Integration and Community Cohesion

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, many congratulations to my noble friend for introducing this debate—I think not for the first time, but it matters all the more. How good it is that those of us in this place continue to revisit a subject of such great importance. I also congratulate and give an enormously warm welcome to the maiden speakers: both are magnificent people. I am delighted that they have been trained and brainwashed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, who is always somebody to be followed, whatever your political party or persuasion.

My concern is that we might lose some of the great progress that we have achieved in this country. Life was pretty bad in the 1960s and 1970s. Many noble Lords will know that I chaired the juvenile court in Lambeth. My family and I have always been outreachers who try to welcome people. My in-laws had Hungarian refugees; we had Ugandan Asians, and now we have a Ukrainian and a Latvian. But it is relatively easy for us, because we do not live on the margins of society. I am not pretending that those on the margins of society, where jobs and money are poor, can be so generous spirited.

When we look at the improvement in the number of women on boards, and the number of diverse members from different communities on boards, we see that we have done well in this country. We need to beware the wrecking ball—I am sorry—of President Trump. When the crash took place between the airliner and the helicopter, saying that it was excessive DE&I training that had resulted in the Federal Aviation Authority reducing the quality of the people they admitted was, frankly, deplorable. Trump said:

“The FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities”.


It is funny, but it is appalling. We in this country must not dismiss all the DE&I approaches that we have developed.

Only today, financial regulators are saying that they are going to reduce the amount of diversity reporting. Well, maybe it has gone too far. We can talk about ethnicity, but we are not allowed to talk about religion. I do not agree with that and I hope the Minister might comment on that. We are hardly allowed to talk about age any more, but we are allowed to talk about orientation; it is incredibly politically correct. However, we must not lose what we have gained.

We need to have a reality check. I commend the Policy Exchange report, A Portrait of Modern Britain, with the foreword by Sir Trevor Phillips. It may be that the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, will talk about this. It is extraordinarily gratifying. Three out of four people, 72%, believe that children should be taught to be proud of British history, proud of the wars and the abolition of slavery and much else besides. Most ethnic minorities think that social class is a much greater problem in terms of employment and opportunity than ethnicity. I worry that we will create divisions by reinforcing historical prejudices, which actually we should be proud that we in this country have reduced. This is not to say that they will not come back, but we have made great progress. We can take pride in inclusive patriotism, as Sir Trevor Phillips and others talk about.

I want to move on to universities, though, and young people. I echo the words of the right reverend Prelate about the importance of religious education. Religion can be the elephant in the room: people are uncomfortable talking about it. If you talk to people in universities at the moment, they are really alarmed by what has happened, in terms of it simply becoming a taboo subject, a no-go area. I was delighted to see a message from both our colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Hague, at Oxford University, and Larry Kramer, the really splendid director of the London School of Economics, saying they will not tolerate no-go zones, that there must be free speech and open debate, and that the way to solve these issues is not by banning debate.

I warmly commend the work of James Walters, the director of the LSE Faith Centre. Several of us were with him this week at a breakfast when he talked about the efforts he is making to bring people together from different religions: Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Christian, because at universities, people come from all around the world. Some 80% of LSE students are international, and they bring with them their different faith perspectives. LSE has always been extraordinarily secular. I was there as a governor for 20 years. My mother-in-law was there, my grandmother lectured there, and my great-grandfather was an incorporating signatory. It was a secular place, and now they are bringing in the importance of faith.

Let us go younger. I welcome the English Speaking Union, founded in 1918 after the horrors of the First World War. We use the rather ugly word “oracy”. What the English Speaking Union is really working at is encouraging people to be articulate, to debate, to listen carefully but then provide critical analysis. They have got a great new programme of dialogue and debate rather than dispute and disagreement, and I commend their work warmly.

I must get to my favourite subject, which is working from home—a disaster. I want the whole House to from hear Sir Simon Wessely, the regius professor of psychiatry at King’s College London. Of course when you are at home you are miserable, lonely, your prejudices are reinforced, you do not meet people, there is no creativity and there is no diversity. It really is an extraordinarily serious situation. We know that children need to go to school, but we adults like going to work. Remember how wretched we all were when the House of Lords was not meeting. So, please realise that working from home is going to reinforce stereotypes, prejudices and unhappiness. I commend my noble friend once more and the many speakers—I have a lot more to say.