Equality (Titles) Bill [HL]

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Friday 6th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trefgarne]

I have some doubts about the proposal being brought forward by my noble friend. I am anxious, of course, that the peerages and baronetcies of Ireland should all be treated fairly and equally if we possibly can, but the fact is, as my noble friend said, that these matters are of extraordinary complexity. We have already dealt with the problems being faced by my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury. My noble friend Lord Caithness described the problems being faced by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. What are we to do about this? At the very least, if we agree some of these amendments, we risk making the Bill a hybrid Bill. Noble Lords smile at that, but the fact is that a hybrid Bill is a very different animal from the one we are considering today. It needs Select Committees, learned counsel and all sorts of distinguished things that take a great deal of time and, no doubt, a great deal of money. My noble friend’s amendment takes us along that rather dangerous path, and I invite him to reconsider it.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, although I am no expert on the hereditary peerage, I entered into a correspondence with the Ministry of Justice—in fact with the Crown Office—on this matter. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, told the House at the end of Second Reading that my specific point about husbands—and, indeed, the whole Bill—is a matter for the royal prerogative. According to the Crown Office’s letter, hereditary peerages are a matter of property.

It therefore seems to me to be very simple. Under the European Convention on Human Rights, we may not discriminate on grounds of property. Article 14 says that there shall be no discrimination on, inter alia, grounds of status; it is absolutely straightforward. If hereditary titles are property, we simply cannot discriminate. Under own Equality Acts—we have not yet got to those amendments—we cannot attach conditions to women that we do not attach to men, and vice versa.

The whole Bill therefore boils down to the fact that where there is a title, which is property, there must be equality—no “ifs” or “buts”, no petitions, no waiting for this, no waiting for that. Where people have a title which attaches only to one sex and not to the other, it is against our equality law.

Our only hope of getting this legislation through the House of Commons is to have a straightforward, simple Bill that applies the principles, which we cannot avoid, of the European Convention on Human Rights and our own equality law. We should strip away all the carbuncles and just get down to what has to be done under our law.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, there is a problem with the noble Baroness’s proposition that a hereditary title is property. There is more than one respectable view on that, as I understand it, so it may or may not be property. Another way forward, of course, would be to seek some sort of derogation from the European Convention on Human Rights with regard to hereditary Peerages. The Spanish Government are faced with the same problem. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister has some information about how the Spanish Government are responding to this difficulty. They recently created a new hereditary marquis in Spain who turned out to be the coach of the football team. However, they then lost so he may be stripped of it after all.

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[Baroness Deech]

On a point of order: according to the Crown office—and it should know—it is written in Halsbury’s Laws of England, 5th edition, Volume 79, paragraph 808:

“A peerage is an incorporeal and impartible hereditament, inalienable …”

It is real property akin to land. Of course, even if the Royal Prerogative enters into this, I think it is a lawyer’s point that a parliament can change or nibble away at or remove parts of the Royal Prerogative, so I hope that will not stand in the way.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Baroness for that. I recognise her legal expertise in this area. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, that I have not entirely followed the Spanish Government’s debates, and I am sure he could also inform us on the Dutch, Belgian, Italian and Swedish debates on what happens on titles. I can recall a most wonderful evening in Rome, talking to Italian liberals—a nearly endangered species—hosted by a wonderful woman called La Contesssa Machiavelli. This was not at all the content I had in my mind at all. If we are going to make comparisons on titles, there are a lot more: I am not sure whether Andorra—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, some while ago, I was chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Little did I think that that post would have any bearing on today’s debate. Without going into the detail, there is no doubt that modern law, including the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of a couple of years ago, leads us to the situation that children, however they are conceived, enjoy the same rights as those conceived in the natural fashion. In fact, I think that the amendment goes further than is absolutely necessary—it may be a storm in a teacup—because if the child has the gametes of both parents, it is their child. However, the law says that a child born to a surrogate mother is actually the child of the surrogate mother. The law treats the baby as the child of the mother from whose body it emerged. This amendment would achieve something, but if we are ever going to get a general statement of principle from the Government or elsewhere, it will have to be along the lines that the use of in vitro fertilisation techniques, as in other walks of life, will make no difference to succession to titles.

[Lord Jopling]

The noble Baroness may recall that I was heavily involved in the 1990 Act following a constituency case, which I mentioned earlier. The law was changed so that in the case of a surrogacy the genetic mother could get an order from the High Court that she be deemed to be the full mother, not the surrogate mother. In this case, no doubt, the same procedure would have to be followed, as in the High Court ruling. At that stage, the genetic mother would be fully the mother.

Equality (Titles) Bill [HL]

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, there are two elements to this Bill. I am personally affected by only one but there is a common thread that joins the two parts and lies at the root of this very welcome Bill, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas—the equality of men and women. We in this House are very ready to impose equality obligations on others and must therefore be equally ready to accept them ourselves. The origin of this debate goes back further than the recent change that gives royal girls equality with royal boys in the succession. For a long time now there have been well founded concerns about primogeniture, title and inheritance of estates; and for more than 50 years the husbands of noble Baronesses, Ladies fortunate enough to be seated in this House, have received second-class treatment compared with the wives of noble Lords. What a contrast that makes with the egalitarian behaviour accorded in practice in this House.

All women in positions created by birth or elevation to a status should be treated as well as the royals and as well as their male peers. If titles matter—and they certainly do when linked to the inheritance of an estate—they must be inheritable by women. If they do not matter, if as no doubt some will say they are trivial and snobbish, then for the sake of equality the only answer would be the removal of the titles borne by the wives of knights and Peers. I rather think there would be something of an outcry if that were to be done, which proves my point.

In relation to primogeniture and estates, there is no reason to think that women are any less capable of managing estates than men, and noble Lords will forgive me for mentioning the alleged incompetence or spendthrift traits sometimes said to have been found in their male ancestors. The dilemma of “Downton Abbey” should be fiction only and not real life, for women’s livelihoods and the future of great estates may depend on inheritance. Moreover, equality in succession would have the welcome side effect of bringing some more women into hereditary Peer positions in this House. So the changes proposed in the Bill must be supported by the Government.

The other part of the Bill that is close to my heart is about an issue that I have addressed before—namely, that the husbands or partners of dames and noble Ladies do not have a courtesy title, while the wives of knights and noble Lords do. Dames and noble Ladies have earned their titles, not inherited them. Yet they receive worse treatment than the Ladies who are married to noble Lords. If a male Peer’s wife is always a Lady, and his divorced wife retains that title, should not the same courtesy be extended to the husband of a woman Peer? Husbands will have done as much, if not more, to support and partner their wives as the women married to noble Lords. When I brought this issue up in 2009 many noble Lords treated it as amusing, but there is a serious point. It is discrimination that a man may confer on his wife an honour that a wife may not confer on her husband or civil partner.

Thus all members of our Supreme Court are Lords with Lady wives, save the one female Supreme Court justice whose husband remains “Mr”. Thus we have the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Lord and Lady but Mr and Baroness or, in my case, Dr and Baroness. There are two possible theories behind this anomaly. One is that there is support of one spouse by another—as they used to say, behind every great man is a great woman—but surely what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Support works both ways. I guess that many is the husband of a noble Lady who has gone out of his way to help her do her work, support her and manage without her company, maybe even more so than the other way round, and they deserve equality of treatment.

The only other possible reason for retaining discrimination is that women, but not men, derive their position in life from their spouses. Indeed, many women have given up the title “Mrs”, preferring “Ms”, precisely because it is the married woman who is marked out by title as the dependant of her husband and not the other way round. Unfortunately, many elements of our family law treat wives as having a place in life wholly dependent on their husbands conferring that place on them, as though the women were piggybacking through life. In many respects, our unreformed family law suggests that a woman is not expected to make her own achievements in life but to rely on her husband or partner for status and financial support. That cannot remain the case. As Aretha Franklin sang:

“Sisters are doin’ it for themselves,

Standin’ on their own two feet ...

We got doctors, lawyers, politicians too”.

The truth is one of mutual support and so the titles must be equal. In these times of change, gender equality is a given, and it should not have taken 55 years for this to be recognised by and in this House. I urge the Government to take up this worthy Bill, which will do a great deal of good and no harm.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, I yield to no one in my horror at the use of chemical weapons; and at the deaths so far in the Syrian war of more than 100,000 innocent persons; and at the 1 million or so refugees displaced, whose situation in the desert with no basic facilities for their children, such as education, will reverberate across the region long after Assad has gone from the scene. Where, incidentally, did those chemical weapons come from? Can we cut off the supply? How fortunate it is that Syria’s nuclear reactor was knocked out a few years ago. It might otherwise have been used.

What, then, do we do? Punishment and reaction there has to be. That is easy enough to say, but what should it be? I have given up any hope of referral to the International Criminal Court; that cannot happen. In brief, it seems to me that the arguments against any military intervention outweigh the arguments, moral and political, for military intervention.

My first reason is that the consequences could be irreversible and incalculable: not least, more terrorism on our streets. This we have learnt from previous incursions into the Middle East—although I must say that fear should not shape our foreign policy.

The second reason is that the public are against it both in the US and the UK as shown by the opinion polls. We will have a repeat of the demonstrations that we had against the Iraq war and it is surprising that there have not already been more demonstrations on our streets of the revulsion felt against Syrian actions.

The third reason is that it is too late. As Kissinger said in relation to the Iran/Iraq war,

“It is too bad they both can't lose”.

There may have been an earlier time when the west could have intervened, but to do so now is to take sides without the real possibility of achieving anything. Regime change will not happen. Civilians will undoubtedly be caught up and there will be retaliation.

Fourthly, we cannot afford it. Thousands of UK Army personnel were made redundant very recently. Defence cuts have left us weak and we seem to have different priorities for spending. I heard recently that we had spent three times as much on welfare, rightly or wrongly, as on defence.

Fifthly, I have not heard what our strategy is. Do we have an exit plan? How long will the intervention last? When can it be said to have been successfully accomplished? What if Assad or whoever the culprit is has more stocks of chemical weapons and is able to import more? What will our reaction be if the slaughter spreads to neighbouring countries? Since Russia is involved, this possible exercise will not be like the one undertaken in, say, Kosovo. If the US and the UK did not finish what they started and Assad survived and continued, American credibility and our own would be damaged and Iran, for example, will see that the West is impotent in relation to its collection of nuclear material. In the mean time, we are taking our eyes off the Egyptian situation, Iran and Iraq.

The struggle in Syria will not be ended by air strikes or even the delivery of arms to acceptable rebels. There will be a showdown with Russia and reverberation across the Middle East and at home. We have never taken the moral action that maybe we should have in relation to, say, the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the protection of North Koreans, with as many horrors, because of the strength of Russia and China and their presence on the United Nations Security Council. Our morality is selective.

Is intervention better than non-intervention? I am afraid not. Would intervention prevent a repeat? I fear not. Is there a less bloody act of retribution? I cannot think of one. I am disappointed at the failure of action of the United Nations due to its structure and indeed the failure of the European Union in this foreign policy area. There has been a low-key call from Europe for a diplomatic push. I would have expected a stronger voice of leadership on this issue. If there is a failure of our international organisations, we will have a resurgence of the strength of individual nation states and religious sectarianism and violence. That is because we do not have the strong international organisations that we need at this moment.

Order of the Companions of Honour

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is a little wide of the mark. It is appropriate to pull the subject back towards the Question by saying that the Order of the Bath has a particularly strong military connection, as the noble Lord well knows. Every time I give a tour of the Abbey, which I do from time to time as a former chorister, I remark that one sees the military banners up in Henry VII’s chapel.

[Baroness Deech]

What proportion of the Companions of Honour are women? Is the noble Lord satisfied that the highest honours which can be awarded, including the Order of Merit, satisfactorily represent the contribution of women to the achievements of this country?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is an extremely good question. We are very conscious of the imbalance in gender terms of almost all the orders and honours which are awarded. Only four of the 41 members of the Order of the Companions of Honour are women. However, nearly half the honours awarded in the latest New Year Honours List—47%—were awarded to women, although the majority of those were at what one has to call the lower levels of honours, not the higher. That, of course, partly reflects the continuing imbalance in society and the economy. Since John Major’s changes in 1993, it is open to all British citizens to nominate people for honours. There were 3,000 nominations last year. I encourage everyone to think very actively who else, particularly among distinguished women, might be nominated for orders.

Israel and Palestine

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, on all sides of the House noble Lords are united in willing peace in the world, whether it be in Israel, Palestine, Syria, Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, and also Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran—the list is only too long. Indeed, in the previous parliamentary Session there were no fewer than 706 Questions on Israel and Palestine.

What contribution can and is being made by NGOs and the civil population? Are there instances when NGOs fan the flames rather than promote peace? Peace will come when Palestinian refugees are treated like other refugees in the world. Why are they kept in the state they are in, unlike the millions displaced at the end of World War Two, for example, from Pakistan, Cyprus, India, Germany and Jews from Arab countries? The NGO that militates against peace is the UN Relief and Works Agency—UNRWA. To an outsider, UNRWA seems a humanitarian group helping Palestinian refugees. In reality, it undermines the chances of Arab-Israeli peace and holds Palestinians back from rebuilding their lives. It was set up to take care of the Arabs of the British Mandate. It began with some 700,000 charges and now has more than 5 million. It perpetuates their refugee status, unlike the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that takes care of 50 million refugees with half the budget of UNRWA.

The issue is that UNRWA counts as refugees not only those displaced in 1946-8 but their descendants down to the fourth generation, including many who have never—and whose ancestors never—set foot in Israel and who are not in need. There are actually only 30,000 refugees properly defined under the UN definition of a refugee. The UN definition specifically excludes any person who has acquired a new nationality. UNRWA is the only refugee organisation in the world that considers citizens of another state to be refugees, and includes all descendants of original male refugees. On that basis, there will be a lot of refugees sitting in this House.

However, UNRWA does not push for citizenship in the host countries of others. Its budget is $1.23 billion over two years—98% of which comes from Europe, the US and Canada, while the oil states give only 2%. It has become an industry in itself, with 29,000 employees, overwhelmingly Palestinians, while the UNHCR has a mere 7,600 employees. There is one worker for every 157 Palestinian refugees. It needs reform. By limiting its largesse to those in need it should ensure that it is not partisan and that the children in its schools get a balanced and discrimination-free education and are not taught to hate Israelis and to glorify terrorism and suicide bombings. It should accept, and teach children to accept, the right of self-determination for all people, Israelis as well as Palestinians. In fact, UNRWA’s functions would be better transferred to other UN agencies and to the Palestinian Authority and it would be better if it were dissolved.

I do not have time to mention the noble NGOs other noble Lords have described, but I want to draw attention to the magnificent collaboration going on in medical research, in particular in Ben-Gurion University in Israel where researchers collaborate with Arabs on identifying a defective gene that causes a fatal calcium deficiency in Arab children. Professor Margalith of that university won the Tyler Prize for work on malaria and collaborated with Palestinian and Jordanian scientists to eradicate mosquitoes.

The Government should be spending their cash—and I hope the Minister will answer—on NGOs that work for coexistence, not those that are partisan. What can civil society in Britain contribute? Unfortunately, in the view of some, anti-Semitic language has entered the mainstream of political discourse here. You could argue that Israel behaves in the way she does in part because the lessons learnt from the Holocaust were that she can never rely on the armed strength or support of others. Trying to play down the goal and intention of the Holocaust, as we saw recently, or throwing around the word “apartheid” simply reminds Jews in Israel, and maybe elsewhere, how fragile is the barrier against their destruction in every generation. Support for Israel by churches and politicians here would do more than anything else to encourage Israel to take the brave steps it needs to take—steps that it thinks will endanger its existence.

Terezin Declaration: Holocaust Era Assets

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Deech]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to ensure that fellow signatories to the Terezin Declaration on Holocaust Era Assets fulfil the obligations of the Declaration in relation to the restitution of wrongfully seized property.

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, I start with a quote from Bazyler:

“Holocaust restitution is not about money. It is about victims. It is about individuals who have waited for over 60 years for something. Of course, it is not about perfect justice, but it is about waiting for some recognition to validate the misdeeds that have been perpetrated. . . Holocaust restitution is not only about the victims. It is also about those who victimized. It is about satisfying the need for a moral accounting regarding the horrific events of the second world war and some of the communist depradations thereafter”.

The trauma of human loss was so great that no discussion of material loss occurred for decades after the war. Only the Germans made reparations for about 50 years from 1945, to their credit. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communist regimes, not only did walls fall, but doors were opened to memories, to archives, to litigation and legislation, to honest property titles supported by law, to negotiation and to the facing up to the unresolved issues of the past. There is unfinished business, and sadly those most affected, the survivors, are now in their 90s, and for decades have been frustrated in their relatively modest aims. I feel a personal responsibility for them and for those for whom it is too late, and I declare an interest as a descendant of those from whom property was taken, although I am uncertain about title and the possibilities of claim because I have no way to ascertain ownership and sale.

There has been a series of conferences on restitution, culminating in the conference that resulted in the Terezin declaration, the 2009 Prague conference on holocaust era assets. Adopted by 47 countries, including the UK, the declaration called for participating states to meet the social and medical needs of the half a million survivors, of whom half are on the poverty line; it called for the restitution of wrongful property seizures, forced sales and sales under duress in the Nazi period; it called for the identification and restitution of cultural property seized by the Nazis; and it called for open access to archival material, the preservation of memorials and for measures to combat anti-Semitism.

In 2010, there was a follow-up conference, which produced guidelines relating to best practice in property restitution, the most intractable problem. Solution would remove the cloud that hangs over the title to many properties in eastern Europe. The guidelines apply to communal and personal property and state that the compensation process should be accessible, simple, expeditious, avoid residency and other onerous requirements, and be of low cost. States should open their archives to assist in the proof of title, which should not be too onerous, while respecting the occupancy rights of those who are current residents in good faith. Poland, which attended the Terezin conference, did not sign up to the guidelines.

The achievements in this field, even before Terezin, are considerable. There have been settlements of the issues relating to dormant bank accounts in Switzerland, and to unclaimed insurance benefits. There have been payments to former slave labourers, and there has been some restoration of communal religious property. The Czech Government have established the European Shoah Legacy Institute in Prague to supervise follow-up.

Some countries which had formerly neglected the topic have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, legislation for the return of or compensation for stolen property—they are Turkey, Latvia, Hungary, and Lithuania. The UK, to its great credit, enacted the Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Act 2009, and the significant contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Janner, in taking this forward must be recognised. The checking of the provenance of artworks which might have changed hands in the Nazi period is now routine. The UK has also appointed the first envoy for post-Holocaust issues, the distinguished diplomat Sir Andrew Burns. In addition, the Wiener Library in London hosts, from 2011, the International Tracing Service, a digital record of 17.5 million people of the Holocaust. All those involved are deeply grateful to the UK for this move.

The Government of Israel were previously reluctant to get involved, and many of the survivors there felt that to accept any tainted money, as they saw it, was immoral. But they have now set up a database of half a million pieces of stolen property called Project Heart. The list was compiled from European archives, and the plan is to move to legal and public action to stimulate the co-operation of countries that have not done the right thing so far.

However, problems remain. Too many states only allow claims for property taken in too narrow a time band, require current citizenship, or place impossible evidentiary burdens on claimants, when of course they must know that those who were killed or fled did not preserve title deeds. The pursuit of legal action inside a foreign country is prohibitively difficult, and the European Court of Human Rights too slow.

The worst offender, however, is Poland. It remains the only major country in the former Soviet bloc and now in Europe that has no law providing for restitution or compensation for private property stolen during the Holocaust. Poland was home to 3.3 million Jews before the war, of whom 90 per cent were destroyed, leaving behind their homes. On 13 occasions there has been Polish draft legislation, the most recent abandoned this year. Restitution had been made a condition of Polish entry to the EU, but was dropped at the last minute due to the country’s economic conditions. However, Poland is now one of the few European countries to have avoided the recession, and had a 4.3 per cent growth in GDP last year. This year Poland also abrogated the mechanism to facilitate the return of communal property seized by Nazi and communist decrees, before the work was finished.

We call on the UK Government to persuade Poland to participate in the 2012 conference on this topic, to disregard communist nationalisation of property seized by the Nazis, to assist in the creation and operation of a restitution mechanism, and to support the USA in its approaches to Poland.

The model restitution programme is that of Austria, which in 1938 forced Jewish property sales and forced Jews out of the professions. In 2001 Austria established a General Settlement Fund to resolve all remaining issues. The Austrian Government set up a three-person claims committee to receive claims, using relaxed standards of proof—for example, the 1938 property records, witness statements and birth certificates. The Austrians put $210 million into the fund, with extra for insurance claims. Claimants no longer had to take legal action at their own cost. The committee dealt with 20,000 claims relating to 240,000 individuals before closing its work. This model should be promoted by the UK Government for all outstanding eastern European issues. Archives need to be opened and an office has to help the elderly claimants with their research. I trust that this will be the UK’s programme when it attends the conference this year.

Sharansky said that the Holocaust was not only genocide but the greatest theft in history. Justice is in sight if the UK will use its good offices to ensure the implementation of the Terezin declaration.

Poland: Restitution of Property

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Baroness Deech]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will add to their priorities for the United Kingdom chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe the securing of restitution or compensation from the Government of Poland for British citizens whose property in Poland was seized by the Nazi and Communist regimes.

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare that I may have a possible interest.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government’s priorities for the UK chairmanship of the Council of Europe were announced by my right honourable friend the Minister for Europe on 26 October. Our main priority is for the reform of the Court of Human Rights. The Government have no plans to augment these. The Government take the issue of property restitution very seriously, as the noble Baroness will be well aware from her participation in conferences on this subject. We will continue to remind Poland of its stated intention to reinstate a restitution Bill, currently stalled, when its economic situation allows.

[Baroness Deech]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. Is he aware that Poland is the only post-Communist European nation without legislation to help the victims of Communist and Nazi property seizures, whereas other relatively poorer countries have such legislation? Is he aware that Poland is not engaging with the formal process that he mentioned and is unlikely to attend the conference on this next year, so will he take steps to help the claimants by, for example, pressing for a European representative on reparation and asking for a quid pro quo for the £2 million UK contribution to Poland which was recently made for the preservation of Auschwitz?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there are several complex issues in that supplementary question. Legislation has indeed been passed in all the other post-Communist countries although I am advised that its implementation has been patchy. Poland has suspended its legislation on the grounds that the €5 billion which it estimates would be the cost would take it above its current budgetary limit. We all understand that in current circumstances national Governments find these things difficult. I am very conscious that restitution in Poland is an unusually difficult issue after 80 years in which first Nazi and then Russian troops have rolled over Poland. There was confiscation and enormous destruction, then Communist confiscation, and a great deal of movement of boundaries and forced relocation of Poles, Germans and others.

Anti-Semitism

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, I never thought that in my lifetime in this country, to which my family has reason to be so grateful, I would have to say that anti-Semitism is on the rise and that there is a need to speak out. I welcome the Government’s actions in response to the inquiry, in particular the excellent appointment of Sir Andrew Burns as the envoy for post-Holocaust issues. The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, has been a brave exponent of the truth and a defender of minorities, and I thank him.

The Government have not been able to influence the way in which anti-Semitism is taking hold in higher education and the way in which anti-Zionist rhetoric is being used to cloak anti-Semitism. The old language of prejudice is once again manifested, for example, in West Dunbartonshire Council banning books from Israel.

One should be rational about these issues but I cannot help but be passionate about what I see around me—in particular the way in which the minds of young people are being infected. The National Union of Students recently issued an interim report on hate crime. It surveyed 9,000 students and reported that 31 per cent of Jewish students had experienced a hate incident—more than any other religious group.

The unhappy plight of many Jewish students was first exposed nationally by the report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group in 2006, with accounts of harassment and attacks, often in the name of Israel. There was a dramatic rise in national anti-Semitic incidents to nearly 1,000 a year in the period of the Gaza operation. Students paid the price too. Universities are in denial about extremism and radicalisation and have not addressed the very real problems of anti-Semitism that exists on campus. Only yesterday the Government issued their Prevent strategy, highlighting the dangers of extremism in universities.

There is a considerable overlap there with the topic of tonight’s debate because where there is Muslim extremism there is usually extreme dislike of Jews. Our priority task should be to save young minds from being indoctrinated with this ancient hatred, whether it is by the preaching of inferiority at some faith schools for the young or the doctrine of exclusivity at universities. I am pleased to be a trustee of the Coexistence Trust, headed by the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, which is doing pioneering work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Deech]

Since 1986, universities have been required to issue a code of practice on freedom of speech within the law, enabling control of speakers where a breach of the law is likely. Universities are subject to the law of the land, including the Equality Act and the Protection from Harassment Act, which should be sufficient to protect students. But most universities have failed to operate their codes, and they emphasise freedom of speech at the expense of ignoring its limits.

There is no legal freedom of speech that involves hatred of minorities, racial and religious abuse. There are egregious examples of universities failing to protect Jewish students. Ironically, one of them was the LSE, which was content to make financially rewarding links with Libya. It hosted a speaker late last year called Abdel Bari Atwan, who was already on record as having glorified the killing of Israelis and rejoicing over the assassination of Jewish students. The university could have used the code to ban this, having been forewarned, but did not, with sad consequences. Given the increasing dependence of universities on raising funds, one hopes not to find links between those universities that have received funds from extremist regimes and their unwillingness to control such speakers.

Students may feel reluctant to report anti-Semitic incidents to their lecturers, whose union, the University and College Union, has officially decided that anti-Semitism cannot occur in the context of Israel-related activity and is obsessed with Israel. The European working definition of anti-Semitism states that the singling out of the state of Israel for criticism not levelled at other countries, the denial of Jewish self-determination and comparison with Nazi policies may be anti-Semitic. In its recent motion 70, the UCU resolved not to use this understanding of anti-Semitism in its own internal complaints procedures, so that it can cry Israel in order to stop Jews talking about the racism that they have experienced. Many Jewish members have resigned from the UCU, but the union has rejected a motion to investigate that as well. In its actions, the UCU is denying the Macpherson definition of racism, reached in the wake of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, as,

“any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim”.

UCU's actions, including this latest motion, show it to be an organisation which is institutionally racist against Jews.

This is the union that has spent years trying to establish an illegal boycott of Israeli academia. This is the union that hosted a South African called Bongani Masuku as a speaker, despite the fact that the South African Human Rights Commission had found him guilty of hate speech against Jews. This is the union that would now deny Jews the ability to complain about racism by denying their perceptions of victimhood if the topic of Israel is in the frame.

Universities should now consider breaking off recognition of UCU. Universities have a statutory duty to promote good race relations on campus and a public sector duty of equality. The Government should insist that they carry out their legal responsibilities and apply their codes of practice on freedom of speech; and I call on the Equality and Human Rights Commission to investigate the UCU.