Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

That is true—absolutely, not at all.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Indeed, so that is true. For once noble Lords are agreeing with me: this House is not representative of the feelings of the British public. Therefore, the Joint Committees of Parliament, which include many from this House, who are hostile to what the British public voted to do in the past—

Elections Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak on this part but I feel very queasy about the way a number of noble Lords are using the situation in Ukraine to have a go at this part of the Bill. People are indeed dying for democracy, but they are not dying to defend an Electoral Commission—an unelected quango in the UK. I think it is rather unbecoming to use that.

The Electoral Commission is relatively new to the UK’s democratic life and democracy thrived when it did not exist. At the very least, we should stop aggrandising the Electoral Commission as though the electorate depend on it. There are problems with it and there are problems with the way the Government are trying to deal with it. I am not necessarily defending the Government’s way of solving the problem of the Electoral Commission—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

Will the noble Baroness give way?

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Go on, defend it. The noble Baroness used to be in the Communist Party.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Very good, well done everyone, carry on.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

The noble Baroness said that we had a functioning electoral system before we had the Electoral Commission. The commission was a move to improve it, just as votes for women was a very great step forward. I am sure she would not want to go back to the time before that.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I appreciate that I am surrounded by Labour noble Lords who object to what I am saying. One of the great advantages of votes for women was that occasionally we get to say the odd thing that does not go with the grain.

I am raising the problem that the Electoral Commission is not necessarily all good. I want to say this about it. There was a great deal of dissatisfaction about the Electoral Commission’s lack of independence in its response to the 2016 referendum, which I referred to in my Second Reading speech. Such were the concerns about the bias of the Electoral Commission in that period that it had to apologise for the bias of many of its members. This is not me saying it—I am quoting the Electoral Commission, which we are all told we have to listen to.

The bias led to many voters feeling that the Electoral Commission was not fit for purpose and was in fact biased against their wishes as an electorate in that referendum. Many of those people were not Tory cronies but Labour voters—Labour voters who may no longer be Labour voters because they became disillusioned by the fact that the Labour Party told them they had got it wrong, they were duped and they needed to think again. While the Labour Benches are very keen on democracy, they were less keen on the democratic decisions of many of their voters in 2016 and subsequently.

At the very least, therefore, it is important that we look at the role of the Electoral Commission critically and seriously. I do not think the way the Government have gone about reforming it will clarify or help things. I will make those points another time. But to say, as has just been said by a number of noble Lords, that we have a responsibility to take the Bill and thwart it, scupper it, throw it out and all the rest of it, seems to me rather to fly in the face of democracy. A little humility is maybe needed to remember that the plans for the Elections Bill were in the Conservative Party manifesto—which noble Lords will be delighted to know I did not vote for, before they all start.

Nevertheless, I clocked that they were there. We in this House are unelected legislators and need to take at least a smidgen of note of what the electorate might consider priorities. Not everything is a Conservative Party plot but one reason many people voted for the Conservative Party in 2019 was that they felt abandoned by the opposition parties.

Covid-19

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

They are all non-affiliated.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, there is a slight panic in the House about the non-affiliated. I am glad to hear a new emphasis that lockdown is not cost-free, but that devastating toll is present with these restrictions too. Can the Minister comment on whether there is an impact assessment on, for example, working from home guidance and effectively closing down city and town centres and the impact that this has on jobs and livelihoods for the people who work there? On the pressures on the NHS, is there more detailed evidence of how many people are actively being hospitalised by this new variant of Covid rather than being in hospital already and testing positive for it? That is not at all clear in the Statement but it makes a difference as to how frightened people might be of it.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will indeed consider voting for either the fatal or a regret amendment. Despite this, I want the Minister to note that many of us here understand that he and the Government are under huge pressures. I also appreciate that in a period where “gotcha” blame games are the way we go in politics, politicians can become terrified, defensive and reactive. They often will not admit mistakes and therefore cannot learn from them. They make every pronouncement black and white, delivered with a definitive certainty with no nuance and certainly no room for disagreement. One tactic is to avoid blame by attempting to hide behind the science, and the reliance on what passes for irrefutable evidence. As we all get bamboozled by data, graphs, charts, forecasts and infection rates, no mention is made of the wider principles undermining decision-making. When evidence substitutes for judgments, policies are ring-fenced off from accountability and it can create a fatalistic mood in society where people are told that there is no choice.

It was not ever thus, even in this Covid period. Remember that, at the start of all this, hundreds of thousands of people were mobilised as NHS volunteers, eager to help to take on Covid. Even if lots of them never received an email, they showed that there was a willingness to actively create a shield around the vulnerable and act in social solidarity. Contrast that with now, when people are at the end of their tether. The Government’s policies have demobilised people, demanded passivity and compliance. People are told, “Shut up and put up—we know best”, but is that true? Surely in an emergency more than ever, politicians could do with a hand. I urge Ministers to draw on the resources, intellect, intuition, common sense and intelligent criticisms of millions of people in order to move forward.

I want noble Lords to imagine, for a minute, what it feels like to be in Wales at the moment. The people have endured a lockdown, and their reward from Welsh Labour is a 6 pm curfew—more puritan prohibition than science—with utter indifference to the destruction of hospitality jobs. By the way, I give a shout-out to the 100 north Wales publicans who banned the First Minister from pubs for 18 months—hear, hear to them. This illustrates the infuriating way that citizens are treated: they are victims of arbitrary diktats from on high and never involved in any debate—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

This woman is mad—totally mad.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

You might disagree with me, my Lord—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

No, I just think you are mad.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

You think I am mad? That is a good start to a civilised debate. Anyway, all this is unnecessary and not the way we should move forward, because I think that the technocratic approach is bad for science and democracy. Science is in danger of being turned into a dogma set in a stone tablet; the very strength of the scientific method is challenging and testing hypotheses, and it is being corrupted by an adherence to “the science”.

Those scientists who raise concerns about the official narrative have their professional reputations traduced as fake experts and shills, have their interviews censored and dubbed misinformation—and are heckled as “mad”. Surely with a new virus, we need to hear all scientific views, not just those of SAGE. All scientists, pro and anti lockdown, should be prepared to have their work rigorously scrutinised and critiqued. None should be silenced, or important questions will not even be asked, let alone answered.

The technocratic approach is also bad for democracy because it narrows down the debate to solely assessing responses to Covid through quantifiable measures. I confess that we all get dragged into reducing the debate to its most narrow parameters. We have all wasted hours on the minutiae of the differences between tiers 2 and 3 and what they allow. That crude, utilitarian approach even means that we are all tempted to parade death figures to make our case: pro-lockdowners state Covid deaths while anti-lockdowners emphasise neglected cancer patients, heart disease victims and suicides.

This counting-the-bodies approach is available only if the Government allow us to think of health, longevity and safety as the only value in this debate, but it means that we miss the bigger picture. Yes, we can count the horrifying number of job losses due to lockdowns, not Covid, but there are more immeasurable aspects to this: unemployment, losing one’s savings and bankruptcy. It is not just about money; it robs people of dignity, agency and sense of worth. It demoralises people: they feel useless.

Yes, we can count the number of elderly and vulnerable lives allegedly protected by lockdowns, but how do you measure the cruelty of locking up so many people in, effectively, solitary confinement, deprived of love and stimulation? You can count the rising number of Covid cases, but it is not a sign of libertine recklessness that millions are bereft because they are denied conviviality, civil society and time with their mates in the pub, football and so on—it is called civil society; it is called society.

However, the greatest value sacrificed is our attack on freedom: it is not just the frightening number of new laws, micromanaging our lives, or the relentless attacks on freedom of association in churches, our own homes or on protests; it is worse than that. It is political leaders behaving like little emperors, throwing the public scraps of freedom for good behaviour, expecting them to be grateful and then grasping them back for misdemeanours. Citizens are rendered helpless, expected to be happy that they have been given a mere five days as a Christmas dispensation. Do you know how demeaning and frustrating it is to feel that one’s destiny is in the hands of SAGE behavioural psychologists who believe that board games and Christmas shopping are an existential threat to society?

All this seems so counterproductive—that is my point. Remember, politicians are asking society to do something historically unprecedented.