Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Cormack

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I propose to your Lordships’ House that Report not be received and that consideration of the Bill not proceed at this time. This reflects the fact that, of the many people I have spoken to, few believe that the Government are truly ready to proceed with the Bill.

I posit three reasons for this. First, we have been through three Education Secretaries in three days. We now have a caretaker Prime Minister and Government. Perhaps the less said about the behaviour of the new Education Minister, the better; the National Education Union has said all that needs to be said on that matter. In our unwritten, dysfunctional constitution, accreted over centuries of historical accident, “caretaker Education Secretary” may not have a technical meaning, but it has a practical one. With a new Prime Minister due in a couple of months, there is a very good chance that we will have a fourth Education Secretary.

The second reason is that, were this reform to be carefully thought through, long planned and developed over a long period of consultation and reflection with clear goals in mind, a temporary—if long-running—perturbation in the Government might not be a significant impediment to progress. However, it is nothing like that. We have the Government agreeing to pull one major element of the Bill—the first part, which was presumably their primary reason for bringing the Bill forward—and promising both to introduce an alternative approach in the other place and that they will allow future extended debate in your Lordships’ House. This promise will have to be followed by a new Government, most likely with a new team of people; I intend no insult to anyone still in post.

The third reason why we should not proceed today is that the remaining parts of the Bill are a controversial hotchpotch that has produced in my mailbag—and those of many other noble Lords, I have no doubt—cries of fear and horror. As usual, your Lordships’ House is trying modestly to improve the Bill, with a series of votes planned for this afternoon. However, a bad law is surely worse than no law at all, particularly in the current circumstances. Our schools would be better off without the extra confusion and disruption created by a half-cooked Bill proceeding to the other place, allowing them and the department to concentrate on the triple epidemic that they face: the continuing Covid epidemic; the crisis of mental ill-health and stress affecting pupils, teachers and other staff; and the cost of living crisis that is hitting school and family budgets hard.

If we proceed now, we will be trying to put a few patches on a sow’s ear. That is not progress and not the right direction for your Lordships’ House. Instead, let us leave our education system and department to settle down and seek stability and certainty where they can find them, rather than contribute to their problems.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I had no intention of following the noble Baroness until she began to speak. I do not always agree with her, but she has spoken a lot of very good sense this afternoon.

As I sat here during Question Time, I felt increasingly that we are in a vacuum. We have a discredited Prime Minister who is still occupying No. 10 Downing Street. It will be an absolute scandal if he is still there after the House rises for the Summer Recess. You cannot have a Government in suspended animation. You must have a Government in which people can have a degree of trust. My solution, which I made plain in a letter to the Times last week, is that we bring our election of the leader of the Conservative Party to a conclusion in the House of Commons next week.

It is utterly ludicrous that we should spend four, five or six weeks traipsing around the country appealing to an infinitesimal proportion of people—about 200,000 in England, Wales and Scotland—who then possibly choose the second person, so you begin with a Prime Minister who does not enjoy the confidence of the majority of the Members of the House of Commons. I beg all my noble friends, if they believe that there is some substance to this argument, which has also been advanced by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, to speak out, and speak inwards as well. To have a Government in office but not in power is, to quote a famous speech by my noble friend Lord Lamont many years ago, doing the nation a great disservice. We all need a Government who have the opportunity to develop new ideas, and to present policies to the country, to your Lordships’ House, and to the other place.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, was absolutely right that this Bill is, in effect, already discredited. The brilliant forensic activities of my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking have shown just how many holes there are in it. We know that a great number of clauses will be withdrawn. Therefore, we have that worst of all combinations, a ragbag and a Christmas tree, to quote the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. Is that really any way to proceed? It is not. We should drop the Bill, we should move quickly towards the instatement of a Prime Minister who enjoys the confidence of a majority in the House of Commons, and we should begin to rebuild trust in our Government, a trust that has been squandered and besmirched by a man who has defiled everything that he has touched. That is the true background against which we debate this afternoon.

The Opposition should have no part of this. They should say, “We are not going to debate this Bill. It’s got to be sorted out.” We need to put the Government of this country on an honourable and honest footing, as soon as we possibly can.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Cormack

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, and to commend him, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on Amendment 24, to which the Green group would have certainly given its support, had there been space on the paper for it.

I will, however, go back briefly to Amendment 23 from the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, because it is crucial that we acknowledge the importance of chalk streams. It is something I have in the past done a great deal of work on, with concern about the arrival of what has been called unconventional oil and gas extraction and its potential impact on them. I will admit that seeing the noble Lord’s amendment also made me want to revisit amendments that I tabled to the then Agriculture Bill on meadows and hedgerows. They are all things we need to include when we are talking about the species abundance target more broadly.

However, what I mostly want to address is new subsection (4) in the Government’s amendment and the proposed amendments to that subsection. As the noble Lord, Lord Randall, has already set out extremely clearly, this simply does not live up to the promises that the Government made on the species abundance target: the words we heard from the Secretary of State in what was billed as a landmark speech.

Amendment 24 would leave out the word “further”. The Government’s amendment states that they will “further the objective”, and Amendment 24 says “meet” the objective, which is a considerable improvement. However, I have tabled Amendment 26, which would go further. I apologise to noble Lords, because I realise, looking at it, that in the Explanatory Statement I did not really get on top of the complexities of explaining it. The key difference in this context is that I say, rather than to “further” or to “meet” a target, “delivering an improvement”. We have the Government saying, “We’re going to try to at least not get worse”; Amendment 24 says, “We’re going to at least meet a target for species abundance”; and I say, “We have to see an improvement.” That is what would be written into the Bill.

I shall go back, as did the noble Lord, Lord Randall, to the speech of George Eustice in Delamere Forest. I have a couple of quotes from it. It used the phrase “building back greener”. I put the stress on the “er” in that: an improvement. He said that

“restoring nature is going to be crucial”—

we are restoring, we are improving. He said:

“We want to not only stem the tide of this loss but to turn it around and to leave the environment in a better state.”


I would say that to deliver on what the Government say they want to achieve, they need the words “delivering an improvement”, or words very similar to those, in the Bill to commit to seeing an improvement.

I shall give just a short reflection on what that means, and I shall go to the RSPB:

“More than 40 million birds have disappeared from UK skies”


since 1970. What the Government are offering is, “We’re going to try and stop losing more”; Amendment 24 says, “We guarantee to at least stay where we are”; my amendment says, “We’re going to bring at least some of those 40 million birds back.” That is what it is aiming to do.

We can reflect on a phrase which has been very much popularised by George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist and writer: “shifting baseline syndrome”. Older Members of your Lordships’ House may well say, “Well, nature just doesn’t look like it used to when I was a child”—but their grandparents would have said exactly the same thing. We have had a long-term, centuries-long collapse, and if you could get someone in a time machine from 200 years ago and put them into our countryside now, they just would not recognise it, with its total lack of wildlife.

It is also worth looking at the Government’s reaction. The noble Lord, Lord Randall, referred to the Dasgupta review. The Government have, of course, already put out a formal response to that in which they talk about a “nature-positive future”, which I suggest implies that there has to be an improvement: if you are going to do something positive, you are increasing it. That explains why I have worded Amendment 26 in this way, in terms of delivering improvement.

I want briefly to address the rest of Amendments 26 and 27 on the issue of species abundance. I have talked to some of the NGOs that have been instrumental in the petition that the noble Lord, Lord Randall, referred to—250,000 people had signed it the last time I looked to say that they want an improved species abundance target—I will be very happy if the Minister can correct me, but no one has actually defined what a species abundance target means. We go back to our debate on Monday about what biodiversity means: whether it is biodiversity of genes in a large population which has a large diversity of genes, one hopes; whether it is species; whether it is the fact that to have abundant species, you need a rich ecological environment. All those things fit together. Amendments 26 and 27 are my attempt to get the Minister to reflect now, or if not now, later, and explain to us what the Government really mean by a species abundance target.

What I have suggested, in trying to address those different aspects of biodiversity, is to look at the mass of wild species—we are talking about bioabundance. Keeping a few handfuls of tiny populations of every species going is not enough; we need to have lots of the popular species, lots of all species and also population numbers of red and amber list species, trying to address those rarer species on which a lot of the attention in terms of extinction is focused. I am sure all noble Lords have received many representations about Amendment 24, which is certainly a great improvement on government Amendment 22, but I ask your Lordships’ House, as we go forward to the next stage, to think about some wording in the Bill that guarantees building in improvement, not just ensuring no decline.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She and her colleague from the Green Party can certainly never be accused of falling down on the job. They are persistent; I do not always agree with them, but I salute them for keeping their cause going.

I was greatly impressed by my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge’s speech but I must say to my noble friend, whose personal credentials I do not question for a moment, that his amendments this evening are disappointing, to put it mildly. The speech of the Secretary of State, George Eustice, to which reference has already been made, excited expectations. The amendments that my noble friend has tabled do not—if they will fulfil those expectations, there is a great difference between promise and performance. It is not just the road to hell that is paved with good intentions; in this context, the road to extinction is paved with good intentions. It is not a question of my noble friend’s intentions but of the performance that I think will follow.

I suggest that on Report my noble friend should toughen this up. I ask him to convene a meeting of those are speaking in this debate and others to see whether we can come to a consensus and amendments that will really reflect what I believe is his genuine intention, and what is certainly the desire of a large majority of your Lordships’ House. I urge him to do that, because I do not want this to become a politically contentious Bill; it is one that ought to command the allegiance of people in all parts of the country and in all political parties. I salute the Government for bringing it forward, but say to them, please do not fall down on this. It is crucial that in 10 years’ time, looking back upon 2030, people do not say, “There was a great opportunity that was badly missed.”

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Cormack

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Monday 8th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I speak against Amendment 2 as I did against the comparable amendment in Committee. I also express my opposition to the inclusion of alienating behaviour in the statutory guidance.

In Committee, having begun examining the issue of claims of parental alienation with an open mind, I focused particularly on the research and expert evidence, including a complete issue of the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law. Today, I will reflect on what came next. As I expected, having spoken in your Lordships’ House, written an accompanying op-ed and shared both outputs on social media, I got a significant response.

A lot of that response was emotional and angry. That did not surprise me, since we are talking about the most intimate of personal relationships, and I was more tolerant of aggressive tones than I would have been on other topics. But something struck me in many of the responses that I received. It was the use of the word “right”, as in “my right to see my children”, “parents’ rights”, “my right to direct my children’s future”. That crystalised some of the unease that I had felt in reading the academic claims backing a so-called syndrome of parental alienation—explicitly or implicitly, that was where they were coming from.

We live, of course, in what continues to be a patriarchy. Claims laid down for millennia that the father is the head of the household, that, as in ancient Rome—the classical world that some of our current Government seem to so admire—he had the right even to kill any member of it without the law offering any legal protection at all, are extremely hard to wipe away.

Under British law, until 1839 every father had the absolute right to keep control of his children should their mother leave. Even after 1839, only women who had the means to petition the Court of Chancery had a chance of keeping what we would now call custody, and then only if they could demonstrate an absolute moral clean sheet. The father’s morals were irrelevant. If your Lordships want to see how there is nothing new about coercive control, the life of Caroline Norton, whose brave, landmark campaigning won that change in the law, will demonstrate that. The global pervasiveness of this patriarchal ideology was referred to earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, said in opening this group that the Bill should not be caught up in gender politics. This issue—the entire Bill—is deeply, inevitably gendered, however much the Government might try to deny it. The struggle to get to the situation we are apparently in now, where the wellbeing of the child is predominant in decisions made about that child, was one long struggle against a society run by men in their own interests. But now we are faced with renewed efforts, a fightback for a “presumption of contact”—an assumption that if a child says they do not want to spend time with a parent, the other parent must be turning the child against them.

After entering the debate publicly in Committee, I was contacted by women who told me what presumption of contact and a fear of an accusation of parental alienation had done to them. I want to give them voice, so I will report one such case. I will call her Camilla, although that is not her name. Her account was of seven years of hellish coercive control and physical assault. She remained, at least in part, because the partner concerned told her that he would claim parental alienation if she left and did not allow wide access to the children. She was concerned about what would happen during that access.

After Camilla had left the relationship, she went through court case after court case as he claimed rights to parental access, while not paying the child maintenance that he could have afforded, and alleging that the children’s expressions of a desire not to spend time with him were a result of so-called parental alienation. Such offenders, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, can be extremely convincing in a public space and in contact with professionals.

For fear of not being believed, Camilla told her child that should anything bad happen when they were with their father, the child should not tell her, but should instead tell an official authority figure. So, that upper primary school age child declared, in front of many peers and school officials at a school gathering, that their father was physically abusing his new girlfriend in front of them. Then, happily, safeguarding apparatuses kicked in, as they should have. A few weeks later that child disclosed, again to people outside the family, that they had been sexually abused by an individual that the father had left them with. It is a horrendous account and one that I will long remember, and I think of the difficulties and pressures on that child.

This brings me to my final point, one that I do not think our debate in Committee really brought out. It is about the impact on a child of being told that they are deluded, or that their mother or father is leading them astray, or lying to them, and that their own impressions, feelings, desires and beliefs about not being with a parent are some kind of false consciousness. When a child says that they do not want contact, they need to be given—no doubt for their own well-being—the chance to explore that with trained professionals and given the time to explain, to discuss and to vent their feelings.

Above all, children need to be listened to. Imagine what it feels like to have stated very clearly to officialdom that you do not want to spend time with a parent, that you have seen them doing things that are illegal or vicious or clearly damaging to other human beings, then being forced by a court to spend time with them anyway.

I was talking about these issues with a friend of mine who is over the age of 80. I was fascinated when she explained how, not through the agency of the court but through community and social pressure, she had been forced to spend teenage weekend days with her father who had separated from her mother years before. She felt that her father did not really want to be there, and she certainly did not want to be there as a teenager, but she did not have agency or control. More than 60 years later those weekends clearly still had an impact on her. We know that agency and control of one’s own self, being listened to and believed, are crucial for well-being.

It would appear that this amendment is not going to be pushed to a Division, so on one level this is academic. That is narrowly true in terms of the progress of this Bill, but in terms of defending a hard-won, long-fought-for principle of children’s interests being paramount in the official approach to custody and access, against the weight of those millennia when the father’s control was absolute or near absolute, this is an important debate. Let us keep the well-being of children as the sole goal—a very recent goal that is both a moral right and one that will give us the healthiest possible society.

[Lord Cormack (Con) [V]]

My Lords, that was a very powerful speech in favour of the aims of the amendment. At the end of the last debate in Committee when I spoke I said that I was somewhat ambivalent, although I totally supported what my noble friend Lady Meyer was seeking to do. That remains my position to a large degree, although I have come down—if it were a case of this amendment going to the vote, which I hope it will not—of probably being on the side of my noble friend. There is nothing more admirable in life than somebody who dedicates himself or herself to trying to ensure that others do not suffer as he or she has done. The noble Baroness’s campaign, over 20 years or more now, to ensure that other women and men should not have to tread the road she was obliged to tread is wholly admirable and commendable. There is nothing more wicked—and I chose my words with some care—than seeking to corrupt the mind of a child, particularly so that that child is turned against either their father or, more often, sadly, their birth mother.

We have devoted time recently to debating the importance of motherhood—there is nothing more important in the world. My noble friend Lady Meyer has clearly suffered greatly. She does not want others to suffer greatly in the same way, nor do any of us. It is a question of how we achieve her aim without making this Bill more difficult. As I listened to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and to my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, I thought that between them they had got it right. They both signed this amendment but they do not really want it to be necessary.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Cormack

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 25th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I take a moment to praise the powerful speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, with which I entirely concur.

As a Green, being lobbied from a wide variety of perspectives on the linked Amendments 2 and 4 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, the obvious place to start was with the evidence, so I asked the House of Lords Library for a survey of the peer-reviewed research. The conclusions of that evidence—the concern that the concept of parental alienation had been dangerously overdeveloped and overused—were clear. An entire issue of the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law is dedicated to this subject. The introduction states that,

“experts in the field of domestic and family violence have expressed serious concerns regarding the recourse to the concept of parental alienation by family court and child protection services. In the context of domestic and family violence, women may have well-grounded reasons to want to limit father-child contact … However, with a ‘parental alienation’ lens, women’s and children’s concerns are likely to be seen as invalid and as a manifestation of the mother’s hostility and alienating behaviours.”

That quote, and my views, reflect the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and I also associate myself with her concerns about the current uses in the courts. I support her call for the removal of the reference to parental alienation in the draft statutory guidance for the Bill. That is not the conclusion of just one journal; it is reflected in other articles in a range of journals, including the Family Court Review, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, and the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse.

The introduction from the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, is an atypical account. The whole basis of claims of parental alienation is, in general, highly gendered. It claims that what women are saying cannot be trusted and relied upon. The pervasiveness of this was also evident in the conclusions of the brilliant Cumberlege report into medical devices and practices causing harm mostly to female patients and their concerns not being listened to.

That is the evidence, but I also want to go to fundamental principles. I believe in trusting individuals, in believing their capacity to make choices and decisions for themselves. That is a foundation of Green political thought. Inherent in the claims of parental alienation is the assumption that children can be turned against one parent by another, an assumption reflecting the hypodermic syringe theory of communication: that a message delivered will be 100% absorbed, believed and acted upon. This is a false consciousness argument, a claim that people do not understand their own circumstances and situations. Trusting individuals includes trusting, and listening to, children. Failure to do that has been a huge issue in many recent, tragic child sexual abuse scandals.

Votes at 16 is a long-term Green Party policy, but I regularly speak to school and community groups much younger than that who have very clear views and understandings that they have developed by themselves, through thought, research and consideration. The exam-factory model of schooling, to which successive Governments have been so attached, has not succeeded in destroying this. I believe very strongly that children need to be consulted and listened to by the courts and professionals when decisions are being made about their lives.

This brings me finally to acknowledge that we are all shaped by our own lives and experiences and should be open about and declare them. There is no such thing as an unbiased observer—in science, social science or politics. I know about this from personal experience. As a child, I was subjected to an attempt by a grandparent to alienate me from other members of my family. I rejected that, turned against it, understood what was being done to me and resisted from a very young age. In today’s debate, I will be listening to and relying on the peer-reviewed evidence, but also reflecting my own life understanding, in speaking against the inclusion of parental alienation in the Bill, because the whole approach fails to listen to women and children particularly and is not based on evidence.

[Lord Cormack (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I begin with an apology: I was unable to take part at Second Reading of this important Bill, a Bill on which I, like others, congratulate the Government. Unlike much of our discussion and debate in this House, this is a real debate, with passionate views, strongly and sincerely held, being expressed on both sides of the argument.

I come to this from a background of 40 years as a constituency MP. Throughout that time, I held frequent and regular advice surgeries—at least a couple a month. I was always most distressed and least able to help when people brought their parental and marital difficulties to me. Whenever I saw people to discuss these things, I became convinced that, in almost every case, the victims were the children. When there is a separation or break-up of a marriage, long-term relationship or anything else, it is the children who always suffer, regardless of the “blame” attached to either side. Other noble Lords will have shared these experiences, which were the most difficult—indeed impossible—to resolve adequately, properly and fairly.

Some years ago, when I was in the United States with the Foreign Affairs Committee of another place, I met someone who felt passionately about this issue. In the margins of our meetings, she explained to me the cause that she was championing and gave me some of the details of why she was doing so. That person was the wife of our then American ambassador, Sir Christopher Meyer, and is now our much-admired colleague in your Lordships’ House. She spoke today with passionate intensity; it was a very moving speech.

I was minded to say that I would of course support these amendments. I support so much of what is behind them, but I cannot ignore the powerful speeches from the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Helic, or from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, a few moments ago. I am very persuaded by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who knows perhaps more than any of us about marital problems and difficulties from her work in the family court. Although she spoke so briefly but movingly, this is something we must not dismiss.

I wonder whether the Bill is the right vehicle at the moment. I am not saying that I am persuaded that it is not; I shall talk and read more after today’s debate, but one body is frequently derided in the modern age: the royal commission. I wonder whether a royal commission to look into these things, to weigh the conflicting academic and other evidence, might not offer a positive and helpful way forward. There is no doubt that both my noble friends Lady Meyer and Lady Helic would be more than well equipped to give powerful evidence to such a body—as would others; we have all had representations on both sides of the argument.

There is nothing worse than polluting the mind of a child and weaponising and indoctrinating a child, particularly doing it with the intention of discrediting the other parent. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to enjoy very long marriages and see our children likewise enjoy long marriages have no real idea of just how devastating the sort of situation that my noble friend Lady Meyer described can be. We can only listen with sympathy and regard. We can empathise to the best of our ability, but we have not been there and we do not know that. However, I think that it would be very sensible for a royal commission to look into this. Royal commissions do not always have to, in the words of the late Lord Wilson, take minutes and sit for years. A small group of very experienced lawyers and others could pronounce on this in a fairly short timescale.

For the moment, I reserve my position on this amendment. I want to listen to what others say in this debate and when we come to Report, but I ask my noble friend who will reply from the Front Bench at least to reflect on the suggestion I have put forward and see whether it offers us a way to achieve what my noble friend Lady Meyer would have us achieve without some of the dangers talked about so powerfully by the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and my noble friend Lady Helic.

Trade Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Cormack

Report stage & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Altmann. I join her in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hain, on the ingenuity of his important Amendment 26. As he and others have recognised, Amendments 17 and 18 have, to a large degree, been overtaken by events, but I believe that something along the lines of Amendment 26 must be incorporated in the Bill to give reassurance in Northern Ireland. I would go so far as to say that the success of the deal concluded on Christmas Eve, which I welcome, hinges to a large degree upon Northern Ireland.

In his very moving words, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, indicated that the fact that the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland is also the border between the United Kingdom and the European Union is a matter of great significance. He also pointed out the sensitivities in Northern Ireland, sensitivities of which I became acutely aware during my five years as chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in another place and which, for me, were seen at their most acute and most moving at a meeting I had the privilege to address in Crossmaglen village hall in 2009, following the brutal and sadistic murder of Paul Quinn.

Northern Ireland is a precious part of the United Kingdom. The Belfast agreement must not be put at risk. Free passage across that border, with its 300 points of crossing, must remain and anything that can give reassurance where, at the moment, there is uncertainty, as the noble and right reverend  Lord, Lord Eames, so graphically outlined, must be to the betterment of our relations not only within the United Kingdom—which I pray remains the United Kingdom—but between the United Kingdom and the European Union. Anything that can give such reassurance must, surely, add strength and purpose to the Bill.

I am not going to attempt to rehearse the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Hain. He put them succinctly and graphically and I believe they should command the support of your Lordships’ House. I therefore have pleasure in supporting these amendments, particularly Amendment 26, and I beg my noble friend on the Front Bench to give a reply that means that the noble Lord, Lord Hain, does not need to divide the House. We should not be divided on an issue that, above all, should unite us—the future of the Belfast agreement. If this amendment cannot be accepted for some technical reason, then I beg the Minister to undertake to introduce an amendment at Third Reading that will encapsulate the fundamental points of this one and underline its purpose. I am glad to give my support to the noble Lord, Lord Hain.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I am pleased to offer the Green group’s support to all these amendments, particularly Amendment 26. It is a pleasure to follow the detailed, highly informed expositions of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. I do not feel there is a great deal to add, so I will be very brief, but I want to ask two questions of the Minister. First, what assessment have the Government made of the understanding and ability to deal with this of small businesses, particularly in Northern Ireland but also those exporting goods and services to Northern Ireland? How are they dealing with, and how will they be able to deal with, the trading co-operation agreement arrangements? Is the Minister confident that there is sufficient support for those, given the uncertainties that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, just referred to?

Secondly, venturing into a very complex area but one that I know is of great importance to some people, as I understand it there is a hard border down the Irish Sea for seed potatoes and possibly also for fresh potatoes. Can the Minister explain the situation with potatoes going to and fro across the Irish Sea?

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Cormack

Report stage & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I put my name to my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern’s amendment out of admiration for him and for the way in which he has sought positively to contribute to our debates on the Bill, both in Committee and on Report. All his contributions have been informed by his passionate unionism. He is a truly remarkable man. He was a most revered Lord Chancellor and, of course, had he lived in Edinburgh in the Age of Enlightenment he would have been one of the adornments of that age. We are extremely fortunate to have him as a Member of your Lordships’ House.

I say to my noble friend Lord True that my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay has indicated that he does not wish to push his amendment to a Division because he is appreciative of the recognition of the importance of the union displayed by my noble friends Lord True and Lord Callanan, and indeed all those who have spoken from the Front Bench. However, and I say this on my own account, while I completely understand why my noble and learned friend does not want to divide on this amendment, and I admire him greatly for all that he has done, I still believe that the union is in peril, and it is terribly important that my noble friends on the Front Bench take most carefully into account all that has been said today on the subject of the union. All the amendments have been informed by a great love for the union, a recognition that it is at risk and a passionate, consuming desire to ensure that the most successful union in European history does not come to grief.

If, when he comes to wind up, my noble friend Lord True could emphasise his own devotion to the union, that would be a reward to my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay for his persistence, and a recognition from your Lordships’ House of the esteem in which we hold him.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

It is a pleasure to follow Lord Cormack, who has neatly demonstrated in this last group on Report how much this has been a cross-party, cross-House effort. There may be many things that we disagree on, but what has been broadly agreed is that the Bill is not currently fit for purpose. We have seen that again and again, with very strong votes for the amendments put forward by your Lordships’ House from a wide range of directions. It is fitting that, in opening this group, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, demonstrated the House’s persistence in the face of technological challenges, which has been a great credit to the House right through this debate and, indeed, through the entire Covid-19 pandemic.

I will speak briefly to Amendment 75, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, to which I have attached my name, as have the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Wigley. I shall not go through it in detail; it is a very detailed amendment, but that reflects of the nature of this debate and the issue of trust. Your Lordships’ House has heard again and again, including in reports from its respected committees, of great concern about details, plans and policies not being put in the Bill. This is one more amendment that seeks to tackle that. Looking at the overview of this, your Lordships’ House has, perhaps slightly ironically, been standing very firm as a defender of devolution and democracy. We will almost certainly return to this again and I urge all Members of this House to stand up for these issues, which are crucial for the future of the United Kingdom, whatever shape that might take.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Cormack

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 18th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, speaking after so many distinguished noble Lords, I will try to avoid repeating what has been said. I formally offer the Green Party’s support for these amendments and thank the noble and learned Lord who tabled them and his co-signatories for their labours and powerful arguments.

I will offer three perspectives from green political philosophy. First, on the value of diversity, which the common frameworks approach embraces, a healthy ecosystem and a healthy governance system contain diversity. Our outdated, dysfunctional Westminster system acts to suppress that and, in response, we have seen the successful drive for devolution that has brought in political diversity across these islands. As we speak, the Senedd is considering extending that diversity to local government in Wales. That is a direction of travel that the Bill clearly and deliberately seeks to wrench into reverse, being deliberately destructive, as the noble Lord, Lord Garnier, said.

Diversity has obvious practical benefits, such as the ability to experiment, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, reflected earlier, with different approaches to blocking the flood of single-use plastics into our choked islands; different approaches to producing healthy food from flourishing small market gardens and farms; and different approaches to educating our children, which later amendments in my name address. Where one approach is transparently successful, we hope others will follow its lead—unless political calculations get in the way.

The second philosophical point is about the value of localism—the people affected making the decisions that affect them, ideally democratically, as the nations other than England enjoy their democratic devolved legislative structures. “Take back control” was a very popular slogan in 2016. I entirely agree with that need, and put it to your Lordships’ House that this is what the amendments in support of the common frameworks agreement do for the people of these islands.

Finally, there is the value of co-operation. Working co-operatively is something that we, as Greens, find is very popular with the public. They are fed up with the see-saw of two-party politics, of a new Government seeking to sweep aside and to argue against everything their opponent did, just for the sake of claiming victory. The common frameworks approach is the very epitome of a co-operative way of working.

The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said that for the Government to reject these amendments is to reject devolution itself. I agree. She said that it would be a step towards the break-up of the United Kingdom. I agree. My view of the union is different from the noble Baroness’s. I believe there is a strong natural current towards taking back control in many parts of the United Kingdom but, if it is to happen, we can surely agree that it should be in a co-operative, positive environment, not nations feeling that they have to struggle their way out from under the boot of an overweening, care-less, distant Westminster.

Finally, taking the scientific perspective that reflects my background, I invite your Lordships’ House to consider the fate of the trilobites, whose long story of ocean success and eventual extinction was laid out in a paper in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Science this week. Through three periods of mass global extinction, the trilobites were a large part of ocean ecosystems but, after each challenge, they had less diversity in ecological niches and bodily forms. Eventually, they dwindled to one species and disappeared. In diversity, co-operation and local power is strength. In homogeneity, dominance and centralism is a loss of resilience, decline and the potential for disaster.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a remarkable afternoon. I agreed emphatically with my friend the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, when he said it was not so much a debate as a series of statements. I have said similar in the past about other debates. I really believe it is essential that we do something to restore debate. My very good and noble friend Lord Naseby made an interesting speech, but I would have loved to have intervened. I would have challenged him, for instance, when he said the Bill is entirely legal. It is now, because we took out Part 5 last week but, if they attempt to put it back, it will become illegal again. He would have responded robustly and interestingly to that sort of interchange. It brings the place alive. We are in a dead, one-dimensional Parliament and we have to do something about it.

Having said that, I will make a suggestion. If we group the speakers who are in the Chamber, it should be permissible for me to intervene on the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on me, me on my noble friend Lord Naseby or whatever. At the beginning, whoever is on the Woolsack reads the rubric about all noble Lords being treated equally, but there is a time to depart from that. It is entirely right and proper for noble Lords to speak on the screen but, if they are there and not here, they cannot expect to enjoy all the privileges and preferences that those of us who take the risk to come here ought to have. I urge those who arrange these things to consider that.

Outside Part 5, the subject of today’s debate is the most important part of the Bill. We had a magisterial introduction to the debate from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, wonderfully and amusingly backed up by somebody who led him so often, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern. I beg the Minister, in his reply, to reflect on what those two eminent lawyers said. One was a Conservative Lord Chancellor of many years, and he was backed up by others such as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, who was another signatory to the amendment. I think that all noble Lords who introduced this amendment gave, as one noble Lord described, a masterclass in how to do it.

Despite what my dear and good friend the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, the Government have demonstrated that they can listen to your Lordships’ House—not only on the Agriculture Bill a week ago, but today on the Order Paper. We have all had a letter, signed by my noble friends Lord True and Lord Callanan, thanking us for our contributions in Committee and saying that they have taken points on board. They have—not enough, but they have. If any point is to be taken on board it is that which we are debating in this first series of amendments. It is crucial, as several noble Lords have said, as the union is at stake.

We were not helped by a certain insensitive remark by an eminent personage a couple of days ago. As we have said before, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I were on opposite sides in the 1970s when we were debating devolution, but it has happened. It is a fact of life. Therefore, there has to be an arrangement between the constituent Parliaments of the United Kingdom. Every noble Lord who has spoken today, with the possible exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has expressed a fervent desire to keep the union. It is the most remarkable union in modern history, but it is at risk. It is at risk because the Prime Minister is perceived—and perceptions are so important in politics—to have a rather haughty attitude towards Scotland. It is at risk because the Government are perceived not to care sufficiently about the frameworks of the constituent Parliaments of the United Kingdom.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, laid this out with forensic and clinical precision. I beg my noble friend, in his reply, to reflect on what the noble and learned Lord said in introducing our proceedings. Notice that I am not calling them a “debate”. I beg and beseech my noble friends, Lord True and Lord Callanan, to show a degree of sensitivity, as they have on some other amendments. Sensitivity is not a political weakness; it is sign of political maturity and strength. Reflect and, as I hope, we may not have to vote this afternoon.

I hope the Minister promises to come back at Third Reading, having had conversations with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and my noble friend Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth. Remember that, for several years, he led the Conservative Party in the Welsh Assembly, as it then was. These are not political enemies and this is not a party-political issue. It is a constitutional issue of supreme importance to all parties. I ask the Minister, please, to take it away and have conversations with the noble and learned Lord, my noble and learned friend and other noble Lords, and to come back at Third Reading. If he cannot give that conciliatory, sensible and constructive answer, then I will have no hesitation in pressing the “Content” button on my machine.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Cormack

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords & Ping Pong (Hansard)
Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I express the Green group’s very strong disappointment about the decisions made earlier today in the other place. We sent them constructive amendments that aimed to protect those whom the Government themselves recognise as the most vulnerable people in society; to retain our close ties with the continent of Europe after we Brexit; to keep hard-won protections; and to recognise the established conventions of the power of the devolved institutions. We spent five days presenting powerful arguments for those amendments. I do not intend to rehearse any of them here. Rather, I present to the House three practical arguments for a way forward that the House might not currently be planning to take.

My first practical argument is about the past five days. We have all worked very hard. We have presented the arguments and argued the case. As the noble Baroness said, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has worked astonishingly hard and deserves the highest levels of credit. But we are potentially looking at the coming five years. I am not one who believes that we will suddenly see an outbreak of stability in Britain that means we will see five years of stable government—but it is possible that we will. So I ask your Lordships’ House to consider what it will be like if we spend five years working like we just have for the past five days and then get to the point again and again of not being listened to. Do we want simply to bow down and allow that to happen again and again?

My second practical argument is that we are not going against the Salisbury convention. Nothing here reflects what was in the election that was just held—the election in which 44% of people voted for a Tory Government and 56% of people did not.

My third practical suggestion is not to be what might be described as recalcitrant, but to pick one of these amendments to say to the Commons, “Please listen to the powerful arguments and think about the impact of your actions.” I am of course referring to the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, put forward. We could hold the line on that one amendment. I ask noble Lords to think about what the impact of that might be. We are talking about people whom the Government agree are the most vulnerable children on the planet.

As we have heard in the debates, we know that lots of those children have made their way to Britain through irregular, dangerous and sometimes deadly means. A couple of years ago, I went to a memorial service for a young man who died in the back of a lorry. He had the right to come to Britain, but felt that he could not exercise that right and died as a result. I ask noble Lords to think about the message that us bowing down on the Dubs amendment will send to children in Europe today. They need to know that there are people in Britain, in the Houses of Parliament, who are on their side. So I ask your Lordships to consider our way forward, and to consider standing up for those children.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, we should take an example from the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who replied with great graciousness this afternoon, and move forward, jettisoning wherever we can the words “Brexit”, “remain” and “leave”. Wherever we stood in the past, we are now moving forward. I am very glad that there has been no contesting of the will of the elected House, which represents the will of the people. Let us now try to have some unity and some real healing across both Houses.