Intergenerational Fairness in Government Policy

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, first I thank my noble friend Lady Smith for introducing the debate. It is a speech I do not think I would have cared to try. Next, I have to slightly rap my noble friend Lord Storey across the knuckles. Not everybody in this debate has got their bus pass yet. One or two of us still have a wee bit of time to go.

Having said that, I wish to talk about the student experience. The first time I spoke about that in a meaningful way was over a quarter of a century ago, when I was able to state that I was talking about it as the person who had the most recent experience of that situation. If it was not 1990, it was 1991, when we first started discussing the process that removed the grant system, then the personal maintenance loan. Since then, we have been moving away from a system that is now seen to be something of a golden age. That golden age has probably become slightly more golden with the glow of our looking back at it. I remember students complaining that they did not have enough grant to live on—another pretty steady experience back then. That was a well-worn path, even by the time I arrived in the early 1980s.

So, what have we got here? Students going through university today perceive that they are being unfairly treated. Noble Lords can argue about that perception until the cows come home, but the fact is that it is there. We have effectively “monetised”—I searched long and hard for the expression—the value of the university experience by having this great burden of debt. Whether that is the reality, whether students are expected to pay it off or do anything with it, it is still there. It has a monetary value, which means the experience of being at university has become a sort of money, cashback, return, value-for-investment process, which was not there a few years ago. A debt of £50,000 has been mentioned, but the figures change, along with the number of people currently taking higher education degrees compared with the past. I find it rather odd that people doing polytechnic degrees were not counted in half the statistics I looked at. Good old-fashioned educational snob value; there we are.

However, we have this idea of debt going through—and what do we get back from it? That means the entire education process is being looked at in a slightly different way. Anybody taking an arts course now says, “I don’t get enough hours of contact. I’m paying all this money, so why don’t I get the hours”? As an arts student, I was given guidance and lots of books, then told to go away, study, do the work, come back and see where I made mistakes and where I could improve. Are students being taken through it in a step-by-step process? They think, “We’re paying for it. We should get some more help”.

Perhaps we need to look at this in a slightly different way. The idea of what students are getting seems to be changing rapidly, as is the role of the parents supporting those students—the bank of mum and dad, as has been referred to. They are asking what their child should get with all this debt, regardless of whether they are actually going to pay it back or not. We need to look at that. The perception of what is happening is very important, because as we all know, perception becomes knowledge and knowledge becomes reality, regardless of how flimsy the foundation is. That is the process; people behave in reaction to that knowledge and reality. If, as seems to be going on right now, people are voting against something because it is terribly unfair, and we say we will change it—I put that promise right up there with free beer for everybody.

However, if that is what people are doing, that is the way they get in. It distorts the argument. We have to look at what they are going to get out of the experience and package it differently. We may well have to change that burden of debt from being an individual thing to a societal thing once more. I cannot see any solution other than some form of graduate tax, because the burden will get bigger and the perception—you will not be able to write it off or do anything with it—will get bigger. We will have to repackage it. Is that not what finance does all the time? I suggest we start doing the same thing quite quickly.

Finally, on the idea of perception, I want to raise another issue, which may be outside the debate. Special educational needs in universities is now much more a problem of the institutions themselves. When we considered the Higher Education and Research Bill, I tried to see whether we could get a good guide to the job of the universities when dealing with the lower levels of this issue. I am still waiting for a good answer. I am still waiting for somebody to counter the argument that we should let the courts sort out universities’ level of responsibility. When we are looking at the idea of perception, I hope that such issues can be included in the thinking. I hope I will not have to bring that subject back to this House.

Child Sexual Abuse: Football Clubs

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2016 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to respond to the multiple allegations of child sexual abuse within football clubs.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Addington, and at his request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper. I think the Minister and I would agree that we have both drawn the short straw today, for different reasons, but I hope we can have an interesting debate on the subject, which is not the most pleasant one.

Football—the beautiful game, which we gave to the world—is in crisis at the moment over allegations of sex abuse. All I wanted to do when I was young was to play football. There was only one thing wrong with that, which was that I was not any good at it. Somebody who was very good at it was a chap called David White. He rang me when he heard I was speaking today, and I met him on Sunday. He started playing football at five years of age. His father took him everywhere, and he clearly had the ability and the skill. At 16, he signed professional papers for Manchester City; at 18 he made his debut. In his career he played almost 400 games, scored 100 goals and won an England cap. He was a good footballer. He scored the first Premier League goal for Manchester City when the league was formed in 1991. You would think his life was complete.

I went to meet David for three hours. The story he told me was a difficult one, but one he wants to be heard, for a number of reasons, which will become evident. When he was 10, a coach at a local football team said he was taking the team to Spain for a week to bond, to learn to work together and to learn about different cultures and lifestyles. He said it would be good for the boy, whose parents happily sent him on his way to Spain with all the other lads. On the second day in Spain, the abuse from the coach started. The boy is 10 years of age, in Spain; he does not speak Spanish, there are no mobile telephones and he is at the mercy of this coach for a week. It is absolutely appalling. He comes back and has the dilemma of whether to tell his father—he knows what the consequences of that will be, including probably prison for his father—or to keep quiet. He kept quiet and told nobody. For 20 years, he told nobody.

The police called in about 1999, asking about abuse and whether he had any evidence of it and whether he knew about anybody else or had been involved himself. He said, “No, I knew nothing about any of this”, because he still had his father. His father was alive and he knew what it would do to him, so he denied it. Then it was in the newspapers. His mother asked him about it and he denied it, but in the end he could not deny it, and explained it all to her one night. He told me that that was cathartic and lifted the weight off his shoulders, as it had been in the back of his mind all his career. His mother was made to promise not to tell his father—they had separated by now—and his father, who died a few years later, never knew, for which he is really grateful. He and his mother now knew, but no one else knew for another 15 years, until Andy Woodward admitted that he was abused. David and other footballers then came forward to say that they were as well.

You think that is the story, but then at 6 pm on Sunday, I get a phone call from his mother, who wants me to go and see her to discuss the matter. So on Monday, I left this Chamber on the 6 pm train back to Manchester, and then got in my car and drove to Eccles to meet his mother, an absolutely wonderful woman. In her mid-seventies, she lives in Eccles and is still active in the community. As you go in, there is a photograph on the wall of Harold Wilson in the Rose Garden with a number of people, some of whom Members to my right may remember. Her father was Jack McCann, the Labour MP for Rochdale from the late 1950s to about 1972, when he unfortunately died. So she is a socialist in background. She is at the heart of the community now, attending Christmas parties and so on. We sat for a couple of hours, and what came from her was a sense of guilt. There is a disconnect between your head and your heart; your head tells you that it is not your fault and these things happen, but your heart tells you that you should have looked after your son and somehow you are responsible. The more you tell the story, though, the more people understand it and the less that guilt is there. I hope that telling David’s story today will help other people to come forward and explain the problems that they have had.

David White has no problem with the FA or with the football club. He is not seeking compensation or publicity. All he wants is for this not to happen to anyone else. There have been big changes now. I have met people from the FA; I met James MacDougall yesterday and we had a good discussion. There are checks and balances now in the football league and the FA. I would say it is one of the safest industries for young boys and girls to go into because those checks and balances are second to none and the child protection unit works really well.

However, the approach needs to be more holistic. As David said, these people operate down paths. If they go down the path of football and we cut that path off, that is great, but what is to stop them opening a little judo club in Urmston, a badminton club in London or a dance school in Newcastle? It is the holistic problem that David wants challenging. It is all very well for these organisations to begin to run to cover, call for reports and say it is all very terrible, but there needs to be an outcome from this. That outcome has to be the message that, “If it doesn’t feel right, tell someone”, together with a phone number.

What David wants is for the football league and the Premier League, the people with the big money, to be a conduit for all other sports to pull together and get this to happen. I cannot make it happen and neither can noble Lords, not even the Minister, because children do not listen to us—they listen to Wayne Rooney, Andy Murray or Lewis Hamilton. People like that should be persuaded to pass that message down to children. Now, unlike 1979, children have mobile phones and are all on Snapchat and talking to each other. There is much less chance of these people manipulating and frightening them and making them their “special people” because they have no one to talk to.

What David wants is for people to understand the darkness and despair. He tells me he could have played more for England and for his football clubs. He would have a fantastic two or three weeks where he would score goals but then something would trigger him, the mist would come over him and he would be useless for two or three weeks. Managers would say, “He’s a great footballer but he doesn’t put his heart into it”, or, “He’s a great footballer but he’s a Champagne Charlie”. They did not know what David was going through. I would like to ask some of the managers who have managed David White to pick the phone up and chat to him now, because he was not not trying—it was just that he was in a place where it was almost impossible for him to function. Then that would go, and he would carry on. This is a difficult subject for me, and indeed the House, to talk about, but I emphasise that if we can get the message right this will not happen for anyone else. That is the most important thing that we want to happen.

I ask the Minister for her view on the following. David White, an ambassador for Manchester City who does corporate hospitality, also does the commentary for Radio Manchester on match nights. Last night City played Watford, but he had a phone call from the BBC saying that it no longer wanted his football-commentating services until, in its words, “this matter is dealt with”. That is incredible and unforgivable of the BBC. He is a victim; he has not been charged, he is not giving evidence and he is not sub judice—he is just a person—yet the BBC has arbitrarily decided that he cannot speak about football any more. Does the Minister think that was a sensible thing to do? Does it send out the right message to people to come forward, to help to change the situation? I do not think the situation is as bad now as it was. That was then; in the 1960s and 1970s there was a different culture. It still needs addressing, though, and there are far more people in far more sports in the same situation. I hope the Minister will address those points.

Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

The noble Lord speaks with passion and from great knowledge of this matter. I defer to that. I am nervous about intervening because we are in the presence of a former captain of the Olympic team, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem. I support the intention behind the amendment, but I wonder whether something has not gone wrong in the drafting. The problem arises because the last word in subsection (2)(a) of the proposed new clause is “or”, which means the language in paragraphs (a) and (b) is not cumulative, but alternative.

Proposed new subsection (2)(a) defines the offence of taking a prohibited substance. Proposed new subsection (2)(b) never mentions prohibited substances. Its scope looks astonishingly wide. It says that if an individual,

“has been banned or suspended from participation in any sporting activity, or has been or is a member of any organisation which has been banned or suspended from participation in any sporting activity anywhere in the world, at any time”,

he is committing an offence. Change sports and assume we are talking about football. A footballer who is red-carded is banned for playing for a few matches. In the terms of proposed new subsection (2)(b)(ii) he would be required for the rest of his career to present at least every fortnight a certificate saying he was free of any banned substance. Proposed new subsection (2)(b) does not talk about drugs at all. It says that if a club or sporting organisation was banned for corruption, its financial affairs, a betting offence or any kind of offence, that club, all its players and all those who had played for it in the past would be required to obtain this certificate every two weeks. The same would apply to individuals banned for reasons that had nothing to do with drugs.

I support the intention behind the amendment, but I do not think the wording is quite right.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I too support the noble Lord’s intention. I have a less subtle criticism of the wording. It refers to “prestige”, “promotion” and “relegation”. The noble Lord has stated very clearly that he is going for the elite. However, promotion and relegation run the whole way through all our sport. I am sure that the noble Lord was not worrying about the eastern counties division north rugby, shall we say, but it would be caught by this at the moment.

It should not be down to a Back-Bencher, even one as distinguished as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, to be doing this. It should be taken on by the Government. There is a will to do this correctly with the Government. When the Minister replies to the noble Lord, I hope that she will let us know what the Government are doing. That is what is required. We can thank the noble Lord for opening this up. It is down to the Government to take coherent action to make sure this is happening, I hope, with other nations. As the noble Lord pointed out, they are taking their own action. If we can act together, we will be able to do more.

I applaud what the noble Lord is trying to do. I say for a fact that he has probably made far fewer mistakes than I would if I had tried to do this. Indeed, that is a fairly safe bet. I think he has missed on this, but to open up the argument and get into it he has done us a service. We have to make sure we take some action soon. Whatever else has gone before has not worked. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” clearly does not apply here.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem]

My Lords, I shall not endeavour to emulate the comprehensive approach of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. I will permit myself one observation: if he had been allowed a growth hormone, it is unlikely he would have been the cox of a successful, gold-medal winning Olympic eight for Great Britain. He may think that, all things considered, at least from a sporting point of view, he did the better out of the bargain.

I too am sympathetic to the purpose of the amendment. I propose to put it into historical context, perhaps from the rather narrow prism of my sport, athletics. It is almost certainly the case that the last clean Olympic Games of the modern series were the Games held in Rome in 1960. By 1964 there was anecdotal evidence, from which inferences could be drawn, that in eastern Europe there was systematic doping of track and field athletes. It became increasingly clear that that was at its height under the East German Government. As an effort to attract some privilege and prestige, it was clear that athletes in East Germany who sought to achieve the highest levels were not able to do so unless they succumbed to the programme of doping.

That had long-term effects. There is at least one noted case of a female swimmer who was subject to anabolic steroids to such an extent that her female characteristics were so badly damaged that, to regularise herself and her role in society, she transitioned from female to male. That is a clear illustration not only of the power of doping, but equally that the ingestion of drugs for performance-enhancing purposes can bring with it quite extraordinary personality and other penalties.

I am talking about anabolic steroids, which were the drugs of preference in the times I describe, but more sophisticated performance-enhancing methods are available. There are those who argue that we are engaged in a battle between the chemists in the laboratories and the investigators, with the chemists, often having greater resources and no inhibitions, having the opportunity to create circumstances which make it very difficult for the investigators to get to the truth of what is going on.

In my own sport, professionalism has now replaced the sham amateurism of the 1960s, but with that has come the opportunity for quite substantial rewards. I do not regret being an amateur, nor do I have any regret for those who are now professionals. If you are as good a professional athlete as you might be a barrister, then why should you not take full advantage of those qualities? However, as a result of that professionalism, the rewards have become quite extraordinary, far beyond the riches of Croesus that were imagined but never achieved in my time.

I shall make one confession: I suppose I broke the amateur rules once because at North Berwick at an August bank holiday meeting I was given £5 more than my legitimate expenses, and it is perhaps a measure of the time that I thought that was actually a pretty good deal. I was so heavily handicapped in the 100 yards that the local boy won by a street and a half. As I walked out, there was a notice which said “No betting allowed”, and a man took a swing at me, saying, “You weren’t trying”, so I suppose even in those days of what we thought was purity, there were other considerations.

I shall return to the main thrust of what I am trying to say. It is this—and here I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said—a two-year ban or a four-year ban is as nothing because if they did amount to something, there would not be so many repeat offenders. People are allowed back into international sport who take the same risk and are found to have been in breach yet again. There is an issue here because the courts have traditionally been reluctant to accept the notion that the authorities can impose lifetime bans because, now that sport is professional, that has an impact on the patrimonial interest of the individual. On one view, it is preventing the individual following what is essentially his or her occupation.

The noble Lord catalogued a series of adverse consequences. Let me put a slight gloss on that and add some of my own, albeit they are expressed in a manner similar to his. The first is the damage to health and personality, to which I have already referred. The second is the undermining of the integrity of sport in a way which is almost incomprehensible. The third, as he made clear, is the unfairness to other athletes who are competing without performance-enhancing assistance. The fourth, which I do not think he mentioned, is that a culture grows up in which young, promising athletes are led to believe that the only way in which they can achieve the highest pinnacle of success is to indulge in drugs of this kind. From my membership of the Court of Arbitration for Sport I know of at least one case where it was perfectly clear beyond any question that it was not the young person but the young person’s ambitious parent. If you take these consequences, or features, of what we are talking about and add them to the comprehensive account given by the noble Lord, it seems to me that the case for my noble friend’s plea that this is something for our Government to begin to take seriously and to produce proposals to deal with is overwhelming.

Historical Sexual Abuse in Football

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for what he said and his support; this is very much a cross-party issue that we need to tackle. Of course, I also express my sympathies to the Brazilian team for the appalling crash. As the noble Lord said, the fact that we are so interested in it just shows how sport brings us all together. I also endorse the bravery of those people who have come forward. My goodness, it takes a lot to do so as an adult when this has happened to you as a child—particularly in football, which I feel has been a male-dominated sport. It must have taken an enormous amount of bravery for those 20 footballers to come out and be open about what had happened to them.

A far as I know, the report will be published, but I will have to go back and check that.

The noble Lord also asked what else we are doing from a wider viewpoint. Earlier this year, Ministers asked the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, to carry out an independent review of the duty of care that sport owes to its participants. Her review covers a wide range of areas, including safeguarding. She is due to report back shortly to the Minister of Sport, and she has set up an independent group to support her in this that includes Anne Tiivas, chief executive of Child Protection in Sport Unit.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it is very good that we can echo on a cross-party basis the sentiments that have already been expressed here—and, indeed, the international support for that very unfortunate football team. Will the Minister give us an assurance that there will be a concentration on the one-to-one contact between coach and player, particularly when they are juniors, and how that is monitored? That will ensure that not only parents and participants but also potential coaching staff know what the correct boundaries are and what safeguards apply on both sides. Without them, we are in danger of doing considerable damage.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. That is indeed going to be part of the reviews that are taking place. No stone will be unturned, and we are going to learn a lot of lessons along the way. As the noble Lord said, that is a very important point, and I know that it will be taken back and looked into.

Disability: Premature Deaths

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, what first led me to put my name down for this debate was the simple fact that when it comes to any minority group that is interacting with a public service, particularly the health service, if there is a communication problem you suddenly see problems in the results. If they cannot access the system, you suddenly find that they are not getting the best out of it.

The fact is that most forms of healthcare are based on a doctor talking to a patient. The noble Baroness stole some of the thunder from my speech by pointing this out, but all the groups that have problems with what we would regard as normal conversational communication suffer in terms of healthcare and when interacting with virtually all other structures of the state, and indeed goods and services. Extracting information from the patient to ensure appropriate treatment is bound to be more difficult. If you know you are going to interact with this group, you have to have some way of correcting that situation otherwise you are guaranteeing a level of failure. There are various bits of legislation coming through at the moment, and if everything was working correctly I am sure the noble Baroness would not have bothered tabling this debate. However, it is quite clear that it is not.

There are contributing factors—for instance, lifestyle. We know it is very difficult to get people with learning disabilities into activities like sport because there is no structure for them, and that leads to other health problems later on. However, if we are talking simply about the interface with a GP or a nurse or receptionist—the noble Baroness was right to mention those who are the gatekeepers to the service—unless there is training in this area, we are going to have problems.

If an employee does not have generalised training, they must at least have some awareness that means they know when they should back off and call in the experts. We need it to be acceptable to say, “I need help and support”, without it going against that employee. Think about it: if you are in a job where you are supposed to deal with a person in this situation, you should be able to think, “Do I have the authority and the right to ask for extra help to deal with the situation?”. In many situations, to do so fundamentally undermines your professional competence. Unless we allow that, we will not get the best outcomes, because people bluff to get through the situation—it is a natural reaction and we have all done it in our own worlds. You want to cover up the fact that you are having problems with something you are expected to be able to do. Unless you can call in expertise, and know that that is okay, you will have problems.

I could go on for a considerable time giving more examples, but at this time of night and with a maiden speech on its way which is probably much more interesting than mine, I will cut my remarks off here. Unless we embrace the idea of preparation to call in expertise and making it acceptable in the work environment so to do, we will continue to have these problems. What we are talking about here is only one manifestation of the problem. It is not just within the health service, it is within all services. It involves continuing conditions and stress, and mental health comes in later. Setting a good example from the Department of Health would be a simple step forward. It would be good to hear tonight an assurance that it is acceptable—indeed, required—to have that flexibility.

Soft Power and the UK’s Influence (Select Committee Report)

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when you are number 26 in a list of 30, everything you thought you might say that might be original has usually been covered. I shall run through these areas quickly.

The BBC World Service is an incredibly good institution but, as has been said, it would not exist in anything like its current form without the BBC. The BBC’s greatest claim to fame is that it bears the name “British” and has consistently been a pain in various parts of the anatomy of every single British Government that I can remember. Trying to explain that abroad, and the fact that a society such as ours supports such an institution, says more about us than we can imagine from sitting here.

It has been suggested that we should enhance our Diplomatic Service to access the power and influence that we have. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said about power and soft power. I, too, have problems with how much power and influence is concerned, but there must be something that takes it forward. It is also quite clear that hard power still has a role to play—it is probably the backstop to smart power and soft power. You name it, we need it. If we are to be any sort of player in the world and to be sure of our own security, we will need hard power. We can argue until the cows come home about exactly what form that should take, but we will need something there.

There is one thing that I do not think has been touched on much, which was something of a surprise to me. The report mentions the Olympics but there is not much mention of sport generally. If ever there is something that goes beyond the normal confines, it is sport. Sport is something you can talk about and relate to. Britain has given the world football. The figure I saw was that the Premier League reaches 212 territories—I am not quite sure what that is in terms of countries. Billions of people watch it. We have the most watched league; that is massive power. In the current row about the placement of the World Cup, if we have not brought the FIFA house crashing down, at least we have shaken its door a bit. We can probably say that, yes, we have power there.

We also have the Rugby World Cup coming up. For anybody who wants to see the comedy version ahead of it, do you know that the British Parliament is hosting a parliamentary World Cup tournament? I do not know if I shall be the only player from your Lordships’ House and, with the amount of hobbling I have been doing, I may not be playing in all of it. This is something else that we have given the world. Other sports have come to us; we have given these. These sports cut across even the high networking worth that has already been spoken about. It goes beyond the Commonwealth Games and it travels beyond the European Union. Even in rugby union, that British-dominated game, France, Italy and Argentina, as full board members, might just object to thinking that they are naturally part of our sphere of influence.

The whole idea of sport as something in which you can compete—where you can join in, participate and have an interaction with others—has not really been touched on, other than in relation to the Olympics. With the Olympics, we were talking about the structure of getting the Games and running them well. That ties in because, if you look at our history, we have had a series of disasters in organising events over the past few years. There was Pickett’s Lock and the Wembley fiasco—projects that had to be publicly taken on. It was not until the Commonwealth Games in Manchester that we got it right. Effectively, we invented a new way of doing things: regeneration, creation and giving something permanent back to society. All of that enhances these events. Our volunteer structure has been widely taken up by others, and it is clear that it allowed us to have the confidence even to bid for the Olympic Games.

The Olympics themselves seem to have become something of a beacon. It was a regeneration project that has proved useful to society since and it gave us kudos. It was also incredibly useful in building up an awareness of disability rights because of the success of and drive behind the Paralympics. That is an incredible achievement. They were the first Paralympic Games for which you could not get a ticket; that is a massive contribution and one that still has repercussions all over the world. You cannot build up a prestigious Paralympic team unless you actually do something with your disabled community. These people are not a drag; they are a bonus and a boost to society. We hope that it will go further than that, and the legal framework and the full range of civil rights that are expressed in the rule of law tie in with it.

We must bear in mind that we can take the idea of projecting ourselves as a sporting nation and tie that in with everything else as we go forward. We must build on it, because if we do not, we will miss out on something which, shall we say, carries less obvious baggage than most of what we have been talking about. You have to try slightly harder to misunderstand a sports team going on to a pitch than, for instance, a cultural programme about Shakespeare. You have to go forward and create something positive there. If you do not, you miss something that is universal, in which we are a leader and where we can touch the rest of the world without offending anyone in any way.

Equality (Titles) Bill [HL]

Lord Addington Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, any hereditary Peer who speaks on this Bill probably has to declare a series of interests. My interest is that my only child is a daughter. I have checked under all the beds and cannot find anybody else in the house; and she is definitely a daughter.

Would I like my daughter to inherit my title? Yes, I would. Do I think my younger brother, or either of his two sons would do a particularly bad job if, by some miracle, the hereditary peerage process is still going by the time it comes round to them? I touch wood in saying that and will ensure that I cross the road carefully when I leave the Chamber. Would they be any good at the job? Who knows? My two nephews are still far too young to even consider this as a realistic prospect as you cannot sit in this Chamber before attaining the age of 21. But, would my daughter be any worse? I do not think so. Would my older sister have performed worse than me, had she sat in this Chamber? She would have done things differently, but would she have been worse than me? I doubt it. However, we are talking about history here. I am a direct descendant of the first Lord Addington through the younger sons’ line. Had this Bill become an Act in an earlier era and been implemented, I would be very surprised if there had not been a few females succeeding to the title. The fact that it has always been done and chance has always worked in that way is not a good reason for carrying on with the present system. The fact that things can change and there is a pool of talent out there that could add to this place is something we should embrace.

If hereditary Peers’ automatic right to sit in this Chamber is cut within the next few years—we have been waiting a decade and a half and there does not seem to be any great hurry to reduce it—it would be merely a courtesy that should be carried on in the fairest way to reflect society. It is a bit of history that does not hurt very much. We should embrace the fact that history is living and changing.

I have a good memory for previous arguments on this issue that I have listened to, and my noble friend has probably found a way forward that will allow us to take that important step. It may not be the end of the argument but it is a step forward. In embracing the idea I suggest that if we pass this measure the world will carry on turning. There will probably be a few family squabbles but there always will be, some of which are quite entertaining, provided that you are out of punching and throwing range at the time. We should take on this part of our history, make it slightly more up to date and let it carry on. While we still have an entrance into this House, it is absurd not to do this, given that we have the opportunity. This measure will not hurt anyone and I totally support it.

English Premier League Football

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I have a confession to make: I am not a football fan. It is an odd thing. What does Premier League football—this great, iconic game in this country—mean to me? My home city is Norwich. I still look for the result when it is announced on a Saturday. I still take that bit of time to find it. I might not take much time to watch the team play, but in a strange way the result matters. It is part of my identity. That tells us much about the importance of football in our society. It gets through to people who play another sport—in my case, rugby. It has a dominant position, which explains why the Premier League, when it broke away from all those years of tradition with all the gloom and doom that came with them, has gone on to be a wholly new, global thing.

How has football transformed itself? My memories of it as a young person were of something that you went to in order to shout abuse—often of a racist quality—at people and to get into fights. That was the general impression. The game at professional level has transformed itself after some very unpleasant experiences, and continues to transform itself. It now accepts its social role. Parliament is a slightly reactive body. There has to be a problem, it has to get reported and then we generally do something about it at some point after that. We now have interaction with the system, which has broken down the anti-social aspects of football and allowed this new thing to flourish. Now the Premier League has gone global and encourages huge amounts of expenditure.

What are the downsides of the changes that have happened from the world I grew up in? The idea of the local boy playing for his club and coming good is something that is now almost guaranteed not to happen because of the free and global market in players, and the international market structure. That has been used to explain the lack of competition for our national team. I repeated this argument once and somebody who knew something about the game said, “Don’t talk rubbish. The people who are beating us often have their players in our league as well”.

It is a huge, comparatively new thing. One of its downsides as a sporting event is that the championship is won too often by the same few clubs. Manchester United seems to have a timeshare on the championship with whoever else is coming along in the queue at the time. Greater diversity would be beneficial. However, as we look through the briefing, we discover that investment in other sports—for instance, the Olympics—and their competitors is important. So are the continuation of talent spotting, and support for the teaching of training techniques. The Premier League is showing the way here, and investing in sports science produced by other bodies. This movement is gaining momentum and reflects the world in which we live.

However, when things go wrong—we remember the disappearance of Leeds United and Portsmouth—it can be cataclysmic. A club, which is a great social entity that brings pride to a local community, can disappear. Under this system, I do not think that there is great enthusiasm for saying that you have a franchise rather than a place in a league with the possibility of promotion and relegation. It can all go horribly wrong. It can even cause losses to the Revenue, as it did in the case of Portsmouth and other clubs. If we look north of the border to another great icon of the football scene—Rangers—and the trouble it has got into, we see the need to temper the ability to strive for success with realism. It reinforces the point about management structures and the fact that things come with a preparation cost.

It is a romantic idea even if much of the romance is being stripped out by money. However, if you do not prepare, you will lose this thing that people have a relationship with. The managers of many clubs have been hounded out because they would not invest sufficiently in their club for their fan base. The English Premier League as it stands now does good works and the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, has pointed out one of its activities. It is an icon of sporting activity. However, it has also shown that it needs management, investment and to be observed. The Government cannot totally turn their eyes away from it. To get the best out of it we have to live and interact with it. It cannot be left to itself but must link to its community. Politicians must make sure that it remains linked, too, to our structure. It is simply too big and too influential to be left to one side. We must to talk to and engage with it. Otherwise we will lose many of the benefits that are potentially there.

Elections: Registration

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, successive Governments have struggled for some time with the whole issue of citizenship education in schools, and as the noble Baroness knows well, schools have struggled with how well PSHE as a whole is taught. I have asked about citizenship education and students tell me that they have had a bit on the European Union and a bit on Parliament in between the instruction on how they should behave in relations with the opposite sex. We all know that citizenship education remains a problem. It is a problem with which the Department for Education and others are grappling, but I encourage the noble Baroness to keep pushing.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, it seems, as my noble friend will undoubtedly be aware, that the young are interested in single issues in politics. Would it not be a good idea to encourage those single-issue groups to inform the young of just how important it is to get involved in the political process in order to get anything done, and that voting is part of that?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the localism agenda—and, indeed, reviving local democracy—is clearly one very important part of getting young people re-involved in democratic politics, because it is easier to understand how they interact with local politics. I have to say to all Members of the House that the way in which we handle the issue of constitutional reform over the next year will send a signal to young people about how responsible we are, at Westminster, in reacting to constitutional reform issues.

Public Services (Social Value) Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Friday 27th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, when your name appears towards the end of a speakers list, it is not unusual to discover that everything you wanted to say has already been said, often more eloquently than you could have done. Therefore, I shall not detain your Lordships' House for long.

This is one of those Bills where you ask yourself why on earth it has not been introduced earlier. Then you have a look and think that there was nothing to stop it being introduced earlier; so why has that not been done? The simple reason is that, until now, this subject was considered as something that was jolly good but which should be tagged on to something else. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, touched on that when he spoke about corporate responsibility in relation to many big firms. Indeed, we have all seen projects of varying quality and heard the associated razzmatazz about corporate responsibility. However, corporate responsibility has not been an essential part of the services we are discussing and the concept has not been open to challenge prior to the introduction of the Bill. I hope that the concept is also applied to non-traditional, first-choice suppliers; when you come out with an expression like that without thinking about it, you wonder whether you have been here too long. Such suppliers could offer models of best practice that may be absorbed by bigger groups.

Whenever you have a good idea and it is purloined by somebody else, you always cry foul, but as long as action is taken that is a good thing. I hope that the Bill, which is a short measure when compared with the huge Bills that we have discussed over the past few months, will help to start a process. Following the enactment of other good small pieces of legislation, battles have commenced in terms of enforcement, monitoring and making sure that people take them seriously. The Bill constitutes a good idea that has been given a few teeth. Whether those teeth are sharp enough, or the jaw that contains them is strong enough, we do not yet know. However, the Bill is a good start. We should see it as part of an ongoing process as opposed to an end in itself. Nevertheless, it is valuable.