Education (Values of British Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, both for bringing us the Bill on this initiative and for his fine introduction. I agree with many of the speeches made already—that of the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, and notably that of the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, with her expressions of concern about Prevent.

Given the time limit, I will focus on Clause 1(5), which concerns the required inclusion in educational directions of respect for the environment. This follows from the contribution of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield; I repeat his question for the Minister on where the new GCSE in natural history is.

We have inherited a disastrous set of values and attitudes towards the environment, with thinking that goes back a long way and which we have adopted into our intellectual tradition. It includes the great chain of being, which is the concept that human beings are some kind of pinnacle of life, and the idea that the whole complexity of life on earth—the living system that James Lovelock identified as Gaia, which has evolved over billions of years—is there for us as a species, under our control and for our exploitation.

The 21st century has exposed that for the dangerous fallacy it is, with the climate emergency, the nature crisis and the poisoning of our planet with novel entities; six of the nine planetary boundaries have been exceeded. We know that there are other intellectual traditions and other ways of looking at the world, which are attracting attention from our scientists and researchers. For example, I note that, across many African religions, there is the concept of ukama, which states that animals are part of a community with humans; it emphasises mutual dependence, a sense of unity and, at least sometimes, a moral imperative of respect.

For those for whom that perhaps goes a bit far, I go back to 21st-century science. It tells us that we are holobionts, a complex of tens of thousands of species. We need to understand our own bodies, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, said yesterday in my Oral Question about biocides. I point noble Lords to a book written by a Member of your Lordships’ House—the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, who is not currently in her place—entitled Good Nature: The New Science of How Nature Improves Our Health. We are failing our children if we do not educate them about their place as part of nature; that needs to be part of a much broader change where our education system works to prepare people for life, not just exams and jobs.