Dasgupta Review

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Thursday 7th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am very pleased to hear the Minister referring to—

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My noble friend the Minister has talked about food security—as has Defra. Do she and the department recognise that we grow only 50% of the food that we eat? In those circumstances, and given the topsy-turvy world in which we live, should the policy not now be called “food insecurity” rather than food security?

Elections Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid that I am going to strike a discordant note because I invite my noble friend to reject these amendments, and certainly Amendments 137 and 138. I follow what the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said about Amendment 143. It is an interesting idea but highly complex and probably not practical.

The Committee will recognise that I am committed to a vibrant civil society. I have spoken about it, I have moved amendments about it, and I think that it is a very important part of our democratic system, because it maximises people’s ability to participate, collectively or individually.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who is not in his place, referred to lowering the voting age in order to increase citizenship education, which seemed to be the wrong way around; citizenship education would lead to improved understanding of what voting is all about. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. That was a central theme of our cross-party review on citizenship for civic engagement. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, as a member of the Liaison Committee, for having backed the idea of a follow-up, since when we have gone sideways, if not backwards. I am pleased to be able to say to him and the noble Baroness that the revised report will be published on Monday and out in the wider world on Tuesday, to probably no effect whatever but at least we will have some benchmarks.

During the committee, we had two issues from which the chairman has scars. The first was about British values. What were they, or were there any? The second was the voting age.

I shall quote a couple of sentences from our report, because they summarise some of the issues that lie behind these two amendments and which mean that I personally do not support them. Paragraph 319 of the report states:

“However, the issue has divided our witnesses. There is no consensus on whether the age should be lowered to 16 or whether it should remain at 18. Proponents of the change listed being able to marry and become a member of the armed forces as a reason for considering that 16 year olds are sufficiently responsible to vote. However this raises questions of whether it is right for people to be trusted as responsible enough to vote whilst not being responsible enough to ‘buy a beer or cigarettes or even drive to their friends or buy a firework’”.


That was what Professor Jon Tonge, professor of politics at the University of Liverpool, said in evidence to us. He and Dr Mycock have been doing some more research on this whole area. As the noble Baroness said, there was obviously a fierce discussion about the pressure for democratic backing for the change. Professor Tonge told our committee that he thought young people were almost evenly divided, though he said that some of that data was quite old.

The noble Baroness referred to the Make Your Mark campaign, but I am not sure she gave the full picture of what we were told. To quote from paragraph 321,

“the Make Your Mark campaign coordinated by the UK Youth Parliament included the votes of over 950,000 young people”,

which the noble Baroness referred to,

“who had voted to make votes at 16 one of their core campaigns.”

However, an analysis of the votes done by our staff showed that

“it received 101,041 votes”—

only one in nine—

“and came 5th out of 10 topics. This suggests that young people care more about other topics than about votes at 16.”

Interestingly, the topic that received the most votes was “A curriculum to prepare us for life”, which in turn suggests support for a radical overhaul of the whole area of citizenship education and involvement. As Professor Tonge said:

“You would not let people go out on the road and drive a car without giving them some lessons first, yet we expect them—particularly if we lower the voting age to 16—to go out and vote without giving them any training in what our political systems are about. It seems perverse.”


To summarise, my view is that unless the case for making a fundamental change is overwhelmingly made, we should not make the change. I do not think that case has been overwhelmingly made. It certainly was not made before our committee and that is why I hope my noble friend will reject these amendments.

I shall dare to trespass on the Committee’s time for a further moment, ending with not a discordant but a sour note. In the debate on voter ID in the last meeting of the Committee, my noble friend on the Front Bench took a lot of heavy punishment about how it was being introduced to try to benefit the Conservative Party. He rejected that, rightly in my view. Would I be wrong to say that there might be some advantages for other parties in the House in young people voting and that that may be why it is being so enthusiastically supported?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Would the noble Lord agree that young people look at what their interests are? Maybe if the Conservative Party did more to represent the interests of young people, more of them would vote for it.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I am not saying anything about that. I am just saying that I do not think the case has been made for the change. Where we go from there is another matter.

Elections Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. I agree with everything she said.

I offer Green support for Clause 1 not standing part. We would have attached a signature to the opposition to the clause had there been space. I am well aware that we have already had a very long debate, so I will make three key points that have not quite been made elsewhere, and echo the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in introducing the group, on the power of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, last week. Anyone who wants to see it will find it on my Twitter account, handily captioned and shared. I urge people to share it because it deserves a wide audience.

The first of my three points builds on the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who suggested that people were saying there might be a sinister plot with the Republicans. There does not have to be a sinister plot for people to copy what they see happen in other parts of the world. Indeed, the inspiration for voter ID, which I believe is voter suppression, comes from the other side of the pond. I quote the American Civil Liberties Union, because if that is where the inspiration comes from it is instructive to see the context:

“Voting should be as easy and accessible as possible … But … more than 400 anti-voter bills have been introduced in 48 states … The result is a severely compromised democracy that doesn’t reflect the will of the people. Our democracy works best when all eligible voters can participate and have their voices heard.”


That is a message from America, but it is one we should also listen to here.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

Does the noble Baroness not understand that voting systems in the US are a state matter? The problem is not what she says it is; it is that every state has a different methodology. That is what leads to confusion and difficulties, particularly in some states which adopt particularly regressive and repressive measures. The point she is making about photo ID is nothing to do with that.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I disagree with the noble Lord, in the sense that I am talking about the rhetoric, and the context and reason for this, whether it is happening on a state-by-state basis or nationally. What is behind it is in my second quote, from Max Feldman at the Brennan Center for Justice, who says that

“claims of widespread fraud are nothing more than old wine in new bottles. President Trump and his allies have long claimed, without evidence, that different aspects of our elections are infected with voter fraud. Before mail voting, they pushed similar false narratives about noncitizen voting, voter impersonation, and double voting”.

To pick up the noble Lord’s point about people’s concerns about the voting system, these days we see a great deal of sharing and cross-fertilisation of concerns on social media. Rhetoric spread by powerful, well-funded forces will have an impact on people’s views, as we have seen in other contexts.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, suggested that people were coming perilously close to suggesting that the purpose behind voter ID was voter suppression. I am not going to come “perilously close” to it; I believe that that is the case.

The second point I want to make concerns history. I do not believe that we are guaranteed to gradually progress positively into the future, but look at the trends. In 1832 and 1867, the Great Reform Acts spread the right to vote among men. In 1918 and 1928, women got the right to vote. In 1969, and implemented in 1970, the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18. That is all heading in the direction of greater engagement. In Oral Questions earlier we saw some fairly severe attacks on democracy and devolution in the UK, but Scotland and Wales have gone further down this road, with votes at 16. Democracy has been on a long-term trend of engaging more people. We have to ask why we are suddenly heading in the opposite direction with voter ID.

My final point is a practical one. Most of this discussion has focused on the estimated 2 million people who do not have any ID. I do not think we have talked enough about the people who do not have ID on them at the point where they go to vote. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, pointed out, none of the pilots was in a large urban area.

I was in a large urban area—Sheffield—telling on a polling station in one of the years when the pilots were being conducted. I saw a large number of people who had seen the reports and thought that they had to have ID.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Monday 28th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

In following my noble friend Lady Stroud, I shall plough a lonely and, I fear, unpopular furrow by suggesting to the Minister that we ought to reject this amendment. I greatly admire my noble friend Lady Stroud for her commitment and the work that she has done in these areas, but I still think that her amendment should be rejected. As my noble friend Lady Stowell pointed out, of course these are asylum seekers whose cases have not been determined. Some of them will be asylum seekers, and some of them will not find their case, and they will become in effect economic migrants. I absolutely accept that the time that it is taking to determine the cases is very long and debilitating to all parties concerned, but I am concerned because, if we allow people to use the asylum route as a means to move forward faster, it is at the expense of those who wish to come here as economic migrants from the beginning.

Secondly, I do not accept the argument that forum shopping—looking around for the best place to make your future—is not a factor. Of course, it is not in every case, but it is a factor. I will not weary the House at 10.20 pm with the list of things, which run from the diasporas to the respect for individuals, the chance to learn English, flexible labour markets, and so on, but they are undoubtedly factors that encourage people to come here.

Nearly every case that I have heard being made now is based on the economy, and the economic prism is undoubtedly an important one, but there are prisms other than that. The impact of each one of us—whether we have just arrived here, seek to come here or have been here for some time—is not just about our economic performance. We make demands on our society of a house, a school, a hospital and a place for our children to play. We have an impact on the green belt, the availability of open space and our future food and water security in an increasingly uncertain world. We expect, overall, that between now and 2040 there will be another 4 million people in this country.

Members of your Lordships’ House have talked about public opinion and where it stands on the issue, but I can tell your Lordships that 71% of people believe that this country is already too crowded and that the Government do not have any plans to deal with the challenges that that causes. If you reset that polling so that it just asks the minority communities, 61% are still equally concerned about the prospects that lie ahead not for us in this House but for our children and grandchildren, if we do not take steps, wherever we reasonably can, to ensure that the growth of population in this country is limited as far as possible. With the best will in the world—I accept the good intentions of my noble friend—her amendment does not tick that box. It encourages the growth of population; it does not discourage it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I point out to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that the whole point of the amendment is to ensure that people who may be making demands on houses, schools and hospitals can also build those houses, staff those schools and provide care in those hospitals. Briefly, I want to add “Green” to the list of of parties mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, that support the right to work for asylum seekers. Indeed, I can date that back to at least 2006, when I joined the Green Party. Pretty well the first event I went to was one hearing from refugee women who expressed their desire for the right to work and were very pleased that that was Green Party policy.

I am well aware that the Minister is far more likely to listen to voices behind her—and I urge her to do so—then she is to me, but I point out that the six-month restriction on the right to work was brought in by the Labour Party in 2002 and strengthened in 2005, so the Government would be reversing a Labour policy.

Finally, as I often seek to do in your Lordships’ House, I reflect the voices of the people most affected, who are calling, as the hashtag goes, to “Lift the Ban”. A man called Mahmoud was recorded by Asylum Matters. He said: “It would make our lives meaningful and useful at the same time if we could work.” Please listen to that voice.