear role in facilitating philanthropy. The Green Paper will consider that role and will take a bottom-up approach, recognising that the most effective proposals for increased giving and social action are likely to come from communities, business and civil society. As part of this, it will showcase some of the most innovative approaches, including those which use the latest technologies, and will challenge government, the voluntary and community sector, and business to think about how they can incorporate these approaches. The Green Paper will also take on board the latest insights from behavioural economics to encourage social behaviours. As mentioned by my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, the paper will focus not only on giving money but on how people can best give their time and skills for the benefit of others and themselves.
Alongside the Green Paper, the Government are taking forward a number of other pieces of work to support philanthropy. As mentioned by my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter, the role of philanthropy in the arts and culture has a long and noble pedigree. Through the Medici family in Renaissance Italy to Andrew Carnegie in the early 20th century, to the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover, and Dame Vivien Duffield today, philanthropists have supported artists and enabled culture and creativity to flourish, enhancing our civilisation. The Secretary of State for Culture, my right honourable friend Jeremy Hunt, will be announcing a package of measures to boost philanthropy in the coming few weeks.
It should be noted that 70 per cent of all private giving to the arts goes to bodies in London. There is a particular challenge, therefore, around fundraising for the arts in the other English regions, which the Government recognise and want to help address. Over the past year, the Treasury has been conducting a review of Gift Aid through a sector-led forum. The forum made a number of recommendations to improve and simplify the administration of Gift Aid and its promotion to taxpayers. Many of the recommendations will be taken forward through a new customer forum chaired by HMRC. The Government aim to publish the Gift Aid report and their initial response on the Treasury website tomorrow. We are just a day too early to discuss it but we can go to bed tonight in thoughtful anticipation of what we will discover on the morrow.
The Government are also taking action to encourage giving in local communities. In that respect, I am grateful for the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. She referred to community foundations and to how doers and givers can have great leverage on the way in which these things work. Small amounts applied wisely build up social capital, and rich and poor can discover their shared values in their communities. I commend her contribution to the debate because it exemplified the kind of theme we are hoping to encourage.
The Communities First Fund, which will be launched next year, will include a matched funding programme to encourage philanthropists to contribute to the building up of local endowments that will support local action. While I was listening to the debate, my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts informed me that the committee in which he is involved has met seven times and will publish a report in March or April about deregulation in the CRB. He is dealing with this matter and I hope that he will bring forward recommendations which will make things much easier for the voluntary sector. I hope that, together, this work will bring about a significant increase in philanthropy.
Philanthropy enables the big society, both as a source of funds that facilitates independence outside the state, and as a means of creating social capital and stronger and healthier communities. I return to the words of my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury on the issue of engagement. The key thing that philanthropy policy should be designed to do is to build on the strong levels of giving in this country. It should make it possible for all who are involved in the charitable sector to feel that their giving will be much easier and more effective.
Again, on behalf of all noble Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, for securing the debate, and I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to it.
Lord Janvrin
My Lords, I add my thanks to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. The range of experience, wisdom and ideas has been extremely helpful in supporting what I hope will be the start of a continuing debate on this subject in the coming months. I particularly thank the Library for its briefing, which was produced extremely quickly and was incredibly comprehensive and very useful.
I pick up on the Minister’s remarks that we might be too early. I hope that this will be a contribution to the thinking that is going on and I welcome the idea that we might come back to the subject. I remain of the view, and am greatly encouraged in it, that this is extremely important for our society and for us all. I thank all noble Lords for taking part.
Income-related Benefits (Subsidy to Authorities) (Temporary Accommodation) Amendment Order 2010
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Knight of Weymouth
That this House takes note of the Income-related Benefits (Subsidy to Authorities) (Temporary Accommodation) Amendment Order 2010 (SI 2010/2509).
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I am pleased to see the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, in his place. Such is the generosity—indeed, the philanthropic nature—of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, particularly with his time this week, that he has become a bit of a fixture on the Front Bench. I therefore thought that he may be replying to the Motion—perhaps he is—but we will wait and see.
The order builds on a scheme that my party introduced this year when in government to control the cost of housing benefit awarded to claimants living in temporary accommodation. The current scheme applies only to claimants in temporary accommodation that is leased or licensed by a local authority from a private landlord. The order that we are debating extends the scheme to accommodation where the landlord is a registered housing association. On that very narrow basis, I say at the outset that it is reasonable.
This Take Note Debate has been tabled better to understand the ever changing environment of housing benefit in which this order will operate from April next year. In particular, I am keen to understand how it relates to the statutory instruments that were published this week and reported on by the Social Security Advisory Committee: the Housing Benefit (Amendment) Regulations 2010 and the Rent Officers (Housing Benefit Functions) Amendment Order 2010. Like the order that we are debating today, they limit the amount of housing benefit that can be awarded under the local housing allowance arrangements from April next year by removing the five-bedroom local housing allowance rate so that the maximum level is for a four-bedroom house; by introducing absolute caps so that local housing allowance weekly rates cannot exceed £250 for a one-bedroom property, £290 for a two-bedroom property, £340 for a three-bedroom property and £400 for a four-bedroom property; by removing the £15 weekly housing benefit excess that some customers can receive under the local housing allowance arrangements; and by setting the local housing allowance rates at the 30th percentile of rents in each broad rental market area rather than the median.
These orders are extremely controversial, in stark contrast to the order that we are debating now. However, it is difficult to scrutinise today’s order properly without understanding the effect of these two later ones because, in essence, if the effect of the other housing benefit changes is as bad as some people fear, they will increase the pressure on temporary accommodation. This, in turn, is important, given what the Explanatory Memorandum to today’s order says about the consultation response. Paragraph 8.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:
“Concern was generally raised that local authorities would be required to find alternative accommodation for a number of households in more expensive areas or in larger properties”.
It goes on to say that,
“the extent to which private landlords will be willing to renegotiate lease payments downwards, thereby sustaining existing tenancies, is not clear at this stage. The National Housing Federation Practitioners Group estimated that up to a quarter of its members’ stock could be at risk”.
I note that at paragraph 7.4 of the Explanatory Memorandum, the Government say that fixing the level of subsidy to March 2013 will,
“help maintain the supply and quality of temporary accommodation”.
On that basis it is clear that the Government are also concerned about the supply of temporary accommodation. Therefore, I ask the Minister what the Government's own assessment of the effect of these changes is on the supply of temporary accommodation. Can he then tell us what additional demand he anticipates from the other changes to housing benefit that are being implemented through the other orders tabled this week? In doing so, he may also want to reflect on what the Social Security Advisory Committee said in its report on the changes. The document states at page 4:
“The Committee’s report recommends that the Government should not go ahead with the package of amendments proposed. The Committee raised a number of concerns about the scale and impact of the changes, and the serious effect this would have on customers claiming Housing Benefit who are living in the private rented sector, particularly those claiming according to Local Housing Allowance rules”.
On the same page, the document states:
“The Committee challenged the case for change that was put forward by the Department for Work and Pensions. They felt it was contradictory to suggest that Housing Benefit reform is needed to ensure the housing choices of benefit recipients are geared to a similar level that people in work are likely to achieve, as Housing Benefit is also available to people in work. In addition, the Committee found no evidence to suggest that the housing choices made by Housing Benefit customers are excessive, noting research which suggests that the Local Housing Allowance arrangements are not unduly favourable compared to low income working households”.
The document continues:
“The Committee commented on the Government’s increase in funding for Discretionary Housing Payments which they note represents around 4% of the total cash losses that will result from these measures. They believe this increase will be insufficient to allow local authorities to provide adequate support, even for vulnerable customers, to meet their rent or find suitable accommodation”.
I shall talk about vulnerable customers later.
Finally, the report states:
“The Committee concludes that the Housing Benefit measures represent a high risk approach to managing the cost of Local Housing Allowance cases”;
and states on page 26:
“Apart from the potential financial hardship, the human costs, the child poverty and other wider negative impacts of these proposed changes, we also see them as being out of step with the broader thrust of policies to incentivise work and to make work pay”.
The Minister may also want to reflect on what Shelter said this week. It stated:
“But this will not change the fact that when these changes will come into force, 134,000 households will be uprooted from their homes. It is extremely disappointing that the government has ignored the advice of both its own advisory committee and voices across the housing sector in ploughing ahead with these damaging proposals”.
The uprooting of 134,000 households means a massive new pressure on temporary accommodation. Will the changes in this order help or hinder in meeting those pressures?
Given that the Government’s own impact assessment on the high-level impact of the local housing allowance measures shows a staggering 936,960 household losers from these changes and that the average loss per household will be £12 per week, does the Minister agree that the Shelter estimate is probably quite cautious at 134,000 households? What is his analysis of the geography of this misery? The University of Cambridge study commissioned by Shelter shows a halving of the proportion of affordable neighbourhoods if these changes are implemented. This study suggests that there will be no affordable neighbourhoods in the City of London or Kensington and Chelsea, and less than 10 per cent in Hammersmith and Fulham, Islington and here in Westminster. It looks as though that will result in large numbers needing to use the time to readjust of up to nine months that is now generously offered by the Government, with large numbers needing to move out of the middle of the city to more suburban boroughs. Do the Government share this analysis, and is the Minister confident that this displacement will happen smoothly? Or should these authorities be trying urgently to increase the supply of temporary accommodation to meet their statutory responsibilities?
Does the Minister have any confidence that this temporary accommodation will be close to the schools for the children who are affected? Has he seen the article in today's Financial Times, which reports a shortage of 68,000 school places already, half of which are in London? The Government’s impact assessment on their housing benefit changes states:
“Children who experience disruption to their schooling, particularly in the run up to examinations may do less well than pupils who are otherwise similar”.
Is it not the case that unless the Minister is confident that he has enough supply of accommodation to avoid these effects, these poorest children will suffer this damage to their life chances? What is his estimate of the extra cost to families of children travelling long distances to school if they are from those 134,000 displaced households—if Shelter’s figures are correct?
My final question is on the impact on those with disabilities. The Government themselves state that some individuals may have to move out of the local authority area. They will be forced out of homes that have been adapted to meet their needs. Is this group not the most likely to be in need of temporary accommodation because of the need to wait for housing from the limited supply of stock that meets their individual needs to become available? Does the Minister truly have confidence about the supply of temporary accommodation that has the necessary adaptation for these vulnerable people?
I have raised a number of important questions. I know that some of this is complicated as we start to try to understand the consequences of the Government's changes to housing benefit, of which this order is an integral part. I look forward to some answers. I beg to move.
Lord Best
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for allowing us a chance to review some of these questions. Perhaps the position can be most simply expressed by recognising that the intention is to reduce the housing benefit bill by some £2.25 billion per annum by the end of this Parliament. That is £2.25 billion a year that will not be paid through housing benefit to landlords. There are only two parties from whom this money can come; one is the landlord by accepting a lower rent, and the other is the tenants by finding the balance from their own resources, including other benefits—since most are on benefits of different sorts, or pensions. Which of these two parties is more likely to take this very substantial £2-and-a-bit billion hit?
The first question is, I suppose, whether people can move to a different place where they can find accommodation for which the rent will be covered in full. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, looked at the numbers that may be involved, and it does not seem likely that if people move from central London they will find vacant properties in cheap areas on the scale that would be required. They are much more likely to have to stay put and face the eviction that may follow if they cannot pay their rent and all the hassle and trouble that that brings simply because there will not be places available in other areas. There are also social and welfare costs for the boroughs into which any large-scale movement of people would go. There are questions about school places and the other facilities that people will need and, if these are the poorest boroughs, the local authorities concerned are the least capable of finding the social and welfare resources to help those people.
Will landlords reduce their rents? Some landlords will reduce rents simply because the market served by local housing allowance claimants is so large that in some areas there will be nowhere else to go. These are areas with a high proportion of people in receipt of local housing allowances. They are areas of the lowest demand and there may be no work for people who move there. However, in great tracts of the country, landlords are not going to reduce their rents. I chair the Property Ombudsman service, which managing agents of private landlords sign up to to handle their complaints, and I have been talking with those agents about how they are approaching this issue. Their advice to their landlords will increasingly be not to let to those on benefit as they will not be able to pay their rent. Quite a few landlords will already not let to people on benefit, and I think it is quite likely that, as agents are telling me, more landlords will not only say that they will not reduce the rent, but that in future they will not have people on local housing allowance in their properties because they suspect that they will get into arrears and difficulties and that it is not worth the hassle. There are plenty of other people to whom those homes can be let, so when a shorthold tenancy expires, the next people will not be on benefit. The outcome will be a reduction in the amount of letting to those on local housing allowance because of the hassles that people are expecting.
This morning, I talked to the person who manages the rent guarantee scheme for a rather smart outer London borough. The local authority has produced a very good scheme that gives landlords a guarantee of the rent, provided they take people on housing benefit. Landlords have resisted taking people on housing benefit in many cases because rent is paid on a four-weekly basis instead of a monthly basis, because arrears may accrue or because the local authority’s administration may mean delays. In order to overcome this reluctance, this local authority and others elsewhere have a rent guarantee scheme so that if the landlord takes these people, the rent is guaranteed. Unfortunately, this officer working in the outer London borough tells me that landlords are already saying that although the borough will guarantee the rent, they will not carry on using the scheme because too many hassles and hazards have been introduced by the prospect of housing benefit cuts. This means that this unfortunate officer in that outer London borough is not able to house the people who he is mandated to look after, because the private sector will turn its back on them wherever it can. I know that in some areas it cannot, where the market is so weighted in favour of those on benefit and where there will have to be rent reductions. The trouble is that it may be found that those rent reductions are taken out on the tenant because the landlord who gets less rent in the lowest areas, where property quality is often lowest, may not put back much into their investment if they are getting a lower income from it. The deterioration of those properties may result from that.
Lord German
My Lords, I am relatively new to this House; it has been five months now. I mistakenly thought that when a debate is called on a particular order, we debated that order and that if noble Lords wanted to debate another order, they would put a Motion down about it. I was obviously mistaken as it seems to be the way of this House that if you can find one word in the title of the order, you work on that, so I may regard it as a fairly open season. If somebody can explain that method and the way that this House works, I would be pleased to hear it.
It seems to me that we have an order before us which has nothing to do with most of the statements made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I understand both the concerns that he wishes to raise and that he wants to talk about the other orders. I wonder why the Motion is therefore not about another order but, be that as it may, I wish to raise one question and one issue about this order and, since it is open season, I would like to make about three or four remarks about the order to which the noble Lord, Lord Knight, has referred.
The first question is about this order. Quite clearly, the burden of applying a new cap on temporary accommodation owned by registered social landlords is going to mean a new burden for them. Social landlords may or may not have to readjust their own rental levels with the people from whom they are actually renting the accommodation in the first place. Has an impact assessment been done of that and do we know whether much work is to be done in that area? If so, how do the Government propose to recompense registered social landlords for the extra work that they have to do? Just as, in its system, if local government is having to do extra work one would expect the extra burdens upon it to be recompensed with some funding, is there an extra burden on registered social landlords as a result of this order and, if there is, how are the Government going to recompense them?
On the other order—to which the noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Best, both addressed their remarks, which was perfectly reasonable—I have a couple of remarks and questions about issues that need to be raised. First, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred to the Social Security Advisory Committee report: but was it not the case, as I believe, that that report was written in advance of the orders to which he referred being laid? Can the Minister tell us whether they have taken account of the views of the SSAC in the orders that were laid, in which case there is another debate to be had that might be overtaken by the events to which the noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred?
Secondly, is it not a fact that we refer to movement in the private rented sector as being something which, one almost gets the impression, is unusual? However, do the figures not show that 40 per cent of tenants in the private rented sector move within a year? There are reasons for that happening and there is evidence of it. Do they not also show that 70 per cent—a huge number—of all tenants in the private sector move within three years? Therefore, mobility in the private rented sector is not unusual—it happens—and I do not necessarily believe that we should be worried about it if it already happens and is already a feature of that sector.
My second point of concern is that the housing benefit changes are often seen through the prism of London. People understand that there is a particular problem in London, which I admit there is, but it is often viewed as representing what is happening in the whole country. There are many areas in this country where the cap will not impact in the way that it will in London. We need to be careful that we do not see the nature of all change through the prism of London alone. There are specific circumstances in London that need to be adjusted and taken into account, and undoubtedly that is a debate to be moved forward.
The fundamental question, to which the noble Lord, Lord Best, referred, concerns the partnership between those who pay the rent and those who receive it. The question is how those who receive the rent can be incentivised to reduce the amount they charge. That is fundamental because, although an equation has only two sides to it, this one has a third, which is the housing stock and the number of houses that are available for social housing. However, I think that that, too, is the subject of another debate. In the equation between those who pay the rent and those who receive it, how is it intended that landlords be incentivised to move to the new levels that the Government will be providing? Perhaps in his reply the Minister can outline some of the ways in which that might happen. If it does happen, it might take away some of the evidence from those who say that landlords will not alter and will not move.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, given the hour and the potentially challenging journeys that some of us will have in getting home tonight, I intend to speak only briefly, especially as I have an invite this evening to Luton’s Best. It is an award ceremony for community excellence, which shows that we were ahead of the game before David Cameron thought of the big society.
Luton has a direct relevance to this debate—particularly to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Best—because, taking all these housing benefit changes in aggregate, Luton is being affected at the moment. I am told that there is block-booking of bed and breakfast accommodation in Luton by London boroughs in anticipation of what all these changes will mean, and that has ramifications not only in relation to rent levels locally but in relation to the whole range of services provided by, for example, the local authority. Therefore, I say to the noble Lord, Lord German, that even the cap on its own has a spillover effect on other boroughs. Of course, the cap may be a particular issue for London but the other range of issues—the 30th percentile and the CPI—could also in due course have profound effects right across the country.
I also say to the noble Lord, Lord German, that he was a little harsh on my noble friend Lord Knight, who I thought gave a brilliant speech. He was dealing with the context in which this order has to be applied, and it is affected very profoundly by the new environment in which we find ourselves. This order follows on from one that came into effect in April, introduced by our Government. It related, as we have heard, to changing the basis on which subsidy was paid to local authorities from what was called the threshold and cap system, from which local authorities used to generate good revenues by charging at one level but paying rents at a different level. I have no doubt that those surplus revenues were put to good use, but it is right that that was changed. Moreover, as my noble friend said, the extension of the changed subsidy arrangements to housing association leasing systems is in principle a sensible thing to do.
The Explanatory Note for the order states that,
“some other leased accommodation not currently affected”,
is to be included. I hope that the Minister will be able to say what is encompassed within that. It would also be good to know what the implications of these changes to the subsidy system will mean to the resources of RSLs. I do not think that a detailed impact assessment has been produced, but understanding the impact would be helpful.
We are considering these changes in a substantially changed environment so far as housing benefit is concerned, but I am sure that we will have an opportunity to debate that not only today but on numerous occasions to come. We are dealing with a situation where actual rents are paid by local authorities and are then reimbursed through the subsidy system. I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Best, said about the impact of all these housing benefit changes on rent levels. He asked whether they would force rents down in some circumstances or have impacts in other ways. One of the changes to be introduced under the housing benefit changes will be the switch in 2013 to uprate local housing allowances by reference to the consumer prices index rather than, as now, by reference to actual rent movements. That inevitably means that there will be a widening gap between actual rents and local housing allowance levels. If the arrangements proposed in the order are to continue at that time, it means that local authorities may be at risk of having to bear the increased shortfall. The noble Lord, Lord German, asked whether these increased burdens are going to be reimbursed by the Government, which is a highly relevant question. I thought that, so far as local government is concerned, the Government had signed up to fund any increased burdens, so I shall be interested to hear from the Minister on that point.
This is not only a question of the eventual switch to the CPI because the switch to the 30th percentile will lower the housing allowance on which the subsidy is to be paid, even though we are dealing with a situation where it is actual rents that are being disbursed by housing associations or councils. This is yet another example of the Government placing on local authorities the responsibility to deal with what are effectively cuts in the system. In a sense, local authorities are the third party in addition to the two already identified by the noble Lord, Lord Best.
I have one further point. The package of housing benefit cuts and reduced investment in social housing along with cutbacks in support for mortgage interest will inevitably lead to increased homelessness. There is no other conclusion that one could possibly reach. That will lead to greater recourse to temporary and bed and breakfast accommodation, and therefore wider applications of the order before us, along with an increasing share of the costs imposed on local authorities. I want to ask a question on one particular point. One of the recommendations made in the SSAC report was to ensure that definitions of,
“‘intentionally homeless’, and associated guidance, is revised so as to ensure the position of households that fall into arrears because of changes to housing benefit entitlements are not excluded from the scope of the homeless provisions”.
I have not had a chance to peruse this in great depth and thus get behind the recommendation, but if there is a risk of people not being able to continue with their current tenancy because the level of their housing benefit puts it beyond their financial means, one would expect them to fall squarely within the definition of those who are homeless and have to be supported by local authorities.
I shall close with those brief comments, but this is just the start of a long journey of debate we need to have around the whole range of housing benefit regulation changes which I believe are deeply damaging and very misguided.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for asking us to take note. I had to check up on what he was asking us to take note of. I looked at the order of business for the day and discovered that it was the temporary accommodation housing allowance, but I understand that he wants a debate on housing allowances and the Government’s housing policy in general. Fortunately, my noble friend the Minister for Welfare Reform is sitting at my right hand. I know that he is looking forward to engaging in a broader debate with the noble Lord and other noble Lords who have participated in this debate. As was rightly pointed out, this is an important policy area, in which there has been a considerable policy change, and I think that noble Lords will want to be reassured about that.
I think that it would be reasonable if I were to start by addressing the subject on which I swotted up. I am used to having to have a certain amount of agility on my feet, but it is easier to be agile about some things than others. I shall begin by answering a few questions. My noble friend Lord German asked about the SSAC report. We have sought in the new orders to respond to that report and the issues that it raises. There will be a read-across from the report. That will not necessarily satisfy every point, but we have sought to respond. I confirm what he said about mobility issues. It is important to reflect on the fact that, in many cases, mobility is a built-in feature of the housing market. He asked how landlords might be incentivised to adapt to the new market conditions. One of the ways in which that can be done is through direct payments reflecting reduced levels.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, asked what other leased accommodation is included. Leased accommodation in Wales and Scotland is not covered by the current scheme, but it will be included. This is accommodation that is leased for more than 10 years—this is not applicable for English local authorities—within the housing revenue account.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked about the impact of LHA on homelessness; the noble Lord, Lord Best, was concerned about that, too. It is too soon to know how landlords will react to changes affecting local housing allowance rates for people in the private rented sector. However, we expect that many landlords will reduce their rents as a result of the LHA measures. There may be some increase in the number of tenants who need to find alternative accommodation, but that does not necessarily mean that they will experience—I am sorry, but I cannot find what I was looking for. I think that there is a joke about this: “Now you’re on your own”. I shall stop at that point.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked about the impact on children’s schooling. We have discussed the possible impacts of the housing benefit changes with the Department for Education and the devolved Administrations. It is not possible to estimate how many households with children would move or where they would move to. Movement from one authority area to another may be more common in London, but schools in London have surpluses. Data show that 75 per cent of primary schools and 65 per cent of secondary schools in London have surplus places available. A transitional protection period will give parents more time to plan a school move if that is necessary.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, suggested that discretionary housing payments are insufficient. We have trebled the amount available for DHPs; in addition, we have announced an extra £50 million funding to help local authorities to implement this change. So we are not asking local authorities to absorb all this on their own.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked how LHA reform affected TA. Will customers in temporary accommodation be able to continue meeting their rent when the changes to LHA come into force? The vast majority of households living in temporary or short-term accommodation have as their immediate landlord a registered housing association or local authority. They will not, therefore, be affected by wider changes to housing benefit affecting those in the mainstream private sector.
If I have not covered all the questions that he raised, I shall write to the noble Lord. Indeed, my noble friend is looking forward to engaging on the whole issue of housing allowances at a debate in future.
As for the reforms themselves, this latest subsidy reform will help to control further the level of housing benefit expenditure for people placed into temporary accommodation by their local authority. It will extend the reach of a new subsidy scheme that was introduced in April this year. The intention of these further changes is to create a more level playing field to ensure that funding streams are equalised among different providers of temporary accommodation. First, I would like to acknowledge that the new subsidy scheme for people in temporary accommodation was developed and introduced under the previous Administration. It already appears to be an effective and well planned reform. Given that, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, will wish to show his support for the latest set of changes, which continue from where his Administration left off.
Local authorities use various types of property to provide households in need with temporary accommodation, including their own stock, hostels and bed and breakfast hotels. However, most temporary accommodation is secured from the private rented sector, through some form of lease or licensing agreement with a private landlord. The order that came into force in April this year affected housing benefit subsidy for cases in private sector leased accommodation, but only those where the local authority is the claimant’s landlord. The changes due to come into force from April 2011, which we are discussing today, will extend the new subsidy rules to cases in leased accommodation where a registered housing association is the claimant’s landlord. These are known as Housing Association Leasing schemes, or HALs.
The main purpose of introducing the new subsidy scheme in temporary accommodation was to encourage more local authorities to charge reasonable rents. This does appear to be happening in many cases. Basically, the old scheme allowed too much subsidy to be paid on some properties because it took no account of their actual size or location. Housing benefit expenditure had increased in this area from around £250 million in 2002-03 to more than £640 million in 2007-08. The rate of increase in costs was unsustainable, and was disproportionate to increases in the case load, which peaked in early 2005 at around 110,000 households in Great Britain.
I should stress that, since then, local authorities have done a lot of good work on homelessness prevention that has helped to bring those numbers down considerably, but, although the temporary accommodation case load has been coming down, expenditure has been going up. In part, that was due to local authorities in London charging inflated rent levels. Those high rents—averaging £300 to £400 plus per week, even on small one or two-bedroom properties in parts of London—could be met by housing benefit, but such rent levels were very likely to deter people from working. The level of worklessness among households in temporary accommodation is high. Independent research published in 2008 suggests that the level is around 64 per cent but is possibly higher in some parts.
In addition, families living in temporary accommodation in London, where most of the case load is concentrated, often remain in such accommodation for lengthy periods. Despite its name, the average period spent in “temporary accommodation” in London is three years. It is clear that unnecessarily high rents, which often attract 100 per cent subsidy, are not good either for households living in temporary accommodation or for the taxpayer.
The new subsidy scheme that came into force in April this year, which is based on local housing allowance rates, ensures that the weekly amount of subsidy payable for these cases is based on market rates in the private rented sector. In other words, the amount of subsidy now relates to the size and location of the property used by the local authority. There are three elements to the subsidy formula: the rental element, which reflects the cost of leasing a property; an amount towards the management costs—the management costs element—involved in running these schemes; and, lastly, two upper cap limits, of £500 for properties in central and inner parts of London and £375 for properties located elsewhere.
For the rental element, we take the local housing allowance rate based on the size and location of the property and remove 10 per cent. The 10 per cent is a notional amount, which is taken off to reflect management costs that have already been factored into market rents. We then add back into the formula one of two separate amounts for the management costs of running private sector leasing schemes, such as maintenance and void costs. The amounts are £40 a week for authorities in London and £60 a week for other authorities. The lower amount for London authorities reflects their ability to achieve economies of scale. The actual amount of subsidy payable is the lowest of: the LHA-formula amount; the customer’s actual HB entitlement, if it is less than that; and the appropriate upper cap limit.
Returning to the rental element, I should advise that the LHA rates used in the formula for this financial year are those that were published in January 2010. Using a static rate provides more funding certainty for local authorities throughout the year. From April next year, the subsidy amounts will be based on the January 2011 LHA rates, which will still be set using the median of rents. Therefore, it is evident that the LHA changes announced in the emergency Budget for private rented sector claimants are entirely separate from the subsidy arrangements for people in temporary accommodation.
One of the key issues surrounding the new subsidy scheme’s introduction this year was whether to include the housing association leasing schemes—HAL schemes—that I mentioned earlier. At the time, there was no evidence of inflated rent levels among those schemes and, in most cases, rents still appear to be staggered appropriately to reflect different property sizes. However, the risk of having different subsidy rates for housing association and local authority-run leased accommodation is that it could lead authorities to shift from one type of scheme to another, depending upon which seems more generous. There would also be greater potential for private landlords to draw authorities and housing associations into procurement bidding contests, which would increase expenditure.
This latest amendment to the subsidy order—the Income-related Benefits (Subsidy to Authorities) (Temporary Accommodation) Amendment Order 2010 (SI 2010/2509), which is the subject of this debate—will extend the new subsidy scheme to include cases in housing association leased accommodation, as well as close off some other potential loopholes. It will ensure that there is no benefit for local authorities in switching between different schemes based on whichever attracts the most subsidy. It will create a level playing field for providers, who often compete to procure properties in similar locations.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in what has been a helpful debate. I am also grateful for the support that I have had from Shelter and the Chartered Institute of Housing. I am mindful of the challenging journey to Luton that awaits my noble friend Lord McKenzie and I wish him success in it, so I shall be brief. I simply say to the noble Lord, Lord German, and others who were worried that I might have strayed slightly from the job in hand, that I had a call from the office of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, to ask what my interest was. I said that I was interested more in the context than in the detail of the order, so I hope that what I have said today was no great surprise. We shall come back to the substance of these issues, on which I look forward to debate with noble Lord, Lord Freud. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, for being able after a very long and arduous week to give us a very useful explanation of the order.