Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Stansgate) (Lab)
Good afternoon. If there is a Division in the Chamber, we will adjourn the Committee for 10 minutes—but some Members may feel that we have had enough Divisions in the Chamber to last one week.
Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]
Thursday 13th February 2025
(5 days, 12 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeBus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL] 2024-26 View all Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL] 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 54-III Third marshalled list for Grand Committee - (12 Feb 2025)
Baroness Pidgeon
“Impact on rural areas(1) Within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report detailing the impacts of the provisions of this Act on rural areas.(2) For the purposes of this section “rural” refers to areas so defined by the Rural Urban Classification.(3) The report in subsection (1) must include, but is not limited to—(a) an assessment of the level of bus service provision in rural areas including frequency, coverage, and accessibility;(b) an evaluation of how the provisions of this Act affect access to public transport for residents in rural areas, with a focus on affordability, reliability, and inclusivity;(c) a review of the potential economic, social, and environmental impacts of any changes in transport services or infrastructure in rural areas as a result of this Act;(d) recommendations for any further actions or policies that may be required to ensure that rural areas are not disproportionately impacted by the provisions of this Act.(4) The report must be accompanied by a statement from the Secretary of State on how the findings of the report will be addressed, including any further steps to mitigate negative impacts on rural areas, if applicable.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to publish a report within six months on the impacts of the Act on rural areas.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
Amendment 49 picks up on a crucial issue that I highlighted at Second Reading and said would be a key theme from these Benches: ensuring that rural areas receive a proper bus service for those often isolated and smaller communities. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for signing this amendment.
Rural areas remain severely underserved when it comes to bus services, with provision often unreliable and inadequate. As I have mentioned previously, in areas such as North Shropshire an estimated 63% of bus miles have been cut since 2015. These reductions have had a significant impact on communities.
In general, urban local authorities have above-average levels of bus use per head when compared with rural areas. Department for Transport data shows that, for the year ended March 2024, in Brighton and Hove there were 147 passenger journeys per head of population, alongside Nottingham on 126. This compares with rural areas such as Rutland on three per head, Cheshire East on seven, and Somerset and Shropshire on eight per head of population. That is hardly surprising when these areas have seen significant cuts to their bus services in recent years.
Our amendments on socially necessary bus services, which we debated on Tuesday, would help address this issue, but so would this amendment, which would require the Secretary of State to publish a report within six months of the Act on the impact it is having on rural areas. We hope this focus on our rural communities will help to drive the integration and quality of bus services that our rural and smaller communities and villages deserve. This analysis would be a timely assessment, allowing for a prompt evaluation of the legislation and its impact on rural communities, and would help inform decision-makers, including local transport authorities, and ensure that rural communities’ needs are being met, improving their quality of life and access to services.
I draw attention to the evidence submitted to the Commons Transport Select Committee by the Campaign for National Parks, which flags that visitor travel is an important element of rural transport but that this aspect is often overlooked when considering the role of buses in connecting rural communities with nearby towns and cities. It particularly flagged the access to national parks by public transport. This adds another dimension to our amendment when considering rural bus services.
There are further amendments in this group that also look at rural bus services and villages and cover other important areas, to which I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 62. The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, to which she has just spoken, is a very relevant one, and I think I spoke a little bit about it previously.
I suggest that it is important to know what we mean by public transport. This buses Bill is a great development of that, because it is designed to take people who do not have cars, or perhaps do not want to use cars, to shopping, to doctors and hospitals, to visit friends and relatives or whatever—to get around for communication. Of course, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, said, it is just as important in the rural areas as in the cities.
One element that I have discussed briefly with my noble friend the Minister is if people cannot get across because there is water in the way. Some of the water has bridges; some does not. Some has big ferries and some has small ferries, and, of course, many of the bridges are tolled. The River Tamar has a tolled ferry and bridge combined. The toll is not very high and you pay it only one way, which is interesting. There are smaller river crossings in Cornwall and many other places where people pay a few pounds to get across. Many people moan at the cost, especially if the tolls are private-sector operated, but they have to cover their costs and most of them are pretty reasonable.
There is a big campaign at the moment about the cost of ferries to the Isle of Wight. There are several of them, as noble Lords know. I do not express an opinion on the campaign or the cost, but people are suffering from an unreliable service, which affects them going to work, college, hospital and so on. For a big population—it is probably more than 100,000—that is quite significant.
On the Isles of Scilly, where I live, there are only 2,500 people but they still have to get to hospital and go shopping when the shops on the islands do not provide what they want. The costs there are pretty mind-boggling. In the summer, you cannot get from the mainland to the Isles of Scilly for less than £100 single. For some people, such as those on the national minimum wage, that is quite significant. If you want to fly, which has the added advantage of being a bit quicker—although it does not like the fog very much and so gets cancelled quite often—the cost sometimes goes up to £150.
This may be a situation where there should be some kind of public service obligation for a ferry, which is probably the cheapest and most reliable form of transport, but the ferry does not go in the winter. You can go on a jet boat, which carries 12 people and takes a couple of hours. If it is not bumpy, it is quite comfortable; if it is bumpy, I leave that to noble Lords’ imagination. Something needs to be done to provide some kind of reasonable public service for the 2,500 people who live on those islands and many others like them.
My Amendment 62 is designed to ask my noble friend to produce a report within six months. I am afraid he will be busy if he accepts all these amendments, but I would very much welcome some response. This is a problem for people who have less access to what is properly proposed in the Bill, which I very much support.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, this is an eclectic mix of amendments. My Amendment 53 focuses on effective governance arrangements, which are key to an effective transfer of powers to local transport authorities, leading to effective delivery of these significant and welcome changes to improve public bus services. The Government’s devolution proposals to create strategic authorities will, I presume, transfer responsibility for bus services from the existing arrangements to these new authorities. At the very same time, those areas of England with a two-tier system of local government will also be undergoing major changes as district councils are abolished and unitary councils are created.
Together, these reforms will result in considerable change in the administration of both local governance and elected governance, decision-making and accountability. Clearly, this is also happening—all three things together—at a time when the responsibility and accountability for public bus services occur and major powers are transferred to local transport authorities. Hence Amendment 53 in my name, which is there to probe what consideration the Government have given to providing guidance and support to those areas of local government that are subject to these significant changes.
Can the Minister share any insight into the arrangements that will be put in place to support councils during this transformation of their local transport responsibilities? For example, it is often necessary to aid effective change with initial additional resources, whether funding or access to experience and knowledgeable advice. The measures in the Bill will transform public bus services but, in my view, what must not happen is transformational change failing or being beset with difficulties for want of preparation on the governance side of the equation.
I feel quite strongly that this is an important area of the change that will take place but that it has perhaps not been given sufficient thought in the Bill, as it is presented to us. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I rise to speak in particular to Amendment 49 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Pidgeon and Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, as well as Amendment 78 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I remind the Committee of my interests as president of the Rural Coalition and a vice-president of the LGA.
The purpose of these amendments is to ensure that the Bill works to the benefit of rural communities. Transport in rural areas—and, often, the absence of it—has been a persistent problem. Poor service planning in rural areas, cuts in services and ill-considered centralisation have been repeat offenders, and we must make sure that the Bill does not miss the opportunity to improve things. While other government departments carry on planning their services based on urban delivery models, the costs they save by doing so are passed on to the providers of rural transport or rural individuals themselves.
Rural transport cannot be left to the market alone, even where there are state-directed requirements for socially necessary services to be taken into consideration. Franchising has the potential to be a solution to the rural public transport problem, but it must include cross-subsidy between rural and urban areas, and seasonal cross-subsidy when visitor income can be used to support wider community needs. It is vital that the requirement in the devolution White Paper not to leave orphaned rural areas off the map of strategic authorities also applies to bus franchising.
When and if bus franchising is done right and rural public transport can be meaningfully relied on by residents, it is a step towards enabling the rural economy’s productivity to increase and for it to make the contribution it is capable of towards national growth. Without tackling this, it will continue to lag behind. The Rural Coalition, of which I am president, recently published a Pragmatix report looking at the huge untapped potential of rural areas in contributing to the economy of our nation. But we need to get certain things right, of which transport is one.
For these reasons, it is not only prudent but urgently necessary that the Bill includes requirements to produce a rural impact assessment, as outlined in Amendment 49 from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. Government policy has an unfortunate track record of not appearing to rural-proof things properly. I have pressed the Minister in the Chamber on this a couple of times recently, asking for help on the strategies and matrices being used by government departments on rural-proofing. So far, I cannot get any information on that. This amendment, alongside Amendment 78, would help us move forward.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 49, to which I added my name. I will also speak to Amendment 78 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. These are two very similar amendments saying pretty much the same thing. Their timeframe is different, but if we are to have this new Jerusalem of connected bus services that help people—the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, commented about the outer fringes—we really need to know that this is happening. We need to concentrate it and we need it reported back to us.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 49, to which my name is attached, and remind your Lordships that I am president of the Local Government Association. From 2011 to 2023, England saw a 20% reduction in bus service provision, adjusted to a 28% per capita decrease amid population growth. The withdrawal of essential bus routes has isolated residents, particularly the elderly and vulnerable, from critical services and social opportunities. Despite overall national decline, particular regional disparities have hit areas such as North Yorkshire, Rutland, Shropshire and Slough. The government investment of £3.5 billion since the pandemic into initiatives such as the £2 fare cap and examples of community-led efforts to subsidise services demonstrate awareness of the problem, but this alone cannot create a more comprehensive bus network.
Transport for All believes that the Government’s proposed increase in funding is an opportunity to address the challenges faced by rural areas. However, in rural areas disabled people are more likely to rely on buses than non-disabled people. They are often impacted by inaccessible bus stops and poor connectivity, but buses are essential for accessing employment, healthcare and social inclusion. Rural bus services often exacerbate isolation and inequality, highlighting the urgent need for reforms that prioritise accessibility and inclusivity as an absolute must. In a survey carried out by Transport for All, 48% of respondents cited barriers to access on buses.
The English national concessionary travel scheme—ENCTS—is fantastic, but it cannot be used before 9.30 am, which creates barriers to employment for disabled people in these areas. New funding has been announced for rural and smaller authorities to provide for ENCTS enhancements. This would promote greater accessibility, similar to that in areas such as London and Merseyside, where disabled people can travel for free at any point of the day. It is really important that we look at this in rural areas—otherwise, it is going to exclude lots of people.
On the second day in Committee I covered issues on the accessibility of bus stops, ramps and shelters. This is even more important in rural communities, where there might be several hours between bus services, but we should also recognise that buses are critical to the local economy. Buses are socially necessary in rural areas, and it is vital that these services are maintained and expanded to meet community needs, especially for disabled people.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, it is impossible to disagree with the amendment that the Committee is discussing. We have heard the usual comprehensive proposals from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. I rise only to ask that if she is not happy—and none of us could be happy about the decline in rural bus services—how can that decline be reversed and who will be responsible for reversing it? Presumably, the Government will be expected to adequately fund the sorts of services that the Liberal Democrats and the right reverend Prelate envisage. We all know that is not going to happen in the short term. No doubt, it will enable the Liberal Democrats to blame somebody else—
Lord Snape (Lab)
Well, life is not fair. These are the realities of running bus services. I just remind the noble Baroness who accuses me of not being fair that I used to chair a major bus operator. It was employee-owned for much of the time and faced the same financial constraints and problems under the coalition Government—of which, if I remember rightly, the Liberal Democrats were a part.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
Stop being snide. I am sorry—I should not intervene, as I came late.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
As far as I have heard on this third day in Committee and at Second Reading, there has been a majority consensus for the Government’s proposals. What we are trying to do is to draw out those issues that we hope the Government will be able to address. One, as we have heard this afternoon, is rural bus services—and, indeed, access for island services. Equally, we understand that that will probably mean more funding. We had a debate on that on an earlier day in Committee. This is not about criticism or blame; it is about pulling out the issues.
Lord Moylan (Con)
I wonder if I could interrupt the noble Baroness to say that I hope that she realises that this Bill does not give the Government powers to run bus services. The whole point of this Bill is to give powers to local government to run bus services. When she says, “We want the Government to address these issues”, it is unclear to me to what she is referring. If she says that she wants the Government to provide funding to address these issues, that is fine, but if the funding is to be specific and hypothecated to particular purposes—say, to the crossing of bodies of water or certain rural services—then what is the point of giving the powers to local government? They should be making those decisions, wherever the funding comes from. I find the Liberal Democrat position on these provisions very difficult to follow.
Lord Snape (Lab)
I am not sure who is giving way to whom at the present time. I will come to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, in a moment or two, because I would be fascinated to hear his summing up of this matter—I wait with bated breath. Having gorged on those subsidies when he worked for TfL, while his party denuded the rest of the country of bus services, his response will be absolutely fascinating.
I ask the noble Baroness—I hope without causing too much offence—that if these proposals are to be properly implemented, who will provide the finance? It has to be either local or central government. The reality of these matters is that, in the short term, there will not be a massive improvement in rural bus services once this Bill becomes law. I only wish that the opposite were true. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister can reassure me that it will be true. However, until we know exactly how funds will be allocated and how great those funds are, I must say to the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, that, as ably as she moved this amendment, it is, as far as I can see, rather typical of the Liberal Democrats—all motherhood and apple pie.
Lord Burns (CB)
My Lords, I mentioned at Second Reading that I had been chairman of the North Wales Transport Commission in 2023-24. I spent a lot of time in north Wales looking at the performance of the bus services there. I am wholly persuaded of the merits of a franchising system in rural areas as well as in more urban areas, because we all know the problems that the existing system has created. However, I should point out—this follows the previous intervention—that doing this work and deciding which routes need to be run and where people wish to go is a time-consuming business. It will take a significant period to monitor where the car journeys are presently being taken and what kind of network is best going to meet the needs of people. I find the notion that there should be review of this within six months or even two years very ambitious, because in the work that I was engaged in it was time-consuming to get anywhere near a feel of how to create an integrated network rather than just a set of buses that were serving individual parts of the of the area.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords I am grateful to everyone who has spoken in this debate. We on our side are supportive of the importance of taking into account the needs of people dwelling in rural areas. Indeed, we have our own amendment to a very similar effect in a later group, which could have been disposed of here. Our proposal to the Liberal Democrats was that it be wrapped up with their proposals, but that was rejected, so now it is going to be debated as a separate group, somewhat repetitiously, towards the end of the list. So we generally support this.
A lot of what I wanted to say has been anticipated. I know that he does not like the fact that he and I agree on quite a lot of things, but the noble Lord, Lord Snape, has brought a dose of sensible realism to the debate, for the first time, perhaps, in our Committee. He was supported in that endeavour by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, with his practical knowledge of having examined the bus routes, the lack of bus routes and the potential bus routes in north Wales.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said that this Bill will transform bus services. As shorthand for an aspiration, that is fair enough, but the Bill in itself is not going to transform bus services at all, although that might be the aim. What it is going to do is transform the governance of bus services in two ways, both of them subject to the provision of very large amounts of money, which can come only from central Government and which is not apparent at the moment, although we are all aware that a spending review is in hand. Who knows what will happen? You stick in your thumb and pull out a plum. Who knows what is going to arrive for bus services or rural bus services when the Chancellor has completed her work? At the moment, we cannot say. We can say only that a large amount of money will be needed.
The two respects in which the governance will be changed to which I wish to draw attention are, first, that operational decisions about the running of buses are going to be transferred fundamentally from managers of bus service companies, who have a great deal of experience, to committees of councillors with very much less experience. They will take advice, no doubt, and the Government have said that they are going to offer them the advice of the Bus Centre of Excellence to do the sorts of things that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, referred to. They include, particularly, route planning, but these councillors will also be responsible for fare setting, and fares and ticketing is a great skill and art. We might all think that it is terribly easy to decide on a bus fare, but the whole business of fares and ticketing is a professional and skilled business. There is a great deal that they are going to have to do which they will now be responsible for, which previously they were not, with very little skills support because the Bus Centre of Excellence is a relatively small operation.
The other way in which the governance is going to be transformed—and this is what relates to my three amendments in this group, which I will dispose of briefly in a moment—is that for the first time, effectively, the Secretary of State is going to be issuing guidance that will shape the provision of bus services in a way that simply is not the case when bus services are provided privately. As far as I am aware, that is not the case in Manchester, let us say, where there is no great guidance coming from the Government. Manchester has adopted franchising powers already. But there will be guidance and the local transport authorities, in providing bus services, are going to be subject to it.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 49 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Pidgeon and Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and Amendment 78 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, seek to place a statutory requirement on reviewing the Bill’s impact on rural areas and villages. I also heard clearly the point from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans—and, incidentally, I agree with him about the need for cross-subsidy to help bus routes that are not in themselves profitable.
I note and understand the importance of serving villages and rural areas. Indeed, the Government intend the choices available to local transport authorities in the Bill to address just those points—including, for the avoidance of doubt, as we discussed this on a previous day, the appropriate use of demand-responsive transport.
The monitoring and evaluation of the Bill, which include the impact on rural services, will be completed as part of a wider evidence review of bus franchising. It will take several years—up to five years—for local authorities to transition to a franchised network or to form local authority bus companies, so any review prior to this would not be able to consider the full impact of any such transition. I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and I have very high regard for the work that he did in both south Wales and north Wales; he made elegantly that very point. In addition, the full impact of franchising is not expected to be seen until franchising schemes have been operating for some time. Therefore, the timing of a full assessment of impacts on local services needs to reflect that timeline.
I say to my noble friend Lord Snape that while a dose of realism is always a good thing in a discussion about the future, the evidence from the stages of franchising in Manchester is that a remarkable change in both the reliability of the bus service and the volumes of patronage and revenue has been seen as a consequence of the introduction of franchising in various phases.
Lord Snape (Lab)
I respectfully point out that Manchester is scarcely a rural area, and the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, specifies rural areas. It might be a bit more difficult to run cross-country services in rural areas than it is to run a franchising operation in cities such as Greater Manchester.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Indeed. I am grateful to my noble friend for that observation. I should have also mentioned the situation in Cornwall, which is more or less franchising and in an area that can be called rural, where the consequence of a decent set of organised services in a rural area has been a considerable increase in patronage. My noble friend’s point about realism is right, and I think the real point of what he was saying is that these things take some time to mature and come into effect.
On rural areas, there is no doubt that considerable damage has been done to public transport by an approach necessitated by the previous Government’s funding mechanisms, which have reintroduced routes that were withdrawn, withdrawn again routes that were reintroduced and given a lack of continuity to services that need it in order for people to rely on them.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for bringing forward Amendment 53 about statutory changes to local council powers. The Government believe that such changes will be wholly beneficial to communities in the United Kingdom. There may be legislation in this Session that alters the powers of local councils to provide them further powers on transport. Given the proximity in timing of any such legislation to this Bill, it would not be appropriate to provide such a review, as the powers would not have had sufficient time to be in force.
I appreciate that this Bill and the English devolution Bill, as well as the forthcoming railway reform Bill, will or may have related provisions to enhance the role of local councils, and we will work closely across and between departments to ensure that they most effectively give local councils control over their own transport networks. In respect of buses, the extensive guidance already available on enhanced partnerships in franchising from government, and the Bus Centre of Excellence, which has been referred to previously, will be available.
Amendment 62 in the name of my noble friend Lord Berkeley would introduce a statutory requirement for the Secretary of State to review within six months the Bill’s impact on certain local transport services. I refer to the remarks I have already made about the length of time it would take to take a good view about changes. I know that my noble friend is a long-standing campaigner on ferry services and the important role they play in connecting communities. I also note his description of the ferry service to the Isles of Scilly as “bumpy”, which is undoubtedly true. I agree that these services provide a crucial lifeline for many communities and ensure that people can access essential services, as he says.
The noble Lord also asked at Second Reading about tram services. Again, they are an important part. However, the meaning of this Bill is clear: it is focused on the provision of local bus services and a tram is clearly not a bus—a ferry is even less so. On ferries, though, I understand that the Isles of Scilly Council has been in touch with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government regarding both this matter and broader support for the islands. I hope that the noble Lord will note that I have said that.
Turning to Amendment 73, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, for bringing it forward. The Committee will have heard the noble Lord’s remarks about the handling of passenger complaints. The Government remain committed to ensuring that services are continuously improved with passengers. This amendment is consistent with our approach to rail, for which guidance on how to resolve complaints already exists. I agree with the noble Lords that it is important to deal with complaints properly, but it is my view that, apart from the handling of the original complaint, the resolution role sits with passenger watchdogs. The department is in the process of undertaking work with existing passenger watchdogs—Transport Focus and London TravelWatch—and bus stakeholders to identify issues and make recommendations on embedding standardised complaint-handling processes, ensuring that passengers have clear escalation. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord that the way to deal with complaints is not to file them in the waste-paper basket, but I do not wish to cut across the engagement that is currently under way.
I shall now address the points from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, about help for local transport authorities in route planning and fare setting. Of course, he has missed the fact that virtually every local transport authority in Britain has existing experience in both since, for the past 40 years, they have had to tender services that have not been found by commercial bus services to be worth running. I cannot believe that there is a local transport authority in the country that does not have some experience of both route planning and fare setting.
Amendment 79B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, seeks to impose new requirements on the provision of real-time passenger information. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord that ensuring that passengers can access high-quality, real-time information about their services is critical, but he will, I hope, be aware that there are existing obligations on bus operators. The Public Service Vehicles (Open Data) (England) Regulations 2020 provide the foundation for those obligations and, from these regulations, the Bus Open Data Service was launched in 2020 to facilitate the provision of high-quality, accurate and up-to-date passenger information across England, outside London. The Government will continue to work with local authorities and the sector to help drive improvements in real-time information.
I know that the noble Lord will have noted the part of our earlier discussion about the requirement in this Bill to ensure that real-time information is available on an accurate basis; the worst thing you can have is inaccurate real-time information. However, this Bill is also about empowering local areas. Part of that is trusting them to take decisions on what is best for the communities that they serve and working with them constructively, particularly in areas where there are existing regulations to ensure that services are improved. This is why I believe that the noble Lord’s Amendment 79B is not necessary.
Turning to Amendment 79D, again I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for bringing it forward. As he said, it is about working with local transport authorities and airport operators, but I do not believe that the amendment is necessary. My department is currently carrying out a call for ideas for the integrated national transport strategy, which will set out a single national vision. This will have people who use transport and their needs at its heart and will empower local leaders to develop integrated transport solutions. As part of the Bill, we want better links across modes—links that connect people and businesses and support the economy. We are working with operators, local authorities and passengers in that way to deliver more reliable public transport networks in general. The noble Lord will, I hope, understand that I do not wish to cut across the engagement on the integrated national transport strategy that is currently under way.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his remarks in response to my amendment. He said in passing that a tram is not a bus, which is of course true, but it often fulfils the same role as a bus by moving lots of people in relative comfort. A lightweight tram scheme is now being built in Coventry, which I hope will be working in the next few years. It is very much cheaper to build, which is excellent, because it needs lighter track work. However, the question of who decides the timetable and fares of that tram and any bus service that Coventry City Council might wish to encourage will need looking at in future. Has the Minister’s department thought about that?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his intervention. First, the ultra-light tram development in Coventry is still a tram—it has steel wheels on steel rails, so it is still a tram. Secondly, all those schemes, even ones that will, I hope, produce a relative reduction in capital cost, have to be considered through the Transport and Works Act orders and other mechanisms for building infrastructure. The consequence of that is that those schemes are generally under the control of public authorities and are almost always in urban areas. One of the consequences of the freedoms that this Bill will give to local transport authorities will be the introduction of franchising, binding together all the public transport services in those conurbations, including both timetables and fares, to give an integrated service to citizens who live in those towns and cities.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
The Minister has clearly heard the strength of feeling from across the Committee about rural communities and the importance of connectivity and access to bus services. The comments of the noble Lord, Lord Snape, about funding are important, because funding is always the elephant in the room. But what we are discussing are new measures, including franchising, which will be the new tool to help local government and local transport authorities to address some of these socially necessary routes—not profitable routes—as part of bus route packages. Our amendments simply try to improve this legislation; we are very supportive, overall, of its aims. I am reassured to have heard from the Minister about this wider review and ensuring that rural communities and areas are part of that, so I am happy to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Pidgeon
“Review of bus fare impact on patronage(1) Local transport authorities must conduct a comprehensive review of the impact of bus fares on passenger patronage within their jurisdiction.(2) The review may assess—(a) how fare levels influence ridership trends,(b) the social, economic, and environmental outcomes of current fare structures,(c) potential changes to improve accessibility and increase patronage, and(d) potential benefits, if any, of the simplification of ticketing systems for the purposes of increasing bus patronage.(3) The first review must be completed and published no later than six months after the date on which this Act is passed.(4) Subsequent reviews must be conducted at least once every three years, and made publicly available.(5) In conducting the review, local transport authorities must consult relevant stakeholders, including public transport users, service operators, and community representatives, and any other stakeholders deemed relevant by the local transport authority.”
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 51 would require local transport authorities to carry out a review of the impact of bus fares on passenger numbers within their area. The review must look at how fare levels are influencing numbers; the social, economic and environmental outcomes of the current fare structure; ways to simplify ticketing systems; and changes to increase bus patronage and improve accessibility. This review should be carried out within six months of the Act passing and every three years, working with all key stakeholders.
We feel that there is a significant gap in the Bill relating to fares. The final-stage impact assessment states:
“Increased fares, unreliable services and fewer routes would likely drive more people away from buses, further reducing passenger numbers”.
Helen Morgan, Member of Parliament for North Shropshire, told me that Shropshire has lost more bus routes than any other county and that the £2 fare cap was not introduced in Shropshire. Fares are significantly higher and a six-mile journey into Shrewsbury can cost as much as £6.20. It is therefore essential that local transport authorities assess the impact that fares are having, alongside other factors, in the provision of local bus services following the implementation of this Bill.
I also have Amendments 74 and 80 in this group, which together place a limit of £2 on single journey bus fares, which can be reviewed every three years and adjusted by statutory instrument. The increase in the bus fare cap from £2 to £3 has created real barriers for passengers, particularly those on low incomes who rely on buses to go about their everyday lives. The £1 rise per journey adds up quickly, straining already tight budgets and forcing difficult choices between transport and other essentials. For rural communities where alternatives are few, the impact is even greater. Without addressing fares in this Bill, we risk deepening existing inequalities and leaving many people isolated. I remind Members that the final stage impact assessment states:
“There may also be benefits associated with increasing bus usage through lowering fares”.
We also strongly believe that affordable public transport promotes greener travel choices. It helps to cut carbon emissions and eases road congestion. In many parts of the country, it remains cheaper to drive than to take the bus. This is a disincentive, and putting a £2 cap on bus fares would go some way to helping to address it. This legislation is about improving bus services and enabling local authorities to have a choice about how local services are provided, but unless there are affordable bus fares, there is a huge hole in this plan. I hope the Minister can address these concerns and respond to our proposal to keep bus fares affordable across the country.
On the previous group we had a discussion about real-time passenger information and open data. Another issue linked to the price of fares is the accessibility of purchasing tickets. There has been a transformation in purchasing rail tickets, despite the fare structure being incredibly complex, through tech innovation and apps. One would want to see, as part of these changes to improve bus services, bus retail being opened up to third-party organisations to allow innovation and the ability for passengers to purchase bus tickets or rail-bus packages. When the Minister comments on our amendments, will he also reflect on improving the Bus Open Data Service and on how opening this area further might transform the passenger experience? I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, this group is full of sensible amendments. I will speak to the two in my name, Amendments 77 and 79. Amendment 72 is about the concessionary travel scheme—the £2 fare cap—which has been an immense success. In the village where I live in Dorset, it has changed people’s lives. All sorts of people now do not use their cars, which saves them an awful lot of money that they can spend on things such as heating. They do not need to use their cars, they do not need to pay for parking, and they do not need the maintenance of their cars. It has made a huge difference, and many of those people are not looking forward to it going up at the end of the year to £3. It definitely increases usership. It was interesting to read Amendment 63 from the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, presumably in support of the £2 fare cap, which I think is wonderful.
Amendment 79 is about a slightly different issue. It is about encouraging children to start using buses. Most children in the area I live in have to use buses to get to school if their parents cannot afford a car or cannot afford to drive them. I think it is very good practice to get children on the buses early and encourage them to understand that it is something that everybody can do. Also, to some extent, it is a little bit of independence for them. As a Green, I struggle slightly with the idea that any travel should be cheaper than walking and cycling. However, in this instance I think it is sensible to make bus travel free for children, simply because there are so many other accumulated costs on their parents. I think this would be a very good move.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 63 standing in my name. We are fully aware that fares must contribute to funding our public transport system, particularly when it comes to meeting essential social needs. However, we must also acknowledge the significant impact that fare levels have on passenger demand. This is especially relevant given His Majesty’s Government’s recent decision to raise the bus fare cap by 50%.
We are proud of our own record, particularly in extending the £2 bus fare cap throughout 2024. That policy, as we have just heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, provided crucial support to passengers across the country, especially in low-income areas where bus services are a lifeline for many. It is therefore imperative that we fully understand the impact of increasing fares on those who rely most on these services.
This amendment seeks to ensure that the Government carry out and publish a comprehensive impact assessment on the economic and social consequences of removing the £2 bus fare cap. This assessment must include, but not be limited to, the potential impact on passenger numbers; the financial implications for local transport authorities; the effect on accessibility for those who depend on bus fares for essential travel; and the impact on passengers’ ability to reach socially necessary services, as defined in Clause 12.
We do not believe that His Majesty’s Government conducted such a detailed assessment before announcing the increase to the fare cap. However, they still have the opportunity to do so now. By undertaking that assessment, the Government can ensure that future decisions are based on sound evidence and a clear understanding of the impact on those who depend on public transport the most. For those reasons, I urge the Minister to consider this amendment and commit to a full and transparent assessment of the impact of increasing the bus fare cap.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, I do not think I will offend too many people if I say that no one could object to this amendment. Fares play an important role, but I do not think we should overemphasise the role they play. Travel West Midlands, a company with which I was involved for some years, did regular passenger surveys—largely a tick-box exercise, for obvious reasons, handed out by the driver or staff at bus stops. Funnily enough, fares never topped the list of complaints; reliability, congestion and safety all came before fares for passengers in the West Midlands. That is not to play down the impact of fares on passenger carrying, but it should be kept in perspective.
As for the contribution from the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, I kept count at Second Reading, and that is 11 different reviews, reports and committees that the Conservative Party has so far advanced in the debates on this legislation. I hope that management time—or ministerial time, for that matter—can perhaps concentrate more on running effective services and less on producing reports to the demand of the Conservative Party, largely about matters that its period in office considerably worsened for the bus industry.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I am again very grateful to all noble Lords who spoke. I am surprised that I have to help the noble Lord, Lord Snape, understand that very frequently in Committee, as a way in which to provoke some sort of debate or to probe the Government’s intentions, it might be appropriate to ask for a report without necessarily wanting to amend the Bill in that direction when we come to Report—ill named, perhaps. I am sure he realises that his jibe against the Conservative Party has fallen flat.
I was rather pleased to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, say that she would welcome opening things up to the private sector to develop interesting, innovative and technological apps and ways of paying. I think that is the first thing we have heard said in favour of the private sector in Committee so far.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and, in a sense, the noble Lord, Lord Snape—what he was saying was to some extent a response to what the noble Baroness had been saying—bring us to the heart of a debate that most politicians try to run away from: how bus services and other public transport are to be paid for. What is the role of fares in paying for them?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 51 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, would require local transport authorities to review the impact of bus fares on patronage. Where a local transport authority has delivered fare interventions to encourage patronage, such as Cornwall’s bus fares pilot and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority Mayor’s fare intervention, they have already commissioned independent evaluation reports to measure their success. Bus service improvement plans already in place also include measures addressing bus fares to encourage greater use of buses. We must recognise that changes to fares are usually delivered at the same time as other transport interventions that support and improve bus services. It would therefore be challenging to attribute any change in patronage solely to a change in the fare charged to passengers.
Your Lordships will have noted that the Government are in the process of negotiating the outcomes for which local transport authorities will be held accountable in respect of buses, as part of their recent respective comprehensive funding settlements. In addition to outcome monitoring at a local level, we will continue to monitor fare impacts at a national level to inform future fare cap decisions.
In passing, I note the noble Baroness’s observations about whether Shropshire adopted the £2 fare cap. I am informed that all except six bus services in Shropshire were covered, although I would not say that the bus network in Shropshire was either adequate or satisfactory. One of the effects of the Bill, when it becomes an Act, will be to enable local transport authorities to do better by the various means embraced within it. I therefore submit that the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, is unnecessary because of the actions already taking place.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, for Amendment 63, which seeks to examine the impact of ending the £2 national bus fare cap. The department has prepared a full monitoring and evaluation report of the £2 national bus fare cap, which has just been published. The report is available to read and I will make sure that noble Lords present have the link to it. It suggests that urban populations are more likely to have used the scheme, where of course journeys are shorter and fares are more likely to be £2 or less. In fact, the average fare payable on buses prior to the scheme’s introduction was between £2 and £3. The Government’s adoption of a £3 cap, and the added safeguard of increases above £2 being limited to the rate of inflation, do a great deal, at the cost of £150 million, to continue to ensure that millions can access better opportunities and get greater bus use.
Lord Moylan (Con)
A study of the effect of the £2 bus cap would be very valuable—let us remember that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said that in her rural part of Dorset it was transformative; I think that was the word she used about it having a significant effect in that part of the world—and we look forward to reading it. But my noble friend Lord Effingham was also asking for a study of what the effect of increasing it would be when that is introduced, which would be equally valuable and show the other part of the equation, if noble Lords see what I mean. I press the Minister because I do not want him to miss the point inadvertently. Is a similar study of the effect of increasing the cap to £3 after an appropriate period—six months or a year—something to which he can commit himself today to illuminate that picture for us?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that. I will certainly think about whether, and at what stage, the department would look at that further. I am certainly not going to commit to it today, because we are looking at wide-ranging legislation about bus services in general, but I wanted to inform the Committee that the work on the £2 bus fare cap is now published.
Amendments 74 and 80 from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, also concern the £2 bus fare cap, which I have just addressed. They are clearly intended to seek its reintroduction. Bearing in mind what the average bus fare is, that the Government are proposing to continue with a £3 cap and that fares between £2 and £3 will go up only by the rate of inflation, I hope she will agree that those amendments are unnecessary. However, the noble Baroness referred to the wider retailing of bus tickets, which is obviously a good idea; from time to time, I find myself agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. Access to bus services should be widely available, and not understanding the fare structure or being able to buy a bus ticket are the worst reasons for not using the service.
In my view, and in the Government’s view, the provisions in this Bill that allow local transport authorities a choice of enhanced partnerships or franchising, or even their own bus companies, will enable local transport authorities to look at wider retailing. Of course, the ultimate aim is not to sell bus tickets at all but for people to use credit cards or bank cards directly as means of payment. We want the bus industry and bus services to move towards that, and I believe that this Bill will facilitate it.
Amendment 77 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, looks for a review of the English national concessionary travel scheme. The Government want everybody who needs it to have access to public transport and are committed to improving the system. The English national concessionary travel scheme costs about £700 million annually, and any changes to the statutory obligations, such as the hours in which the pass can be used being extended, would need to be carefully considered. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, on a previous occasion in the Chamber, the Government are not considering changes to the scheme at the moment.
However, local authorities in England already have the power to offer concessions in addition to their statutory obligations. We see this in London, where individuals aged 60 and over are eligible for the 60+ Oyster card, and similar schemes already exist in other parts of the country, where local authorities have chosen to provide specific support to their communities through offers that go beyond their statutory obligation. That ability for local transport authorities will continue, and no part of this Bill will restrict it. A review into the English national concessionary travel scheme concluded in 2024, and my department is currently considering the next steps.
Amendment 79 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, would require the Secretary of State to review the impact of making buses free for children. The Government remain committed to exploring targeted solutions that deliver value for money to taxpayers while ensuring affordable bus travel for those who need it most, particularly young people. Bus operators can choose to offer concessions to children and young people. In fact, youth concessions are currently offered by at least one commercial bus operator in 73 out of the 85 local authority areas in England outside London. Local authorities also have powers to introduce concessions or discounts for young people. Since buses are local and the Government are committed to devolution, that is where we believe that such choices should be made in respect of free and reduced-rate travel for children.
Finally, I note the observations by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, about demanding or wanting reports following my noble friend Lord Snape’s helpful intervention. This Bill has been carefully thought through. The first requirement when it becomes an Act of Parliament will be that it works for local authorities, communities and bus passengers. No doubt there will be reports in due course but, frankly, I am not looking for any of them to be carried out now or in the immediate future because, as my noble friend observed, our efforts ought to be concentrated on running the bus service better rather than writing reports about why it does not work.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
I thank the Minister. I am reassured by him saying that the Government ought to continue to monitor the fare impact at a national level and will circulate the link to the review of the £2 cap. That is to be welcomed. I hope that he will drive forward the point about ticketing and modernisation because it is important for passengers.
However, I go back to the comments that I made earlier. The hefty report that I have here, the final-stage impact assessment, says:
“There may also be benefits associated with increasing bus usage through lowering fares”.
We have heard today about Cornwall’s hugely successful pilot but, if you read the trade press, it is clear that there are concerns about it continuing, and this goes back to the funding point that we discussed earlier. Probably for the first time in this Committee, I strongly disagree with the Minister about the £2 bus cap. We think that it is essential. The Minister described my amendment as unnecessary. We do not agree with that, we think that it is very necessary, but, at this stage, I will withdraw it. I am sure that we will come back to it at a future stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Pinnock
“Training programmes on provisions in this Act and their impact on local transport authorities(1) Local transport authorities must establish and maintain training programmes to ensure staff and relevant stakeholders are informed of the provisions in this Act and their impact on the powers and responsibilities of local transport authorities.(2) Such training programmes shall—(a) provide a comprehensive overview of relevant legislative provisions in this Act,(b) focus on the practical application of these powers in policy development, planning, and service delivery, and(c) ensure compliance with legal obligations and promote effective decision-making.(3) Training must be made available to—(a) elected representatives overseeing transport functions,(b) officers responsible for the implementation of transport policies, and(c) any other individuals or organisations directly involved in delivering transport services.(4) Local transport authorities must review and update the training programmes regularly to reflect changes to this Act. (5) Authorities must publish a summary of the training programmes and participation rates annually to ensure transparency and accountability.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires local transport authorities to develop training programmes to ensure staff and stakeholders are informed about the provisions in this Act and their impact on the powers and responsibilities of local transport authorities.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I remind the Grand Committee at this stage that I am a serving councillor.
The changes proposed in the Bill, as we discussed earlier in the amendment on governance, will require councillors serving on local transport authorities to make a range of decisions—the noble Lord, Lord Snape, was able to list some of them—that are currently not within their purview. That is positive. It will mean that democratically elected representatives will make the essential funding decisions that underpin bus services. It enables transparent decision-making and, in turn, that enables local people, as taxpayers, to question those decisions.
Creating an open, transparent and accountable process in the bus franchising system is essential. Local transport authorities are not used to operating in this extensive way. What LTAs do now is to try to support as best they can some socially vital services when bus companies say that they are not profitable. When the measures in this Bill are enacted, the role of the LTAs will change considerably. There will be major decisions to take on the shape of bus services and the balance of provision between running profitable routes and providing a public service option for smaller communities, as well as consideration about services at night, in early mornings and at weekends. Given that none of those serving on local transport authorities is likely to have had extensive experience of the new franchising arrangements, ensuring that a training programme is available for all involved is important.
Now I come to the more radical bit. Amendment 54 in my name seeks to go a step further and require mandatory training for councillors and staff, particularly councillors serving on local transport authorities. Councillors currently serving on planning and licensing committees are making decisions within a legal framework. Exercising that responsibility within that framework while raising the concerns of the people they serve is not straightforward. Many councils, mine included, have a mandatory training requirement for any councillor who serves on a planning or licensing committee. That has helped to raise the standard of discussion, debate and decision-making. Not every council has a similar training requirement for those committees, but doing so helps everyone to focus attention on the choices available, rather than simple opposition, which, when operating in a legal framework, is often unsuccessful.
There will be many difficult and challenging decisions to be made by local transport authorities as they seek to balance routes, rural routes, fare prices, congestion and time-tabling reliability. A lot of that is within a legal framework. Therefore, an extensive training programme would benefit those sitting on those committees and help those making those difficult choices to do so in a way that they can respond to effectively when they are challenged about why they have made a decision. There will be a lot of that, I think: “Why haven’t you got a rural route for me?” or “Why haven’t you cut the fares?”. If there was that training, it would be the background for them effectively to explain the decisions that have been made. Given that, I hope that the Minister will carefully consider the merits of the amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 55 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I tabled this as a probing amendment to continue the discussion on training to help to improve it and to try to mitigate the failures. I realise this is a rather generic amendment and lacking in much detail, but it is about getting the widest possible number of people to understand the impact on a disabled person of not being able to get on a bus.
I receive a number of emails every month from disabled people who are unable to access a service. It may be due to a broken ramp, although the bus should not leave the depot if the ramp is not working. It is also hard to get any traction on complaints, and a lot of disabled people feel that their issues are simply not understood. The issue with the space between wheelchairs and buggies is ongoing. I have experienced it myself, regardless of the High Court case of FirstGroup plc v Paulley. That does not seem to have moved things on as much as I had hoped. Then there is the issue of visually impaired people who have guide dogs, and understanding the space required for them is really important.
I recognise that a whole pile of training already happens, but I think it needs to be better. The impact of a disabled person not being able to get on a bus leads to isolation. In many cases, it is not possible for them to rely on taxis or other unsustainable modes of transport. You might be okay with taxis in a big city where they are accessible, but in lots of places around the country they are not. I probably receive emails every month from disabled people who have been refused access to taxis or charged more because of their impairment. Fewer disabled people are able to drive. Twenty-eight per cent of disabled adults live in a household without a car and only 61% hold a full driving licence, compared to 80% of non-disabled adults. This is why buses are so important.
I already mentioned how hard it can be to get redress. It is very hard to complain to the driver, especially if they just drive off, having refused access. It is also really hard to complain to the companies. They will often give an apology, but that does not fix the issue of somebody not being able to get on in the first place.
I am really interested in looking at what we can do to improve the quality of training. As an aside, I am chairing the Aviation Accessibility Task and Finish Group for the Department for Transport, and training is the number one thing that we are looking at. We are not at the point of writing up our recommendations just yet, but we are exploring raising the bar on standards and ensuring it is equally delivered across the country.
I realise the vagueness of my amendment is probably not helpful, but I look forward to continuing the discussion about how we can make it more possible for disabled people to have the same experience as everybody else.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
This group of amendments is really important, because training is an essential part of this new move to different models for providing bus services across the country. I particularly wanted to highlight the important amendment from my noble friend Lady Pinnock, because local transport authorities will be taking on significant new powers. We must not underestimate that, and it will be vital that their staff, stakeholders and members who sit on the authorities have a comprehensive training package, so they understand the legislation, framework and landscape—and accessibility and what that truly means, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, rightly highlighted. I liken this to thinking about planning and licensing requirements and what has transformed local government over the last couple of decades in terms of training and the quality of decision-making in that space: we need to look at this in a similar way. I really hope the Minister will respond positively to these amendments.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to those who have spoken in this short debate. I have great sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said, as she knows. We will support her in her continuing campaign, and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, to put the case on behalf of disabled people for proper consideration in relation to public transport services.
I was mildly tickled by the proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. One of my deep concerns, which I have tried to express in as gentle a way as possible throughout this Committee, has been the adequacy and competence of local councillors to take on the role envisaged for them by this Bill. I had not imagined that a vice-chairman of the LGA should give such ringing endorsement to my concerns, to the point where she actually said that training should be mandated by statute for those who will take part in making those decisions. We are at one on this in our concern.
None the less, I am not entirely sure—here I suspect that I will sound a bit like the Minister, and I speak as a former local councillor—that the idea of a statutory training programme in this area would be appropriate. There is a false analogy with training for the exercise of planning and licensing functions, because those are almost invariably what are referred to as quasi-judicial functions that relate to individuals making applications relating to their property, business, premises or whatever. They need to be taken in an appropriate legal framework, rather than a political framework. It is appropriate that councillors are given training in that legal background where they are called on to make those decisions.
The sort of decisions that will be made here are not in that category, so I wonder whether this approach is necessary. In fact, even it were appropriate to have statutory training, I would not have training on the provisions of this Bill, which is what the amendment calls for but, rather, training of the sort that perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Snape, could provide: training in how to run a bus company and make the hard, crunchy decisions that you will be confronted with about how to manage your resources in a way that maximises your revenue while allowing you to provide as many, but not necessarily all, of the socially important services that you would like to provide. Those are the hard, crunchy things that people will need to be trained in, rather than understanding the legal background provided by this Bill.
In a way, I am delighted to find myself holding hands with the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on this topic, but I am not sure that I can support her on the wording of this amendment.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I will address Amendments 54 and 55 together. I listened carefully, as I hope that I always do, to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, who talked about her real experience of travelling by bus. Anything less than 100% accessibility is unacceptable, and I completely agree with her.
The Government are determined that power over local bus services is put back in the hands of local leaders across England. That is why the department recently allocated over £700 million of bus grant for local transport authorities in 2025-26 by formula. Funding for bus services is also provided through the local government finance settlement. In fact, specifically, the 2025-26 funding included money for additional officer capability, for either additional officers or help equivalent to additional officers, to help each local transport authority in the choices that this Bill will give them.
The Government have also established the Bus Centre of Excellence, which I am sure we will continue to return to. Work is also under way to provide even more active support to local transport authorities that wish to explore franchising. I take this opportunity to make noble Lords aware of the Government’s plans to pilot different franchising models particularly suited to more rural areas. This funding, along with potential local transport authority bus funding in future financial years, is available to support implementation of the Bill’s measures.
It is, of course, wholly reasonable to expect the people who deliver policies and support services that help disabled people to understand their legal rights, needs and expectations. This afternoon, we will come on to the primary training needs of bus drivers, who are the visible front line of the bus service. The Government are clearly committed to helping authorities deliver the service improvements that we all want to see, whether it is through tailored assistance, the additional funding to which I have referred or the Bus Centre of Excellence.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this mini-debate. In particular, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for her important amendment; again, it rightly raises the issue of access for those with disabilities. I always think that if we get access for people with disabilities right, we get access for everybody right. The noble Baroness has placed an important amendment before us to make us think about that.
In my councillor role, at the moment, I am trying to help a resident who is in a wheelchair. There are three wheelchair users on her estate and only one can get on the bus at any one time, so she is unable to get the bus if they are there at the bus stop; she has to wait another hour to get a bus. Somebody said to her, “Well, get a taxi”. As the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, will know, the answer is frequently no. There are no accessible taxis in my town, so that resident is stuck. We need those issues to be at the forefront of this debate, which is why the training is so important; otherwise, we will get it wrong. That would be both a terrible mistake and a loss of an opportunity.
I thank the Minister for his reply. I can understand why he stepped carefully around the issues of local government requirements and training for those on local transport authorities. I thank him for saying—sort of—that he will think about this. I hope that he will, because better decisions are made when folk understand the parameters within which they are operating. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Hampton
“Access to the Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System (CIRAS)In the Transport Act 2000, after section 144E (inserted by section 21 of this Act) insert— “144F Access to the Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System (CIRAS) for drivers of PSVs(1) Local authorities must ensure that service operators provide drivers of a PSV being used under a licence to provide a local bus service with access to the Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System (CIRAS).(2) If service operators do not fulfil the requirement under subsection (1) to provide access to CIRAS for drivers, the local authority may revoke the service permit.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that service operators provide drivers with access to CIRAS (Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System).
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 58, I will also speak to my Amendments 59 and 60. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Pidgeon, for their help along the way. I degrouped these from the original groupings, as they are more about safety than accessibility and inclusivity. I felt that they were important enough that they might get a bit lost in a larger group.
On 29 January, bus drivers marched from Victoria to Parliament to protest about driver conditions and present a petition, signed by over 29,000 people, calling for the acceptance of a bus drivers’ bill of rights, which is about giving bus drivers the basic rights of employment that they feel are being eroded. It was timed to commemorate the death of Kathleen Finnegan, who was killed by a London bus while crossing at Victoria Station. Driver welfare should be the cornerstone of any legislation. I have had meetings with representatives of bus driver groups who feel that there are some working practices going on that they are unhappy about.
My Amendment 58 would mandate that everyone has access to a confidential incident reporting system. CIRAS is one, but there are several bona fide reporting systems available. TfL has had that in place since February 2016; once again, we go back to the fact that TfL does a very good job, so let us roll that out. In my conversations with the Minister, for which I thank him, he felt that this could be brought in and would help a lot with driver safety concerns. If this were a requirement for every bus company, one would hope it meant that any driver safety issues could be thoroughly investigated. That would be great for transparency, passenger confidence, workers and politicians.
I turn to Amendment 59. On the first day in Committee, the Minister said that this Bill is about safety. The noble Lord, Lord Snape, referred to that as well in talking about passenger surveys. However, except for a section about how to deal with crime on buses, there is very little in the Bill about safety.
My amendment would force bus companies to publish their safety data regularly. I talked about this at length at Second Reading, so I will not repeat myself but, in reply, the Minister said that all the data nationwide is already available on STATS19. I am afraid that I will ask the Committee to buckle in and follow me closely on this, because it will get quite granular. The Minister said in his letter that,
“It should also be noted that STATS19 data is a comprehensive and robust public record of personal injury incidents and includes a wide range of data that can be used to support future improvements to safety. A further set of safety data is collected by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Authority, who also collect data on incidents or collisions involving Public Service Vehicle … licence holders. By law, all PSV operators must report fatalities, serious injuries, allegations of a safety defect, serious damage as a result of the incident, a safety critical component failure or history of the same component failing, and a vehicle catching fire”.
I have to say that I did not find STATS19 to be user-friendly, on quite a brief look, and nor did it seem to regionalise data.
In response, the very excellent Tom Kearney, of LondonBusWatch—if there is anyone you need to granularly look at data, it is Tom Kearney—said this. I will quote him exactly:
“Compared to London’s published data, the DfT’s STATS19 Data is seriously deficient and undercounts the number of people killed and injured in Bus Safety Incidents. Even a casual review of STATS19 Data … reveals that is neither published as frequently or in as much useful granular detail as the Bus Safety Data TfL has published on its website every quarter since 2014 … Because STATS19 data combines incidents involving Bus and Coaches and does not include injury incidents involving Buses that have taken place on private roads or land (entrances/exits to and at bus stations) as far as Bus Casualty Data Reporting is concerned, STATS19 is both inaccurate and misleading. STATS19 also does not include injury incidents (Trips & Falls) onboard buses that might not have been caused by a collision, yet produce a lot of casualties (including fatalities) and are an important indicator of Bus Safety Performance”.
He continues by saying that an analysis of TfL’s published data reveals that, for the period from 1 June 2016 to 31 December 2023,
“Collisions from London Buses at Bus Stations have injured 133”
and sent 87 people to hospital.
In addition, between 1 January 2014 and 31 January 2024,
“6 people have been killed from Collisions from London Buses at Bus Stations. None of these fatal or injury incidents involving Buses are recorded in STATS19 Data; Out of the 120 Preventable Bus Safety Deaths that have occurred over the period Q1 2014-Q2 2024 that TfL’s published, 27 … don’t get reported in STATS19 because they occurred at Bus Stations … or resulted from onboard falls … or ‘other’ preventable safety incidents”.
TfL does not provide any details on those. Tom Kearney concludes:
“We have FOI requests that prove that the DVSA collects but does not publish data and the Traffic Commissioner neither collects nor publishes data”.
If the Committee has followed that, this issue is at best muddy.
Could we, as the users, have this data on a dashboard divided by LTA? STATS19 is neither easy to use nor, as far as I can see, divided across the regions. The Minister said that it might well be possible for franchises but was doubtful whether it would work where there was no franchise in place. These days, we are being told that data is gold. Surely companies should be mining this data anyway to analyse their performance—and if not, why not?
When I spoke to Go-Ahead, it was also concerned that much of the accident data is not the fault of buses but might be used as a headline number to dent passenger confidence. I am sure that it is not beyond the wit of mankind to separate fault from no-fault accident data and learn from it. Again, we are talking of transparency and public confidence.
On my Amendment 60, from my conversations with bus drivers, again, they are really concerned about tiredness and things changing with shift patterns. They feel that they need more time. Again, since my conversation with the Minister, I realise that there are very different patterns in being an HGV driver and a bus driver. This is more of an amendment to push for an idea of the reporting. We really need to look at driver welfare and I beg to move.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
The amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, raise some really important points about the safety of bus services and are important for our considerations. Bus safety performance data being shared in a clear, simple and transparent way is important if we are talking about driving up performance. The complexities that we have heard clearly outlined show why this is so.
I am particularly interested in Amendment 58. It is a good suggestion that all bus drivers should have access to the confidential incident reporting and analysis system known as CIRAS. Over my years of working on the London Assembly, we heard evidence time and again from drivers suffering from fatigue and stress and, in some places, of there being a culture which really did not support reporting of concerns and practices. Many drivers feared for their jobs and we heard similar things about the tram network as well.
CIRAS describes its role on its website:
“We listen to the health and safety concerns of people in transport. We protect their identity when we share their concerns with the right people to act. When we listen, we learn. We help our members share good practice and promote an even stronger culture of listening. And our members learn from valuable safety information they might have otherwise missed”.
This is important as we seek to improve bus services across the country. I really look forward to hearing the Minister’s thoughts on this group of amendments, particularly the point around CIRAS.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, with his amendments, the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, has opened up one of the most important and least discussed areas to do with bus operations in a way that presents many of us who have experience of responsibility, one way or another, for bus services—in my case, a non-executive responsibility for a number of years—with real challenges and difficulty. The question we must ask ourselves is whether bus operators have the right mentality about safety. I say that in the light of what has been achieved in the construction industry, for example, over the past 20 years, where a focus on zero accidents and injuries has transformed the way of working. Of course, zero is never quite achieved, but very close to zero is now achieved on construction sites. A deliberate programme and a deliberate change in mentality has brought that about. On the railways, there is a strong focus on that mentality, and I wonder whether it exists on the buses: are we, in fact, way out of date in our attitudes towards safety?
I want to mention that I have just become an officer of the newly reconstituted APPG on Women in Transport. The relevance is that many of these issues to do with safety are women’s issues. There is the obvious question of violence against women and girls on buses; the APPG will look at that, but there is the broader issue of safety in general. I do not have up-to-date statistics, but it used to be the case, admittedly some years ago, that a very large percentage of women over the age of 65 presenting at A&E were there because they had suffered an injury inside a bus—not from a bus collision but inside a bus, very often because of aggressive or inappropriate braking on modern buses, which have very sharp brakes. The safety regulators, of course, think, “Yes, we must have the sharpest and most modern brakes, just as for a motor car”, but in a motor car you are sitting down and strapped in, whereas on a bus you are frequently standing up, because buses are designed to carry standing passengers. Sharp braking results in people falling over. Very often, proportionally, it is elderly women who are falling over and being injured. Do we take proper account of that? Are we recording it? Are we thinking actively about what we should do about it? The situation has not improved in the 20 years or so that I have been making this point about elderly women inside buses.
Then there is the question, which is very pertinent to the Bill, of the way in which franchise contracts operate. My experience is somewhat out of date, but it is a London-based experience where franchising is used, and to some extent the London model is the basis for the Bill and is being rolled out elsewhere. The emphasis in the contracts is on keeping to the timetable, and that is very difficult in urban areas because of congestion and unpredictable events, including roadworks and so forth. Very often, drivers are under pressure—they have a clock and are in direct communication with their control—to make up time because gaps in the service have arisen, and they can do that only by going faster and braking more sharply. Quite apart from the potential effects on passengers inside the bus, which I have already mentioned, the risk of knocking into something, often with very serious effect if that something happens to be a human body walking in the street, is increased.
We are all here saying how wonderful it is—not all of us are saying it with the same level of enthusiasm, admittedly, but there are people in the Room saying how wonderful it is—that we are extending a franchise model, but the structure of the contract on which those franchises will be based needs to be looked at carefully in the light of safety considerations. We should all be very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, for bringing up this issue.
In relation to Amendment 60, I am not persuaded that we should have a new and separate statutory provision about working time in the Bill, when we already have quite extensive and elaborate working time legislation elsewhere. There is a lot to be said in favour of Amendments 58 and 59. I have a suspicion that they will reappear on Report; if they do, they will deserve very serious consideration indeed.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Pidgeon, for Amendment 58. It seeks to require local authorities to ensure that bus operators provide their drivers with access to the Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System, which I will refer to as CIRAS.
The Government are always concerned, as they should be, about any safety incidents in the bus sector, or indeed any other public transport sector. That is why a number of official routes exist to allow anyone to provide confidential, anonymous reporting on safety and standards in the sector, backed up by enforcement. Anyone may anonymously report a lack of safety or conformation to standards in the bus sector to the DVSA intelligence unit, which may use this information to investigate the situation, including by working with other government departments and agencies, as well as police forces.
Comprehensive standards bridge all aspects of bus operation, across the roadworthiness of vehicles, operation of services and driver standards. As I said, they are enforced by a number of organisations, principally the DVSA. The operators of the vehicles are licensed by the traffic commissioners, who consider non-compliance issues seriously and ensure that operators are effectively regulated. The judicial process of the traffic commissioners can and does result in depriving people of operators’ licences and depriving managers of their certificate to run bus operations.
CIRAS provides another route for employees to report concerns. Both Transport for London and Transport for Greater Manchester are members of CIRAS. Being able to report such concerns in a confidential manner is clearly important, and I would encourage employees of member organisations to consider using this service where appropriate. But CIRAS is a third-party service, and it would not be appropriate to include it within the scope of the Bill.
However, I did a bit of personal research on this, and I will say that if we are asking people to report bus safety issues to the DVSA intelligence unit, it would make a lot of sense for access to it to be freely available. When I looked at it, it was quite difficult to find, which is really unhelpful, so I commit that we will see what needs to be done to make sure that the route to report directly to the government agency responsible for safety on buses is as efficient and easy as possible.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for bringing forward Amendment 59. Road safety is a priority for the Government, of course, and we expect bus operators, as I hope I have just said, to adhere to the highest standards of safety. Buses are one of the safest modes of road transport in Great Britain, and my department remains committed to improving safety with appropriate vehicle construction standards and ensuring the safe operation of vehicles. As we have heard, franchising authorities report safety in detail, and I expect that a consequence of this Bill, as it enables other franchising authorities to be established, will be to enable them to report safety in a similar way to how London and Manchester already do. In effect, the franchising authority is taking responsibility for procuring and delivering a bus service.
In respect of operations that are not part of franchise bus services, we have heard this afternoon that this is carried out through the STATS19 framework, which relies on reports from the police. These reports are based on locations identified by geographical co-ordinates. This is a role that cannot be delegated to local transport authorities and ought to stay with the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency because it relates to PSV operator licensing requirements. However, I note the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, in respect of accidents away from public roads, which I will go away and have a close look at. I am not familiar with that nuance, but it is clearly important. Trying to divide any sorts of accidents into fault and no fault is fraught with difficulty. In fact, it must be subjective, and therefore I am not sure that we would want to go down that road. I understand his point about recording accidents on public service vehicles wherever they occur, and I will go away and see what can be done about that.
Amendment 60 from the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, seeks to change long-established rules about daily driving time on regular bus services. There are two sorts of driving time rules: one for services that do not go beyond 50 kilometres and one for services that do. These daily limits are well and long established, and I think the gist of my conversation with the noble Lord was that he was looking for an ability for people to report scheduling requirements on bus drivers that make drivers feel that they are not safe. That is a matter that could well be drawn to the attention of the DVSA because it goes to the heart of the repute of the operator. I understand that there may well be drivers who feel that what they are being asked to do is potentially or actually unsafe. That goes back to the process that I have referred to and the ability to report it to either CIRAS, if the people responsible for the operation are members of it, or the DVSA if they are not. I note what he said about this amendment seeking to draw to our attention this important matter.
The noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Moylan, talked about the timetable. No bus timetable in Britain should have any requirement for people to drive unsafely or exceed the speed limit. As a seasoned operator with some background in this, I say to them that very often, certainly in urban areas, what you are in fact looking for is not the timetable to be operated but the reliability of the bus service to be as good as it can be. My experience is that drivers should not feel under pressure to return to the timetable. In many cases, any substantial delay makes that impossible. The training given to bus drivers is about driving safely, having absolute regard to the safety of passengers and, in practice, maintaining the regularity of the service rather than the timetable.
If there are cases where drivers feel that they are being asked to drive unsafely, either by schedule or in practice, it is the reporting mechanism that we need to address because there are people trained in this stuff who can address those issues.
Lord Moylan (Con)
With the Minister’s permission, I do not think that we are disagreeing and, therefore, I do not think that what he just said about timetables is quite the answer to my point. It may be my fault for expressing it in the way I did. I am sure that I talked about adhering to the timetable—I will look back at it—but he has cast it differently. He said that reliability—that is, the frequency between buses arriving—is what operators seek to maintain, but that is precisely what can lead to the sort of pressure on drivers where a controller says, “Hurry up because the gap between you and the bus ahead has got too large”. That is really what I was talking about and what I meant to express, although I used the language of timetabling.
The key question that the Minister will need to address is to what extent does the contract reward that behaviour? To what extent is reliability rewarded in the contract? In many cases, companies and people behave according to financial incentives. If your narrow margins as a bus operator or a franchise depend on maintaining certain levels of reliability and certain gaps between buses along the service, that is what you will be pushing your staff to do. It comes back to this question of what the contract says and what it rewards.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. Before I got to the railway, I spent most of my adult life trying to encourage people who control bus services not to rely on the timetable but to adhere to a regular frequency. Of course, the truth is that in most urban areas, once you have lost time, the chances of ever regaining it are, frankly, pretty small, and they are even smaller with the increasing use of speed limits of 20 miles per hour. I take the noble Lord’s point but, in the end, this is about people either being required to drive unsafely or believing that they are required to do so. It is certainly possible, and I have seen it done to encourage people to attempt to make time up but, in my experience over the 50 years I have been driving buses—now and again, more recently—it is very difficult to do so.
Let us go back to the safety aspect of this. Where the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, is going rightly concerns finding a way for bus drivers to express that they are being either expected to drive unsafely or encouraged to do it. I take his point about that very clearly. As I said before, there are all these requirements on franchised authorities, which will report on safety because they are procuring the service. CIRAS is available, where people have chosen to join that third-party organisation, but, where they have not done so, it is about making the route to complaining clearer and more available. I very much hope that that answers the noble Lord’s points. I will leave it there.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who took part in this debate. I genuinely thought that this was this place at its best, and I realise that I have trespassed on a landscape of real expertise, but I think we got some cross-party consensus that we really need to push safety to the front of the Bill if it is not there already. I think the implication was there, but it is not in the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, talked about zero injuries in the construction industry which was very interesting, and we need to take that on board. Once again, we have got back to this: we need a really good reporting mechanism that people can use, and we need to publish what data is coming out as much as possible. I trust the Minister when he says that he will go away and think about this a lot. In that case, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Earl of Effingham
“Financial inclusion in public transport policies(1) Local transport authorities (LTAs) must ensure that all guidance, regulations, and policies implemented under this Act take into account the principle of financial inclusion.(2) In particular, LTAs must have due regard to—(a) the affordability of bus services for passengers on low incomes,(b) the availability of payment methods, including cash, that are accessible to all passengers, including those who do not have access to digital or contactless payment methods, and(c) measures to prevent financial barriers from excluding any groups of passengers from accessing essential bus services.(3) LTAs must publish a report every four years on steps taken to promote financial inclusion in bus services, including measures adopted to ensure access to cash payment options and affordable services.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment places a duty on Local Transport Authorities to prioritise financial inclusion in their public transport policies. It requires LTAs to ensure affordability and accessibility, including access to cash payment options, and mandates periodic reporting on progress.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 64 in my name. This amendment places a responsibility on local transport authorities to ensure that bus services remain accessible, not just through affordability but through the diversity of payment methods available. The reality is that different passengers have different preferences on how they want to pay. If we take rural areas, for example, we know that public transport services are often limited in these regions, and buses may be the only form of transport available. For many elderly residents in rural areas, cash is their preferred method of payment. If we remove cash payment options from bus services, we could unintentionally exclude a significant portion of the population, especially in rural and isolated areas where public transport is already sparse. This would not just inconvenience elderly passengers but severely restrict their ability to access essential services such as medical appointments, local shops and social support in the community. For these passengers, financial inclusion is about the ability to pay for their travel in a way that works for them. This amendment is not about one-size-fits-all solutions; it is about recognising that different passengers need different options. The elderly, the digitally excluded and those on lower incomes should be catered for in our transport policies. By ensuring that cash payments remain an option and that services remain affordable for all, we are creating a system that truly works for everyone, not just those who have the latest technology. I beg to move.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendments 71 and 72 in this group, with a slightly different angle on this interesting topic of payment, which has been raised by my noble friend Lord Effingham. Normally, I like to give the Government a good roasting, criticise them and explain why it is that I am so much further ahead in my ideas than they are. On this occasion, since I have tabled these amendments and made further inquiries, I am glad to say that this will be an easy ride for the Government because they are doing quite a lot on this already and things are going generally in the right direction.
My first amendment relates to the payment by concessionary fare holders, and the second relates to contactless payment. The two may seem to be roughly the same, but they are very distinct. Contactless payment using a bank card, debit card or credit card cannot be used by those who have concessionary rights to travel on the buses because, obviously, if you are going to use a card, that right has to be evidenced by some identifier.
Let me give an example: those who have a national bus pass will have a photo card of a distinctive style, with an English rose on it; I remember that that was an important feature when it was designed. It is a card of a distinctive style with your face on it, and you need it in order to demonstrate your right both to the bus driver, who probably takes no notice of what is on the card, and, certainly, to a revenue protection officer were they to board the bus and check. This cannot be done with a bank card. One therefore needs two types of technology involved, which I want to deal with separately.
In London, the system that was developed for concessionary fare holders was originally the system used for all contactless payment. This was the Oyster card technology, which is still used for concessionary card holders. That includes not just the elderly—the national bus pass people—but also those with freedom passes and young people who have free travel as well. That technology is used.
However, when the national bus pass was introduced—by Gordon Brown’s Government, as I recall—that technology was not used and the DfT preferred its own technology, which goes under the name of ITSO. TfL regarded it as rather clunky, but the fact is that TfL then had to fit all of its bus card readers with equipment that could read two separate technologies in order to read what is going on. This was a very foolish way of going about things. The purpose of Amendment 71 is to suggest that, as this matter develops, there should be a single system that is applicable to concessionary card holders.
Amendment 72 relates to contactless payment. Contactless payment is widely used in London and was promoted by TfL in collaboration with the banks. In fact, it is quite likely that the banks would never have taken the risk of introducing contactless payment into the country if it had not been for TfL turning up and saying, “We have 4 million transactions a day; if we were to get together, maybe we could make contactless work. It will de-risk it for the banks, to some extent, and will give us something even cheaper than the Oyster card system”. I mentioned it being cheaper.
We should bear in mind that the driver of this, from the bus operators’ perspective, is the cost of collection. The point I would make—I would never disagree with what my noble friend Lord Effingham says—is that inclusion is very important, but one has to remember that cash is expensive to collect. It is much less for electronic payments. Of course, you have to pay the banks, but TfL was quite lucky because it had a proposition for the banks, which meant, I think, that it could negotiate a very good deal with them in terms of what it paid per transaction. Certainly, it is much less than the cost of cash collection, or even of Oyster card operation. If you are an ordinary passenger on TfL services nowadays—not a concessionary fare holder—you must notice that all the advertising encourages you to use contactless and not to get an Oyster card at all. That is the direction in which everything is going.
Outside London, however, contactless payment is still rare. The reasons for this are partly that the different bus companies all have different back offices, and the system needs to work in such a way that it will work with all the different back offices. I am perhaps pre-empting what the Minister will say, but I am delighted to be able to say that I have had some very interesting and valuable conversations with Midlands Connect, which is the non-statutory transport body for the West Midlands and the east Midlands. On behalf of the Government, it is carrying out work to develop a system that would work with all the different back offices of the various different bus companies so that it is possible that, over time, we could have contactless payment on buses throughout the rest of the country. That would be very welcome. It would be useful if the Minister could say in his reply what the timetable for that is; how much resource the Government are putting into it; what level of priority they regard it as having; and how they will now work with the multiple LTAs up and down the country, which will be running the buses, to make sure that this is adopted in a coherent way.
Lord Burns (CB)
My Lords, can I use this opportunity to point out that one of the great benefits of the contactless system is the ability to have integrated fares across a region? One of the things that I discovered in North Wales was the frustration of many people—again, particularly in rural areas—when they were taking several journeys to get to their destination. The ability to have this all taken care of within one transaction is of enormous benefit. Of course, as we know from London, it gives also you the opportunity to have daily caps on the prices of tickets and a great deal of improvement in the experience of people who are making complicated journeys, often across different modes but certainly across different bus journeys.
I see this as an important part of the future. If we are to have an integrated public transport system, we need an integrated fare structure as well. The contactless system is an important step on the way to achieving that important part of the pricing mechanism for the future. Despite the issue that we heard about earlier in terms of the £2 fare cap, my own view is that having an integrated system of the kind we enjoy in London is one of the most important things for the future usage of buses.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for their amendments; I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for his remarks just now. The Government know how important affordable and reliable bus services are in enabling people to access education, work and vital services. We also know that buses are particularly important for people in the lowest-income households, who make nearly twice as many bus trips as the average, and for younger people, who are much more likely to use buses than other age groups.
The Government also understand the importance of making payment methods on buses accessible and available to all. This is why we have provided guidance to local transport authorities and bus operators on developing their bus service improvement plans, which encourages both parties to work in partnership on improving the provision of fares and ticketing to ensure that the needs of all local bus users are taken into account. To this end, local transport authorities are also encouraged to capture local information about cash usage and electronic payments to inform the development of their bus service improvement plans. The bus franchising powers in the Bill will also give local authorities greater control over fares and ticketing while, through their enhanced partnership arrangements, they can work closely with bus operators to ensure that fares and ticketing policies are inclusive for passengers.
I should just add that, from my own experience as the person who was at the time responsible for the removal of cash payments from buses in London, contrary to the belief of the then mayor that it was the poorest people in London who habitually paid cash, it was completely the reverse: the poorest people in London had already worked out the value of Oyster cards and of daily, weekly and monthly ticketing. In fact, it was the ABC1 males who insisted on trying to pay the enhanced cash fare. When we withdrew it, they immediately moved to Oyster cards themselves. We have already discussed better ticketing once this afternoon, of course.
Amendment 71 looks to have integrated ticketing across the bus network; I note that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, largely took Amendments 71 and 72 together. His sentiments are right: it is good for passengers, as well as for the bus network, its operators and franchising authorities, to have the most modern methods of payment with the lowest possible transaction costs. I completely agree with him.
What we do not want is to try to force people to do things that they cannot currently do while the work in progress that the noble Earl described is going on, to make payment methods as easy as possible. He asked me for a timetable, which I am not sure I can give him, but the multiplicity of back offices across the bus and railway networks in Britain needs to be untangled, and substantial work is going on within the department to enable multimodal ticketing, particularly in Manchester and the West Midlands, outside London. The consequence of that will be—I hope in time, and as quickly as possible—to allow the back office, in the way that he wants and as the noble Lord, Lord Burns, described, to provide seamless ticketing across bus networks. That work continues, and will take some time. He is, of course, right that in London the volume of transactions was so great that the credit card companies were willing to come to the table very easily. Outside London, it is a bit different, but the department is working very hard to do it.
Since the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, rightly says that the Government are moving quite well in that direction—and he also observes, as I can confirm from observation just now, that the English national concessionary pass has the English rose on it, because mine has it on—I submit, on his own assurance that the Government are moving quite fast, that neither amendment is necessary.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
I thank my noble friend Lord Moylan, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and the Minister, who have all contributed to this short debate. It really is critical that we ensure financial inclusion for everyone. Based on what the Minister has just said, we will look at this issue further, but for now I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
The Earl of Effingham
“SEND pupils and home-to-school buses(1) In discharging their duties under this Act, local transport authorities must have due regard to the needs of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) when planning, commissioning, or providing services for home-to-school buses.(2) In particular, local transport authorities must take into account the following when providing home-to-school bus services for SEND pupils—(a) the specific travel requirements of SEND pupils, including but not limited to the provision of accessible vehicles, safe travel arrangements, and appropriate support during transit;(b) the need for flexibility in travel arrangements to accommodate the varied needs of SEND pupils, including those with physical, sensory, or cognitive disabilities;(c) the availability of transport options that support the inclusion of SEND pupils in mainstream education, ensuring they can access education on an equal basis with other pupils;(d) the potential for tailored travel arrangements, such as assistance with transfers, escort services, or adaptations to vehicles, to ensure the safety and comfort of SEND pupils during their journey to and from school.(3) Local transport authorities must also ensure that—(a) there is clear communication with parents, carers, and guardians of SEND pupils regarding bus transport arrangements and options available to meet their child’s specific needs;(b) where applicable, there is collaborative working between the local transport authority and educational institutions to ensure that home-to-school bus travel arrangements align with the pupil’s education plan or needs assessment.(4) The Secretary of State must, by guidance, specify further details on the best practices and requirements for local transport authorities to meet the needs of SEND pupils in the provision of home-to-school bus travel, with regard to accessibility, safety and effectiveness.(5) The Secretary of State must, every three years, publish a report on the adequacy of home-to-school bus travel provisions for SEND pupils, including any identified gaps in provision and the steps being taken to address them.” Member's explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) must consider the needs of SEND pupils when arranging or overseeing home-to-school bus travel services.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
I shall speak to all the amendments in this group standing in my name.
We must support our most vulnerable people, and we believe that His Majesty’s Government should prioritise SEND pupils when considering school bus services. Amendment 65 would place a vital obligation on local transport authorities to have due regard to the needs of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities when planning, commissioning or providing home-to-school bus services. We often speak in your Lordships’ House of our duty to ensure that every child has access to education, yet for many SEND pupils the journey to school is fraught with obstacles. Transport is not merely a logistical issue; it is a fundamental enabler of equality. Without suitable and reliable transport, education itself becomes inaccessible.
This amendment acknowledges a simple but often overlooked reality: that children with SEND require transport that is adapted to their needs, ensuring safety, accessibility and dignity. It is not enough to assume that standard transport provisions will be sufficient. Many of these pupils require accessible vehicles, safe and structured travel arrangements and, in some cases, specialist support during transit. Without these measures, their journey to school can be distressing, unsafe, or even impossible. Flexibility is key. The needs of SEND pupils vary widely. Some require physical adaptations, while others need assistance due to sensory sensitivities or cognitive challenges. A rigid, one-size-fits-all approach will not work. Local transport authorities must recognise the diversity of needs and build flexibility into their transport planning, ensuring that no child is left behind.
This amendment also speaks to the broader issue of inclusion. If we are to uphold the principle that SEND pupils have a right to mainstream education on an equal basis with their peers, we must ensure that they can physically access their schools. The provision of suitable transport is not an additional benefit—it is a necessity. This is not about adding burdens to local authorities; it is about embedding fairness and inclusion in our transport system. It is about ensuring that SEND pupils are a priority in our transport planning.
With Amendment 66, we must ensure that pupils attending schools outside their local transport authority’s boundary are not disadvantaged. This amendment requires LTAs to work collaboratively with neighbouring authorities to co-ordinate travel arrangements that are reasonable and accessible. Given the potential impact of franchising in certain areas, there is concern that changes to bus routes may inadvertently disrupt essential school transport services. This amendment ensures that LTAs take this issue into account when making transport decisions.
It is crucial that the Secretary of State provides guidance on co-ordinating cross-authority travel and evaluates its effectiveness at regular intervals. This will help to address any barriers preventing pupils, particularly those with SEND, accessing their education due to inadequate transport links.
Amendment 67 also comes in the context of a wider concern, which is His Majesty’s Government’s VAT on private school fees. The implementation of VAT on private school fees has caused financial strain on many families, but particularly those with SEND children. The Telegraph has reported that inconsistencies between Treasury and HMRC guidelines have resulted in some private schools having to add VAT to fees for essentials such as school lunches. Furthermore, the decision to push through the VAT levy during the academic year, without providing schools adequate time to adjust, has placed additional burdens on families. Not all SEND pupils have education, health and care plans. This means that many parents have been forced to pay transport fees out of pocket to ensure that their children’s needs are met.
We are simply asking for a review by the Secretary of State and consideration of an exemption on bus services for SEND pupils. As I said earlier, this is not about adding burdens to local authorities; it is about ensuring that SEND pupils and those who travel across authority boundaries are a priority. The Government have said they want to ensure that all children have the best chance in life to succeed—and that is, of course, absolutely correct. Fairness should extend to all pupils, particularly those with SEND, regardless of where they receive their education.
On Amendment 68, please let me highlight the critical issue raised in this amendment, which seeks to review the impact of national insurance contribution increases on transport services for those children with special educational needs and disabilities. The proposed increase in employer national insurance contributions will create a serious financial strain on private bus operators that provide SEND transport services. Many of those providers already work within narrow financial margins, and the increase in employment costs will likely make it financially unsustainable for some of them to continue offering their essential services.
The Confederation of Passenger Transport has estimated that this will cost the bus industry a total of £100 million. For a bus driver earning £30,000 per annum, the additional cost will be approximately £800 per year. This is a significant burden for small and medium-sized private operators, many of which already struggle to remain profitable in an industry with tight margins. If these private providers can no longer afford to maintain SEND bus services, local councils will be forced to step in, which means they will need to retender thousands of contracts—an administrative process that could take months. Delays in retendering would cause disruption to transport services, leaving vulnerable children without the critical support that they need to attend school. Such delays could also affect the quality of services, as new providers may not be able to offer the same level of expertise or flexibility that the private operators previously provided.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, has raised some serious concerns and this group of amendments picks up a point raised at Second Reading by my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond. She described the ongoing situation with school bus services and pupils with special educational needs in North Yorkshire, and the terrible impact it is having on families and children. It is vital that bus services support children attending school and college, whether within their local authority area or further away, which is often the case with specialist education provision. This is an area of much concern. I hope the Minister is able to provide some assurance in response to this group of amendments.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I heartily endorse the comments made by my noble friend Lord Effingham and the support given by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. To be crystal clear, the fundamental issue is not the increase in national insurance rates as such, but the reduction in the threshold at which national insurance becomes payable.
Many of the people who drive special educational needs buses are part-time semi-volunteers. They may be working a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the afternoon, and their overall salary, as things currently stand, brings them in below the level at which national insurance contributions are payable. That is approximately £10,000 a year; I am using a very rough figure there, as I do not have the actual figures at hand. The Government’s proposal is a reduction to £5,000 a year of the point at which national insurance contributions become payable—again, an approximate figure. It is that reduction which brings these people within scope of national insurance contributions, which is potentially fatal to the operation of many of these services. They will simply not continue. The best that can be hoped for would be a more expensive service, after a lengthy period of retendering and disruption, in which maybe the same or maybe different operators are providing a more expensive service to the local education authority in many cases.
Separately, there is also the question of private schools and putting VAT on the bus services they provide, which would be bizarre because no other form of transport is subject to VAT, as far as I am aware. It is one of the consequences of the Government’s vindictive action against private schools. But the SEND issue is not simply about private schools; it is about the whole range of schools, and it is crucial that it is resolved soon.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Before I address the amendments in this group in turn, I wish to say that I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Pidgeon and Lady Harris of Richmond—who raised her concerns at Second Reading—for raising the importance of home-to-school travel for children with special educational needs. Although this is not directly within my department, my officials continue to work with the Department for Education to understand the issues and how they are best addressed. No child should struggle to get to school because of a lack of suitable transport.
Your Lordships may already be aware that the Government are clear that the system for educating children with special educational needs and disability—SEND—requires reform. The Department for Education will work with families, schools, local authorities and other partners to deliver improvements so that children and young people can access the support that they deserve. It acknowledges that challenges in the SEND system extend to the arrangements for home-to-school travel and has committed to ensuring that more children can receive the support they need in a local mainstream school. This will mean fewer children needing to rely on long and complex journeys to access education.
Turning to Amendment 65, home-to-school transport is the responsibility of local authorities with education functions, not local transport authorities. For example, Transport for Greater Manchester is the local transport authority for the Greater Manchester region but responsibility for home-to-school travel rests with the 10 local councils within the region. The Education Act 1996 places a statutory duty on local authorities to arrange free home-to-school travel for eligible children. A child is eligible if they are of compulsory school age, attend their nearest suitable school and would not be able to walk there because of the distance, their special educational needs, a disability, a mobility problem, or because the route is not safe.
It is for local authorities to decide what travel arrangements they make for eligible children. For example, they might provide them with a pass for free travel on public transport or arrange a dedicated bus, minibus or taxi. However, to meet their duty, the travel that they arrange must be suitable for the needs of the child concerned. The Department for Education provides comprehensive statutory guidance to help local authorities meet this duty.
The Government already expect local transport authorities to take account of the needs of all people travelling, including children travelling to school. Effective collaboration between local transport authorities and local authorities delivering home-to-school transport may bring benefits, but it would not be appropriate to place a duty relating to home-to-school transport on local transport authorities when statutory responsibility for that service rests elsewhere. For these reasons, Amendment 65 is unnecessary.
Amendment 66 relates to children travelling outside their local authority boundary to access a suitable school place. The statutory duty that requires local authorities with education functions to arrange free travel for all eligible children applies regardless of whether a child’s school is outside the council’s boundary. Where a child with special educational needs has an education, health and care plan, the school named in that plan will almost always be considered to be their nearest suitable school for the purposes of assessing their eligibility for free travel. It is already commonplace for local authorities to arrange free travel. For this reason, this amendment is unnecessary.
Amendment 67 concerns the application of VAT to transport for pupils with special educational needs who attend private schools. These services may already be exempt from VAT; for example, passenger transport in a vehicle with 10 or more seats does not pay any VAT, and operating a vehicle that has been constructed or modified to cater for the special needs of people with disabilities may also not pay any VAT. The Government’s ambition is a state-funded school place for every child who wants one, whether they have special educational needs or not. The Department for Education’s reforms, which I have already mentioned, will deliver an inclusive mainstream system that meets the needs of as many children and young people as possible in their local community.
I also draw the noble Lord’s attention to the consultation on the national insurance contributions Bill, which says at paragraph 2.13:
“The policy intention is to only capture education services and vocational training supplied by a private school, or a ‘closely connected person’, and closely related boarding services. The government recognises that other goods and services ‘closely related’ to education, such as school meals, transport, and books and stationery, are integral to children accessing education. As a result, other ‘closely related’ goods and services other than boarding (i.e. goods and services that are provided by a private school for the direct use of their pupils and that are necessary for delivering the education to their pupils) will remain exempt from VAT”.
I therefore consider this amendment unnecessary.
Finally, Amendment 68 concerns the impact that the increase in employer national insurance contributions will have on bus services for children with special educational needs. The Government recognise that the increase to employer national insurance contribution will have a varying impact across sectors but had to make difficult decisions to help restore economic stability.
As I have remarked already, local authorities are responsible for arranging home-to-school travel and deliver this through a range of providers. Department for Education officials engage regularly with local authorities to understand the challenges that they face and will continue to monitor this situation. It is expected that private sector organisations that contract with local authorities will take the impact of national insurance changes into account, along with other changes to their cost base, in the usual way through contract negotiations.
My noble friend Lord Livermore, at Second Reading of the NIC Bill on 6 January, said in response to a question about NICs and special educational needs transport:
“The right reverend Prelate also asked about SEN transport. In the Budget, the Government announced £2 billion of new grant funding for local government in 2025-26. This includes £515 million to support councils with the increase in employer national insurance contributions, which covers special educational needs home-to-school transport schemes”.—[Official Report, 6/1/25; col. 601.]
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, does the noble Lord accept that that is true for special educational transport needs provided directly by local education authorities using their own employees but not for contracted services, which are very widely used?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. I was referring to support to local authorities for home-to-school transport schemes. I will take that away and come back to him with the clarification that he seeks in this respect. I can say that the Government do not expect the changes to national insurance to have a significant impact on home-to-school travel for children with special educational needs, so it would not be proportionate to conduct the assessment as the amendment suggests. I do not think that it is required.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, my noble friend Lord Moylan, and the Minister for their contributions in this debate. We have heard so much in the Chamber about how SEND pupils may be adversely affected by various new government policies, so we feel that a review, or an impact assessment as per these assessments, is a fair and reasonable request. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment in my name.
Lord Moylan
“Transfer of functions of Traffic Commissioners to the Department for Transport(1) The functions of the Traffic Commissioners established under the Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981, in so far as they relate to buses, are transferred to the Secretary of State for Transport.(2) The Secretary of State may establish a dedicated division within the Department for Transport to carry out functions previously exercised by the Traffic Commissioners and transferred by subsection (1). (3) All references to the Traffic Commissioners in any relevant legislation, regulations, or guidance, in so far as they relate to buses, are to be construed as references to the Secretary of State or the dedicated division established under subsection (2).(4) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the commencement of this provision, publish a report outlining the structure, roles, and responsibilities of any division established under subsection (2).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment abolishes the role of Traffic Commissioners in so far as they relate to buses and transfers their functions to the Department for Transport. The Secretary of State will be responsible for implementing these functions through a dedicated division, ensuring streamlined and consistent governance.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I suppose you could say that this is a modestly frivolous proposal because I do not suppose for a moment that the Minister will agree to it, but I thought it would give us an opportunity to take a little excursion into the history and byways of English bus history and to consider how it is that institutions, once established, can take root in a fashion that means they are almost impossible to abolish. Indeed, they can even engender a degree of affection that means they become almost inbred in the national consciousness, not that there are many people outside the transport industry who are conscious of the traffic commissioners. It is worth bearing in mind that they arose in the bad old days of corporate capitalism and monopoly capitalism, which prevailed particularly in the 1920s when what Americans called trusts were thought of as the rational way of delivering goods and services in the private sector. We adopted that idea, creating monopolies wherever we possibly could in the private sector, unregulated monopolies in many cases, and encouraging them.
So it came to be that the thought that capitalism unbridled would produce reckless and wasteful competition arose in the bus industry nationally—or among those observing the bus industry—that it needed to be properly organised on a rational basis and that the way to do this would be to appoint an authority that would be able to decide who could run a bus, where they could run the bus and what fares they could charge. As this was a gentle form of English socialism, it was not a national authority but rather 12—I think it was 12— regional authorities in the shape of a traffic commissioner, whose job it was to do all this work and decide who could run a bus and where.
Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)
I have seen the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is not addressing it; he is giving us a history lesson. We had this in the football debate where we had 25 minutes of someone describing the difference between a badge and a crest. It was an excellent presentation on the fleur-de-lis and the history of football crests, but it served no purpose whatever towards the football Bill and, at the end, the amendment was withdrawn. I think that sometimes Members need to be mindful of the time and effort that other Members put into sitting in these Committees and should perhaps use a bit less frivolous description just to prolong the meeting. It is absolutely contrary to the spirit of how these Committees are supposed to work. To probe the Government is fair, but to go into a history lesson on the role of traffic commissioners is unacceptable.
Lord Moylan (Con)
Well, that is a very serious rebuke on the part of the noble Lord, Lord Goddard. I nearly wilted and decided to curtail my speech as a result of that intervention, but I have found the strength to continue. I remind the noble Lord that there is no question of time being spun out here. We are in day three of a four-day Committee, and we are very likely to finish the Committee today. We are going at rapid speed, and any suggestion that any member of this Committee has been using the time to spin out the debate is preposterous and is denied by the facts, so I will return to what I was saying.
This was the purpose of the traffic commissioners; they were set up for that purpose. So we come to 1985. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, considers 1985 an historical date or one that is part of the modern and contemporary world; for me, it is fairly contemporary, but I would not want to comment on the noble Lord’s age or experience of these matters. Of course, in 1985, all those functions in relation to buses were taken away from the traffic commissioners. By then—this is important—they had acquired functions in relation to the freight industry, as well as certain safety functions on top of that, so there was a reason for continuing the traffic commissioners then.
The noble Lord, Lord Goddard, will have noted, in his careful scrutiny of my amendment, as will have other noble Lords, that it refers only to the bus functions of the traffic commissioners. There is nothing here that would abolish them entirely. That is a pity, in my view, but I was advised by the Public Bill Office that an attempt to abolish them entirely would be outside the scope of the Bill.
The commissioners survived 1985, although there was really very little need for them. The Government are returning to a sort of 1920s view of how buses should be run in the Bill before us, but not giving the same functions back to the traffic commissioners. The decisions about where the routes should run, who should have a special licence and what the fares should be will in effect fall to the local transport authority, not the traffic commissioners, but they are to continue. Their functions include enforcement on safety matters, yet their budget for that is derisory and, effectively, there is very little enforcement. A lot of that work is done, in relation to freight at least, by the DVSA and not by the traffic commissioners.
Generally, it would be a good time to have a bit of a clear out of the bureaucracy that encrusts our modern society. I would like to see the traffic commissioners go entirely and what functions they have transferred to the Department for Transport, but the proposal today, for scope reasons, as I said, is slightly more modest. I do not expect the Minister to accept it, but it is a proposal that those of us here in Committee with a slightly more revolutionary spirit—I am sorry that does not include the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, or maybe it does; we shall hear when he comes to speak—should embrace to see some real change, at last, at the seat of government.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, perhaps I might briefly address one of the suggestions of the noble Lord, Lord Goddard. I was present in the Chamber, as I frequently am, during the Football Governance Bill. I appreciate that he might not be that interested in the difference between the crests and the arms, but the College of Arms is run by my noble kinsman His Grace the Duke of Norfolk, and I can tell him that the argument put forward as between crest and arms is relevant and has implications. It is important to realise that. He may well want to look into it; I am happy to explain to him why it is important, if he is interested.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, the imminence of the recess suggests to me that I should not challenge the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, in his knowledge of the history of the traffic commissioners, but I will do that over a drink some time. I am less interested in the development of the Road Traffic Act 1930, or indeed the Transport Act 1985, than I am in the future of the bus service in the 2020s.
Traffic commissioners play an important and strategic role in the transport sector and, these days—principally but not wholly—in road use safety. I certainly refute completely any suggestion that there is an absence of enforcement; the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency does that. Traffic commissioners are an admirably economic and cost-effective way of dispensing justice to bus operators and bus drivers—those who are licensed to provide these important and, indeed, safe services—in a way that is widely celebrated in the industry and regarded as far more effective than any other solution. Indeed, the independent review of the traffic commissioner function undertaken by the Ministry of Justice, published in May 2023, found that
“the Traffic Commissioner function generally operates effectively”
and noted a strong level of support from the industry for functions continuing to sit with the traffic commissioner. The truth is that for a regulatory arrangement to be so widely celebrated by the industry it regulates is something to be celebrated, rather than abolished.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, is the Minister not rather concerned that the regulator is so widely celebrated by the industry it regulates?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
One of the reasons why is because it is not in the industry’s interest to have poor-quality operations competing with it; that is true in respect of both the goods sector and the passenger transport sector. When the traffic commissioners take enforcement action, including depriving drivers or operators of their licences or curtailing them, it is widely celebrated by those operators who do take account of the law and operate safely. That is what is important.
On our earlier discussion about the safety of bus operations and bus drivers, finding a mechanism that is effective for disciplining those drivers and operators who transgress the law—sometimes with no intention of complying with it—is very effective. I encourage noble Lords to consider the alternative mechanism of taking taxi drivers in front of magistrates’ courts, which are often found by everybody looking at the actions of the magistrates to be excessively lenient and persuaded by drivers’ explanations of their behaviour that would never pass muster with the traffic commissioner. It is a very important judicial function, and the commissioners need to be supported.
Returning to the Bill, your Lordships will have noticed that some limited changes are proposed to the functions of the commissioners. These include changes to services operating under service permits with enfranchised areas and powers to act against bus operators who breach the mandatory training requirement. The Bill is about empowering local leaders to take decisions on how best to run bus services in their areas. The presence of traffic commissioners across the regions of England—and, for that matter, Scotland and Wales—is complementary to this Bill’s objectives. They are well placed to use local knowledge to take the decisions they do in the execution of their powers, and I certainly do not believe that the noble Lord has made any case for change in the way that this amendment suggests.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for Clause 21 of the Bill to be brought into force by regulations instead of coming into force two months after Royal Assent. This is to allow sufficient time for guidance under new section 144D of the Transport Act 2000 (inserted by Clause 21 of the Bill) to be prepared.
The Earl of Effingham
(4A) Sections 1 to 15 may not come into force until the Secretary of State has published and laid before Parliament the report required by section (Impact assessment on rural areas).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment combined with another ensures that the Secretary of State must publish and lay before Parliament a report on the impact of sections 1 to 15 on rural areas before they come into force.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I am aware that we have already discussed various aspects of this amendment in the debates, so I will be brief. Before we move forward with significant changes to our bus services, we think it very important to pause and ask: what will this mean for rural communities? That is precisely why this amendment is so important. It would ensure that before Clauses 1 to 15 of the Bill take effect, the Secretary of State must publish a report assessing the impact on rural areas.
This report is not about delaying progress; it is about ensuring informed progress. We need to understand whether these reforms will improve rural connectivity or unintentionally make services even harder to access. Will funding be allocated fairly? Will small operators that serve rural routes still be viable? Will local authorities have the powers and resources needed to support these services? These are critical questions that must be answered before the Bill comes into force. I beg to move.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, for his remarks on Amendment 82. I also thank him, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and all other noble Lords for the issues they have raised in Committee. I have found the exchanges useful in discussing the purpose of the Bill and considering issues raised across your Lordships’ Committee. The Bill reflects how important it is to improve local buses for passengers across the country, including those who are woefully underserved in rural areas. Throughout this process, the needs of people living and working in and visiting rural areas have been integral to policy development.
Government officials have worked hard to publish a thorough and comprehensive impact assessment that has been rated green by the independent Regulatory Policy Committee. The assessment covers every one of the Bill’s measures in detail, including in the context of rural areas, so I am afraid I would struggle to justify why a further duplicate assessment is required. Although the noble Earl says this is not about delay, the amendment would have the potential to delay progress on the Bill and therefore to delay its introduction in areas that need its provisions.
It is important to remember that the freedoms allowed by the Bill to franchise and set up a local authority bus company are entirely optional. These powers simply give local transport authorities more choices in how their bus networks are operated. If a rural authority decides to establish a local authority bus company, it will have the flexibility to scale the company to match the needs of its local passengers, its ambitions for the network and the available funding. Additionally, it is important to highlight that the Government have allocated funding to build LTA capacity and capability on buses, including, but not limited to, the Bus Centre of Excellence. They also plan to pilot different franchising models that may be particularly suited to rural areas.
I conclude my remarks there, and once again thank all noble Lords for the excellent debates across the days we have shared in Grand Committee. I look forward to further debate on Report.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. I also thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Pidgeon and Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Berkeley, whose amendments in the first group were relevant to my amendment. I do not think we need to discuss further and, on that note, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
National Insurance Contributions: Hospitality Sector
(5 days, 12 hours ago)
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Lord Altrincham
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact on the hospitality sector of the cost of the increase in employer National Insurance contributions, and the savings from the increase in employment allowance for the smallest businesses.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Altrincham and at his request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)
My Lords, it was this Government’s duty, in the Budget last year, to fix the foundations of the economy and to repair the £22 billion black hole in the public finances. In doing so, and in recognition of the importance of small businesses, including hospitality businesses, to the economy, we protected the smallest businesses by increasing the employment allowance from £5,000 to £10,500. This means that, next year, 865,000 employers will pay no national insurance at all, and 1 million businesses will pay the same or less than they did previously.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer, but I am afraid that I have to challenge the validity of his data on what he refers to as the black hole. Please let me quote Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who said that Rachel Reeves
“may be overegging the £22bn black hole”.
Most crucially, please let me quote Richard Hughes, the chair of the OBR itself, who said:
“Nothing in our review was a legitimisation of that”
£22 billion figure. I have a simple question for the Minister: when the OBR’s chair says that nothing in its review was a legitimisation of the number that has now been repeated 59 times from His Majesty’s Government’s Benches, is the chair of the OBR wrong?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am rather astonished that the noble Earl has gone on this line of inquiry, but I am absolutely delighted that he has, because, as he knows, it is one of my favourite topics; I hope that we can make it 60 times from this Dispatch Box that I talk about the £22 billion of unfunded spending that we inherited from the previous Government. The noble Earl will know that the OBR’s review was on the meeting that it had with the Treasury on 8 February 2024, when, under the legislation passed by the previous Government, the then Government were obliged to disclose all unfunded pressure against the reserve. The OBR’s review has established that, at that point, the then Government concealed £9.5 billion from the OBR. Before we dismiss £9.5 billion, that is equal to the entire capital education budget and the entire capital health budget. That is not a drop in the ocean; that is £9.5 billion. The OBR then made 10 recommendations to stop this from ever happening again, and we have accepted all of those in full. Of course, that was just in February; the previous Government then had until July. What makes anyone think that, because the previous Government thought they got away with it in February, they could stop until July? Treasury figures show that, come the spring Budget—
Lord Livermore (Lab)
Well, it was quite a long question. The noble Earl asked me to break it down specifically, so I am answering him. By the spring Budget, that number had reached £16.3 billion, and by July, it had reached £22 billion.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, the changes to the employers’ NICs threshold now mean that someone working part-time for just eight hours will be subject to employers’ NICs—a huge additional cost for the whole hospitality sector, including the pubs, which the Prime Minister says he champions. Will the Government not only reverse this hike but follow the Lib Dem proposal to halve employers’ NICs on part-time workers, saving the hospitality sector and the jobs of so many people who, because of responsibilities, disabilities or other limitations, absolutely rely on part-time work?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The answer to the noble Baroness’s question is no. Of course, we recognise that the retail and hospitality sector has struggled in recent years. At the Budget, we introduced a number of policies, including freezing the business rates small business multiplier. Together with the small business rates relief, this will exempt over a third of properties from business rates. On national insurance, as I have said before, there are consequences to responsibility, but there would have been greater consequences to irresponsibility, and it is not clear to me how the noble Baroness would fund her policies.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the increase in the employment allowance for small businesses is most welcome, but can I press the Minister on the exemption for public sector employers from this increase in NICs and urge him to consider extending that exemption to social care and charity companies for example, particularly as they have such a preponderance of low-paid women in their workforce?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The distinction that we are following follows the long-established distinction in these matters, and it is exactly the same as the previous Government had in their health and social care levy. That is a long-standing principle and, as the noble Baroness will know, we have extended a significant amount of compensation to public sector employers.
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
My Lords, in the noble Earl’s question, the IFS was prayed in aid, but is it not a fact that, throughout the general election, the IFS—particularly Paul Johnson its leader—was saying all the time that there was a black hole that would have to be filled?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My noble friend is quite right. We inherited a situation where there was a complete fiscal fiction. We have had a tough Budget, but we have wiped the slate clean and restored transparency and honesty to the public finances. We inherited a situation where there were no spending plans in place; we have a spending review and, for the first time, we have put certainty into public spending. We inherited a situation where capital spending was falling, and we have ensured that capital spending is rising. We are bit by bit restoring and rebuilding the foundations of this economy.
Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, would the Minister acknowledge that SMEs employing part-time workers, particularly in hospitality and retail, are facing 20% to 50% increases in their national insurance contribution bills on April 5, and that this hardly fits with a world of flexible and part-time work, and nor will it help the Government’s mission to get Britain working?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
We know it is particularly important to protect the smallest companies, and that is exactly why we doubled the employment allowance, meaning that 865,000 employers will now not pay any national insurance at all and more than 1 million businesses will pay the same or less than they did previously.
Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, we are a highly regulated and highly taxed country; that has a big impact on SMEs. On regulation, to appoint a lawyer can take as much as two months, to open a bank account takes three months and even to register for VAT can take weeks. This NIC increase is very much an employment tax: on every person employed, you have to pay 15% NIC. Could the Minister please tell us what they can do to support SMEs, which are the backbone of our economy, in terms of regulations?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I completely agree with the noble Lord that small businesses are the backbone of the economy. Many of the regulations he speaks about were introduced by his Government over the past 14 years. We have committed not to raise corporation tax for the lifetime of this Parliament, giving certainty to business and keeping the rate at the lowest in the G7. We will introduce legislation to tackle late payments, which is a key issue that disproportionately affects small businesses. The upcoming small business strategy will set out a comprehensive plan to ensure that small businesses have access to the right skills, finance and markets to reach their full potential.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, is it not the case that the Opposition are trying to suggest that the national insurance increases are the result of the Labour Government? Is it not a fact that, if they had not left that deficit, we would not have had to introduce the measures that we have had to introduce recently?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right. As I have said all along, there are consequences to responsibility, and we have always acknowledged that. But the consequences of irresponsibility—for the economy and working people—would have been far, far greater. We saw exactly that with the Liz Truss mini-Budget, which crashed the economy and saw typical mortgage payments increased by £300 a month.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, £9 billion was also the cost of giving public sector workers a huge pay rise, without specific related productivity requirements. Recent changes have shown that probably the only people in the country who do not believe that the Chancellor’s Budget has unnecessarily worsened the position of hospitality, charities, hospices and many other small businesses are the Chancellor herself and the noble Lord opposite. Will the noble Lord think again, because of the effect on growth and on these particular sectors?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I notice the noble Baroness did not mention today’s growth figures, which were obviously higher than expected, but, as we have said all along, they are simply not good enough. We are doing everything we can to bring stability back to the economy. The noble Baroness has opposed every single measure that we have taken to restore stability to the economy; she has opposed every single measure that we are putting in place to rebuild the supply side of this economy; she has opposed every single measure we put in place to rebuild the public finances. It is very interesting that she says she opposes the pay rises for public sector workers, and I am sure every public sector worker will be listening closely to what she says.
E-scooters
(5 days, 12 hours ago)
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Baroness McIntosh of Pickering
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of enforcement measures against the illegal use and operation of e-scooters.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
Tackling anti-social behaviour is a top priority for this Government and a key part of our safer streets mission and plan for change. The Government have announced proposals to give the police greater powers to clamp down on e-scooters and other vehicles involved in anti-social behaviour, with officers no longer being required to issue a warning before seizing vehicles. These powers will be included in the forthcoming crime and policing Bill.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I want to address the current illegal use of privately owned e-scooters in public places. The current rules are simply not working. The Minister addressed the fact that crime is being perpetrated by owners of illegally operated e-scooters. Will he look favourably on the provision in my Private Member’s Bill, where I ask the Government to consider legalising the use of privately owned electric scooters in public places to regulate their safe use and introduce compulsory insurance? Currently, these cannot be insured as they are illegal in public places. The cost to the Motor Insurers’ Bureau—and therefore all of us who pay for our motor insurance—is going up. Some 35% of the claims paid out by the Motor Insurers’ Bureau are against pedestrians between the ages of seven and 80. The numbers of deaths and casualties are increasing. What are the Government doing to address this increasing problem of illegally operated e-scooters?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
My colleagues in the Department for Transport have already made it illegal to use e-scooters in public places. There are 17 current pilots to examine how e-scooters can be used, and they are being evaluated currently. The police and others can issue fixed penalty notices. The noble Baroness’s Bill has been discussed previously, and there are several ideas in there which are worthy of consideration. However, the Government’s first priority in the crime and policing Bill is to make sure that where those bikes are now being used illegally, they can be seized without any warning by the police. If this House and the House of Commons pass that legislation before the end of this year, those bikes will be seized by police.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, this situation is not sustainable. Research carried out by the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety shows that e-scooter riders are more likely to fall forward in the event of a collision and therefore are more likely to suffer a head injury and serious consequences. Will the Minister push for new regulations to ensure the safety of private e-scooters separate from the public trials?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The noble Baroness focuses on very important issues, and the safety of the public is a prime concern. It is currently illegal to use e-scooters in the way in which she has described, and the police have powers to issue fixed penalty notices on a range of measures—that is an important issue. The trial that is being undertaken is to see whether the safety measures that are required are appropriate, and that will be reviewed in due course by the Department for Transport. But in the meantime, we have recognised that there needs to be action on those illegal scooters, which is why we are exercising powers to allow seizure as a matter of first recourse, not as a second or third recourse. If this House approves them, those powers will be operational as soon as the crime and policing Bill receives Royal Assent in due course.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, this is a tangential issue which I hope the Government can get ahead of. On Monday I was walking back towards the Tube and came across two people with two small fridges about this big on six wheels—they were robots. I said, “What are these things?”, and one of them said, “We are working for the Co-op supermarket and we’re trialling on-pavement delivery services around the country”. They mentioned the Co-op and a number of towns. I said, “Have they got permission to be on the pavement?” “Yes”, he said. I asked, “What happens when I’m on the pavement?” He answered, “They’re very clever—they will miss you”. However, supermarkets are very greedy and are always looking for an edge. So, if there is no legislation, we do not want six-wheeled, horizontal fridges whizzing down our pavements in the near future. Please can the Government find out and do something about it? It will be a problem.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for educating me in the use of mobile fridges; I saw on my local regional television service that the Co-op is trialling them in the north-west of England. I am not aware how widespread that is, and to be honest from the Dispatch Box, I am not aware of what current legislation will cover that issue. But, as ever, I will take it away, examine it and make sure that I respond to the noble Baroness, and I will certainly look with interest at the impact of those mobile vehicles on pavements. My view is—this is a long-standing view—that pavements are for people, not for cars, bikes or e-scooters. But I will examine for the noble Baroness how that aspiration goes into legislation.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, further to the point on criminality made by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, quite apart from the nuisance value and the danger that is attached to the use of these e-scooters, there is strong evidence to show that they are being used in connection with crime and anti-social behaviour, such as the increasing level of mobile phone thefts. Can the Minister perhaps outline what action is being taken to tackle this problem in conjunction with the Home Office?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The noble Lord may be aware—if he is not, I will certainly send him information on it—that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary convened a meeting last week with police chiefs and the Metropolitan Police to look at ongoing concern about mobile phone theft, and as a result of that discussion, several areas of work are being commissioned to look at how we can reduce it. It is completely unacceptable for any criminals to use bikes, e-scooters or other potential means of movement to steal mobile phones. It is a growing crime that we want to crack down on, and it is distressing to people. It is not about the loss of the phone; if the phone is unlocked, it can lead to wider fraud issues, such as bank fraud and the use of Apple Pay, et cetera. The noble Lord raises a really important issue, and I will update the House when we have had further discussions with the police about what actions can be taken.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
The theme of this Question seems to be public safety. I noticed that last week two fires were reported in London due to lithium battery failures, one in an e-scooter and one in an e-bike. What consideration are His Majesty’s Government giving to mandatory safety standards for PLEV batteries, and how can we enhance awareness of safe charging practices to protect lives?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate raises an important issue. I confess that he is straying into areas that are beyond my direct responsibility because they are Department for Transport issues. But it is extremely important to make sure that we have sufficient regulation and assessment of the potential dangers of electric batteries causing fires in electric vehicles and cars. If the right reverend Prelate will allow me, I will refer his comments to my noble friend Lord Hendy, the Transport Minister, and I will ensure that he gets a reply on the specifics of that issue downstream.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, as a regular user of hired electric scooters, I welcome them. They are very convenient and if you obey the law, it is fine. But will the Minister encourage his colleagues in the Department for Transport to introduce legislation so that people can own e-bikes and e-scooters with impunity rather than having to hire them?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I hope I have helped the House by saying that currently the use of those scooters in public places is illegal but they are allowed to be used on private land. There is the ability to have selected trials of hired e-scooters, in which my noble friend is participating, obviously. The Government intend to review how that trial has gone, to learn the lessons about safety, the use of those scooters, the costs and indeed the points that the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh and Lady Pidgeon, have mentioned. That review will take place over the next 12 months, and the issues that the noble Lord has raised will be forward policy which will lie with my noble friend Lord Hendy.
Lord Rogan (UUP)
My Lords, despite being banned in public places in Northern Ireland, e-scooters remain a common and worrying sight on the Province’s streets and roads. Last month, on the Floor of this House, the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, gave me a welcome commitment to launch a UK-wide consultation with all enforcement authorities to ensure that the laws on e-scooters are upheld. Is the Minister able to provide an update on what progress has been made in delivering on this commitment, and can he assure me that the Police Service of Northern Ireland will be fully involved?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The regulations that we are looking at in the crime and policing Bill will be England and Wales provisions, and they are in relation to the seizing of scooters if the police decide that they are being used to commit anti-social, illegal acts. The wide-ranging review of offences is ongoing. I suspect that transport issues are devolved in Northern Ireland, but I will check for the noble Lord. I will respond to him in due course. I will maintain my discussion on direct Home Office issues but will refer any points that have been raised here on transport issues so that my noble friend Lord Hendy is appraised of the feelings of the House.
London Stock Exchange: Decline in UK Funds
(5 days, 12 hours ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the net £9.6 billion decline in investment in UK funds in the London Stock Exchange in 2024.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)
My Lords, there has been a net decline in investment in UK funds for the past nine consecutive years. This is, of course, a matter of concern, although this does reflect global trends, and the outflow in 2024 was £2.5 billion less than in 2023. The UK’s capital markets remain some of the strongest and deepest in the world, and the UK is a leading centre for international capital raising, last year raising over £20 billion of equity capital—more than the next three European exchanges combined.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I was very glad to visit the stock exchange this week with other parliamentarians from the Industry and Parliament Trust. The stock exchange is important to national economic welfare. It is therefore unfortunate that the Government have scrapped the last Government’s plan for a tax-free Great British ISA, incentivising savers to invest in British stocks and shares. How does the Minister intend now to encourage people, including first-time investors, to invest in such shares?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question and for telling us about her first-hand experience this week. She may know that feedback from industry and consumers on the last Government’s proposed Great British ISA was mixed at best, and no clear value-for-money case was made for that, so, as she says, we will not be proceeding with it. But as she will know, at the Masion House speech the Chancellor published the interim report on the pensions investment review and launched consultations on measures that would deliver a major consolidation of the defined contribution market and local government pension schemes. They could unlock around £80 billion for investment in private equity and infrastructure, but of course, there is no guarantee that that will be invested in UK markets, as she says. The pensions review is absolutely committed to looking at further ways in which that can be achieved.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, when the Government chose not to follow the overwhelming response calling to exempt listed investment companies, otherwise known as listed funds, from consumer collective investments and to refer them to the Financial Conduct Authority consultation, did they realise that it would cost another £30 billion in lost investment? Did the Government realise that their interim solution, which the FCA is not enforcing, is a short-term solution and cannot give confidence to what are long-term investors and investments? Does the Minister agree that correct arithmetic cannot be a matter for consultation, and will he facilitate my meeting with officials to explain that beneath the jargon, smoke and mirrors, this issue is a simple matter of correct arithmetic?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question, and once again, I pay tribute to her for her campaigning on this issue. The Government absolutely recognise the key role the investment company sector plays in the UK economy; it represents over 30% of the FTSE 250 and invests in assets that support the Government’s growth agenda. We have listened carefully to the noble Baroness’s concerns, not least through her campaigning in the previous Parliament and her Private Member’s Bill in this Parliament. Last year we legislated, I think as a direct result of her campaigning, to reform retail disclosure, with the FCA launching a consultation on an entire replacement regime in December.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I am sure the Minister is aware that the tax-dodging fast-fashion firm Shein, having been rejected in New York, is now apparently seeking to list on the London Stock Exchange. Does the Minister agree with Liam Byrne, the chair of the Business and Trade Committee, who wrote to LSE asking if it agreed that it was important that firms seeking to list on the exchange have safeguards against forced labour in their products?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The decision on whether a firm can list in the UK is a matter for the independent regulator, the FCA, subject to a firm meeting its listing rules and relevant disclosure requirements.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, the chief beneficiary of the loss of business from London has been New York, where companies are not subject to stamp duty. Is the Minister’s department prepared to consider lifting this handicap from the London Stock Exchange to give us more of an equal chance?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
Stamp taxes on shares raise more than £4 billion a year in revenue. Targeted design features such as the exemption for transfers made on growth markets also support the UK’s competitiveness. This matter is out of scope of the pensions review, but we of course keep all taxes under review.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, the London Stock Exchange suffered its biggest exit in a decade in 2024, with 88 companies moving out of the market compared with 18 new listings. The drop in liquidity and trading activity began with the 2008 financial crash but accelerated significantly with Brexit. We all want a rebound, but will the Government take the necessary steps to rebuild liquidity by strengthening our relationship with the EU? A customs union would be a good first step; as one investor said to me, “Outside of the EU, why choose London over New York?”
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question, and she knows I agree with her analysis of the effects of Brexit. Firms may, of course, choose to list in other countries for a variety of reasons, and the Government appreciate that there is a perception that firms, especially tech firms, will have larger valuations in the US. We are determined to change that perception, which is why the Government are taking forward an ambitious programme of reforms to boost the attractiveness of UK markets and to support firms to start, scale, list and, importantly, stay here. As she knows, through the Government’s work on the EU reset, we will absolutely strengthen our relationship with the European Union.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
Does the Minister know that Australian pension funds invest 80% in Australia? Thirty years ago in this country, it was 40%, and in earlier years it was 60% and 70%. It seems to me that the situation is rather more serious than just “looking at further ways”. Does the Minister agree that if we really are to attract more FDI and sovereign wealth funds and create an attractive centre for high-innovation investment in this country, we need something a little beefier than what he has indicated so far?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question, and I agree with every word he said. We have been very guided by the Australian experience. We have been clear that UK pension funds are investing a lot less in the domestic economy than overseas counterparts. Australia and Canada are two that have been spoken about. He talks about beefier measures, but the pensions review is the most fundamental review of pensions for a generation, and it is actively considering what further interventions may be needed by the Government to ensure that our reforms to the UK pension system benefit UK growth.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, the Minister previously referred to corporation tax. Corporation tax in this country is uncompetitive compared to corporation tax across the water in the Irish Republic, where it is about half. The Republic has succeeded in attracting a number of international tech companies to set up their businesses there, at the expense of the United Kingdom. My home town of Macclesfield lost a significant investment of £400 million by AstraZeneca, which went directly into a pharmaceutical cluster in Cork. Can the Minister ask his officials to look into why, notwithstanding our uncompetitive corporation tax, we consistently lose out to the Republic of Ireland? Its civil servants are very good at working around ours, at the expense of the United Kingdom.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The noble Lord says that the corporation tax is uncompetitive, but it is where his Government put it. We have said that we will cap it at that level for the remainder of this Parliament; it is one of the most competitive in the G7. We have also said that if it looks uncompetitive at any point, we will act.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, can the noble Lord enlighten the House on the conversations his department has had with UK pension funds on the barriers to them investing in the UK? What sort of concerns do they express, and what are the Government doing to overcome them?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
As I have already set out, that is exactly what the pension review is looking at: identifying those barriers and why UK pension funds invest less in the UK than their overseas counterparts. The consultation is currently live and we will feed back on it in due course.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, can the Minister tell us why, in opposition, the Labour Party proposed that it would follow the French Tibi approach to pension investment when they got into government, but since getting in, it has decided not to mandate investment from pension funds?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
As I say, the pension review is considering whether further government intervention may be needed to ensure that our reforms to the UK pension system benefit UK growth. Of course, throughout this process, we will continue to work with the pensions industry to improve saver outcomes and increase investment in UK markets.
British Council
(5 days, 12 hours ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask His Majesty’s Government what their response is to the concerns expressed by the Chief Executive of the British Council for the future of that organisation; and what steps they are taking to ensure that the British Council's art collection is not to be sold off.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
My Lords, the British Council’s board of trustees is ultimately responsible for the British Council’s financial sustainability. The Government highly value the British Council as a UK soft power asset and are committed to working with it to ensure its financial sustainability. The FCDO is exploring all options, including the sale of assets, with the British Council and the Treasury to ensure this.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, will the Government properly support the British Council which does so much for our culture and soft power, the soft power council indeed that already exists but is under enormous financial pressure? It is considering closing up to 40 country operations. The Government should take careful note that wherever we move out from, Russia or China are poised to move in. Will the Government forgive the Covid loan, with interest accruing at the commercial rate of £1 million a month? Will they review the funding of a vital institution that has been underfunded by government for years?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We will not be forgiving the loan. The loan was made by our predecessor Government. I cannot explain why it was done in the way that it was, and it is unfortunate that a payment schedule was not agreed as part of that process. However, we are where we are. We are working very closely with the British Council. We speak on a regular basis, and I have visited the council when I have been on overseas visits. What it does is tremendous. What the noble Earl says about other nations filling the gaps that we leave is correct. However, we must ensure that the British Council is put on a sustainable footing for the long term. That is why we are working closely with it and looking at all viable options to make sure that that is what happens.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, I hear what the Minister says about working closely with the British Council, but the Government give the British Council only about 15% of its total revenue. Regardless of where fault lies, it is unconscionable that the British Council is having to pay £14 million a year in interest on a Covid loan. It is no good saying that we are where we are, when the Government have just launched a very high-profile Soft Power Council. The British Council, alongside the BBC World Service, is the most important arm’s-length body in projecting British soft power. We cannot simply say we are where we are and leave it at that.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Nobody is saying we are where we are and let us leave it at that, but we are where we are. This is not where I would wish to be, for all the reasons that the noble Lord says. We must protect the British Council, and enhance and strengthen it. I am very pleased to say that the British Council is a full participant of the Soft Power Council. I have spoken to the chief executive to get some advice on how we might go about setting it up and how to take that forward. He is fully involved, and quite right too It is our determination that the British Council is strong and grows, and is able to do more of what it has done for decades. As the noble Lord says, it is a vital part of our soft power work.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, I had the privilege of being chair of the British Council for six years, at the beginning of this century—which was quite a while ago, when I was a much younger woman. As I travelled the world, looking at the projects that were conducted by the British Council, I found that it was the envy of the world. It was the envy of France and Germany; they too had cultural organisations, but those never had the reach or success rate of the British Council. The scandal has been the diminution of the government grant to the British Council over the last 15 years. Given the situation we are facing—where we are watching the United States retreat from the world and from obligations to the world, and from the soft power that it exercised through USAID—is this not the very moment when we should be stepping forward and making sure that we are the people who can do soft power better than anyone? Can there not be an increase in the grant to the British Council and assistance in dealing with this debt?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
At the moment, the Government provide around 16% of the British Council's funding. The rest, to the British Council’s enduring credit, it manages to raise itself through its own activities—mostly English language tuition and other activities that it conducts. The balance of that we are discussing with the British Council. However, it is a strength that the council has that degree of independence from government, and I would not wish to see that jeopardised. Whether or not we can increase the government grant and to what extent is open to discussion, but I point out gently that, if we did decide to do that, the money would have to come from somewhere else.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we welcome today the vice-chair of the British Council as a new Labour Peer. We on these Benches look forward to robust defence of the British Council from the Government Benches. This is a Covid loan. The loss that the British Council made was due to Covid and the drying-up of English language teaching. There are many other Covid loans outstanding. Many of them were fraudulent, as we know; this clearly was not. The Government will struggle to recover some of those others. This was clearly an honest loan made in honest circumstances. Can we not treat this in that context, while the Government perhaps work harder on recovering other Covid loans which are a great deal less honest?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I will not get into the issue of the other Covid loans, because it is beyond my remit. The noble Lord talks about defending the British Council. There is no need to defend the British Council from this Government; we are strong allies, supporters, friends and protectors of the British Council. The British Council will thrive under this Government. However, it is right that we are going through the process that we are now to make sure that the British Council is as strong as it can be going forward and that it can adapt to face its current challenges, needs and demands. The noble Lord is absolutely right to mention that our dear and noble friend Lady Alexander, who is currently the vice-chair of the British Council, will soon be joining us on these Benches.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I know she was introduced today. I had assumed that she was having a cup of tea or something, but I see she is here. Fantastic. It is even better that she is here to witness the strength of feeling and support from across this House for the British Council. We welcome her with warm hearts.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the Government should be commended for setting up the Soft Power Council, but, for the last 90 years, the British Council has been a vital component of the way in which this country projects its values and influence around the world. A powerful example of this is the current photography exhibition in Portcullis House, which comes from the British Council’s season of culture between the UK and Ukraine. In our debate on Thursday on the creative industries, I asked whether, rather than forcing the British Council to sell off the artworks that it has collected over nearly a century, the Government might look at the acceptance in lieu scheme. Those debts could then be offset but these artworks could be kept and shared with the public here in the UK and around the world. Is that something that the Foreign Office has discussed with DCMS or the British Council?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I should make it very clear that nobody is forcing the British Council to make any decision in any direction about its art collection. As I understand it, around half of that is covenanted anyway and could not be sold. There is a decision to be made, and it is right for the British Council—I would defend it on this—to look at other assets and make a decision. What that decision should be is not for me to say, but I support at least looking at that option. Does Rachel Reeves want to be paid in art? I very much doubt it. What is important is that we are able to move forward, alongside the British Council, and that it is strengthened and can get the loan on a sustainable footing, look at where its income streams are coming from, and ensure that it can grow and be strong in the future.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a long-term member of the Hay Festival. We have worked for many years with the British Council and we now are working with the Soft Power Council. Despite many questions across the House just now, I do not understand why we need both. I gather that the Soft Power Council is to be more businesslike. However, looking at the record of what we have done in Colombia, Mexico and other countries, I see that we have produced enormous amounts of investment in Britain by soft power. Why do we need both? Why are the Government cutting down the council in favour of this new body? Is it just because they are the new kids on the block?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It is not an either/or. The British Council is central to the Soft Power Council. However, the Soft Power Council includes business, the Premier League, museums, and science and technology. It will be much bigger, but the British Council will be at the centre of it.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, we will hear from my noble friend Lady Keeley.
Baroness Keeley (Lab)
My Lords, I agree with noble Lords that the British Council is a vital part of the country’s soft power, and we have to recognise that its art collection showcases UK artists and architects across the world, including at the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The current financial situation of the British Council is concerning. I have to say, following the other comments, it was irresponsible of the previous Government to leave the British Council dangling with a £197 million Covid loan with no repayment schedule, leading to the current uncertainty. It is good to hear the strength of feeling in support of the British Council, but can my noble friend the Minister say any more about what steps will be taken to get it on to a sustainable footing?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
The issue of the loan needs to be dealt with, but no one should think that that is the only thing that the British Council needs to concern itself with in making sure that it is as strong as it can be in the future. It needs to look at changes in the way language tuition takes place and at different parts of the world where it may not operate currently but might wish to in the future. All of these questions need to be discussed and thought through thoroughly, so that we get a strong, sustainable business plan and are able to see the British Council thrive in the next few years. As everybody has said—there has not been a single word of criticism or doubt about what the British Council brings—this is a vital part of the way that the UK presents itself around the world.
Arrangement of Business
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, when I became Government Chief Whip in July of last year, I assured the House that I would make timely announcements of future recess dates, as I am firmly of the opinion this is good for Members of the House and the Administration and staff who serve the House so well. Therefore, as a treat before the February Recess, I am delighted to be able to provide the House with an update on recess dates. I have already announced the current plan for recesses up until the end of the conference season 2025. There is a notice in the Royal Gallery and the Printed Paper Office. In addition, I can now confirm that, subject to the progress of business, the current plan is for the House to rise for the Christmas Recess on Thursday 18 December and to return on Monday 5 January. I hope this gives noble Lords plenty of time to plan holidays and spend time with family and friends. I will shortly email around the full list of anticipated recess dates this year to assist the House. Finally, I wish all Members and staff a relaxing and enjoyable February Recess.
US Steel Import Tariffs
(5 days, 12 hours ago)
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Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, can the Minister confirm what conversations Ministers have had with their counterparts in the US about steel tariffs? How many times have Ministers spoken with US trade representatives since last Sunday, for instance? In particular, can she confirm that the first 500,000 tonnes of steel to the US will be tariff-free as they were under President Trump’s previous Administration? And finally, can she bring us up to date on the Government’s efforts to obtain a free trade agreement with the United States?
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade and Treasury (Baroness Gustafsson) (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question. I think we all agree that the US is an indispensable ally in many areas. As he may have seen, President Trump has said he has had a couple of good, constructive calls with Keir Starmer and the two enjoy a good relationship. The Prime Minister has said that he would like to work with the US to develop a trade deal, and we are keen to work with the Trump Administration to capitalise on opportunities and deepen and strengthen our relationship.
With regard to the specifics around what will happen within the steel sector, there is a lot of hypothesis and noise at the moment, but there are currently no established facts about what that will look like. The Government will make any key decisions in light of those key facts as and when they emerge, and we will not be drawn into a hypothetical conversation.
With regard to a free trade agreement, we have talked about the fact that the US is such a valuable ally, and we would love to be able to deepen those trading relationships. That said, 18% of our trade today already happens with the US. Any free trade agreement set in place would need to best represent UK interests.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, being emollient has never worked with President Trump. Will the Government heed my leader Ed Davey’s calls to work with like-minded allies, including Canada and the EU, to respond to both steel tariffs and potential dumping, including plans for retaliatory tariffs on targeted American exports such as Tesla vehicles? Have Ministers convened a meeting with the leaders of our four UK nations to work together to protect our steel industry? The Canadians have called all their Premiers together. Are the Government working not just with our steel companies but with the unions to protect steel jobs? This country would never start a trade war, but it cannot weakly acquiesce in being the victim of one.
Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I agree that the UK steel industry is something that we hugely value and look to support in any way that we are able. To that end, we have a steel strategy being published this spring which will outline how we intend to make the industry as sustainable as possible. A steel council is already in existence, and I can confirm that it includes representatives from the union. The Secretary of State for the Department for Business and Trade is in a regular and open dialogue with the industry, and we will consider all the tools in our toolkit to make sure that we are able to support the industry. I note as well that £2.5 billion of investment has been set aside to support the UK steel industry.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
What assessment has the Minister made about the impact on Northern Ireland of EU tariffs in retaliation, given that we in Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework would be subject to the EU regime in that regard? Has the Minister spoken with the Northern Ireland Executive about the damage that would be done as a result for Northern Ireland?
Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for the question. Again, it is very difficult to comment on the specifics of what the tariffs will look like when we are at a point when there are few facts and a lot more conversation and speculation. Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom customs territory and internal market. For goods moving into Northern Ireland that do not subsequently enter the EU, the duty reimbursement scheme enables traders to reclaim or remit applicable EU duties in full. However, the implications for Northern Ireland of the substance of any arrangements will be a key aspect of the considerations and the ongoing consultation with our partners, both within the UK and within the steel sector at large.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, on Tuesday in the other place, the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security, said that
“a clear-headed sense of the … national interest”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/2/25; col. 182.]
was required in reset talks with the EU. Given that that is the case, and following on from the question from the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, can she tell us what His Majesty’s Government are doing proactively with the EU to deal with the complexities and constraints of the Windsor Framework if tariffs come to the EU—I accept her point about hypotheticals—so that it does not impact on Northern Ireland?
Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)
Forgive me. I cannot comment further on the specifics of the Windsor arrangement in absence of the facts, but on the relationship with the EU, this Government were elected with a strong mandate to reset that and make sure that we build on the relationship we have, both with Europe and the US—I do not think this is necessarily a binary choice between the two. I suspect that when we think about the strategy particular to the steel industry, understanding what those relationships look like with the EU but also with the US, and the specifics of any tariff arrangements in place, will be a key factor of those considerations and the strategy at large. We will not be afraid to make sure that we are representing UK industries in supporting the steel industry to the best of our ability.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, the steel industry is paying much the highest electricity costs in the world, and unless we can get around that problem, we are not going to be selling steel anywhere. The Minister did not mention that. Could she say what is being done to address that part of the problem, which would not solve all the difficulties but would certainly make things less difficult than they are now?
Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)
I acknowledge that electricity and power costs within the UK are higher. In my role, as I think about investment, that is something that we need to make sure we understand and grapple with as we support stronger investment in the UK overall. With regard to the steel industry specifically, there are initiatives and schemes for high-intensity energy consumers within the UK that are valuable assets, such as the steel industry, to support them with those energy costs. However, while I acknowledge that that support is specific to the steel industry, wider UK industry as a whole really needs to understand what we can do to grapple with energy costs. On that, significant investment is under way to increase the supply of energy within the UK and the transition into cleaner energy environments. A lot of work and investment have gone into that as part of the green energy transition.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, the steel industry is a strategic asset for the country. The Minister stressed the importance of our link with America, but it is important that the Americans understand that if they are saying that Europe is going to be responsible for its own defence without much American support then the strategic and sovereign capabilities in a number of areas such as steel become even more important. That message needs to be put across.
Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)
I wholeheartedly agree with my noble friend that the steel industry is a vital asset within the UK. As I think about emerging markets and emerging technologies—for example, the electrification of cars, or building infrastructure to support AI investment around data centres—steel is always going to be an essential component of building up our own expertise, not just within the industry itself but within those other emerging industries. That is why building on our sector expertise and working with that market is going to be key to delivering on the Government’s ambitions on growth. I come back to the point that having a steel strategy—which will be coming out in spring—working with the industry through the steel council and having regular and open dialogue are all essential, and indicative of the value that we place on the industry.
UK-EU Relations
(5 days, 12 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement. Before I start, I will say that, while the timing was eventually agreed in the usual channels, it does not really do for your Lordships’ House to hear a Statement seven days after it was given in another place. This House is Parliament, too, and the clear constitutional principle is that if, for their own advantage, the Executive—any Executive—wish to use Parliament as a platform for their policies, their Ministers must, without equivocation, be promptly and fully accountable to both Houses. We may not agree about policies, but Parliament requires prompt answers and a seven-day wait is not good enough for this House and should not become the standard. I must make clear to the House that that is nothing whatever to do with the noble Baroness opposite, who is always open and available to the House.
The Prime Minister is very fond of words beginning with “re”: reset, review, relaunch—what ever happened to that?—and now we are actually hearing “reshuffle”. Those of us on this side remember those dread briefings in the press and we have every sympathy with those on the Front Bench opposite, who try hard to serve this House and who are now reading this kind of spin themselves. I do not get very often to the Dispatch Box now, so let me say, as Leader of the Opposition and on behalf of the Opposition, how much we appreciate noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite in the difficult job that they do.
I shall start on one point of agreement. This House is absolutely united in wanting good relations with our European friends and allies. It was in fact our Government who organised the summit of European leaders at Blenheim Palace in July that the Prime Minister spun as his reset idea. The purpose of that summit was precisely to consider the challenges of illegal immigration and security that face our whole continent—welcome discussions that were carried on in Brussels. So, obviously, we have no quarrel with co-operation or sharing ideas.
However, on illegal immigration, were any specific undertakings secured in Brussels to combat this criminal trade? Did perhaps the Prime Minister meet Prime Minister Meloni and ask her about her initiatives to process would-be migrants offshore? Or rather, did he perhaps give Giorgia Meloni a copy of a lecture by the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General and warn Italy not to try to make her own laws? Will the noble Baroness guarantee that the reset will not result in any return to EU legal frameworks, such as jurisdiction of the ECJ in UK immigration or security policies?
We hear a lot in this Chamber, not least from the Leader, about the need to follow every dot and comma of the Labour manifesto. The Labour manifesto said:
“There will be no return to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement”.
No freedom of movement: that is pretty clear. So can the noble Baroness clear up the conflicting statements about a new youth mobility agreement, as desirable as many may see that? Did the Home Secretary speak for the Government when she ruled that out?
On trade, can the Government deny that they are considering rejoining the pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention on rules of origin? If not, how would this stand with their stated commitment to make a clean break from EU trade structures? Will the Government support amendments to the product metrology Bill in your Lordships’ House next week that would block powers to introduce dynamic alignment of regulations with the EU. If not, why not?
We support international co-operation on security. Now, I may be an old man, but on our continent I think that is called NATO. So does the noble Baroness agree that the UK’s defence commitments must be made through NATO, the world’s foremost security alliance, not through ad hoc European arrangements that risk compromising our interests that may or may not have been discussed in Brussels?
Specifically on security, did the Prime Minister discuss co-operation with the EU in the Indian Ocean against the Chinese challenge? Only last week, Russia announced an agreement to open a new naval base in Sudan. France has two naval bases in the Indian Ocean, in Mayotte and Réunion. Both of those are sovereign French territory—EU territory. When the UN suggested that France should give them up, France simply vetoed the resolution. That is what I call “ruthless pragmatism”. So will the Government scrap their foolish plan to give up the Chagos Islands and enter into full-throated security co-operation in the Indian Ocean with our allies, including France, as part of the EU? They might even be able to put the money saved on the deal into building new ships and creating British jobs.
The Statement says the PM told the EU to
“step up and project strength”.
What on earth did he mean by that? Did the langoustines jump from the plates as he pounded the table? President Trump says he wants to see 5% of GDP spent on defence. What percentage target on defence did the PM tell the EU would constitute “stepping up and projecting strength”? Will the noble Baroness please tell us?
We are and remain steadfast across this House in supporting the brave people of Ukraine, and I am glad that was reaffirmed in Brussels. There can be no peace without the consent of Ukraine. Yesterday, though, the US indicated that it did not envisage a practical place for membership of NATO for Ukraine. Can the noble Baroness tell us the UK’s Government’s reaction to that, please? It is important that we should know.
On AI, which is material to our security, the UK attended the summit convened by President Macron this month but refused to sign the declaration. Britain followed the United States and Vice-President Vance. We think the Government are right to preserve our freedom of action, but can the noble Baroness tell the House why the UK declined to sign the declaration?
The Statement is silent on fish. When we left the EU, there was a temporary arrangement to allow EU fishermen to adjust to changed circumstances. The brave fishing folk of the UK now expect full rights and full access to our own waters. Will the noble Baroness assure the House that they will get those fair deserts, or will fishing communities be treated in the same way as farming ones?
Finally, where will ruthless pragmatism place us in a battle, which we hope will not occur, between the EU and US on tariffs? Does the reset include co-ordinating policy on tariffs with the European Union or does it not? Will the noble Baroness please tell us?
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, it is an unexpected pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord True. He mentioned that he is infrequently at the Dispatch Box these days. That may explain why he perhaps took a little longer. If I go over the 10 minutes for Front-Bench questions, I hope the Minister will understand why.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
No, it is 10 minutes normally for questions and 10 minutes for the answers.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
It is 20 in total, including the answers. Anyway, we are all vehemently agreeing that it is 20 minutes in total. The convention I was always taught was that it is about 10 minutes for Front-Bench questions, and the response is about 10 minutes. I will carry on.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
I am now being told that I am time-wasting and that I have to speak up. I have never been told in your Lordships’ House that I need to speak up.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord True, that bringing a Statement a week after it was given is not acceptable. In particular, the world has already changed so much in a week that the musings that have come from Washington, from Donald Trump and his Cabinet Ministers, raise serious concerns about Ukraine, which were discussed this morning. These Benches may agree with the Conservatives that NATO matters, but at the moment the people who are putting Ukraine at risk and not supporting Ukraine are our American allies in NATO. If they are not supporting Ukraine, we need to work far more closely with our European allies to make sure there is no agreement on the future of Ukraine without Ukraine, the UK and other European voices. Does the Minister agree?
Like the noble Lord, Lord True, I find that some aspects of the Statement might be welcome. Having co-operation and meetings is desirable. If we want to rebuild our relations with Europe, we need to have regular meetings. The Ministers, Nick Thomas-Symonds and Stephen Doughty, have had regular bilateral and multilateral meetings with our European partners. I declare an interest, wearing my academic hat: I am currently doing some work on the UK’s bilateral relations with the EU generally and with Germany in particular. The feedback we get is that these meetings are well-received by European partners, but what are they leading to?
As the noble Lord, Lord True, said, we have a reset. We have been told we are not having a rewind, but what does that actually mean? There is little detail in the Statement and a brief reference to the meeting Minister Thomas-Symonds had with Maroš Šefčovič. It is almost impossible to scrutinise what is going on to hold the Government to account. Could the Minister perhaps talk to her colleagues in the other place to see whether a little more detail could be forthcoming? What does the reset mean?
Finally, if we are having a reset and ruthless pragmatism, could the Minister tell us what is meant by “ruthless pragmatism”? Under the new Labour Government, essentially, the approach was promiscuous bilateralism—to have bilateral relationships with as many European partners as possible in order to achieve effectively short-term goals. When the UK got what it wanted, it disappeared; reciprocity was absent. Do His Majesty’s Government understand the importance of reciprocity if we are to rebuild our relationships with Europe? Can ruthless pragmatism include an understanding of that? Does it also include the need to compromise—for example, with movement on a youth mobility scheme, which is not the same as free movement?
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord True, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, for their comments. They raised a number of important issues, which I will attempt to address in the time remaining.
As the Minister for the Cabinet Office said last week, on 3 February
“the Prime Minister attended an informal retreat with the 27 EU leaders and Presidents von der Leyen and Costa. This marked a clear step forward for this Government’s reset of the UK’s relationship with the EU. He is the first British Prime Minister to join a meeting of European Council members since the UK left the EU”.
At the informal retreat, the Prime Minister
“discussed the common threats that the UK and the EU face, and the value that closer UK-EU co-operation on security and defence could bring. These were points that he also discussed earlier in the day, when he met the Secretary-General of NATO”.
The Prime Minister clearly outlined
“a number of steps to increase co-operation on shared threats, including cross-border crime and illegal migration, while delivering growth and security at home. He called on Europe to step up and project strength, to keep up the pressure on Putin, alongside sustained military support to Ukraine, to put it in the strongest possible position this year”.
In response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord True, our support for Ukraine is unequivocal.
The Prime Minister also set out a strong case for European security and defence, an ambitious UK-EU security partnership and a deeper role for Europe within NATO. Our reset priorities are to protect the security and safety of UK nationals and the wider collective security of Europe, and to support growth through removing barriers to trade. Shortly after the retreat, we announced that the UK will welcome the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission to the UK for the first UK-EU summit, which will take place on Monday 19 May.
This Government have been clear that we are not hitting rewind on Brexit; we are hitting reset. As we made clear in our manifesto, we are not undoing Brexit. We are not rejoining the single market or the customs union, but we are looking to make Brexit work in a way even the leader of the Opposition has made clear that the previous Government failed to do. This is the spirit that we are taking into discussions with the EU as we approach the summit and beyond. This is not a zero-sum game, but a win-win for both sides, with people across the UK and the EU benefiting.
In response to the point from the noble Lord, Lord True, on the pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention, we are always looking at ways to reduce barriers to trade, within our clear red lines. Having a smooth trading relationship with European partners is essential to driving growth at home. This is one of the options we are open to looking at to reduce barriers. It is right and responsible that we are looking at it to determine what is in the UK’s national interest. However, we do not currently have plans to join the pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention.
On the question of youth mobility, as I made clear during the recent debate on this in your Lordships’ House, this Government recognise the value of schemes which give young people the opportunity to experience different cultures and work or study elsewhere. However, in response to the noble Lord’s point with regard to a prospective scheme on youth mobility in the EU, the Government have been clear that we do not have any plans for youth mobility schemes. However, we will look at any proposals from the EU on this and a range of other issues.
If I do not get the opportunity to respond to the other points that have been raised I will write. On AI, as we develop our approach to regulating AI, we recognise the need to engage with a range of international partners. This includes engaging with the EU, which is a key science and technology partner, as well as working alongside the EU and other partners in the G7, the OECD, the UN and other international fora. We take a very close interest, as noble Lords will be clear is appropriate, in how our largest trading partners are regulating in similar areas. We have regular exchanges with the EU on regulatory developments.
On Chagos, as noble Lords will be aware, the British Indian Ocean Territory deal is rooted in a rational and hard-headed determination to protect UK national security. This deal will protect the base on Diego Garcia and cement a UK and US presence in the Indo-Pacific for generations to come. It is a bit of a stretch to raise this in a debate on the EU reset, but I hope the noble Lord will be content with my response.
On the timing of this Statement, as the noble Lord opposite knows, Statements are scheduled and agreed through the usual channels. As the noble Lord will also know, the Opposition are requesting that every Statement is repeated in this House, which is creating pressures on scheduling. I understand from the Chief Whip that work is ongoing to improve this after the recess.
In conclusion, the Prime Minister made the point in Brussels that the world is very different from that in 2016 and even from that in 2024. A number of noble Lords have noted that the world is changing even on a week-by-week basis. In this time of uncertainty, this Government are stepping up to build alliances in a bid to make our people safer and more prosperous. That is at the core of our national interest and will contribute to this Government’s ambitious plan for change. It is through a new partnership between the UK and the EU that we will deliver for the people of the United Kingdom and for people across the continent.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we on these Benches note with interest the call from the noble Lord, Lord True, for a substantial increase in our defence spending—and no doubt for the higher taxes to pay for it. We also think that the correct adjective to describe the Government’s approach to the EU is not ruthless but timid. It is timid in defining a reset by the negatives of what we are not doing, rather than what we are doing. It is timid because we are not really investing in finding out what we require and what costs and benefits that would have.
I want to ask the Minister: first, are we rebuilding the expertise in Whitehall, which we had abandoned in recent years, on how the EU works, on relations with the Commission and on the complications of regulations in the European Union, which we have to relate to and which I think a great many people now simply do not understand? Secondly, since we are clearly heading towards the sort of relationship that Switzerland has with the European Union—untidy, painful but necessary—are we spending a lot of time talking to the Swiss about the difficulties of their relations with the European Union? That is where we are likely to end up if this timid half-reset proceeds within the boundaries which the Government, frightened of the Daily Mail as they are, are about to pursue.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
On whether the Government’s approach is timid, I note that if the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, believes we are too timid and the noble Lord, Lord True, thinks we are potentially going too far, it is possible that we are getting the balance right. The Government are determined to reset the relationship with our European friends. The EU is the UK’s largest trading partner, and it would be irresponsible if this Government did not attempt to make sure we have good relations with the EU. This has been a priority of this Government. It is five years since the UK exited the EU, and we are determined to make sure that, with economic growth being the number one mission of this Government, boosting trade abroad, including with the EU, is absolutely essential to delivering a strong economy at home.
Lord Craig of Radley (CB)
My Lords, the issue of Diego Garcia has been mentioned. What stage have His Majesty’s Government got to in agreeing with the Americans on the proposed arrangements? If they have agreed, have the Americans also agreed to make a contribution?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
Did I understand correctly that the noble and gallant Lord’s question related to the deal on Chagos?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
With respect to your Lordships’ House, this is going so far from the issues covered within an EU-UK reset that I will refer the noble and gallant Lord back to the point I made during my first response, but I will ensure that the noble and gallant Lord gets that response in writing.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, can the Minister explain to us why we never seem to see the Attorney-General in this House? He is constantly telling us how important international law is; maybe he could explain why we have this obsession with not being involved in any way with European law? If we are going to reset our relations with Europe, we are going to find it very difficult to do so without accepting some form of adjudication, and that means some sort of sort of legal framework. Even the Norwegians managed to accept that. Could the Minister tell us exactly what the thinking is on how we can get a reset without any agreement on any legal structure to enforce it?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I am not going to give a blow-by-blow account of ongoing discussions. In relation to my noble and learned friend Lord Hermer’s presence, or otherwise, in your Lordships’ House, I see him pretty regularly. I have no idea where the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, is when the Attorney-General is in your Lordships’ House; I would suggest, if the noble Lord wants him to answer questions, that he put appropriate Questions into the ballot.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, it is disappointing that there was no mention in the Statement referring to any discussion about the effect of Brexit on the arts and creative industries. When are the UK Government going to have that discussion with the EU, bearing in mind that the creative industries are hugely important to this country, as the Minister knows? The creative industries are waiting on this.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The Government are committed, as set out in our manifesto, to supporting our creative industries and our creative artists in touring and performing around Europe. I am happy to meet the noble Earl, and I will ensure that my DCMS office gets in touch with him. I am not going to give a description of where we are regarding ongoing discussions or a commentary on negotiations. We are clear, as I know the noble Earl is, that this could help deliver real benefits not just to artists in this country but to artists and venues from across the EU.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, Brussels has already set out its case that it wants to renegotiate the fishing arrangements. The Government will find that agriculture, fish and food is often the last hurdle in securing a trade deal. I am pleased that the Government are continuing to defend the decision to protect sand eels in order to protect puffins and kittiwakes, but the Government should be seeking to try and open up the export of foods, because the French Government are refusing to put in the necessary facilities in France and that is blocking the export of foods into that country.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
On fisheries, the UK and EU share a commitment to protecting the marine environment through various international agreements. We do believe that, by working together on this and other food export issues, we can effectively deliver on our commitments in a way that supports the long-term sustainability and resilience of our fishing fleets, and that protects our food exports and imports in a way that benefits the UK in the trade position we will have going forward.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
My Lords, in the reset talks to what extent are the Government taking account of two factors affecting Northern Ireland? First, with the current review being carried out by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, into the workings of the Windsor Framework, how will that play into the discussions? Secondly, given the continuing lack of any support whatsoever in the unionist community for the current arrangements under the Windsor Framework, there is a breach of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. To what extent are the Government cognisant of those very fundamental points?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The noble Lord referenced the commissioning of my noble friend Lord Murphy of Torfaen to conduct an independent review of the Windsor Framework. This will report within six months. Looking ahead, we are committed to continuing to seek joint solutions with the EU to challenges that might arise in the future around the Windsor Framework. We are taking forward our commitments, as set out in the Safeguarding the Union Command Paper, including the implementation of the UK internal market system. For example, the Government announced the membership of the independent monitoring panel, and the chair of InterTrade UK.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)
My Lords, of the 70 direct engagements that UK Ministers have had with EU counterparts, which have included discussing or progressing a youth mobility scheme? The Minister touched on this earlier, but why will His Majesty’s Government not consider proactively proposing a new youth mobility scheme? As the Minister highlighted, there are many benefits to having such a scheme.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
In response to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord True, on this, the Government recognise the value of schemes that give young people the opportunity to experience different cultures and work or study elsewhere. We have the Turing scheme and, separate to that, the UK operates a number of bilateral youth mobility schemes with European countries such as Iceland and Andorra and with a number of our global partners. We do not have a proposal or plan for a youth mobility scheme, but we will look at any EU proposals on a range of issues. But, as I outlined in the debate we had on youth mobility in your Lordships’ House a couple of weeks ago, the EU has not yet come forward with definite proposals on this point.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, the Government have set out two of their objectives for this supposed reset: an agreement on SPS—agri-food—and some sort of agreement on the emissions trading scheme, with closer linkage between our scheme and the EU’s. In its negotiating document that was made public before Christmas, the EU said that agreements in those areas would be possible only if there were dynamic alignment in the application of EU law, jurisdiction of the Court of Justice and an EU enforcement mechanism. Will the Minister confirm that such terms will not be acceptable to the British Government in this reset? If she is not willing to give such a clear denial, should we not conclude that such terms could in fact be negotiated in this reset?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
On the sanitary and phytosanitary agreement, the Government are committed to pursuing an agreement that could reduce trade friction and bring benefits to both the UK and the EU. The UK and the EU are like-minded partners with similarly high standards, and we have been clear that an SPS agreement could boost trade and deliver benefits on both sides.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, we had a useful debate on this subject a few days ago, and I noted very considerable agreement on the creative industries, as the noble Baroness mentioned. But I ask her one specific question: will this reset include an attempt to relieve the problems caused by cabotage, which are really sinking many touring proposals at the moment?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I restate that we are committed to addressing this. I will write to the noble Lord on his points.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I concur with my noble friend the shadow Leader’s comments about the timeliness of accountability. In that context, given the limited opportunities for scrutiny and oversight of the Government’s EU policy, with the demise of the European Scrutiny Committee in the other place—in contrast to the forensic, detailed scrutiny of the previous Government’s negotiating policy in the run-up to our exit in 2021—will the Government now change or reverse their policy and publish an extensive strategy in terms of a negotiating mandate to be put to the European Union in the next few months, particularly on the specific point of the role of the European Court of Justice?
On the second point—I am not sure the Minister answered it directly—will she give an unequivocal commitment to protect UK fishing rights, even under pressure from the Prime Minister’s good friend, President Macron, in the forthcoming negotiations?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
On fishing rights, in approaching future access arrangements beyond 2026, our position is clear: we will continue to advocate for and support UK fishing communities while ensuring that we meet our shared international obligations. On the timing of the debate, I repeat what I said earlier: attempts will be made to improve timeliness after the Recess, but Statements are scheduled and agreed with the usual channels. On whether there should be a European committee, my understanding is that there is one. Arguably, given the dire need for a reset following the previous Government’s deteriorating relations with the EU, there should have been more scrutiny under the previous Government, not less.
Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)
My Lords, further to that answer, in the previous Parliament a number of White Papers were published by the Government of the day. One in February 2020 set out the approach to the negotiations on the TCA, and another one, I believe in July 2021, set out in some detail the approach to the renegotiation of the Northern Ireland protocol. Will the Government proceed in a similar manner and produce Command Papers that set out the approach to the negotiations? If so, when are we likely to see them?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I will write to the noble Lord on that point, but we are not planning to give a blow-by-blow ongoing position on where we are with negotiations. We are clear that we are resetting the relationship with our European friends, and this Government will continue to report back to Parliament, as per the Statement, so that there is the opportunity to debate this. But I note the noble Lord’s point, and I will write to him on that aspect.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, during the general election, Steve Reed, who is now the Government’s Environment Secretary, said that the Labour Party would, in government,
“ban the commercial import of foie gras, where ducks and geese are aggressively force-fed”.
Interestingly, this was also the Conservative Government’s policy pre Liz Truss, although it was never delivered. Yet, just this week, a Defra spokesperson, when asked about plans for a potential veterinary agreement with the EU, essentially responded, “No comment”. Can the Minister assure me that the Labour promise during the general election will be delivered in banning the commercial import of foie gras?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I have to say that I do not have that in my pack. I will write to the noble Baroness on that. I personally do not eat foie gras, and I know many noble Lords feel the same.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, hearing about promises at the general election, I am reminded of the clarion calls that came from the then Opposition about smashing the gangs and getting round the table with the French, as if it had not been done before. Can the Minister update us on what is actually happening on the ground? My understanding is that, in terms of the boats, sadly, the crossings are increasing.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The Government are meeting with four countries—France, Germany, Holland and Belgium—on those exact points.
Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)
My Lords, at present, Northern Ireland is sitting apart from the rest of the UK in relation to Europe. Will any future relationships and management processes that the UK might have with the European Union include Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, so we will all be back into one position again?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I refer the noble Lord to the independent review of the Windsor Framework, led by my noble friend Lord Murphy, which will report within six months. As somebody with family in Northern Ireland, I am very clear that it is absolutely part of the UK.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, returning to the questions asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, the French President has made it very clear that there can no reset of UK-EU relations unless fisheries are on the table. The Minister said that she would advocate for the rights of UK fishermen. Surely, this is very different from stating that there is going to be no reduction in their rights. Which is it?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
We can split hairs around particular wording, but I am absolutely clear that the UK Government advocates for and supports UK fishing communities, while ensuring that we meet our shared international obligations. I stand by those words. That is the Government’s position.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness for what she said both on the pan-Euro-Mediterranean customs deal and on the youth mobility scheme. She essentially said, “It’s not something we’re asking for but, if the other side wants it badly enough, we might be prepared to discuss things”. This seems a very sensible line to take in any negotiations. If they want to put something valuable on the table, such as lifting the checks in Northern Ireland, we should be open to discussions. Why does the Minister not take the same line on the defence agreement? As one of two nuclear powers, we are by far the largest contributor to the defence of Europe. When it comes to putting stuff on the table, I can see why the EU wants us involved, but how on earth have we got ourselves into the position of being the demandeurs here?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I am quite proud of the position we are taking on defence in Europe. I am unclear why I should apologise for it. I refer noble Lords to the very clear message from the Defence Secretary, John Healey—including to our ally Ukraine—on our firm determination to ensure that our country is safe and also that we stand with our allies elsewhere in Europe.
Prevent: Learning Review
(5 days, 12 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I am responding to this Statement on behalf of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition with deep sadness. Sir David Amess was not just a colleague and friend of mine in the other place; he was a true servant of the people. His warmth, kindness, keen sense of humour and unwavering commitment to his constituents set an example to all parliamentarians. His murder was an attack on democracy itself and it is incumbent on us all to do everything in our power to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again.
The Government are right to publish the Prevent Learning Review into this case. Transparency is crucial in restoring trust in our counterextremism strategies. It is only by learning from past failures that we can strengthen our national security. The findings of the review are concerning. It is clear that the vulnerabilities of the perpetrator were not adequately assessed, that record-keeping was inadequate and that a miscommunication led to an incomplete intervention. Most concerningly, the case was closed too soon, allowing a dangerous individual to slip through the cracks. These are not minor administrative errors but systematic failings that demand urgent attention.
I welcome the fact that all four recommendations of the review have been implemented, but we must go further. The introduction of a new independent Prevent commissioner is an important step, but this role must have real teeth to scrutinise the system and hold authorities to account. The Prevent programme must be laser-focused on countering Islamist extremism—the ideology that led to the murder of Sir David. The independent review of Prevent by William Shawcross made it clear that, too often, the programme has been distracted by vague and politically correct priorities, rather than focusing on the clear and present threat posed by radical Islamism. This must change.
The Government must also address the broader weaknesses in our counterterrorism approach. The British people expect that those who pose a clear danger to our country are properly monitored and, where necessary, detained. We must ask whether current powers are sufficient. Whole-life sentences for terrorists are welcome, but we should also consider greater use of terrorism prevention investigation measures and enhanced surveillance for those who leave Prevent but remain a risk.
Additionally, this review has highlighted the crucial issue of MPs’ security. Public service should not come with a threat of violence. The Government must continue working with the parliamentary security department to ensure that MPs can serve their constituents without fear.
More must be done to clamp down on online radicalisation, which played a role in this case. Social media companies must take greater responsibility for tackling extremist content.
Finally, let us never lose sight of what this debate is truly about. Sir David’s light remains. His service, optimism and belief in his community live on. It is in his memory that we must commit to doing everything possible to prevent another tragedy of this kind. I support the Government’s effort to strengthen Prevent, but I urge Ministers to ensure that this programme never again fails, as it did in this case. We must be ruthless in our commitment to national security and unwavering in our resolve to protect the values that Sir David embodied.
What specific measures will the new independent Prevent commissioner have at their disposal to ensure greater accountability and effectiveness in countering radicalisation?
Secondly, given the concerns raised in the Shawcross review, how will the Government ensure that Prevent remains focused on the most pressing threats, particularly from Islamist extremism, rather than being diluted by other priorities?
What steps are the Government taking to enhance the monitoring of individuals who leave the Prevent programme but may still pose a risk? Should stronger legal powers, such as TPIMs, be considered?
How will the Government work with social media companies to crack down on online radicalisation? What consequences will there be for platforms that fail to remove extremist content?
Lastly, what further reforms are being considered to improve MPs’ security? How will the Speaker’s Conference ensure that lessons from Sir David Amess’s murder are fully implemented?
Baroness Doocey (LD)
My Lords, the murder of Sir David Amess highlights the urgent need to strengthen our counterterrorism strategy if we are to prevent similar tragedies in future. The terrorist threat is continually evolving. More extremists now follow multiple ideologies, or none at all, with the internet and social media fuelling self-radicalisation. Conspiracy theories, personal grievances, misogyny and anti-Government sentiment further blur the picture, making credible threats harder and harder to predict. To stay effective, our approach must adapt to this increasingly fragmented and unpredictable landscape.
The review that was made public yesterday highlights that Sir David Amess’s killer had his Prevent file closed too soon in 2016—a failure the Home Office and counterterrorism police have known about since at least February 2022. Yet, as we heard last week, less than three years on, a similar pattern of failure has been identified in the review following the Southport stabbings. This suggests that, while much may have been done to improve the workings of Prevent in the last decade, some critical lessons have still not been learned. We therefore echo the sentiments of Sir David’s family in welcoming the fact that light has finally been shone on those failings, following yesterday’s retrospective publication of the 2022 report.
The Liberal Democrats have consistently raised concerns about whether the Prevent strategy is the most effective mechanism for addressing radicalisation. Unfortunately, recent events confirm that its shortcomings are not isolated incidents, and I therefore welcome the Government’s decision to task the new Prevent commissioner with reviewing the handling of Sir David’s case. Can the Minister confirm that the commissioner will have a broad and independent mandate to conduct a thorough assessment of Prevent? Will the Government commit to placing this role on a statutory footing to ensure accountability and effectiveness?
Any comprehensive review must also examine how Prevent collaborates with stakeholders, including police and crime commissioners and elected mayors. Community engagement is central to an effective counterterrorism strategy. Can the Minister outline how local communities will be consulted in the development of future counterextremism policies?
The current system is simply not equipped to manage emerging risks effectively. We live in a world where counterterrorism casework involving young people is increasing, and more referrals are now for individuals with a vulnerability rather than an apparent ideology. To tackle both emerging and traditional forms of radicalisation, we urgently need a system that is built for the reality of modern extremism.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, for their comments and contributions and I will try to answer the questions accordingly. I begin with the praise given to the late Sir David Amess by the noble Lord. Like him, I served in Parliament with Sir David—in my case, for 28 years. I shared with him a role on the Panel of Chairs, chairing debates in committee and in the House. I found him to be an honest, open colleague who stood up for his constituency with immense passion, and I am very pleased that Southend is now a city as a result of Sir David’s campaign. I also want to remember that primarily, Sir David was a father and a husband, and his family grieve much more than we will ever know. Our thoughts are with them today.
The noble Lord and the noble Baroness talked about the failures of the Prevent system in the case of the convicted killer of Sir David. There were a number of recommendations, and six findings were highlighted in the report. The Government wanted to publish those findings to ensure that they were open and transparent, and that the concerns raised would not be hidden behind a secret report. It is right that we did that this week, and it is also important that we look at the four recommendations in the report. To date, the Government have completed all four recommendations on key issues. I hope that that will give some comfort to those who have been the victims of previous attacks.
Having said that, we recognise that there are a number of considerations. The Shawcross report, which the noble Lord mentioned, made a number of recommendations; again, the Government have accepted those. They are in the process of implementing, I think, 31 of the 32 recommendations and will complete those in due course.
The noble Lord asked whether we need to look at other forms of monitoring. The terrorism prevention measures, which are in place to monitor people who are on the radar or who have had convictions, are extremely important and the Government keep them under regular review. The noble Lord also mentioned the Prevent commissioner, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. We have given the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, a temporary position for the moment, and have asked him to do three things, in effect: a sprint review of what happened in the specific case of Southport and the murders that took place there; a sprint review of what happened in relation to the murder of Sir David Amess, now that this document has been published; and a long-term review—which may well be taken forward with the full-time commissioner, who is shortly to be appointed—of the Prevent legislation as a whole. That review will look at legislation and the operation of Prevent; examine any specific lessons learned from those two horrific incidents—Southport and the murder of Sir David; and examine whether there are any recommendations to bring back to Ministers to continue to improve the position and help ensure that we stop future murders.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, mentioned that there is considerable focus on potential Islamist and neo-Nazi terrorism, and that that is considerably fuelled by online activity. We are committed to looking at the implementation of the Online Safety Act, which will come into real effect on 17 March this year. But my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has also written to tech companies, asking them to be very wary of what I would term illegal criminal terrorist content and to remove it, pending the Government’s own review of whether there needs to be further action downstream through the Prevent review as a whole. Online radicalisation is extremely important and is the driver of many of these sole individuals who commit horrific crimes without any organisation behind them. They learn and they mirror, and the Government are extremely cognisant of that self-radicalisation online.
I turn to some of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, made. It is extremely important that we look at the whole question of internet regulation and at the six failings that were identified and the four recommendations that we have now implemented. I recognise the concerns that have been raised, but there is still a very positive story to tell about much of what is happening in Prevent. Since Prevent was put on a statutory footing by the previous Government in 2014, and onwards since 2015, some 5,000 individuals have been referred and have successfully gone through what I will term de-radicalisation programmes, having been identified as vulnerable individuals with a range of tendencies that are driving them to potential activity. That success has been positive, even though there are terrible failings, of which the murders of Sir David and the three young girls in Southport are critical examples.
In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, the role of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, will be to look at Prevent legislation and policy; to oversee and ensure implementation of recommendations from previous reports and reviews, including the one on Sir David; to look at the coronial process; and to look at general Prevent learning reviews. It will be independent of government: no one who knows the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, will doubt that he will be independent of government. His job is to make recommendations, raise critical issues and, along with the general political process of the House of Commons and House of Lords, hold Ministers to account on the delivery of these recommendations.
I shall end where I started. Sir David Amess was a good man. He did not deserve the death that he had. He served his constituents well, and we need to be cognisant of the fact, particularly those of us who hold public office as elected Members of Parliament or Members of this House, that what happened to Sir David could have happened to any of us, at a surgery or at a public meeting. I am extremely cognisant of the fact that we need to address this.
Going back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, the Speaker’s Conference is looking at security. Operation Bridger, the police-Home Office response for Members of Parliament in particular, is looking at security requirements generally. On a case-by-case basis, Members of this House can be examined and supported by Operation Bridger. That is extremely important, because the key thing is that the murder of Sir David Amess was an attack on democracy in this society. It was an attack on all of us, and on all the values that bring us to this House and to the House of Commons. So, I praise his work and I mourn his loss, but our lesson from this event must be to ensure that we improve the Prevent strategy to prevent radicalisation of further individuals downstream.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest in that I conducted the first Prevent review in 2011 and started what became the Shawcross review, which I strongly support. I thank the Government for the remedial steps that have been taken, as described in the Statement, following the loss of a valued colleague with whom I too was in the House of Commons and had many happy exchanges. Can we now be a little bit more positive about the future? Does the Minister agree not only that there have been successes, as he just described, but that some of them have been quite remarkable in turning young men and women from becoming potential terrorists, and that we should not let up in enhancing the effectiveness of Prevent in what is an extremely challenging and difficult area of work, which is sometimes underestimated?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, for both his previous work on helping to support to development of the counterterrorism strategy and his comments. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, there have been around 5,000 successful Prevent referrals since 2015, and there are people now living productive, constructive lives who may have gone down the radicalisation route had Prevent intervention not taken place.
I add that I was in the Home Office from 2009 to 2010, and in the Ministry of Justice from 2007 to 2009, and when we dealt with Prevent then it was an entirely different world. There was no Twitter or Facebook; the internet was relatively in its infancy. In the 14 to 15 years between then and my return to the Home Office, there has been the dark web, radicalisation, fake news—a whole range of things. One of the key issues for the future is asking the tech companies to step up to the plate on what they need to do to help support the Prevent strategy and deradicalisation. That is why my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has written to tech companies, following both the Southport and Sir David Amess reviews, to ensure that we can examine, with them, their responsibilities once the Online Safety Act comes into effect on 17 March.
I am grateful for the noble Lord’s support. He is right that Prevent can be a success and we should not throw it out on the basis of failings that are self-evident but which are not the full story of how the Prevent strategy has worked.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s typically generous remarks about my former colleague Sir David Amess, who was a personal friend and a fine and decent public servant. The city status of Southend-on-Sea and the Children’s Parliament, which he helped to found, are fitting tributes to a good life and one well spent.
Having represented a constituency which was 16% Muslim, I know the difference between those who follow the Muslim faith and those who follow the pernicious poison of Islamism. On the latter, can the Minister reassure the House that the Islamist proselytising that we have often seen across the prison estate, in madrassas and in some mosques in this country will be part of the review, and that the Government will take those issues seriously? If Prevent is in a position to intervene early with some individuals in those settings it may head off some of the much more serious criminal activity.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful for the noble Lord’s comments. The loss of Sir David was felt keenly across the House, but particularly by those who shared his political party or were close to his region. He will be forever remembered for the Adjournment debate, now named the Sir David Amess Adjournment Debate, in the House of Commons. For those who do not know, Sir David was always first up in every Adjournment debate to raise about 46 issues to do with Southend. Of those, 42 or 43 ended up in some positive outcome for his constituents. I should mention that, before Southend, he was the Member of Parliament for Basildon.
The noble Lord raises extremely important points. There is a criminal threshold for individuals who promote Islamist or neo-Nazi terrorism, or terrorism related to any other form of hate, such as misogyny. It is extremely important, if evidence is brought forward and the threshold is crossed, that the police take action via the CPS. The Prevent strategy is particularly about younger people being radicalised by those who have criminal intent and have provided criminal material, or individuals who have crossed that threshold and are having their own grievances or immaturities exploited by individuals for the purpose of terrorist activity. The Prevent strategy is about helping people who are going down that route. I think the noble Lord is referring to the criminal threshold, which is for the police and the CPS to determine. They have my full support to prosecute anybody who encourages terrorist activity.
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
My Lords, I fully support the Prevent strategy. It is vital, as one of the four legs of the Contest strategy. Along with Pursue, to arrest the people who did it, Prevent obviously tries to prevent the thing happening, and Prepare ensures we prepare for the consequences.
One thing that needs to be addressed, which the noble Lord, Lord Davies, raised, is that there is a handful of TPIMs in place. For those who are unaware of what that means, it refers to people who are not charged but have appeared in court, and conditions are put on how they live in free society. One of the most effective measures is their relocation, but it is also expensive, as is the surveillance that surrounds them. Over time, the security services have suppressed the number of people under TPIMs because, having served them, they have to follow these people, as do the police.
This situation seriously needs looking at, because we now complain that the police and others did not look at these people to prevent them committing the awful crimes we have heard about today. That suppression, which happens partly through resourcing but partly through accountability, does us no good. I cannot comment on whether 200 or 50 people need to be on these orders, but it needs to be more than a handful, because we expect others to bear that risk. When it goes wrong, we say, “Why didn’t you do something?” It is because we have suppressed the number under TPIMs. The place to decide whether they should be on them is called a court. I am afraid that, in my view, it has not happened in sufficient cases.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The noble Lord brings a lot of experience to this topic. He is right that a very small number of individuals are currently on TPIM orders. For the House’s information, I publish on a regular basis the number of those on TPIM orders. A Written Ministerial Statement on this was published in, maybe, the last two weeks. From memory, the latest figure is certainly low. I cannot remember the exact figure, but it is under 10.
There is an argument to be had but, in a sense, it is not for Ministers. The TPIM legislation is there. If the police and the courts have severe concerns about individuals who may have previous prosecutions, but in this case do not have a prosecution in the specific area, TPIMs are a tool that can be used. It comes with a cost and potential further risks, but it is a valuable tool. Throughout my time in this field, TPIMs have been a way in which individuals who have not committed a crime can be monitored because of the danger they pose, and action can be taken in the event of them moving towards potential terrorist activity.
The noble Lord makes a valuable point, but I cannot, at the moment, give him a plan on resources. However, his point is noted and I will take it back to officials.
Lord Paddick (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I too pay tribute to Sir David. My thoughts are with his family, in particular with his daughter, who is being very courageous in pursuing this issue. I declare my interests as set out in the register. I thank the Government for the openness and transparency they have shown by publishing this Prevent Learning Review and emphasise the importance of defending democracy by ensuring the security of Members of Parliament, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, and the Minister have both said.
Would the Minister agree that the best will in the world and the most thorough procedures, carried out in the most diligent way, cannot guarantee the absence of terrorism, while maintaining the freedoms that we cherish in a liberal democracy—particularly in relation to attacks by lone actors. Would the Minister care to comment on the inference that dedicated professionals involved in these processes might be ignoring credible threats because of political correctness?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. Again, he brings a perspective that is helpful to inform government policy as a whole. I am not aware of anybody having their reputation slurred by political correctness, but I say genuinely to him that I have a great admiration for all individuals, in the police and elsewhere, who work to help the Prevent programme have the successes that it has.
There are failings in these cases—again, every individual can fail at different times. Are they systemic? That is what we are asking the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, to look at. Are there suggestions for improvement? Yes, there undoubtedly are. Are there suggestions for future legislation? Probably. But the question for me is: is it still worthwhile investing in support for professionals to undertake diversionary work for younger people who are coming into contact with neo-Nazis and Islamists, or indeed who are forming views which will lead to terrorist action downstream? The answer to that question is a resounding “Yes”. As the Government, we have to give full support to those professionals who are making judgments that I do not have to make on a daily basis, but they do. They deserve our full support, but that does not mean that we do not have to learn lessons when things have gone wrong—and in this case, and in the case of Southport, things have gone wrong and lessons need to be learned.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I have heard the passion and fury from Katie Amess, David Amess’s daughter, over recent weeks, demanding a full inquiry. I would just like to say that she is very much her father’s daughter and he would be so proud of her. She feels that the Government are ignoring her. I ask the Minister whether he will please look seriously at her common-sense suggestion that the Axel Rudakubana Prevent inquiry is expanded to include Katie’s father’s murderer, Ali Harbi Ali, because, as she says, it is wrong to pick and choose which murders Prevent failed to prevent should be investigated.
Also, does the noble Lord agree that both cases have a lot in common, not least that politicians can get distracted by some bizarre blame games. When Sir David died, there was a swathe of people discussing online civility—anything but discussing radical Islamism. After the Southport killings, what have we been discussing? Selling knives on Amazon. It does not feel too serious to me. A full inquiry into both together would be helpful for everyone.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness. We have ordered a public inquiry into the Southport murders. We agreed to do that and we are looking currently at terms of reference and a number of other measures to get that inquiry under way. We have asked for an initial Prevent review from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, in relation to the murder of Sir David. Like the noble Baroness, I pay tribute to Sir David’s daughter, Katie, who has done herself proud in standing up for the legacy of her father, and also in standing up to make sure that her father has justice and that lessons are learned. That is a vital role for her to do.
We will first review the examination by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, of what has happened, on top of the reviews that have been undertaken, which we published this week. In the light of that, we will consider further discussions downstream. That might not satisfy the noble Baroness now, but I am trying to put that into the context of where we are to make sure that we do not lose valuable lessons from what happened to Sir David.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the very gracious and moving tribute he paid to the late Sir David Amess. I was fortunate to be elected on the same day as Sir David, 42 years ago. All of us will never forget the day the news came through of his tragic murder. We owe it to him, on all sides of this House, to make sure that we get this policy right.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord. I know he was elected in 1983 in North West Norfolk. It does not seem like 42 years ago. I went down in flames in Eddisbury on that day. I pay tribute to the fact that he won his seat, as did Sir David on that day. Again, from my perspective, we have a lot of political knockabout in both Houses at times, but you can also spot and respect integrity, and Sir David had integrity. It is important that we recognise and celebrate that.
While we will always have political differences, including with the noble Lord now, we must recognise that behind the politician is a person with a family and a commitment. Whatever drives us into politics for our own values, this is the place to debate them. We should be able to debate them outside, in our constituencies and in public, without the fear of attack or death by those who disagree with the principle of democracy, and not least with the individual who is the face of their ire. It is not just Sir David but my former colleague in the House of Commons, Jo Cox, and many people from Northern Ireland who have stood their ground, put their views forward, been in the public domain and found themselves subject to violence as a result. That is not the way we should be doing things in this United Kingdom.
Lord Pickles (Con)
My Lords, I too want to thank the Minister for what was not just a kind and generous tribute to Sir David but also an immensely sensitive Statement, and on point in terms of how to address the issue. These things affect us all. David was a neighbour of mine and was one of the first people to welcome me, a Yorkshireman, down to Essex, and to make me feel at home.
We are about to debate the Holocaust. A Holocaust survivor once said to me a few years back that the thing that she noticed most coming to Britain after the war was that the policemen smiled, and that it was easy to meet councillors and officials. What happened to David threatens that. That ease that we have in this country is very much central to what makes us tick and we need to be able to hold on to that.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
Absolutely. The noble Lord and I were elected on the same day—9 April 1992—to the House of Commons. One of the great joys I had as a Member of Parliament, was, yes, debating in Parliament, but actually it was having face-to-face surgeries where I walked into a room and did not know who was going to walk through the door and I did not know what problems they would bring; or I would go to a fête or a factory; or I would walk down the street and be stopped by individuals who asked for help and support or sometimes wanted to make a vigorous point about a particular aspect of government policy. That is the essence of our democracy.
The noble Lord has reminded us that the murder of Sir David was an attack on that democracy. For those who have witnessed the growth of authoritarian regimes such as those who will be the subject of the debate shortly on the Holocaust, this democracy of ours is open and should be willing and transparent. We should be held to account for our views and our actions, but we should do so in a way that is with peace, tranquillity and fair and open political debate. The murder of Sir David and the murder of Jo Cox in the political context were horrendous attacks on them and their families, but also on our democracy.
Holocaust Memorial Day
(5 days, 12 hours ago)
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Lord Khan of Burnley
That this House takes note of Holocaust Memorial Day.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Khan of Burnley) (Lab)
My Lords, it is with respect and solemn reflection that I move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Many of us have attended Holocaust Memorial Day events across the country, including the national ceremony in London. His Majesty the King attended the commemoration at Auschwitz-Birkenau alongside Chief Rabbi Mirvis, Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich and leaders of 50 countries.
Last week, I had the honour of listening to Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg. What struck me was that, although Manfred is now 94, he related what happened to him as a young boy as though it were yesterday. He told us about the heartbreaking moment when, aged 13, he and his mother were sent off to work while imprisoned at the Preču concentration camp. On their return, his little brother Herman was missing. They never saw him again. For over 70 years, Manfred held a small hope that, somehow, Herman had survived and one day they might be reunited. Sadly, that was not to be. Manfred’s story about his little brother brought home to me that, while we rightly remember that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, we often miss that 1.5 million were Jewish children.
Manfred’s story touched me deeply, as he spoke of his mother and the loss of her youngest son. I am the youngest son in my family and I recently lost my dear mother. I take this opportunity to give my heartfelt thanks to noble Lords for all their kindness shown to me in the last few weeks. It does not really matter how old you are; the loss of a mother affects you deeply. My mother was an inspiration: one important thing she taught me, which is so relevant to today’s debate, is that we must never forget the lessons of history. The history of the Holocaust provides lessons for the whole world. It shows us what can happen when hatred takes over a society, when barriers are created and fellow humans are treated as something different—something to be despised.
Nazi ideology can be hard to comprehend. It was ruthless and fearsome. Children like Manfred’s younger brother Herman were especially vulnerable to Nazi persecution. Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered not only 1.5 million Jewish children but tens of thousands of Romani Gypsy children, 5,000 to 7,000 German children with physical and mental disabilities living in institutions, as well as many Polish children and children residing in the German-occupied Soviet Union.
Along with elderly people, children had the lowest rate of survival in concentration camps and killing centres. People over 50 years of age, pregnant women and young children were immediately sent to gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other killing centres. Until mid-1943, all children born in Auschwitz, regardless of origins, were murdered, usually by phenol injection or drowning. Later, non-Jewish newborns were allowed to live. They were entered in the camp records as new arrivals and tattooed with a prisoner number.
Due to woeful conditions in the camp, few lived long. Children born to Jewish mothers were routinely murdered. Thousands of Jewish children survived this brutal carnage, many because they were hidden. With identities disguised, and often physically concealed from the outside world, these youngsters faced constant fear, dilemmas and danger. Theirs was a life in shadows, where a careless remark, a denunciation or the murmurings of inquisitive neighbours could lead to discovery and death.
Of course, none of these stories could be preserved without the men and women with the courage to tell them—women such as the remarkable Lily Ebert MBE, who died at home in London in October last year, aged 100. Her life after Auschwitz showed that, even in the face of unspeakable evil, the human spirit can triumph.
Ann Kirk BEM died earlier this year, at the age of 96. She arrived alone in London aged 10 on the Kindertransport. She dedicated her life to raising awareness about the horrors of Nazism. Anne was married to Bob Kirk BEM, who also came to the UK on the Kindertransport and died late last year, aged 99. They were a wonderful couple who dedicated their lives to sharing their story—a story of how they left their home and parents as children and made new lives in the United Kingdom.
Anne met Bob at a social hub for Jewish refugees called Achdut, which means togetherness. The couple married in 1950 and had two children. It was not until 1992 that they told their sons about their background, after being invited to speak at an event commemorating Kristallnacht at Northwood synagogue. It was during the couple’s speech that their children discovered the truth of their upbringing. I often think how hard it must be for survivors to give their testimony, to return to those moments, to remember those darkest of days and to recount how loved ones—husbands, wives, sons, daughters—were taken away.
I want also to take a moment to debunk the idea that we did not know what was happening. From 1942 onwards, reports of the mass murder of Jews in continental Europe began to reach Britain. As the tide of the war turned against Germany and its allies, the British Jewish community started to plan for post-war relief work. Jewish aid workers began, after the liberation, to report that some children had survived the Nazi concentration camps.
In May 1945, Leonard Montefiore, a well-known philanthropist, travelled to Paris to meet with the heads of Jewish organisations. Before returning home, he wrote to Anthony de Rothschild, chairman of the Central British Fund—now World Jewish Relief—outlining a scheme to bring
“a few hundred children from Bergen-Belsen or Buchenwald”
to Britain. On his return to London, Montefiore drew up detailed arrangements planning not only how he was going to get the children to Britain but how he was going to give them the best possible care.
The British Government approved his proposal and granted permission for 1,000 child survivors to be brought to the UK. At this point, it was believed that no more than 5,000 Jewish children in central and eastern Europe had survived the Holocaust, and those would be cared for in allied and neutral countries such as Sweden and Switzerland, so the Home Office’s offer of 1,000 visas was a fitting response.
That said, the offer of help from the British Government was not without conditions. The children had to be aged 16 years or under and would be granted permission to stay in the UK for only two years. They were not to cost the taxpayer a penny and the Central British Fund was to be financially responsible for the entire cost of looking after them. The money to do this was to be raised privately. It was later stipulated that only children who had been in concentration camps would be admitted to the UK, although the age limit was raised to 18 in 1946.
In the end, just over 700 children came to Britain. They were known as the boys, even though there were girls too, and they arrived in five groups. The first group arrived in August 1945, is known as the Windermere boys and was made up of 300 children. The second group arrived in October 1945, is known as the Southampton boys and was made up of 152 children. The third group arrived in March 1946, is known as the Belgicka boys and was made up of 149 children. The fourth group arrived in June 1946, is known as the Paris boys and was made up of 101 children. The fifth group arrived in April 1948, is known as the Schonfeld boys and was made up of 21 children.
Their story is less well known than that of the Kindertransport, through which 10,000 Jewish children were saved in the aftermath of Kristallnacht in 1938. The boys set up the ’45 Aid Society in 1963. They wanted to say thank you and to give back to the society that had welcomed them. Over time, the running of the ’45 Aid Society has passed to the children of the boys—often referred to as the second generation—the custodians of the testimonies and life stories of the boys. They keep their testimonies alive and make them relevant for future generations, through educational activities, community events and fundraising.
I want to thank these custodians, but I really want to say a special word to the survivors. Every day that you have lived, and every child and grandchild that your families have brought into this world, have served as the ultimate rebuke to evil and the ultimate expression of love and hope. We need only to look at today’s headlines to see that we have not yet extinguished man’s darkest impulses, but none of the tragedies that we see today may rise to the full horror of the Holocaust.
The individuals who are the victims of such unspeakable cruelty make a claim on our conscience. They demand our attention: that we do not turn away; that we choose empathy over indifference; and that our empathy leads to action. That includes confronting the rising tide of anti-Semitism around the world. We have seen attacks on Jews in our streets and in the streets of major western cities. We have seen public places disfigured by swastikas.
Some foreign Governments continue to rinse their history, and some are not willing to recognise that the Nazis could not have done this alone; they needed willing partners. It is up to each of us, every one of us, to forcefully condemn any denial of the Holocaust. It is up to us to combat not only anti-Semitism but racism, bigotry and intolerance in all their forms, here and around the world. We cannot eliminate evil from every heart or hatred from every mind. What we can and must do is make sure that our children and their children learn their history so that they might not repeat it. We can teach our children to speak out against a casual slur. We can teach them that there is no “them”, there is only “us”.
I have had the honour of attending many Holocaust Memorial Day events over the last couple of weeks, each one different and yet all the more meaningful. My department funds the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and this year granted an additional £80,000 to the existing annual grant of £900,000, to ensure that the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony was televised on the BBC. I have been told that 2 million people tuned in to the ceremony.
As we approach the 25th anniversary of the Stockholm declaration, it is important to take stock of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s achievements. IHRA is perhaps best known for its non-legally binding definition of anti-Semitism. There are many other tools relating to accessing archives and safeguarding sites, and a toolkit to fight Holocaust distortion. These are just a few of the tools developed by IHRA in partnership with the experts, and I pay tribute to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, in particular, in this area.
IHRA is important because it holds each and every one of us to account. We all have issues with our history. The problems we face today are more complex and more subtle. It has been a long process even for democratic countries to confront their own problematic history. Year on year, we see countries rinse their history and rehabilitate people. Well-known anti-Semites morph into nationalists or become heroes in the fight against communism. It was only in 1995 that the French Government accepted responsibility for the deportations and deaths of over 70,000 Jews and Austria finally dispelled the myth of being Hitler’s first victim and made amends to Austrian Nazi victims.
In the United Kingdom and the United States, we need to come to terms with the fact that we did not open our borders and accept Jews fleeing the Nazis. Earlier, I mentioned the Kindertransport. In the case of the UK, we accepted children but not their parents. Most of the children never saw their parents again.
The work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, the Association of Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust to ensure that we never forget is more important than ever, especially as the number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling. Each and every one of us who has had the privilege of hearing first-hand testimony has a duty to keep their memory alive.
That is why we remain determined to create the UK national Holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens—a place where we can learn about the Holocaust, a place which will ensure that we never forget where hatred can lead. Subject to the passage of the Bill, and to recovery of planning consent, we hope to begin construction before the end of this year.
These words of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel are very important:
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed, and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky”.
It has been 80 years since the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Americans liberated Buchenwald and the British liberated Bergen-Belsen. We owe it to those who were murdered, those who survived and those who liberated the camps to never forget and to ensure that every generation knows where hatred and indifference can lead.
Before I end, I would like to pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Anderson. We all know how dedicated she is to tackling anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred. She has never given in, despite appalling levels of abuse directed at her. She is someone I greatly admire.
As a man of faith and as the Faith Minister, I think it is only fitting that I end with the following words penned by the late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks—may his memory be a blessing:
“We know that whilst we do not have the ability to change the past, we can change the future. We know that whilst we cannot bring the dead back to life, we can ensure their memories live on and that their deaths were not in vain”.
I look forward to everyone’s contributions, in particular, the maiden speeches of my noble friends Lord Katz, Lord Evans and Lady Levitt. I beg to move.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this important debate to your Lordships’ House today. It has been my solemn duty to bring this debate to the House in previous years, and I congratulate him on his speech. I too am looking forward to hearing the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Evans of Sealand and Lord Katz, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt. I know the whole House will join me in welcoming them.
On Holocaust Memorial Day every year, we remember the unspeakable crimes of the Nazi regime against the Jewish people. We remember also the many political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish, Roma, Sinti, lesbian and gay victims of the Holocaust.
It is on Holocaust Memorial Day that we remember the unique evil of the Holocaust: the killing of Jews because they were Jews, as part of the Nazis’ plan to wipe out the entire Jewish people. The history of the Holocaust is a bitter truth, and we must never shy away from repeating that truth. Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Majdanek and Treblinka are just some of the haunting names of the places where Jews were imprisoned, beaten, worked to death, tortured and exterminated—murdered because they were Jews.
Not all the names of the Nazi camps are so familiar to us. Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen were just two of over 1,000 concentration camps operated by the Nazi regime for the mass persecution and murder of Jews and its other victims. Eighty years ago today, on 13 February 1945, Soviet forces liberated Gross-Rosen concentration camp. By 1945, there were no Jews left at Gross-Rosen because, on 2 December 1941, the head of the camp, Anton Thumann, gave the order that
“no Jew is to remain alive by Christmas”.
On 12 October 1942, the last 37 living Jewish prisoners were sent to Auschwitz.
Isaak Egon Ochshorn, a Jew who was in Gross-Rosen from June 1941 to October 1942, before being transferred to Auschwitz, gave evidence after the liberation of the camps that showed the appalling treatment of Jews at Gross-Rosen. He said:
“The sport of Commandant [Thumann], favoured in winter, was to have many Jews daily thrown alive into a pit and to have them covered with snow until they were suffocated”.
We must never forget.
In this the 80th year following so many liberations, we must also remember that liberation was not the end of the story for the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Many Jews died early because of the harm the Nazis did to them during the Holocaust. The wounds of families that were broken by the Holocaust were felt for many years and are still felt today.
Holocaust Memorial Day was intended to be a reminder of the suffering of the Jewish people in the past, but we sadly know that Jewish people are still not free from persecution. As we heard from the Minister, since 2023 we have seen a shocking rise in anti-Jewish racism on our streets, online, and in our schools. In 2024, the Community Security Trust recorded 3,528 anti-Semitic incidents in the United Kingdom, the second-highest total ever reported to the CST in a single year, second only to the 4,296 recorded in 2023.
Anti-Semitism in this country is growing, and it is shaming that the spike in anti-Semitism we have seen over the past year has directly followed the worst massacre of Jews since the fall of the Nazi regime. When I moved this debate last year, just months after the pogrom of 7 October, I recounted the story of 91 year-old Moshe Ridler, a Holocaust survivor murdered in Kibbutz Holit, just over 1 mile from the border with Gaza. His home was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and then by a hand grenade. To his 18 children and great-grandchildren, may his memory be a blessing.
The deaths of the 1,200 people who were murdered in the 7 October pogrom, as well as the ongoing suffering of the hostages and their loved ones, remind us that the work of organisations such as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust has never been more important. I put on record my thanks to the CEO of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Karen Pollock CBE, who does so much important work to ensure that our children and grandchildren are taught about the horrors of the Holocaust. I also thank the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, its CEO, Olivia Marks-Woldman OBE, and her team, which delivers the annual Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony and thousands of local activities across the country.
Eighty years on and still the Jews across the world experience persecution, discrimination and, at worst, fear for their lives. That is the imperative of our commemoration: we must not merely ensure that the Holocaust is never forgotten; we must remember, actively reflect on and learn about the unique suffering of the Jewish people in the Holocaust. We must teach it to our children and remind our neighbours of the insidious threat of anti-Semitism. We must never forget—and we must hold to the promise, “Never again”. Only by keeping our covenant to remember may we hope to end anti-Semitism for good.
I look forward to hearing the reflections of noble Lords across the House. My thoughts and prayers are, as always, with the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and their families.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, never were the national anthem’s words,
“Long live our noble King!”,
more apt a tribute than when seeing the King spending hours at Auschwitz-Birkenau, paying tribute with the sincerest words possible. I am sure that the entire Jewish community, here and around the world, is moved and grateful.
For some of us, every day is Holocaust Remembrance Day. My earliest memories are of my mother weeping over my bedside because of her inability to get her mother out of Poland and into this country. She blamed herself for her mother’s death.
On my father’s side, he lost his mother and two siblings. His tiny ancestral village on the border of Poland and Ukraine lay during the war in the path of the Russians coming one way and the Germans coming the other. When the Germans arrived, they summoned all the Jewish women to the village square with their valuables. Next door to my family lived a Polish painter, Eugeniusz Waniek, who subsequently went to Kraków and became very well known.
On her way to the square, my aunt Helena rushed next door to him and thrust a set of silver cutlery wrapped in a linen cloth into his hands. “Keep this”, she said, “until we get back”, which, of course, she and her children never did. He did a brave thing, which would have cost him his life had it been discovered: he hid the silver in the cloth in a box in his garden. At the end of the war, he took it with him to Kraków. There was no internet then and he never knew what had become of my family.
I happened to speak about my origins to Norman Davies, the distinguished historian of Poland. In 2008, he wrote in a Kraków newspaper about my trip to the family village. Waniek, the painter, by then 102, was read this by his carer. He declared that he had something for me and, to cut a long story short, I returned to his flat in Kraków, where, in the presence of the media and after a glass of schnapps and some reminiscences, he presented me with the cutlery in the same linen cloth. They are the only artefacts I have that were touched by my lost family. What a tribute it is to the bravery endemic in such small acts in those terrible times. He died three months later.
So it is with some pain that I wonder what Britain’s politicians and leaders mean when they support Holocaust remembrance. What do they mean by remembering it and by “never again”? What I see is ignorance of the history of anti-Semitism and the mistaken framework that treats the Holocaust as consigned to the Nazi past, not the preceding 2,000 years and today. Perhaps with good intentions, the Holocaust has been globalised. That makes it seem as though Jews were just one of many casualties—and it is therefore exceptional to focus on them or on anti-Semitism—and that the notion of genocide can be spread far, wide and thin.
Jewish scholars will tell you that to assemble the Holocaust with other genocides reduces its meaning to that vague word: hatred. It dilutes and avoids the centrality of anti-Semitism. Restricting the Holocaust to the Jewish tragedy—as it should be—does not mean that the loss of Jewish lives is worth any more than any others. But the record in recent years shows a marked reluctance to acknowledge the specificity of Jewish suffering. The Holocaust is entirely different from the other genocides we remember—in history, continuation, manner of execution, worldwide extent, collaboration and result. The Government, by going along with the structure that the Jewish Shoah should not be commemorated on its own, but always in tandem with other Nazi-targeted groups and more recent genocides, have opened the door to generalising the Holocaust. This enables the Jews to be forgotten and not mentioned by “Good Morning Britain” or Angela Rayner when marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. Sadly, it leads on to comparisons between the Holocaust and the Gaza war, most shockingly by the Irish President.
For half a century, it has been assumed, without evidence, that learning about the Holocaust prevents lapses into anti-Semitism—but it does not. That is in part because the Holocaust has been detached from the rest of Jewish history and because it has been used as a lesson in morality and democracy. It is easy enough to portray the Nazis as evil and the Jews as innocent victims. The lessons go on to indicate that it was not this generation that committed those crimes and that we are not bystanders. That must not be allowed to become an absolution. It should not be allowed to place anti-Semitism firmly in the past—that is wrong. Even in this country, we should not forget the massacre of Jews in 1190 and the expulsion in 1290. In my own hometown, Christ Church Cathedral is built right in the middle, on top of houses occupied by the Jews. There is too much politicisation, de-judaisation and universalisation demonstrated at Holocaust remembrance ceremonies. This is counterproductive.
The late Lord Sacks, of blessed memory, explained how anti-Semitism mutated from hatred of the religion, then the race and now the only Jewish state. Sadly, it is only a state of one’s own and the means of self-defence that stop genocide, as can be seen from more recent genocides. If Israel had existed in 1938, rather than 1948, and had been able to take in refugees rather than being blocked by the British, how many thousands or millions of lives might have been saved? In the 1940s it was able to take in the Jews thrown out of other Middle Eastern states whose persecution we should also remember.
In 2023, we saw the new Holocaust threats from the invaders into Israel from Gaza, and their desire to repeat it. This Government are rightly keen on Holocaust remembrance, but they should accept that they have a special responsibility for the protection, safety and understanding of the State of Israel.
The Government should acknowledge that they have failed to stop anti-Semitism being demonstrated in our universities and on our streets. Holocaust remembrance is ineffective unless backed up by supporting and understanding a safe and strong Israel—that is the real meaning of ensuring never again.
We need to teach that the Holocaust did not succeed. Since the end of it, we have had 24 Nobel prizes, business leaders, philanthropy, cultural achievements and a new state. The distinguishing feature of the Jewish community down the ages is survival. Let us go forward on an upbeat note. We survived against all the odds; not death, not victimhood.
The Lord Bishop of Lichfield
My Lords, it is an honour to participate in this debate. I anticipate hearing many more thoughtful and powerful contributions like those we have already heard, and look forward to hearing the words of the noble Lord, Lord Katz, who will follow me. I congratulate him on making his maiden speech today, along with the noble Lord, Lord Evans, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt.
I declare my interest as a former chair of the Council of Christians and Jews. With that in mind, I was very glad to see on the speakers’ list today my friend the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, who shared with me as a trustee there. I look forward to what he has to say.
On Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember the lives of the 6 million Jewish men, women and children, along with other groups, who were murdered by the Nazis. This year has been particularly significant, as it marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. As the Minister pointed out, as each year goes by, the number of living people who have their own personal accounts of surviving the Holocaust diminishes. It is the responsibility of us all to ensure that their lives do not simply become statistics in a history book but that they are remembered as people, each with their own stories and experiences.
In that regard, I commend to your Lordships the Forever Project, an interactive experience that I visited at the Beth Shalom National Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire. This project gives people the opportunity to hear from and to have a question and answer session with a hologram of a Holocaust survivor. Through the use of AI and voice recognition, it is an innovative way to preserve their memories and to enable future generations to learn about their experiences. Those memories serve as a reminder and a warning of where anti-Semitism can lead when left unchallenged, and we must be alive to prevent such atrocities recurring. This is why commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day each year is so important.
It is a matter of fact and a matter of shame that, through a distortion of Christian theology, the Church in almost all its branches has historically contributed to the immense suffering and injustice experienced by Jewish people over the ages. It follows that the Church must have a vital role and duty, in partnership with others, in actively standing against anti-Semitism. This is a major task for our renewed theological understanding today.
The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “For a Better Future”, but to build such a future we cannot be passive; it requires commitment and action from each one of us. Genocide is not inevitable, nor does it happen overnight. It is gradual, beginning with the othering of those whom we consider different from ourselves, and the normalisation of acts of discrimination and hatred. While the horrors of Auschwitz move further into history, sadly, anti-Semitism does not.
One persuasive analogy of anti-Semitism is that of a virus which mutates over time and reinfects society in different forms. The most recent statistics published by the Community Security Trust, cited by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, underline the dimensions of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in our own time, in our own country. The use of social media has only fuelled this, exposing more people to hateful content and enabling anti-Semitism to spread further and faster.
This is preventable. We can choose to shape a better future, built on our shared humanity and on strengthening the fabric of our communities through mutual understanding and trust. We cannot afford to be complacent bystanders. We must actively challenge anti-Semitism and all discrimination wherever we see it, to seek understanding rather than fearing those who are different from us. We must personally question the small remarks, whether they be so-called jokes or throwaway comments, which can appear insignificant but can so easily build to destructive hate on a greater scale.
Interfaith dialogue plays an important role in this, as well as being an example of how those of different beliefs can come together to find common ground and connection. On Holocaust Memorial Day this year, the Council of Christians and Jews organised a profound morning of testimony, reflection and prayer as a testament to the power and significance of that dialogue.
I finish with some words that Rabbi Charley Baginsky shared at that meeting. She said,
“Optimism, in this sense, is not the denial of pain, but the radical choice to imagine and work toward something better, something more just, something that can heal the divisions we face. This vision of a better future is not a distant dream—it is a call to action. It is a call to reject the forces of hate and division, and to embrace the transformative power of empathy, of connection, of community”.
Let us not forget the horrors of the past, but let the memories of those who experienced them spur us on to build a better future, free from hate and division.
Lord Katz (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is an honour to speak in the debate, opened by my noble friend Lord Khan, and to hear from so many noble Lords on this subject, not least, in a few minutes’ time, my noble friend Lord Dubs, whose wise words continue to inspire.
I thank noble Lords from across the House for the warm welcome that I have been given in the few days I have been here. I thank the doorkeepers, attendants and all the staff of the House, who have been so supportive and have done their level best—often in vain—to stop me getting lost. I thank my supporters, my noble friends Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, and my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon, for all the support and encouragement that they have given me.
As the memory of the Holocaust, that most singular act of evil, fades into the distance, and the number of survivors who can bear witness to the cruelty of Nazi persecution diminishes, we must redouble our efforts to etch the Shoah, and subsequent genocides, into our collective memory.
I add my voice to those of many other noble Lords today in thanking the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust for all the work that they do to ensure that this happens. However, they face a Sisyphean task. Research from the Claims Conference published last month found that 52% of those surveyed in the UK did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Nearly a third could not name any of the camps or ghettos established in World War II. Those figures underscore the scale of the challenge, in the face of social media misinformation which seeks to downplay, distort and even deny the reality of the Holocaust, one of the most documented events in world history. Our truth is indeed under attack. This is our responsibility too. Debate is coarsened and conspiracies fed when senior politicians compare their opponents with Nazi collaborators or doubt their loyalty to this country.
My family was one of the lucky ones. My dad’s father was the last of my forebears to come to Britain, making the perilous trip from Bialystok—then in Russia, now in Poland—to the East End of London in 1911. Sadly, we know little of what and who he left behind. We cannot be sure, but it seems highly likely that some of my family would have perished in the war, simply for the crime of being born a Jew. My grandfather was a tailor, as was my mum’s father, who insisted that before putting down a deposit on one of the new houses being built in Edgware in the 1930s, the site foreman walked him to the school that was promised to be a few minutes’ away. He knew, as so many immigrant families do, of the power of education to transform your life chances.
The lesson stuck. His daughter, my dear mother Doreen, spent her life teaching and passed the lesson on. As someone who attended a comprehensive that, before me, had never sent a pupil to Oxford, I understand all too well the importance of a decent education in promoting social mobility and providing opportunity, from—perhaps especially from—the earliest years, to university access and vocational education.
This is a vital part of the Government’s economic agenda. We should view human capital as being as important as physical capital when we talk of removing obstacles to growth. I say this as someone who has spent the past two decades working in transport, specifically rail, including for an operator and for the rail union TSSA, where I had the great pleasure and honour of working for Lord Rosser, much missed from this place. So I appreciate the Government’s drive to invest in the infrastructure that our country so dearly needs to thrive. For long a neglected subject, I am pleased to see that this is a real focus for this Government. I am not a died-in-the-wool railwayman. I do not argue rail for rail’s sake but for what it achieves—connecting communities, enabling prosperity and, again, promoting social mobility. We need more rail and more integrated and accessible public transport. I hope to be a strong advocate for it in this place.
More widely, we must build our way out of the economic malaise that we have inherited, using not just infrastructure but housing to address the crisis that young people face—I salute the Government’s ambition on housebuilding and am most definitely a yimby in this regard—nor can we fall into the trap that investment is a zero-sum game geographically. I am a born and bred Londoner but I insist that investing in London will continue to be good for the rest of the country and vice versa. One should not and must not come at the expense of the other.
I pause to reflect that it speaks so highly of both my party and our country that a little over 100 years since Chaim Katz stepped off the boat, fewer than 80 years after Solomon Goldberg left the East End for Edgware and helped found the synagogue there, their grandson is a Peer of the Realm. This is but one thread in the special tapestry woven by immigrants depicting the contribution they have made, and continue to make, in a thousand different ways.
Sadly, the tolerance and generosity of this nation, which helped so many immigrants to settle and thrive, was not to be found for Jewish people in the Labour Party between 2015 and 2019. As chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, a socialist society affiliated to the Labour Party since 1920, I and my colleagues found ourselves defending our members, who faced the vile toxin of left anti-Semitism, which had been allowed to enter, and fester in, the party’s bloodstream. Inaction and passivity from the then party leader sent a clear signal that this discrimination was tolerated. The party that so many of us had joined because it believed in equality and fought discrimination doubled down rather than face the difficult truths. It doubled down out of political convenience.
Too many suffered during those years, but it would be truly remiss of me not to mention my noble friends Lady Hodge of Barking, Lady Anderson, my soon-to-be noble friend Luciana Berger, and Dame Louise Ellman, who were the particular and public targets of much of the hatred. The impact on the wider Jewish community in this country was even greater, considering that at the height of the Labour Party’s membership then, it had a membership of well over 400,000 and there are but 300,000 Jews in this country. I will never forget tear-streaked conversations with people in Hendon and Mill Hill—lifelong Jewish Labour voters telling me they simply could not trust the party, our party, any more. How could we have let them down so badly?
It is for ever to his credit that the first thing Keir Starmer did when he won his leadership election was apologise for and vow to root out anti-Semitism from our party. He understood the moral and political necessity of this mission, and he succeeded. Working with my noble friends Lord Evans of Sealand and Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, who I look forward to hearing from later, we in the JLM challenged, cajoled and drove Labour to meet the challenges set down by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, following that body’s landmark ruling that the party had broken equalities law. Process and rule change were part of that story, but education and leadership, as ever, much more so. I will for ever be proud of the role we in the Jewish Labour Movement played in helping to save the Labour Party.
My party is still in the foothills of rebuilding trust with the Jewish community, but I think we have returned to a place where Jews voting in the general election last year made their choice on policy platforms, not out of fear, as they did in 2019. We must never—never—allow that situation to arise again. Indeed, if the 2019 election was in part about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, in turn the 2024 election was, in a smaller part, about anti-Semitism in the whole country. As we have already heard from my noble friend the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, following 7 October, which saw the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, anti-Semitism has risen to unprecedented levels, not merely as a reaction to the ground war that started some time after that date, but from the day itself.
Anti-Semitism, to paraphrase Conor Cruise O’Brien, is the lightest of sleepers. Any excuse will stir it to life. On our campuses, on our streets, around our homes, our synagogues and our schools, the levels of anxiety and fear that British Jews feel is palpable—the worst I have seen in my lifetime. The Prime Minister has been clear that this spike in anti-Jewish hate is intolerable, just as he has been clear that the remaining hostages taken by Hamas on that fateful day and being held in Gaza still must all be brought home now.
It surely cannot be difficult for us all to grasp that we must not blame British Jews for the actions of the Israeli Government, just as we do not blame British Muslims for the actions of Hamas. From this basic proposition, surely all else must follow. As ever, it is through education that we must tackle hate on all sides. Integral to this is ensuring that Holocaust education is, in the words of our Prime Minister, “a truly national endeavour”.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
It is a privilege and an honour for me to follow the speech of my noble friend, and I congratulate him on what he has done and what he has said today in his speech. As we know, he has been national chair of the Jewish Labour Movement since 2019. He has a long history in the Labour movement. He was political officer of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, working with our late friend Lord Rosser when he was general secretary. He served on Labour’s National Policy Forum and retains a keen interest in transport matters and rail in particular. He has also served as a local councillor, representing Kilburn for Camden Council from 2010 to 2014. He was a Labour candidate for Hendon in 2017, and for Cities of London and Westminster in 2001, in which role I preceded him—and also lost—many years before. He was recently awarded an MBE for political and public services. I always enjoy meeting colleagues who have been local councillors, with whom I have something in common, and I understand the contribution that local councillors make to life in their communities—we sometimes devalue that here.
Mike also talked about his family history. It is appropriate, on a day when we are debating this topic, that we should remember the family history of people like him and how it led to this country becoming the country it is. He talked strongly about anti-Semitism, a scourge on any country, and on this one when we experienced it. I found the anti-Semitism painful and personally upsetting, and I still do.
Recently, the Prime Minister invited to tea at No. 10 Downing Street—the first time I have been there for some years; well, I am hoping—Holocaust and Kindertransport survivors and above all, their children and grandchildren. There are not many of us left, as has been said, who came to this country on the Kindertransport, and even fewer, sadly, who survived the horrors of the camps. I remember an occasion here, an event that I think the Holocaust Educational Trust organised, in one of the committee rooms. There were Holocaust survivors there, and they asked me what I was. I said, “I just came on a Kindertransport”, and they said, “That’s wonderful”. I said, “Look, compared to what you went through, I just got on a train, and two days later I arrived at Liverpool Street station. What you went through was unbelievably appalling, and we respect what you’ve been through and your sense of purpose and tenacity”. Sadly, there are not many people left in either category, either Holocaust survivors or Kindertransport people, which is why it was interesting to have tea in 10 Downing Street with the Prime Minister. I notice that King Charles has also been to Auschwitz and spoken out strongly in opposition to anti-Semitism.
On the words “never again”, what happened in Israel on 7 October was an appalling tragedy, and with some of the events in Gaza, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur and Syria—and what has happened to the Yazidis—I am afraid it seems that we as a world are not learning what we should.
I shall refer again to Nikky Winton, who organised the Kindertransport that brought me to this country. I became a good friend of his before he died and we chatted occasionally. He was a marvellous example of a human being who devoted himself to helping other people. He got to Prague in 1938-39, he saw what was happening and, unlike other people who say, “This is awful” and walk away, he said, “This is awful. I’m going to do something about it”, and that distinguished him. I will put in a plug for the film “One Life”, which came out about a year ago; I have seen it twice, and I have to say it brought me to tears both times. It is a remarkable tribute to a remarkable individual.
Through the Kindertransport, Britain took 10,000 children, mainly from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Some argue—though this is not the real point of this debate—that 10,000 was not a very large number, but if we did it then we can do it now. Still, that is for a future Bill on another occasion. It is interesting to read Hansard from the time when the Commons was debating whether Britain should take Kindertransport children. There were voices then of the sort that we have heard more recently, but the fact is that this country took the people. As I am sure your Lordships will be aware, just off Central Lobby in the House of Commons, there is a thank-you plaque on behalf of the 10,000 children who arrived in Britain on the Kindertransport, thanking Britain for having given us safety. When I take people on a tour, I show them that and say, “Look, this is where we thank Britain for what they did to save us”.
Like many people, I have been to some of the camps. I went to Auschwitz and I found it a painful experience; it is even painful to think about it today. I was with a friend who had also fled from Czechoslovakia, standing there looking at the suitcases. In those days, people had initials on their suitcases, and we were looking to see if there were any people we knew whose cases were there and who had then died in the camps. I did not see any.
More recently—I think I mentioned this last year—I was invited to Berlin along with Hella Pick, a wonderful journalist, to a commemoration of Kindertransport in the German Bundestag. They had an exhibition about Kindertransport. It was a very moving thing, all the more so because it took place in Berlin in Germany.
I want to reflect on an experience that I think I referred to in this debate last year. Some time ago, I was invited to a school in east London. It was a maintained school, but it was all Muslim boys. The project they were working on was Kindertransport and the Holocaust. I did my little piece about refugees and the Holocaust. The first question in the Q&A came from a 14 or 15 year-old boy, who said, “What do I say to somebody who denies the Holocaust ever happened?” That was such a powerful question. It was a sign that the school was doing a good job and the message was getting home. This was a statement he wanted to be able to repudiate if somebody mentioned it to him elsewhere. Whenever I have spoken to schools about these issues, they really get it. They understand what is going on and it is very rewarding to talk to students. That is why I pay tribute to the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for the work they do.
If anything is going to come out of the tragedy of the Holocaust, it is the next generation who will carry this forward when those of us who were closer to it are no longer here. That is why I was so shocked when Elon Musk was photographed doing a Hitler salute. Maybe he did not mean it; maybe he did not understand, but it is quite shocking when these sorts of things happen.
I sometimes wonder whether decency and the values we uphold are a thin veneer and these things can even be swept aside. I remember reading some years ago about a German soldier who was working, I think, in Auschwitz and who wrote to his wife back in Germany saying, “Make sure the children clean their teeth”. What a contrast between somebody who was murdering Jews—gassing them, day in and day out—and yet was worried about whether his children were cleaning their teeth. I find that difficult to understand. Last year, tragically, we saw some riots. Again, it made me think that sometimes there is a thin protective layer of decency in countries. Our job is to make that layer much thicker. It is a thin protective layer, because the way those riots exploded and people tried to petrol-bomb hostels housing refugees, I found deeply shocking.
I have spoken to many faith groups, which are all supportive of the cause of refugees. It is a tribute to the many Jewish groups I have spoken to that they are very supportive of refugees. Pretty much all the refugees happen to be Muslims, but the Jewish community is very supportive. That is the sort of thing that should be said more often.
I will finish with one story. I was in a refugee camp in Jordan. It was a decent camp; it had sanitation, electricity and prefabricated buildings. I was talking to a Syrian boy, and I asked him, “What is your situation?”. He said, “Well, I’ve finished my education in the camp. I’ve tried to get a job in the camp, but I can’t. I’ve tried to get a job elsewhere, but I can’t”. It made me think that human beings—I refer to Holocaust survivors in particular—can put up with terrible situations if there is some hope for them at the end of the line. If there is a bit of hope, that is what matters. Our job is to make sure that there is hope and that the scourge of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia is eradicated. Our job is to spread that word. That is why I welcome the chance to take part in this debate.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I very much welcome this debate initiated by the Government during their presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and I congratulate the Minister on his speech. It is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, as it always is to work with him. We are blessed today by three maiden speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Evans of Sealand and Lord Katz, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, who are all on the Bench opposite.
Only the noble Lord, Lord Katz, has spoken before me; the chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement has shown what a great contribution he will make to this House. If I may squint at my phone, I found an interview he did with Jewish News in which we explained how his family originated in Białystok—then in Russia, now Poland. He recounted his preparation for his introduction to this House:
“I was asked by this very nice man ‘We just wanted to check whether any of your family has been ennobled?’ I thought to myself that in the past some of my family may well have been on the run from Russian nobility!”
I thought that that encapsulated a bit of his history.
This year, we mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, in January 1945. I was grateful to be invited to the ceremony led by the Foreign Secretary David Lammy at the FCDO, where we heard both from a Holocaust survivor and from a young woman, among many others. She, like myself, is not Jewish, but she spends a lot of her spare time on Holocaust education because she can see how vital it is to all of us.
I recognise the special pain for the Jewish community, but as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust said:
“The Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilisation … prejudice and the language of hatred must be challenged by us all. Holocaust Memorial Day is for everyone”.
The Holocaust Educational Trust, another trust that does such great work, noted:
“As the Holocaust moves from living memory to history, this Holocaust Memorial Day presented a key opportunity to bring the Holocaust to the fore of our national consciousness”.
This was a seam emphasised by His Majesty the King, who said:
“As the number of Holocaust survivors regrettably diminishes with the passage of time, the responsibility of remembrance rests far heavier on our shoulders, and on those of generations yet unborn. The act of remembering the evils of the past remains a vital task and in so doing, we inform our present and shape our future”.
My Liberal Democrat colleague, Vikki Slade MP, made a similar point in the debate two weeks ago in the other place,
“as the living memory of the Holocaust reduces, it is more important than ever that each of us keeps it alive through our own annual acts of remembrance and in calling out antisemitism and all acts of discrimination and hate against groups because of their faith, nationality or identity”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/1/25; col. 1163.]
Last October, we sadly lost 100 year-old Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert, to whom the Minister referred. She did so much work to ensure that the Holocaust would not be forgotten. I am delighted that her mantle has been taken up by her impressive great-grandson, Dov Forman.
I was struck by a comment by the Prime Minister about how in Auschwitz he saw,
“photographs of Nazi guards standing with Jewish prisoners staring at the camera – completely indifferent – and in one case, even smiling”.
The Prime Minister said:
“It showed more powerfully than ever how the Holocaust was a collective endeavour by thousands of ordinary individuals utterly consumed by the hatred of difference”.
The Holocaust was not only a crime wider than the SS; it also did not come out of nowhere. Preceding it there were years, centuries and millennia of discrimination and persecution of Jews, both as groups and as individuals. As my colleague, Vikki Slade, said, before the Holocaust there was,
“a decade of dehumanising a whole community”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/1/25; col. 1163.]
Dehumanisation of people—which has been called the fourth stage of genocide—is the key to enabling not only persecution but extermination. Amid all the terrible bleakness and horrors of Auschwitz, I found the arch over the entrance gate emblazoned with, “Arbeit Macht Frei”, — “work makes you free”—the most chilling in its utter cynicism.
When I go to Jewish and Holocaust museums, or indeed to Yad Vashem, which I have visited twice, I not only find the photographs of persecuted Jews subjected to pogroms, and other victims of the Nazis, hugely emotional; I also find desperately poignant the photos of hard-working, bourgeois and successful Jewish families in German and other towns and cities who strove to fit in, to do everything to become respectable citizens of their home country. They sought to belong, and they were still destroyed.
On my bookshelf at home, I have a book that I have had for about 20 years—I think I bought it in New York. It is by Vienna-born Amos Elon and called The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch. It describes how, in the two centuries from the entry of penniless 14 year-old Moses Mendelssohn, later of course a famous philosopher, into Berlin in 1743—entering through the Rosenthaler Tor, the only gate permitted to Jews, and cattle—until 1933, the German Jews increasingly and hugely contributed to Germany's intellectual, political and economic development. The Weimar Republic was the high point of the assimilation and integration of German Jews into German life. The writer notes:
“Alongside the Germany of anti-Semitism there was a Germany of enlightened liberalism, humane concern, civilised rule of law, good government, social security, and thriving social democracy”.
But none of that saved Germany’s or Europe’s Jews, because the continuing discriminatory attitudes of their fellow citizens had never been removed and were there to be exploited.
I was sorry that London’s Jewish Museum closed in 2023. We do, though, have the impressive Holocaust galleries at the Imperial War Museum and the Wiener Holocaust Library. We are privileged to have, as a Member of this House, the Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein—the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein—the grandson of German-Jewish scholar and anti-Nazi campaigner Alfred Wiener, who founded the Wiener library in 1933 in order to warn the world of the Nazi threat. I hope the noble Lord does not mind me referring to him and quoting him in his absence. Within weeks of the appalling attacks by Hamas on 7 October, graffiti was daubed on the Wiener Holocaust Library. The noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein—still, like me, tweeting—understandably reacted, tweeting as @Dannythefink:
“I’m so upset by this graffiti attack on my grandfather’s library. Alfred Wiener had a PhD in Islamic studies and cared deeply about Arab people. To see his Holocaust archive vandalised in this way suggests an attack on Jews not a critique of Israel. It’s dismaying”.
I will finish, as I must, by saying that since 7 October we have seen a distressing rise in anti-Semitic speech and attacks, with hostility to the very existence of the State of Israel. When people chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, this is a call not for two states but for the destruction of Israel, based on not only anti-Zionism but anti-Semitism. We have pledged “Never again”, but political developments around the world, not least in Germany, are deeply troubling. Our vigilance must be constant, vocal and vigorous.
Lord Pickles (Con)
My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my registered interests, particularly those relating to Holocaust remembrance. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Katz, on a wonderful speech. He reminded me very much of how I felt when I first arrived here. I can remember being given an office on the third floor, above Royal Court, and then spending the next two weeks trying to find it again. He gave an informed maiden speech. It is clear that his contribution will make a very big difference to this House. I welcome him here; he comes with a magnificent reputation, and I personally look forward to hearing him speak again.
A couple of weeks ago, I stood close to the railway arch at Auschwitz-Birkenau, close to where, over 80 years ago, my friend Ivor Perl last talked to his mother. On the separation ramp, he jumped lines to join her and his little sister, saying, “I want to be with you, mum”. She replied calmly, “No, Ivor, go and be in the other line with your brother”. He obeyed. They would never see each other again. By the time he was allotted a hut, both mother and daughter were dead and cremated, their ashes cooling. Ivor remembered that it was a beautiful warm spring day.
Noble Lords may recall that Ivor inspired the strap-line of the UK’s presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, “In Plain Sight”, meaning that the Holocaust did not happen in dark corners but in bright sunshine, with the whole world watching.
The UK holds the presidency on the cusp of significant change. Within a few short years, Holocaust survivors will move from contemporary memory into history books. How we deal with the loss of witnesses has been vigorously debated for the last few decades. When I took up the role of special envoy 10 years ago, the feeling among some was that empathy was the key, and that everything would fall into place naturally. I had my doubts. Unsupported empathy is fragile and fickle. If there is any doubt about that, consider the indifference the world has shown to the Israeli hostages. Consider the reaction by humanitarian agencies to the three emaciated men who were released—one of whom was hoping to be reunited with a family long dead. Not a single word of comfort came from any of the self-described humanitarian agencies.
For its strategy this year, the UK presidency has adopted a triple-track approach to support empathy around three headings: landscape; archives, including testimony; and objects. On landscape, the IHRA has adopted the safeguarding sites charter, which sets out guidelines for the preservation of murder and detention sites. The UK played a pivotal role in drafting the charter. Across the killing grounds of the Holocaust, sites are deteriorating with the passage of time, neglect and wilful destruction. The charter lays down a set of advice aimed at preserving the sites with dignity.
Complementary to the charter are reminders through people, buildings and places. Our presidency is keen to engage young people, and we did this through the remarkably successful “My Hometown” project. The project invited schools across IHRA member countries to look at what happened in their hometown during the Holocaust. Schools in former occupied countries and those receiving victims of Nazis and their collaborators produced original and moving projects. Participants were from as far afield as Argentina to Greece, and the United States to Poland, and from member countries in between, including the United Kingdom. Most projects attracted favourable media attention, linking familiar buildings and places with the Holocaust locally.
On archives, the presidency has worked with the Association of Jewish Refugees on our legacy project, the Holocaust Testimony portal, which pulls together for the first time testimony from UK Holocaust survivors and refugees who made their home here. This includes testimony from the AJR’s Refugee Voices initiative, the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, the Shoah Foundation and many more archives. We hope that more archives, particularly the smaller and more specialised ones, will join in the coming months. The portal allows the testimonies of individual survivors across the decades to be seen in one place. The IHRA formally established the archive forum, which will encourage the flow of information between archives.
I am a past chair of the Arolsen Archives—the world’s most comprehensive archive on the victims and survivors of the Nazis and their collaborators. The collection has information on more than 17.5 million people and belongs to UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme. In recent years, Arolsen has improved public access to the archive.
To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camps, the IHRA broadcast over social media “80 Objects/80 Lives”, a digital project of one-minute clips which features 80 objects from filmed testimony of British Holocaust survivors and refugees. The objects represent the personal histories and experiences of Jewish Holocaust survivors, during and at the end of the Second World War. Such objects as teddy bears, a doll, a watch or a spoon take on special meaning. A passport with the letter “J”, a yellow star and a bowl from Bergen-Belsen are bittersweet reminders of a lost world. I thank the Association of Jewish Refugees for its creative help with the 80 objects.
The UK is lucky to have such widespread support for Holocaust organisations, and we used the London plenary to showcase the variety and vivacity of these institutions in the UK. Even in these challenging times, the UK continues to have an excellent reputation in the field of Holocaust remembrance, education and tackling anti-Semitism. The former Attorney-General of Canada, Irwin Cotler, known to many in this Room, described our policy as the gold standard for others to follow.
The UK presidency addressed two pressing problems. We have had special conferences that have dealt with the problems of artificial intelligence and bringing people together across differences, and we organised a conference to deal with the teaching of the Holocaust because there was a lack of confidence after 7 October. We will continue to tackle Holocaust denial and distortion, and will continue to the end to look at the Stockholm Declaration. Next week, we will meet again to look at the next 25 years.
We have moved now. That moment that we saw a couple of weeks ago was poignant on all levels. We will never see the like again. Ten years from now, at the 90th anniversary, there will be no Holocaust survivors to speak. As the Minister said, we are now the custodians of their memory. We have a duty to remember and to tell the truth.
Baroness Levitt (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Katz on his powerful and moving speech. I look forward greatly to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Sealand, who will speak after me. It is an honour to follow my noble friend Lord Katz.
Like many others, over the past week or so, because I knew that my maiden speech was fast approaching, I have been anxiously listening to those made by my fellow new entrants to your Lordships’ House. By doing so, I have learned that it is customary to start with thanks. I say this because I want to emphasise that, although it is customary, these are not mere words but something heartfelt and sincere from each of us. The extraordinary friendliness and helpfulness of the House officials, the staff, the police and the doorkeepers have made what could have been a rather overwhelming experience feel achievable.
I pay special tribute to the head doorkeeper, who told me with both humour and firmness when I should say “Good morning” and when I should say “Good afternoon”, depending on whether it was before or after Prayers. I can say with confidence that I am unlikely to forget this early lesson.
I thank all my new colleagues on this side of the House, as well as noble Lords from other parties and the Cross Benches, for the warmth of their welcome. I want to thank my supporters. It has been an honour and a privilege to have had the support and encouragement of my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark. Of my other supporter, I shall say a few words in a few moments.
In my professional life, I was taught at an early stage that you start all addresses by summing up the purpose of your speech in a single sentence. My single sentence is this: I am a criminal barrister. This not only explains what I have been doing for the past 40-odd years but illustrates both what I would like to achieve through my membership of your Lordships’ House and why I wanted to speak in this particular debate.
I am going to guess that, when I said I was a barrister, you probably all thought that you could predict who and what I am. Perhaps words like “establishment” and “conventional” may have crossed your mind. But I thought to myself that, as we are likely to be working together for quite a long a time, I should maybe reveal a little bit more about myself, including perhaps a few things that not many people know about me. I reckoned, I am among friends—none of you are not going to tell anybody, are you? It is all going to be okay.
I was astonishingly badly behaved as a child. When I was 14, I was expelled from a school called Roedean for being disobedient and a bad influence on the other girls. My unfortunate, very worried parents had to find a new school for me, not only in the middle of the academic year but in the middle of a term. One school was persuaded to take me, but I had not learned my lesson. My by now rather less worried and more exasperated parents made weekly trips to the headmistress’s office to try to persuade her not to expel me for a second time. Somehow, I just about lasted the course but, decades later, I was visiting the school under my married name—because I was a little unsure of my welcome—when a familiar voice shouted, in a voice you could have heard in Latvia, “Alison Levitt: you were the worst girl I ever taught!” This was my old history teacher. She went on to say that at school I was a total nuisance, always questioning, always challenging everything. But some years later she discovered that I had become a criminal barrister, “And”, she said, “then it all made sense”.
I am not sure how my fellow barristers will feel about a typical barrister being described as a perennial nuisance, but they will probably agree that a constant questioning of the established order is something we all do, and something of which we are rightly proud. I was called to the Bar in 1988. Women barristers were having a pretty terrible time of it generally, but one of the most demeaning things was that we were not permitted to wear trousers in court. Skirts and dresses only—even when you were having to trudge through the snow to some far-flung court where your client, who was charged with sexual assault, would sit there looking at your legs while you were desperately trying to take instructions and pull down your skirt with your other hand.
Fast forward to 1995, when I was chair of the Young Barristers’ Committee. At my monthly meeting with the then chairman of the Bar, my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith, asked me, “What can I do for the Young Bar?” I took my courage in both hands and replied, “Trousers”. He was a little bit surprised but, entirely characteristically keen to do what he could for diversity and inclusion at the Bar, he spoke to the Lord Chief Justice, and within days the rules were changed. As late as 1995, it was a novelty for women to wear trousers in court—I ask you. This remains a moment of pride for me.
By now, you may have noticed a bit of theme about me. If I wanted to self-aggrandise, I could call it wanting to achieve justice and support the rule of law, but I suspect that, more accurately, it is endlessly and exasperatingly insisting on swimming upstream. One of the reasons I am so delighted to have joined your Lordships’ House is that I have a lifelong interest in the purposes of legislation which creates criminal offences, and for this reason. Sometimes, laws are entirely pragmatic and designed to achieve a particular end—the compulsory wearing of seatbelts comes to mind—but sometimes a law does something else as well. The things that we make criminal say something about what our society finds unacceptable. An example of this is the change in the law which made rape within marriage an offence. Some said at the time that there would be hardly any prosecutions because it would be impossible to prove lack of belief in consent, but I was in favour of it because I thought that doing this sent a strong message that our society does not believe that women are the chattels of their husbands. Now, decades later, juries do regularly convict of this offence, so sometimes we legislators can actually influence and bring about social change.
The converse of this is that if there are laws which we do not enforce, it tells society that we do not think these transgressions matter. By not catching and not punishing shoplifters, for example, we run the risk of beginning to legitimise so-called low-level dishonesty, for which I predict there will be a very high social price to pay.
I have said that I am a criminal barrister, but for the last three years I have been a judge, doing criminal jury trials at the epic Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London. I resigned about two hours before the announcement of my elevation to your Lordships’ House. So, I have very recent experience of the sharp end of our criminal justice system, which I hope in due course to be able to put to some use in your Lordships’ House.
Others will speak about, and for, the police, the prosecutors, the solicitors and barristers and the part they play, but for now I want to say something appreciative about my former colleagues, the judges, because I can tell you that to a great extent it is their hard work and good will that are holding the beleaguered crown court system together. They deserve our thanks. Also, as old habits die hard, if I occasionally address noble Lords as “members of the jury”, I hope I shall be forgiven.
So, why make my maiden speech as part of the Holocaust Memorial Day debate? I said a few moments ago that I would come back to my other supporter: my noble kinsman Lord Carlile of Berriew. He and I, as some noble Lords will know, have been married for nearly 20 years. Some of you may have assumed that, because of my family’s surname, I am Jewish, but in fact I am not. He is—at least, his family were. My husband’s parents were both Holocaust victims and survivors: his father’s entire family—first wife, parents, sister, niece—were murdered in Poland by the Nazis. The only one to survive was my sister-in-law, hidden in Poland from the age of two until the war came to an end and she was reunited in the UK with her father. My husband’s mother and her family survived in Poland between 1939 and 1945 by ducking and diving and assuming non-Jewish noms de guerre. For our family, this is the most terrible, up close and personal reminder of what happens when a society forgets why the rule of law matters.
In the 1940s, my husband’s parents arrived in the UK from Poland as refugees from the Nazis. I never met his father, who had died years earlier, but I knew and loved his mother. This is not my story to tell, it is my husband’s, but there is one reason why I wanted to speak of it today. His grandparents, who survived the Nazis but were then trapped in Poland by the Soviet regime, had got through the war by selling a few diamonds, which was all they had managed to salvage of their earlier comfortable life. After the war, they came across a remaining diamond ring, which they then smuggled out of Poland by baking it into a cake and sending it to my mother-in-law, who by now was living in Burnley, Lancashire. This bit of the story my husband cannot illustrate, but I can. This is the ring. I wear it every Holocaust Memorial Day, and I am wearing it today because it conveys this simple message: they survived. They are still standing, right here in the UK House of Lords. So, I too say: never forget; never again.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
Well, my Lords, I have been looking forward greatly to today’s maiden speeches—without trepidation in the case of the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans of Sealand. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Katz, on his maiden speech, and I look forward to that of the noble Lord, Lord Evans; they will bring much to your Lordships’ House. But at this point, I have the heartfelt—I use the word deliberately—honour of thanking my noble kinswoman for her remarkable speech. I had to check with the clerks what the right appellation was. She demonstrated her eloquence, her wit, her determination and her critical faculty, of which I have some experience, all of which will make her a valued Member of your Lordships’ House. Her contributions on many subjects, I think—declaring my interests firmly—will be welcome, especially those founded upon her unusual and profound knowledge of and contribution to our criminal justice system. I should add that she brought me closer, much closer than I had ever been before, to my Jewish heritage, and I thank her for that.
I turn now directly to the subject of the debate. I say that the Shoah, the Holocaust, was the event of the most unnatural scale and horror in the history of humanity. It brought the end of six million lives, some my own close relatives: people who had no interest in politics, no interest in government, no interest in how their country, Poland, was ruled.
I was denied meeting one pair of grandparents because they were murdered. My half-sister’s mother died in Auschwitz, after spending three years there. On her death certificate it says typhoid, but we know that she became ill and was shot against a pole outside a shed in Auschwitz. Visiting there—I will never do it again, because I do not think I could take it—was an extraordinary experience for me.
In my view, what happened to those people has left an indelible mark on the living. I want to talk a little—nobody has yet—about what is generally referred to as survivor’s guilt. It is not a good description of what it is, but I cannot do better at a moment like this.
I do not know how many of your Lordships have seen the remarkable BBC series, “The Last Musician of Auschwitz”. It is required viewing. It tells the story of brilliant musicians, among the best in the world, who faced the moral dilemma of whether they should play music while others in the camps were marching to their deaths as slave labourers. What happened is that survival won the debate, and that is what survivor’s guilt is about: survival often wins the debate and they were right to do what they did, but it did not go away after they had done it.
I have seen it at close quarters. All my father’s family died of murder, except my beloved sister—my half-sister, in fact—who is now a lovely old lady living in a nursing home. She is spared, by dementia, from the memories of her experience as a hidden child. Before she became ill, she wrote a remarkable book, published by Bloomsbury Publishing, about what she remembered of her childhood between the ages of two and seven when she was hidden in Poland. She was hidden by an audacious young woman called Frederika, who was a distant cousin. She ensured that the child, my half-sister Renata, survived the war. After the war, that woman brought Renata to her father, who had been a solider in England—a medical officer. In a glorious flash, he and Frederika had a speedy romance. They married and I am their son.
Until I was 10 years old, I knew nothing about that background. My parents converted to Christianity while my father was a general practitioner in Burnley. My mother walked into Manchester Cathedral and demanded to see the bishop, and that is how that happened. I was not told until I was 10 years old that Renata, by then 20, was not my full sister. As it was put to me, she “had another mummy”. It bonded us for the rest of our lives and still does, but it was an extraordinary early example of what survivor’s guilt is all about.
Another example from my family is my cousin, Willy Verkauf. He left Poland when he was 17, just before the war. He went to Israel, came to Europe and became an art dealer in Basel. How did he express his survivor’s guilt? He discovered a painter called André Verlon, who you will see referred to in books about paintings of the Holocaust. André Verlon became a reputed Holocaust painter and artist. The survivor’s guilt is that André Verlon and my cousin Willy Verkauf were the same person: he invented an alter ego through which he could express his earlier experiences and the loss of his family in the Holocaust. I am proud to own two of André Verlon’s works, which I keep at home.
Then there is my cousin Ewa, who came for lunch with me in this place. She looked at me as though it were completely bizarre that we were having lunch here, that I had no business to be here and asked, “What on earth is going on?” We have all had these sorts of experiences; I can see the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, nodding.
Ewa told me that she was in a concentration camp with her mother and her baby. The baby died and she helped her mother to commit suicide. One day, she was sitting in a room with a number of women in the concentration camp and a Nazi guard came in. He took a 13 year-old girl by the hair and dragged her out of the room. A few minutes later, the girl returned, weeping, saying, “He raped me, he raped me”. A few minutes later still, the guard came back into the room, stood the girl up against the wall in front of all the other women in the room and shot her dead in the back of the head.
My cousin Ewa had real survivor’s guilt, so much so that she married an American and had two fine sons, and did not tell them until she had nearly died that they had had a brother or sister who died in a concentration camp. People have to live with these experiences.
The importance of memorialising the Holocaust is that we must make sure that the rest of society lives with these experiences. The wonderful work of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—I pay great tribute to him; I have watched him in Parliament for more decades than I would care to mention, because we are all getting older now—demonstrates that it is very important to educate so that people know that the Holocaust not only really happened but was the worst event in history.
My real point is that Holocaust Memorial Day is not merely a day in which we remember, but it is very much part of the present. We who carry the sort of history that I have appreciate the huge public support that comes through Holocaust Memorial Day. The day stands as a memorial and a reckoning for all of us who celebrate the innocence of our grandparents and other close relatives and commemorate their death. It is also for those of us who suffer the benefit of survival, as my parents and my cousins did and as I do to a lesser extent in coming to terms with the past, of which I knew nothing until I was 10 years old.
I could say much more, but for now it is enough that, in a debate such as this, I say about the past that we have the opportunity to learn important lessons for the future.
Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP) [V]
My Lords, it is a great honour to contribute to this vital debate—a debate in which the House is rightly able to speak with one voice. It is particularly an honour to follow the long list of excellent contributions that we have heard. I welcome and look forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Evans, who will be the next speaker. I particularly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Katz, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, on their excellent maiden speeches. I am glad that I was able to follow the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, rather than precede him—I would have risked matrimonial disharmony if I had come between husband and wife. I look forward to hearing the further contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Katz, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, who have made such an excellent start.
The Nazis inflicted great atrocities across a wide range of communities, many of which have already been mentioned today. It is right that we acknowledge and remember all of those. Evil is evil, but it is particularly true that the Holocaust, the infliction of an attempt to wipe out the entire Jewish community off the face of the earth, stands alone as the greatest act of evil in the history of mankind. The murder of 6 million Jews—it is Jews, not just people—is something that we must commemorate at all costs.
When we mention the 6 million people, it is sometimes difficult for us all to get our heads around what that means in practice. Stalin once said that the death of a single person is a tragedy; the death of 1 million people is a statistic. We cannot afford the deaths of the 6 million Jewish people in the Holocaust simply to become a statistic. We should always remember that behind each one of those 6 million is an individual life and story: a father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife or friend.
If there were no other reason than simply to commemorate the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and their families, that would be reason enough to hold the annual Holocaust Memorial Day. However, sadly, there are other reasons that also compel us, rightly, to keep this uppermost in our mind.
First, it is clear that humanity has not learned the lessons of the atrocities of the Holocaust. Since 1945, a range of genocides—a word that is sometimes overused and perhaps wrongly used—have clearly been inflicted throughout the world, from Cambodia to Rwanda, and from Darfur to Bosnia. Therefore, ensuring that we learn the lessons of history is critical to ensure that it does not repeat itself.
Secondly, and even within this country itself, it is clear that anti-Semitism did not simply begin with the Holocaust—and, even more sadly, that it did not end with the Holocaust. The last 18 months in particular have seen a heightening of anti-Semitic behaviour across the United Kingdom. We have seen it in our streets, in our schools and across our community as a whole, with the terrible statistic that 2024 had the second-highest number of anti-Semitic attacks in recorded history.
I was struck by a speech that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, gave in this House some time ago. He contrasted his greater concern for his young daughter, who lived in London, whenever she would go into the city on a Friday or Saturday night to socialise, with that for his son, who served with the Israel Defense Forces. That, for many Jewish people, is an all too commonplace experience in our society. The poison and cancer of anti-Semitism is still with us, which is why we need to ensure that we constantly confront it and do everything in our power to eradicate it.
Thirdly, we need to understand and know the Holocaust to ensure that we learn the lessons from it and are vigilant to make sure that it does not happen again. There is a dangerous and historically mistaken belief that the Holocaust was a one-off terror perpetrated by a few evil fanatics at the top of the Nazi regime. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. The Holocaust was the most extreme example, but it was built upon centuries of anti-Semitism across Europe. While we think of it as a terror, what is perhaps most chilling about the Holocaust were the efforts made by the Nazi regime to make everything appear as ordinary and normal as possible. That was done for the purposes of trying to make sure that the Jewish victims of the Holocaust went to their death as compliantly as possible. To the extent to which the fictions were created of, for example, the showers in the concentration camps, they were not purely built on terror but on trying to create a sense of ordinariness and a belief that nothing unusual was happening.
Fourthly, it was not just the actions of a handful of people; the Holocaust was brought about by both the active participation, and often the acquiescence, of tens of thousands, if not millions, of people who helped facilitate it. They were people who, in other walks of life, we would simply regard as being ordinary and unremarkable. That is why it is wrong for us to see this as some one-off event; that drags us into a place of complacency, in which we believe that the conditions of the Holocaust could never happen again.
While acknowledging the evils perpetrated by so many during the Holocaust, it is also appropriate that we acknowledge the bravery and dedication of many other people in Europe during that decade or so. Many people acted with bravery and risked their own lives in sheltering and protecting members of the Jewish community and others, often directly at the expense of their lives. This took place in the UK as well. I am very proud that, in my constituency—the village of Millisle—there was a centre which served as a refuge for Jewish people directly before and after the war. It helped to look after some of the children from the Kindertransport and it became a home shortly after the war to some of those who had survived Auschwitz. That bond with the past has been built upon in Millisle. Millisle Primary, the local primary school, has recently opened a Holocaust memorial garden. That is a living way in which the current generation can acknowledge what has happened in the past.
Finally, I suspect most noble Lords have had the great honour and privilege—like I have—of meeting Holocaust survivors and listening to the very moving and telling first-hand testimony of those survivors. With the passage of time, the number of survivors is becoming less and less. Perhaps, in another five or 10 years there will not be the opportunity for anyone to receive first-hand testimony. This is why it is important that the mantle passes to the rest of us to carry on that critical message. The work of organisations such as the Holocaust Educational Trust and the ambassadors of Lessons from Auschwitz is no better exemplified than by the actions of our sovereign, who gave a truly remarkable example to the rest of us this year by becoming the first member of the British Royal Family to visit Auschwitz. That is the leadership example we need to pursue.
Peter Robinson, a former leader of mine, once described politics quite accurately as a never-ending relay race. For concentration camp survivors, their race as individuals on this earth is nearly run. It is up to all of us—the post-war generation—to now grab hold of the baton and to carry on the message of the critical nature of commemoration of the Holocaust and to ensure that—not simply in words, but in deeds—we fulfil the promise of “never again”.
Lord Evans of Sealand (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is humbling—and slightly daunting—to follow such moving and important contributions, particularly from my noble friends Lord Katz and Lady Levitt. I will do my best. I would like to do three things in this speech: give some thanks, briefly tell the story of why I am here, and contribute to this debate.
First, I thank my noble friends Lord Kennedy and Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath for introducing me; the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her brilliant leadership and support; and the doorkeepers and all the Lords staff who have been a credit to this House and an enormous help to me. With all these maiden speeches, I hope they feel cherished—they certainly deserve to.
Of course, I thank my noble friends, but I have also been made to feel so welcome right across the House. After three short weeks, it is clear to me that this House is an extraordinary place. It certainly has its foibles and it is not perfect. But the quality of expertise, scrutiny and debate is world-class. Dig under the partisan froth, which occasionally bubbles up even here, something terribly important is happening: the foundation of so much of what we have as a nation. It is democracy at work.
Why am I here? It started with my parents, both working class; their values were family, fairness, decency and hard work. Together, they were greater than the sum of their parts, and they worked so hard to give my brother Rob and I the start in life that everybody should have: safe, secure and loving.
So many people have helped and encouraged me but I will pick out just three: Dennis Wiseman, my English teacher at St Olave’s school, saw something in me that I did not see in myself; my friend and mentor Len Collinson, who told me I knew nothing about business and then dedicated so much of his time to teach me so much; and the exceptional Baroness Margaret McDonagh of this House, sadly no longer with us.
Noble Lords will all have their own stories about what got them into politics. Over the years, I have worked with some brilliant people from all mainstream parties, all wanting to change places and lives for the better but disagreeing on exactly how—which is what democracy is about. You cannot have democracy without political parties, and the disrespect in which they are held by too many is a great jeopardy for us.
I can remember the day I first got involved in politics like it was yesterday. It was 12 May 1979. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected in a landslide, but it was not that election that called me to action. I was meeting my brother Rob in our local high street. I was late and, as I approached, I saw him being bullied, mocked and taunted by a group of teenagers. Rob has a learning disability. I sorted those kids out—trust me, I did—but on the bus on the way home, I realised that I would not always be there for him. I needed to do something to make the place better, safer and kinder. Why did those kids think it was right to bully and mock, whereas similar kids from our street were kind, generous and inclusive to him? I wanted a country that brings out the best in people and discourages the worst. I joined the Labour Party that day.
I am fortunate, though, to have three families: my own—my wife, brother and daughter; the Labour Party; and, thanks to the only unkind thing my father ever did, imposing on me the life sentence of supporting Chester Football Club, I have Chester Football Club. All three have the power to test me, but I am blessed to have them.
Hatred in politics was alive and well when I was cutting my political teeth in the 1980s, with the National Front on the rise. In 1988, I visited the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where many of the mechanics of the Holocaust were developed before implementation in the larger camps. It was a profound experience which lives with me today: the mundane, everyday things in the well-preserved huts; living quarters, not statistics.
Those who perpetrated the atrocities were people as well. As Steven Pinker has said:
“We have to be prepared … to see that evildoers always think they are acting morally”.
Yesterday, in advance of going on a delegation to Israel next week, I witnessed raw footage collected by the IDF of the 7 October atrocities, which are still happening today. Were they monsters? Maybe, but they were also people like us, which is difficult for us to concede. Despite technological, economic and social advances, we are still constantly rocked and astonished as atrocities are committed today. It is too easy to demonise perpetrators as simply evil.
In 2006, 12 British National Party councillors were elected in Barking and Dagenham. Rapid change, poverty and deindustrialisation all played a part, but political parties, including my own, were also culpable. I am proud of the work I did alongside many others, notably the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, to regain the confidence of residents in mainstream politics there.
I became general secretary of the Labour Party in 2020. I was alarmed to find anti-Semitism alive and well in my own family, the Labour Party. My friend, Dame Louise Ellman, who suffered terrible anti-Semitic abuse, once said to me, “Only now can I really fully understand how ordinary people can do terrible things”. That chilled me. This was not the 1940s in another country; this was England in the 21st century, within a progressive political party. It was a personal pleasure to welcome Louise back into Labour Party membership in 2021.
Keir Starmer provided first-class leadership, and it fell to me as general secretary to root out anti-Semitism. It was not easy. I witnessed the certainty of the self-righteous, and indestructible narratives that resisted challenge and even truth, but I was ably assisted by so many in that task, including my noble friend Lady Ramsey, who led the transformation of our complaints process and did so much to restore the battered confidence of Jewish stakeholders. My noble friend Lord Katz provided exemplary leadership, and the Jewish Labour Movement was courageous and resilient. Other Jewish leaders trusted us when they could have been forgiven for not doing so. It was tough but, together, we changed the Labour Party for good.
However, there can be no complacency. There is still a toxicity in our politics, and, sadly, it is growing. I saw it in the recent general election all too clearly. It is easy to descend to the lowest and to proffer simple solutions to complex problems. My fundamental belief remains that, with the right environment, support and nurture, the overwhelming majority share the values my parents taught me: generosity, kindness and love.
The work done in your Lordships’ House is noble in the best sense of the word, but it could be too easy for us to become cocooned in this House and the other place against the harsh political reality. There has never been more volatility, or less affinity with mainstream parties. This is a real danger. Very little in politics is inevitable, but a dysfunctional democracy is certainly a precondition for the worst to prevail.
As my noble friend Lord Dubs, who knows more about this than most of us, said, we must never be bystanders to hatred. That can be difficult, but thanks to the support of so many, I was able not to be a bystander to hatred in that high street with my brother in 1979, to the BNP in Barking and Dagenham, or to anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. It is up to us to spot and stop the small acts of hatred wherever we find them, before they become the norm, before they burgeon with the accelerator of social media, and before it is too late.
David Baddiel has said that anti-Semitism is unique in its ability to shapeshift. It exists in both the far right and the far left, in conspiracies, in populism and even among those who claim to fight racism. No party represented here is immune. I am proud to be a Member of your Lordships’ House, but we need to do more. We are the doorkeepers of our democracy. If we allow democracy to fray and decay—and it is doing exactly that—on our watch, we could open the door again to the kinds of atrocities we are marking today. We must simply never let it happen.
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
My Lords, it is an honour and a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Evans of Sealand and to be the first to congratulate him on an inspiring maiden speech. I have known the noble Lord for many years and can confirm that he is definitely no bystander. He has always been a man of action—and I do not include his support for that peculiar football team, Chester—whether in support of his brother on the high street, or in taking on the BNP in east London and, regrettably for me, the anti-Semites in the Labour Party when he became general secretary in 2020. He will be a great asset to your Lordships’ House.
I was so pleased to be able to support his efforts when he was general secretary, under the leadership of the now Prime Minister Keir Starmer, to tackle the scourge of anti-Semitism in our party, which, as we heard from my noble friend, is one of his three families. The need to do the work that we did, hand in hand with my noble friends Lord Katz and Lady Anderson, and so many others, is proof, if ever any were needed, that marking Holocaust Memorial Day is more important now than ever. I bear in mind the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on this subject.
We must always be vigilant and determined men and women of action. That is what I see right across this House. I saw it when I was working for the Labour Party in helping to lead its response to the damning report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. I saw it then in the calm and assured roles that the late lamented Lord Kerslake and the wonderful noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, played in overseeing the recruitment of the independent complaint adjudicators to ensure that anti-Semitism—indeed, all acts of discrimination—could be rooted out.
I also saw that vigilance and determination in the unwavering support and oversight of the work by my noble friends Lady Hodge, Lady Royall and Lady Lawrence, alongside Jewish communal stakeholders, including—I am very anxious about leaving out some names—the then president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Marie van der Zyl, the current president, Phil Rosenberg, the wonderful Adrian Cohen and the Jewish Leadership Council, the Jewish Labour Movement, which was absolutely central, the Antisemitism Policy Trust, the fantastic Community Security Trust, and those JLM members who were so fundamental, Peter Mason and Adam Langleben, among others. I have seen it too since having the honour of joining your Lordships’ House, including in the powerful maiden speeches from my noble friends Lord Katz and Lady Levitt.
I have also been inspired by the hugely impressive ways in which the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, brings the horrors of the Holocaust to life in his writings for today’s generations by sharing his family’s terrible testimony regarding, among other things, Bergen-Belsen. I am inspired by the wisdom and generosity of spirit of my noble friend Lord Dubs and by hearing of his remarkable experiences of the Kindertransport, and from listening to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, speaking of his family’s horrific experiences. I found listening to the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, deeply moving, as has been other testimony in the House today.
It was only after joining your Lordships’ House that I learned, from the noble Lord, Lord Austin, that I had been inspired by another child refugee from the Holocaust many years ago. Without me even realising it at the time, his father was my head teacher at secondary school. I only learned of Mr Austin’s experience of the Nazis decades after being taught by him and his wife—the noble Lord’s mother—I assume because back then people did not really talk about it, at least not outside their families.
Indeed, it was from my own family that I learned about the horrors of the Holocaust. When I was growing up, my father told me of his time in the Westminster Dragoons, a tank regiment which landed on Sword beach on D-day. He then drove, with his comrades, his flail tank across northern France and eventually found himself part of the liberating forces at Bergen-Belsen. My dad never forgot what he saw there. I am not going to talk about that because others have spoken about those horrors so eloquently and with even more experience than I have of hearing about it. He said that I should never forget what he told me about and what he had seen. He wanted his children to know, to remember and to speak of it—as I am doing today in his honour. He worried even then, when we were children growing up and as teenagers, that some people were denying that it had ever happened and forgetting about it. By continuing to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, as all noble Lords have done so eloquently today, we can and must make sure that no one ever forgets.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, it has been a great honour to hear three such interesting and heartwarming maiden speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt. It is also a great honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay.
Today we are all here gathered in remembrance. The speeches we have heard have been heartbreaking and full of sadness on many occasions, which has moved many of us. Eighty years ago, the world bore witness to the liberation of Auschwitz—a name etched in infamy for its wickedness, a place where a million souls perished. But we must be clear: Auschwitz was not an anomaly, nor was it the whole story. It was but one in a network of extermination camps which sought to systematically eradicate 6 million Jews in Europe. We must resist the temptation to speak of the Holocaust as a horrific event that took place during the Second World War. To do so would be to diminish the full scale of atrocity which spanned nations, years, and generations of suffering.
Although today is a day of reflection, it must also be a day of reckoning, because the hard truth is this: anti-Semitism did not die with the fall of the Third Reich. It was not buried in the rubble of Berlin, nor was it erased by the words “never again”. It persists, it is alive, and it is growing. We have all heard that the Community Security Trust documented the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents in a six-month period. It is no wonder that the CST also uncovered that merely one-third of British Jews believe they have a future in this country and that a staggering 50% have considered leaving altogether. It is truly anathema to me that in the UK—a nation that has been a beacon of refuge and opportunity for Jewish people—there are those who fear for their safety, their children’s futures, and their very place in society. How can this be? How did we arrive at a moment where British Jews, who have contributed so much to our national life, feel unwelcome in their own country? Crucially, what will we do about it?
We rightly place great importance on the memorialisation of the Holocaust. It is an opportunity to educate, to remember, and to honour those whose lives were stolen, but remembrance alone is not enough if it comes at the expense of acting against contemporary anti-Semitism. What is the point of solemn words and candlelit vigils if we fail to confront the anti-Semitism of today? I put it to the House that each Holocaust Memorial Day should be a day not just of reflection but of renewed commitment to tackling contemporary anti-Semitism in all its forms. This commitment must be explicit: annual targets, clear objectives and unwavering political will. Without this, the fight against anti-Semitism will continue to be overlooked, sidelined and deprioritised on the political agenda.
Let us be honest: the pervasive nature of this problem indicates that we are beyond easy solutions. It cannot be resolved overnight, but that must not deter us. We need a patient, sustained effort—an approach that acknowledges the scale of the issue while refusing to accept it as inevitable. We have skirted around this subject for too long; it is time to take it seriously and, as we do so, we must ensure that Holocaust Memorial Day remains firmly rooted in the historic reality of what happened. We remember all victims of hatred, but let us not shy away from the fact that the Holocaust was first and foremost the attempted extermination of the Jewish people. This is not a mere historical detail; it is the very essence of why this day exists. To obscure or generalise this fact is not only a disservice to the past but a dangerous mistake for the future. Making the historical and contemporary link both honours the memory of those murdered and is the best bulwark against history repeating itself. The Holocaust was not inevitable; it was the result of unchecked hatred, institutional complicity, and the silence of too many for too long. That is why we must act now.
Today, as we remember the liberation of Auschwitz, let us also liberate ourselves from complacency. Let us not merely remember; let us resolve. Let us not only mourn; let us act. Let us ensure that when we say “never again”, it is not merely a phrase but a reality that we strive towards. I urge my esteemed colleagues to stand firm against anti-Semitism, to make Holocaust Memorial Day a moment of real commitment and to ensure that British Jewish people can live in this country with the same security, dignity and confidence as any other citizen.
Lord Parekh (Lab)
My Lords, I want to share a few thoughts on the question of the Holocaust memorial. However, before we talk about it, we need to ask: why do we want to remember the Holocaust? What do we wish to remember? What is our assessment of it? These are the questions that this debate was and is expected to answer.
Is the Holocaust in some sense unique in human history, or have there not been cases of collective killings and mass suffering? The first thing therefore to ask is: what is the specificity, the uniqueness, of the Holocaust? I suggest that it is not merely a question of a large number of people being killed—6 million, 4 million or whatever. What is unique about it are the following four things, and never before or after have these four things come together in the way that they did in the 1940s. First, the Holocaust was articulated through the agency of the state. It was not a question of people going berserk and killing each other, or ethnic tribes springing upon each other; it worked through the state, systematically aiming at particular groups and wanting to eliminate them.
Secondly, the state did it because it was guided by a particular ideology, the ideology of racism—the Aryan race, the pure race, the white race. There are different races, and particular races must be eliminated. Thirdly, race acts as a navigator. It helps you to identify groups that you should get rid of. Fourthly, when you do get rid of them, theirs is not an ordinary death. It is a death that is bureaucratised and treated simply as an impersonal event in the life of the state.
Given those four elements—using the state and mobilising its resources, being based on a particular ideology, using that ideology to identify particular groups and then mobilising the state to kill people whom you have identified as undesirable—the question is often asked in many circles: why are you taking the Holocaust as in some sense unique? Why not see it as simply representative of other kinds of suffering? Slavery, for example, has been a long-lasting feature of human life. Why do we not memorialise slavery? Likewise indentured labour or, if we are considering genocide cases, there have been other genocides in history. Why are we concentrating on the Holocaust?
I think I have already answered that question, but I suggest that the kind of suffering involved in the Holocaust was unique for the following reasons. In the case of slavery, there is human contact; the state is not involved. Death comes rarely and when it does it is generally incidental and not planned. There is a human relationship between the slave owner and the slave. A kind of humanity is there in almost all forms of suffering, except when you come to the Holocaust, where humanity disappears and the individual is not just dehumanised; he is “inhumanised”. The language used is the language relevant to animals—cockroaches, worms and so on. In no accounts of suffering of any kind that I have read or heard about have I seen human beings referred to in that inhuman way. This phenomenon of “inhumanisation” is very peculiar to the Holocaust.
If that is so—and I hope this is so—the questions that we have asked about other forms of suffering, and the lessons we have learned, cannot be applied to the Holocaust. For example, in the common attempt to understand why the Holocaust occurred, people say, “Well, the Nazis hated Jews”. It is not as simple as that because there were Nazis who did not hate Jews; they had Jews as friends or as mistresses. Others have said that they did not just hate Jews; they hated human beings as a whole and were misanthropes. That is not true either, because they had good friends. Or it is said that they were evil, wicked persons. That is not quite right either because the “evil” they display is shallow and superficial. It is not born out of the deep layers of the human soul.
That leaves us puzzled. How do we explain the behaviour of a man who has dogs, loves animals, has friends and a mother and a father going to the concentration camp and knocking off a few people and returning home as if nothing has happened? It is this that needs to be understood. In order to be understood, it is this that needs to be questioned. What kinds of human beings are attracted to this or turn into machines of death? That cannot be answered if you look at the ordinary forms of killing. If you were to look at the psychological theory that it developed from ordinary forms of killing and apply it automatically to the Holocaust, it simply would not work.
To these simple questions—why and how—what answer would you give? Hannah Arendt had to invent a new concept: the banality of evil. She had made a massive study of concentration camps and ultimately came to the conclusion that these people were shallow. There was nothing there. You expect wicked people to have depths of an evil kind, but there was no such thing. My suggestion is simply that we have not even started learning lessons from the Holocaust. If these questions remain unanswered, what are we learning from the Holocaust memorials being set up all over the world?
I want therefore to end with a very simple conclusion. There are many others that follow from this. When we say, for example, the Holocaust is evil, we are making a moral judgment on it. It is evil, yes, but what else? Is that enough for us as a lesson to learn? Here I suggest that in the case of the Holocaust and lessons we can learn, we need to be asking certain questions which are not asked in relation to other forms of suffering. Let me take a simple example, with just one minute left.
We judge it, as in all our discussion today, as being in terms of the Jewish people. Is the Holocaust entirely the moral property of the Jewish people? Is it not an indictment of the entirety of mankind and should it not be seen as a human problem, which addresses all human beings anywhere and not just Jews? Of course, Jews were the primary and intended targets, but so were lots of Poles and others. That is one point.
The other question is of a slightly different nature. The Holocaust has happened, but what are the moral consequences? Does this mean that the Holocaust was the price Jews had to pay to win the State of Israel? How glibly we slip into a certain way of thinking and certainly of talking; “Look, they have suffered so much and therefore the Jewish people have a right to Israel” or “Whatever they do is forgiven”. In that case, we do injustice to other people—namely the Arabs and the Palestinians. The simple thing is that we have a lot to learn, and we have not yet started learning it.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Cryer)
Order. I apologise to the noble Lord, but can I ask him to come to the end of his remarks now please?
Lord Parekh (Lab)
These are the lessons we need to learn, and I hope that we will start learning them fast.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I will begin by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Austin of Dudley, who sadly is not able to be in his place today. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, reminded us just a few minutes ago in her excellent speech, Ian is the son of a Holocaust survivor. It was he who helped me understand the significance of this day, long before either he or myself were Members of your Lordships’ House.
Unlike my present diocese of Manchester, Dudley, where I was then the bishop and the noble Lord, Lord Austin, was an MP, did not have a very large Jewish population. Nevertheless, at his instigation, every year we sent two young people from Dudley College of Technology to Auschwitz. They reported back to our annual Holocaust Memorial Day event that was held in the college, where they told very moving stories of what they had seen and how it had made them feel. Their witness, alongside the testimony of Holocaust survivors, helped inspire young people who were born almost half a century after the Holocaust to understand why we today must be constantly on the vigil against those voices that seek to deny the common and equal humanity and dignity of every single human being. Those who denigrate, despise and ultimately seek to destroy those whom I, as a Christian, will always declare as being created in the very image of God.
I now live in Salford, in the midst of the largest Jewish community outside of London. The boundary of the eruv, which permits many of my Jewish neighbours to undertake tasks such as pushing wheelchairs and prams on the sabbath and other holy days, is my garden wall.
This year, I have been delighted to see the success of the Holocaust Memorial Day schools exhibition held in Manchester Cathedral. It features the work of Church of England primary schools across the whole of Greater Manchester from many culturally, racially and religiously diverse communities. The children responded to key themes of the Holocaust in a number of ways. Some of them created origami paper cranes as prayers for peace; others reflected on Pavel Friedman’s poem, The Butterfly, which was actually written in a concentration camp. There was a re-creation of the pile of children’s shoes from the children who lost their lives at Auschwitz—that was very difficult to look at—and a collection of human portraits from many different cultures to celebrate our differences.
Meanwhile, local authority Holocaust Memorial Day events in Greater Manchester, including one that I attended in Manchester Town Hall, had local speakers who were Holocaust survivors or from their families. Respect was shown to them at these events by members of all our main faith communities: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Jain. In my role as convenor of the Greater Manchester faith leaders, I have the privilege of leading representatives of all our major faiths. We are good friends and good neighbours.
The multifaith Challenging Hate Forum, which is hosted by my cathedral, undertook its own visit to Auschwitz, led jointly by my dean and Rabbi Warren Elf. My wife was part of that trip in March 2019. We also have vibrant bilateral groups, such as our Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester, where relationships that are forged and sustained over many years prove so vital when we find ourselves in tense times. I am privileged to work closely with the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region, and to use my voice here in your Lordships’ House to raise concerns that it and other faith communities have first prompted me about.
The Church of England teaching document, God’s Unfailing Word, which was published in 2019, speaks of attitudes towards Judaism over many centuries as providing,
“a fertile seed-bed for murderous antisemitism”,
and of the need for Christians to repent of the “sins of the past” towards our Jewish neighbours. It notes the part played by flawed Christian theology in promoting negative stereotypes of Jewish people.
I am grateful to other noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and my right reverend friend the Bishop of Lichfield, for reminding us that anti-Semitism did not arise in the 1930s but was nurtured and grown over the preceding two millennia. There can be no overlap between the truth of our witness to Christ, which it is the task of theology to articulate, and the darkness of anti-Semitism. We have a duty as Christians to be alert to the continuation of such stereotyping and to resist it. My right reverend friend was a member of the group that wrote this document, though I note he was too modest to refer to that in his own speech earlier.
Remembering the Holocaust serves as a bulwark against the ever-present forces across the world that seek to resurrect vile, violent and murderous anti-Semitism or to perpetrate fresh genocides against other targeted groups. This year marks 30 years since the Srebrenica massacre, when more than 8,000—mainly men and boys—were killed in just a few days by the Serb forces. I am proud that, in Manchester, we—again together, as all our faiths and others—commemorate Srebrenica Memorial Day each year.
In Britain, we take pride—I take pride—in our pluralistic society, one where people are free to practise their religion and express their identity and where they should be able to live without fear of persecution. But we must never take those freedoms for granted. They are the product of a long history of struggle and sacrifice. Yet, as other noble Lords have said, they remain under attack—even in the UK, even today. We must make sure that atrocities such as the Holocaust never happen again. We must speak up and act up when anti-Semitism, racism or xenophobia happen.
As a schoolboy in Manchester, I studied alongside many fellow pupils who were Jewish. Most of them would have lost family members in the Holocaust. Simply being boys together—we did not have girls in those days in my school, and it still does not—taught me that we were one humanity under the skin. Indeed, the only practical difference between being Jewish or gentile seemed to be that my Jewish friends got to go home a lesson early on winter Friday afternoons.
As others have said, with each anniversary, the memories of the Holocaust slip away from living memory. If we are to hold firm against the evils of fascism and other extreme ideologies—as indeed we must—as each generation of survivors passes on, it is incumbent on all of us to remember the past. Today’s debate plays a vital part in enabling that, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley—a good friend, who does so much excellent work to promote strong relationships between different faiths and communities, and who spoke so strongly and movingly in opening our debate today—for giving us this opportunity to build “For a better future”, to quote the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day.
Viscount Eccles (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate and a particular pleasure to speak in a debate where we have heard three varied, enjoyable, interesting and informative maiden speeches.
I was 14 at the end of the war. I was at boarding school in Winchester, and my memory tells me that we did not know about Auschwitz. However, we were told about Belsen, and noble Lords will all know, I am sure, why Belsen came into the knowledge of the general public in this country, as the first of the camps that we really knew about. We learned about the camps in stages, and we learned about what had been happening in stages: arbitrary imprisonment, forced labour, cruelty, neglect, disease, starvation and industrialised murder.
This was so far beyond our 14 year-old experience, knowledge and imagination. It was a shattering blow to our experience of the war. After all, we had been through a period when it seemed that we were going to lose the war—and then we looked at this and what we were supposed to understand. At evening prayers, who ever took them faced a very troubled congregation.
Then, we thought to ourselves, “How could people be found to run such a system—who would be the guards, bookkeepers, managers and commandants?” We found it very difficult to cope with that. Then there were the misfortunes, the betrayals and the widespread collaboration—all these aspects came out, stage by stage. Then we got to hear about the text of the final solution. Again, that was quite beyond our comprehension. All we could conclude was that it was unattainable and massively evil.
Time goes by and our nature is such that we have to learn to cope. At that time, we did not have the 6 million label. We came to cope by somehow thinking that it was individuals to whom these things had happened. We thought of it as a whole series of individual tragedies and the effect they had had upon their close families and relations. This is probably still the way I think about the Holocaust—as a massive list of individual stories.
Eighty years later, there are two other ways in which we might usefully accept the challenge of thinking about the Holocaust. How did Europe come to create the conditions where the Holocaust was mounted, from the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires through Bismarck and competitive rearmament to the First World War, Versailles and the Weimar Republic, the rise of Hitler, the Second World War and the final solution? I believe that, although we have looked in some detail at that story—that long journey—it merits being looked at in ever more detail to try to come to some resolution about how this could have happened. Whatever one thinks about the Holocaust, it was one outcome of that long journey.
There is a second journey about which we need to think very carefully, and that is what has happened since 1945. During my national service, some of my colleagues had come recently from Palestine, which was still briefly in its mandate condition before the creation of Israel. They told pretty wild, difficult and dangerous stories of the Stern Gang and the PLA. It behoves us to consider what part the Holocaust has played in geopolitical outcomes since 1945 and, indeed, up to today. What part does that appalling event play in the way in which we think about where we are now and where we are going? Again, I feel that the study of and research about this are extremely important.
To sum up, we do our best in our efforts to cope with what is happening to us and around us. In coping, we have more than enough to think about, to study, to research and to remember.
Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury (CB)
My Lords, when the Nazis came to power in 1933, my father was dismissed from his job as a medical researcher because he was a Jew, and he made his way to this country, where he was taken in, made his home, raised a family and became a distinguished scientist. Historically, this is a reminder that although—or perhaps because—the Holocaust originated in Germany, many German Jews had time to leave before the final solution was initiated, whereas the Jews in subsequently Nazi-occupied countries did not have that opportunity, with the disastrous consequences that we all know and that have been described in a number of speeches today.
Personally, my father’s reception in this country has made me for ever grateful to the United Kingdom and made me, for a while, very suspicious of Germany, a suspicion reinforced by the fact that a number of members of my mother’s family died in concentration camps. However, subsequent experiences, particularly my contact with German judges, have given me two insights.
The first is respect for the way in which Germans have come to terms with what happened and have tried to take steps to make sure it does not happen again. Let us hope that the rise of the AfD does not represent a signal of retreat from that.
The second is a realisation that while it was, as has been said more than once today, unique in history, the Holocaust could have happened anywhere. We delude ourselves if we think that lessons can be learned so that nothing like it will happen again. I am afraid that history shows us that racial prejudice, racially motivated violence and even—fortunately, only rarely—genocide have been features of human existence as far back as records go, and that anti-Semitism has been prevalent, sadly, for more than 2,000 years.
Of course, that is not to say that everyone is racially prejudiced or anti-Semitic, or has a predisposition to racial violence, let alone to committing genocide. But one has only to read about how many otherwise apparently decent German soldiers were prepared to massacre helpless Jewish women and children simply because they were ordered to do so by their officers to realise how skin-deep civilisation is, at least in extreme circumstances, a point eloquently made by my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs.
An important component of combating such tendencies in any country is the rule of law, coupled with strong, democratic institutions—a point made by the most recent winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics, who showed that the quality of life in countries with those features significantly outperformed the quality of life in countries which lacked them. It is noteworthy how democracy, the constitution and the courts in Germany all crumbled very quickly in the face of ruthless Nazi aggression, thereby setting Germany on course for the Holocaust. The rise of Hitler shows that democracy is not enough: the Nazis came to power through the ballot box. Had there been humane laws enforced by an independent judiciary, I suggest that the story would have been very different.
Of course, the judges cannot stand on their own, even when supported by advocates as talented as the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, whom I congratulate on her maiden speech. They need to have an embedded culture that genuinely believes in respect for all people and genuinely supports the rule of law. Without that, the road to perdition beckons.
As my noble friend Lady Ludford reminded us, the price of liberty—and, I would add, the price of a decent society—is eternal vigilance. On that score, we are in danger of drifting into choppy waters. I am struck by how ignorant and uncaring most people in this country are about our constitutional arrangements, the rule of law, the role of the courts and why it matters. Even those at the top of our constitutional tree, in what we coyly refer to as “the other place”, are often remarkably and insouciantly ignorant about such issues. Such ignorance helps breed prejudice, and prejudice, if unchallenged, metastasises into persecution, and sometimes something worse than persecution.
Education and research are therefore key. It is through education that we seek to ensure that future generations are encouraged and enabled to recognise and combat racism in general, and anti-Semitism in particular. It seems to me essential that young people are both taught to disavow racism, anti-Semitism and intolerance and educated about our constitutional system and the rule of law.
Some 10 years ago, I would have said that this country had, by international standards, a reasonably good record on anti-Semitism. Recent events, which were well described by the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans of Sealand, in their excellent maiden speeches, show that things have deteriorated, but that people are doing their best to reverse this disturbing development. They deserve our support, both in words and actions.
When it comes to education, I would like to take the example of the work of the Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex, home to the Centre for German-Jewish Studies, of which I am privileged to serve as president. For over two decades, the institute has been dedicated to scholarly inquiry into the history, culture and thought of Jewish refugees from German-speaking lands. This not only preserves the memory of those who fled persecution but, by actively engaging with students, school children and the wider academic community, helps to ensure that contemporary understanding is informed by past knowledge and experience. Anyone who has listened today to the recollections of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, the noble Lords, Lord Dubs and Lord Carlile of Berriew, and, from a different perspective, of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, will realise how important it is that these stories and experiences are relayed to the young.
As has been said, 6 million people killed is a shocking figure, but Stalin has already been cited, and there is something about figures that depersonalises it. To get the full horror, one just has to be told the stories that we heard today. If those can be got across to the young, we are on our way to achieving something.
I like to think we are still the same country that took in my father 90 years ago. He was then funded in his research by an organisation call Cara, the Council for At-Risk Academics, which was founded, as it happens, in the same year he came here. My wife is currently supporting a Ukrainian family, one of whom is a lawyer and whose research is now supported by Cara. That somehow epitomises how both the good and the wicked are always with us, and it reminds us how we must fight to promote the good and suppress the wicked.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate our three newcomers, the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt. I am sure they are going to make a distinguished contribution to this House, and all three maiden speeches were well worth listening to.
I have not intervened in these debates in the past. Part of the reason is that I have no family history to relate such as the harrowing stories we have heard today. Also, because I am a Roman Catholic, I have not felt that our religion’s performance allowed me to say much about the Holocaust.
I was in the Foreign Office as an official during the Six Day War. I saw the way in which the Foreign Office reacted, and it was very interesting. The Arabian departments did not want anything to do with it. Frankly, had it not been for Harold Wilson, we would probably have made a lesser contribution to the Six Day War and its aftermath than we did. The combination of Harold Wilson and Lord Caradon—better known as Hugh Foot—meant that Britain ended up having quite a reasonable outcome to the war. The reason I mention this is that they suddenly put together a special department of the Foreign Office, which I was posted to from the Arabian department. One of the things I noticed, which I will come back to later, was an inability of some people to see both sides of the story. That was not because they were malicious; it was because they were just blind to an extent.
I fully support the Conservative Friends of Israel and I have been horrified by the Hamas attack, and in particular the failure, it seems, of the British press to realise that it was Hamas that attacked Israel. Israel did not do any attacking; Hamas attacked. When I look at the three released hostages last week and the gloating of the Palestinians around them, I am sorry, but I cannot feel much sympathy for them. I just wonder at the damage they are doing to their own population. It is absolutely astounding. What is quite saddening to me is what I perceive as the bias in reporting in the British press. I do not see it as being even-handed; it is all, “on the one hand, this; on the other hand, that”. The people of Israel were attacked. They have a right to defend themselves—full stop, as far as I am concerned.
I was 25 years in the European Parliament. I had a lot of time to talk to politicians from other countries of Europe—many of whom had been alive during the war and some of whom had fought during it. One who became a good friend of mine was a German general. He joined at the very end of the war in the boy soldiers brigade in Berlin. I also spoke to a lot of people around Germany. The fact of the matter is that many Germans blanked themselves out from what was going on. If you want to know what I mean, it is the way in which we blank ourselves out from what is going on in British prisons this very day: rats running around, atrocious overcrowding. No one knows about it. No one writes about it. No one deals with it.
Talking to many of my German colleagues, I am afraid it was quite clear that many of them had just blanked it out. They had lived, or their parents had lived, through the terrible 1920s, when the Weimar Republic was frankly unstable, and Germany was a horrible place to live—with massive inflation and the like. Then, along came this little man, who nobody particularly liked and who was not from their class, but, somehow, the country became richer. Things started happening. We often overlook the fact that the dispossessed effects of the Jewish community were distributed largely to the remaining Germans. Many Germans got better flats; they got more furniture; they got all sorts of things. They turned their face to the wall. They pretended they did not know, because they did not want to know. They blanked it out.
That also applies to my own Church. The Pope at that time, Pope Pius XII—Eugenio Pacelli was his name—came from one of the most established families in the Roman Catholic hierarchy. He was probably the most upper-class Pope that we have had in the last 200 years. He cut his teeth, so to speak, as papal envoy in Germany. He spoke fluent German but, in 1870, Italy was reunited and the papal lands were confiscated. That was a dreadful blow to the Catholic Church and the Pacelli family refused to deal with the Italian state. Then along came Mussolini, who signed the concordat and regularised relations with the Roman Catholic Church. Pacelli was influenced by that. By that time, he had left to become the Secretary of State, which is like being the Foreign Minister, and then he became Pope. He also blanked out what was going on. He was looking for Jews who had been baptised as Catholics who could be saved. The rest were cast aside.
When I was a little boy at a convent school, I was quite firmly told that we should not be sorry for the Jews because they killed Jesus. That was in 1953, so that was what was going on then.
My final plea to the Minister is that, if we need one good thing, apart from Holocaust lessons in schools, it is education. People do not understand the different religions, and we need some education so that people understand what the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions are. That is needed because the base of tolerance is knowledge and education.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, what special maiden speeches we have heard today—I welcome them all. I make special mention of the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Sealand, which is up the road from Buckley, so we are almost neighbours.
Some of my Academy of Ideas colleagues are organising a summer school in July entitled, “Upheaval: Why Politics Needs a New Language”, so I have been thinking a lot about disputes over meanings of words. In this House of late, we have had tortuous debates about the meaning of everything including extremism, hate speech and terrorism. God knows what far right means these days, and some cannot even define what a woman is.
One word that is increasingly becoming unmoored from its meaning is “Holocaust”. The Holocaust is now used as a free-floating catch-all to describe every violent geopolitical event or even general human evil. But my plea is that words matter. Very much in the theme of the spot-on speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, we must insist that the “Holocaust” word refers to a particular unique event in history. The Nazi death camps were not generic; they were part of what camp survivor Elie Wiesel explains:
“The Holocaust was conceived to annihilate the last Jew on the planet”.
Despite this, even Auschwitz—a death camp designed for the genocide of the Jews—has been turned into an all-purpose symbol of human cruelty. UNESCO describes the world heritage site as a universal
“symbol of humanity’s cruelty to its fellow human beings in the 20th century”.
In this way, the Holocaust is being ripped out of its historical context.
Meanwhile, celebrity social justice activist Naomi Klein said the quiet bit out loud in an essay in the Guardian last year. She wrote that we are entering a new intellectual era, one in which people are openly asking if the Holocaust should
“be seen exclusively as a Jewish catastrophe, or something more universal”.
Klein goes on to argue that perhaps the Holocaust was not
“a unique rupture in European history”
but rather
“a homecoming of earlier colonial genocides”.
This anti-western decolonising lexicon should be a red flag. Remember, in the decolonisation narrative, Israel has been identified as the epitome of the colonial settler state and Jews branded as the embodiment of white supremacy who deserve our ire and Hamas’s actions.
Klein also notes that increasingly, people are demanding greater recognition for other groups targeted for extermination by the Nazis, as though this was in any way on a par with the targeting of the whole Jewish race for extermination.
Beyond the Guardian’s comment pages, it seems that, because we live in an era which treats victimhood as a virtue and confers moral authority on it, a queue of identity groups is laying some claim to the Holocaust experience. There even seems to be resentment in that, when Jewish voices demand that we recognise that it was they who were central to the Holocaust, it is treated as though they have been driven by narcissism.
Gradually, this has expanded into demands that any reference to the Holocaust must also mention victims of other international atrocities, whether it is Rwanda, colonial era massacres or, inevitably, contemporary events in the Middle East. The Islamic Human Rights Commission wrote to UK town halls asking them to boycott this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day on the grounds that it is “morally unacceptable” that Gaza is not considered a genocide alongside the Holocaust.
The problem is that wrenching the Holocaust from its historically specific context, in which all are victims, relativises and almost normalises it and renders it banal. One of the most devastating consequences is that it makes it difficult for the public, especially new generations, to understand the true nature of this industrialised act of anti-Semitic barbarism, and to even remember at all that the Jews were the targets. The consequences of this trend, what Brendan O’Neill’s new book, After the Pogrom, calls the “dejudification of the Holocaust”, were more than evident on Holocaust Memorial Day this year. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, reminded us that a whole swathe of commentators and politicians forgot even to mention the Jews, listing almost everyone else who was killed, apart from the victims: the Jews.
I am not suggesting such errors of omission are conscious acts of erasure. It somehow feels even more chilling that they are more likely examples of unconscious bias and careless forgetting. The problem with relativising the specific Holocaust is that it makes a mockery of “lest we forget”—and we can expect a lot more forgetting if we are not careful.
In my mind, the consequences of this dejudification of the Holocaust is that increasing numbers, especially of young people, do not even recognise when the iconography and language of historic Nazi period Jew hatred rear their ugly heads today. It is always so jolting when I talk to students involved in BDS campaigns and critique their calls for boycotts of Israeli foodstuffs as they wrench them off supermarket shelves, or their demands to blacklist and censor entire countries’ academics, artists, scientists and sportspeople. When, looking at scenes of blood-like red paint daubed on shop fronts, I mention that it echoes 1930s Germany, they look at me blankly.
I rather nervously disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—I know that is nerve-wracking—about his Elon Musk arm gesture point. Whole swathes of young activists I know have been queuing up to denounce that as a Nazi salute, seeing far-right fascists around every corner. But when the same people see starving, emaciated Jewish hostages paraded, jeered at and humiliated by Jihadi baying mobs, or when they see political activists standing outside UK synagogues screaming “baby killers” at Jews—and those activists are my tribe—suddenly, they get a blind spot and they cannot see any Nazi salutes, symbolism or anything. They do not recognise the dejudification trends of the Holocaust past and their re-emergence today, and that is worrying.
So, how do we counter this fake news of a Jew-light Holocaust? We all reach for more education, but it bodes badly for the educational boasts that the new Holocaust memorial museum next door to Parliament is going to solve it all when, shamefully, our very own Parliament banned a Holocaust memorial exhibition from Westminster Hall because it was too political. I am not Jewish, and it is exactly more politics—political solidarity—that I think we need. It is why I was so pleased that grass-roots campaigners Our Fight UK took the Auschwitz Album, Yad Vashem’s street exhibition, to Parliament Square the weekend before Holocaust Memorial Day. Young people like Miles explained that their aim was to urgently
“inform the public what a”
real
“genocide looks like”,
and centre that on the murder of 6 million Jews.
Our urgent educational and political task must include exposing the rise of the newly powerful forces which are acting to exterminate the Jews now—“Never again” is now. Yes, I mean Hamas, Iran and the Houthis, but closer to home there are the radical Islamists and their numerous apologists, who, if we are honest, are influential in many political, cultural and media institutions. Too many of us look the other way, bite our lips, and will not name and shame. It is about time we spoke up, loudly.
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. I congratulate and thank the new Members of your Lordships’ House on their maiden speeches, all of which were deeply moving.
It somehow seems fitting that I should make my first speech since recent surgery to repair an undiagnosed femur fracture—on which I have been unwittingly, if somewhat painfully, hobbling for months—by speaking in this debate. It was, after all, my childhood Jewish refugee surgeon, Hanuš Weisl, who put me back together again more times than I care to remember. He lost almost all his family in the Holocaust. I think of him today and his family members, whom the wonderful Wiener Holocaust Library has established were murdered in Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. May they rest in peace and may their memory be a blessing.
Inevitably, all of us, as we have heard in this debate, turn our thoughts to our precious Holocaust survivors and to the world’s promise to them immediately after the war: “Never again”. How do we best honour them, our Holocaust survivors? I ask myself what “Never again” means. Does it, for example, simply mean no more concentration camps, crematoria or gas chambers—the physical structures which the Soviet troops stumbled upon in disbelief 80 years ago? Does it mean no more Nuremberg laws, to which Matthew Pennycook, in his powerful Statement of 23 January in the other place, implicitly referred in terms of the Nazi legislation discriminating against Jews and depriving them of rights and property? Mercifully, both are very unlikely in today’s world.
So I ask myself another question: how do we counter the challenge that remains? How do we perform the task of eradicating what the Minister described in his poignant opening remarks as man’s darkest impulses? Does that insidious and poisonous prejudice—which informed, by osmosis and within a remarkably short period of time, the culture underpinning the abomination that was the Holocaust—still exist?
We have already heard about the IHRA’s current theme, “In Plain Sight”. That phrase reminded me of something that the remarkable Holocaust survivor, Manfred Goldberg, whom the Minister mentioned, said to me about the promise “Never again”. Manfred told me that he had genuinely taken it for granted that the promise would be kept; he took it at face value at the time and for all time. I know that he is horrified that the hatred is back and in plain sight.
That brought home to me that it is not enough for me to say, “We will always remember you and the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust”. In an age of pernicious poison spread via social media, we need to acknowledge the racism still in plain sight on the streets of our capital most weekends. I refer of course to the demonstrations in central London, the first of which—the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign—unbelievably started organising while the 7 October pogrom was under way.
As well as being the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, 2025 is the 60th anniversary of Labour’s Race Relations Act receiving Royal Assent. As noble Lords will know, the Act made the promotion of hatred on the grounds of race, colour and ethnic or national origins an offence. The vile vitriol being visited on our Jewish communities clearly runs counter to the Act. This is racism, pure and simple, and it is happening in plain sight. I ask the Minister to say in her closing remarks whether she agrees that a fitting way both to mark the Act’s anniversary and to assure the survivors that “Never again” means exactly that would be for His Majesty’s Government to be even more clear that what is happening on our streets is racism and it will not be tolerated.
I take one common, supposedly innocent chant as an example. Now, I know what is meant by “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”—survivors certainly do. It means the destruction of Israel. It means the mass murder of Jews for being Jews, as we saw Hamas perpetrate on 7 October. It means a one-state, not a two-state, solution.
It is understandable that, in our desire to see peace in the Middle East, some want to believe that we are dealing with a peace-loving entity in Hamas. Yet if there is one organisation that has shown time and again that it is absolutely against peace and that it does not want a two-state solution, it is Hamas; rather, it wants to kill Jews and destroy the State of Israel. I refer noble Lords to Hamas’s statements of 24 October 2023, 30 January, 14 June and 24 October 2024. Its racist, genocidal hatred on grounds of race is in plain sight.
In conclusion, I want to take up the challenge set by my noble friend Lady Eaton in her excellent speech. I welcome the assurance given by the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, on Monday that Hamas can play no part in the future of Gaza’s governance. But can the Minister assure the House that its supporters here in the UK will not be allowed to reduce her and our sincere, renewed pledge of “Never again” to a meaningless mantra recited to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day? Surely we can all agree that that is the least our survivors and the millions of victims of the Holocaust deserve.
Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Lab)
My noble Lords, it is an absolute privilege to follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, and so many of the exceptional speeches we have heard today. I pay tribute to the maiden speeches of my noble friends Lord Katz, Lady Levitt and Lord Evans. They were powerful speeches all, and I hope noble Lords will agree that they will be influential and strong voices in this place.
As we have heard today, the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day was “For a better future”. Today I want to pay tribute to an organisation and the people within it who are seeking to create a better future for us all by educating our ever-changing world about the horrors of the past so that we do not replicate them in our futures.
Generation 2 Generation is a charity that enables descendants to tell their family Holocaust stories to a range of audiences across the UK. It currently has 41 speakers and is recruiting more. This academic year to date, the speakers have been booked to deliver their family stories to more than 390 audiences, reaching over 45,000 people. I am sure noble Lords will agree that that is impressive. Its key aim is to ensure that the Holocaust is not forgotten or denied, and to challenge racism and discrimination in all its forms.
Last Sunday, I was privileged to speak to some fabulous volunteers who wanted the stories of their families to be told and not to be forgotten, to be an education to a world where propagation, propaganda and misinformation is rife. So, let me tell your Lordships about Sabina Miller.
Sabina was born in 1922. She was Jewish, one of five, and she grew up in a warm, comfortable, loving and happy home in Warsaw. When the Nazis invaded in 1939, their home was taken from them and the family was forced to relocate to the ghetto. Some 400,000 people were crammed into just over one square mile. Hygiene was impossible, food was so, so scarce, and disease was rampant. Like many, Sabina contracted typhus. She was overwhelmed with the disease and was unconscious for 18 days. She remembers her mum standing at the end of her bed saying, “You’ve got to live. You will live. You must survive”. But when she awoke, both her mother and her father had died.
The situation in the ghetto was desperate, so Sabina covered her star of David and effected an extraordinary escape. She found illegal work alongside other Jewish girls on a farm—20 years old, digging potatoes, cleaning out stables and forced to sing anti-Semitic songs while they worked. While she was there, she received a postcard from her beloved sister Esther. It said, “I’m on a train. I don’t know where I’m being taken. If anyone finds this card, please send it”. Esther must have thrown that card from a train, and someone, in a simple act of kindness, delivered it. Those were the last words that Sabina’s sister would ever address to her. Shortly after, Sabina heard that the Sokołów and Węgrów ghettos where the remainder of her family had been taken, had been, to quote the Nazis, liquidated. Her siblings, her parents, her cousins, her aunts, her uncles, her grandparents—all gone. She said later, “The fact that people have families and I haven’t is something which hurts dreadfully”.
That was just the beginning of Sabina’s amazing story of survival. She spent the winter of 1942 living in an ice-cold, small ditch, warily begging for food. She changed her identity many times, was imprisoned, was interrogated on four separate occasions by the Gestapo and was eventually sent to a forced labour camp in Germany, where she remained until the war’s end. I cannot do justice to quite how unbelievable Sabina’s story is, and how unlikely it was that she would survive.
But survive she did, as did Lela Black, born in Salonika and sent to Auschwitz with her husband, her daughter and the rest of her extended Greek family. She was the only survivor. Some 50,000 Jews lived in Salonika before the war; approximately 96% of them were murdered in Nazi death camps.
I also want to mention Tony Chuwen, a Polish Jew who survived two concentration camps, hid in the German army and escaped to Finland, finally skiing for three days over the frozen sea to Sweden. Tony, while he was serving in the German army, at huge personal risk shared his meagre rations with the woman cleaning the barracks, a Jewish woman held in a prison camp. Years later, he attended a Holocaust event and heard that two women had survived their time in a Nazi camp by sharing scraps of food that one of them had been given by a German soldier.
Sandra, Gloria and Jacqueline are the descendants of these strong, extraordinary people. They volunteer for Generation to Generation. All three women told me how their relatives completely rejected any notion of bravery or resilience. Instead, these survivors asked, “Why me?” And they answered, “I was lucky”. Their stories are dotted with unexpected acts of kindness from Jews and non-Jews alike. And perhaps that was part of their luck.
We know, in this place, that anti-Semitism, racial hatred and genocidal violence are still with us. I hope—and I know that the volunteers from Generation to Generation also hope—that by sharing these stories from survivors, one day people will no longer be dehumanised, treated as other, humiliated, terrified or murdered because of their race, creed, nationality or religion. Let us remember the horror and the evils of the Holocaust, and let us not rest until justice is done for the victims in our world where genocide again threatens our humanity.
Lord Gold (Con)
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, this afternoon. I, too, would like to add my congratulations to the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans of Sealand, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, on their excellent contributions and maiden speeches. I have no doubt that each of them will make a wonderful contribution to this House. I would like to tell the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, that from my position I was able to see that her husband was smiling right through her presentation, with such pride. I have also come away thinking there is no such thing as a quiet breakfast in their household.
The noble Lord, Lord Khan, in opening this debate in such a powerful way, mentioned seeing Manfred Goldberg last week. I, too, had the privilege of listening to this wonderful, articulate 94 year-old, who vividly described his life in Germany pre-war and how, miraculously, he managed to survive the brutality and suffering imposed on him by the Nazi regime. Unfortunately, though, Manfred is now in the minority; very few Holocaust survivors remain alive to tell us of their experiences and give us first-hand testimony to the wickedness imposed upon them and millions of others.
Unless we continue to remember the Holocaust, and the wickedness shown to the Jewish minority and other minorities across Europe, there is no guarantee this will not happen again. The photograph of released hostage Eli Sharabi captured by Hamas on 7 October 2023, looking so gaunt and emaciated, reminded so many of us of the liberation of Belsen in 1945 and the horror discovered there. We say “Never again”, but the rise in anti-Semitism here—3,528 cases reported by CST in 2024—across Europe and in Australia, Canada and the USA, makes the risk of repetition a real possibility. Particularly worrying is the rise of anti-Semitism in our universities. Although much can be done to inform and educate those born after the war, especially our children—the Holocaust became part of the English national curriculum in 1991—hearing from survivors who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust is the best way of achieving this.
If this cannot be done face to face, giving our children the opportunity of hearing from survivors remotely is the next best thing. Therefore, it is commendable that at a recent Holocaust Educational Trust dinner, our present Prime Minister announced a national ambition that every schoolchild should hear the recorded testimony of a Holocaust survivor. Other initiatives include investing a further £2 million for Holocaust education, announced by the Chancellor in her Budget, and for the teaching of the Holocaust to continue to be compulsory in state schools and expanded to include academies. These initiatives were announced by the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, following a curriculum review.
All this is excellent, but to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to inform and educate today’s and tomorrow’s generations, the creation of Holocaust centres and memorials all around the world is so important. That is why I strongly support the building of a memorial and learning centre. While the Holocaust galleries at the Imperial War Museum are impressive, building a lasting memorial here, right in the centre of Westminster, next to our Parliament—which has always stood for liberty and freedom all around the world—is making a massive statement that we in the UK remember now and will not forget in the future the events of the 1930s and 1940s which resulted in 6 million Jews and other minorities being slaughtered.
Let the world know that in this wonderful United Kingdom, our home, we will always stand against tyranny and prejudice, wherever they raise their ugly heads. The 2015 Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission report recommended the building of a “striking and prominent” new national memorial, to be located in central London. There can be no more striking and prominent location than right here in Victoria Tower Gardens. Objections have been raised to this location. It is argued that there are security and traffic issues, that the atmosphere of Victoria Tower Gardens will be changed, that access may be restricted, that too many people might visit the memorial—3 million visitors a year are expected, and I hope that we increase on that number—and that there are alternative sites. Frankly, I do not believe that these objections stack up. Security and traffic issues will arise wherever the memorial is located, and we will sort them, as we always do. As for the atmosphere in the park, I know how sensitive those responsible for the memorial are to this issue and how they truly believe, as do I, that the park can be improved.
By going ahead with the building of the memorial and learning centre here, we are raising awareness of the Holocaust and acknowledging its importance, just as was achieved last month by the visit of His Majesty King Charles to Auschwitz on Holocaust Memorial Day, commemorating 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. No other memorial in any location in the world will be as prominent as this one—
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
The earlier part of the noble Lord’s speech was very moving and compelling, but a number of us have avoided burying this debate in a difficult discussion about the Victoria Tower Gardens proposal. Will he do the same and move on to another subject?
Lord Gold (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for that intervention. It so happens that I am through on this. I just wanted to add one last word, which is that we should be very proud of going ahead with this. I accept the noble Lord’s intervention and have nothing else to say except to pay tribute to everyone who has spoken here today. Every single speech has been most moving.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, I have been in your Lordships’ House for just over two years and this is the first time I have taken part in a Holocaust Memorial Day debate. It is a humbling experience to listen to all the moving speeches.
As we all know, the word “Holocaust” is most commonly associated with the Nazi genocide of Jews in Europe during the Second World War. It is one of the darkest and most horrific episodes in human history and highlights man’s inhumanity to man. Six million Jews were murdered—not 1 million or 2 million but 6 million. How could it happen? When I watch the grainy black and white footage of the concentration camps, it feels as though it happened yesterday—not in some distant medieval time, not 100 years ago, but yesterday and as if I could almost touch it. How could anyone conceive of the idea that they could eradicate an entire race of millions of people from the face of this earth and not be held accountable by future generations?
Where were the voices of reason, of right-minded men and women in Germany at that time? How could a nation that gave the world great literature, philosophy and classical music descend into such barbarity? It is said that when the news of what was happening in these concentration camps first reached London and Washington, the political establishment refused to believe it, thinking that it was simply not possible. Yet, due to some complex geopolitics, Germany was taken in by this evil, grotesque ideology, led by unscrupulous men, resulting in this mass murder on an industrial scale.
Learning about such horror should remind us all of the dangers of nationalism, xenophobia and the rhetoric of hate. Regardless of our political differences, it is our responsibility to oppose politicians and leaders who prey on people’s fears and promote hate. It is up to us to defend democracy, freedom, life and liberty. Over the centuries, mankind has committed countless horrendous mass murders, massacres and atrocities. Some have faced justice, others have not. The German playwright and anti-Nazi activist Bertolt Brecht wrote:
“When crimes begin to pile up, they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard”.
In 1948, the United Nations established the genocide convention, which remains the main international legal instrument for preventing genocides. Yet, tragically, this has not prevented further atrocities being committed. In July 1995, right in the heart of Europe, 8,000 men and boys were murdered in cold blood by Bosnian Serbs in what is known as the Srebrenica massacre. In July 1994, in Rwanda, over a million people were slaughtered. Back in 1995, the Turkish army systematically murdered well over a million Armenians—an event widely regarded as genocide.
In 1968, American troops slaughtered hundreds of unarmed civilians in a village in Vietnam and gang-raped women and girls in what became known as the My Lai massacre. The only man convicted of this crime, William Calley, was later pardoned by President Nixon, and that speaks volumes about our present-day justice system.
In November 1984, after the assassination of the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, we witnessed the planned massacre of many thousands of innocent Sikh men, women and children in Delhi. Forty years have passed yet justice remains elusive.
In India, at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on 13 April 1919, during the British Raj, General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to open fire on an unarmed crowd of over 20,000 people, killing hundreds. The British historian Nigel Collett, in his biography of General Dyer, titled The Butcher of Amritsar, claimed that over 800 men, women and children were mown down in just 10 minutes, with hundreds more dying from their wounds.
I could go on with many more examples, as history is full of such atrocities and massacres. Above all, though, the Holocaust is the worst of them all. It happened.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sahota, and to wind up from these Benches a debate in your Lordships’ House. Sometimes that is also a privilege, and today clearly falls into the latter category.
It has, of course, been a pleasure to listen to the many fine speeches from all parts of the House. I hope I will be forgiven if I single out right at the start the three impressive maiden speeches that we have heard—those of the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans of Sealand, and the diamond-studded speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, who, not for the first and perhaps not for the last time, left the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, following in her wake. I must say in all seriousness that I have heard the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, speak many times in this Chamber but, even by his standards, today’s speech was outstanding and extremely moving. The fact that the three maiden speakers chose a non-party-political topic for their speeches means that I can congratulate them even more fulsomely than is usual. I know I speak for everyone here when I say we are looking forward to their many contributions in future years.
In this debate, as the annunciators remind us, we are asked to “take note of” Holocaust Memorial Day. Although that is the traditional form of the question for such debates in your Lordships’ House, I suggest that a debate asking us to take note is particularly appropriate for this topic. The Holocaust happened because people did not take note. They did not take note of what was being said on their streets, of what was being decided in their Parliament or when extremists marched through their streets, shops were boycotted and Jews were discriminated against in public services, in professions and in the public square. They simply did not take note. As my noble friend Lord Balfe said, they blanked themselves out.
The Holocaust did not happen overnight, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield reminded us. It was planned, and the plans were made public. It was actually founded on and in law. One of the overlooked casualties of the Holocaust, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, remarked, was law and justice. The murders in the gas chambers were preceded by concentration camps, the concentration camps by ghettos and the ghettos by discrimination, and that discrimination was rooted in law and upheld by the German courts, their lawyers and, yes, their judges. The fact that it did not happen overnight prompts us to ask: why did people not take note? Where were the protests?
Like others, I miss the presence of the late Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, especially on days like this. As he pointed out, there were no protests when, on one day in 1933, all Jewish lawyers in Germany came to their offices and cleared their desks—under compulsion of law, let us remember—nor was there a protest when doctors had to do the same, and then all the other professions. There was simply silence, indifference. No one took note. Nor was there any protest in Austria when, on one day in 1938, one-sixth of Vienna’s population, the Jews, were banned from owning property. That was one-sixth of a city, but there was not a single protest.
If Holocaust Memorial Day is to mean anything, it must encourage us to speak out and call out injustice. We have a duty to take note. I suggest that, as part of that duty to take note, we should consider Holocaust Memorial Day, which is now a quarter of a century old, and pay tribute to the work of many organisations. This includes the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust, so ably led by Karen Pollock, which work so hard to commemorate and educate. I also commend respectfully the work done by my noble friend Lord Pickles in this area.
Let me make three points. First, let us be clear about the unambiguous aim of the Holocaust. It was the systematic and industrial murder of Jews with the aim that there would be no Jews left in the world. The Holocaust was put into effect by means of laws which explicitly referenced Jews and made special provision for them. The Nazis had no trouble using the word Jews. They knew who their victims were and, just as importantly, why they were the victims. The Jews were to be murdered simply and only because they were Jews.
So, in common with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, I ask: why do so many organisations seem to find it so difficult to use the words Jews or Jewish when commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day? The Royal Free Hospital referenced
“millions of people killed during the Holocaust”—
no mention of Jews. Barnet Council referenced the “victims of the Holocaust”—no mention of Jews. Cambridge City Council is another entity for which the word Jews appears to have become verboten. This is not a party-political point, so let me single out for praise Islington Council, with its solid Labour majority, which referred to
“the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust”.
If Islington Council can do it, so can everybody else.
Of course we can, should, will and must remember other victims and why they were victims—because they were gay, or Roma, or had mental or physical disabilities—but the overwhelming majority of the victims of the Holocaust were Jews because they were Jews, and they deserve to be remembered as Jews. We do not remember the victims of the Holocaust by denying who the victims were or why they were the victims.
Secondly, let us be clear about the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Just as we do not remember the victims by denying why they were victims, we do not commemorate the victims by lumping the Holocaust together with other genocides and tragedies. We must not globalise the Holocaust, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, put it. There is space in the human heart for all victims. To recognise the uniqueness of that appalling enterprise the Holocaust in terms of its numbers, its industrialised systems of murder, and its use of entire state apparatus for one purpose only—to rid the world of Jews—is not to denigrate, demean or ignore other genocides, whether in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, or anywhere else, a point powerfully made by the noble Lord, Lord Parekh. We do not remember the victims of the Holocaust by denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust.
Thirdly, we certainly do not remember the victims by denying that there was a genocide at all or by using the murdered Jews of the Holocaust in some perverted form of inverted history to attack living Jews. We are used to the ramblings of Holocaust deniers and those who refuse to confront the reality of the Nazi genocide and we rightly ignore them, but denial comes in many forms. To give the most egregious example, the President of Ireland, in his speech at a national Holocaust commemoration event, began by saying that the Holocaust started with the “manipulation of language” and then, astonishingly, referred to the Holocaust an as “attempted genocide”, twice. If you talk about an attempted genocide, you are denying that it was a genocide.
The President of Ireland also used his speech—at a national commemoration event for the Holocaust, let us remember—to deliver his views on Israel and Gaza. I will not trouble the House with what he said, as it does not merit repetition in Hansard—or, frankly, anywhere else. His words were so incendiary that Irish Jews who protested the president’s use—or, I should say, misuse—of that sacred platform were forcibly removed from the venue. Jews being manhandled out of a Holocaust commemoration event; how could that happen? It happens because there are too many people who are only too willing to attend and speak at events commemorating dead Jews but who are nowhere to be seen when it comes to protecting living Jews.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester was absolutely right when he reminded us that the hatred of Jews did not begin in Nazi Germany in 1933. My noble friend Lady Eaton was equally right to remind us that the need to protect Jews did not end in 1945. For all the talk of a Jewish diaspora, living Jews today —the Jewish community—are overwhelmingly based in two locations only: North America and Israel. The former, at least for the moment, can look after itself, but the latter needs and deserves our support. It is not just that Israel was born in the shadow of the Holocaust; it is that if there had been an Israel, there would not have been a Holocaust. It really is that simple.
When the first Zionist Congress met in 1897, no one then knew which of the various strategies for the survival of the Jewish people would prove successful. Would it be to embrace communism or socialist Bundism? Would it be to advocate for western assimilationism, or even to join forces with Arab nationalism? They all had their supporters, but which was the was the right path? Today, we know the answer to that question. The Holocaust gave its final, bloody say. The answer of history was found in the piled bodies and heaps of ashes at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and elsewhere.
As in 1945, so also in 2025: the simple fact is that Israel and Zionism, which is no more and no less than the right to Jewish self-determination, is essential for the future of the Jewish people as a nation. We do not have to like modern Israel any more than we like or do not like modern Greece. We can agree or disagree with its Government, its policies and its actions. However, we cannot commemorate Jews, who were victims in the Holocaust because they could not defend themselves, if we deny Jews today, whether individually or collectively, the right and the means to defend themselves.
Where others did not take note, we will take note and we will do more. The noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, asked what is meant by “Never again”. I will answer that large question with a very short answer, building upon a point made by my noble friend Lord Gold. It means that we will not stand by silently at a time when pictures of starved and emaciated Jews—who have been starved and are emaciated only because they are Jews—which we saw as black and white pictures in our history books, have reappeared as colour images of released Israeli hostages on last night’s TV news.
In accordance with Jewish tradition, I will not end these remarks on a sad note. Let me end by congratulating the usual channels—the powers that be, if I can borrow William Tyndale’s magnificent phrase—for arranging this debate today. Holocaust Memorial Day was a few weeks ago, but today is a very appropriate day for this debate. That is because today is a Jewish festival known as Tu Bishvat, celebrated each year on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat. It is one of the four new years in the Jewish calendar—the monarch may have two birthdays but we have four new years. Each serves a different purpose: Rosh Hashanah in the autumn begins the Jewish new year for many purposes, but Tu Bishvat was the date for calculating the agricultural cycle for the purpose of biblical tithes. In modern times, it has become a celebration of ecological awareness, when many trees are planted. It is often known as the “new year for trees”.
On Holocaust Memorial Day, we commemorate the many Jewish communities who were uprooted, and the millions of individuals—men, women and all too many children—who were cut down. Family trees, such as mine, are shorn of many branches because they were consumed in the fire and the horror of the Holocaust. But in the spirit of Tu Bishvat, we will today pledge ourselves not only to take note of the destruction wrought by the Holocaust but to plant afresh, to nurture new growth and to help those communities, both in Israel and throughout the diaspora, to blossom and flourish again. Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must loudly and confidently proclaim: “Am Yisrael Chai”—the people of Israel lives.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, we have had a powerful and moving debate. This debate, as ever, is your Lordships’ House at its best, and it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, who delivered an incredible speech. I wish him, and the trees, chag sameach.
Before I move on to the substantive part of my speech, I start by offering a huge mazeltov to my noble friends who have made such wonderful maiden speeches. There might be a little Yiddish and Hebrew in my speech today—good luck, Hansard.
I start with my good and noble friend Lord Katz, the chair of the JLM, who was its chair when I was its parliamentary chair. I think it would be fair to say that he was my partner in crime and my friend, as we fought for the heart and soul of our party. It was a rollercoaster, but, because of him and many Members of your Lordships’ House, we won. Today, I know that Chaim and Solomon would have been so proud to see him deliver his maiden speech.
I will follow, I think, by talking about my noble friend Lady Levitt, whose speech was spectacular. I love the idea of her as a 14 year-old getting expelled. I too was always naughty, but I was too scared of my teachers to be that naughty. She was quite clear about why she is here and about the rule of law—but I think all Members of your Lordships’ House will remember the jewellery. I do not know how the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, will ever match that with additional gifts to his wife. I am quite clear that, while he may be lucky to have her, we on our Benches are delighted to have her. That was an extraordinary and incredible speech.
I turn to the third maiden of today, from my noble friend Lord Evans of Sealand. We did not quite celebrate his role in defeating the evil of the politics of Jeremy Corbyn. My noble friend was the man who helped rescue my party from the brink and who suspended Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party. I will always be grateful for the work that he did. He delivered on the now Prime Minister’s commitment to rip out anti-Semitism from the Labour Party by its roots. Importantly for this side of the House, he was general secretary of my party when we won the general election—and for that we are grateful.
It is an honour to close this debate, which was so well opened by my noble friend Lord Khan. This House is very special, and the fact that this debate, of all debates, is being opened by a practising Muslim and closed by a practising Jew shows just how far our society has come.
As we have heard, this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is an especially poignant occasion: the last major anniversary when we can expect to have significant numbers of Holocaust survivors able to share their testimony. It was attended by His Majesty the King, a symbol, if ever there were one, to the Jewish community and the world of the importance of this date and the place that the Holocaust shares in our collective history. This is the last major anniversary where it is the words of survivors, not ours, that touch our hearts.
That is why, as ever, I am in awe of my noble friend Lord Dubs, who has once again reminded us of his modesty. It may have been just a train that he got on, but we are so grateful that he did and that his parents were brave enough to put him on it. As he reminded us, Nicky Winton gave us a blessing: he gave us my noble friend, an inspirational colleague. Nicky Winton also provided us with the clearest example of how one person truly can change the world.
It has been a privilege to hear so many noble Lords share their personal experiences and reflections during this debate. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield reminded us, for many of us, this is now our responsibility. If the words “never again” are to be made real, the onus is on us and on every generation going forward to tell the stories of our families. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, of her family’s heartbreaking stories. For me, her story will always be about “survival by silverware”; I will never forget it.
The personal testimony of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, about his family reminded us of the impact of the Holocaust on those who survived, and the impact of survivor guilt. This theme was also touched on by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles.
It is also incredibly important on days like today to remember those who liberated us, because they too had to live with what they saw. I thank my noble friend Lady Ramsey not just for her speech but for highlighting the role her father played in the liberation.
My story, too, is a personal one. When I spoke in this debate last year, I spoke about my family arriving in the UK in the 1890s, having fled the pogroms of Tsarist Russia. As far as we know, not one of those who chose to remain in the shtetl survived the Shoah. I am proud to be British, but I also realise how lucky I am to be British. For my family, anti-Jewish hatred is not an academic exercise; it is formative to my understanding of my place in the world. The Shoah helped shape not just my existence, but my world view. My family knows only too well, as do the families of many in your Lordships’ House, where hate can lead and the importance of security and freedom—and the requirement, the duty, to fight for the core human rights we take for granted at our peril. That powerful point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Neuberger.
We are here today to remember those who were murdered because of who they were, not what they did. They were apparently easy targets for ideologues and dictators who sought to gain and abuse power by scapegoating communities, amplifying tropes and embracing hate and fear over hope, building on thousands of years of hatred towards my community. As my noble friend Lord Parekh reminded us, they also used the tools of the state to murder Jews.
At a time when my community and many others are once again scared, I want to find some hope in this horror—some light in the darkness. As we do this, I want to thank the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, for his work. His dedication to Holocaust memorial and the fight against anti-Semitism, both here and across the globe, are not just recognised but celebrated. I, for one, am grateful for his service. He is one of the lights in the darkness.
On Holocaust Memorial Day, people across the world came together and lit candles to remember the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust and the hundreds of thousands of others killed for being gay, disabled, Roma and Sinti, black, trade unionist, a Jehovah’s Witness—anyone considered a threat to the Aryan people. As the noble Lord, Lord Weir of Ballyholme, reminded us, behind each of the statistics and the people we talk about there was a person, a family and a story. I want to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that this Government are clear on the unique evil that the Holocaust was and the specific, devastating impact on the Jewish community. In 1933, there were nine and a half million Jews living in Europe; in 1945, there were not.
Language matters, but so do symbols. When we talk about lighting the darkness, the candle’s flame represents the human soul and serves as a reminder of the frailty and beauty of life. As we remember the appalling acts of the Holocaust, it has become so much more than that. This frailty and beauty are ever present at the children’s memorial in Yad Vashem, which represents one and a half million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust. In the underground chamber, the flame of a single candle is reflected by countless mirrors, while the names, ages and home towns of children who were murdered are read out in Hebrew, English and Yiddish. Each reflection reminds us of a life not lived; a child who was murdered before they could make a mark on the world; a family that was never going to grow. The wrenching power of this sacred memorial to what was lost, for me, at least, allows us to see the totality of the Shoah—the true scale of the loss. I know that if I were to visit it a thousand times, each time my heart would break.
Yad Vashem allows us to see the depravity to which man can sink when we begin to see our fellow human beings as somehow less than us, less worthy of dignity and of life. We see how evil can triumph when good people do nothing; how silence led to one of the most appalling crimes in history; how people were targeted for who they were, how they prayed or who they loved. But Yad Vashem is more than just a memorial and museum to remind us of man’s capacity for evil: it also provides us with hope—the stories of the righteous among the nations who refused to be bystanders. It is here that we need to find our hope: a reminder that we are not impotent; that we can all stand up against the politics of hatred and that our actions can change someone’s world, can be a light in the darkness.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, reminded us, listening to first-hand witness is vital and provides a light in the darkness, a source of hope and inspiration. At a special ceremony held in Parliament to mark Holocaust Memorial Day earlier this year, we heard the testimony of Alfred Garwood, someone I had not heard before. He was born in a Nazi ghetto in 1942, imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen and liberated by the Red Army when he was being moved to another camp, all before his third birthday. He survived only because his father had been born in London and was considered valuable to the Nazis. Alfred spent the rest of his childhood in Britain and grew up in the centre of a community of Holocaust survivors. He has devoted his life to understanding the psychological impact of trauma related to the genocide. His words will stay with me for ever: “If you are consumed by hate, the only people you successfully hurt is yourself”. He is a light in the darkness.
As many Members of your Lordships’ House have said, we cannot ignore what is in front of us, and what is in front of us, as reported by the CST this week, is shocking levels of anti-Semitism on our streets, which are scarring our towns and cities. The report released by CST yesterday recorded 3,528 anti-Semitic incidents in 2024. There are only 250,000 Jews in the UK. There will not be a Jewish family who was not touched by an anti-Semitic incident in the last year. Ten are being reported every day. This is the second highest number on record, surpassed only by the appalling figures of 2023, when there were 4,296 incidents, the majority of which followed the pogroms of 7 October. As my community grieved about events abroad, where they were worried about their families in Israel, they were being targeted at home. Their only crime was to be Jewish. This is not acceptable in 21st-century Britain.
These rising numbers are a wake-up call for us all. How can it be that one of the smallest minority communities in the UK is facing such hatred? While the number of incidents is high, we must not lose sight of the fact that not all hate crimes are reported. How many Members of your Lordships’ House who are regularly targets of the racists report every incident? Even I do not. My life has to be more than their hatred, and sometimes I do not want to pick up the phone and say what happened to me in the street. But we must appreciate the scale of that challenge.
However, while it is easy to be disheartened, that is not the approach I am prepared to take. The work of the CST, the Anti-Semitism Policy Trust, the Holocaust Education Trust, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Association of Jewish Refugees ensures that they are all lights in the darkness; as is Generation 2 Generation, so strongly promoted by my noble friend Lady Brown of Silverton. She gave such powerful testimony, and I am delighted that she is working with them. All the groups and organisations that are working together demonstrate that we are never powerless in the face of hatred.
I, for one, am very aware that I owe my safety and security to the dedicated team of professional staff and volunteers at the CST, who have protected me when I have been in the middle of a racist storm. CST, HET, HMDT and AJR are out there every day, actively tackling anti-Jewish hatred, educating about the dangers of where hatred can lead and remembering that crime of crimes, the Holocaust. Their work also shows that we all have choices. We can choose to be the light; we can call out those who hide in dark places. We have the choice to ignore what happens to others or to act on behalf of others. It is much easier when someone stands in front of you if you are targeted than having to fight for yourself.
This is our obligation: not simply to bear witness but to act, as the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, made clear. What does this mean today? It means confronting bigotry and hatred in all its forms. It has no place in the classrooms of children, on the campuses of our universities, in our hospitals or in the corridors of power. Nor does it have any place on the streets of the United Kingdom.
We must never forget that our children are not born to hate; they are taught to hate. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Lord, Lord Gold, made clear, they can also be taught about love and history.
This year, Holocaust Memorial Day has reminded us that our freedoms are all too fragile. There is a responsibility on all of us to do everything we can to protect and cherish them. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, reminded us of both the international context and the scale of anti-Semitism. The noble Lord, Lord Sahota, spoke movingly about the banality of evil and how many other acts of violence there have been in our society.
Today, we reflect on where we are, where we were and where we are going. I will give the final word to a Holocaust survivor, the late Sir Ben Helfgott, who said:
“My Holocaust experiences may have hardened me, made me more realistic about human nature, but I was repelled by the evil I witnessed. I despaired, but I did not let cruelty and injustice break my spirit. I refused to poison my life with revenge and hatred for hatred is corrosive. Instead I was left with a dream—to live in a world of understanding, compassion, fraternity and love for my fellow man”.
Bank Closures: Impact on Rural Communities
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the number of bank closures in the past decade and the impact on people in rural communities.
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who are taking part in this short debate and look forward to listening to each of the contributions that they will bring. While this debate has its focus on diverse rural communities, I know that the issue before us is not solely rural.
Last month, Lloyds Banking Group announced that it will be close 136 bank branches across the country. The Tyne valley in Northumberland will see another three branches close their doors—two in Hexham and one in Prudhoe—meaning that customers in Hexham will need to travel over 15 miles to Consett to visit their nearest Lloyds branch.
Lloyds’ announcement comes after a decade of decline in the number of high street banks. Figures from Which? show that 6,266 bank branches have closed across the UK over the past 10 years, representing 63% of branches open at the start of 2015. If bank branches continue closing at such a rate, we face living in a society where those unable to bank digitally are financially excluded.
However, it is not the closure of banks that is at the heart of this issue; it is the stripping away of essential services without adequate alternative provision. With the number of customer transactions at the Lloyds branch in Prudhoe having almost halved in the last five years, its closure is understandable. Online banking is indeed far more convenient for many, but where does that leave those who rely on the services that in-person banking provides, those living in rural areas whose broadband is unreliable, those who struggle to understand online systems and fear the risk of fraud, those on low incomes who rely on cash to manage their budget, and those in need of advice to set up a mortgage or business for whom a phone call cannot compare?
While the rise of online banking has increased the ease of managing money for many, the support that face-to-face services provide continues to be vital, especially to some of the most vulnerable people. An Age UK survey reveals that the use of online banking is as low as 14% among the 85-plus age group. A complete transition to digital banking risks financially excluding many older people, making it harder for them to manage their money and fully participate in society.
The closure of banks also reflects the wider issue of declining high street services. We should not underestimate the contribution of such services to fostering a sense of connection in diverse communities—this is not, as I said, solely an issue of rurality—in the context of a culture with increasing isolation and loneliness.
Access to cash also remains essential, with 5 million people continuing to use it every day. The closure of local banks puts pressure on small rural businesses, some of which experience a lower footfall because of less access to cash in their area. Many owners are forced to travel further distances to deposit cash and carry out their banking, leading to reduced opening hours. There are also those with special needs, for whom using banking apps is not an option.
I welcome the new duty that the Financial Conduct Authority has placed on banks to assess the impact that the closure of a branch will have on access to cash in the area and to ensure that adequate services are implemented ahead of closure. However, cash assessments address only part of the issue. Those regulations do not protect vital face-to-face services that people rely on. The assessment of cash access in Prudhoe completed by LINK last month deemed that there are already cash access facilities within a mile radius of the Lloyds branch that will close this coming May. It therefore concluded that no further services, such as a banking hub, are needed in Prudhoe. The assessment does not, however, consider the impact on access to face-to-face services within the community as they lose the town’s one remaining physical bank branch.
I fully support the introduction and rollout of banking hubs, enabling communities to access in person the fundamental function of banks from a range of providers where bank branches are scarce. I praise the Government for their commitment to open 350 hubs over the next five years and particularly the recent announcement of plans to open 10 new hubs, including in Alnwick and Amble in Northumberland and in Whitley Bay in north Tyneside. Nevertheless, I remain concerned about the pace of the rollout. According to Cash Access UK, the provider of banking hubs, it takes approximately 12 months to open a hub, as it must secure a suitable property and appoint operators and community bankers. What steps are the Government taking to speed up the rollout of banking hubs in light of increasing bank closures, and what certainty do they have that the FCA will fulfil its duty of ensuring that no community is left with a gap between the closure of a bank and the opening of a banking hub?
Considering the current rate of bank closures and recent announcements from Lloyds, I am concerned that 350 hubs will not be enough to fill the gap in services that the rapidly closing bank branches are leaving. Are the Government open to increasing this target to meet the needs of diverse communities?
Finally, while banking hubs are essential in providing face-to-face services, I also believe that they have a key role to play in bridging the digital divide. Banking hubs are well placed to offer training and support to those who do not find it easy to manage their finances online and to equip them with the digital skills to do so. What steps are the Government taking to encourage banking hubs to provide training to enable people to manage their finances online and to promote digital inclusion and thereby reduce digital poverty?
Online banking is an innovative tool to manage our personal finances, but it should not come at the expense of removing essential services from rural communities, nor the digital and financial exclusion of some of the most vulnerable people in society. I urge the Government to ensure that no one is left behind and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate deserves our congratulations and thanks for raising this topic, which is crucial to the strength of communities throughout the country and therefore to the country itself. She is not only reverend, she is right.
I declare my interest as a member of the Horizon compensation advisory board. The relevance of that, which will come as no surprise to your Lordships, is that I want to talk about the Post Office.
I believe in the Post Office. Despite all it has done, despite the mayhem and trauma that it has inflicted on sub-postmasters throughout the country and despite the appalling scandal of the Horizon saga, the Post Office is essential to communities up and down the country. I will go so far as to say that I love the Post Office—not because of its management, obviously, nor because of its structure or behaviour, but because of the relationships that sub-postmasters have with their communities. It was those relationships that made the Post Office brand the most trusted brand in the country. Sub-postmasters know their communities: they help pensioners with any issues they might have, they keep an eye out for people who have not been around recently and who therefore might need help, and they hold the community together. They lead the community. That is one of the reasons it was so disgraceful of the Post Office management to use and abuse that most trusted brand in the country to prosecute and persecute the people who had generated that trust.
This debate, for which I again thank the right reverend Prelate, gives me an opportunity to say that the Post Office may form the basis of a wide-ranging solution to the problems that she rightly sets out. The UK’s banking network has worse than halved since 2015. The LINK network says that there are about 3,000 bank branches left. The Minister for Small Businesses, speaking in another place last week, said that we are below 5,000. Either way, it is not enough.
Age UK has briefed your Lordships on how this hits the elderly particularly hard. The elderly may be less digitally adroit than younger people, they may need to be protected from online scams, they may rely more on cash and they may need face-to-face advice. The solution to these issues is the Post Office. The Government have the ambition of banking hubs and they are rolling out 350 of them, over 100 of which are already up and running. That is excellent, but it is not ambitious enough.
Hubs are the key to holding communities together. Those hubs could—and in my opinion should—include not just banking but social interaction. They could include that essential ingredient of all civilised life: coffee, and even cake. Over the coffee and cake, people could meet to discuss what to do if they feel digitally excluded. They could bring their laptops in and work out how to upgrade them and how to protect themselves from scams. They could access all manner of government services, local and national, and possibly even other services, including driving licences and powers of attorney. They could work out how to deal with planning applications and they could buy things—and not just coffee and cake. Perhaps there could be a health centre hub—so they could be told they were drinking too much coffee. All of this would be not just a major step forward in relation to convenience but good for the resilience of the country. Resilience is the new black.
A couple of years ago, I chaired a Select Committee which examined risk planning and management. We found that the key to dealing with risk is general resilience and that resilience is most in evidence when it is bolstered and disseminated by strong communities. If the Post Office is about anything, it is about communities
The last thing the Government should be doing, as sadly happened in November, is closing post offices. As banks close their branches, we need more post offices, not fewer. We need bigger post offices, with the wonderful sub-postmasters getting back to their rightful role as leaders and enablers of their strong communities.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot and to have the opportunity to congratulate him again on being recognised as Parliamentarian of the Year for all the work that he did to represent the postmistresses and postmasters through that terrible period: one of the darkest periods in this country’s legal history.
I also congratulate and thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle for securing such an important debate. I declare my technology and financial services interests, not least as adviser to Ecospend and Trustly.
I will concentrate on connectivity, cash and community. Connectivity is the essence of being human: how we relate and how we connect with one another in real time, in the physical world. With bank branches retreating from our high streets, gaining financial services is becoming vanishingly impossible in the real world.
So, what is the solution for people who want to do their daily banking, not just for individuals but for micro and small businesses as well? The stats tell us that, whichever one chooses, you can be, in a certain percentage, a mile or three miles away from your nearest branch. But when one looks at other elements of connectivity, that is as good as being 300 miles away if you cannot get there.
I, too, will focus on the key role I believe the Post Office can play to bring forward solutions in this space. It is a brand that has been in our communities and our society for over half a millennium. There has to be a future for such a brand to deliver on the financial, digital inclusion and community cohesion challenges to connectivity.
What happens if people find themselves without a banking branch or easy access to a post office? We are told, “You can go online”. But what if you cannot? It might not be accessible or, indeed, you may not want to—and there are many reasons for that, not least the fact that we are in the midst of a fraud epidemic. The three largest economies on planet earth are, first, the United States of America, secondly, China, and thirdly, economic crime and fraud. Can the Minister say whether the Government understand why people may not choose to go online? What are they doing further to help people online and in particular, when they are in that online world, with something as personal and serious as finance?
I turn to connectivity. What happens if you have no bank branch, and the broadband and mobile coverage isn’t all that in your area? That is especially the case in rural communities, but there are also some city not-spots. You can be as financially savvy and digitally smart as you want, and you can have the best device, but with no broadband or mobile connectivity that payment will not be made. What is the Government’s plan to look at all these elements of connectivity, to enable everybody to have the financial and digital inclusion not only that they deserve and need but that is vital if the Government are to deliver on levelling up and their growth agenda? If the bank branch has gone and there is no bus and no broadband, it is difficult to see financial and digital inclusion.
A lot of good work has happened around access to cash. What is the Government’s medium-term commitment to enabling access to cash and to the very service that underpins cash and the ease of accessing it in communities across our country? Can the Minister say whether there is a continuing commitment to free access to cash at all ATMs across the country?
What is the Government’s plan for cash acceptance? To put it in terms: what currency does cash have if there is no place to spend it? As my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot said, cash is such a key underpinning for resilience, including financial resilience for individuals who do not want to go online or who want to run their household or business with cash for reasons of control. Similarly, for the broader economy, what is the Government’s view on the resilience of continuing the cash system, if and when things go wrong in the digital space?
Finally, what are the Government’s plans for further innovating around access to, and acceptance of, cash? I was fortunate to bring an amendment to the Bill that became the Financial Services Act 2021, which enabled cashback without the need for a purchase. What is the measure of its success? Most of the transactions that have occurred as a result of that service are for £20 and under, so it is really delivering financial inclusion.
The third “c” is the most important: community. Yes, we can build digital communities, and they can be incredibly effective, but ultimately it is important how and where we meet and come together, and how we relate in the physical space—the human world. Some may say “IRL”, but it is that community space where so much human potential—and economic, social and psychological good—can get done.
I have a quartet of final questions for the Minister. How many hubs should be established by the end of this year? I agree that we could be more ambitious. Will the Minister consider setting an ambitious target of 1,000 hubs by the end of this Parliament? It would take at least 2,000 hubs to properly cover the branches that have disappeared—and continue to disappear. What are the Government’s thoughts on increasing business banking services within these hubs? For people who run small and micro-businesses, this could be a lifeline. They do not have time to get into a vehicle and go five miles to another town, they want to run their businesses. What are the plans for increasing business banking facilities at the hubs?
While we are on the issue of financial inclusion, I ask the Minister: what are the Government’s views on flat-screen card payment devices? These are completely inaccessible for blind people and many other people. The worst thing about it is that it is taking away something which was previously accessible—the card payment machine, which had buttons on—and enabled independent payments. Now, because of that technological change, they are completely inaccessible. Will the Government consider looking at this and giving their view on whether this breaches equalities legislation?
Financial and digital inclusion often walk hand in hand. It is the Government’s role—it is all of our role—to play a part in bringing them about. The social, human and community possibilities that come as a result are what makes it worth being in a country such as the United Kingdom. I look forward to the Minister’s response. Ultimately, it is an issue for rural communities. It is an issue for all communities because, at its heart, finance is how we enable possibilities. That is the purpose: individual possibilities, business possibilities and community possibilities. I thank the right reverend Prelate again for giving us the opportunity to discuss these matters this evening.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, I join in the thanks to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle for obtaining this debate. It may be a short debate but, as others have said, it is an exceedingly important one. If it was not the last debate before recess, there would probably be a much bigger attendance but the range of comments would be very much the same. This is an area where the House has tended to be of one voice in its general concerns. That has not always penetrated through to the regulators or the banking community.
The right reverend Prelate described very accurately that the whole banking landscape has changed beyond recognition in the last five years. I accept the number of about 3,000 branches remaining open in the UK. More of them are closing on almost a daily basis. That is compared with about 10,000 10 years ago and over 20,000 in the late 1980s.
We can all accept that the rapid transition to digital banking and a broadly cashless way of life suits a lot of people. However, there are an increasing number of people and communities—especially people with disabilities, older people and particularly people in rural areas—who are being left behind because their basic banking needs are barely being met by the system as it is today. Rural Northern Ireland is an extreme example of an area of concern. Some areas of the UK can now very accurately be described as “banking deserts”, with long trips to physical branches and often not even a reasonable bus route for someone who does not have a car.
The FCA has produced new guidance on bank closures: it is very cash-focused. Is the Minister able to comment on whether she thinks it is adequate? Can she tell us whether sanctions have been applied to banks which seek to evade the intent of that guidance?
It is not just individuals who are affected. As other speakers have said, many small businesses, especially independent shops, have been very adversely impacted, and bank closures have added to that growing sense of desolation in many high streets. Surveys show that many customers feel they are being forced into a new way of banking which they find far less convenient and secure. In addition, customers whose local branch has been shut down not only are travelling long distances if they want to talk to someone about their money but feel that that whole closure process is happening without proper engagement with them, and certainly without the consent of many vulnerable groups and communities. It has simply been done to them and they feel powerless. It would be naive not to recognise that the banks are saving some £2.5 billion annually with these changes, so they are very motivated to close bank branches and move away from providing that face-to-face activity. Some 5 million people still look on cash as a necessity, and 5% have no bank account.
Far too often, the debate is framed solely around access to cash. That really fails to recognise that some people want and need face-to-face banking without having to make a long journey. It might be something such as registering a death, probate, powers of attorney, support with fraudulent activity, larger payments and transfers, and help on mortgages and loans. As the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, pointed out, small businesses often find that face-to-face discussion is necessary for them to have the confidence to begin to branch out and acquire the knowledge that they need to borrow and then to grow, so it is very much part of the Government’s economic agenda.
I am concerned that banking hubs, along with post offices, are being positioned as the key solution. We on these Benches have always supported shared banking hubs, provided that they provide a good range of basic banking services, including the presence of community bankers from all the main banks on a regular and frequent basis. When the Government have the next financial services Bill, will they amend the legislation to reflect that much broader need? What measures are the Treasury and, indeed, the regulator taking to make sure that those additional banking services are very much the norm and well represented within banking hubs? I join the noble Lords, Lord Holmes and Lord Arbuthnot, in saying that the rollout has been quite glacial and that there is a serious lack of ambition in 350 banking hubs; I would assess that double, perhaps even treble that number is necessary. The Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Emma Reynolds, says that she is
“championing sufficient access for all as a priority”.
Can the Minister tell us what “sufficient” means?
As the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, has said, in many small or medium-sized rural towns where a banking hub would not be viable, the Post Office is now the only remaining financial institution where consumers and SMEs can do basic banking. I am really taken with his focus on these post offices as also functioning in many ways as the heart of the community and building the relationships within it, as well as providing services. What assurances can the Minister provide on the survival of these post offices?
The Small Business Minister, Gareth Thomas, said he wanted 99% of people to live within three miles of a post office. I remember trying to deal with this issue when I was an MP, and we had a huge battle because being within three miles or even one mile required you to swim across the Thames to get to the post office that had been identified. Do we now have a common-sense approach to try to work out whether these distances make sense for people in the way that they actually have to travel? What is the timetable, and can the Minister tell us how many post offices are surviving and being protected in rural areas? It is important that they are in deprived parts of urban communities, but rural areas are a greater challenge. The Minister’s views would be extremely helpful.
Community access to cash pilot schemes have been recommended for some of these areas, supposedly with tailored solutions. Can the Minister tell us whether those pilots have taken place?
I will pick up on the concerns that were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, on digital exclusion. He is essentially the House’s expert in this area, and I found it interesting that he does not consider digital inclusion to be sufficient. He points out that this very much goes hand in hand with the ability to receive face-to-face services.
With 17% of social tenants without any internet access at home, and with so many others in areas where internet access is unreliable and difficult, what action are the Government taking on access to skills? The noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, asked, why not use the post office for teaching and access to skills? Also, what are the Government doing to upgrade the technology as part of financial inclusion?
Access to banking services is a necessity, not a luxury; inclusive growth absolutely requires it. Our rural communities cannot be left disadvantaged. Are the Government ready to get a grip on this issue, be radical if necessary and make sure that both individuals and businesses have the financial infrastructure they require?
Lord Altrincham (Con)
My Lords, I declare my recent directorship of the Co-operative Bank, which has tried hard to maintain a good branch network, notwithstanding the widespread closures of bank branches all over the country for the past 30 years. I commend the right reverend Prelate for raising this important issue for rural communities—perhaps also for Newcastle, the north-east and the whole country. The Church plays an important role for the vulnerable and perhaps for all society, but banks do too, in the sense that financial services are a mirror to society.
Banks and regulators have a tendency to conflate this issue with access to cash—the distance to the nearest cash machine, say, although hopefully not by swimming, as the noble Baroness pointed out. Banks like to say that technology changes have created a demand for online services and a reduction in the use of branches. In this, banks are conveniently in line with regulators, which focus on cash machines. The FCA last year wrote to the banks with guidelines on cash services, despite efforts made in Parliament during the passage of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 to protect counter services.
But people like bank branches because they need help. They may need help with fraud. A young person might need help finding out how to get a mortgage. Someone recently married might ask about opening a joint account. They might have questions about children or divorce. They might ask about getting a power of attorney for a parent, or about death. In this way, bank branches become part of the life cycle of people and a community, much as retailers do. When they close, that help and that connection inevitably fragment to social media and elsewhere.
Alas, the number of bank branches has fallen everywhere—down to 5,500 or so in 2023 and probably closer to 3,000 today, as we have heard. This has been an unintended consequence of financial regulation over many years. It started with the FSA and FCA regulations about giving financial advice, which had the consequence of banks ceasing to provide financial advice. This is a good example of well-intentioned but naive regulation to improve consumer protection leading to consumers getting no help at all.
Then, there was cost pressure on the banks, partly as a result of regulation, which made it hard to maintain buildings and branches. It is particularly regrettable that the advantages of ring-fenced banks—a theoretical concept of prudential regulation which comes at an actual, not theoretical, cost of over £1 billion a year to the UK economy—have had the real-world consequence of a reduction in consumer utility through the closure of branches. While the banks are safe, the banks have, as a matter of fact, closed.
The noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, referenced the plans to provide some support through post offices and the new banking hubs. There may be charity initiatives that could maintain a degree of branch service as well. As of this year, only 100 hubs are operational, and we understand that the Government are committed to achieving 350 hubs by 2029. The Post Office, we think, has indicated a higher number of 500 by 2030. Clearly, these numbers are insufficient, as other noble Lords have pointed out. This issue is rather urgent in areas with no banks at all. Nevertheless, hubs are unlikely to replicate the services and knowledge of a working bank branch.
There is some evidence that closures are now slowing, particularly as Lloyds Bank gets to the end of its closure programme. There may be some competitive advantage to the remaining banks with branches—led by Nationwide, which now has the largest network, with around 700 branches. The regulatory pressure to reduce the number of branches, notwithstanding the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, may be partly offset by the needs of small businesses, which do need branches and do need to handle coins and cash. For them, we must be thankful.
Branch closures are part of a wider retail shutdown going on at the moment, and all the more reason to ask the Government to intervene, perhaps by asking that the banks hold their branch networks now at the level of around 3,000 branches. We could call this level the “Newcastle number” in honour of the right reverend Prelate. We need to mark at some point where the bank closures end, and now is as good a time as any, particularly because the process is slowing. At the very least, we should give time for alternative services to grow before the situation becomes acute, not only in rural communities but everywhere in the country.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle for this very timely debate. I reassure her on behalf of all of us that the number taking part is no reflection of the significance of the debate: rather, it is a reflection of the time of day in the run-up to the recess. I thank other noble Lords for their significant contributions to the debate. By way of context, I will say that I live in a small market town and have witnessed the decimation of the number of branches. We are left with one building society branch, although a community hub has opened—so I have personal experience of the issues that have been raised.
There is an important thread running through all of this. We are of course talking about the rural economy and how it is going to survive, but the comments today have been mostly around communities, vulnerability and making sure that we are inclusive in all the work we have done. We have heard the statistics of the rapid closures today. I do not need to repeat them, but I emphasise the comments of the right reverend Prelate around her concerns at the speed with which this is happening.
We must acknowledge the change in banking in recent years. Again, I know from experience the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, my family making sure that I got my act together and got fully included so that they did not have to worry. We must acknowledge that this has opened up a whole new tranche for people and many have benefited from the digital innovations. In 2017, 40% of UK adults regularly used a bank branch. By 2022, only 21% of UK adults still did. Almost 9 in 10 adults banked online or used a mobile app, including 65% of over-75s.
I emphasise that it is this Government’s ambition to ensure that all consumers can benefit from digital services. That is why, in the 2024 Autumn Budget, the Government announced funding of over £500 million next year to deliver digital infrastructure upgrades through Project Gigabit and the shared rural network. None the less, I assure noble Lords that the Government understand the importance of face-to-face banking to communities across the UK and continue to take action to realise the full economic potential of rural businesses and communities—picking up on the points that made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer.
For example, the Government intend to introduce permanently lower tax rates for high-street retail, hospitality and leisure properties with a rateable value below £0.5 million from 2026-27.
There have been many comments about connectivity, and I heard the comments that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, made very powerfully. That is why, on 17 December, the Government introduced the Bus Services (No. 2) Bill to this House, putting power over local bus services back into the hands of local leaders, to address the concerns that have been raised today.
We have heard a lot about the target for banking hub services and we are working closely with banks to roll out 350 hubs by the end of this Parliament. As we know, over 100 have already been opened. I reassure noble Lords of the extent of the services on offer. They provide services for personal account holders, but they also offer services to business customers so that they can withdraw cash, deposit cheques and pay bills. They also have separate rooms where customers can see community bankers from their own bank to carry out the wider banking services that have been raised today, such as registering a bereavement or help with changing a PIN—whatever the need, that service is available. The Government are committed to working with industry to ensure that banking hubs meet customers’ needs. Some banking hubs are trialling opening on Saturday mornings, which is something we can all look at with interest. We will drive forward the rollout of hubs. I cannot say how many hubs will open this year—this is work in progress—but I recognise the ambition around this, and the training needs that have been highlighted today.
It might help if I set out the FCA’s rules that underpin the rollout of banking hubs. When a bank announces a branch closure, LINK, the operator of the UK’s largest ATM network, will carry out an impartial assessment of communities’ access to cash needs. Where LINK recommends a banking hub, Cash Access UK—a not-for-profit company funded by the major banks—will provide it. Where a closure triggers an assessment, the branch cannot close until any LINK-recommended services have been installed. I hope that gives some reassurances about the concerns raised.
LINK considers population size, the number of small businesses and levels of vulnerability. It also considers the distance to the nearest branch and the cost and travel time via public transport. Anyone who feels a banking hub is needed, including members of this House, can request an access to cash review directly through the LINK website. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, highlighted access to services. The Government are determined to see local communities get what they need when it comes to cash and banking services and are continually working to improve this.
I pay enormous tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, for the work that he has done with post offices. I recognise what he said about them being at the heart of the community. I remember the days when you used to go on a weekly basis to pick up child benefit, and the people that you met. When you did that, people knew you were okay. I am afraid that we have lost that. I was a proud owner of a Girobank account as well, and I am delighted that post offices are stepping up to the plate in terms of offering banking services. They have a duty to serve their communities, which is at the heart of this debate, and 99% of personal customers and 95% of business customers can do their everyday banking at the 11,500 post offices around the country. The comments from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, about communities absolutely fit in with that.
I assure noble Lords that the Secretary of State for the Department for Business and Trade has met the Post Office’s chair, Nigel Railton, to discuss the Post Office network. It is central to our thinking as a Government.
I appreciate that post office closures can be concerning for communities but, unfortunately, branches can shut down for a variety of reasons, many of which are outside the Post Office’s control. Post Office Ltd works with communities to ensure that services are maintained, and the government-set access criteria ensure that services remain in reach.
Running throughout this discussion today was the issue of financial inclusion. I am pleased that work on the financial inclusion strategy is carrying on and is being developed, alongside a supporting committee chaired by my colleague, the Economic Secretary. The committee’s mission is to tackle a range of barriers to inclusion for excluded groups. That includes work being taken forward by a sub-committee of consumer and industry representatives, focusing on key policy issues, including digital inclusion and access to banking services, which met for the first time earlier today.
I recognise the whole issue of fraud. We have to emphasise that. It is one of the most cynical crimes in the country, targeting the most vulnerable and the elderly.
To respond to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, many firms support access to digital services through different initiatives. On the noble Lord’s point about the accessibility of card payment terminals, I am pleased that UK Finance and the Royal National Institute of Blind People have developed accessibility guidelines for touchscreen chip and pin services and an approved list of accessible card terminals, although I accept that there is certainly more to do.
Access to cash is something that we have run through, but the whole issue of digital inclusion, as expressed so ably, is pivotal. Through the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, this Government are taking the lead and looking forward to working around digital barriers beyond financial services, which can include customers, while the whole issue of the rollout of broadband internet services is something that we are all aware of.
What we need to understand is that access to a transactional bank account is a crucial element in supporting people’s financial resilience and well-being. I think that runs throughout this. I am conscious that there were a number of very specific questions put to me. I guarantee to write in response to those questions.
I end by thanking the right reverend Prelate again for her timely debate, and for her continued championing of rural banking access. I was struck that she broadened this out and recognised that inclusion is an issue right across the country for many of our different communities. I reassure her and the House that the Government will reflect very carefully on all the points that have been raised today in this very thoughtful and helpful debate.
Energy Bill Relief Scheme and Energy Bills Discount Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2024
Baroness Twycross
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 16 December 2024 be approved.
Considered in Grand Committee on 12 February.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, I beg to move en bloc the two Motions standing in his name on the Order Paper.