Ethnic Minorities: Ministers’ Statements

Monday 3rd February 2014 Lords Chamber

Question

15:00

Asked by

[Lord Avebury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what advice they issue to Ministers about making public statements on allegations about the general behaviour of ethnic minorities.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, Ministers are expected to behave in a way which is consistent with the Ministerial Code.

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords, when Ministers, or officials on their behalf, refer to homeless Travellers as a blight on the community, or as having a negative impact on business, does this not reinforce local authorities’ failure to produce a five-year rolling programme, as required by the Government’s planning policy for Traveller sites? Will they desist from using pejorative language about Travellers and instead embody the PPTS in statute law, with a power for the Secretary of State to direct local authorities to grant permission for such a number of sites and caravans as he may specify, as already happens in Wales?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord is referring to a DCLG press release of last summer which used the unfortunate term “blight”; the word was shortly afterwards removed and replaced by “problem”. In the previous survey of Travellers’ caravans, there were estimated to be 20,000, of which 15,000 were on authorised sites of one sort or another and another 5,000 were on non-authorised sites.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, last week we commemorated the Holocaust, which encompassed the genocide of about one-quarter of the Roma people of Europe, whose violent persecution still continues. Should not our political leadership be more mindful of where prejudice and bigotry lead?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we remember the Holocaust and that, I hope, although the Jews were the primary target of the Holocaust a great many others also died: nearly 2 million Poles, perhaps 200,000 Sinti Roma, gays, people with Asiatic features and others. The West German Government recognised the Roma dimension of the genocide in 1982; I understand that in 2012 a memorial to the Roma and Sinti who died in the genocide was unveiled in Berlin.

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords, what is the advice given about migrants? Can the Government publish the apparently mysterious reasons why the report commissioned on migrants by the Home Secretary has been shelved?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord is referring to the EU balance of competences review, particularly the free movement of persons report. In view of the considerable uncertainty about the impact of the free movement of persons this January, it was felt that we should postpone that paper until the third semester, this coming summer, to make sure that we had accurate figures.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, concerns all democratic parties, and how we ensure that racists and extremists are pushed back into the political margins where they belong. Are HMG committed to ensuring that all their Ministers have a self-denying ordinance not to pander to the racists by echoing their messages for short-term gain? Secondly, how will HMG ensure that our laws to combat racism and xenophobia are reflected in the language that their Ministers and MPs use?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Ministerial Code is entirely clear on the way in which Ministers should behave. I am not aware of many other occasions on which such language has been used. Ministers are extremely careful about references to particular communities, migrants or others. We all understand how very delicate this area is.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the sort of language we saw in the run-up to 1 January in reference to the latest wave of migrants—Bulgarians and Romanians—was wholly unnecessary and negative, and had an impact on the ground on the perception of people from other countries coming here to work? I mean words like “scroungers”. Does he agree that this sort of language has no place in our society? After all, are we not all part of the big society?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I entirely agree but I think it is a question for the editor of the Daily Mail more than for any Minister in the current Government. There was quite absurd language and, indeed, some entirely untrue stories about extra planes, packed buses and so on that appeared in December, and which have not been denied since by the newspapers that published them. That is very unfortunate in an open, free and democratic society.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

Could the Minister remind the House how complaints against the Ministerial Code are made and to whom, and how they are dealt with?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, they are dealt with by the Cabinet Secretary. The only other case I am aware of during the last year was where a Minister was thought to have referred to electoral fraud within the south Asian community in an unfortunate fashion. The Minister responsible apologised immediately.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, would the Minister not agree that his very welcome words about Ministers being careful about using any words that might encourage racism or xenophobia would be rather more believable if the Government were not opting out of the European Union’s decision on racism and xenophobia?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes an extremely strong point. I offer no further comment than that.