Lords Chamber

Thursday 25th June 2026

(began 1 month ago)

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11:43
Baroness Merron Portrait Baroness Merron, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care (Labour)
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children might reflect on whether it would have been better to have been fertile, to have had been fertile, to have had fulfilling intimate relationships, to have been themselves. I predict to have been themselves. I predict litigation on the scale of infected blood. The first principle of blood. The first principle of medical ethics is do no harm. This trial cannot avoid doing harm. I trial cannot avoid doing harm. I think parents would join me in asking the Minister to stop it.

**** Possible New Speaker ****

There was a question, no question. I appreciate the noble Lady has

**** Possible New Speaker ****

I appreciate the noble Lady has strong views, as do a number of noble Lords. As we heard yesterday noble Lords. As we heard yesterday in the statement that I presented and responded to yesterday. But to come straight to the point on come straight to the point on consent and to remind noble Lords consent and to remind noble Lords this is a sensitive, emotive, emotive and difficult subject. But that is why we have to be driven, as the last government was, by clinical evidence and clinical experts.

And I recall that the noble Lady Baroness Cass, who was entrusted, and rightly so with an independent review, said this is an area of remarkably weak evidence. There are always choices. We could continue with uncertainty and risk to safety of children and young people, which I don't think any of us want, or we can undertake a scientifically guided trial for 233, with all the rights safeguards that I've referred to and actually protect children and young people.
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11:52
Baroness Janke Portrait Baroness Janke (Liberal Democrat)
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they will not have proper access to health care. So much so that A&E health care. So much so that A&E has become the default destination for desperate patients unable to find care or advice through their find care or advice through their local doctor. 18% of patients attending A&E did so because there attending A&E did so because there was no GP appointment available to them. This amounted to 4.5 million them. This amounted to 4.5 million attendances. Nearly half a million people waited 24 hours or more in A&E last year, an increase of 150 000 patients in just three years.

Over 1.1 million patients were stuck in A&E, specifically waiting for an in-patient bed to become available. Even more frightening, my Lord. According to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, published in June this year, in 2025, around 15,860 patients died in NHS A&E departments in England while waiting for care that could have saved them. That is roughly 1.3 1300 people every month, nearly ten times the figure recorded in 2015. However, My Lords, the government's ten year primary health care plan promises US community based health services with a focus on illness prevention and promotion of good health.

I must say the vision of a well-resourced, community based health service is attractive and powerful. It's what we all want patients and professionals alike. But it could not be further from everyday experience. With waiting times for GP appointments at record levels. People's fears about access to health are well justified, particularly amongst the vulnerable and elderly. Worse still, the system can be off putting and daunting and not everyone is able to navigate it. For example, the 8:00 scramble having to phone in by 8 a.m.

and then be told you're 20th in the queue, or having to explain matters which are highly personal to the receptionist who answers your call, or having to deal with an online system only to find there are no appointments left and you must phone anyway and wait in the queue. My Lords, there are many questions across the board as to how we get from where we are now, to the reassuring and welcoming world of the ten year vision, the pillars of community health care that so often support the ailing service we have today are the community pharmacies who offer a local service that is practical, easily available and embedded in local communities.

I will use the rest of my time today to speak about the crisis in this essential service and its impact on community healthcare. My Lords, we often hear the community pharmacy described as the front door of the National Health Service, yet we are currently watching that door being systematically bolted shut in the communities that need it most. The scale of this crisis is staggering and frankly, a damning indictment of a decade of financial neglect. Since 2015, England has seen a net loss of 720 pharmacies.

Last year, closures reached their second highest level on record, and current data suggests that the rate of closure this year is nearly 50% higher than at the same stage in 2023. Between January and April alone, 177 pharmacies closed their doors for good. The root cause of this is a 30% real terms funding cut since 2015. While the costs of medicines and energy and staffing have surged, core funding has remained stagnant, leading to an annual funding gap of at least £2 billion across the sector.

As reported by the NHS. The human cost of this neglect is borne by pharmacy owners, 65 of whom are now operating at a loss. Nearly half, 45% have been forced to rely on personal savings or remortgaging their own homes just to keep their doors open to the public. My Lords, every day, pharmacies facilitate 1.6 million daily visits, providing vital triage and advice that keeps pressure off overstretched GP surgeries. However, when a local pharmacy closes, these daily visits do not simply vanish.

Instead, they are forced back into the primary care system, exacerbating the crowding of emergency departments with non-urgent issues that could have been managed in the community. Acute care is designed for rapid intervention in time sensitive, high stakes conditions like heart attacks or severe injuries. By removing the pharmacy buffer, we are forcing patients with minor ailments into acute settings, wasting specialist resources and jeopardising the safety of those with life threatening needs. Pharmacies cater for many needs from dispensing medicines, vaccinations, medical advice, urgent medical care as well as services to promote health such as smoking cessation and weight management.

And they could actually do more to ease pressure on other parts of the health service, according to a Department, Department of Health and Social Care report of 2025, 70% of people surveyed would be happy to see a pharmacist for common conditions or prescription reviews if it meant being seen sooner. The same study found that 68% of respondents are comfortable speaking to a healthcare professional in a pharmacy setting, rather than a traditional GP surgery. Pharmacies offer a range of walk in services and can work in tandem with GPS and other primary care settings to play a greater role in long term condition management and point of care testing.

But this has to be with the right investment and support. Pharmacies my Lords are small businesses and like all small businesses, they have difficult issues affecting them, such as increased national insurance charges, increases in the minimum wage and rising business rates. Incidentally, GP practices and pubs are exempt from business rates. So many local pharmacists are asking why not? Why cannot pharmacies also be exempt as an essential service? So I would like the Minister to consider that in her remarks, 95% of pharmacies also told the National Pharmacy Association that they were not in a financial position to be able to support the government's ambitions to move care into the community, as

**** Possible New Speaker ****

Outlined in the ten. Year plan. Deprived areas with high health needs saw the highest high health needs saw the highest rates of pharmacy closures between 2022 and 2025, with Liverpool being 2022 and 2025, with Liverpool being the nation's capital for pharmacy closures per head of population, followed by Blackpool, Coventry and followed by Blackpool, Coventry and Hull. The pharmacy network in England now stands at its smallest England now stands at its smallest since 2006. 63% of pharmacies could close this year, with 40% unable to pay the full cost of prescription medicines for patients.

And the current system of reimbursement for medicines is currently failing. Pharmacists and patients and needs reform. My Lords, we are also facing a workforce crisis where locum costs have risen by 80% in a single year, and overall staffing costs have grown by nearly 70% since 2015. Pharmacies simply cannot absorb this scale of increases without a fair and sustainable funding settlement. So my Lords, Lights Out is not just a campaign slogan. It is becoming a stark reality for high streets across the country.

We cannot move health care out of hospitals and into the community. If the community infrastructure has been allowed to crumble. So I ask the Minister today, when will the government deliver the urgent investment needed to close the £2 billion funding gap and stabilise this sector? What specific protections would be put in place to prevent further closures in deprived areas where health needs are greatest? And how does the government plan to prevent the withdrawal of addiction and delivery services that will inevitably overwhelm our GPS and A and E departments? My Lord, the.

My Lords, the time for warm words has long passed. We need a sustainable road map that reflects the true cost of delivering NHS pharmaceutical care. If we do not act now, the front door of the NHS will not just be bolted, it will be gone forever.
12:01
Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho Portrait Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (Crossbench)
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Yeah. The question is.

**** Possible New Speaker ****

This motion be agreed to. My Lords, I thank Baroness Janke for that incredibly powerful opening and for the chance to talk opening and for the chance to talk in this important debate. I stand here with two hats on. Firstly, as the survivor of a major trauma who the survivor of a major trauma who has spent a disproportionate amount of time in the healthcare system in all parts of it. And secondly, and all parts of it. And secondly, and far more importantly, as patron of day one trauma, which I shall describe later in my remarks, I'd describe later in my remarks, I'd like to make three points.

The first is that we must start with the patient, not with the system. And too often it seems as policy makers, we think about the policy and the organisational structure rather than the experience of the patient in the system. This is particularly true for trauma victims. I start with trauma victims because trauma perhaps is the most sharp end of our healthcare services, and the one where patients have to go through so much of the different services that are offered, from intensive care to rehab to community services, and then to the long term support that they might need as they live at home.

When someone's hit by a car, when they have a fall, or they experience a major trauma, they don't think about the system that they are in. They think about surviving. They don't think, I've now left acute care and I'm in the long term recovery ward. They think I want to recover. What matters to them is whether they receive physiotherapy, occupational therapy or psychological support, pain management, speech language therapy, practical help to return to work and life. I've met many trauma survivors through day one, a charity that helps people at the point they have a severe physical trauma, of which there are about 30,000 people who enter the system every year.

What they do is work alongside healthcare professionals in the most intense settings to help people navigate the things that are happening to them could be how to get benefits, where they might be off work for a long period of time, or it could be how to work out whether or not to have an amputation of a limb. Very brutal decisions at the most difficult time of their lives, often working with families alongside them. And what we see at day one, trauma again and again is that too often patients are bumping up against different bits of a system, as opposed to being seen as a patient and one person.

So this brings me to my second point, which perhaps inevitably is about technology. I welcome much of what is in the NHS modernisation Bill, particularly around single patient records. But sometimes this feels far removed from reality of what is happening in the system. We must engage more deeply with people who are expert in this area and give them power within the huge networks that exist in the NHS to change the patient experience. It is not acceptable that families and individuals, at the most difficult time of their lives, have to navigate so many different systems.

We've already heard from Baroness Janke about how people will be put into an online system, then to be chucked out to the telephone. But imagine if you cannot actually move or speak, how do you navigate the system then? And too often at the time when we're most profoundly need the help and we have the opportunity to use technology, it is absent both from the people caring for the patients and for the patients themselves. I read just this morning on a blog from open AI, perhaps a PR, I'm sure, but 230 million people a week are now using ChatGPT for health questions, 230 million people, and goodness knows what the quality of that information might be.

It's so important that we recognise what's happening in the outside world and try and build it into the system in a more effective way. So we must start with the patient. We must join up policy as opposed to organisational structures that reflect the needs of how people are actually living and experiencing the system. We must use technology to make sure that people have a more effective journey through their recovery, and also that clinicians and doctors and patients and physiotherapists and all the people that work so hard in the system are given the best shot at delivering the care they must urgently want to deliver.

And finally, we must support charities in the system again and again, both in my own journey and now as a proud patron of a couple of them, I see how difficult it still is for charities to get access to some of the parts of the NHS where they want to help, and where they're providing a vital, vital ballast to the people who are working in the system more directly. Day one trauma works across multiple numbers of trauma centres in the north of England, and when they're in the intensive care units or when they're in the acute care units, they are welcomed by the staff because they are doing much of the work that the staff have no time to be able to do.

Similarly, Horatio's Garden, a fantastic charity that builds gardens for spinal patients, gives access to the outdoors. It's doing valuable work for people at those acute moments, so we must be able to answer these three questions. Are we starting with the patient in these policies? Are we using technology to the best of our advantage? And are we enabling charities to help support the system where we don't have the resources ourselves?
12:06
Baroness Leaman Portrait Baroness Leaman (Liberal Democrat)
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Thank God, I'm grateful to my >> Thank God, I'm grateful to my noble friend lady Jack for securing this important debate. I'm going to focus my remarks on the crisis in focus my remarks on the crisis in medicine supply, the collapse of our community pharmacy network and the impact these failures are having on patients, particularly children with ADHD, many of whom have just finished sitting their exams without access to the medication they need. Since September 2023, we've witnessed a sustained and debilitating shortage of ADHD medications across the UK, medicines upon which hundreds of thousands of children and adults depend have been intermittently unavailable for nearly three years now.

At the height of the crisis, patients were reported to be travelling over 50 miles simply to find a pharmacy with stock. The House of Lords Public Service Committee, in its February report, Medicine Security National Priority, made the stark assessment that medicine supply shortages represent a potential national security issue, with 73% of pharmacy workers stated that ongoing supply issues are putting patients at risk. My Lords, consider what it means for a child with ADHD to face their GCSE or A-levels without medication.

For many young people, that medication is the difference between being able to demonstrate their knowledge, ability and hard work, and sitting in an exam hall, unable to engage with the paper before them. Students have reported rationing tablets, taking half doses or going without entirely during the examination period. While parents have spoken of the distress of watching children who've worked diligently throughout the year face their papers in a state of disadvantage, not of their making, this is a vivid illustration, I think, of the motion before us, when primary and community services fail to ensure consistent supply.

The fallout is immediate. We not only jeopardise the child's health, we derail their education and shatter their wellbeing and the most severe cases. This pushes vulnerable young people into acute crisis, ultimately driving up demand on the very services already at breaking point. The causes of these shortages are complex, but they're not mysterious. The OECD, identified as far back as 2022, that medicine shortages were increasing globally. But here in the UK, we have compounded these global pressures through our own policy choices.

First, our departure from the EU. A Nuffield Trust report in March confirmed what many had long warned. Brexit has been a key factor in the worst UK medicine shortages for four years between 2020 and 2023. Drug shortages in this country more than doubled, leaving the European Medicines Agency losing a place in the EU bulk buying scheme and creating additional regulatory complexity has significantly weakened our position. Second, our overreliance on overseas suppliers. The Lords committee noted that the majority of active pharmaceutical ingredients required by the NHS are controlled by China, India or other single sources.

We've allowed our domestic manufacturing capacity to wither the government's commitment of up to 520 million to manufacture more medicines domestically is welcome, but it comes late and must be accelerated even when medicines are available, patients must be able to access them. As my noble friend Lady Janet has highlighted, some 700 pharmacies have closed permanently since 2022, leaving England with its lowest number of pharmacies in nearly 20 years, with the National Pharmacy Association warning that 63% of pharmacies could close for the next year.

The government has taken some steps. The Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework for 2526 provides £3 billion of funding, and the expansion of pharmacy First is welcome. We need to treat medicine, supply chain chain resilience as a national security issue as it is, and we need to place it on the security risk register as the Lords committee recommended. We need a critical medicines list and an active pharmaceutical ingredients list to identify vulnerable supply chains, inform stockpiling and guide domestic production. We need better communication of shortages to frontline staff, so GPS, pharmacists and hospital clinicians can take timely action.

We need proper investment in community pharmacy, not merely enough to survive, but enough to thrive and expand services. As the NHS ten Year Plan envisages. And as a matter of urgency, we need specific measures measures to protect children with ADHD during the examination periods, emergency supplies, priority allocation, whatever it takes to ensure young people are not disadvantaged by failures in our supply chain. My Lords, the relationship between acute primary and community health care services depends fundamentally on patients being able to access the medicines they need, when they need them, where they need them.

At present, we are failing that test. Children are sitting exams without medication. Pharmacies are closing at an alarming rate. Supply chains remain fragile and reactive. The government has acknowledged the problem, but acknowledgement is not enough. Urgent, sustained and adequately funded action is needed. I look forward to hearing the minister's response, and I hope commitments that match the scale of the crisis.
12:11
Baroness Brinton Portrait Baroness Brinton (Liberal Democrat)
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The Lords Baroness Brinton is taking part remotely. I invite Baroness Brinton to speak. >> My Lords, I thank my noble friend Baroness Janke for calling this important debate, and it's a pleasure to follow my noble friend Baroness Leaman, who spoke movingly of services for children with ADHD. And I also want to support everything that Baroness Lane-Fox said earlier. The ten year NHS fit for the Future plan aspires to change the NHS to make it work better in the mid 21st century, and science, medicine, demography and lifestyles have changed so much since the NHS was founded that radical change must happen.

But it must be patient centred, not organisation convenient. My chronic illness means that I have more interaction with the NHS than the average patient, and recently that has escalated with new autoimmune problems. So I've seen firsthand what is happening in too many different hospitals in recent months. Good armies, including my local Watford General Hospital, have had in place not just an effective triage system, but also a 72 hour emergency admissions unit for GPS to refer patients who don't need A&E but do need very short term hospital care, perhaps to get an infection under control.

And this latter one has worked well for a decade. I've experienced two emergency eye clinics in the last three months. The first in London, was a complete nightmare to navigate. The staff were wonderful, from the receptionist to the nurses, the doctors, but the building was completely inadequate and hampered an effective service for people who may not be able to see where they're going. A&E was on the first floor with a narrow waiting room with about 60 seats and at least another 20 people standing.

It was barely wheelchair accessible, noisy and chaotic. Contrast that with Addenbrooke's Hospital Emergency Eye Clinic in Cambridge, where I still saw at least three different professionals in each of my visits. They had four different and smaller, quieter waiting areas, so a patient progressed through the system, being informed at each stage about the likely wait time. Now that was a calming and effective process. My Lords, the pressure on GP and community services with the move to reducing pressure on acute services has considerable unintended consequences.

The time that many GPS have with each patient can be as low as five minutes, so a GP who doesn't know the patient well just cannot read. The longer history, I'm at high risk of serious infection. But a locum GP told me that they didn't just hand out antibiotics for minor infections. I was in A&E 24 hours later on an antibiotic drip. My Lords, this is not about the locum. This is about the pressure that our GP services are under. This needs to be remedied.

The government wants to divert patients in surgeries to GPS. So recently my surgery system automatically got the pharmacist to call me to discuss my medication, and I asked him how my hospital medication would interact with what he was proposing. He hadn't read my notes either, and he realised I must see a doctor instead of him. Waste of his time, waste of mine. And don't get me started on the barriers of accessing community physiotherapy if you have a chronic illness. Five years ago, my local physio community trust sacked all their specialist physios to save money.

If you need help, you have to navigate 220 minute automated triage assessments, but they only triage patients on just one injury. When I finally got to talk to a human on the phone recently, I was then given interim exercises which caused serious pain to my other joints. I can't get past the gatekeepers to look at me as a whole person, and there's a national shortage of physios without whom fit for the future will not work. But there is excellence happening. Last October, my sister was diagnosed at William Harvey A&E in Ashford with terminal and untreatable cancer.

The one thing she wanted was to be back in her own flat with her cat. Madeline was put on the end of life discharge to assess pathway run by the Kent Community Health Foundation Trust. My other sister and I were with her for that last two months, saw first hand how an excellent and complex system can work. Well. They helped us with the expert end of life care at home company, the GP and nurses at her surgery, the Pilgrims Hospice and the community nursing team.

We were told by the brilliant GP surgery nurse who visited often that if we had to call 999, we should tell them on the phone that the her wishes from the start so that when the paramedics arrived it was all about getting her back into bed after a fall, not back into hospital. Managing all of this were exceptionally well trained administrators who understood their role and how to make things happen, and she was able to be at home until the last 24 hours.

But my Lords, there was also a reduction in need for A&E space, acute bed space and advice on tap when needed. This service should be universal, but it isn't. To conclude, as with many of the wonderful other wonderful parts of the NHS and care sector, there is real excellence, value for money and social care. The difficulty remains that it is not consistent and as long as acute, primary and community healthcare isn't focussed on the patient, then services will be inconsistent and probably more expensive to the detriment of patients in the community.

A plan alone won't change things, but putting the patient journey truly at the heart of these changes can and does work.

**** Possible New Speaker ****

My Lords, I declare an interest as a veteran of many health service reorganisations through which I've consistently advocated for children and young people not to be forgotten. So it won't be a forgotten. So it won't be a surprise that I'm doing the same today. I've spent many years working, making the case for better integration across primary, community and acute services, community and acute services, particularly increasing delivery of paediatric care within primary and community settings. The government's commitment to shift care from hospital to community settings is welcome, but we have heard similar aspirations before, so how do we ensure that this time it becomes a reality? I have four asks of the government.

First, I
12:18
Baroness Cass Portrait Baroness Cass (Crossbench)
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echo Baroness Lane-Fox comments about thinking about the patient journey. Please map child and journey. Please map child and family journeys clearly so that people can understand where and how they access support. The ten year health plan mentions children frequently, but after reading it in its supporting documents, I was still unclear how neighbourhood health services will fit alongside health services will fit alongside family hubs, young futures hubs, community paediatric services and other existing models. Neighbourhood Health Services could provide the glue that joins these services together, but there is also a risk of duplication and confusion.

My second ask builds on existing good practice. Rather than embarking on another cycle of pilots that are never adopted at scale. For example, the Well Centre in Lambeth, well known by my noble friend Baroness Gerada, which is run by Doctor Steph Lam, a superb GP, provides integrated support for 11 to 20 year olds, bringing together mental, sexual and physical health care alongside social prescribing and community support. It already demonstrates much of what is envisaged for young futures hubs, yet remains partly dependent on charitable funding.

We should invest in and replicate successful models such as this. Similarly, the Children and Young People's Health Partnership in south London has demonstrated that local child health clinics delivered by paediatricians and GPS and a nurse led intervention service, can address unmet needs, reduce inequalities and reduce hospital attendance. The model has been adopted elsewhere and provides an evidence based example of community community based care in action. We have another valuable community resource in the form of children's hospices, which support children with life limiting conditions not just at end of life, but over a very extended period, as well as their families.

In 2025 to 6, their average caseload rose by 11%, a growing cohort that would otherwise fall to the NHS. And meanwhile, statutory funding has failed to keep pace, accounting for just 25% of hospital expenditure of hospice expenditure, with the rest dependent on charitable donations. If we don't fund these services properly, care will move from community to hospital rather than vice versa. My third ask reflects concerns raised by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. As these reforms progress, how will the government ensure that integrated care boards consistently prioritise and adequately fund children's health? Will executive children's leads within ICBs be protected? More broadly? How will changes to ICB membership ensure strong clinical leadership for children's services and an appropriately planned and funded workforce? We are desperately short of community children's nurses and school nurses.

If the community workforce is not valued, incentivised and supported, there will be no meaningful shift of care into the community. And finally, please listen directly to young people. Alex Parton, a youth intern at the Well Centre, said healthy children become healthy adults, but young people are too often treated as bystanders rather than future citizens. If, as the Secretary of State has said, the ten year health plan will put a megaphone to the mouth of every patient, young people must have a turn on the microphone.

So I look forward to the minister's response, and I'm very happy to share with her and her team my little black book or little black iPhone, a very useful contacts of good practice.
12:22
Baroness Walmsley Portrait Baroness Walmsley (Liberal Democrat)
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Yes. >> My Lords community and primary care services are at the heart of the government's objectives in the ten year plan to shift from sickness to prevention and from hospital to community. But the hospital to community. But the funding doesn't always support that. Over the past nine years, the average increase in spend across health services has been 31%, but primary care had only 24%. The patient population has grown by over 7 million since 2015, yet the number of GP practices has fallen by about 20%, leaving some rural areas without accessible cover.

I heard a case only this morning of a rural GP who retired single doctor practice patients had to travel 12 miles to get to the nearest GP and there were no buses. The average list size is now 40% higher than a decade ago. Primary care, including dentists, optometrists and community pharmacists, are part of the prevention agenda. If there are major funding gaps and important aspects of the service suffer, GPS control the patients health records and their patients have in the past benefited from continuity of care.

But this no longer always happens and the benefits have been lost. Despite evidence that continuity is beneficial and can save money. GPS are the first port of call for patients, the point of first triage or suspected diagnosis, and the gateway to more specialised services. If people can't get to see their GP as my noble friend, Baroness Janke said, they eventually turn up at A&E, usually with a much more serious condition and at greater cost to the NHS. Diet and vaccinations are key aspects of prevention.

Some GPS employ dieticians, but nowadays it seems the main response to obesity is through treatment rather than prevention. These injectable medicines are quite effective, but their long term cost effectiveness is not yet proven. We need more dietitian services in the community. Access to a healthy diet is dependent on many factors beyond the scope of primary care, so the Minister will therefore not be surprised that my first question to her, again is what progress is being made with publishing the consultation on the healthy food standards? Has the Department even established the parameters of the consultation? GP practices also deliver the core childhood vaccination programme, mostly given by the practice nurses, and they are the most trusted people to answer patients questions.

But some communities are hard to reach, leading to inequality of coverage. Reaching them costs a lot more time and money, but the benefit of doing so is not just felt by those patients, but by the whole community. When herd immunity levels can be reached dangerously, this is not being achieved partly through lack of consistent funding in transferring vaccination commissioning to ICBs. Will the government ensure consistent funding for outreach according to the need in the area, midwives, health visitors and school nurses have a role in advising patients about diet and vaccination, but all these services have experienced cuts.

Many schools no longer have a school nurse, and newly qualified midwives are not able to find posts. The number of health visitors has reduced by 43% since 2015. This makes it difficult to ask them to do catch up vaccinations in the home. Does the Minister have any results from the recent pilot on this? All these health professionals have a contribution to the preventative agenda and saving money. We've all heard of dental deserts and community optometrist deserts, but both could save the NHS money given appropriate levels of funding.

The main reason children go into hospital is to have rotten teeth removed, and this is because they eat too much sugar and can't find a dentist. What is being done to avoid dental deserts and in eye care? We have the workforce and the infrastructure in the community. And yet access depends on where you live, which pushes avoidable demand into hospitals. 1 in 4 people can't access a local optometrist, and there are 600 000 people on hospital waiting lists, many of whom could have been managed in the community.

What steps are the government taking to ensure equitable access to optometrists across England? My Lords, we have a wonderful range of community and primary care services and yet their full potential is not being used to prevent ill health because of either under or inconsistent funding. That is very unwise to say the least.
12:27
Lord Scriven Portrait Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat)
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Well, Lord, it's always a >> Well, Lord, it's always a pleasure to follow my noble friend Baroness Walmsley and I will pick up on her final theme. And I thank my noble friend Baroness Janke for initiating this important debate, and both her and my noble friend Baroness Leman, as the Vice Chair of the APPG on Community Pharmacy, I think the case for extra investment has been made. My Lords, when the government took office nearly two years ago, they came with the narrative of transformation.

They promised people a fundamental shift away from the expensive, reactive walls of acute hospitals and towards a proactive preventive neighbourhood health service. But looking at the NHS ledger of the 2627 financial year, they're forced to confront a reoccurring theme. This government's policy is built on hope. While the NHS is living a different reality. The government stated their hope that primary and community care would finally receive the financial engine required to keep people well as long as possible at home.

The reality under their watch is that the gravitational pull of the acute sector is still as strong as ever, accounting for between 75 to 80% of total NHS spend. The data from integrated care boards for the year ahead show this out of a combined £139 billion allocated, the total identified for neighbourhood health transformation activity is a measly 0.25% and this is the. To fund the flagship policy of the government's health strategy. The reality is that local efforts to invest in community, primary and preventative services have been actively crushed by top down directives, prioritising acute hospital performance.

The Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire ICB cluster tried to deliver the government's vision with a £33 million fund dedicated to community transformation. Yet within days of launching it, national performance directives forced them to withdraw the whole funding and redirect it to acute services. The government's financial priorities are written clearly also in their capital budgets. They've earmarked £2 billion this year for acute emergency care, yet allocated only £200 million for their flagship neighbourhood health centres. When you contrast 2 billion for the emergency machine against the 200 million for new community infrastructure, their true priority is laid bare.

And nowhere, my Lords, is the gap between the government's rhetoric and reality more damning than in community support for learning disabilities? Over the last 24 months, we have witnessed the continuation of the systematic hollowing out of the infrastructure that keeps these people safe and alive. Evidence published only last week by the Royal College of Nursing exposes what is happening right now under this government's watch in their report safety, Equity and Expertise, the RCN warned that the specialist learning disability nursing workforce is in absolute crisis.

In autumn of 2025, the first academic intake under this government. We see a catastrophic collapse in the pipeline. Fewer than 500 student learning disability nurses enrolled across the entire UK and in the South East. The intake was exactly zero. The workforce is evaporating because community budgets are being raided, and the human cost. For someone with a learning disability, there remains a shocking 20 year life expectancy gap compared to the general public. When the government forces ICBs to pull transformation funds and looks the other way, especially this nursing pipeline dries up.

They engage in a false economy of the highest order. When a. When a vulnerable young person loses their community safety net, they land. Eventually, in an acute crisis bed, the taxpayer pays a premium for this systematic failure. This is not just a policy failure, my Lords. It's a profound human failure to. Which is all too real for my family. So I asked the Minister, why has the government spent the last two years forcing local health systems to continue to feed the acute vacuum? And when will the align? When? When will they finally align the reality of NHS budgets with the hope of their rhetoric?

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Yes. Lord. I'm grateful to. Baroness Janke for securing.

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Baroness Janke for securing. This debate and also to Baroness Walmsley for saying many of the things around primary care and general practice that I want to say, and I always feel that I'm here defending my own profession. So the defending my own profession. So the NHS was founded on a vision of care delivered close to home in communities, general practices and
12:32
Baroness Gerada Portrait Baroness Gerada (Crossbench)
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communities, general practices and district nurses. Yet over decades, recent decades, a profound imbalance has appeared in resource allocation. The hospital based care has grown in work force, infrastructure and funding, while services that form most of the patients first point of contact, as we've heard, have been left to wither. When I started general practice on the 17th of February 1991, I had time with my patients. I had time to do what my patients. Many of you in this room wanted the mantra, quite rightly, of moving care into the community has not been has not been associated with a simultaneous move of resources, people, infrastructure, support or estate.

I now do more than any other GP in any other comparable health services, general practices. General practice in this country does more to a greater degree of complexity than any other GP. I do everything other than open heart surgery in my in my consulting room. And as I said, I don't, by the way, for Hansard do that. Now, the consequences of this shift are evidence right across, as we've heard, the full breadth of primary care, millions of patients can't register with an NHS dentist.

Many resort to emergency departments for toothache or worse, leave decay untreated until it becomes a serious health problem. Optometrists, as we've heard, are often the first to detect conditions such as glaucoma, diabetes and hypertension are increasingly unable to sustain NHS funded services. Continuity of care, which I will say a little bit later with the GP, is becoming a rarity. While community nursing is stretched to breaking point. These are not separate crises, nor a physiotherapist and all the other community specialists.

We've heard they are symptoms of some of the same structural neglect, a system that has consistently prioritised acute visible hospital care over the quieter but equally essential work happening in surgeries 360 million times per year. Consulting rooms and communities. General practice alone receives less than 8% of the NHS budget, the lowest proportion for decades, risking replacing continuity of care the bedrock of my profession with brief transactional encounters. Despite clear evidence that continuity delivers better, safer and more effective care without continuity, the NHS, as we've heard, already, becomes a maze where patients get lost on workforce.

No system succeeds without the people to staff it. Practice nurses, health visitors, district nurses, the quiet architecture of community health has been allowed to to has been hollowed out over decades. Over the same period, the consultant workforce has increased 120%, whilst a number of GP partners has fallen. And even with the number of GP partners, around 1 in 5 GPS cannot find full employment because we don't have the funding to employ these doctors. When community care buckles, the consequences follow downstream.

The result is a system paying premium prices for intensive care to manage problems that should have never reached that threshold. This is not simply an administrative problem, it is a moral problem. What kind of health service do we want? Do we want one that catches people only when they fall, or one that walks alongside them where possible and prevents that fall altogether? Now, what does fair distribution mean? It means teams without walls. It means multidisciplinary teams built around the patient rather than the disease or body part.

It means shared records that follow the person rather than sit in silos. Social prescribing that connects people to their communities before loneliness becomes a clinical problem. And we need to step down facilities that bridges the acute ward with the patient's home. My Lord, I had all of those resources 20 years ago. Those of you that remember the Tomlinson Review in 19 early 1990s, integrated, step down, community based multidisciplinary hospitals, please, let's stop reinventing the wheel. When community care buckles, the consequences flow directly downstream.

And redistribution is not simply an administrative question. As I said, it's a moral one. What is required is not another review or reorganisation, but sustained political will, clear frailty pathways, a realistic workforce plan training that ensures all doctors and I mean all doctors, spend meaningful time in community settings and a rightful place for community practitioners on integrated care boards. I ask the Minister, when are we going to finally redress the balance and stop the imbalance of more and more resources going into hospitals, rather than where patients receive most of their care?

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Thank you. I'm delighted to.

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Follow the noble. Baroness Gerada with her first hand expertise and experience as a GP, describing the service I think we all would like to see, and I'm grateful for my noble friend grateful for my noble friend Baroness Janke for introducing this vital debate in the House today. The relationship between acute The relationship between acute services and primary care goes straight to the heart of how the health service we value can survive and function. Baroness Lane-Fox rightly highlighted the need for the patient to be the focus, not the organisation.

Describe the needs of serious trauma patients and the opportunities for technology. And my noble friend Baroness Brinton also highlighted the need for patient centred services. The whole person at the heart of this, and the consequences of the deep imbalance between acute primary and community health services are starkly visible in the data. NHS England discharge data from 2025 shows that patients who
12:38
Baroness Pidgeon Portrait Baroness Pidgeon (Liberal Democrat)
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are medically fit to leave hospital spent the equivalent of 4.34 spent the equivalent of 4.34 million days stuck in beds. They were not there because they needed acute care, but because the community and social care needed to support them simply did not exist. And my noble friend Lord Scriven And my noble friend Lord Scriven provided the clear financial reality of acute services being prioritised and community services prioritised and community services reduced, and the hollowing out of services for people with learning disabilities.

But let's look at dentistry. NHS England statistics published in 2025, show that 4 in 10 children, over 5 million in total had not seen an NHS dentist in over a year, and the Darzi review in 2024 found that only around 30 to 40% of NHS dental practices were accepting new child or adult registrations, respectively. And as my noble friend Baroness Walmsley mentioned, official data from NHS England and the Royal College of Surgeons confirms that tooth decay remains one of the most common reasons for hospital admissions among young children in this country.

The reality is that preventable dental disease generates acute demand. A child admitted to hospital with rotting teeth is a child whose primary care has failed, not whose acute care has failed, and Baroness Cass brought her expertise around children and young people and questioned how the government's plans will really serve families better and bring the change that is needed. And let's just look at some other trends in primary care general practice. If we. As we've heard, is under extraordinary and unsustainable strain.

Our GPS are the front line of defence position precisely where they need to be to detect health issues early. They are the front door through which the public interacts with our health service, and it needs investment. If accessing a GP feels impossible, then quite frankly, public faith in the wider health service collapses entirely. Now, my noble friend Baroness Walmsley highlighted the funding of primary care, not keeping up with demand or population, and key areas of prevention work and Baroness Gerada rightly talked passionately about how GP services have been left to wither and now have less than 8% of the budget.

And as we've heard, according to the Association of Optometrists, access to community eye care Services varies significantly across England and as a result, 1 in 4 people cannot access these services locally. Patients with common eye conditions are frequently directed to GPS, A and E's or hospital eye services, even though they could be safely managed by community optometrists and at the same time, more than 600,000 people are waiting for hospital ophthalmology appointments, adding extra pressure to acute services. This just makes no sense.

And it's patients who are suffering. And in mental health, the picture is equally distressing thousands of children and adults waiting months, sometimes years, to receive the support they need. I think the previous government left mental health services in a state, but the consequence of mental health being under-resourced only quite frankly triaged at the point of crisis flows directly into acute services. Psychiatric presentations in A&E, lengthy detentions under the Mental Health Act and ambulance callouts could have been avoided with earlier community intervention.

They're the heavy downstream costs of failing to invest upstream, and emergency departments are already bearing that cost. The Department of Health and Social Care figures show. The government has announced an average of 376 million in emergency winter funding annually over the past seven years. This is patching up the system year after year. That's not sustainable health and the Royal College of Medicine has long called for staffed hospital beds, social care capacity and community step down services, and the Liberal Democrats have proposed a 1.5 billion plan to deliver 6000 more beds daily boost, step down care and enshrine

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In law the right to be seen in A and E within 12 hours. But let me be clear beds alone will not solve be clear beds alone will not solve this. Beds will fill up again unless what lies beyond the hospital in home care, community hospital in home care, community services and in general practice is also fit for. And social care sits also fit for. And social care sits at the very heart of this problem. Local Government Association figures for 2025 show that total local authority spending on social care reached a record £29.3 billion in 2020 425, up by £12.4 billion since 2015.

Social care now accounts for up to 80% of many council budgets, putting immense strain on other services. And yet, the commission tasked with recommending long term reform, is not scheduled to complete its work for a further two years, with implementation potentially delayed in 2036. Those waiting for care and those stranded in hospital beds for want of it simply cannot wait that long. Now, my noble friend Baroness Janke described powerfully the role of community pharmacies, which is a key part of primary care, and my noble friend Baroness Leman described the real impact on children and young people with medicine shortages, shortages and she also described the impact of this going on into acute services and reference the excellent report from the Public Services Committee on Medicines Security, which I recommend to the House.

And within this debate, we have not even touched on ambulance services and the key role that paramedics could play, the potential they have with a shift in resources to help people, that they are treated in the right place in the right time, rather than the critical point we have today. I also recommend noble Lords. Read the latest publication from the Public Services Committee on this very topic. As Lord Darzi commented in his review of the NHS since at least 2006 and arguably for much longer, successive governments have promised to shift care away from hospitals and into the community.

In practice, the reverse has happened. Both hospital expenditure and hospital staffing numbers have grown faster than the other parts of the NHS, while numbers in some of the key out-of-hospital components have declined and the King's Fund have also commented, I quote when trying to envision the future of the health and care system in England, the difficult question to answer is not what do we do? The vision for care has been outlined by multiple governments in countless policy documents. But how do we actually make it happen? I welcome the commitment in the government's ten year health plan to shift from hospital to community.

It's the pace of change and the resources that need to support the rhetoric and actually make it happen. Rebalancing an entire National Health Service requires rewiring, funding, stabilising the workforce, and completely integrating local services. If we all agree on this diagnosis, we need to work together to implement the long term radical changes needed to fix this. I look forward to the noble Baroness, the Minister's response to this timely debate.
12:46
Lord Evans of Rainow Portrait Lord Evans of Rainow (Conservative)
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My Lords, I thank the noble >> My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, lady for securing this important debate. There is, I think, important debate. There is, I think, broad agreement across the House on Central Point. If we are to build an NHS that is sustainable for the an NHS that is sustainable for the future, we cannot rely solely on treating people. Once they arrive at hospital. We need strong primary care and early intervention that prevents illness from escalating in the first instance.

My Lords, that principle is not new. Successive governments, including the Conservatives, have spoken about shifting care closer to home. The current government has made it one of the central pillars of their health strategy. Through the proposed neighbourhood health service and the commitment to move from hospital to community community based care. The question, however, is not whether we support that ambition, but whether the government are delivering it. My Lord, the figures set out in the House of Commons library briefing are striking.

Between 2015 and 16 and 2023 2024, spending on acute services increased by 14.3 billion, while primary medical care increased only by 1.7 billion and community services by 3.1 billion. Those figures illustrate the scale of the challenge in rebalancing the system. They also demonstrate why simply announcing a shift is not enough. Rather, resources must genuinely follow patients into community settings. If the policy is to succeed, these benches welcome the government's stated commitment to shifting care out of hospitals into communities.

We also recognise the potential benefits of neighbourhood health centres in bringing together diagnostics, rehabilitation, mental health services and primary care closer to where people live. However, there are legitimate questions to be asked about pace and delivery before the election. Ministers spoke about increasing proportion of NHS funding allocated to primary and community care by 2029. That objective has now been further pushed back to 2035. For many patients and practitioners, that will feel like a significant delay.

My Lords, these benches also hold concerns about whether primary care is being given the tools it needs to succeed. The opposition have consistently raised concerns regarding changes to the GP funding formula and the expectations placed upon GPS through the advice and guidance system. Community care cannot simply become a mechanism for managing demand that would previously have gone elsewhere in the system. If primary care is expected to do more. It must be properly resourced to do so. I turn briefly to mental health, where the relationship between the acute and community services is particularly important.

Community support and accessible treatment can prevent deterioration early and reduce hospital admissions. It is therefore concerning that the share of the NHS spending devoted to mental health has fallen in each of the last three years, from 9% in 2020 324 to projected 8.4% in 2020 627. At the same time, local systems are no longer required to increase mental health spending in line with overall NHS spending. These developments appear difficult to reconcile with the principle of parity between mental and physical health.

In closing, I therefore have four questions for the noble Baroness, the Minister. What specific milestones will the government use to demonstrate that the promised shift from hospital to community care is actually taking place? What assessment has been made of the impact that recent GP contract changes will have on primary care capacity? I will do the government intend to ensure that mental health services do not lose out to NHS resources are distributed across the system and in the case of eye care, there is already a workforce and infrastructure in the community to treat patients effectively.

Yet access depends on where you live, which pushes avoidable demand into hospitals. What steps are the government taking to ensure equitable access across England? Strong hospitals will always be essential, but NHS fit for the future also requires strong community services and affect early intervention. The challenge for the government is not setting out that vision, it is delivering on it. I look forward to the minister's response.

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My Lords, I first of all want to congratulate the noble Lady Baroness Janke for securing what I Baroness Janke for securing what I think is a very important debate. I am also grateful to all noble Lords am also grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions, and I recognise so many of the challenges that are raised, which is exactly that are raised, which is exactly why we are taking the action that we are. And I'm glad that the noble Lord, Lord Evans in particular, did welcome the move of direction, as has so many noble Lords, including the noble Lady, Baroness Pigeon.

But it is important that we look at where we started, because I think it reminds us of the scale of the challenge, and it was the noble Lord Lord Darzi that made the point about. We inherited an NHS facing the worst crisis in its history. We all know of people stuck on waiting lists for many years. Staff felt let down by bureaucracy and little support and. And patients that have to navigate a system that all too often felt complex, disjointed and fragmented.

And the noble Lady Baroness Brinton spoke to literal navigation, which I thought was also an absolutely key point. And not only was that the situation, but we recognise that whilst we are making improvements, there is some way to go and I want to set that out in the outset. And to the Baroness Lane Fox and I'm grateful for her. Talking of her own personal experience, I can say yes, the patient is at the centre of all the reforms that we are making because the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, found that the society, that society is getting sicker, people are living longer but in poorer health, and they are living with more complex needs.

And I should emphasise that burden is not shared equally. The gap in healthy life expectancy has grown between the richest and poorest areas and the the model of care that was in place, and that we are still seeking to change. As I say, whilst making progress is working least well for those with greatest disadvantage who are most likely to have complex needs. And yes, I agree, the system we inherited and are changing to hospital centric.

To detach from communities and to organised into silos, and to the noble Lady Baroness Lane-Fox. Yes, modern technology has transformed everyday life and the scale of change certainly had not reached the National Health Service. So we had a stark choice, as noble Lords know, and that our response is reform. And we also heard from staff and patients. They don't want the status quo. And to agree with the noble Lord Lord Scriven people said they wanted radical reform, and we have embraced that.

So I do believe that the ten year health plan does respond to that, setting out the three fundamental shifts hospital to community, analogue to digital and sickness to prevention. And at the very core is the neighbourhood Health and our Neighbourhood Health Framework, which was published in March, does give partners the clarity to develop locally led plans and to the. What is at the core of this debate, I believe, is about how to make that shift real. So for the first time, the medium term planning framework does set a target to reduce long waits in community health services, with at least 80% of activity to take place within 18 weeks.

By 2829, we are restoring GP access and to some of the points made about the important role that we acknowledge of the GP. More than 76% of people are now saying it is easy to contact their GP. That is up from 61% when or from when we came into office. And the noble Lady Baroness Brinton, the noble Lord Lord Scriven and the noble Lady Baroness Gerada all spoke to the importance of GPS. So we are training thousands more GPS and we are boosting capacity.

Capacity between July 2024 and April 26th, we have more than 2000 additional GPS, which is now. In total, we have over 3000, the highest number since 2015. And this has meant that we have delivered and I'm grateful to GPS. 12.7 million additional GP appointments this year compared to last year, and we are investing directly in the services that will make neighbourhood health possible, something also raised, quite rightly, by the noble Lady, Baroness Cass, and I totally agree with her about young people having that voice, and we do ensure that is the case.

But I know where to come should we need further assistance. But we have invested an additional £601 million in general practice, taking total GP contract investment to nearly 14,000,000,000 in 2627 and a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lady Baroness Jenkin Janki and also the noble Lady. Baroness Leman, spoke about the importance of community pharmacy, which I totally align myself with and that is why we have given a 10% uplift to recognise that key role, and that is an uplift which translates to £340 million.

Further on funding, which again a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord Lord Scriven, have raised over £9 billion invested through the Better Care Fund and a commitment to deliver 250 neighbourhood health centres. The first 27 sites have already been selected, so it's not just a vision, but vision is important, continuous, accessible and integrated care, one centred around the patient and one that prevents ill health that intervenes earlier, that gives people more control. And by 2035.

So I understand the wish for pace, I share it, but we also have to be realistic. There is a reason it's a ten year health plan. Not so we wait, but so that we have a plan and that will transform the model of elective care. So many interactions will no longer take place in a hospital building, but they will be able to take place. And again, the noble Lady Baroness Fox asked if we are using technology to the best advantage, and certainly the NHS was way behind where it should have been.

But we are moving to that because interactions will be able to take place virtually or through neighbourhood services. Closer to home. We will see the first NHS online hospital. The development of the NHS app, which already many of us know has greatly improved as patients do access care information appointments more responsibly through their phones. And by 2035, two thirds of outpatient care will take place digitally or in the community. And central to that will be the single patient record, which I look forward to coming to when we receive the National.

Forgive me when we receive the health bill, general practice will remain at the heart of the. Of Neighbourhood health. I've heard what the noble Lady Baroness Gerada has said, and we are introducing two new at scale contracts the single neighbourhood provider, a multi neighbourhood provider to support GPS and partners to work against larger geographies. And I do recognise the pressure on GPS and we are working with GPS in order to assist them in their effectiveness and also the way in which they serve patients and integrated health organisations will take responsibility for local population budgets.

They will support integration and move resources to where they have the greatest impact. Key within all this debate, particularly raised by the noble Lady Baroness Pidgeon, the noble Lady Baroness Gerada and the noble Lord Scriven and other noble Lords, was about funding. So we do know the importance of ensuring that investment supports the shift from hospital to communities, including to the noble Lord, Lord Evans, through mental health, as well as primary care and neighbourhood care.

So to that point, the ten year health plan does set out an operating model that shifts power from the centre to local commissioners and providers. As I mentioned, ICBs and providers are developing medium term and multiyear plans through the medium term planning framework to show how they will use funding in line with the priorities I. ICB allocations give greater growth. I can assure noble Lords to community, greater growth, to community rather
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Baroness Merron Portrait Baroness Merron, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care (Labour)
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than acute services to support the community transformation that noble community transformation that noble Lords and I seek, and to support neighbourhood health. And we will continue to set those national expectations, and we will support that by changes to system that by changes to system incentives such as financial flows. I did hear the call for ring fences, I did hear the call for ring fences, which I know is often brought, and it's a legitimate challenge. But I would say to noble Lords, they do not by themselves guarantee better outcomes.

Our approach is to set national priorities, accountability as well as enabling ICBs to use funding flexibly because they are best placed, as we know, to meet local needs and to secure best

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value. On just one. One issue. The flexibility though, which was in my flexibility though, which was in my point, is taken away when national directives come down, forcing them to actually spend money on acute

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and emergency care. Well, I think I've, I appreciate

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Well, I think I've, I appreciate I always appreciate the expertise of the noble Lord, but I have set of the noble Lord, but I have set out what the approach is. And because we are focusing on outcomes and the best way to achieve it, I can of course, say that we constantly keep that under review and discussion, so it isn't top down, but is actually, how are we going to get to the place that all noble Lords want us to get to? And I know that I'll only be able to refer to some of the limited number of questions.

So I hope noble Lords will forgive me. But the noble Lady Baroness Walmsley, who raised the question of dental deserts. We are offering incentives to attract dentists under the Golden Hello scheme, which is what it says on the tin. And importantly, we're also increasing the supply of dentists. We've just announced the first sustained expansion of dental school places since 2007, and the noble Lady, Baroness Walmsley, also asked about progress being made on publishing health food standards and the consultation, and I acknowledge her particular interest and expertise.

We will soon be consulting on the proposals for healthier food targets and reporting. Importantly, we do remain on track for delivering on this ten year health plan commitment in this Parliament. The noble Lady would like further information. I'd be very happy to obtain it for her. The noble Lord, Lord Evans, asked about milestones that will be used and to ensure the shift from hospital to community is actually taking place, which is important. So to that point, that is why we have published the Neighbourhood Health Framework, which will ensure that accountability.

I'm very alive to the points he makes about mental health services, and I'm sure that he welcomes the mental health strategy, which will bring together all of the points. And I'm very enthusiastic about the fact that we're piloting community based mental health centres, and I've been glad to visit the one in Birmingham, which has totally persuaded me of their value. But we must wait for, of course, the evidence. So, my Lords, with that I know that noble Lords know that the NHS that we inherited was under intolerable pressure, and I would say we have chosen reform, we have invested, we are rebuilding access, we are enhancing digital tools and our our not just our vision, but what we will deliver as an NHS closer to home that is more preventative, is more joined up and is more equal.

That is the way we will take the NHS into the future.
13:06
Baroness Janke Portrait Baroness Janke (Liberal Democrat)
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I'd like. Minister, for her remarks and for her explanation. She's obviously very committed to her plan. I think it's fair to say, from what we've it's fair to say, from what we've heard during the debate today, both very strong contributions, both professional and from patient experience. I think it's fair to say that people in this chamber are not necessarily convinced, and there is a lot of work to be done to convince people that the plan is going to succeed, not least the people who are working in it.

And I would just perhaps draw the attention of the Minister to the morale and the sense of crisis that there is in very many communities. My own point about local pharmacies, there is a crisis, and if we're not careful, there will be none left to help to deliver the plan. And I'm sure that is similar in various other parts of primary care. So whilst I do recognise the Minister has tried to be helpful, I do think there's still a lot of work to be done and I will be, and I know others in this chamber will be pursuing the plan in the hope that we're going to see it succeed in future.

But it will need a lot of commitment and and resource, as we've already said, of focusing resource on primary care in communities and making sure that that focus is kept and that we are still we are committed to it. Thank

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you. The question is that this motion be agreed to, as many as are of be agreed to, as many as are of that opinion will say content. To the contrary, not content. The the contrary, not content. The contents have it. Question for short debate. Places of Worship
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13:09
Baroness Prentis of Banbury Portrait Baroness Prentis of Banbury (Conservative)
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talk of the valley and frankly makes The Vicar of Dibley look makes The Vicar of Dibley look rather low key. But this large church is a huge responsibility for a small village. It's grade one listed 45% of grade one listed buildings in the country are places buildings in the country are places of worship. Every five years we are given a list of repairs which must be carried out. We're currently worrying about how to pay for a repair to the roof, and we are not alone in that.

Cleaning the church. In the run up to the wedding, I felt the care that had been lavished on our building for generations. I'm very concerned that the actions of this government mean that on our watch, we may fail to preserve these buildings as we should. The vast majority of the money needed for upkeep comes from individuals in the village. Apparently, 89% of the population are unaware that for most ordinary parish churches, there is no central fund for repairs.

Our church relies mainly on a very few people giving monthly direct debits. Of course, in order to function as a church, we must also fund the contribution which pairs are pays our share of clergy costs, which in our case is 11,500 pounds a year. All this from a congregation on a normal Sunday of around ten. Money for mission rightly should come from churchgoers. I have no quarrel with that. But this debate is really about how we support our most important buildings listed buildings, the listed places of worship scheme allowed us to apply
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None Portrait Short debate: How the Places of Worship Renewal Fund will differ from the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme Baroness Prentis of Banbury (Conservative)
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to reclaim the VAT costs on the cost of repairs, with a fairly cost of repairs, with a fairly straightforward application process. About 60% of all listed places of About 60% of all listed places of worship in the UK have used the scheme in the last ten years. That's why previous governments That's why previous governments funded it with a stable budget of about 42 million. With this, we about 42 million. With this, we were not only preserving beautiful and important buildings, but we were also recognising the real value that churches provide to community life in the UK.

Recent research by the National Churches Trust using proper Treasury methodology estimates that for every pound spent on a church, the benefit to the community is £16. It's worth remembering, of course, that the Church of England has to provide marriages and burials, and that there is historical value as well as civic value in these buildings. We're also, for example, one of the largest providers, in fact, the largest provider of art exhibition space in the country. Despite all this, the government decided drastically to cut the funding available to only a fund, which includes £23 million a year, which will not rise with inflation.

And there is a new cap on all grants of £25,000. They announced that the scheme would end in April this year, only for it to close early, meaning eligible applicants lost out after some time when we were all in the lurch with no information at all. We do now, sadly have details of the Places of Worship renewal Fund. It is a complex, very complex competitive grant scheme with two application windows a year. Historic England who've been put in charge once again of administering administering the scheme, have already warned of delays just for the earliest stage of the application.

The scheme is limited to England only, with no provision for listed places of worship in the rest of the UK. To put the differences into perspective, it's estimated that the new scheme will probably support 100 to 150 listed places of worship a year. The previous scheme supported around 5000. The complexity of the application process is a real barrier. The fund is explicitly designed to target support in the most deprived areas of England, where need is highest. Consideration will also be given to communities with the least ability to raise funds locally.

The scoring matrix has not been published, and I would ask the Minister to give us further details on how rural deprivation in particular, will be assessed. If necessary. I would ask her to write to me about this, because details are really needed by the poor individuals in parishes around the country who are going to have to make the applications for this scheme. My other asks of the Minister are really, please think again. There is an argument that we should have a scheme such as this one for areas of highest deprivation, but please, could we do it in conjunction with the previous scheme which allowed us to claim back VAT costs? I'm really pleased that the Conservative Party has committed to reinstate the scheme as it was before.

The much more generous scheme. My Lords, I'd like to thank you for your interest in this debate, and I'm sure in turn you will all thank. Join me in thanking those who care for our listed places of worship, the Churches Conservation Trust, the Friends of Friendless Churches, and most of all the individuals of all faiths and none who give their time and money to keep the roof on. Government should not tax this worthy work which is done on behalf of us all here.
13:15
Baroness Wilcox of Newport Portrait Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Labour)
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My Lords, if we get this right. >> We will do far more than preserve historic buildings. We will protect the civic infrastructure that quietly infrastructure that quietly sustains our communities every single day. If we get it wrong, we risk allowing that infrastructure to erode slowly. So I welcome the government's intention, and I thank the Minister for bringing this forward. However, intentions alone will not sustain these places. What matters now is delivery, and this proposal truly matches the scale of the reality on the ground.

Because, my Lords, it's not really about buildings, it's about whether we recognise and are prepared to properly support the role these places now play. As frontline providers of community support. In my own city of Newport, these are not abstract heritage assets. They are places where people go when the system is under pressure. They are where families turn to when times are hard, and increasingly they are stepping in when others no longer can, and they are doing so largely through volunteers, through faith communities, through people who give their time and energy without expectations of recognition.

So let me turn to my own church, Saint Willis Cathedral in Newport, the seat of the Archbishop of Wales. The inspirational and welcoming the Most Reverend Cherry Vann. It is, of course, a place of history, a place that holds the memory and remains of the Chartists who died in the struggle for democracy. But its significance does not end there. Saint Willis is not simply a monument to our past. It is a working part of our present. It is a place of worship, certainly, but it's a place where people gather, where support is distributed, where community is built and sustained in every meaningful sense.

It's a civic asset. And this coming Sunday, I shall be honoured to once again attend Newport's Civic Sunday Service, held to welcome the city's new mayor, who this municipal year is my very good friend, Councillor Deb Harvey, who is the epitome of a community champion. Together with the deputy mayor, Councillor Debbie Jenkins, who I know has an excellent grade in GCSE English as she's one of my former pupils. When we talk about funding these buildings, they are not passive structures to be preserved.

They're active institutions. The Listed Places of Worship grant scheme has recognised this, at least in part, and has succeeded because of that recognition. It's worked because it's been straightforward, predictable and accessible. It's trusted communities to get on with the job of serving others rather than tying them up in bureaucracy. I welcome the proposal for a places of worship renewal fund. But I say with caution to the Minister, this must not just be a rebranding exercise. It must be a real step forward because the reality is stark.

The demands on these buildings are increasing, not decreasing. So the question before us is simple does this fund rise to meet that reality? Will it support not just emergency repairs, but essential adaptations to make these buildings usable in the modern world? Accessibility, energy efficiency and the ability to remain open as genuine community hubs? I do hope it will maintain that simplicity. And most importantly, will it be funded at a level that reflects what is happening in communities like mine in Newport, where these buildings are shouldering an ever greater sense of social responsibility.

My Lords, I support the direction the government is taking, and this is the moment for realism and ambition. If we are serious about strengthening communities, we must be serious about strengthening the institutions that hold them together. If we are serious about resilience, we must invest in the places that deliver it daily. And if we're serious about fairness, we must recognise that these communities cannot continue to do more with less. So I urge my noble friend, the Minister, to ensure that this fund does not merely continue what exists but strengthens it, ensure it reflects not just aspiration, but the reality faced on the ground, and ensure places like Saint Wallace are not simply preserved for their past, but properly supported for the indispensable role they play today.

Because, my Lords, these buildings are not just part of our heritage, they are part of our response to the challenges we face now, and we cannot afford to let them fall in that pursuit.

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I'm extremely grateful to. Baroness Prentis for securing this debate, and indeed, thank her for a debate, and indeed, thank her for a wider service to the church and congratulate her daughter and son in law as well. I do indeed want to thank everyone, the many thousands of people across our country who play a part in caring for our wonderful churches and churchyards. My fellow Lords spiritual regret My fellow Lords spiritual regret that they're not able to join this debate.

Many are with their candidates for ordination services taking place this weekend, but I know that they share my support for the Places of Worship Renewal Fund and the recognition from the Secretary of State for culture, media, Media and Sport that places of worship are, and I quote, part of who we are as a nation, end quote. And as the Second Church Estates Commissioner put it, when this scheme was raised in questions in the Other place churches are again, I quote, cornerstones of our communities, end quote.

It is hard to overstate the significance they hold to people up and down this country, irrespective of faith. They are not only places of worship, but vital community assets contributing to heritage, to social cohesion and to local economies. And I am pleased, therefore, that the government recognises this through this fund. I'm also aware that there have been collaborative campaigns for long term sustainable support for the fabric of church buildings, so the Places of Worship Renewal Fund will help unlock other funding for capital works, which would have been unavailable under the previous scheme.

In my own diocese, for example, there are a number of major parish churches in areas of high deprivation which simply could not have raised the necessary funds needed for repairs. Even with the VAT rebate. There are, however, shortcomings to this new fund, some already mentioned by noble Lords. But I think it's important that I state these for the record. Firstly, far fewer churches overall will be supported through this new fund than they were by the listed Places of Worship Grant scheme.

The latter provided around £40 million a year and supported around 5000 listed places of worship per year. By contrast, the Places of Worship Renewal Fund works out at £23 million annually for four years and is expected to benefit around 100
13:22
Lord Bishop of Leicester Portrait The Lord Bishop of Leicester (Bishops)
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to 150 listed places of worship each year. Secondly, this fund only each year. Secondly, this fund only applies to England. Church buildings play as important a part in the heritage and community in the heritage and community infrastructure of the devolved nations. So I want to ask the noble Lady, the Minister, to explain how the government plans to support churches in Northern Ireland, churches in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. And thirdly, whilst I appreciate the focus on areas of high deprivation where churches can struggle to raise funds, the Index of multiple deprivation does not reliably capture the challenges that more rural areas face in this respect, and indeed more broadly, very rural areas have smaller communities to draw on for fund raising.

And yet churches there play often an even more important role in bringing people together, often as the only public building for miles. So again, I ask the noble Lady, the Minister, will there be any support extended to these more rural churches in future years of the fund? The financial challenges facing cathedrals and church buildings and those who care for them is growing. Recent funding pressures highlight a widening gap between the cost of maintaining historic places of worship and the resources available to support them.

Many congregations are now small, and the burden of upkeep increasingly falls on communities with limited resources. So a strategic, long term funding approach is needed, which recognises that greater stability enables greater planning, better outcomes and ultimately better value for money. So can the Minister indicate whether that is the government's long term ambition?

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My Lords, it's a genuine pleasure to follow the right Reverend, the Bishop of Leicester. Reverend, the Bishop of Leicester. I enjoyed his contribution, though I have a nagging feeling that what I'm about to say next may make him I'm about to say next may make him wish that he'd been scheduled to speak after me rather than before. Now, my Lords, I may be a minority of one in this debate with this views, but I'm definitely not a minority of one in the House, and nor am I a minority of one in the country.

My Lords, we are living in an increasingly secular Britain where less than half the population identifies with any religious faith and a mere fraction regularly attends services. Yet this capital
13:25
Lord Scriven Portrait Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat)
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ring fenced. Yet this capital fund ring fenced millions of pounds of ring fenced millions of pounds of taxpayers money a year for the exclusive benefit of active religious buildings across the country. This is not a natural exercise in heritage conservation. exercise in heritage conservation. It's an exercise in state patronage, filtering public tax revenue from filtering public tax revenue from citizens of all beliefs and none to subsidise the operational footprints of religious institutions. And look at the gross unfairness baked into the eligibility criteria.

A historic grade two listed village hall, an old miners welfare hall, or an independent community theatre facing structural collapse cannot touch a single penny of this fund. They are forced to battle for oversubscribed general grants. And the irony being that religious organisations are fully entitled to apply for some of these pots to. Yet now an active place of worship receives a dedicated, exclusive multi-million pound safety net. Crucially, the government has confirmed that the financial assets of religious bodies are not routinely considered when determining how this new support will be distributed.

Why? Let's look, for example, at the Church of England. The Church Commissioners manage a massive diversified endowment fund now valued at an astonishing £11.6 billion. They hold vast stakes in global equities and despite scaling back their retail exposure, they retain a 10% stake in the MetroCentre in Gateshead, now being put up for sale for an estimated £500 million, providing just how highly commercialised these holdings are. Nowhere is the commercial wealth clearer than in the heart of London, where the church owns the prestigious 90 acre Hyde Park estate.

The estate consists of 2300 high end properties, luxury residential lets and boutique commercial quarter of Connaught Village. It raises a staggering 45 million to £60 million in rental income annually for the fund. And let us be clear about what is missing from this premier estate. Despite the church's public rhetoric on housing, there's virtually no social or affordable housing on this site. It's treated explicitly as a high yield cash generator. We will no doubt hear the argument that the 11.6 billion fund cannot legally be used to maintain local parish churches, because its statutory duty is restricted to pensions and clergy salaries.

My Lords, while restructuring the endowment fund to local church properties might be difficult, it is not impossible if the leadership of the Church of England decides it, so wishes to do so. It's a question of choice. Instead, this cash rich institution holds its wealth centrally and doesn't and doesn't use it for the upkeep of private religious buildings. The church of the Church of England spent £35 million on school evangelism projects alone last year, at a time when they can devote more money in a single year to school mission than the total annual budget of this entire new tax funded building fund.

Why should taxpayers be expected to meet the costs of repairs that the church is entirely capable of funding from its own vast resources? Furthermore, my Lords, we must scrutinise the strict mandate that these buildings must be sorry, must remain in active religious use to qualify. This goes far beyond preserving architecture. If this were purely a rescue mission for historic bricks and mortar, the theological utility of the building would be completely irrelevant. By tying public millions to active worship, the state is directly intervening to support religious practice itself.

By funding active worship, the taxpayer is being forced to bankroll institutions that frequently hold exclusionary positions. Many of the religious bodies owning these buildings discriminate in their hiring practices, refuse to perform same sex marriages, or bar women from leadership roles. Why should an LGBT plus an atheist or a woman taxpayer see their hard earned money used to prop up the roof of an establishment that actually rejects their rights? Somerled's if we are to spend £92 million of of public capital on heritage, let us do so through a strictly neutral secular framework which these buildings and these institutions can bid against.

Let us build an inclusive fund. Let us build an exclusive fund for public space, not not the structural fabric, or not fund the structural fabric of private faith. I urge the government to rethink this fund and use it to deliver and protect truly secular and inclusive buildings. For a 2026 Britain.
13:30
Baroness Gill Portrait Baroness Gill (Labour)
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I welcome the opportunity to debate this important topic, and my sincere thanks to Baroness Prentis of Banbury. I recognise that places of worship are an important part of UK's heritage and architecture, and it's fair to say my opinion differs greatly from Lord Scriven before me. I have taken particular great interest in them since I was a board member of English churches. Housing places of worship have held a special fascination for me, regardless of the faith, not just for their spirituality, their serenity, intimacy, but they gave real insights into the history of the locality over the last few years.

Post Brexit, I have regularly visited my local churches for art lessons, musical performances and local fetes. From the number of activities posted on the boards. They are real centre of the community, a hub for community cafes, parent toddler groups, food banks and addressing many other welfare concerns. Likewise, sacred places of other faiths also provide similar support for their congregations. My own experience in Sikh gurdwaras, many of them provide a daily hot meals to everyone in the community, not just to the practitioners of that faith.

Therefore, the new renewal fund of 92 million of capital funding over four years, announced earlier this year, I believe, will address the challenging state of repairs of some of our oldest buildings in disrepair. The fact that the funding, the priority will be to those areas of high deprivation is a really positive factor, given it's the hardest for those places of worship to raise funds in their localities. I appreciate that many of the oldest buildings are churches and cathedrals.

Nevertheless, there are notable older buildings belonging to other faiths that will qualify, including 27 synagogues, 15 mosques, seven Sikh gurdwaras and five Buddhist temple. And I'm particularly pleased that many of them in my constituency of West Midlands. However, I have had a lot of feedback about the loss of universal VAT refund. This will be felt as a real cut by many places of worship, who will no longer have access to that free repairs. Many of these, I recognise are new, but are iconic landmarks such as Guru Nanak Road in Southall, Neasden, Hindu Mandir Temple and Birmingham Central Mosque.

And they're not listed, but they are very important centres for long established communities there. So now I do recognise that they have recourse to National Lottery funding, but there are real dilemmas faced by the committees of those organisations about accessing funds from gambling. Anyway, regardless, I really welcome that this government is safeguarding our heritage for future generations to enjoy believers and non-believers. Could I finally just ask the Minister whether any additional support be given in navigating complex application process in deprived neighbourhoods who lack.

Having dedicated heritage staff? Thank you.
13:34
Baroness Seccombe Portrait Baroness Seccombe (Conservative)
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Lord Burns. I thank my noble friend Lady Prentice for bringing friend Lady Prentice for bringing this important debate before the House today. Parish churches are so often the centre of local communities, including for people of all faiths, and none of nothing can compensate. When a centuries old church closes its doors. And. Over the past half century, a approximately 8500 churches of all denominations have closed. My Lords, this is a profound tragedy. During the pandemic, the doors of all our church buildings were suddenly shut.

75% of the respondents to the National Churches Trust survey said that this had a negative effect on their community. Priests were forbidden by their own bishops from entering the churches that their call to love and serve, even from ringing the bells to let people know that they were being prayed for. May those decisions never be repeated. As I live alone, I found lockdown particularly difficult. I discovered that the only way I could see other people was when I was shopping, shopping and embroidery kept me going.

I was greatly relieved when I was able to join my son's bubble. And so in my Toyota hybrid, I went and travelled to and fro, but thankfully very economically. Yes, of course, the established church itself has much to answer for, but it appears the government is misunderstanding the role of our church buildings. Once again, it is shameful that the funding was cut by almost half for the listed places of worship scheme in its last year, and now the new Places of Worship Renewal fund will see drastically fewer churches receive any government support whatsoever.

Repair works can be expensive and increasingly so, but they are essential to maintaining our heritage and not just England's, but Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland too. So I so agree with the right Reverend Phillips that the new Places of Worship Manure Fund should be accessible to listed places of worship across our whole country, church communities and their volunteers are the custodians of the heritage, and yet they are under attack. The Countryside Alliance estimated that ten crimes were committed every day on church property in 2025, and the true figure may well be higher.

What is the government action to tackle this? The damage caused to our altars and stained glass windows. Traumatises congregations and tears apart communities and causes the need for yet more repairs beyond the usual day to day maintenance of these magnificent buildings. My Lords, they need our help. It seems that all these volunteers are asking is that their fundraising efforts for repairs and not tax. Further, with the addition of VAT, I would be grateful if the noble Baroness, the Minister in her wind up speech, can tell us why the government insists on doing so.
13:38
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Portrait Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (Liberal Democrat)
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Hear, hear. >> My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness Prentis of Banbury. For securing this. >> Important debate. >> And may I say what a pleasure.

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And may I say what a pleasure. It is to see her in her place. Leading this debate this afternoon. The noble Lady has set out very eloquently the problems and issues facing those churches which have ancient buildings to care for, and I agree with all her comments. I have spent the majority of my adult years attending, organising and contributing to events designed to help raise money for much needed repairs to leaking roofs, rotten floorboards and new heating systems.

This extended to extended to altering the layout of pews so that a community space could be created where worshippers could enjoy a chat and a cup of coffee at the end of a service. The listed places of worship grant was well respected by parishes and provided much needed funding for both small and larger projects. The new fund, the Places of Worships Renewal Fund, is competitive rather than against criteria, and possibly 100 to 150 churches will get a grant, whereas in the past 5000 gained from the VAT refund at 20%.

This is not to be brushed aside as irrelevant, adding to which a church will need very competent people to put together the application. The overall amount set aside is now less, as has already been said, £23 million a year versus 92 million for four years, but not inflation proof. Submissions to the fund can only be made twice a year, whereas previously it was rolling. Whilst I can see many benefits in the renewal fund, I fear that it will mean smaller rural parishes will miss out, especially as the fund is competitive.

The ethos of the fund to reach out to disadvantaged communities is excellent. However, I suspect that this will mean urban and city churches, where the expectation will be that the grant will renovate a dilapidated church, leading to increased congregations will be paramount. I support this, but the other side of this coin is that those rural areas where the local church, when built, had a thriving congregation, but which has now dwindled to a handful of faithful, will not score highly enough to get a share of the fund.

For over 30 years I worshipped in a Somerset village church where the congregation was small, perhaps 15 to 20. On a good day, very plain on the outside, but with spectacular stained glass windows given by the family of a young German airman shot down and sent to work on a local farm. He and his family were so grateful for the kind treatment he received. They replaced all the plain glass windows with beautiful stained glass. This church was not listed then, nor is it now.

Having moved to Hampshire, I now worship in a church which is generally full. It is a much wealthier area compared with the small Somerset village. There are many different activities, including a group for mums, babies and toddlers on a Monday morning. This church is also not listed. Neither of these churches would have qualified for access to the listed Places of Worship grant scheme, but both along with all churches, had to go through the laborious process of getting a faculty if they wanted to do any sort of repair, however small, and even if the members of the congregation were to do the repair or updating themselves.

Architectural heritage is important when entering a cathedral, a sense of wonder descends on the visitor. Whether this is Rochester, which has existed in various forms since the seventh century, or Coventry Cathedral, which is literally risen from the ashes ashes of the Second World War, even a modern cathedral will need some repairs to keep the weather out. As demonstrated by Liverpool Metropolitan Catholic Cathedral, which had problems with its roof when scoring for the Places of Worship Renewal Fund.

Is it likely that the small parish church in a rural area looking to create a community space where outreach can take place for young people, mums with babies or socialising for the elderly will not score against the larger town and city churches, which serve a large, disadvantaged community which needs a sense of community and purpose. The ending of the listed Places of worship grant scheme and replacement with the Places of Worship Renewal Fund has caused widespread concern amongst many church communities.

It is not only the regular worshippers that value their church. There are those within the village or community who rarely attend services, but often support fundraising events. These community members want the church to be there for them for weddings, funerals and the occasional baptism. If a church seems likely to close, there is general outcry amongst the population it serves. The church is an important part of the fabric of society and should be not and should not be left to crumble into decay.

I support the comments of the right reverend Prelate. The Bishop of Leicester, Baroness Wilcox, Baroness Seccombe and Baroness Gill and I will have words with Baroness Cass, with Lord Scriven. I look forward to the Minister's response and reassurance that we are not about to see the demise of the village parish church due to a leaking roof or dry rot.
13:44
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Portrait Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Conservative)
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Yeah. >> My Lords, I'm very grateful to my noble friend Lady Prentis of Banbury for securing this debate and I congratulate her for the way and I congratulate her for the way she set it out. And I congratulate Matilda and James on what sounds like it was a splendid wedding, as their example shows, these are the places which record some of the

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most important moments in people's lives and link In many cases, two. A thousand

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In many cases, two. A thousand years of history of those who've been through those moments as well. These are in urban and rural areas, often the last places of of community venue, providing not just community venue, providing not just religious services, but support in so many ways to the community as enabled, Baroness Brady Wilcox said. enabled, Baroness Brady Wilcox said. This is part of our civic infrastructure and a survey by the National Churches Trust has tried to put a figure on this and show the £55 billion of social value that is delivered just through churches, not just the other places of worship of all faiths and denominations to which these schemes are apply.

So I'm grateful to all Labour Lords for speaking, and we, of course, send our best wishes to all the ordinands. This Petertide. Yes, liturgically. Not the best timing, perhaps, for the debate, but a very timely one to be having. These buildings of all faiths, faiths are not are looked after by by volunteers. They're not rewarded in this life anyway for their for their service. And the, the not every parish can rely on a former attorney general to help them get their head around schemes.

The old scheme had many advantages. We've heard about the simplicity and reliability in chief. When I was a Minister, though, I was always open to the ideas. The scheme was good for those that had the money to carry out the work. Lots of churches said they wanted something that would enable them to carry it out in the first place. So I'm open to ideas that allow that, as the new fund does. But. But like many, I do regret the way that the change has been brought about was in many ways regrettable initially, sort of the halving of the amount available, a bit of uncertainty about whether it would continue and when, which of course led to a very tight window for people to be applying, certainly in this first tranche of of the scheme.

And that, of course, puts further burdens on the volunteers, particularly those without the resources and the professional sort of background that help them get their head around it. There was also a bit of a lack of consultation amongst the users of the scheme, which is an important thing, and debates like this are a really great way for feedback to be received by the Minister and her officials on those that are using this to deliver that, that public good. But we recognise we are where we are, and the government has been clear about the clarity for the scheme and the rest of this Parliament.

I think, therefore, we'd like to focus a bit on, on, on how we can make make it work best. As we've heard, the new scheme is competitive, and maybe the Minister can say a bit about how the government will ensure that we don't have winners and losers. Previously, there was a scheme to which everyone could apply. The cap in the old scheme was only ever met once last year when the amount was halved. Before then, people applying knew they were very likely to to get the the money back.

How do we make sure there is that reliability and dependability in the new scheme, and how do we make it as user friendly as possible through generous deadlines, through clear guidance, simple forms for the volunteers to fill in in. The new scheme focuses on areas of deprivation. There's been lots of interest, but also lots of scratching heads amongst those that are trying to work it out around the country. How can we make sure that the data sets that the the that's based on are reliable? In particular the methodology the community needs index actually scores an area as more affluent.

If it has a, an asset like a church. So by definition, having a church, how do we make sure that the methodology doesn't count against the places that most need to use it? Will the Minister work with Historic England to make sure that feedback from these early tranches are fed into the user experience? The new system is England only, whereas the old one was UK wide. Will the government work with the devolved authorities to make sure that there's support in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where, because of the different denominations, particularly in in churches, there are a greater number of religious buildings needing to be looked after and saved.

Will she recognise that not everyone can avail themselves of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, some faith groups and denominations, because that involves an element of gambling. Don't like to apply to the the that that particular heritage fund. That's why this one is so important. And will this scheme be evaluated? In talking about the reasons for the scheme that the Minister talked about previously, eight out of ten churches said that they would have carried on the work anyway. Well, of course they would have, because if the roof is falling down, you have to fix it whether you get the tax back or not.

The evaluation and the analysis is really important here in evaluating this scheme. Can it be done in conversation and consultation with users to understand some of those, those nuances which I think might have been lost in, in drawing up the current one, because it may be that there is a blend of the two schemes that help give the grants and the tax back, I should declare an interest. I'm a trustee of the Churches Conservation Trust. In fact, I've just come from a meeting of the trustees of that secular charity that, look, after 350 churches across the country, it was the biggest user of the old scheme, in effect, at the ending of the.

The tax arrangements mean now a tax bill in the region of 300 zero zero £0 for a charity that is funded both by church and state, to look after these buildings for the good of the community. I know the Minister has been generous in her time with the chairman and chief executive of the charity, but and has visited a church in rugby. I hope she'll continue to keep the open door approach that she that she has. And as we've got a bit of time in hand before the the our is done, I should just draw out a bit more on the the point that noble Lords have made about the work that these churches do for people of all faiths, and none.

The noble Lord Lord Scriven is very welcome to come and visit church to see the range of things that we do there art exhibitions, recording studios, model railway exhibitions, camera, beer festivals, even medieval jousting and note. His party wants to have a network of cold spaces in this period of heat. There aren't many places colder than a church I can. I can tell him we have this network that can be used for people of all faiths and none, and of course they are engines of skills and training for the heritage skills that we need to repair buildings, including the one that we are sitting in at the moment.

So I hope the Minister will take the the feedback that has been raised by users of the scheme to the Department to make sure that we have a scheme that really. Thanks and understands the custodians of these buildings who are delivering such a social good.
13:52
Baroness Twycross Portrait Baroness Twycross, The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Labour)
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My Lords, I'm really pleased to answer this question for short debate and like others, would like to thank the noble Lady Baroness Prentis of Banbury for securing this debate and all other noble Lords in the right reverend Prelate who, despite the weather, stayed to speak in the debate. I'd like to congratulate the noble Lady Baroness Prentis, or rather probably her daughter and son in law for their marriage, and I will ehm, in the time allowed to answer as many questions as possible, but I will review Hansard and follow up in writing, where I do not.

In May, as noble Lords are aware, I announced the opening of applications to the Places of Worship Renewal Fund. The fund will provide upfront capital grants to restore listed places of worship, with funding targeted towards the places that need it most. I was pleased to be able to secure this funding of £92 million for churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and other places of worship in recognition of the valuable role they play in the hearts of their community. In many cases, they provide services well beyond their congregations.

The example the noble, noble Lady, Baroness Prentice, gave in her opening remarks from her local church of Saint James. The Apostle highlighted this, as did the examples by the noble Lady Baroness Bakewell of Haddington. My noble friend Baroness Wilcox, the noble Lady Baroness Seccombe, and the noble Lord. Lord Parkinson, indeed highlighted the effective monetary value of the social value that is provided. Since I became Heritage Minister, I have visited places of worship up and down the country, including Sir Michael Le Belfrey in York, Salisbury Cathedral, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, which was mentioned by a Baroness Bakewell and Grimsby Minster, and the Sir Moses Montefiore Synagogue in Grimsby.

I've also spoken regularly to stakeholders including the Church of England and National Churches Trust. I know that wonderful buildings like these rely on dedicated volunteers to keep the doors open and to keep the lights on. While some larger places of worship may have dedicated fundraising staff, I know that for the vast majority it is those same volunteers, including, I have no doubt, many members of your Lordships' House. But clearly a number of those who spoke today who will fundraise with their community and who will apply for funding for repairs and essential improvements.

This scheme is designed with them in mind. The noble Lady Baroness Prentis highlighted how highlighted the previous listed Places of Worship grant scheme, and I do recognise how much this was valued by those caring for historic places of worship. I know it's supported many transformational projects. However, in the current fiscal environment, we need to look carefully at how funding is targeted to ensure it is delivering against our ambitions as a noble Lord. Lord Parkinson highlighted and as the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Leicester said, many churches haven't benefited as they couldn't actually raise the capital funds up front.

Our evaluation of the Listed Places of Worship grant scheme showed that 80% of those who benefited said they would have completed the works anyway, though in some cases to a different timetable or scope. Our internal analysis of past payments of the listed places of Worship grant data also shows that it disproportionately favoured places with less advantage, illustrating the point that actually, for some areas it was almost impossible for them even to to sort of get the funding to make the essential repairs.

This is not to reassure my noble friend Baroness Wilcox a rebranding exercise, the Places of Worship Renewal Fund will target places facing double disadvantages, double double disadvantage, places with the highest levels of deprivation and with the greatest need for investment. When assessing claims, Historic England, who will manage the fund for the government, will prioritise eligible applications. Eligible applications in these places of greatest need. Baroness Prentis asked around a question about rural churches, which was also raised by other noble Lords and applications will be any listed places of worship can apply.

Applications will be prioritised on the basis of need, as set out on the Historic England website, in areas not served by standard measures of deprivation. Additional consideration can be given to those that serve isolated or rural communities, or provide the primary or only shared community space in that locality. Baroness Prentis and my noble friend Baroness Wilcox, Reverend referenced. Devolution or my noble friend Baroness Wilcox WEF referenced the incredible church in Newport, Wales, in relation to devolution.

The list of places where grant scheme was UK wide. It's about rebate scheme. The places of worship scheme is England only because heritage is devolved. The Scottish National, the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland administrations receive Barnett consequentials that the Spending Review, taking into account any changes to DCMS overall settlement. We have made them aware that this also covers this scheme. It is now for the devolved administration to consider whether to set up new arrangements should they wish to. They haven't yet done so, but we have offered to share how DCMS is approaching this lottery.

Funding is available in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales as well, and we would anticipate that over the next three years about £100 million will be distributed for churches across the three nations for the nation's over three years. I do appreciate the point made by my noble friend Baroness Gill. On some places of worship, being reluctant to take lottery money. Point also made by Lord Parkinson. It is only when all eligible projects or in or serving the places that face double disadvantage have been funded that other projects will be considered.

Second priority will be given to areas with the greatest need, as measured by the index of multiple deprivation. Once eligible. Projects in these areas have been funded, projects with the greatest need in terms of financial need, urgency, repair or community benefit will be considered. The Places of Worship Renewal Fund moves funding from a retrospective reclaim, as noble also noted, funding those projects that could already raise the money to carry out capital repairs, repairs to a targeted upfront capital grant funding will no longer be awarded on a first come, first served basis.

It will go to those places that need it the most. By enabling application applicants to secure funding before major works begin. The Place of Worship Renewal Fund gives congregations the confidence and certainty to carry out works. The noble Lord Lord Scriven questioned the point around active places of worship. I just wanted to clarify that an active place of worship is either being categorised as one used for worship at least six times a year, or it is owned by a charity that cares specifically for historic places of worship that are open to the public on a minimum of six times a year, like the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, I recommend a visit with the Churches Conservation Trust.

The CCP is eligible for the new scheme. My noble friend Baroness Wilcox asks if funding would be sufficient. The Places of Worship Renewal Fund will invest £92 million as. As I've listed, there's also a wider landscape of government funded for the Churches Conservation Trust. The National Lottery is expected to spend over £100 million between 2024 and 27, and obviously the vital work of parishes and congregations is also key. This is not the only new funding. I've launched. The £60 million Heritage at Risk Capital Fund is now open, ready to conserve and repair assets delivering community benefit.

The £42 million Heritage Revival Fund is also open, supporting communities themselves to take on the regeneration of historic buildings, getting them back into community use. This sits alongside lottery funding to heritage of around £300 million and annum. In relation to the points made around whether the church should fund this or the sustainability of funding. And I think I allude to sort of different points made by the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. Care of our place of worship is a significant challenge, and in the government's view, it needs to be a shared endeavour.

I will talk to the Church of England about how we, the church and the lottery and others can work together to support these buildings. My conversation with church officials, however, suggests that they are willing to have this conversation and in response to noble Lord, Lord Scriven's wider point, I do think there's a balance to be struck. These aren't simply religious buildings, they're also historic buildings, which I apologies. I can't remember which noble Lord it was said this. I think it might be the noble Lady Baroness Prentis.

They make up almost half of grade one listed buildings. Through the Places of Worship Renewal Fund. Smaller grants will be available for minor targeted interventions. The noble Lady Baroness Prentis, My Noble Friend Baroness Wilcox and others, including the noble Lady Baroness Bakewell and noble friend Baroness Gill, have highlighted that simplicity was a feature of the previous scheme in designing the new competitive application process. We've worked hard with Historic England to take into account the needs of volunteers up and down the country who care for our places of worship.

In response to Lord Parkinson in designing the scheme, we met with a range. We met with a range of stakeholders, as did Historic England and Historic England also ran a working group to design it. Historic England will have dedicated project officers to guide smaller congregations and faith groups through the grant application process. And when I was on a recent visit to Grimsby, I met a congregation who were availing themselves of that advice, and we feel that that means that groups that need extra support will receive it.

Above all in areas of advantage. This is the first round of Lords of a new scheme, and I've got very few comments. I've got a couple of paragraphs left. So with the indulgence of the House I might continue. This is the first round of a new scheme. We're monitoring feedback carefully, using Historic England Intelligence, reviewing social media and listening to our stakeholders to understand if improvements to the process can be made. I will meet with Historic England to discuss this and happy to meet with any interested members of your Lordships' House as well and hear directive and noble Lords direct experience.

Like all speakers in today's debate, I recognise how our historic places of worship provide many valuable services to our communities, from food banks to playgroups, two spaces for music, dance and culture. The best way to protect our heritage is to use it. And this is exactly what the funding aims to do. I will write to other noble Lords, including to Baroness Seccombe around crime and crime against churches in the scheme will, however, ensure heritage buildings, including listed places of worship, stand proud at the centre of our communities and continue to serve their needs for many years to come.



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My Lords, we might take a moment for people to leave the chamber.

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And.
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None Portrait Debate: Growing threats to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, including disinformation, foreign interference and declining public trust in politics Lord Wallace of Saltaire (Liberal Democrat)
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Motion for debate. Threats to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom. Lord Wallace of Saltaire. Saltaire. >> My Lords. >> I'm sure we're all grateful. >> For how cool. >> The chamber is today.

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And I want. To talk about the interconnection between domestic and foreign threats to British and foreign threats to British democracy. Philip Rycroft, in his report this spring, warned I quote, that there is a long term and worrying loss of trust in our democratic system and processes. He further warned that this problem of public disillusion makes it easier for foreign hostile actors to interfere in British politics seeking, I quote, to sow distrust and exacerbate divisions in UK society with the ultimate aim of undermining confidence in our democracy.

This chamber will be considering the representation of the people Bill later in the year, which addresses the issue of foreign interference but only touches on the alienation of a substantial proportion of Britain's citizens from Westminster politics. The Rycroft report recommends that we amend the Bill to strengthen its protections against foreign finance and disinformation which, as he rightly points out, are deepening public mistrust. But the UK was already an outlier among democratic countries for public disengagement from national politics before financial globalisation made it easy to disguise where political donations came from, and social media made deliberate disinformation campaigns a regular part of our political life.

All of us involved in politics should be concerned about the depth of public disengagement from political life and disillusion with our democratic institutions. 50 years ago, several million British citizens belonged to political parties. Now that sunk to less than a million in the first general election, I was aware of 80% of registered voters turned out in 2024, that was down to less than 60%. While the number of eligible voters not on the register is estimated to have risen between 6 and 8 million.

This means that the massive Commons majority of Labour MPs on whom our current government rests, received the support of not much more than a quarter of adult British citizens. Registration and turnout were lowest among young people. Opinion surveys confirm deepening public mistrust of Westminster politics. Similar trends in declining confidence are observable in other democratic states, but disillusion with democratic institutions has fallen further in the UK than in most other comparable countries. The Electoral Commission has recently reported that public trust in politicians has marginally improved, rising to 14%.

We're down there with bankers and worse than estate agents. We may disagree about the underlying causes for what a recent report from demos described as a democratic emergency, but I hope we all agree that we do face a major problem which will require cooperation across our parties to resolve. I've been involved in politics in West Yorkshire for most of my career, and I'm painfully aware of the reality of feeling left behind in what were once council estates, where sold off council houses had been sold on to distant landlords and converted into houses in multiple occupation, where the shrinking and outsourcing of local services means that public service workers are rarely seen, where local companies have given way to distant private equity owners, and where local government itself is distant and too close to bankruptcy to provide much assistance.

I understand why many of them feel abandoned and inclined to vote against any established party. 350 years ago, John Locke wrote about the state as resting upon a social contract between government and citizens. I left behind don't see much of a social contract. For many of them, their only contact with government is with the DWP. If we are to rebuild trust between citizens, political institutions and government, we need to treat the people of the United Kingdom as citizens rather than as consumers or people who sit at home and wait for public services to be delivered.

And we need to inform them about political choices and engage them as far as we can in local public life. The overcentralisation of government and politics in Britain has left us with what a Commons inquiry into voter engagement a decade ago, a decade ago, called, I quote, broad negative stereotypes about Parliament and government which go beyond healthy and necessary scepticism. We will not regain public trust until we reform and modernise both Houses of Parliament. Our chamber provides essential scrutiny of legislation.

But the accusation I heard the other day that we are, I quote, just a bunch of failed politicians, aren't you, is not entirely untrue. Labour's manifesto promised to establish a modernisation committee in the Commons has so far achieved little more than improving accessibility for disabled members. On one of the bills I was concerned with in the last session, the Commons spent less time debating the report and Third Reading stages than in voting down amendments to the Bill. The style of the opposition leader's intervention in yesterday's Prime Minister's Questions fed into the worst stereotypes of partisan Westminster politics.

A healthy, democratic country is one in which citizens are all engaged in public life to one degree or another. The Thatcherite revolution replacing public services with private provision and reducing the role of local government, reduced the visibility of state action and the opportunities for ordinary citizens to participate. David Cameron, as Prime Minister, wanted to limit the anti-social effects of a market society by building a voluntary big society, but that never progressed much further than the modest experiment with citizen service.

With a small number of young people, Labour's English Devolution Act last year completes the conservative destruction of district councils and gives most power in devolving government to 30 or so elected mayors as little local democracy, and that no chance of meeting your councillor to discuss politics in the street or the pub. The Strategic Defence Review, published 12 months ago, set out a vision of a national society remobilized, to meet the new threats which our country faces.

A whole society approach, as it called it, in which volunteer reserves for civil emergencies, and I quote the development of a new force that is modelled on the reserves and connects local communities with defence, recruited and employed locally. Alongside this, it urged the Prime Minister to launch a national conversation on defence and security to persuade citizens to take their share of the responsibilities involved. We are still waiting to be persuaded, the noble Lord Lord Coaker told us last week that he has been designated the Minister for the National Conversation.

I think the SDR intended that it should be the Prime Minister who should have led it. The public need to be informed. Last week I read a published report from the French equivalent of our government's Defending Democracy Taskforce. I find it extraordinary that the British task force does so little to inform Parliament or public more fully about the work it does and the threats it encounters. British citizens are unlikely to respond to the star's call for active engagement in ensuring our security, unless they regain greater trust in our political institutions, both national and local.

That is a challenge for all of us who believe in liberal democracy. Foreign interference is much more likely to gain traction in British politics when public trust is so low. Foreign state interference, as I have already said, was a challenge before social media achieved its current dominant role in political communication. Russian money flowed into the Conservative Party and the Brexit campaign. As the ICS Lord Sugar report described. Russian assassinations on British soil go back to Soviet times. We've since seen examples of Chinese and Iranian state interference.

An Israeli company we've just learned attempted to influence the Scottish elections. American corporations, foundations and extremely wealthy individuals have interfered, most prominently Elon Musk, who's been beamed into a Tommy Robinson rally in Trafalgar Square and used X algorithms to spread disinformation and attempt to shape election campaigns. Others from these branches will talk further about disinformation and social media, and about tightening controls on donations to political parties and campaigning bodies from abroad. I want to talk about how we should strengthen our domestic defences against these malign influences by informing and educating our citizens on how to discriminate between evidence and fictions, and engaging them again in addressing the difficult choices that national and local governments have to make.

Some may disagree that foreign interference constitutes a threat. The noble Lord Lord Hannan, who is in his seat, on Tuesday defended Elon Musk's use and misuse of X to promote a political party. I am surprised that someone who campaigned so vigorously to defend national sovereignty from the European rules that our government had participated in shaping should be so relaxed about interference from the United States. He knows well the rising flow of finance across the Atlantic to support third party bodies and partisan think tanks in Britain that promote everything from climate change denial to the banning of abortion and the shrinking of the state.

And and appears entirely relaxed about it. I look forward in his speech to hearing his definition of a healthy democracy, which I hope might be a little familiar to traditional conservatives, from Burke to Macmillan, and to learn how he considers it possible to reconcile that vision with the libertarian minimum state approach that neoliberals on both sides of the Atlantic want to create and attempted under Mrs. Thatcher to create in Britain. I also look forward to the noble Baroness Baroness Finn definition of what the Conservative Party now considers a healthy democracy, which I suspect is somewhat more constructive than his.

Multiple reports from both Government and Parliament have advised us that better political education is what we need, particularly so now that the cacophony of social media is making it more difficult for readers to distinguish fact from fiction. The move to vote to 16 adds new weight to education about the responsibilities of citizenship. I visited several secondary schools, both state and independent, in recent months, to discuss how they will adjust their curriculum to meet the demands of citizens preparing to vote.

What struck me most in every school was the response from teachers that they are already overloaded with topics to cover on social, economic, political and personal life and cannot persuade their colleagues to spare more time in form for this. There's a lot more work needed on this aspect of the curriculum review. I was also told by teachers and students alike that teenagers now rely on social media, most of all TikTok for their political information, which raises questions about the wisdom of a full ban on social media for under 16 year olds, when that birthday would give them the right to vote.

Yeah, the Minister to whom I posed this dilemma some days ago replied that the BBC would be asked to provide more news and discussion suitable for teenagers. The following day, the BBC announced substantial cuts in its news services, which cuts across any hope that it can somehow lay on more than new voters. Maga Republicans in the United States are doing their best to dismantle
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine Portrait Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Crossbench)
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public service broadcasting, along with so many other aspects of with so many other aspects of public services. We need the BBC to hold the balance and struggle to verify the facts that are often verify the facts that are often contentious political debates. The BBC, for all its flaws, provides a BBC, for all its flaws, provides a shared platform for our public debates. Discontent with democracy increases when economies hit recession or rapid technological change, both of which now face us.

Our democracy is challenged when hostile states or malign foreign actors threaten our prosperity or our way of life. The chaos of British government over the past decade has intensified popular discontent with our political institutions. Opening the door for wealthy populists both here at home and from abroad, to exploit ethnic grievances to undermine democracy further across all democratic parties. We need to rebuild public trust in order to defend our

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weakened democracy. The question is that this motion

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be agreed to. My Lords, it's a pleasure to follow Lord Wallace and thank him follow Lord Wallace and thank him for securing this debate. Democracy is certainly under threat. Just to is certainly under threat. Just to give a few figures, 87% of Britons have either not very much or no have either not very much or no trust at all in politicians, 33% sympathise with the view of British political institutions that they should just, quote, just let them all burn.

And 1 in 5. This is a particularly staggering figure to me. 1 in 5 voters, 21%, say that political violence is acceptable in some conditions. When you think that we live in the aftermath of the murder of two MPs who were murdered for doing their job, that's a staggering figure. Now, some of this is due to direct political interference by hostile states, which Lord Wallace has has talked about. Last year, MI5 director Ken McCallum pointed to a 35% rise in state threat activity and warned that Russian intelligence has been on a mission to generate, quote, sustained mayhem on British streets.

And we constantly see the generation of stories which come from various corners of the world, and example which became still is notorious, was that after the murder, the terrible murders of three girls in Southport three years ago, an entirely false claim appeared online which said that the murderer was, quote, a Muslim immigrant. This is entirely false. But that particular comment, that claim was viewed more than 4 million times in Britain and across the globe. Now the record of Iran is, in my view, even worse than that of Russia or, for that matter, China.

A report by Lord Walney, who's in his place this afternoon, a report from earlier this year detailed how Tehran is making a systematic effort to build a soft power structure through the use of charitable charitable organisations, registered charities which are being subverted or even created by US proxies, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. And we've discussed this many times, and I'll mention this again as use has and is using proxies on a regular basis. The use of proxies are getting worse because they're now using perhaps less obvious proxies.

They're basically using criminal gangs to do their dirty work for them. And we've just seen a court case in which two men were prosecuted and convicted for the murder of an Iranian journalist who was working in in London, the APPG on countering extremism, which I'm a member of, has recommended a number of steps, including a new directorate across Whitehall, which which would be aimed at preventing democratic decline. There are a number of other recommendations in the report by the APPG, which I haven't got time to cover at the moment, but they're all well worth looking at.

I would add that the Charities Commission should be far quicker, far sharper at investigating dodgy charities, with links particularly to Tehran, to China and to to Russia and to other states as well. And there should also be established a list of charities who have found to have had links to hostile states or their proxies. The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has presented this idea a number of times in this in this chamber, and it's well worth thinking about. I would also recommend I've raised this again and again.

I used to raise it in the other place when I was a member of Parliament, we should have the full prescription of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, government after government after government going back to 1979 has failed to act on it. And I've seen well, many, many of us have seen Ministers in the other place come to the despatch box, and here come to the despatch box, clearly very sympathetic towards an outright ban of the IRGC. Somehow, in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that sympathy gets lost and the band gets blocked.

We've now got legislation. We're about to have legislation going through both Houses of Parliament which will create the legal framework which would allow this government or a future government to prescribe the IRGC, but it would then take the political will of a serving Minister to say, we're going to take action and prescribe the IRGC. Now, that's what I've talked about almost entirely is the influence of hostile, hostile states and their their proxies. But I'd also like to just say something about the threat to our democratic institutions from within democratic institutions.

Many of us heard Peter Hennessy Lord Hennessy's valedictory speech a few weeks ago in this chamber. And if we remember, Peter Hennessy was the first person to present the theory. And I'm using the language of the time. A few decades ago, the the theory of the good chap theory of the British Constitution. In other words, the politicians, civil servants and others are largely men and women of goodwill, intelligence, capability. And I think that largely that theory still holds true.

However, what we're now seeing is the rise of elements in the British Constitution, British politics, which were not there when Peter Hennessy wrote his his his books, his outstanding books about the British Constitution. For example, at the other end of the corridor, in the other place, we have a group of five, for want of a better phrase, five Gaza independents who were elected purely on a sectarian basis. Their appeal is purely sectarian. We haven't had that in living memory. And that, in my view, is a threat to democracy.

One of them and led a campaign, and he's boasted about it. One of them led a campaign which was aimed sadly, it was successful, which was aimed to make Britain's second city a no go zone for Jews. When Maccabi Tel Aviv was going to play a football match in Birmingham and that campaign was successful. That, I think, is a tragedy now. We've always had scandals in British politics. Suez and Marconi and Profumo spring to mind. What seems to have changed to me is that the scandals seem to come thicker and faster these days.

So at the moment we're still living through the Mandelson and McSweeney scandal. We still have some, still has some way to run. Before that we had a previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who insisted on staying in Downing Street when effectively the government had ceased to function because so many Ministers, including from the Cabinet, had resigned. Now, before that, we also had a period when the Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, refused to leave despite an overwhelming vote of no confidence, which effectively meant the opposition ceased to function.

All that taken in mind, taken in the balance, I tend to suspect that the British constitution will prevail and that the checks and balances are there,

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but it is not a foregone conclusion. My Lords, I congratulate a noble

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My Lords, I congratulate a noble Lord Lord Wallace of Saltaire for having initiating this debate and having initiating this debate and bringing out into the open so many issues which we ought to discuss much more than we do. I'm going to much more than we do. I'm going to fill my seven minutes or less with one observation and one question to one observation and one question to the Minister. My observation is this, and it's one that doesn't seem to come into the media or general political talk very much, but the public and the voters of today, the electorates of today in all except the countries where there aren't electorates, in other words, the police states, but everywhere else where democracy tries to have a go, have now been equipped with more information, with more layers and layers, avalanches of information, good and bad, misinformation, disinformation, fake information, distorted information, deliberately malign and mal information than ever before in history.

By far. By far. Not just by very little. By far, that never has been such a flood of comment and view. Every one newspaperman put. He said, our trouble with the press is that every reader has become an author. There's 18 billion mobiles at least out there in the UK alone, let alone in the wider world. There's billions out there of iPads. Every time they open, the person opening them feels they've got a right to challenge everything and what they're equipped with.

1001 briefs from social media upwards or downwards, to challenge everything that any government puts out or attempts to do. The in the chip has really reshaped the world. But on a scale not fully appreciated. The Fairchild in the 1960s put four transistors on a chip. Now they're putting 11 billion transistors on a chip. Not Fairchild, of course, but the GDC and Korea in Taiwan and some American companies. This is this is a different world from anything we've ever faced, any democracy has ever faced or tried to face in its history.

Second. This is rather more bringing the issue to the moment than we are rotating governments and, dare I say it, rotating prime Ministers is not the answer to this. That is because I remember I used to take delegations to Japan in the 19 1990s, and every time we went, they arranged very politely for us to see the Prime Minister. Every time it was a different Prime Minister, their rotating of prime Ministers was part of their effort to stabilise their economy and get out of their stagnation.

In the end, it worked, but only in the end. The truth is that the problems facing us now are far deeper than can be solved by changing personnel at the top, and certainly by switching prime Ministers. And there are also cannot be reached, because the biggest problems of energy inflation, climate, environment, defence and security are all only accessible by collections of nations and not by one nation state. We can't blame our government for all the things that are clearly happening on a global scale and have to have a global resort.

I know Labour had some fun blaming the outgoing conservative government because we apparently were responsible for Covid. We were apparently responsible for Russia invading Ukraine and many other things as well. Good, good politics in the very short term, but of course nonsense, because the solutions lie well beyond the powers and capacities of one government and certainly one party government. So, my Lords, we're now in a crisis not of policy, which might be helped by changing personnel. It's not policy.

It is a crisis of ideology. It is a crisis of wrongheaded thinking about what politics should be doing and are doing to serve the people. It is a crisis about imagining that if we go on about the state versus the market, what Marx taught or didn't teach, whether there is a will of the people, how it should be translated, how collectivism is better or worse than individualism, whether the state and the market are against each other or working with each other.

If we go on on that language, we will lose the interest of of all those who wish our country to prosper, and that will leave us very much downward spiral to worse and worse difficulties ahead. What we need now, of course, is to drop this kind of language, the old ideology of the 20th century. What we need now, of course, is to get rid of the last vestiges, which I'm afraid linger in British politics of Marxian collectivism. What we need now is to marry private funds, of which there are masses in the world to public needs, in new techniques and new methods, as many industrial countries are in fact now doing at least eight leading industrial countries of the time are employing new methods of financing their public projects by private finance and sharing the risks in new ways.

None of that seems to be going on here at all. I think there is some thinking, but it certainly doesn't get into the media or the public press or the government discussion that marriage is needed to bring. And I would like to know from the Minister what is being done behind the scenes or anywhere, to expand the sort of ideas that exist. If the old PFI Private Finance initiative, which we tried in 80s and 90s and the beginning of this century, but we discarded other countries, have taken up the idea and expanded it and developed it in very ingenious ways.

And unless we do the same, we are going to be trapped in the old traps of the state versus the individual and more money to the state only being available from tax, which puts everybody off or from borrowing, which we can't do because we're already underwater on our borrowing and any more raises debt and increases rather than decreases the pressures. So that's our problem. And we have to face it honestly and clearly with whom as leader doesn't really matter at this point.

It's simply that we have to understand the world has changed beyond all recognition. Human relationships have changed, and relationships between the electorate, the voter, and those who they trust to govern them, the citizens. The state has changed fundamentally, and until that is grasped by politicians trying to push here and there with policy changes, we are going to continue to have enormous and I think, worsening difficulties.

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Speaking of this debate, I'll declare my long standing association with the National Secular Society. I will also be Secular Society. I will also be drawing on material from the think tank Policy Exchange, where I am a distinguished fellow. As time is so limited, that would make only two broad points. First, that the broad points. First, that the effective exercise of democracy, multi-party democracy in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious multi-ethnic, multi-religious country like the United Kingdom depends on the preservation and defence of a secular public space.

And second, that the guardrails of that exercise are seen by voting at elections are increasingly broken and that unless we move to improve them, public trust in institutions and in politics itself is likely to erode with worrying consequences. Earlier this year, the National Secular Society published a report based on polling by the organisation More in Common, called Britons and Secularism Using More in Commons well-known segmentation of groups into seven categories. And for brevity, I won't detail those now.

It found that 50% of the population is either unhappy with the social contract, such that they have lost faith with traditional institutions, or they feel abandoned and overlooked by political elites. And of course, by that we mean the political parties represented here, or alternatively, a highly distrustful of institutions and feel entirely disconnected from society. While there is a clear consensus in the public mind that religious expression should be tolerated. This is accompanied by unease. When religion seeks to impose itself where it is not wanted or used to obstruct the rights and freedoms of others.

The public are deeply uneasy when religious groups receive special privileges from the state, such as definitions like the I, H, R or Islamophobia definitions. This latter point is extremely important to social cohesion, as the public holds a settled liberal instinct that faith belongs in the personal sphere, and that the public square space should be governed by shared civic values such as equality, the rule of law and the right to criticise ideas including religious ones. A further feature of public scepticism is the role of religious charities.

And here I pick up a point made by the noble Lord Lord Cryer, where the public draws a clear red line against any blurring of charity work, and they believe that the promotion of religion should not automatically grant charitable status, charitable status to the promotion of religion. In questioning support for the legal activities of religious charities, including the idea, for example,
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Lord Bishop of Leicester Portrait The Lord Bishop of Leicester (Bishops)
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that being gay is a sin or that women should obey men. Around three quarters of those polled were against either idea. They fly flagrantly against law in this flagrantly against law in this country on discrimination, and it is one for the Charity Commission to tackle more vigorously than they to tackle more vigorously than they have done to date. This brings me to my second theme the rise of to my second theme the rise of Muslim sectarianism in elections. Much is known of far right populism, but we don't worry enough about about the rise of Muslim sectarianism with loyalty to one's own religious and ethnic group, trumping all other public policy offers from the mainstream parties.

The two groups most associated with this are the Muslim vote, which I'll refer to as T, m, V and Vote Palestine, who have successfully carved out certain constituencies into block votes to win elections. Policy exchange's second report into this trend, which is called Islamic Populism two highlights how both groups have positioned themselves to direct Muslim voters towards candidates best able, in their words, to punish principally the Labour Party, but also the Conservatives. We know all mainstream political parties face pressure from face pressure groups which want them to move in a certain direction.

But when real intimidation is employed against prospective parliamentary candidates going about their normal duties in election campaigning, and when this remains unprosecuted in law, then we're in real danger. One only has to look at the treatment suffered by defeated MPs John Ashworth or Kate Hollern, or those recently elected such as Wes Jess Phillips, Shabana Mahmood Shah, Rushanara Ali or Wes Streeting, who faced unusually toxic levels of abuse from some Muslim voters. So my question to the Minister is this what discussions are the government having with the Electoral Commission on forthcoming legislation regarding criminal offences for the harassment of, or hatred directed at candidates in elections? I ask this as we've seen an increase in custom made electoral literature, both print and digital, in non-English, not a translation of leaflets from the languages of our country English, Welsh or Gaelic into others, but I mean leaflets containing entirely different messages in languages that a neighbour does not receive, or that an opponent cannot read without specialist translation.

We saw ample demonstrations of this in the recent Gorton and Denton by election, with videos carrying inflammatory material in Urdu, which, if said in English, would have counted a vigorous response from the majority of the voting public. I don't have time today to go into what those different dog whistles contain, but suffice it to say, they are not run of the mill political opposition messages. Part of the problem lies with the Electoral Commission itself, which publishes its information in a multitude of languages as norm.

This works against efforts at integration and social cohesion. Why? When it takes several years to become a citizen and to vote, is the assumption from our Independent Electoral Commission that voters will not understand English once the Commission sends a signal that our citizens can never expect to form the mainstream of the voting public, then what hope is there for integration or incentives towards active citizenship? So, my Lords, it is time that we ensure the election electoral and printed campaign materials must only be produced in English, Welsh or other UK languages.

The Electoral Commission cannot be expected to chase around checking compliance and material in potentially dozens of different languages. So I conclude by coming back to where I began. The British public do not want this. The more in common research is clear that shared civic values, equality, the rule of law take precedence over unrestrained religious strictures in the public mind. They are deeply uneasy when religions. Religion imposes itself in the public sphere. My Lords, the public understands this. I hope in

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time the political parties will to. My Lords, I too am hugely grateful to the noble Lords, Lord grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Wallace, for securing this debate, and it's a pleasure to follow the noble Lady Baroness Falkner. Our noble Lady Baroness Falkner. Our belief systems may differ, but we share much in common. Still, I share much in common. Still, I speak as chair of a new Church of England Working Group on promoting England Working Group on promoting unity in our nation, a role that has made me think hard about the three threats before us today, what they mean for our common life indeed for the church and for other faith groups, and the three threats that the noble Lord has highlighted are susceptibility to disinformation, foreign interference, and falling trust in our democratic institutions.

Share, I believe, a primary underlying cause, the slow loss of the institutions in which people once learned to trust one another and to act together. So in decades past, people found recognition and a sense of agency and belonging in the institutions closest to them the parish and the chapel, the union, the club, the bodies that stood between the individual and the distant powers of state and market in the past 50 years, both membership of such bodies and their numbers have fallen dramatically.

Without them, we have fewer spaces that bring people together across difference in search of a common aim, fewer ways to learn and practice the habits of democracy, and fewer chances to trace the arc from discussion to decision, to impact the very things that give people a sense of participation. And with it, trust in our institutions. Trust. Though my Lords, has not disappeared, it has migrated to online influencers with whom people form parasocial relationships and to new in-groups built on shared identity, often mobilised against a particular other.

And this is where foreign interference and decision formation thrive. Because online, we make ourselves far more open to manipulation by distant actors. As Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, put it, anger and hatred are the easiest way to grow the online platform. In line with this, a recent BBC Panorama investigation traced a network of quotes patriotic British anti-immigration accounts, pages with names like Great British People claiming to be based in Yorkshire, but which actually operates from South Asia and the Gulf.

Many had posted on entirely different subjects before pivoting to anti immigration content because it drew more engagement and so more advertising revenue. People with no stake in our common life. My Lords, are profiting from deepening its fractures. Such content can give people a sense of common cause, but it is an ersatz belonging, one that depends entirely on the construction of a shared enemy. My Lords, I want to go further still. It is not merely that populist movements benefit from the decline of our civic infrastructure.

They have an interest in dismantling it for a thick, local plural. Civil society does three things that this kind of politics cannot abide. So firstly, a plural civil society meets the very hungers for recognition, for purpose on which the populist movement feeds. Second, a plural civil society mixes the very people a populist movement would prefer to keep sorted into us and them. And third, particularly, where faith based institutions are concerned, civil society offers a cultivated conscience, a reason to say no to manipulation or controlling behaviour, and to insist on the dignity of those whom a populist movement may wish to exclude.

A people bound together by real and overlapping loyalties, are far more resistant to fear mongering and far harder to divide. And so, accordingly, these loyalties must be loosened. We see where this road leads. In Germany, the churches have declared ethnic nationalism incompatible with the Christian faith and the main far right party, the AfD, unelectable for Christians. The response from the party, which claims to value Christianity, has to been a move to cut the church's public funding.

I am fearful, my Lords, of people who wish to wear the costume of Christianity with little care for its creeds and its doctrines, those who want to parade the cross of Christ in anything but the name of love, and who want to speak of Christian values, but are careless of the places in which they are learned and practised. Someone not given to overstatement recently spoke to me of what he called the threat being existential for us as a church, but indeed for us as a democracy.

And I'm sorry to say that I'm not persuaded that the measures taken so far the Online Safety Act, the representation of the people Bill, Pride in Place programme and so on, that these things come anywhere near meeting the scale of the threat that we face. So I make this plea to the government, treat these threats and the causes behind them with the seriousness

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They demand rebuild the places where across our differences, we still learn to trust one another. For a people who have somewhere to belong are far harder to set belong are far harder to set against each other. And that, my Lords, is the surest defence we

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have. My Lords. I'm grateful to the noble Lord,

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I'm grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for giving us this opportunity. And I've enjoyed listening to the
14:48
Baroness Stowell of Beeston Portrait Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Conservative)
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speeches so far. As has already been said, we have a real crisis of been said, we have a real crisis of trust in politics and in our institutions, and I want to talk institutions, and I want to talk about why and what I think we must do about it. Now, I'm going to do about it. Now, I'm going to start with disinformation, which I agree is a real problem. Foreign agree is a real problem. Foreign state actors clearly engage in it.

Social media and AI make the spread of disinformation easier and cheaper than ever before, and the government must reflect this threat in its defence and security of the United Kingdom. But as real and problematic as disinformation and indeed other foreign state activity described by other noble Lords today so far is. It is not why we are experiencing such low levels of public trust in Parliament, politicians and traditional media, and many of our other institutions. Disinformation is not pulling people away, as I think sometimes we might find it easier to believe if we are to earn people's trust again.

What we must understand is what we are doing that is pushing them away from us to look for something new, whether that's different sources of information or political parties or places of solace. Now, I think when it's when we're talking about public trust, it's important to understand that levels vary between different demographic groups. And in fact, one of my bugbears with the BBC, when it talks about being the most trusted news provider, is its failure to acknowledge, at least publicly, that amongst a certain group, levels of trust in it are very low.

Because I think if they did that, they would find life would be so much easier. But anyway, it should be no surprise to know that the demographic group most distrusting of the political and media classes are people who were leave voters and live in the post-industrial and coastal towns and in rural areas. The people who have consistently voted for and demanded change for at least the last ten years, and whose demands have not yet been met. Worse than that, who have observed politicians battle amongst ourselves to stop Brexit, to not reduce immigration, never mind to not stop illegal immigration.

The same people who have watched as the law abiding and taxpaying are subject to more taxes, rules and regulations whilst lawbreakers get away with whatever they choose to do. The expectations and demands of these people are legitimate. They deserve to be taken seriously and shown respect. Indeed, what they want would create better conditions for people far more than just them. But they are the people who we have already had talked about, who have lost out most over the last 30 years or so.

It's that we ignore or wilfully misunderstand them, sometimes even abuse them for their views and and demands of us that is making them give up on us. Now, mainstream political parties and traditional broadcast media. And it is the broadcast media and the BBC in particular, who have the biggest responsibility in in this area, have a choice. We either acknowledge where we have gone wrong or being too slow. When it was obvious we needed to change course, or we continue to see the rise of alternatives who are very good at showing they understand people's legitimate frustrations.

Even though it's fair to question whether they can or will deliver the solutions they promise. Of course, my own party doesn't escape blame. I backed Kemi Badenoch to lead the Conservatives because I believe she has what it takes to meet the challenge that I've described. For example, she's admitted where we went wrong on net zero and our failings on immigration, and is showing how we've learned from that in the plan she's coming forward with. That's why I think she's making some headway.

But I know even though she is making some headway, that my party still has a lot of work to do. But if we all really care about restoring trust in political institutions, the whole political class and by that I mean all parliamentarians, including the crossbenchers and the bishops. Because don't think for one moment that they are not as much a part of the problem as everyone else have got to start showing. We know where we have been going wrong and start putting it right.

And whilst of course we have policy differences, as we should in democratic politics, it's our disregard and disrespect for what the majority has been voting for. That's the common cause of their disrespect and distrust in us. My Lords, time is running out. Our institutions, whether that's political, media and others, should be the solution to our divided society that represents a real threat to our future and is being exploited by our enemies. But we are losing our moral authority to lead these institutions, because we are denying our part in creating the problem that our institutions were previously trusted to be the solution to.

Blaming disinformation or voters for wanting simple from their perspective. But blaming disinformation and them is displacement activity. My Lords, if we don't show, we understand how we are the problem and that it is us, not the public, who need to change, we will be powerless to stop our institutions from from being demolished, or they will crash.
14:54
Baroness Gill Portrait Baroness Gill (Labour)
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My Lords, can. >> I join the chorus of congratulations and thanks to Lord Wallace of Saltaire for securing Wallace of Saltaire for securing this debate on a crucial subject. The United Kingdom has stood as a The United Kingdom has stood as a global beacon of democratic values, the rule of law and peaceful transfer of power for centuries. I was often told in the European Parliament that I was representing the mother of all democracies. So it's good that, you know, we are having this debate today.

But what concerns me is that those foundations are under severe threat, isn't those threats are not just from marching enemies armies, I should say, but from poisoning our collective minds to sowing the seeds of mistrust. We know that it's now easier, quicker, and cheaper to do this than to attack us physically. So it's good that we have a recognition of these issues and having this debate today. But I would like to add my own experience. When I was elected, the level of vile social media comments I got, I'm going back to sort of early days of the internet and early websites and social media was really unimaginable.

And I didn't mind them attacking me or my politics. That's what we're there for to have those debates. But what I did mind was that it was about my race and about my sex, and that was a problem. That is why so many women parliamentarians have these issues. And I think, you know, I've stopped in social media as a result. And I and I think it's really important that we educate people as to the general public as to how to react and interact with politicians.

And I also would like to associate myself with the words of Lord Wallace about yesterday's PMQs. I was really embarrassed and I was shocked at how low we had fallen in terms of Democratic debate when I was watching this. So just moving back to the subject, I welcome that the government has instigated the Rycroft review that reported in March this year, and I'm sure everybody is familiar that it noted that a political financial systems are increasingly targeted by hostile foreign actors.

It named Russia, China and Iran mainly who tried to covertly manipulate our political discourse. Their goal is to inject discord, poison our core values and polarise our society. They are infiltrating the digital space where we communicate and debate. This isn't simple propaganda, but lies on an industrial scale. Malign forces with algorithms can now spread deepfakes, bot networks, and false narratives at an unbelievable speed and at a global scale. I recall hearing the same worded arguments from the doorstep prior to the 2024 election campaign about our Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.

I remember one woman in Bromsgrove said to me, why don't they just leave him alone? I get all these all day long. She showed me her phone notifications page from Facebook full of anti care notifications, and I heard exactly the same arguments elsewhere in the West Midlands when I was campaigning in that general election. And, you know, I have to say, I have friends in India who sometimes receive exactly the same messages about our politicians. When we do hear clearly, the bots can't tell the difference between whether they're in the UK or whether they're elsewhere.

And I often have to defend our democracy to them to say it's not that bad, because they're getting all this misinformation. So I think it's hardly Time.

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Low and and, you know, much has been said in the last few days. And been said in the last few days. And media are wondering why we're about to have the seventh Prime Minister in ten years. Maybe we need to look in ten years. Maybe we need to look at how these algorithms have been manipulated to demonize individuals. manipulated to demonize individuals. And I suspect if our future PM's, as long as they remain committed to as long as they remain committed to supporting Ukraine, will continue to be targeted in the same way.

I would like, if I may indulge this House to reiterate some points I made in an earlier debate this week in terms of subversion of our democracy. It isn't new. It has been systematically grinding away in our society. Well before the Brexit referendum, I remember scrolling through my own feeds years ago, receiving highly targeted anti EU questionnaires on social media. Platforms like Facebook weren't just places to connect, they were being actively weaponized to push anti EU narrative.

Their sole aim was to manufacture chaos and and shattered public trust. In our core institutions. But what we're seeing today is simply an escalation of the same campaign. There is no longer just a quiet wall of digital propaganda. The line between foreign espionage and domestic terror has evaporated. And I think what we do need to do is to modernize. Our financial frameworks have means of regulating cryptocurrencies and Russian bots, and the government must apply the same urgency to countering state sponsored information warfare as it does to traditional national security.

And perhaps we need to look at our near neighbours like France and Sweden, who have set up departments to tackle this information. And I think it's also important that we have transparency in political financing, closing loopholes that allow opaque funding to influence our elections, and treating foreign interference as severe state threat is.
15:02
Baroness Featherstone Portrait Baroness Featherstone (Liberal Democrat)
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My Lords, I to thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for securing this important debate. And I think Lord Wallace and others have already hit the nail on the head by referring to the loss of trust. But we speak of disinformation and foreign interference and declining trust in politics, as though they form a straightforward chain of cause and effect. And we assume that disinformation leads to declining trust. Of course it does, but it's really not the whole story.

The reason disinformation has become so potent is that trust had already ebbed away. And once that trust was gone, foreign actors can exploit distrust. They can amplify it, they can weaponize it. But can they really create it from nothing? I do not think so. Across much of the democratic world, we have witnessed the rise of populist parties, anti-establishment movements. Many of us disagree with their solutions. Some of us are alarmed by their rhetoric, and yet we have to face the fact that millions of people have turned to them because they felt that the established order was no longer working for them.

And in some respects, perhaps, the status quo did need a rocket up its backside because too many people felt ignored, too many communities felt left behind. Too many citizens came to believe that decisions affecting their lives were being taken by people who neither understood nor cared about their concerns. And beginning to sound like Andy Burnham. I apologise. That sense of disconnection did not arrive with social media. It has been building for years and politicians must not imagine that we stand outside this story.

Indeed, I sometimes think we are far too quick to diagnose the public's loss of faith, and far too slow to ask what role we ourselves may have played in creating it. Overpromising and under-delivering is not a recent phenomenon, nor is the temptation to prefer the short term headline to the long term solution. And politics appears now to be far more about messaging than actual delivery. And trust is not restored by demanding respect it. It can only be restored by demonstrating integrity.

And, I might say, not just around politics. Everything. We used to believe in, pillars of integrity and truth are indicted. Over recent decades, the public has watched a succession of scandals unfold. So what conclusions should they have been expected to draw the churches moving, abusive clergy rather than confronting that abuse the Post Office prosecuting innocent people while insisting its systems could not be wrong. The families of Hillsborough victims having to spend years fighting for the truth, victims of the contaminated blood scandal.

And I always have to declare an interest as my nephew was a victim killed by the state. In my view, victims of the contaminated blood scandal who spent decades seeking recognition and justice while institutions defended themselves, withheld information, covered things up and resisted accountability. And only today we're learning about the horrors of the Nottingham Hospital maternity and baby unit scandal. And I sometimes wonder why we are surprised by a loss of trust that should not surprise us at all, because the issue is not that institutions make mistakes.

Every institution made up of human beings will make mistakes. The issue is what happens then? Do they tell the truth? Do they admit their errors? Apparently not. Do they place truth above reputation? Do they close ranks? Yes they do. Nor can we ignore the role of media in our decline and fall. For generations, newspapers and broadcasters acted as intermediaries between events and public understanding. No longer. Many people regard the media as just another institution whose motives they question and sadly, quite rightly, the relentless pressure of the 24 hour news cycle the race to be first, the search for attention in an increasingly crowded marketplace, and the tendency to frame issues as conflicts rather than problems to be solved, have all played their part.

Outrage attracts attention, nuance does not. And if citizens lose confidence not only in politicians and institutions, but also in those whose role it is or was to hold them to account, where do they turn for reliable information? And internationally, we're also seeing similar contradictions. Citizens see institutions established to uphold human rights, apparently unable to prevent atrocities, while countries with deeply troubling human rights records sit on and sometimes even lead bodies charged with defending those same human rights. This is a world gone mad, in my view.

My Lords, healthy skepticism is a virtue in a democracy. But skepticism can curdle into cynicism, and cynicism creates that fertile ground for conspiracy theories, disinformation, and those who seek to divide us. So if we wish to defend our democracy against disinformation and foreign interference, then of course we must challenge falsehoods wherever they arise, expose hostile actors, and protect the integrity of our democratic processes. But we also have absolutely have to rebuild trust, not through slogans, not through public relations, not through lines to take, not through demanding respect, but by ensuring that our institutions, our politics, our media online and off, and our public life are worthy of it.

For once trust is lost. Everything else becomes much harder to sustain against the malign influences that

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seek to destroy our democracy. Yes.

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Yes. And my Lords, I'm grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for enabling us to have this debate enabling us to have this debate because it gives us an opportunity to puncture the hysteria and the to puncture the hysteria and the moral panic that seems to overwhelm most of the British political class in recent years about in recent years about disinformation, misinformation, foreign interference and all that.
15:08
Lord Frost Portrait Lord Frost (Non-affiliated)
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The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said something like, I hope we all agree we have a problem. Well, it depends we have a problem. Well, it depends what he means by that. I agree there's certainly a problem in disdain for politics and politicians. I don't agree that foreign interference and disinformation and all those sort disinformation and all those sort of things are at the root of it. For after all, there's always been For after all, there's always been disinformation and foreign interference.

There's not new. Only the panic is new. They've always been people who want to harm us in this country. Many of your Lordships, like me, lived through at least the end of the Cold War. Have we forgotten that the Soviet Union spent 40 years trying to undermine British politics, British society? Then there really was a real threat, and they even recruited a few Labour MPs to to help them, if I remember correctly. But we didn't clamp down on free speech to deal with it.

Free speech was much freer then than it was now. We allow people to advocate all sorts of terrible ideologies because we had confidence in the British people's ability not to take them seriously. But now, seemingly, all that has changed. I expect a few of your Lordships are familiar with Google Ngram, which allows you to track when words suddenly started to be used in the public debate. And if you have a look at these words, they all take off.

In around the middle of the last decade, misinformation suddenly shoots up. It's used from the middle of 2015 disinformation. Even though many of us think of it as a Cold War concept, was was hardly used. But now, again, it's shot up as a concept and as a usage. Nobody had heard of the phrase fake news until the middle of the last decade. Then again, it shoots up as an idea. Now, was there some new external threat in the middle of the last decade? Something new and dramatic that we never faced before? No, I don't think there was.

What we did have, of course, was the election of President Trump and the Brexit referendum, and a tide of hysteria was unleashed on the back of that, a fear of voters, a belief they couldn't be trusted to make good decisions, endless worrying about malign actors, foreign agents, bot farms, all this, this sort of thing. Weaponised. Facebook politicians were forced to confront the fact of that point that many people didn't agree with them. And rather than deal with that, they decided to blame the voters instead and take the view that in the social media world, the ill informed populace was easy prey to false beliefs, conspiracies, malign state interference, and all the rest of it.

And I'm afraid too many people seem to believe that ordinary voters are too stupid to make their mind up about things, or distinguish between the true and the false, and they think that it's the government's job to do it for them. Instead, we have a case in point in what I regard as the absurd and dangerous Rycroft report that was referred to earlier, a report written not to identify problems, but to justify unnecessary and authoritarian solutions. Now, Mr. Rycroft worries about, quote, the coarsening of the political debate in a, quote, toxic online environment.

He worries about even marginal impacts having a disproportionate bearing on democratic discourse, confidence in our democracy and so on. He then uses this to justify an entirely illiberal clampdown on political party financing. And unfortunately, the government seems to be taking this seriously. And if implemented, this approach is going to do much more harm to our ability to actually run a democracy than any number of distasteful posts on X or on blue sky. Now, the problem with all this, my Lords, is that the worst and most difficult to correct disinformation.

Misinformation does not come from the general public, it comes from the government. And that is the problem with government based solutions. The list is long. The 45 minute dossier, the Russia hoax, the collusion, supposed collusion with Russia. The predictions of an economic crash was inevitable if we left the EU, the Hunter Biden laptop, the refusal to countenance the lab leak theory about Covid, the belief that wearing a flimsy mask could protect you from the disease, the reluctance for a long time to drop the belief that the Covid vaccine stopped transmission of the virus and most recently, most recently, the reluctance to acknowledge the background of Axel Rudi Cabana and the fact that he was actually in possession of an al Qaeda manual and tried to make ricin.

Governments are not to be trusted on this stuff, and I'm afraid they promote contested issues as facts all the time and expect people simply to to fall in line. And this is why the government's plans, seeming plans to require social media to promote only trusted sources on social media are so dangerous. The BBC may, for some reason, still be the most trusted news provider in the country. But look at its record. Look at the fabrications in Israel, Gaza, its obsession with trans issues, its fabrication of elements of the famous Trump documentary.

No single organization is to be trusted. Now, my Lords, if there's a lack of confidence in our democracy and our institutions, and I'm sure there is, it's I'm afraid because they don't deserve it. Governments don't listen to voters clear messages. They block clear votes. And dare I say it, that your Lordships House and many others might have had a role to play during the Brexit era in undermining that confidence, politicians and governors have not delivered. The responsibility for the problem rests with politicians and the institutions, and it won't be made better by concealing things from voters and clamping down on social media.

The only solution to the problem we've got is taking people seriously, allowing debate, being honest about things, letting voters make their own minds up, and having confidence that they will be able to sift true from false as they always have done. My Lords, freedom free speech, a free society those are the tools. Say no to the

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platonic guardians. It's the only sound basis. Trust the people. Yeah.

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Yeah. My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord Wallace of Saltaire for noble Lord Wallace of Saltaire for initiating this most timely debate. The health of our precious democracy cannot be measured solely democracy cannot be measured solely by a single transactional event at the ballot box. It is a continuous, the ballot box. It is a continuous, long term process of how we shape our shared future, our democratic institutions are the hard won inheritance of our history, the bedrock of our freedom, the foundations on which we face a synchronised asymmetric challenge from foreign actors who wish to subvert our sovereignty from within.

And this brings us directly to foreign interference, a growing assault on our country by utilizing clandestine networks, cyber operations, and illicit funding, hostile regimes ruthlessly attempt to influence British policy, disrupt critical infrastructure and manipulate democratic outcomes. This meddling seeks to ensure that policy decisions serve foreign interests rather than the common good of the British people. Reared on free speech and opinion by stifling open debate in our universities and establishing structures to intimidate minority communities who live here, to
15:16
Lord Risby Portrait Lord Risby (Conservative)
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maintain a strong and secure nation, Britain has absolutely to protect Britain has absolutely to protect its borders, institutions and political processes from any political processes from any external manipulation, foreign technological disruption targets our citizens so as to fragment our our citizens so as to fragment our society into polarized adversarial echo chambers. To counter this, we echo chambers. To counter this, we must look not just at the source of disinformation, but its actual channels. The younger generation is increasingly turning away from conventional news, relying instead on platforms like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram.

Hostile foreign states hold significant, opaque sway over the very algorithms that act to promote the information that our youth consume. We are an increasingly diverse society. When citizens can no longer distinguish verifiable facts and deliberate fabrications, the state loses its capacity to forge a united national consensus on vital strategic interests. Political warfare deliberately leverages social cleavages, such as economic disparities or cultural anxieties in extreme cases, leading to violence so shockingly manifested so recently. Declining trust in political institutions pose a severe threat to the stability and governance of our country.

And when the public perceives that the political and legal system C actually serves a particular ideology or specific groups, the foundational bond between the citizen and the national state dissolves. This alienation leads to voter apathy, civic disengagement, and the rise in populist movements. This, in turn, has consequences for Britain's global position as a state perceived increasingly in some respects, as lacking internal legitimacy, and is fundamentally weak and unstable. If this trust collapses, hostile foreign intelligence agencies can then exploit domestic cynicism or disconnection to sow discord, reducing our overall power on the world stage.

We have regrettably suffered unacceptable security failings which have arisen out of hostile sources. It is critical that our digital resilience must be treated as a core pillar of national defence, reinforced by robust trilateral security partnerships like Aukus, the decline in public trust in politics is our greatest structural vulnerability, and the legitimacy of our state rests upon a basic social contract that our political and legal systems operate fairly and transparently. And when the public perceives these as remote or choked by excessive Whitehall control, disconnection takes root.

We must also ensure that we do not lose sight of the strategic dangers within our political finance framework. Having spent more than 20 years in the financial sector, I know how easily complex corporate accounting can be weaponized, with cryptocurrency exchanges being one example. If we allow opaque shell networks with a zero genuine domestic footprint to root our wealth into our political system, we are effectively leaving a back door open to hostile foreign interference. The United Kingdom has unique and complicated and often separate constitutional structures.

Our vulnerability is enhanced by greater cultural differences. I myself do, from time to time, receive deeply and grotesquely unpleasant emails seeking to exploit and magnify these differences. We are threatened by those abroad or living here who despise our history and our open, free way of life. The sacred duty of the state is the defence of the realm and the preservation of our national independence. We are currently struggling to find the resources to pay for increased defence expenditure, but defence spending has to encompass sufficient resources so that we have the capability to deal assertively with the way that hostile countries and organizations seek to infiltrate our country.
15:21
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party)
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My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for securing this debate. They could hardly be a more important debate. It might surprise important debate. It might surprise you to hear me say that you might expect in this unprecedented heat wave with these islands, people and infrastructure melting all around us, that you might expect me to say that we should be talking about the climate emergency, and particularly climate adaptation. And I often am having just come off the number 390 bus, and I am now talking about political resilience, which is a crucial part of climate adaptation for whatever the specifications of our rail lines or the designs of our school buildings, the nature of our food system, the most single, most important thing for the coming difficult decades, this age of shocks, for which climate is just one of the seven planetary boundaries we have burst through, to which geopolitical and health shocks can be added.

For starters, in the tally of threats, the resilience of our politics, trust, empowerment of individuals and organisations to make decisions under life and death, pressure, pressure and the daily grind. The ability to prioritise and make the right survival choices is crucial. That means a functional politics, starting from the smallest village and progressing up to the giant, fragile city of London and the national scale. And that means a functioning democracy in which everyone is able to contribute, to have a say, to share their knowledge, skills and energy.

Now, Lord Saltire gave us a starter list of subjects for today on the growing threats to democratic institutions. The first was disinformation, and we've already heard, and no doubt we'll hear a lot more about social media and the terrible lies and slurs to be found on it. And that's all true, of course. And the people who are profiting from it, the handful of Silicon Valley billionaires and their friends with whom all our government is all too often seen to be cosying up, inviting in closer with lucrative contracts, giving effective control over vital part of public infrastructure.

That's a problem of political trust. But that disinformation is far is far spread across the traditional legacy media as well. I heard this week, a noble Lord suggest that we should put, quote unquote, mainstream newspapers into schools to inform the pupils, well, no thanks, we don't want the spreading of the racism, the sexism, the transphobia and other prejudices in pupils. That, of course, is the handful of right wing media tycoons that own and direct them. At least not without far better critical thinking and media media literacy education than we have now.

Foreign interference. Well, we get the politics the few pay for, and no wonder people don't trust that wherever on the planet the money comes from. Well, yes, there is no doubt we are in a grey zone information conflict with states that have one interest destabilising us. And those tech bros are again providing convenient tools for that form of welfare and warfare and profiting from it. We are creating the fertile conditions for those seeds to sprout and grow. After all, we have reliably reported today news that the current Chancellor is asking Big business and its representatives to lobby the person presumed to be our future Prime Minister, to keep her job.

Now, the final subject on Lord Salter's list is declining trust in politics, which is what I mostly want to focus on. I don't think I've yet mentioned in the chamber that I have a new book out titled Green Thinking. It's subtitles begins with a word that needs to be inserted into all of our dialogues, all of our thought, unlearning. It is the systems of thought approaches to life, from anthropocentrism to reductionism, neo colonialism to growth ism, the ideology of the cancer cell that got us into this state.

And we need very different thinking to get out of it. One thought pattern, and I'm not going to single anyone out here, but we've heard a great deal of it today, is that we were on the right path somewhere about the 1990s, and we've strayed from it, that we had democratic institutions and somehow we lost them. So the suggestion is we need to get back on the path that is profoundly faulty thinking. This overheated, globally unstable, unhealthy planet is the product of the 20th century, the result of 40 years of extractivism toxic growth, obsession, and trickle down theories of well-being.

The profound mistrust is the result of our political institutions and structures. Francis Fukuyama was only reflecting the general thought pattern of the 1990s that we had reached the end of history, the peak of human achievement in our political and economic systems, what we were always meant to get to. Well, that thesis looks pretty silly now, but at the core of that thesis was liberal democracy. The electoral politics of majoritarianism, the people of these islands, the world being told that they only had one role in politics to decide who ran the system, turn up and vote between two choices.

Occasionally. Don't even think about having the agency, the power, the right to change the system, to make different economic and social choices collectively in their communities. So what to do? I look around the chamber and I see many noble Lords who were not here at the start of the Covid pandemic. Now, as the inquiry has, Covid inquiry has shown, there were huge failures of leadership then a deadly lack of seriousness in our government. But there was also a demonstration that in the in emergency, there are existing tools for the government to act fast.

And we are, as the noble Lord, Lord Saltaire said in a democratic emergency. So we need to tackle the threat to the political systems by making them democratic, far more democratic. I'm hearing people say that we can't change the voting system, the constitutional arrangements. Now we've got to wait years for an election for a mandate from voters. There is no alternative, they say, oh, yes, there is. We hear from the man. We assume he's going to be the next Prime Minister.

The plan to devolve power out to the regions? Great. But what we most need to do, the single key step in this democratic emergency would be to ensure that in the next election, the people's voice, the people's views are represented in Parliament, that we have a fair proportional voting system as the brilliant organisation Make Votes Matter says make votes match seats in the May council elections. A Birmingham in Birmingham a first past the post election, a green was elected with 20.5% of the vote.

Of course I'm glad the green one, but I feel for the other people in that ward. Let's fast forward to the next general election. Imagine similar results up and down the country. Democracy. It would be a good idea, and having a genuine democracy would create a far more resilient society for this very difficult age.
15:28
Viscount Colville of Culross Portrait Viscount Colville of Culross (Crossbench)
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I two. >> Lord Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for preparing this important debate. I want to focus my comments on the acceleration of the dissemination acceleration of the dissemination of disinformation, which we're seeing in our media, and I do believe that is having an effect on believe that is having an effect on public trust. And I'd like to think about what can be done about it. This week I read with great interest the Reuters Institute's Digital news report, which looks at news consumption in 45 markets globally.

All the markets showed a huge increase in consumption of news from social media and AI chat bots, and with it, a massive increase in distrust about news from these sources caused by mis and disinformation and fakes. Researchers found that the US, which has seen the biggest social news news consumption, has only 25% of audiences saying they trust news. And that's from all sources. What I did find interesting was what was happening in Germany, France and the UK, where there is a high trust in news from public service broadcasters in the UK, whether trust in social media was low, that in the SBS and the Financial Times was at nearly 60%.

Although I do take what the noble Lady, Lady Stoll says about the large groups that don't trust the BBC and other public service medias. So it's not surprising that a study by the European Broadcasting Union found AI news summaries misrepresented the news 45% of the time, stating opinion as fact and producing what the tech called hallucinations. And what noble Lords I imagine were called lies. Inevitably, AI is being used increasingly by all news services, including our own public service broadcasters such as the BBC.

However, unlike commercial AI, which is driven by profit and engagement, the BBC has a set of AI principles which are driven by editorial values upholding trust, respect and inclusivity. And most important, the AI output is checked by a human before it's published. As other noble Lords have said, this is happening in the midst of a propaganda war fought by many bad actors. But the main players are Russia and China, who are estimated to spend up to £8 billion annually on public disinformation, which is fed into social media and video sharing platforms.

The best way of fighting back is for users to be educated, not just in how to treat disinformation critically, but also to explain how the information, the disinformation is generated. It's important not only to the BBC and other trusted news sources correct stories which are misinformation, but they also show users how to spot this disinformation. For instance, the South Port riots last year, which instigated a large part by a huge uptick in social media, falsely claiming the attacker was an asylum seeker as part of the BBC's bite size series.

The other side of the story explained where the false posts had come from and how they've been amplified by the manosphere. Andrew Tate By linking in search the key word Southport Muslim and Asylum, these posts were given an emotional charge and a much higher online engagement. These explainers are generated by the BBC's unique verify service of 60 digital journalists who use forensic digital technology to build audience trust by fact checking, verifying images and countering disinformation using advanced data analysis, such as tracing the source of an image and looking at similarities in accounts store of images.

They're also looking for tiny inconsistencies. I was shown the image of an AI generated man, and if you look really carefully, you can see that he had six fingers, some clue there. And they also can spot digital AI signifiers, which are invisible to the naked eye. Ofcom found verified to be the most used used fact checker in the country, these bite sized videos were originally aimed at young digital users, but are now a crucial weapon for for combating disinformation.

The BBC has made a valiant attempt to counter disinformation, but more resources and political drive need to be made available to to to both it and other public service media to support these efforts. That's why I welcome the government's new policy paper, Watch This Space, which recognises the role played by the BBC in providing a healthy information environment. It's encouraging to read in the paper that audiences are more likely to engage with media literacy programs delivered by organisations they trust. I would like to ask the noble Lady, the Minister, if they confirm that if she could confirm that she that she agrees with the suggestion.

The paper for a duty which requires public service media to set out their plans for media literacy strategy and whether she supports public service media's taking the lead in this literacy campaign. At the same time, the BBC is putting forward its response to the charter Review Green Paper for media literacy across the country to become one of its public purposes. This, combined with the Media Literacy Action Plan, is crucial if digital users are going effectively to confront the new world of disinformation online.

At the same time, I think that the Online Safety Act should be revisited to bring it more in line with the EU's Digital Services Act, which requires large platforms to conduct a risk assessment of how their services affect civic discourse. The OSA asks, is this piece of content useful to the to the user? Whereas the DSA has a much further reach, asking the platform is your system design generating societal level harms regardless of any individual post? Unfortunately, the DSA has left too much responsibility up to the platforms.

They're allowed to carry out their own audit on their own systematic risk assessment, and often conclude that their systems are fine. If if Parliament looks again at the Online Safety Act, it will have to assess the societal threats posed by so many platforms. Ofcom needs to set the parameters of the risk assessment and audit their compliance. I believe that's what Parliament intended when the OSA was discussed here in this chamber in 2023. My Lords, the fight against disinformation is so important to maintaining our democracy and our way of life that I believe with determined government action, it is a battle we can fight and fight successfully.
15:35
Baroness Fox of Buckley Portrait Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-affiliated)
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My Lords, the noble Lord Wallace >> My Lords, the noble Lord Wallace of Saltaire is right, I think, to raise the important issue of threats to democratic institutions, he's asked us to consider disinformation, foreign interference and levels of distrust in politics. Now, of course, disinformation is a weapon used by hostile states is a serious threat that needs to be tackled vigorously. But we've got to be honest and admit that sometimes blaming foreign interference can be itself a form of disinformation.

Everything from 17.4 million people voting to leave the EU ten years ago. Happy Brexit Week, by the way, to the proposition that Covid originated in a Wuhan lab were falsely blamed on Russian bots. So we should interrogate if perhaps an overzealous focus on foreign interference and Dis and misinformation are being too easily weaponised by hostile forces. Closer to home domestic politicians, this bad habit has partly contributed to a collapse of trust based on hypocrisy. A recent example, one of the final legacy policies bequeathed by Keir Starmer as Prime Minister has been the proposals that the noble Viscount Colville has just mentioned to force major platforms such as Facebook and YouTube to algorithmically boost content from trusted in inverted commas.

Public service broadcasters, especially the BBC. The stated reason is fighting disinformation. But as Lord Frost has pointed out, how grotesque is that when public trust in the state broadcaster has taken a battering lately due to documented scandals of fabrication, where were the BBC fact checkers when the BBC spliced together two separate parts of a Donald Trump speech to make it appear, he told his supporters to march on the capital and fight while cutting the part where he told them to protest peacefully rather than a mistake in editing.

It appears to have been produced to create a false impression. And what's more, in the BBC's own internal memo prompted by the scandal, it admitted, for example, egregious distortion of coverage of the war in Gaza, such as uncritical airtime regularly given to Hamas propaganda and personnel on BBC Arabic. And it also acknowledged a unit of activist reporters distorting coverage of the gender sex debate to fit appropriate trans ideology agenda. And you really can't get a more obvious example of disinformation than BBC journalists stating as fact that trans women are women in defiance of biology, truth and now the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, while illiberal regulations are justified as necessary to protect the public from being manipulated by disinformation, lots of solutions involve official manipulation, but for the greater good. So that's OK. It takes an insidious form of nudge units, or the Orwellian narrative, or Orwellian narrative control techniques. The recent revelations about the role of the research, Information and Communications Unit based in the Home Office is a chilling case in point. Examples include advice to the police on how to present a wide range of protesters as unsympathetic thugs, or helping shape statements from victims families to keep the lid on any public rage, however, deserved to horrendous crimes.

Or what about narrative control? NGOs that receive millions of pounds in public support to influence public opinion through the media? One example is the recent revelation that a racial injustice influencer, what was employed to write Pro-migration storylines for EastEnders? Culture secretary Lisa Nandy stressed that TV is a cornerstone of democracy and as such is a key tool in supporting social cohesion. Well, that is one way to describe the embedding of partisan political viewpoints in broadcasting cultural artefacts. Another might be propaganda.

Despite such examples, when politicians discuss disinformation, their target is rarely such dodgy interventions, or indeed state misdemeanours and untruths. Instead, the debate often takes the form of self-righteous campaigns against foreign actors manipulating the easily duped masses. As a consequence, it seems there's no problem that allegedly threatens democratic institutions that can't be solved by controlling what ordinary people can see and read, or limiting the information the public has access to, often deploying tactics which betray civil liberties and democratic norms, such as censorship or surveillance.

This seems driven by managing voters increasing refusal to unquestioningly accept PR about policies as though it's truth. Popular skepticism about, for example, the hidden economic costs of net zero targets or fury at years of deception by the state. About the statistics on mass migration are met with incredulity. Warwick University's professor of philosophy, Quasem Quasem Qasem, has written insightfully on this issue, locating the start of this trend back to 2016. As has already been mentioned earlier, the establishment shock and surprise at the election results that year led to a despairing question why and how on earth did millions vote Brexit or Trump? But rather than digging deeper, the standard liberal answer, Professor Kassam argues, is that those voters voted the wrong way because they were either irrational or victims of misinformation.

And this conclusion by elites, Professor Kassam argues, quote, allows them to explain supposedly deviant conduct in a way that doesn't require them to interrogate their own assumptions while promoting the idea that their own political views are not just true, but self-evidently true, so that only some kind of cognitive failure can explain someone else's failure to share them. Such top down condescension and complacency has disastrously led to politicians smearing reasonable populist skepticism about official truths. Over recent years, everything from concerns about two tier policing or farmers fury at inheritance tax hikes, or public outrage at the horrors of the rape grooming gangs through to local opposition to low traffic neighbourhoods, or Ulez style anti-car measures or protests at asylum hotels.

All of these and many, many more have been mischaracterized in this House and the other place as being incited by far right misinformation or populism. Terrible whipped up by the go to bogeymen of tech bros, especially Elon Musk. This approach not only avoids. The real reason for declining trust is exacerbates it further, yes.
15:42
Lord Moraes Portrait Lord Moraes (Labour)
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My Lord, it's a pleasure to follow such excellent speeches, and follow such excellent speeches, and I warmly welcome what Lord Wallace has done today, which is to have this quite profound debate, very overlapping debate at the same time that we're legislating on such sensitive legislation. And I'm sure my noble friend the Minister, will make the connections between some of those speeches earlier this week and today's debate. But today's debate is important because we really need to calibrate what is going on.

We need to provide that context. And there seems to still be some kind of ambiguity about what we're doing. Are we doing the right thing, as the noble Lord Frost implored us not to panic. And I will just be talking about the the national security part of this very overlapping debate, as he implored us not to have a moral panic inexplicably started to panic. I'm not sure why, but I've calmed down now and maybe I can offer this perspective. He talked about the Cold War.

He talked about what intelligence services have to do. Some years ago, I had the experience, first of writing the report on the mass surveillance inquiry after Snowden, and then I chaired the Facebook debate, Cambridge Analytica political interference. And it was an embryonic time because many of these ideas were being explored. But I'm not going to bore you with the European Parliament's committees. But, you know, I'm not going to do that. What I will do, though, is tell you that we had an unprecedented access to serving and retired intelligence officer, senior officers throughout that period, some of whom have kept in touch.

And what is really instructive about those people is that they're not having a moral panic, their duty, their duty, then, whether they're at the dgsi in France, whether they're Gchq, sis, MI6, their task is to calibrate the threats of foreign interference. What effect is it having on our democracy, and do we need to do something about it? You know, there is no fear or favour. They have to represent the current political settlement. And what I found fascinating about all of these people across the Five Eyes Dgsi our own intelligence services, is that they all agreed they were quite exercised even then about what the effect would be of foreign interference.

We have heard, you know, eloquent speeches about what the Iranian state is doing to touch on open wounds in this country and anti-Semitism. We've heard something of other state actors, if I give you the example that they always give, which is how the Russian state operates, the common denominator for them is not that the Russian state took a view on National Rally as it is now, or the front National and Brexit know what their view was, was that the Russian state was doing exactly what was in the interests of the Russian state, economically and politically.

That is exactly what the Iranian state is doing. And when they do it, they are targeting us because we are not doing what they, as their enemy, wants us to do. Now, the point is this, that when you talk to people dgsi, when they were dealing with far right conspiracies and so on, they didn't think the Russian state favored the Front National as it was then on National Rally. If there is a president Bardella and he doesn't do what the Russian state, the FSB and all their proxies want them to do, they will react.

That is the point. It is they're going for the status quo. They're gaining advantage economically and politically for for their state. As a state actor, that is what they are doing. Now. Why should we believe that? Well, first of all, there's a kind of uniformity of view across intelligence services, and not just in the European Union space or the European space. And secondly, they make a very clear distinction. And this is what I would say to the noble Lord Frost. There is a big difference between open and transparent influence activities.

You can say what you like from one state to another. I mean, the president of the United States had an opinion on the Member for Makerfield this morning. Fine. That is not a problem. It is not a problem in in the social media world, the world of machine learning, that is going to happen minute by minute. That is not the issue. Open and transparent influence activities one state to another. What they are concerned about is covert and malign political activities, which have an effect, and they calibrate it as having an effect.

They believe there is an effect of this combined kind of activity. And if I give you like what one of them said, they said, if you take out the different elements of what, say, the Russian state is doing in relation to this country, let's be specific. They will have online approaches. They will talk about financial donations and inducements. They'll talk about cyber compromises, exploiting overseas travel. They will exploit conspiracy theories as fact. Now, if you take all of these things apart, you can dismiss them.

You can say, well, it happens. You know, intelligence services themselves do bad things. I, I, I was reminded of our, our beloved and late colleague Baroness Ramsey, who famously said, as a young intelligence officer, I often did bad things to bad people for my country. That's fine. That's what they do. This is nothing to do with that. What this is, is bad things happening to states who are just trying to ease along with a liberal democracy and all the imperfections and difficulties that you have in a liberal democracy.

Liberal democracies are not perfect. They are full of problems. What our intelligence services believe. And it's the same in France. It's the same in Five Eyes is that this stuff is having an effect. And if it's having an effect, we need to legislate, we need to regulate, and we need to react against it. Now, if it wasn't having an effect and the noble Lord Frost is right, then that's fine. Fair comment, fair comment, what the Iranian state is saying.

But it's not fair comment, is it? Because what is happening is the perpetration of falsehoods. This is the dividing line. You make stuff up. You create conspiracy theories not based on fact. You perpetrate them. There is an effect and it grateful to the the library. It is at last, you know, bringing together lots of evidence that there is a causal link between some of the things that are happening that are negative and the actions of those foreign actors. Now, that's crucial, because without that, it's what the intelligence officers say.

They say, look, you can dismiss a lot of this because we do stuff to them. They do stuff to us. But what we're doing to them, retaliatory measures, is not the core of the problem. The core of the problem is what they did to us when we were not inviting it to be done. It's the same with the Iranian state. We're not inviting the Iranian state to have a view about the open source in our communities, are we? No we're not. But the common denominator between these actors and what these people who serve on the front line for us are saying, is that there is that common denominator, and that common denominator is do harm to us when it was uninvited.

And what do we do? Do we stand back and say, no, it's fine. You know, we had the Cold War. It's fine, it's fine, you know. No, it's not fine. What? Why not? Why not? Anyway, so in conclusion, I think this is a serious problem. It deserves serious respect. And I look forward to hearing what we're going to do legislatively. From my hon. Friend the Minister. Apologies for going on too long.
15:50
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Portrait Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Non-affiliated)
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My Lord. It's a great pleasure to. to. >> Considered him a friend some 30 years. He was a great champion for those in the European Parliament those in the European Parliament who had no voice but his often overlooked and marginalized groups. And I thought, always in the best Labour tradition, that of trying to build people up rather than trying to drag others down. My Lords, the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is the robbing of the human race, the robbing of posterity as well as the present generation, the robbing of those who do, who dissent from the opinion still more than those who hold it so wrote J.

S mill in On Liberty, which I think is still presented to the president of the Liberal Democrat Party as a kind of badge of office when elected. My Lords, if you if you heard a clanking noise as we opened our debate, I suggest that was the shade of J. S mill. Hearing the opinions from the front bench of the party he served and loved, as expressed by Lord Wallace, because Lord Wallace used the argument that every censorial and every authoritarian government that begins with.

He started talking about Russia, and then he elided into talking about Elon Musk. And this is how it always happens. We are presented with some terrorist threat, some terrible foreign actor, and then very quickly it turns into someone whose opinions I happen not to like. And we are the nation that came through the great wars and travails of the 20th century, upholding the principle of free expression, are now expected to throw it all in the air, because we don't like someone who is expressing legitimate opinions that are rude about politicians.

Let's consider the J.S. mill argument about the importance of the solitary opinion. J.S. doesn't argue that free speech matters only for the heretic. He argues that it matters for the rest of us, because how will we know when a consensus is mistaken if we repress challenging or different views? During the pandemic, it was widely. It was very difficult to express in public the opinion that the virus had originated from a lab leak. If we now look at the evidence particularly well expressed by our former colleague Viscount Ridley and Elena Chan in their book on the subject, it is very clear that that's the likeliest origin story, and yet you would be silenced and forbidden to express that opinion by who is to say what is the currently correct but repressed opinion? If you think about it, almost everything when it's a new idea begins with 1 or 2 heretics everything from the female franchise to religious toleration.

Who are we to say that we should stamp out views that we happen to find difficult as, as John Milton put it, opinion in good men is. But knowledge in the making. In other words, as long as you have a free market of ideas, the true ones over time will drive out the false ones. Now, this is always a difficult argument to make because we are a tribal species and we are driven by our DNA towards vendetta and feud. We are all in favor of free speech on our side.

We struggle when it's on the other side. I agree very much with what Baroness Falkner was saying about why there should not be a state definition of Islamophobia. I think we should all be protected by the same laws. How many people will argue, as I would, that exactly the same must hold true about a state definition of anti-Semitism, and for the same reason we should all be defended by the same laws. The people who got very angry and upset about, let's say, the arrest of Graham Linehan over a slightly off color joke about trans people or the incarceration of Lucy Letby after the Southport riots, are very rarely equally vocal in their defense of the free speech rights of, let's say, kneecap, when they say the only good Tory is a dead Tory, or of Bobby villain saying death, death to the IDF, I would set a very high standard for incitement.

I would not consider any of those to be actually likely to incite people. I don't think a stoned theatre goer at Glastonbury is going to

**** Possible New Speaker ****

Jump on the next flight to Ben-Gurion and launch himself at the first Israeli soldier he sees. the first Israeli soldier he sees. Because of that call from the state. But wherever you set that, that boundary, you have to apply it consistently. And I see that people have great difficulty doing so, not have great difficulty doing so, not least when it comes to Twitter, which was, I think, the essence of Lord Wallace's speech when Twitter Lord Wallace's speech when Twitter was banning Donald Trump.

We heard from The Washington Post and Vox Media and most Democrats that it was a private company. It was allowed to do whatever it wanted. The left wing economist Robert Reich said the First Amendment doesn't apply to private corporations. He was absolutely right. Now that it's owned by Elon Musk, the same Robert Reich says, oh, no, it's an oligarchy. It's nothing to do with free speech. And the people who were all in favor of it when it was, by the way, practicing censorship, are now suddenly very upset about it because it isn't practicing censorship.

As I say, we are a tribal species, and we find it difficult to apply these standards consistently. And when I say we, I think I especially mean we politicians because we are sensitive to the attacks that we get. And this is not new. 100 years ago, we could have been having a very analogous debate about the power of the press Barons, the Rothermere's and the Northcliffe's and the Beaverbrook's. Indeed we were. And people in this chamber and at the other end were suggesting various ways of silencing their opinions on exactly the grounds that we just heard.

And yet people were sensible. The British public were not a bunch of dupes. They were able to make up their minds. And we came through the 20th century as a country that upheld freedom. And that's the real solution to disinformation and misinformation, not repression, but truth. The best way to defeat a bad idea is to present people with better ideas. Let her and falsehood grapple. Who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter.

So wrote John Milton in 1644, my Lords, ours is the country that gave the world Wickliffe and Wilkes and Milton and Mill and Lilburne and Locke. And that's only the Johns. What country has done more for free expression? How extraordinary that we should be hearing the sentiments that we've just heard in this place, of all places. Milton, addressing Parliament, said Lords and Commons of England, consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors.

We defeated the Nazi and Soviet tyrannies. We never lost our belief that freedom and free expression made our society better. How extraordinary after that achievement! Now, to be seriously talking about ripping it all up because we don't like what things are being said about us on Twitter. Lords and Commons of England. Consider what nation it is whereof ye are.
15:58
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Portrait Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Conservative)
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Very good. >> Very good. >> My Lords, it's a pleasure to have the opportunity to take part in this excellent debate, and I in this excellent debate, and I commend the noble Lord Wallace. I even agreed with the first 2 or 3 even agreed with the first 2 or 3 minutes of his speech. I don't suppose many in your Lordships House have read the Pope's magisterial first encyclical, letter Magnifica Humanitas, published on the 25th of May. But it touches on some of the issues raised in today's debate.

The. The latter focuses on human dignity in the age of AI. Pope Leo the 14th does reference, quote, disinformation, which he describes as manipulation of information, and his central thesis is that despite the power of technology, which he calls the culture of power, it is possible to preserve humanity through truth, work and freedom. My Lords and human beings are quite capable of avoiding seeing themselves as projects to be optimized or commodified, rather than valuing themselves and others with inherent humanity and dignity.

In short, we must and we can trust the interested electorate to have the common sense they were born with. It's in this wider context that we should critique calls by liberals, authoritarians, humanists and others to mediate and modulate political, social and cultural discourse online, supposedly for the common good. However, this reduces consumers of social media as essentially social media platforms despite historically high levels of information. As my noble friend Lord Howe said to the status of helpless supplicants needing the paternalistic protections of their social and cultural superiors to adjudicate the new platforms and contentious and challenging ideas which are considered heretical.

Odd, really, as the liberal mindset usually extols the virtues of radical personal autonomy. So if we assume that social media platforms are to be policed literally, the question is cui bono, for whose advantage? A narrative which promulgates the idea that some ideas and concepts are beyond the pale, self-evidently favors the establishment, its collective views, culture, power and infrastructure. The word populist is used as a pejorative term used by elites to invalidate and negate the views of the of others, challenging their power structures and policies.

An example has been given the whole narrative of disinformation around Brexit was built up in 2016 by its opponents, when fundamentally, the failure to make an alternative, positive and compelling case for the EU was much more likely as a causal factor, we risk creating a gatekeeping oligopoly of big government, big tech and the permanent state. My Lords, social media is of course different now to previous media in terms of a platform for political debate. Britain has a long history of ribald, raucous, robust, dishonest, exaggerated debates and elections.

The public have never not been cynical about their political leaders. It's why hundreds of people stood on Lambeth Embankment and cheered on the blaze that devoured the Palace of Westminster in October 1834. They didn't check with X before they did it. Partisan newspapers, rowdy public meetings, the coruscating cartoons of Gillray and Lowe and Steve Bell, party political broadcasts they're all part of our rumbustious political heritage. The voters today need extra special protection. Do they need safe spaces? Do they lack the critical faculties of their forebears who were less well educated, less well travelled and cultured? Of course not, my Lords.

There is little or no evidence of of a substantial threat to democracy. This debate, frankly, is a diversion and a displacement exercise for the underlying failures of British government and politics. I've read the Ryecroft review and indeed I work with Philip Rycroft at Dexeu. He's right to highlight the collapsing public trust, but your Lordships House would be wrong to confuse causation with correlation. Social media reflects Britain's cynicism and profound, profound unhappiness with a failed economic, political and demographic model.

Over centralisation, Treasury dominance, unsustainable debt, failing public services, rising unemployment, spiralling taxes and business rates and regulation and bureaucracy, ossified social mobility, stagnant real wages, betrayal of the social contract by politicians who lie to get elected and then renege on their promises, and an activist and unaccountable judiciary and quango state which thwarts organisational change and intercedes between electors and Ministers and which stifles innovation. Two tier policing, rampant welfare spending and the deification of woke shibboleths, fads and obsessions such as Di and net zero and, of course, endemic regional economic disparities.

What really is a threat to democracy? I will give you three examples. Trade union legislation written by trade unions for trade unions. That's a threat to democracy. That undermines the faith and trust in our system. The shadowy research infrastructure, information and and communication unit in the Home Office, which the the noble Lady, Baroness Fox of Buckley mentioned coaching and manipulating and threatening bereaved families to stay on message in the media and for me to stigmatising and criminalising Christians when sincere opposition to abortion for silent prayer for that read thought crime contained in the Public Order Act 2023.

Shamefully, under a so-called conservative government railing against Elon Musk and X is otiose and pointless. Social media will continue to be febrile, fractious and angry until the establishment elite in this country focuses not on the messenger, but on the message. Of course, I concede that there are bad actors that externally from abroad, that seek to interfere in our elections. It would be naive to think otherwise, but the seeds of discord, atomization, civil disorder have already been sown by neglect and short termist policies from a plutocratic elite.

In conclusion, it will take a new generation of leaders and a new government to address the societal ailments and afflictions which are very much closer to home.
16:05
Lord Clement-Jones Portrait Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat)
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I'm grateful to my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for securing this debate and for his excellent introduction, which I thought was both forensic and alarming. And, my Lords, he certainly elicited a range of views certainly elicited a range of views in today's debate. My view is that we are at a critical point for our democratic institutions, facing threats that have grown exponentially in sophistication and scale, and which successive governments have been far too slow to address.

And my Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity as well to disagree with the noble Lord Hannan, Lord Frost, Lord Jackson, Baroness Fox, with their view that the right to freedom of expression gives some sort of licence to spread disinformation with impunity. My noble friend reported that the Electoral Commission's most recent survey found that only 14% of people trust politicians. The National Centre for Social Research reports record low levels of trust in how Britain is governed, with only 12% of the public trusting governments to put the country's interests before their parties.

That collapse does not exist in a vacuum. It's being actively engineered and technology has become the primary instrument of that engineering. In 2020, Lord Puttnam select committee described a pandemic of misinformation and disinformation that would result in the collapse of public trust. Six years on, the failure of successive governments to act on the bulk of those 45 recommendations has had predictable consequences. The World Economic Forum now ranks misinformation and disinformation as the second most severe short term risk facing the world, ahead of extreme weather events and state based armed conflict.

That pandemic has been supercharged by AI. The Ryecroft report, referred to by My Noble Friend and sadly derided by the noble Lord Frost, concluded that our defences are worryingly weak and we are already experiencing information warfare. The Ryecroft review was triggered by the sentencing of Nathan Gill, a former MEP, for accepting bribes linked to the Russian state. His case is not an isolated incident, it's a symptom of a systematic campaign, and Transparency International's research finds that 1 in 10 political donations already originates from unknown or dubious sources, a vulnerability made worse by the complete absence of any cap on political donations in the UK.

His case is one the Strategic Defence Review characterises as a subthreshold attack falling beneath the threshold of war, but acts of aggression nonetheless. The Alan Turing Institute Center for Emerging Technology and Security is monitored. AI disinformation across more than 100 national elections, domestic political actors created significant portions of misleading AI content, threat actors embedded features of verified news sources to make fabrication harder to debunk, and the tools get cheaper and faster with every cycle. This year's full fact report identifies the most insidious development.

Confusion has become the strategy. Not one false claim, but sufficient uncertainty that trust in all information breaks down and citizens disengage from the ballot box entirely. In this environment, the value of the BBC has never been clearer. As my noble friend Lord Wallace and Viscount Colville have said, it remains one of the most trusted news sources in the world, precisely because it is subject to obligations of impartiality and public accountability that no social media algorithm is required to meet.

And contrary to what has been said in the debate today, it can be held to account to deliver on that duty, undermining it, whether through funding, pressure or interference with board appointments, would hand a significant victory to those seeking to diminish or subvert our democracy. The charter renewal process gives us a direct opportunity to support it. The government's own Media Green Paper, published just this week, acknowledges that fewer than half of adults now feel confident judging whether a news source is truthful and proposes new BBC responsibilities to counter disinformation and requiring platforms to make public service media news content prominent during elections and crises.

My Lords, I welcome both proposals. The Social Market Foundation's new report, No News Is Bad News, quantifies what we have long feared. Over 4 million people now live in what is called a news desert, with 320 local publications closed since 2009. Areas with no local news have nearly three times the level of misinformation. As those with a healthy press. These are not abstract statistics. They describe the conditions in which the next general election will be fought. My Lords, briefly, what do we need? We need statutory cross-sector AI regulation, including mandatory AI watermarking of synthetic content.

Voters cannot exercise informed judgment if they cannot distinguish real from fabricated, comprehensive electoral reform reform. While the Elections Act 2022 introduced digital imprints, we still lack statutory advert libraries, and there are no rules whatsoever on deepfakes. In political campaigning, the representation of the people Bill must fill those gaps, and we must invest seriously in digital and media literacy. Internet matters tell us that only half of young people feel confident assessing whether political information online is true, and over 60% simply ignore what politicians say online because they cannot trust what they see.

That is not apathy. It's a rational response to a systematically untrustworthy environment, with a voting age set to fall to 16 and curriculum reforms not reaching classrooms until September 2028, the next general election will arrive before a single child. Benefits. We need interim support for schools now. Shoshana Zuboff captured it precisely when Lord Puttnam's committee cited her in 2020. It's down to lawmakers to protect democracy in an age of surveillance that is the work of the next decade, she said.

That decade is now the collapse of public trust. We're debating is not a mystery. It's a predictable consequence of allowing technology to run ahead of accountability and foreign states. To exploit that gap with impunity, we must treat our democratic information environment as the critical infrastructure it is and legislate accordingly. The time for voluntary codes and piecemeal adjustments has definitively passed.
16:13
Lord Norton of Louth Portrait Lord Norton of Louth (Conservative)
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I. >> Too, commend the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for securing this debate. I also commend the library briefing commend the library briefing prepared for it. There's one key prepared for it. There's one key point I wish to make committing legal and electronic resources to tackling disinformation is necessary, but it's not sufficient to bolster trust in our political system. As has been mentioned, disinformation is exacerbating popular distrust. That is not the cause of it. Countering disinformation is essentially a reactive process, but we need to be proactive if we are to build popular trust.

Those who peddle disinformation exploit a lack of understanding of our political system, not only how it operates, but the benefits it delivers to citizens. We have a political system that is characterised by accountability, effectiveness, flexibility and coherence, yet has been mentioned. Trust is low, both in absolute terms and in international comparison. People don't trust either House of Parliament, the executive or especially political parties. The noble Lord, Lord Cryer, referred to the good chap theory of government.

Our system of government derives its strength not from an elite of good chaps, but from everyone being good chaps. Core to political stability is having a culture of constitutionalism. We tend to focus on form. It is values that matter. There are changes that can and should be made to how our politics operate, both at the level of the individual politician, through a tightening of standards and systemically in terms of how political parties operate. But what matters most in terms of trust is enabling people to feel that they have some involvement.

A necessary starting point is embedding citizenship in our educational system. That is, the route to building an informed electorate, and indeed the route to making sure citizens appreciate and have an incentive to vote. We had a debate in this House in 2018 on citizenship and civic engagement. I spoke as indeed, as indeed did the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. I quoted the research of James Weinberg of Sheffield University, who said, we have evidence that citizenship education, where it's done effectively and consistently can predict political efficacy, participation and levels of knowledge.

But we have still not grasped the sheer importance of producing a politically literate population. Citizenship is formally part of the curriculum, but schools do not have the capacity to teach it effectively, and they lack the incentive to commit resources to it. Fewer than 5% of pupils opt for GCSE citizenship studies. If citizenship contributed to league tables, schools would take it seriously. There are not enough trained citizenship teachers. The recent curriculum and assessment review emphasised the importance of enhancing media literacy, as well as knowledge of democracy and government through citizenship teaching.

It recommended that citizenship become statutory from key Stage one, ensuring we have the resources to tackle disinformation is crucial, but so too is building a politically informed citizenry. The two should be seen as inextricably linked, treating citizenship as something of a silo in the Department of Education is unwittingly to assist those who spread disinformation. A more politically savvy population would be better able to spot disinformation as it is, and as we've heard, people are too susceptible to claims posted online, enhancing citizenship education is not part of the OFT recommendations, but it is a logical extension of what is proposed.

It should be. It should be core to the work of the Government's Defending Democracy Taskforce, building an informed and supportive body of citizens, especially young citizens, is a way of erecting a powerful barrier against those who would seek to undermine our democracy. My Lord, my Lords, the barriers need to be human and not simply legal and electronic.
16:18
Lord Gascoigne Portrait Lord Gascoigne (Conservative)
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I'm delighted to follow my former politics lecturer at Hull former politics lecturer at Hull University. I hope I don't let him down too much with what I am about to to say. I do wish, like a few to to say. I do wish, like a few others, just move away from the external factors and and and talk external factors and and and talk about our own faith in our own democracy. Because I do think, especially with the new government incoming, that now is the time to ask ourselves some seriously hard questions.

And for background, I come from a working class family. I was brought up in a terraced house in East Lancashire, in one of the most deprived constituency constituencies in the land, and my first proper job back in 2004 was for a couple of years in a credit union up there, and the aim was to tackle loan sharks and financial exclusion, as well as provide a service to the community. And there I really saw people struggling and I always remember distinctly remember a conversation I had with one lady who was not complaining at all, but was making it very clear that she was working as much as she possibly could.

But actually, fundamentally, she'd be better off actually not working financially. But she chose to do it just for the sheer principle. And so long before Brexit, before anyone makes that claim, people were feeling left behind. And that London and the South East is an entirely separate part of the country. And there were two interesting pieces I read from the recent Mayfield byelection. The first was in the times, when Quentin Letts commented how he visited the parish and sought to speak to 20 voters.

Seven didn't know there was an election. And more starkly in the New Statesman, Will Lloyd wrote I was tired of writing and speaking about the country like it was a normal place, full of happy, normal communities and cheeky, normal Brits. Nothing I saw or heard seemed normal. Everything was changing and I may not agree with everything. He then goes on to say, but I hope that in those comments we recognise that there is a deeper point being made, that Westminster is not the top of everyone's mind, and that there is a growing unease.

There's been some commentary, I think, about the electoral Commission and their public attitude survey. There's another part that hasn't been noted, which I've referenced before, which is in that survey of last year. Most people believe now that we need a strong leader willing to break the rules, with almost 40% agreeing from Labour supporters. There has also been recent analysis from UCL Policy Lab and more in common. That shows that just over half of Brits say that hard work does not pay, and only 19% think the government respects people like them.

But it's not just about communications. Though I speak personally, we need to remember that most people do not comprehend what billions of pounds being spent here and there means. When most people are worried about holding down their own job. And I've been there when people who should know better lambaste buy one, get one free deals, advocate for me, free days and eating healthily, of course, but people just try their best to feed their family and what little time and money that they have.

Fundamentally though, this to me is about leadership and delivery and showing clearly we're on their side and whether the system is broken or not. Surely we can all agree we are not at our best when we need more reliable energy and want to reduce energy bills. Yet Hinkley Point C is the most powerful, is the most expensive nuclear power plant, and has been delayed by years when the country that invented the railway can't even make them work when the weather is hot, or even expand it with his two.

With it being delayed by over a decade and a cost of over 100 billion. And whether there's two tier policing or not, there is a feeling that the state is sometimes harsher on some cases, yet too lenient on others. And the noble Lord Wallace will know all too well and remember it fondly how he debated the so-called devolution. But in fact, the noble Lady, the Minister as well, forgive me, will recall that yet days later Parliament in this House cheerfully passed a bill to increase the number of paid Ministers.

And you combine that with a growing size of Whitehall, and which is it? Is it centralisation or devolution? And now I read I read last night that the King of the North is suggesting that he'll shove bits of number ten into the North and in under our under the conservative government we tried to move bits of Whitehall around as well. And as a Northerner, I can say this it's tokenistic. It says nothing about more powers to local councils or more money. And when in the end people just want things fixed, not more politicians pontificating, we say we're going to smash the gangs.

Yet on Monday last week, there were 700 illegal migrants arrived. We say children can't be trusted to watch YouTube, but we're perfectly fine allowing them to consent to irreversible medical procedures from the age of 11. And whether those ponies on Dartmoor, those those infamous ponies now on Dartmoor are to be culled or not. It does speak volumes about a broader issue about who's in charge and what is a simple issue. Lord Katz, you answered questions on that issue. My Lords, we also can't have a Prime Minister complain to Parliament that whenever he pulls levers, he's hit by the state.

And I think, to paraphrase paraphrase Louis the 14th, he is the state who he certainly was up until recently. Unless we really revolutionise the state to focus on delivery, make it leaner and more effective, use AI, sort out our laws, streamline them, and make our system deliver. We will keep hitting the same roadblocks. And as my noble friend Baroness Stowell was saying earlier, we cannot keep asking the electorate if they want change, only to not step up to the task. As America marks its 250th anniversary as an incredible nation, a new nation born out of what is incredible nerve or what was incredible nerve, one of its founding fathers and their second president, John Adams, said, remember, democracy never lasts long.

There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. And that may be stark, but that warning is real. We cannot blame others for our own failings. And of course, this is not happened overnight or under this government. And I do agree with the noble Lord Hannan when he talked in certainly in some remarks in this debate, I feel that there is a convenient mixing and muddling between hostile states and the commercially driven US tech companies. But we do need to heed those growing voices that feel ignored and recognise that we need to step up to the task because the warnings are real.

We do need to trust the people more, give them the credit they deserve, focus on them and deliver for them. And this isn't impossible. And we do need to perhaps invoke some revolutionary zeal which perhaps left on the shores of America. We can do it, and I hope we do. Do it.

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Thank you. I thank the. Noble Lord, Lord Wallace of

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Noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for making today's debate possible. We've already had some possible. We've already had some very interesting contributions, and it's a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, who certainly Lord, Lord Gascoigne, who certainly sets out a compelling case for the sets out a compelling case for the challenges of the politics that we face today. And he and I have both had the privilege of spending times working in number ten, and I think I know where some of his frustration comes from in the remarks that he makes.

But the noble Baroness, Baroness Stohl of Beeston and the noble Baroness, Baroness Featherstone, also challenged us to make sure that we weren't just looking at this debate
16:25
Lord Doyle Portrait Lord Doyle (Non-affiliated)
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through one end of the telescope, and they were absolutely right to do so. I would simply say that we do so. I would simply say that we can do two things at once. There are is, of course, more we need to are is, of course, more we need to do to put our own house in order, whilst also recognising what I want to focus on, which are the to focus on, which are the legitimate concerns I believe, around mis and disinformation that around mis and disinformation that is in our politics today, not as a way of absolving ourselves, but of ensuring that we can get across to citizens the information they need to make informed choices at the election.

And I think there is a two things that are happening at the same time, which is the rise of misinformation, misinformation that comes at the same time as the collapse that we've seen in local media. As more media has moved online, with the rise of Facebook groups and similar platforms for local news. Indeed, this has been highlighted in the report that the noble Lord, Lord Clement Jones, mentioned by the Social Market Foundation. No news is bad news. The hidden threat of unchecked local misinformation.

Some of their key findings were that nearly half of Britons seek out local news through social media and more than through any source except television. More than a third use local social media groups as their main news source. The problem with that is that we do face an epidemic of misinformation online. The IMF's analysis showed that nearly 1 in 26 news related posts on Facebook were misinformation, and on X, that figure jumps to an alarming 1 in 4. And this matters even more because there isn't that balance of respectable journalism for people to compare and contrast the information with.

The local media landscape is completely different, or should I say, in places non-existent from the one that I started working in 25 years ago. Now I very much unlike the noble Lord, Lord Frost, I very much welcome the government's announcement this week that trustworthy information will be more visible. But what do we do where there aren't local news sources to boost? My Lords, we need to make sure there is a national focus on ensuring that we do maintain local, vibrant media.

And it should come as no surprise that elections are a ripe target for those at home and abroad who trade in this misinformation. Recent council elections and parliamentary by elections have shown just how intense this can be. And for the avoidance of doubt, this is not an argument being prosecuted by me. Motivated by single party interest. We should note that misinformation has been tracked as being directed across the board to a range of individuals, parties and issues. Let's take the Makerfield byelection, where misinformation quadrupled as a share of news posts, again from the Social Market Foundation report, they found that 1 in 6 items shared in the groups contained information that was false.

And yes, it does cut through to voters, as Luke Tryl from More in common, confirmed the misinformation about candidates, for example, about Andy Burnham came up unprompted, constantly and consistently. Excuse me. In focus groups, we've run in Makerfield, seemingly largely from Facebook. Some believe it, others don't, he said. But no doubt this stuff has real impact. My Lords, we have rightly spent a lot of time in this House debating the impact of social media in children, but I would humbly suggest that we need to spend more time look at educating adults too.

Not in terms of a ban, obviously, but a recognition of the need to increase digital literacy and awareness to build more resilient citizens in our democracy. So can the Minister set out what the government is doing to increase digital literacy? And is this something that Defending Democracy Task Force is looking at, given the overlap with ensuring that we have free and fair elections? And of course, this proliferation of myths and disinformation has done great harm outside of election time, too. We see it with conspiracy theories as they relate to international events or domestic tragedies that we've seen.

And the noble Lord, Lord Cryer, spoke of the Southport tragedy. So can my noble friend the Minister update the House on the government's experience of working with platforms at times of crisis, and their level of responsiveness, and would the government consider a clear duty requiring platforms to respond rapidly when local authorities, police the NHS, identify false content during a crisis? Now, as we've said, not all of this misinformation is with an explicit desire for a political outcome. Plenty is driven by opportunities attempting to use AI generated content to simply profit from political division in the UK.

And I have to say, the noble prelate, the Bishop of Leicester, spoke very eloquently on this and the challenges that there are, and I'm sure many in your Lordships House will have seen some of the recent content that there has been involving the leader of the reform UK and the governor of the Bank of England, which has simply been designed to promote financial investment schemes. There can be no doubt that platforms need to be made less fertile for misinformation. I believe Ofcom should test platforms ability to tackle misinformation and fake accounts, publish the results and take action against poor performers, and the tech companies must set out their plans, such as surge moderation and boosting of trusted information.

Social media platforms should be mandated to heighten the vigilance towards deceptive synthetic content, and ensure any media relevant to the election that is manipulated by AI is labelled as such. My Lords, I don't see this debate as being a council of despair, but a wake up call that we need to look at the range of forces that the forces ranged against us in our democracy. I believe there is still time to ensure that we can preserve the values that we all cherish, and ensure that we can move forward, confident in our

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democracy and the way it operates. I will declare.

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I will declare. An interest as the co-chair of a new All-Party parliamentary Group new All-Party parliamentary Group on on Defending Democracy, which I would urge everyone who has made such, such compelling contributions such, such compelling contributions today to join. And that group was
16:32
Lord Walney Portrait Lord Walney (Crossbench)
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it has a remit, in part following the Defending Democracy Task Force. I may say that I agree wholeheartedly with what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, at the beginning about the. That it is regrettable that there is not more prominence from that task force in communicating and engaging with. With parliamentarians and indeed anyone else, as far as I can see. And that's one of the things the APPG wants to do. It's a pleasure to follow my, my noble friend, Lord Doyle.

I'm not sure if it was by coincidence or mischievous design that the final three of our backbench contributions have been from people who in the past have had senior roles in Downing Street, which many people would say have has contributed over recent decades to decline in faith in democracy. But, you know, we will leave that for others to to judge. I wanted to start by commending the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, actually, for what I thought was an excellent speech. I thought he was a bit too harsh on the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and a bit too lenient on kneecap.

But his central point that democracies need controversy and need freedom of speech to be able to evolve and. And if they cannot evolve, ultimately they will die. Is is is fundamentally important and not sufficiently understood, I think, in the current political discourse. And it's one of the reasons why I, when I, I spent close to five years in the end, as the the last government and this for while this government's independent adviser on political violence and disruption. It's one of the reasons why I recommended in my 2024 report, Protecting our Democracy from Coercion, that actually we should be very careful in the way in which we seek to restrict freedom of speech through a noble objective, such as online safety and cutting out misinformation.

Nevertheless, I think it is also incumbent upon us to accept how big a problem that this can be, and the. That the explosion in in artificial intelligence can genuinely warp people's perceptions. When so much of our understanding of the world, the country, the community around us now comes from a screen, I think it. While misinformation and disinformation has indeed always been used as a tactic to disrupt people, I think it is qualitatively different now when it has become so difficult to be able to to tell reality, reality from from clear fabrication, which is fundamental to people, to a to a functioning democracy.

So I thought, noble Lord, my noble friend Lord Doyle's suggestion in terms of increased responsibilities on social media companies to be able to detect fakes, which indeed artificial intelligence can also help in doing, is important. And another of my recommendations from that 2024 review was, while it was always going to be difficult to be able to draw where the where the boundaries ought to be on freedom of speech, and we should not be quite as gung ho as we often are in restricting topics for debate.

There should be able to be a broad, a much broader consensus on saying that foreign state manipulation is wrong. And when talking to the intelligence services through that report, they were clear that actually they were lacking a level of of resource to be able to go and identify. They could identify, but they didn't have the resource to go and shut down some of the sources of this information, which I think it has somewhat been acted upon since then. But clearly we have a significant way to go, because while this is not a new venture, there is a sustained attempt by hostile, hostile states, particularly Russia and Iran and China in in that to be able to use the tools of the freedoms which we have in our democracy, to undermine it from within.

And I thought Baroness Falkner was was it was very important what you said about the the the manipulation, while it may not be state based from Islamist actors who fundamentally want to sort of replace ultimately democracy, that is an organized activity for which there need, there ought to be more resource, more focus and more recognition in this country in the final two minutes. I just want to to mention two other things. First, an issue that I've spoken about at some length in the chamber on extreme illegal, disruptive protest and the way in which that is used as a tool to undermine democracies.

And I think that many of, of, of people who are generally on the right side of things in this place should be more hard nosed and clear sighted in, in what people are doing, what organized groups are trying to do here, often funded or supported in some way by foreign states to, to ultimately twist the sense of a right to protest into being a threat to our democracy. And we should do better at standing up for our parliamentary democracy.

And when we always seem to think that the, the right and, and, and the nobility is on those outside who are shouting and abusing and intimidating us, then I think we actually see too much ground and we contribute to our own undermining of democracy. And but then the final point is all of that, though important though, it is, the biggest threat to democratic institutions may soon be the. The speed at which AI is developing. Now, there's been a lot discussion about AI's role in misinformation, which is important.

There's not been enough discussion about the potential for incredible national global economic upheaval, which may be about to be inflicted upon us by the replacing of, of, of jobs and, and the way in which this was going to going to need to be very, very skillfully managed without creating enormous, enormous levels of disruption. And finally, if you're if the front bench will will forgive me. My eyes were opened by a particular documentary called Chasing Utopia, which I.

I say you should all go and read it, but go and watch it by the same people who put together the al Gore documentary on An Inconvenient Truth, pointing out that if it is the case that that AI reaches parity in intelligence with with people by the end of the decade and then comes to grow exponentially beyond that, that has fundamental consequences for who we are as human human beings, where we are in in the world, and how our democracies are going to function.

And we need to be thinking a lot

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more about the potential danger of that. Yeah. As with others, I'd like to

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As with others, I'd like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for securing the debate, and it's good to see him continuing to be so active in this chamber, even after stepping down from his role shadowing the Cabinet Office. And I think the timing of this debate is think the timing of this debate is particularly opportune, as we are in the middle of a change of Prime Minister, because traditionally it
16:40
Lord Pack Portrait Lord Pack (Liberal Democrat)
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Minister, because traditionally it is the early days of a premiership that has often been the most fruitful for taking steps to improve and to strengthen our democratic systems. And as we've heard from multiple contributors in this debate, there are many important challenges we need to face. Several people have made reference to the figures from the Electoral Commission, showing that only 14% of people trust politicians. I'm tempted to point out that the year before it was 10%. So we've had a rise of 40% in the number.

But one shouldn't perhaps overegg that rise too much, but also, as has been a regular theme throughout this debate, there is the significant danger of foreign interference. And given some of the comments that were made, let me give the example, which has also been mentioned in this House earlier this week of what happened when the internet was shut down in Iran, a whole load of very active social media accounts passing themselves off as UK citizens with very vocal views on Scottish independence suddenly disappeared.

And those were not accounts that were the rumbustious exercise of freedom of speech by genuine Scots or other people in the UK. They were. Fakery by foreign government, deliberately intended to stifle the expression of free speech in this country. And that is why it is so important that we take such dangers seriously. And I am afraid some noble Lords may be disappointed. Also going to mention Elon Musk, not because he has a views that I disagree with, but because of the way his platform deliberately, repeatedly, persistently sets out to amplify and to spread violent threats against individuals.

The fact that it is now a sadly common experience for many politicians to receive large volumes of images featuring nooses, for example, directed at them. And for X to be so slow in responding is a genuine threat to freedom of expression, to free participation in our democracy. And of course, one shouldn't forget the record of Vladimir Putin and Russia. And, you know, not only is there a established over many years track record of the Russian state being involved in violence being carried out within Britain, we also, as we saw all too recently, now have the connections between the Russian state and the direct incitement of violence involving the Prime Minister.

And that is, I think, a situation that is right to respond to. I don't think it is panic to think. I think it is wise, careful evaluation of the evidence to think that when there is connections between the Russian state and violence directly involving the Prime Minister, that is something we need to respond to and indeed is something very different from what the Russian state got up to in the Cold War. It goes beyond beyond that. But we should recognise, I think there are some positives that we can build on.

There has been the recent rise in turnout in elections. We may not always be happy about who people have chosen to vote for, but we are at the moment, in a period of rising turnout, as we saw most dramatically in the last parliamentary by election, with the exceedingly rare occurrence of turnout in that by election being higher than that seat at the previous general election. We also have, again, looking at the Electoral Commission's data, the fact that there is high and maybe even slightly rising levels of satisfaction with the processes of registering to vote and with voting, and indeed confidence that elections here are run well, a very precious commodity.

But as many have mentioned in this debate, we mustn't be complacent. The right reverend prelate, the Bishop of Leicester, rightly highlighted some of the wider social trends that are the backdrop to many of these issues. And as Baroness Featherstone, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, Lord Clement-Jones and many others mentioned, there are broader issues around trust that simply making some improvements to our democratic system on its own, on their own, will not be sufficient to deal with. But there is good news in that.

There are many reviews and reports, several of which have been mentioned in this debate, which give a rich menu of policy suggestions for the government and for others to pick on. And there are many legislative opportunities. All too often we hear that something will be done when legislative time allows. We do have courtesy of the representation of the people Bill and indeed the commitment in the King's Speech to legislation around the removal of of peerages. We do have legislative time that will permit coming up later this year in this House.

So I therefore would want to concentrate for the moment on just one particular issue specific to today's debate and to the government's legislative plans, and that is the role of money, especially foreign money, in buying undue influence in our democracy, because we are now in a new era of exceptionally, highly concentrated donations. In the first quarter of this year, two people only two people, were responsible for one third of all of the declared political donations made in the UK, and even though those sums were quite large and highly concentrated, they were still actually quite small compared to what a foreign government or a billionaire could decide to spend.

If you look, for example, at the 2024 general election, Labour's total declared national expenditure is £30 million. Now, to those of us who have been involved in various ways with party fundraising, that feels like a lot of money. It's a lot of raffle tickets to get to £30 million. But think of that in a different context. £30 million doesn't even buy you one f 35 aeroplane. Or if one wants to go for a slightly cheaper, slightly inferior model. I'm not an expert in these things, so my pricing may not be absolutely correct, but I believe the typical export price for a su 57 modern Russian stealth fighter is around £30 million.

So if you're sat there in the Kremlin, one plane, only one plane costs the same as a complete national general election campaign by a party that won a landslide. So we should be worried about the possibilities of abuse. And therefore, I very much welcome the Ryecroft review and the implementation of its recommendations, so far as we've seen them by the government, but they do still leave a very significant set of loopholes, one I might call perhaps the Trump loophole, which is, although the representation of the people bill as it currently stands, does introduce some controls on the level of foreign ownership there can be of companies that donate to UK politics.

All Donald Trump would need to do is split his ownership of a company with his children, and all of them would flow, would fall below the threshold. I don't think that is really an adequate threshold. And indeed we did recently in Parliament approve much tougher foreign ownership regulations for newspapers. It is a shame the government has not so far at least, decided to drop the newspaper threshold for political finance. And there is also the donor cap in the representation of the People Act, which is welcome as a as a step forward from where we are, but as it currently stands, is only a limit on what can be given to any one person or party in a year.

Well, the political party has 650 candidates, say, in the run up to a general election. That means you can give 650 times the cap, give a donation to each candidate, you can make a complete nonsense of the cap. And indeed, given most political parties have local councillors as well, one could quite easily, completely, legitimately, every year give thousands times the cap. It becomes not really any sort of cap at all, so I hope the noble Lady the Minister might be able to address for particular questions when she responds.

One is to update us on progress in implementing the rest of the Ryecroft review. Beyond the two measures to give credit to the government that it has moved very quickly on, and I know she would not want me to disappoint her without taking the opportunity to mention the importance of the consolidation of election law. It's very welcome to see the Ryecroft review rightly highlight the need for us to have a robust and clear legislative framework for our elections. But I hope also the noble Lady, the Minister could explain, given that that newspaper ownership threshold was set so much lower for foreign interference with our media, why has the government chosen not to set that threshold, but instead set a much more generous threshold when it comes to donations into our democratic system? And more generally, given the narrow remit of the Ryecroft review, which are specifically around finance, which is not the only form of foreign interference in our politics, what plans does the government have to go beyond that in its further work? Because our democracy requires nurturing and protecting, we need to be free to hold our own debates, to make our own decisions free from foreign interference, so we can exercise our own freedom.



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Yeah, yeah, yeah. My Lords, I, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for bringing this motion before the House. Within living memory, almost every public telephone call in this country travelled across a network owned by a state monopoly. Almost owned by a state monopoly. Almost every letter was carried by another. Almost all televisual information reached the public through four reached the public through four channels. Even the printed press was concentrated in the hands of a small club of proprietors.

Public
16:50
Baroness Finn Portrait Baroness Finn (Conservative)
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opinion was essentially managed by a small, controlling class, many appointed by, licensed by or dependent upon the state. Fortunately, as my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford has made clear, technology has broken that arrangement. Satellite television, mobile telephony, the internet, podcasts, independent publishers and social media have loosened the and social media have loosened the state's grip on the flow of news and opinion. That development has brought dangers which this debate is right to consider. But it has also brought freedom.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, has so brilliantly argued, we should be very careful that in the name of fighting disinformation, we do not accidentally rebuild the old machinery of control. Public trust is essential to democratic government, but trust cannot be restored by merely by merely commanding the public to trust state institutions. It has to be earned by conduct, by honesty, competence, impartiality and accountability. That applies not only to elected bodies, but to all the institutions whose decisions shape public life.

Broadcasters and newspapers, the permanent civil service, the law and the judiciary, regulators, the Bank of England and indeed your Lordships House. And that is why the Mandelson affair has done such damage. When a Prime Minister appoints a Labour grandee to one of the most sensitive diplomatic posts, despite obvious and widely known reputational risks, the public are entitled to ask who was protecting the national interest. The papers, released after the Humble Address have not calmed those concerns. They have deepened them. We have seen redactions, missing messages, disappearing communications and a government apparently more interested in limiting embarrassment than in giving Parliament a complete account.

It is not enough for Ministers to say that officials followed a process. If the process produces an indefensible result, so can the noble Baroness. The Minister, explain why a complete schedule of documents has not been provided in a form that Parliament can scrutinise? And can she tell us whether the incoming Labour administration will commit to ending the casual use of private channels for serious government business? My Lords, this problem is not confined to Ministers. The permanent civil service is supposed to be one of the great stabilising institutions of the Constitution.

It is permanent precisely because it is meant to be impartial. Yet too often the public see a civil service that speaks the language of neutrality while indulging the instincts of activism. The Civil Service Code is not a decorative plaque. It is a condition of public confidence. Officials cannot be neutral between political parties in the office and partisan campaigners outside it. If the public reasonably conclude that the same instincts are shaping advice, implementation and enforcement, and there are the problems of delivery so ably articulated by my noble friend Lord Gascoigne, most voters are not driven by ideology.

They want to go to work, raise their families, send their children to good schools and take home as much as possible of what they work hard to earn. In return, they expect their public services to be decent, effective and accessible, and there is now a wider problem. As the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, made so clear of institutional self-protection. In too many public bodies, failures are met with reviews. Reviews are met with action plans. Action plans are met with yet another layer of training, and nobody is ever plainly accountable.

The British public can see the pattern. They are asked to pay more tax for worse services, while being lectured by institutions that seem very good at protecting themselves and very bad at serving the country. And my Lords, the same standard must apply to our broadcasters, especially the BBC. As my noble friend Baroness Stoll of Beeston made very clear, the BBC is not just another media outlet, it is a compulsory funded national institution with a privileged place in the life of the country.

That privilege carries duties. Too often, the corporation behaves as though criticism is evidence of bad faith, rather than a warning that it that it has lost contact with large parts of the public it claims to serve. We have had the resignation of senior BBC leaders, and as the noble Lord, Lord Frost, pointed out, serious questions about the handling of contested issues from Gaza to sex and gender. The BBC Arabic concerns, including the comparative handling of Hamas shortages, have only reinforced the suspicion that impartiality can

**** Possible New Speaker ****

Varied by service, audience and internal culture. My Lords, the BBC must not merely avoid bias, it must must not merely avoid bias, it must avoid the appearance of belonging to a class, a faction, a worldview, or a cause. At present, it too often fails that test. Editorial decisions rightly be beyond the decisions rightly be beyond the ambit of. But public trust in the BBC is a constitutional matter as BBC is a constitutional matter as well as a broadcasting matter.

Will the government support stronger transparency on corrections complaints, commissioning decisions and conflicts of interest? And will Ministers accept that the licence fee settlement cannot be discussed as though the BBC has a divine right to public money, regardless of public confidence? None of this, my Lords, means we should be naive about the online world. The promise of greater freedom brought by social media has never been uncomplicated. The harms to children are real. My noble friends, Lord and Lady Barron, showed great leadership in this House on child protection and the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, has been clear that social media is not for children.

The government, as usual, arrived late, copied the conservative homework and then tried to claim the idea as its own. But whatever the route, we need serious protection for children. At the same time, adults in a free society must be allowed to argue, offend, persuade and be wrong. The answer to disinformation cannot be a truth ministry, staffed by the same institutions that have helped lose trust in the first place. The state should be very strong against fraud, hostile state interference, impersonation and threats.

It should also be very cautious before deciding that robust dissent is a harm to be managed. And my Lords, foreign interference mentioned by many noble Lords today is a real and growing threat. Reports of Iranian linked social media activity amplifying Scottish separatism show the kind of low cost, deniable operation hostile states now used to inflame division inside democratic countries. Russia, Iran and China do not need to invent every argument. As my noble friend Lord Brisby argued, they simply find our sore points and press on them.

So I ask the Minister, what assessment has the government made of the number of foreign operated bot or sockpuppet counts targeting UK audiences? What work is being done with Ofcom? The Electoral Commission, the intelligence agencies to identify coordinated inauthentic behavior before election campaigns are polluted by it, and our Ministers examining how artificial intelligence can not be used, not to not to censor legitimate opinion, but to detect networks, trace amplification patterns and expose foreign direction. The previous conservative government created the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.

It came into force last year. Russia and Iran are rightly included on the enhanced tier. China is not. If the enhanced tier is for serious state threats, why is China absent? Can the Minister set out what lessons have been learned from including Russia and Iran, and what tests China has failed to meet? Or more accurately, what political courage the government has failed to find? My Lords, it would not be right for this House to debate trust without looking to ourselves, those in the media, the civil service and public bodies could fairly tell politicians, physician, heal thyself.

Your Lordships House is at its best when it is serious, courteous, expert and independent minded. Our debates on defence, security and constitutional matters show this House doing what it is. It exists to do testing government, improving legislation and bringing experience to bear. But breaches of our own standards damage the whole institution. We cannot demand accountability elsewhere while excusing it here. We should therefore recommit ourselves to the disciplines that make this house valuable. Courtesy, restraint, accuracy and scrutiny without grandstanding.

But we should also resist any attempt to use civility as a muscle in response to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. Democracy is noisy. The public are entitled to be angry when institutions fail. It is our job to give them those institutions, to give them institutions worthy of respect. My Lords, the old world of controlled communication has gone and we should be grateful for that. The public no longer need permission from a Minister, a Mandarin, a BBC editor or a newspaper proprietor to hear an argument that is a democratic gain.

The task now is not to rebuild the old gatekeepers under the modern language of safety and resilience. It is to make our institutions trustworthy enough to survive scrutiny. That means Ministers who keep records and tell the truth. Civil servants who remember that impartiality in delivery is their constitutional bargain. A BBC that serves the whole country rather than its own internal culture. Platforms that protect children and expose foreign manipulation. And a government with the courage to name hostile states, including China, when the evidence requires it.

Public trust will not be restored by controlling what people may know. It will be restored when those in power stop behaving as though they have something to hide.
17:01
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Portrait Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government) (Labour)
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My Lords, before I start my speech, can I just say that I'm speech, can I just say that I'm here today? Because the noble Baron, my noble friend Baroness Anderson, had a minor accident and she's been had a minor accident and she's been incapacitated for a couple of days. So that's why you've got me instead of her, I'm afraid. But I'm sure you'd want me to wish her well. And. And a speedy recovery from her injury. My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for securing this very important.

And, as Lord said, timely debate and for the excellent quality of the debate from all noble Lords who have taken part this afternoon, it's been an incredibly valuable discussion to listen to. I hope I can speak on behalf of the whole of your Lordships House when I say these matters require us to put the protection of our precious democracy at the front of our minds. Parliamentary debates on these issues offer a unique opportunity to raise awareness of the threats to the public, signal our unyielding resolve across the nation to confront foreign threat actors.

This government's first duty is as is the duty of all governments, is to keep our country safe. We are absolutely committed to taking all measures necessary to expose and disrupt attempts to interfere with our sovereign affairs, and that is why the government's counter political interference, interference and Espionage Action Plan was announced in November to ensure that our national politics will remain a significant challenge for any foreign actors who try to target us. This plan is structured around three core pillars, delivering an enduring campaign to strengthen awareness of the threat, strengthening our legislative levers to increase transparency and impose costs on threat actors, and making it harder for foreign states to operate through proxies.

And through this plan, we are equipping everyone from brilliant local councillors to MPs to hardworking parliamentary staff with the tools they need to help, recognise, report and resist foreign espionage activity wherever they find it. The guidance the National Protective Security Agency, published in October last year, specifically highlighted the full range of vectors and tactics that foreign states, including Russia and China, are using to target people involved in our politics. Since then, we have brought together the director general of MI5 and the CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre to brief the chief executives of UK political parties on the developing threat picture.

As we continue to expose the evolving tradecraft that foreign states are using. And we are strengthening UK resilience. Earlier this month, MI5, alongside our Five Eyes Alliance allies, issued an intelligence bulletin to warn about the ways in which China's military intelligence is targeting Five Eyes governments and military personnel to gain access to sensitive or privileged information. The next stage of the Counter Political Interference and Espionage Action Plan is focused on developing a programme of work to make it harder for foreign actors to use think tanks and lobby groups as channels to interfere with policy making and our political discourse.

We intend to work with them to strengthen their resilience, ensuring their hard won reputations and networks are not exploited by our adversaries. And can I thank my noble friend Lord Moraes for his insights into this from his EU experience? We are committed to ensuring we have robust systems in place to defend the UK from foreign interference in UK democratic processes. The government has renewed the mandate of the Defending Democracy Taskforce, which brings together government Ministers, representatives from law enforcement and the intelligence community to coordinate the work to protect UK political parties, elected officials and electoral infrastructure from threats including foreign interference.

The taskforce is focused on ensuring the safety and security of electoral processes, ensuring democratic institutions are safe and secure by combating interference and building resilience to threats. And I'm very pleased to hear about the noble Lord Bourne's APPG, which is associated with this taskforce. Recent progress to protect our democratic institutions and those working in our democracy includes new legislation restricting protests outside homes, outside the private homes of public office holders. The delivery of personal cyber security advice in devolved nations for members and staff in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the rollout of the new National Protective Security Authority security guidance to protect democratic institutions from espionage and foreign interference.

In the light of the deeply concerning evidence of Russia's attempts to interfere in UK democracy, the government. That's why the government commissioned Philip Rycroft to lead an independent review into foreign interference in UK politics. It examined recent cases of attempted interference by a range of foreign actors, including events surrounding the conviction of reform UK's former Wales leader Nathan Gill, for accepting bribes to promote pro-Russian views. So I would say to the noble Lord Frost, it was a very specific review for a very specific purpose, and definitely it was evidence led.

The review rigorously tested the financial safeguards we currently have in place, and recommended areas for improving mitigations. Ministers were presented with the findings in March and will provide a comprehensive, line by line response to its recommendations to. I think it was the noble Lord Pac that asked about the rest of the Rycroft recommendations. Ahead of the Commons report. Stage of the representation of the people Bill, so that will provide a further opportunity for scrutiny and debate. We are already taking immediate steps to implement the review's recommendations for a cap on donations made by overseas electors, and for a moratorium on donations made via cryptocurrency, which will make into law through the representation of the people Bill.

This government's clear commitments to upholding and restoring trust and standards and integrity in public life are not merely pledges to be made in your Lordships House. They are a vital line of defence. We will do what it takes to ensure our country is not a permissive environment for foreign interference and safeguarding our democracy. The Prime Minister has been clear from day one that public service is a privilege, and this government is committed to showing how politics can be a force for good.

The Prime Minister has strengthened the ministerial code, putting the importance of public service at its heart and strengthen the role of the independent adviser on ministerial standards. As we promised in our manifesto and I would say to Baroness Finn that processes have already been tightened up in relation to a proposed entrance to your Lordships House and in the ministerial code, of course, will be looked at to see if there's anything more that needs to be done. Baroness Finn and Baroness Featherstone both referred to the the scandals around the Post Office, the infected blood scandal, the Hillsborough scandal and the Nottingham maternity scandal.

A recent horrific tale that we heard about just yesterday. The Public Office Accountability Bill will place a new legal duty on public servants to act truthfully and to fully assist in investigations and inquiries. We must also, my Lord, speed up our response to such issues. Ten years on from Grenfell, those affected still feel that too little has been done. Whilst I maintain this government has taken steps to improve standards, I truly believe that if we are to rebuild the faith that politics can be a force for good, we do need to work together.

This work must transcend differences in political parties and will require us all to come together. So I will actively seek to work with members of your Lordships House on where we believe the gaps are, and what we can realistically fix, and how we can rebuild trust. My Lords, language and tone in political debate are important too. It doesn't help to have a political leader in the other place, making comparisons between a United Kingdom Secretary of State and the Gestapo just because she disagrees with her policies.

I think the noble Lord Wallace and the noble Baroness Stowell referred to these. We do need to change, and I'm afraid in local government, too, we're seeing a deterioration in the tone of debate, which is actively discouraging able local community representatives for standing for councils. In both the debate, led by my noble friend Lord Forbes of Newcastle, and the debate on the Jo Cox Civility Commission, led by a noble friend, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon. We heard hair raising examples of violence and intimidation experienced by councillors, and just last week there was another excruciating example of incivility in the council chamber in Basildon.

I thank the Local Government Association for their survey work on this and worryingly, it shows that 70% of councillors report experiencing abuse or intimidation in the previous year and this rises to 84% for women and ethnic minority councillors. My Lords, we have an urgent job to do as a government to get some legislative weight behind codes of conduct and their enforcement. Noble Lords have also rightly focused on the severe threat of online disinformation, which threatens democracies around the world and poses clear risks to our national security.

The government continues to work tirelessly alongside our allies to expose Russian cyber threats and information operations targeting democracy in the UK and worldwide. For example, since October 2024, the government has exposed and sanctioned 38 organisations and individuals responsible for delivering Russia's information warfare to undermine global democracies. This government is implementing the National Security Act and the Online Safety Act to ensure foreign information operations face the strongest possible safeguards, as are the strongest possible safeguards that our country is capable of.

The foreign interference Offence under the Online Safety Act 2023 compels platforms to take action to prevent users from encountering state sponsored disinformation and interference online, and to minimise how long any such content is present on their services. Countering disinformation is not about stopping individuals expressing their views, but about preventing foreign states from manipulating and misleading people through deception and deceit. Ofcom has robust enforcement powers against platforms who fail to comply, including fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their global revenue.

From the comprehensive powers of the National Security Act to the protective work of the Defending Democracy Task Force, we are deploying a whole of government approach to make the UK a harder task, a harder target. I'm going to try and get through some of the individual points made by noble Lords, but if I don't get to them all, I will respond to you in writing. Nearly all noble Lords spoke about the issues around trust in politics. The noble Lord Wallace, Lord Cryer, Baroness Stowell, the right reverend prelate, the Bishop of Leicester, Baroness Gill, Baroness Featherstone, Lord Gascoigne, Lord Risby, Baroness Bennett, Lord Norton and Lord Walney.

And I think probably nearly everyone that spoke in the debate referred to this. I think this this issue of trust in politics is means that we need to restore the trust in politics, and that starts at school. A number of noble Lords have reflected on the breakdown of key institutions which dominated the last century. And I think, to quote the former defence Minister, we've got to fight the territory on this that exists now, not the territory that existed in the last century.

And that's really important. And that involves education. So that restoring trust in politics starts at school. And government recognises the role that citizenship education can play in supporting young people to understand how to engage positively with politicians and the political system. And that is fundamental to successful implementation of the government's manifesto commitment to extend the right to vote to 16 and 17 year olds. The importance of political literacy was highlighted in the Jo Cox Foundation report, and that's why the government has committed to looking for the earliest opportunity to make citizenship a new requirement for key stages one and two focused on the most essential content.

This includes democracy and government, as well as media literacy, law and rights, financial literacy and climate education. The points made about the funding of that education were well made. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revert those to my noble friend, the Education Minister, and I will respond to those in due course. The noble Lord Wallace rightly made some key points about the overcentralisation of things, leading to a lack of trust. And that's why I'm such a strong believer in the devolution agenda.

I think, you know, listening to voters, putting the decision making and the funding close to the those who are affected by the decisions and in the hands of those who have skin in the game are really important. And I understand that the new MP for Makerfield has quite a strong take on devolution, so I look forward to. First of all, I congratulate him on winning his election and I look forward to working with him. Many noble Lords have raised the issue of tackling misinformation and disinformation.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton, Lord Howell, Baroness Stowell, Baroness Gill, Lord Frost, Viscount Colville, Baroness Fox and Lord Gascoigne. And I would say that misinformation and disinformation pose an ongoing challenge to our democracy. New technologies such as artificially generated video and audio content, specifically pose a risk. It is, and always will be, an absolute priority for the government to protect our democratic process. The current legal framework to tackle electoral mis and disinformation means that In-scope services must also tackle illegal content, where it amounts to existing election offences.

This includes incitement to violence, undue influence, foreign interference and false statements about a candidate's character. The government continues to identify and take action against Russian information operations that threaten the UK's security and democracy. That includes ongoing campaigns with our allies to dismantle the online ecosystem of networks that are being used by Russia to manipulate the the public discourse globally. The government is implementing the Online Safety Act and the foreign interference offence under the Online Safety Act compels platforms to take action, as I've said earlier.

In. A number of noble Lords have talked rightly, I think, in this context about freedom of speech. It's very important that we maintain, as we go through this process, that we are conscious of that. The noble Lord Frost, Baroness Fox, Lord Brisby, Lord Jackson and Lord Pac have all referred to this, and freedom of expression and the right to protest are fundamental parts of a healthy democracy, and these are protected under law. While we are determined to ensure that people are not put off from campaigning and standing for public office, we continue to safeguard the strong legal protections on freedom of speech.

Strengthening participation through informed discussion and open debate does help build confidence in democratic institutions, supporting long term trust and resilience in our democracy. And that's why we've launched the Democratic Engagement Fund to help more people to participate in our democracy. There was much discussion during the debate about the foreign interference through both funding and through think tanks, and we recognise the risk posed by malign actors who seek to interfere with and undermine our democratic processes. And that's why we are strengthening the rules around donations to political parties.

These changes will mean greater transparency in public and political funding. Strong protections against foreign or illicit influence, and increased public confidence in the integrity of our democratic institutions. The noble Baroness, Lady Fin, mentioned the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, and that requires those being directed by the Russian state to register with the scheme if they carry out or arrange for others to carry out any activities in the UK, including political influence activities. The specification of Russia on the first enhanced tier is about protecting UK domestic security, and demonstrates how seriously we take the threat of their interference.

I'll come on to China in a moment, if she'll give me a moment. Officials are also focused on developing a programme of work to make it harder for strep throat. State threat actors to use think tanks and lobby groups as channels through which to interfere with UK policy making. So we intend to work with them, as I said, to strengthen their resilience. My noble friend Lord Cryer, raised the issue of Iran, and I think Lord Pack and Baroness Finn also referred to Iran. We know Iran poses an increasing threat to the UK, both through its destabilizing actions in the region, but also through its direct actions against organisations and individuals in the UK.

The Iranian regime has become increasingly emboldened, asserting itself more aggressively to advance their objectives and undermine ours. And this is evidenced by the fact that direct action against UK targets are substantially increased over the years. There is a long standing pattern of targeting Jewish and Israeli people internationally by the Iranian intelligence service, and it's clear these plots are a conscious strategy to stifle criticism through intimidation and fear. The government's absolutely committed to ensuring our intelligence and law enforcement agencies have the tools they need to disrupt and degrade Iran's malign activity on UK soil, and we recognise the strength of feeling on the question of proscription and fully understand the malign threat posed by the IRGC.

But you'll be aware that we don't comment on whether or not organisations or entities are being considered for proscription, and this is a long standing precedent in relation to China. The government fully recognises China poses a series of threats to UK national security, from cyber attacks, foreign interference and espionage targeting our democratic institutions to the transnational repression of Hong Kongers. Yet we are also alive to the fact that China presents the UK with opportunities as the world's second largest economy and the UK's third largest trading partner.

Not engaging is not a choice at all. That is why the Prime Minister discussed a series of the UK's national security concerns with President Xi during his recent visit, and agreed a new joint law enforcement pact to disrupt the supply of equipment used by people smuggling gangs operating in the English Channel. And we continue to develop a consistent and pragmatic approach to economic engagement without compromising our national security. Many noble Lords have raised the issues around media literacy and the social media ban.

Media literacy is essential to helping young people critically engage in online information, and the Media Literacy Action Plan sets out how the government is strengthening these skills so young people can continue to access reliable political information from a wide range of trusted online sources. Beyond social media and participate safely in democratic life alongside the wider protections for under 16 seconds. I realise I'm running out of time. I do just want to briefly cover some more information on the Ryecroft review. We've.

As I said, we've taken immediate steps to implement the cap on donations and the moratorium on cryptocurrencies. And the review sits against wider cross-government efforts to deliver counter political interference and the Espionage Action Plan, which is being coordinated through the Defending Democracy Task Force. Now, I realize I've not covered everybody's points, but I will write out with those I've not reached. But on this government's watch, we will continue to do whatever is required to disrupt and degrade foreign interference, protect our democratic institutions, and keep the British public safe.

I'm very grateful to the noble Lord Wallace for such an important debate this afternoon.

**** Possible New Speaker ****

Thank you, Minister, for that very thoughtful reply. And I'm very sorry to hear about Baroness Anderson. We all hope we'll see her Anderson. We all hope we'll see her again soon. We will be continuing this debate in a range of other contexts over the next year. The contexts over the next year. The representation of the people's Bill. A lot more discussion about online
17:22
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Portrait Lord Wallace of Saltaire (Liberal Democrat)
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A lot more discussion about online safety and so on. We have not agreed on how to resolve the problem of public trust, but I think we do all now accept that we have a serious problem of public trust, that it will be tested, as Lord Walden was suggesting, as we go through the the economic disruption of AI and others, and we well know how in periods of economic disruption, democracy is challenged. So we will continue to have some real problems.

We could perhaps have spent a little more time on the question of local community and the loss of the sense of localness. I thought Lord Bishop Bishop Lester's speech was extremely interesting in that respect. I would say to Baroness Finn, who suggested that we used to have a concentrated media scene. We had local media. First time I fought the parliamentary campaign in Huddersfield, the Huddersfield Examiner was the thing which everyone read to keep in touch with local politics, and we've lost a lot of the network of local media as we have lost the network of nonconformist churches and others which which held local communities together and moving to the virtual online world is part of what's torn our society to some extent apart.

I would love to have taken further the question of the role of think tanks and foreign governments. I spent 12 years at Chatham House in the last period of the Cold War, and the delicate relations we had with the Soviet Union and others, including the Sunday Times, attacking us for having a relationship with think tanks in Moscow was a way of a. Certainly a delicate roads one has to tread and it's very easy to fall off from one side or the other.

I enjoyed the noble Lord, Lord Hanson speech. As always, I have to say I think he is one of the most wonderful pamphleteers I've ever come across. He can make a plausible argument about almost any subject you wish to learn. We haven't discussed money enough. Not just state money, but private money. Amongst the threats to democracy are extremities of wealth and poverty. And what we see going on in the United States at the present moment is the way in which extremes of wealth pouring through American politics are biasing what would otherwise be the free flow of the noble Lord, quoted John Stuart Mill, who said that truth always beats falsehood in a free and fair fight.

Extremities of money prevent a free and fair fight, so perhaps I might just end with a quotation from Francis Bacon. To him, money is like manure. It is best when it is widely spread. To which I would add money when put together in piles that are too large begins to stink. So let us continue this argument, and I look forward to the many arguments in bills and others we will have over the next year. Before I retire from this place to discuss how we maintain the quality of our democracy and do our best to ensure, through education everything else that not only do we have good chaps in the elites, but as the noble Lord, Lord Norton

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suggested, we help to build more good chaps among the public as well. Yeah.

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I beg to withdraw my. The question is that this motion be agreed to as many of that

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be agreed to as many of that opinion content, content, content, the contents of it. My Lords, I beg to move the

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My Lords, I beg to move the House. Do now adjourn.
10:30
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