Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 3rd December 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Alderdice]

22: Clause 5, page 4, line 40, leave out “and (4)” and insert “, (4) and (4A)”

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friends Lord Paddick, Lady Hamwee and I have put down this amendment not so much for the purpose of tweaking the detailed wording of the Bill, but to raise a wider question about how much preparedness there is on the part of government and the authorities to seriously consider the rationale on which this Bill and counterterrorist policy as a whole is based. There is often a lack of welcome in general terms when people ask questions of a serious order about the whole direction of government policy, but in the area of terrorism it has been in my own experience quite regularly the case that when questions on it are raised, people are accused of being fellow travellers with terrorists. I frequently had that experience myself in Northern Ireland when I raised questions about the Government’s approach. I would be accused, not particularly by government Ministers but by leading political figures in the unionist community, of being sympathetic to the IRA.

There are positive things about this Bill. There has been progress and developments in technology which mean that elements of it are necessary, and I do not argue about that. But in some other ways the Bill is regressive because it is sliding away from the traditional commitment in this country, as distinct from other parts of Europe, that things are legal unless there is a very good reason for them to be illegal. Particularly when it comes to freedom of expression and people being able to look at the other side of the question, it is absolutely critical that we should be able to do that with freedom. That is why I was so supportive of and glad to see that we have passed Amendment 15. There is huge concern on the part of the many NGOs that are working not only on humanitarian and peacebuilding efforts but on trying to understand why it is that people commit themselves to terrorist activities.

We had to do that in Northern Ireland. For many years the received wisdom in this House and the other place and indeed in government generally was that the only way to deal with terrorism was through suppression—to put it down. That is all very well if it works, but it did not work. When the noble Earl the Minister responded in an earlier debate on this Bill by saying, “We are going with the grain of the Terrorism Act 2000”, the question for me was: yes, and has the 2000 Act worked? I do not mean has it worked in terms of the courts and there not being any adverse decisions, but has it worked in terms of terrorism being less of a threat to us now than it was when that Bill was passed in 2000? Terrorism has changed enormously over the period since 2000. At the time many things were happening that we are familiar with in this part of the world, but since then there have been two major developments in terrorism. Most terrorism in the world now is either Islamist of various kinds in its background or it is right-wing white terrorism, which is getting worse and is much less reported. The concern we are trying to express in this amendment is that we should be able to ask the difficult questions without being accused or in danger of questions being asked about our commitment to deal with the problem of terrorism.

When I listened to the noble Earl talking about “going with the grain of the Act”, I could not help but think of the phrase for which I am afraid Lord Denning will always be remembered in Ireland. He said that if it was the case that the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four were not guilty, then it was because the West Midlands police had been lying, and that was too appalling a vista to contemplate. It may have been a vista too appalling to contemplate, but eventually it had to be contemplated because the truth is that they had lied. Eventually Lord Denning himself accepted that.

The problem is this: there is a real danger that the whole direction of policy, which is about the suppression of terrorism, is based on a complete misunderstanding. The misunderstanding is that people behave in an extreme way because they think in an extreme way. That is not the case. People act in an extreme way because they have extreme feelings, not extreme thoughts. I know lots of people with all sorts of extreme thoughts who would not dream of acting on them. I often say that many people believe in heaven but if you say to them, “Would you like to go there this afternoon?” they say, “Actually, I’m not in any great hurry”. People can have a lot of thoughts, but the question is whether they have the emotional motivation to act on them. I do not believe for a minute that the beliefs of people such as Gerry Adams and the late, lamented Martin McGuinness about a united Ireland, or even the strategy that they followed, changed but their feelings changed because they no longer felt that they, their people and their culture were being humiliated, disrespected and kept from making changes through democratic politics. The feelings about things changed. If we do not understand and address that, we will head into terrible trouble.

Some time ago, I had a long conversation with an old friend who ran the CIA for years. I asked him why America is making the same mistakes over and over again. It made the same mistakes in Afghanistan as it did in Vietnam. It made the same mistakes in Iraq as we did. When we went into Libya, we did not have to deal with things in the way we did. We made a right mess of it. The question of Syria has been spoken about. None of these things are getting better. They are all getting worse. At what point do we start asking serious questions about a rationale that says that stronger security measures are the way to deal with this issue? My friend said, “We no longer engage with people in the Middle East and listen to what they have to say so we don’t really know what’s going on with them. What’s being done is completely counterproductive. Years ago, I used to spend my time going to meet the leadership of Hamas, Hezbollah, Israeli settlers and others”. By the way, No. 10 was very happy to hear the results of those conversations at that time. Why did he have those meetings? It gave an insight into what is going on.

The Bill’s approach says, “Don’t engage with people. Ban everything they’re saying. Stop everything that anybody is doing to engage with them. Isolate them more”. There is no evidence that this works. In fact, I fear that the approach that has been taken is the kind that would be taken by a bad doctor who says, “If the medication is not working, double the dose”. What usually happens there is that you end up poisoning the patient. There is a real danger in the Bill, which my colleagues and I felt it necessary to mark out—not because we expect the Government suddenly to say that they got it all wrong and should stop the Bill. That is not the purpose of the amendment. We are trying to see whether there is an understanding that we need to question the rationale for the approach to terrorism in the Bill and in other ways. Otherwise, we will find ourselves locked into a kind of groupthink, which will produce a negative outcome that none of us in this Chamber wants.

There is also a danger of not just illegality but a chill factor for people speaking and thinking about these things. For example, phrases such as “giving reasonable excuse” for some of the work done by NGOs and others are used. What kind of language is that? Should we tell people that they need to give reasonable excuse to the authorities or should we encourage them to go into dangerous situations and risk their lives because it benefits us and the global community? We should not expect them to provide that excuse. The chill factor is quite clear. What do I do with students who ask, “Should we go and do some research in the Middle East to try to find out what’s going on?” After not just a Bill such as this one but recent events there, it is clear that this will be very discouraging, even for people at a post-doctoral level. That will mean that our approach will not be based on real evidence, understanding or appreciation of the problems.

We tabled the amendment to say, not just in the context of the Bill, that we can change some of the approaches, such as those in Amendment 15. We are also asking whether we can think more seriously about an alternative way of understanding what is going on when people engage in terrorism, rather than simply believing in suppression. Suppression did not work out in my part of the United Kingdom. Eventually, the Government had to do all sorts of things that they said they would never do because it was the only way to deal with what was ultimately a political problem, not merely one of law and order. I beg to move.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s comments. We on these Benches have for some time had a concern about the so-called conveyor belt theory that radical, non-violent, extreme views necessarily lead to radicalisation and violence. Many groups in this country hold what most of us would consider to be extreme views, such as fundamentalist Christian groups and ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups, where we have no concerns at all that their extreme views will lead to radicalisation and violence.

There are other factors at play that receive no consideration as far as the Bill’s measures are concerned. We also express our concern that the Bill would tend to put people off debating extreme views, during which the counternarrative can be expressed, peoples’ dangerous views can be openly debated and their ideas shown to be false. The Bill and other measures like it are likely to close down that debate. Ultimately, a battle of ideas is the way to address the underlying issues rather than the approach the Bill takes.

--- Later in debate ---

I could go on, but this is the basic background and rationale behind much of the Government’s efforts to counter terrorism. It should be clear from it that no conveyer-belt theory of radicalisation is in use in government. It should also be clear why our counter- terrorism efforts need to cover such a broad range of activity on top of the work of the intelligence agencies and police to investigate and disrupt terrorists and terrorist plots. It is vital that we do all we can to stifle the online propaganda which fuels engagement in terrorism, that we work to break the “social cocoons” which terrorists form to continue their radicalisation, and that our Prevent work and programmes such as Channel continue to identify vulnerable people and provide them with the support that they need to address the background vulnerabilities and lack of protective factors that can make them prey to terrorist recruiters. With that explanation of the Government’s rationale, I hope that the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for explaining the Government’s rationale, none of which is particularly new to me. The disappointing thing about it is the limited perspective, on two or three fronts. First, terrorism is described almost exclusively as an individual phenomenon—individual people, this, that and the other thing. I started off in that position 30 or more years ago. What became clear to me in working with these situations was that it was a group phenomenon and not simply one of individuals.

The second thing is that the Minister emphasised again that a great deal of the Government’s approach is towards effectively suppressing or limiting terrorism, rather than trying to understand why communities feel—for genuine reasons, on occasion—a disenchantment that leads them to respond in such a way. I make the appeal again for the Government to be prepared to engage in an exploration of the questions, because it is clear that the approach we have taken for the last 20 years has not worked. We are not safer, globally, than we were 20 years ago—on the contrary. However, I am grateful to her because, by making the explanation, she is in a way continuing a process of conversation and exploration. That was the purpose of the amendment and of the general appeal that we do not simply depend on something we do not believe is working well, as there are alternative ways. I regard her explanation as a positive thing and I hope that it is part of an ongoing conversation that will take us to a better understanding and a better way of dealing with the problem with which we are all struggling. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 22 withdrawn.

Development Aid Budget

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, the House knows, and was reminded again this afternoon, of the depth and length of the commitment which the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, has to these matters; it is indebted to her again for this debate. I declare an interest as chairman of the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building and of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at Oxford.

It is a source of considerable pride and satisfaction for many in your Lordships’ House and for our country that, with the initiative of Mike Moore and my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed, we now commit 0.7% of GNI to international development as a legal commitment, as well as a moral one. Coming from my background, I regard this as a kind of tithe—a commitment we make to show our generosity of spirit and determination to make a better world. It is not purely a question of assessing effectiveness, but it is important to evaluate what our money goes to. In DfID and the British Council, we have two organisations that our country uses internationally and which are much better appreciated abroad than they are at home. They are singular organisations with a global and positive impact. I do not want what I say to take anything away from the very positive things that DfID does, but we are here to try to hold the Government to account and I will touch briefly on four issues.

On the question of evaluation, one has to be a little careful to evaluate the right thing. For example, in the case of Northern Ireland, there was an assumption that the problem of the conflict was one of socioeconomic disadvantage. So even during Mrs Thatcher’s time, when money was tight here, lots of money was put into Catholic nationalist and, indeed, Protestant loyalist, areas of Northern Ireland. If you had measured how much went in and some of the economic impacts, it would all have looked very good. However, it did nothing to resolve the conflict. It created upwardly mobile Provos, but it did not stop the conflict because it was not about economics but about other issues. Therefore, when we evaluate, we need to think what we are evaluating and whether it is the purpose for which we are giving the money. That is often not the case because of the dominance of an economic view of humanity and its difficulties. Economics is important, but it is not the sole driving feature and, in resolving economic problems, economic aid is not always the best or only way to address them.

First, I touch on the question of conflict. The first paragraph of Article 1 of the charter establishing the United Nations states that it was set up to address conflict. Many years later, it has produced 17 sustainable development goals. Number 17 is about implementation. The issue of conflict does not arise until SDG 16, and it is there with two or three other issues. Why is that? It is because many of the member nations of the United Nations did not want it there at all. Yet the fact is that not a single one of the other SDGs can be achieved without resolving the question of conflict. Noble Lords have mentioned Syria, Iraq and Libya as examples. How can any of the other SDGs be satisfactorily resolved while those conflicts are continuing? They cannot. Therefore, it is crucial that some of our thought, resource and funding goes to understanding conflicts, what makes them and what resolves them. I appreciate all the difficulties about money for peacekeeping, but I am not actually talking about peacekeeping. I am talking about understanding why we have conflicts and finding ways of intervening, because if we do not do that, to be honest—the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, adverted to this in some of her comments—we are simply subsidising conflict rather than trying to resolve it, and we will not be very effective in making the kinds of changes that we want. Therefore, addressing the question of conflict is absolutely essential.

Secondly, when it comes to addressing economics, the best way, of course, is for communities themselves to develop the education and, indeed—as I will say—the culture that enables them to progress. It became clear to myself and a number of colleagues, particularly Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president, that you can never develop a serious economy in a country, or proper governance, unless you develop institutions of higher learning, and you will never get those if people are never educated beyond a master’s degree. Yet, when we have proposed PhDs for young people from Africa and the Middle East, we have found it impossible to get funding from DfID or any other government or EU agency, because the only thing to which they want to commit money is primary and secondary education. That is perfectly reasonable and good, but we will never get anywhere unless there are people educated in those countries to a level where they can develop institutions of higher learning that take their governance and economy forward. It is short-sighted to focus only on things such as primary and secondary-level education.

That leads me to another very problematic issue—the question of culture. I give an example. I was asked to go and see some Aboriginal people in Australia because, despite the fact that the Australian Government were putting in very large amounts of money, their situation was getting worse. Their health was getting worse. Their education was not improving and the degree of physical and sexual violence, alcoholism and drug abuse was increasing. Why was that? It was because understanding the need for cultural change was not part of the agenda. One needs to find ways of helping people, to engage with cultures where they are, but also of taking people to a new place where they can survive in a world which is very different. Let me put it this way: the Aboriginal people have a culture that goes back longer than any other civilisation, something like 60,000 years. For almost all that time, they have been hunter-gatherers. That means that when you find food, water or whatever, you eat as much as you can because you have no idea when will be the next time you will get something. That is fine until McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken come along, and then, if you go in and eat all you can, you end up with diabetes and all sorts of other problems. That is exactly what has happened. The cultural change has not taken place. Why? Because people who are sensitive to addressing people’s needs say, “No, no, we mustn’t change their culture. That’s their culture. It’s neo-imperialism to get involved in that”. Yet it is a fact that if we keep their culture preserved in aspic, they will die out as a people. So there are complex, difficult issues to be addressed there.

My final point is on the question of the size of organisations. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, quite rightly sang the praises of the large international NGOs, which are very important and deliver a lot of help. However, there are problems with them, one of which was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza. They gobble up the resources almost in total—a large amount of paperwork needs to be filled in and there is a lot of bureaucracy—and that is very difficult for small NGOs. Yet the small NGOs, with a particular idea and commitment, are the ones that will produce something new. Noble Lords often comment about international norms. But those are what we believe now—they are not good enough for the future. If we are to develop things further than where we are now, we do not need international norms alone. We need the small, piloting NGOs that will take a little money and do a lot with it with some new ideas. Can the Minister look again at this question of whether some of the money that goes to the large NGOs and the degree of bureaucracy that they have to create to manage the large number of people they work with might be better spent by taking us forward with the new ideas that some of the small NGOs may help us to create and exploit?

Syria: Aid

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

It is in nobody’s interest to have instability increasing in this region, which is exactly what is happening at the moment. That is why it was incredibly good news when relations were improved with Iran. As I did before, I pay tribute to our colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, for the work she did on that. Iran is indeed an interested party in the area.

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, on behalf of the United Nations, the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, made an appeal for direct access for humanitarian need. The Foreign Minister of Syria publically stated a few days ago that the Government of Syria would now facilitate this. Can my noble friend indicate whether the statement by the Foreign Minister of Syria is evidenced in actual fact or is this yet again a statement from the Syrian Government that has no real strength and basis in fact?

Queen’s Speech

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, for the first couple of years of the coalition Government I was much encouraged and, indeed, enthused, by the change in the approach to foreign policy. It seemed that a number of problems had arisen. I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Triesman—who is not in his place—and was struck by the fact that he was commending the Government for the improved investment in and development of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; that there was a move away from some of the unfortunate approaches that had been taken during the George W Bush period; and that there were problems with the Government’s addressing of the European question. I found myself agreeing with him, and then thinking, “Wait a minute. The previous Government eviscerated the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that is now being repaired”. It was not just George W Bush during his period as the President, but Blair and Brown who were also in government. Our many problems with Europe were not fundamentally addressed during that time.

I will touch on Europe; on cyberspace, which was spoken about so eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Reid, it not being the first time he has focused our minds on it; and on the situation in the Middle East, to which I devote a good deal of my thinking.

I have always been a convinced and committed European. I have based a lot of my own thinking and work in areas of conflict on the model of conflict resolution that Europe demonstrates. However, those of us who are pro-Europeans must recognise what my noble friend Lord Maclennan said about the inadequacy of European democracy. Many of us wanted to see the development of a Europe of the regions. Instead of that, we have not just a Europe of nation states but a Europe of national Governments, each playing off against the other. We must understand, too, that this inadequacy is not just in its democratic structures but in its failure to deliver on many of the things that could have been delivered in economic terms.

It is not possible to speak about Europe being a massive success these days. The worry is that we are a long way from getting through the problem. There is much talk about networks working together but, when it comes to the possibility of the European network being used in foreign affairs, where have we been in dealing with the Middle East? It is, I regret to say, still impossible to get our German colleagues to say anything that might be viewed as critical of any policy of the Israeli Government. It has proved almost impossible to get clear decisions from all Governments together on any serious foreign policy issue of any contention.

Of course it would be wonderful if we could work together on defence, but what has actually happened? Europe has basked under the umbrella of American protection since the Second World War. Not one of the countries, much less our own, is giving the resource necessary for Europe to defend itself. Again, in Germany, it is not yet possible to have a military parade in public, never mind to make commitments to serious overseas engagement. This is the reality of Europe. Unless those of us who are pro-Europe are able to convince the rest of our colleagues in Europe to take seriously what needs to be done on democratisation, on solving the economic problems, on having a common foreign and security policy and on being able to invest enough in defence, our people will not be persuaded that Europe is a viable entity. That would be an ultimate tragedy. That is the network that is closest to where we live.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, mentioned the network of the Commonwealth. Like him, I regret that there was not more focus on it in the gracious Speech. It is another important network for us.

As I said, the noble Lord, Lord Reid, referred to the fifth space that has now opened. There is land, sea, air, space and, now, for the first time, one created by mankind: cyberspace. Much work and investment has gone into it. However, there are two areas which we have yet to address properly. One is international law in cyberspace. The noble Lord, Lord Reid, mentioned the Stuxnet virus. Had there been an equivalent attack by one country on another in any of the other four spaces, it would have been a declaration of war. However, within cyberspace, we are unclear on the rules of international law. Some time soon, we need to be. Otherwise there will be a tragedy of the kind that the noble Lord referred to: there will be some kind of attack without real attribution being clear. This is an area on which I hope my noble friend will be able to tell me the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is focusing some serious international legal attention.

The second area is the psychology of working in cyberspace in war. In the other four spaces, in the main we understand how people function. However, all of us know that when people start sending e-mails to each other, tweeting and texting, they suddenly behave in a different way: less inhibited, less thoughtful and less understanding of the consequences of their actions in many cases. I am yet to see sufficient attention being paid to research in the psychology of cyberwar and cyberterrorism; I declare an interest as someone who has given time academically and in business to this area. I hope that my noble friend will be able to tell me that additional resource will be devoted to research into understanding how people function in this fifth space.

Finally, I turn to the Middle East, which is the issue that frightens me the most. During the last election, people used to say, “I agree with Nick”. In this case, I agree with Paddy, because I am extremely frightened by what is happening in the Middle East. Much of what has been done from outside has created only more trouble. The notion that we are now starting to supply weapons that are massively surplus to any possible requirement in the region because we want to engage in some kind of influence is total foolishness. Again, I come to the network. We will not solve the Israel-Palestine problem by engaging just those two players. It will have to be done regionally. The Arab peace initiative has not had the attention from this country, from the United States or from others externally. It has been retabled, and it needs to be responded to. We will never resolve the problems with Cyprus, north and south, unless we understand the need for regional engagement. The more that energy becomes available there, the more it will either become an instrument for co-operation or a basis for new conflicts there.

Syria is no longer only a Syrian problem. I went out to Lebanon a few weeks ago, just to see how things were going, and I came back very fearful because that border is already entirely breached. Hezbollah is attacking back into villages which have its faithful within Syria and which are under attack from others, and atrocities are being committed within Lebanon itself. Jordan is being deeply destabilised by the number of refugees, and now we have attacks in Iraq and Turkey. It is almost already too late. When Russia sets down its requirements, it is also saying to the United States, “Stop acting like a cowboy, prepared to do things without United Nations agreements. This is a line you should not cross”. For that reason, as well as for many others, I desperately hope that when we come to debate the Queen’s Speech next year we will not do so in the context of some kind of catastrophic conflagration that has developed from the situation in the Middle East, because we are perilously close to it.

Syria: Refugees

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The right reverend Prelate is right. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has promoted the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict initiative, which supports women particularly in Syria but also in Jordan. Local health professionals are being trained in how to respond to reports of sexual violence with the objective of improving the prospect for future investigation and potential prosecution, which the right reverend Prelate rightly identifies as very important.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, on previous occasions I have sought assurances from Her Majesty’s Government that we would concentrate our attention on humanitarian aid, particularly to Turkey and Jordan, which have huge burdens of Syrian refugees, and also to Lebanon and Iraq. Given the recent remarks of our Prime Minister and President Hollande of France, can I press my noble friend to assure us that whatever others do we will not be engaged in military support, other than giving proper support to our front-line ally Turkey, but that we will concentrate on humanitarian aid?

[Baroness Northover]

Following on from the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Wright, I reiterate to my noble friend the risks of action and inaction. We take very seriously the points that he makes. I would point out that the United Kingdom has already pledged almost £140 million in humanitarian relief. It has committed £22 million in terms of non-lethal equipment and practical support for the Syrian opposition and civil society. That is separate from our humanitarian support, but the noble Lord will note the difference in the sizes of those figures.

Overseas Aid

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I suggest that the noble Baroness reads what the Prime Minister said. She will find that it is perfectly consistent with the approach taken by her Government. We work across the MoD, the FCO and DfID to do what we can to tackle instability in some of the poorest countries. It is because they are fragile states that there are such levels of poverty and such a lack of development. That is why it is extremely important to work to support those countries. DfID’s conflict pool and the Building Stability Overseas strategy build on what the previous Government rightly did. This is controlled by the OECD definition of ODA, which does not allow spending for military uses. Therefore it could not come out of DfID’s budget. DfID needs to reach its 0.7% contribution to aid, and we are committed to that. If this came out of it, it would not reach that 0.7%.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, it is clear that peace and stability are critical not just in fragile states but in the development of all states. It would be helpful if my noble friend could clarify how Her Majesty’s Government will decide how far political interventions and interventions involving the Ministry of Defence will receive support. How will the proportions and the kind of help that will be given be decided? It would be helpful to know that to understand this better.

[Baroness Northover]

My noble friend is right to ask for that. It is extremely clear that the OECD defines what does and does not count as overseas development assistance. Most of our peacekeeping, for example, goes through the UN. Some 6% of that budget counts as ODA, and the rest does not. With the EU civilian missions, 100% counts under the ODA rules. This is extremely clearly defined. Where the MoD supports humanitarian assistance—the Navy, for example, supplies tents, as it did in Jamaica after the hurricane—that is counted as assisting and not as providing military equipment. These things are clearly defined.

Foreign Affairs: Global Role, Emerging Powers and New Markets

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for securing this debate, and for the great service that he gave to your Lordships’ House, to the Government and to the country during his time in government. His answers were always thoughtful and conscientious. They were a service to your Lordships’ House and we all appreciated them. He continues that service not only by securing this debate but by pointing us to the kind of strategic thinking to which your Lordships’ House is particularly suited. I am privileged to participate in the debate and to follow him and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson.

My noble friend pointed to the fact that we are experiencing an extraordinary period of global change. We discussed this briefly in a debate earlier this week. He is absolutely right. The enormity of the change has scarcely been understood, partly because the implications are so great that people are panicking in their response to it rather than thinking reflectively. This is an opportunity for us to do so.

We are moving into a series of centenaries over the next few years, including the centenary of the commencement of the First World War. The changes that we are undergoing now, while of a very different type, are of a similar order to those that took place in the early part of the previous century, where empires that had been profoundly significant and powerful subsequently dribbled away over a period of years. Indeed, the role, power and significance of our own country in that regard, moving from being the centre of the largest empire that the world had ever seen, which is still the case, gradually found that empire being unzipped over a period of years. Some of us in Ireland think that that started with the partition of Ireland.

During that period there was a great struggle for our country to come to understand what its new possibilities and opportunities were. Many other countries that in the past had been the centre of great empires simply had a long period of subsequent decline over many decades, and sometimes centuries. Some people have taken a similar view in respect of the United Kingdom, which is misguided and unnecessary. I will explain why.

During that first period of time there was the remarkable development of the Commonwealth. That so many countries that had been colonies wanted to remain in relationship with the United Kingdom is remarkable and largely unprecedented—I will come on to talk about the Francophonie later. My noble friend has referred to this extraordinary development, and perhaps we could have made rather more of it over the years.

Then we came to the period after the Second World War and the European Union moved into the field. It was a peace process; it was an attempt to ensure that Europe did not again return to the terrible disasters of the First and Second World Wars. Now, though, we have a generation arising—my generation and certainly those coming after me—who do not really think of the European Union in that way. They think of it in economic and political terms. Indeed, most of the political leaders of Europe do not see the European Union in terms of ensuring that there is no war: they see it as a platform for themselves, their parties and their countries to play a global role.

That is a serious mistake. I do not think that that is what the population of the European Union think is the function of the European Union. The population do not particularly want to rival China, the United States and other powers; they want to get on with having a productive, peaceful, stable and prosperous life. That is what our people want.

That has led to disenchantment—a big split between the elite of Europe and its populations. It is not what the European Union was for or about. Instead, our world has begun to change further, with extraordinary developments in technology. There are some who think that the key things for us to aim for are size—to be part of somewhere that is big—and resources—that is, to have access to commodities. If we look around, though, the evidence shows that mere population size, market size or access to commodities do not by themselves provide power, influence and significance.

Last night I listened to a Member of your Lordships’ House, as I know some other colleagues did, talking about how size mattered. Of course that is true, but it is not the only thing that matters and it is not even the decisive thing. Many countries are much larger in population and in geographical terms than this country, and have greater access to resources that this country. The continent of Africa has an extraordinary resource base, but that has not made it politically powerful, significant or a leading place.

It seems to me that it is much more about our culture. I do not mean the expressions of our culture in terms of art, drama and so forth, although they are important, but the way of being that we have as a country and a community. I mean the values, principles, the things that drive us and give us a sense of confidence, our history and background, our language, our educational system and the way that we encourage our young people to think for themselves and search out the truth of the way that things are, rather than merely totting up the number of degrees that happen to be passed at universities.

That culture is something that is appreciated by every other country in the world when they look at us. We did not become powerful in the past because of size but because we looked at what we needed to do in the context of the time. Now we have a new context and we can play a significant role. Just look at how well we did with the Olympic Games—not only in organising them but in competing in them—not because we were big but because we focused and had confidence. We should be able to have that confidence because this country is not frightened by a global world. It does not feel intimidated by the fact that we have to have relationships, not just in our local area in the European Union, but right across the world. That is what we have always done, not just in trading but in relationships. Our language is a global language.

As we look to the future, we should not be saying to our young people, “Let’s look at the inevitable decline of our country”, but rather saying with confidence, “Let us look at what we and our country can contribute in a leading way to our new world order”.

West Bank

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Warner, in expressing appreciation to my noble friend Lady Brinton for securing this debate and for the knowledgeable, passionate and well informed way in which she presented a very moving case. It did not come merely from other people’s understanding; she has been involved. She has gone to the places she speaks about and met the people she talks about, and therefore can speak with great knowledge and passion.

The noble Lord, Lord Warner, in speaking about the situation in Gaza, also outlined the urgency of this appalling situation. I recall that in Northern Ireland, while we disagreed on many things, one thing on which all communities came together was the question of water. This is true everywhere; we simply cannot live without it. It is a fundamental human right. For it to be used in any way as a source of political pressure is not only morally wrong but profoundly dangerous, because people will not only react but remember. Some things involving water that are happening in the region concern me deeply.

In October 2011 I brought to your Lordships’ House a debate on the question of water in the Middle East, and how it might be turned from a potential source of great conflict to one of co-operation. I thank my noble friend the Minister, who responded to the debate. She ensured in her preparation for it that there was a constructive and positive response from the Foreign Office. That work continued and continues still, and I hope that a little later in the year it will be possible to have a round-table conference addressing those questions. It is not easy to put these things together, particularly from a distance. We often press our Ministers to do things, and when they are done it is very much appreciated.

This area will not be easily resolved. First, there is a profound difference in the standing of the Israeli and Palestinian water commissioners in the Joint Water Commission. The Palestinian water commissioner does not have the power to implement almost any of the decisions that he may take, whereas the Israeli water commissioner must be consulted and has the final say on all these matters. There are considerable differences in understanding some fundamental data in regard to water and water distribution, and almost endless arguments about pollution, its distribution and so on.

I was a little encouraged in February of this year when I spent some time in Israel and talked to both sides about this question, including the Israeli water commissioner’s office. An appreciation is beginning to develop, among not just NGOs but technical experts, that it is simply not possible for Israelis—Jewish or Palestinian—to isolate themselves from issues of pollution of the aquifers, for example. The disturbing question is whether this is being done to drive Palestinians off the land in order to have a one-state solution that excludes them. As someone who has supported the two-state solution for some time, there is a real question in my mind as to whether the two-state solution is becoming a non-viable proposition. We have to understand the dilemmas we are talking about in that wider political context.

I have to say that the Palestinians have not always reacted wisely in their handling of some of these issues. For example, some young Palestinians told me when I was there this year that one of the mistakes was that Israelis changed the facts on the ground and argued about the politics subsequently, while the Palestinians wanted to solve the political questions while the facts on the ground were changing all around them. I think that many young Palestinians realise that strategic mistake and want to engage in changing the infrastructure to the benefit of their people and discuss the politics subsequently.

If I said positive things about the Minister, I also want to say that I think our ambassador in Israel has also understood the importance of this question and has been pressing it and trying to get people to the discussions. Through the medium of your Lordships’ House, it would be appropriate to indicate our support for what he is doing to enable those in politics, in government and in NGOs on both sides to get together and address these questions. Whatever we say in your Lordships’ House, and whatever the Government try to do, unless we can engage those in the Israeli Government and in the Palestinian Authority, we will not achieve the kind of outcome that we all want to see in your Lordships’ House. We must therefore encourage those initiatives that are taking place, properly funded and properly encouraged, as best we can, and not simply make demands that we all know will not be achieved in the next six, 12 or 20 months.

West Bank and Gaza

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 29th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, since trade is the best form of aid, and since Her Majesty’s Government have repeatedly declared the illegality of settlements in the West Bank, are they prepared to explore the question of whether there should be a differential between trading and doing business with deprived parts of the West Bank under Palestinian authority and trading with the illegal settlements about which they have often spoken, almost in despair?

[Baroness Northover]

In 2009, the previous Government put in place a voluntary agreement on labelling produce from the settlements. It is notable that the major supermarkets in the United Kingdom have taken that forward, so that labelling is there. No preferential treatment is given to produce that comes from the settlements.

Health and Social Care Bill

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I am speaking because my name is also on this amendment. We need to reflect on several aspects relating to the context of this issue. I do not think that there is much doubt that we have a problem of some significance, or any doubt that the problem has been growing over a long time. I also do not think that it is an easy fix simply to jump to statutory regulation. I went through the process when the whole issue of regulating social workers arose, and that proved extremely difficult to introduce. I do not doubt that we will end up with statutory regulation of some kind, but we might have to go through some processes before we get to that point.

I do not want to duplicate the history that other noble Lords have put forward most expertly. I came into this story as a very young civil servant at the end of the 1960s when the Salmon committee was set up. Some noble Lords may be old enough to remember the Salmon committee—I was assistant secretary to the committee. This was in the days when civil servants could not hold a job for long and were moved on at a tremendous rate. While doing this work we saw how things worked at the ward level. In those good old days of the 1960s and early 1970s there was a ward sister, state-registered staff nurses, nursing auxiliaries and state-enrolled nurses. We also had a set of arrangements in which oversight of cleaning was largely the duty of the ward sister. Furthermore, bank working was not that common.

What has happened since those “good old days” is that hospitals have become used more intensively. Bank working has meant that there is a higher flow of different people moving through the wards, and the profession, with good reason, has wanted to make itself a graduate profession. The context has changed a lot, so the dynamics of those wards has changed quite a lot.

Alongside that we have been growing another industry in the community: in nursing homes, residential care homes and—not quite as fast as one would like, within the health service—a district nursing service. One of the problems in both these areas, whether acute hospitals or the community, is that with the demand of patients for services, and the demography which has gone alongside that shift in time, the qualified and registered nursing profession has inevitably had to look for help from sub-professional groups to help carry the load. In the community there is not a strong management structure to oversee this, so to some extent it is difficult for district nurses to oversee any work done by unqualified personnel. Such oversight might be the theory but in practice it will often be difficult to achieve.

Community services are burgeoning, the hospital service has changed, and we have a problem of a growing need for more people who are not qualified and registered nurses to work alongside such nurses to provide some of the care. We are looking to the Government to produce a comprehensive review that examines the situation that we face now rather than the situation we faced 10 or 15 years ago and which was very different.

I suspect that we will have to move by interim steps towards statutory registration, and perhaps voluntary registration is an interim step. However, I am not convinced that we have a comprehensive set of answers to a continuing and serious problem. The Government need to think about how they will deal with this very serious problem.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I also have some scepticism about assured voluntary registration, but I will come back to that when we debate the subsequent amendment. I have some sympathy with the noble Baroness’s amendment. I had not intended to speak on this amendment until I heard a number of noble Lords speak, and I take a slightly different lesson from the history of the past number of years in the development of the nursing profession.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Warner, I remember sisters, state registered nurses, state enrolled nurses, nursing auxiliaries and so on, but one of the key things was that all those professionals described themselves as nurses. Indeed, I very well remember as a young doctor that nurses would not say, “I looked after that person”, or “I was on the ward when that patient came in before”, but said, “I nursed that patient”. There was a quality of compassion and relationship that was critical to the profession. I think that not only nursing as a profession, but many other professions went down the wrong road when they took the view that the future was in tighter registration and a graduate profession because that was not fundamentally the need. I heard my right honourable friend in another place being asked questions in the past few days about poor care of patients with dementia, and he made a very important point. He said that you can find two wards beside each other in a hospital with nurses with exactly the same level of training and qualifications but in one of those wards the patients are cared for with compassion and in the other ward they are not. When we move to healthcare support workers, it seems to me that whatever we move to, we do not move to a title that expresses compassion and care for the patients who are being nursed.

My gratitude to the noble Baroness is not for the specific terms of her amendment, and I do not think that they were the burden of her bringing the amendment forward. It is that we engage in a serious, proper debate about this issue, not just for nurses, but for other professions. There are some for whom I believe that statutory registration is the proper way ahead, but there are others for whom it does not seem to be the case that always moving to graduate professions with training and registration is the sole and most important way of dealing with these questions. It is quite clear that making nurses graduates and having registered nurses only has simply opened a door that has had to be filled with other, less qualified and, it has to be said, less expensive employees. Now we have a problem with them not measuring up to the professional standards of compassion that all of those—or at least, almost all of those—who aspired to be nurses at whatever level in the past aspired to in the best sense.

I welcome the fact that the noble Baroness has tabled this amendment; I am not quite sure it is the precise solution, but I hope we find ways to come back to the serious ongoing debate that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has pointed to because there is a crisis in this area. I remember saying this two, three, four years ago in your Lordships' House and noble Lords who are now on the Benches on the other side thought it was simply a party-political attack. It was not—it was a genuine sense of concern that things were deteriorating. They have continued to do so, and it will not be dealt with solely by registration, training and academic qualifications because a quality of care and compassion and a culture of compassion are necessary. That is not to take away from the question of assured voluntary registration, which I wish to explore in a further amendment.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, for her perseverance and determination in this very important area. Rather like the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, I am clear that the role of healthcare assistants has to be seen in the context of a much more general debate about nursing care, including the compassion that he talked so eloquently about.

As the noble Baroness said to us rather earlier this afternoon, we had an excellent debate on nursing on 1 December, and we are presented with something of a paradox: on the one hand, we should not ignore the huge advances in the nursing profession over the past 20 years. There has been the move to a graduate profession and nurses have taken on much greater responsibility, including for complex care and specialist care, and I think that, overall, the public have welcomed that increased responsibility. At the same time, there has been real and mounting concern about basic standards of care and issues to do with hygiene, feeding of patients, nutrition, dignity and even face-to-face contact—the kind of compassion that the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, has just spoken about. We have seen the reports from unannounced visits of various bodies. Recently, the CQC has undertaken important visits to many of our hospitals. There seems to be real evidence and concern about a falling of standards of basic care.

The reasons for that are not clear. It is possible that nurse training is now too focused on academic performance rather than on practical nurse training. It is also at least possible that the drive for specialist nurses and modern matrons has taken from the ward the many experienced nurses who, in retrospect, might be better placed in leading their ward as ward manager or senior sister. What is not in doubt is the need for serious thinking about how we can enhance the overall quality in standards of basic care that nurses give.

That brings us to the role of healthcare assistants. Again, in our debate on 1 December, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in responding, referred to the concerns that had been expressed about nursing in the acute sector in particular. He said he felt that that,

“related to inappropriate delegation by nurses to healthcare”,

assistants. He continued:

“Wherever there is a multidisciplinary team of regulated professionals and unregulated healthcare workers, appropriate delegation and supervision is vitally important. This is an area ripe for formal review”.

He also said that the Government welcomed,

“the NMC’s plans to update its guidance on delegation”,

and that they have,

“asked Skills for Health and Skills for Care to accelerate production of a code of conduct”.—[Official Report, 1/12/11; col. 419.]

I am sure that those actions by the Government are very generally welcomed. The question before us is whether they are sufficient. From what the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, has said, it is clear that she does not think that they are. Powerful support for that argument has been received from the Nursing and Midwifery Council, which argues that a system of regulation for healthcare support workers should contain provisions for consistent UK-wide standards of training and practice that would assure the public and employers that they have the knowledge and skills to practice safely. It further suggests a mandatory register to ensure that workers who have been struck off the nursing and midwifery register are not re-employed in a healthcare support role, which has been the subject of some concerns. It is also notable that the House of Commons Health Committee supports mandatory statutory regulation of healthcare assistants, which it believes is the only approach that would maximise public protection.

However, we have heard from my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley, chair of the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, who has put a different view. It will be interesting to hear the response of the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, on why she thinks that a voluntary register for healthcare assistants is the way forward. I should like to ask her whether she would support NHS bodies which require healthcare assistants to be voluntarily registered as a condition of employment. If that were the case, what safeguards does she think could be put in place as regards a worker who was dismissed because of poor conduct towards a patient? How could we ensure that in those circumstances that person could not then work in another part of the care sector? That seems to me to go to the heart of the issue of whether a voluntary register could work.

I have no doubt that NHS employers could be encouraged to make it mandatory but the problem with that is that too many people could slip through the net. I would also ask the noble Baroness to respond to my noble friend Lord Warner. I share his view that, clearly, we are crying out for a fundamental review of these issues around nursing quality and care, compassion, and dignity of care being given to patients, and that relationship to healthcare assistants. If the Government are not prepared to move on this and on the point about only going as far as a voluntary register, can they at least give some comfort and assurance that they recognise that this matter needs close attention?

I am not a great believer in royal commissions—I think it was Harold Wilson who said that they could be established in a minute but take years—but there is a strong case for a fundamental review of the nursing profession, embracing healthcare assistants. Would the Government be prepared to give us some comfort on this?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I should like to press this question in the context of the amendments in this group. What is the Government’s rationale for making a difference between statutory registration and quality-assured voluntary registration? The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, has used terms such as “light-touch”, “proportionate”, “appropriate”, “not so expensive” and so on. However, I have difficulty in seeing consistency here.

On the one hand, we can see that there are very small groups such as clinical perfusion scientists who are employed in only a few centres where open-heart surgery is being done. One could see that there may be a degree of expense in setting up a whole scheme of statutory registration. However, when it comes to groups such as clinical scientists and physiologists, there is a much larger number, but almost all of them are employed in the National Health Service. I understand the argument that they are all, or almost all, operating under the supervision of people who are statutorily registered and are operating in the context of the NHS, which deals with financial claims and so on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Walton of Detchant]

What is troubling me about this whole exercise is that, under the Health Professions Council, statutory regulation applies to art therapists, biomedical scientists, chiropodists, clinical scientists, dieticians, hearing-aid dispensers, occupational therapists, operating department practitioners, orthoptists, paramedics, physiotherapists, practitioner psychologists —in what way do practitioner psychologists differ from the psychologists to whom the noble Lord referred?—and many others. A lot of these people are already regulated. Where the statutorily regulated bodies end and the voluntarily regulated bodies begin is very unclear.

[Lord Alderdice]

It may seem a little unclear to the noble Lord, but it is not so unclear. Psychologists are qualified as psychologists, not as psychotherapists or as counsellors—they belong to a different professional body and have different qualifications and requirements. Psychologists themselves campaigned for many years for statutory regulation and finally got it through the Health Professions Council. Arts therapists and so on went through the HPC because many of them were occupational therapists, but try as I might—and I have been doing so for well over a decade—I cannot get successive Governments to address the question of psychotherapists and counsellors, despite the fact that they constitute a far larger number of people.

My dilemma with the current set of propositions is that, of the arguments adduced to try to persuade noble Lords that a quality-assured voluntary registration scheme is appropriate because the people referred to—the physiologists, the perfusion scientists and so on—are operating within the health service under supervision, are employed there and are smallish in number, none of them applies to this other group of people, for whom I have had precisely the same reply from the Minister. Therefore, I am keen to hear from the Government what the set of criteria is. Is it simply that this Government are not keen to pursue anything in the way of regulation except at the most modest level? If so, that is a legitimate argument but it needs to be made. If not, then I do not quite see the consistency of the current application.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

Perhaps I may add a small point. I do not know how many physicians in anaesthesia are employed in operating theatres in private hospitals, where an enormous amount of private surgery is done. One of the main reasons for people going to a private hospital is for surgery—particularly elective orthopaedic surgery. Therefore, although I cannot put any figures on this, I do not think that it is correct to assume that these people are necessarily operating only in the NHS and are subject to current NHS structures.

In the new world where we will have a broad range of providers, it will become even more important to know that there is a minimum standard and that all the people at each step of the way will be answerable. The patient may well choose to go to an organisation where these people are employed but the patient will not know that. No one gives him a list and says, “Of all these people looking after you, these will be statutorily registered but these may or may not be on a voluntary register”. If we are thinking about patients taking informed decisions regarding their future, I suggest that the coroners’ reports that we have had to date should already be sounding alarm bells.