Extreme Poverty and Human Rights: United Nations Report

Baroness Boothroyd Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, we continue to listen and to learn. The Government continue to spend more than £95 billion a year on benefits for people of working age. I say again, as I have said so many times before, that when the party opposite were in government, 20% of all working-age households in the United Kingdom—including Wales—were entirely workless. We have brought that figure down to 13.9% and we want to bring it down much further, but there are many different ways in which we are making a difference, listening and investing more money in real terms into the system to support and encourage people into the world of work and support those who cannot work.

[Baroness Boothroyd (CB)]

The right reverend Prelate asked a direct and interesting question. Will the Minister answer it?

[Baroness Buscombe]

I have answered it. We have listened; we have taken the questions and statements of the rapporteur very seriously. We do not accept, in the words of people at the United Nations last week, the political scaremongering, the hyperbole, the inflammatory and scaremongering approach to the whole subject. It is not helpful from someone who was not keen to engage with our officials.

Leveson Inquiry

Baroness Boothroyd Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boothroyd]

My Lords, this is our first debate on an issue of constitutional importance since your Lordships’ House was spared the Government’s threat to our existence last year. At risk now, of course, is the future of a free and responsible press. I am grateful—as I know are many of your Lordships—to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for agreeing to a full day's debate. It is a farewell gift that we appreciate from the former Leader of this House after his many years of distinguished service.

Whatever we think about the press, the Leveson report reminds us of a truth that good journalists never forget and bad ones have never learnt. It is that newspapers and the media are not a law unto themselves. They are not a separate estate of the realm with a licence to flout the rights of individuals and ride roughshod over basic standards of common decency. I believe that a free press is part of the fabric of our democracy. It is woven into the right to free speech. I do not want a tame press; I do not want a licensed press or press that can be pressured into dropping a legitimate story because it embarrasses people in high places. That does not mean that the rights of the media are unfettered. But rights must be exercised responsibly, and that requires judgment and experience—qualities unfortunately sometimes ignored in the chase for scoops and sensation.

To those who say that the press cannot be trusted to put its house in order, I say: it now has no choice. If that sounds like a threat to legislate, it is, and the press would be very foolish to ignore it. We will not need another inquiry if there are more scandals on the scale we have witnessed. Legislation will be inevitable. To those in the media who think that this will blow over, I say: think again. The victims of press malpractices have found their voice and rightly demand action, as we do. The media’s dirty tricks departments are no longer in the last chance saloon. They have been caught rolling in the gutter and must be cleared out, along with their methods.

Sadly, other institutions in our country that affect our lives far more than newspapers are in a similar position. I refer to banks, hospitals, care homes, the police and to Parliament itself—all have been in the firing line. Royal charters are no guarantee of invincibility, as the BBC knows to its cost. Regulatory authorities abound but the scandals in the City of London and the NHS evaded them. I doubt whether press legislation would fare any better. Wrongly used, it might even make matters worse.

I believe that we need a cultural revolution in the press and in the country. There is too much cynicism, too much dodging the line. Journalists must refuse to do what they know to be wrong without fear of the sack. Editors and chief executives in other businesses must monitor more closely the actions of those under them. Newspaper owners, broadcasting bosses and directors of our great companies must never again claim that they did not know what was going on, because it won’t wash any more.

Reforming the way in which newspapers are run is not enough. The media have darker alleyways where muggers savage people’s reputations without a shred of reliable evidence, as Lord McAlpine has shown. Mistaken judgments must be corrected before they get into print, on the air or on the web. There must be clear lines of editorial responsibility. Serious offences must be heavily punished, if necessary, by exemplary fines. Journalists must be better trained at a grass-roots level. The decline of local newspapers and the provincial press is a tragedy in this respect.

I understand that some of Leveson’s proposals have been accepted by editors but we have had broken promises before. I am not inclined to the view that the best way forward is through legislation but I am firm in the belief that swift, positive action by the press and the wider media is certainly needed to avoid it.

Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Boothroyd Excerpts

Tuesday 14th February 2012 Lords Chamber

The other point I would like to make briefly is that the idea that this is decided by the Commons as though it was some kind of Athenian assembly is absurd. It is obviously decided by the majority, which is controlled by the Government. Compared with 1911, and with everything that has happened since 1911, I think the Government are trying to impose a view of a single-Chamber Government upon the country, which would in many ways make the existence of this noble House pointless, and I think they are politically and historically mistaken.

[Baroness Boothroyd]

My Lords, it is obvious that the Leader of the House recognises the disquiet in many parts of this House about recent operations of the financial privilege. I welcome that, and the explanation he has given today.

I certainly do not challenge the primacy of the elected Chamber and its control over financial policy. Neither do I intend the role of this House to be neglected as the revising Chamber with special responsibilities for the scrutiny of the legislation that comes to us.

The constitution of our country operates by convention. The Leader of the House talked about relationships on this special day, but I remind him that this is a bicameral Parliament; it operates by negotiation, by the ways and means of getting things done. Where were the usual channels during all this? The usual channels assist good relations not only between political parties but between the two Houses. By goodwill and by negotiation, they might have arrived at some compromise on the amendments to this Bill rather than have the Government behave in what I regard as the very heavy-handed manner that we witnessed the other week.

In an effort to resolve this matter, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, made the point that, in future, to avoid wasting scarce legislative time on the Floor of this House, amendments to which the Government might object should be flagged up in advance. I have huge respect for the noble and learned Lord; we worked in tandem for many years. However, I fear that predicting the future in that way would be nearly impossible and even if it were not so, would it not mean asking Lords authorities to interpret Commons privilege, or asking Commons officials to advise your Lordships? That does not seem a very practical way forward.

My concern is about the near future, about the Bills that will come before this House in the remainder of this Session and in the next Session. I ask the Leader of the House to state in his response, unequivocally, that the Government have no intention of threatening the role of this House in its responsibilities of scrutiny and revision by the increased use of financial privilege. Further, I ask him to speak frankly with some of his colleagues in the other House about how the relationship between the two Houses is currently practised and how it might be improved upon. We have the need to know what the future holds for this House for the remainder of this Session and the Bills that we are dealing with, and for the coming Session.

[Lord Fowler]

My Lords, perhaps I might make a brief intervention as a former Secretary of State for Social Security.

This is not the first time that a Government have been defeated in the Lords on a social security Bill. My 1986 Social Security Bill was defeated three times. The question arose what to do about it, so I went to see the late Lord Whitelaw and he in very typical form said, “We’ll put two of them back but you’ll have to give them the third”.

I actually thought that the fact that the present Government were riding roughshod showed a weakness in their position, but then I went back to the debate itself and saw that my noble friend Lady Trumpington—who I do not think is here, which is probably just as well because she might make some sort of gesture at me—