Northern Ireland Protocol
Lord Alderdice Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord True
My Lords, I believe that in practical terms it will be possible to address the issues that the noble Lord points to, in so far as those difficulties exist. There is a little tendency to accuse the Government of trying to gloss over problems. We gloss over no problem. We start with the intention to make the protocol work in a practical, beneficial and light-touch way. Given co-operation from every party—and there has been a positive welcome for these proposals from the Northern Ireland Executive—there is no reason why we should not be able to make the system work as the White Paper sets out.
Lord Alderdice (LD)
My Lords, the consent principle is central to the Belfast agreement and referenced in the Statement, which says that the protocol will be disapplied if Northern Ireland’s political representatives subsequently
“conclude that it is no longer desirable”.
However, it is not unknown for Northern Ireland’s politicians to disagree about what is desirable. For the avoidance of doubt or misunderstanding down the line, can the Minister clarify whether, if at some future point unionists wish to disapply the protocol, Sinn Féin could veto this using the Assembly’s parallel consent requirement, thus blocking any disapplication of the protocol?
Health: Parity of Esteem
Lord Alderdice Excerpts(7 years, 12 months ago)
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Lord Alderdice
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure parity of esteem between mental and physical health.
Lord Alderdice (LD)
My Lords, first, I thank all noble Lords who have indicated their wish to speak in this debate. They are all Members of your Lordships’ House who have a considerable interest in this area. Perhaps I may mention in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, who, as a colleague in the Royal College of Psychiatrists, was probably more responsible than anyone for including the notion of parity of esteem in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. That is one reason that we are debating this Question this evening.
I also wish to mention the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who was of course Health Secretary. He recently put his name to a letter, along with every other Health Secretary in this country over the last 20 years and a number of other senior concerned people, to talk about how the failure to provide appropriately and fully for mental health is a stain on our nation. I look forward to the debate because I think that it provides another opportunity for us to keep this important matter to the fore—not just mental health but the question of how we address these issues.
I should start by declaring two interests. First, I am a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a clinical professor at the University of Maryland in the United States. Secondly, I was one of the people who negotiated the Belfast agreement. The first of those may seem fairly obvious and the second a little more opaque, but the reason for mentioning it is that the notion of parity of esteem was central to the Belfast agreement, long before it was discussed in terms of mental and physical health.
It is important because there were two approaches to the notion of parity of esteem there. The first was that parity of esteem really meant equality of treatment between Protestants and Catholics—between unionists and nationalists. The other, to which I adhere, was that parity of esteem was about an approach to all the people in the community. It was not about a dividing up into one side and the other and a balancing up, but about parity of esteem for all elements of the community—those who came originally from Ireland, those who came in later and those who have come more recently. Parity was not a question of one side and the other.
That is relevant to this debate because it seems to me that there is a danger that we see addressing these issues as a balancing-up of the funding, structures and championing of mental health against those of physical health. There is no doubt that there is certainly a case for that, and I have no doubt that other noble Lords will speak to the facts and figures and explain that mental health has always—certainly in living memory—been the Cinderella of health and social care, and how despite commitments in law and political policy, there is not much evidence that the situation is dramatically improving. That being the case, of course it is appropriate for us to press for things to improve, and to try to ensure that funding and structures do not disadvantage the care of the mentally ill. However, at the same time, we need to ask ourselves some questions. I would argue that instead of repeatedly returning to the issue of changing structures—and the Health and Social Care Act became much more famous for changing structures than it did for the inclusion of the notion of parity of esteem—engineering the cultural change emblemised by the notion of parity of esteem could fundamentally be much more important. That is what I wish to address, and other noble Lords will pick up on the other issues.
When Thomas Jefferson penned the American constitution, he described the inalienable rights as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If any politician nowadays was to propose the pursuit of happiness or a ministry of happiness, they would probably be made fun of. That is partly because words change their significance and meaning, and the words of the 18th century do not necessarily fit with the language of today. Rather than “the pursuit of happiness”, the language that we might use is “the development of mental, physical and social well-being for our people”.
The notion that the pursuit of happiness, or of mental, physical and social well-being, might be a new ambition for health was picked up by the former Minister of State Paul Burstow, my friend and colleague, in a CentreForum panel and publication, which the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, also participated in. It said that the future perhaps is not in creating structures in which mental health gets a fair crack of the whip or slice of the cake, even though that is extremely important, but rather that we try to look at addressing the well-being of individuals and communities in our country. In truth, no matter how much we deal with physical health problems, if people do not feel a sense of well-being, no amount of physical health will make life worth while.
I remember as a very young psychiatrist in Northern Ireland trying to get across on the radio and television issues about depression and bereavement and so on. I was joined by a very senior emeritus professor of surgery, Professor Rogers. I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is extremely intimidating; what is he going to say?”. I made my little presentation and he said, “I want people to listen to this because in a lifetime of working in surgery, with all the horrible diseases and disorders that people have, I have seen very few of them who actually wanted to take their own life. It is a measure of the deeper distress of many people when they are mentally ill that they sometimes feel a need to put an end to their life and their misery”. I have never forgotten that. We all try to promote our own causes, and yet here he was saying, “Yes, I did all sorts of work; but fundamentally, if people get to the point where life is not worth living and they take their own life, it is an incredible marker”.
In 2010, I did a report for the Royal College of Psychiatrists on self-harm and suicide. We marked out a number of things that needed to be done to address the increasing level of suicide. It is not getting better. Arguments might be made about facts and figures, percentages of money, numbers of people being seen, numbers of out-patient appointments and access to services. All of those are relevant and necessary for those who are trying to commission and provide services. But if we all know in our hearts that people who contemplate taking their lives have obviously reached a point that nobody should find themselves reaching—there has certainly been inadequate help and support—that marker tells us that something important has failed in addressing the well-being of our people.
This is also not really a party-political thing, because it has always been a matter of concern on all sides of the House. The noble Lord, Lord Prior, wrote me a note to apologise for not being able to be here for the debate, but he knew that he would be well represented. He said that this was a matter of great importance. Let us not treat it as a question of party politics. Let us try to understand what we need to do to make a real change. In the CentreForum document and the recent report by the King’s Fund and others, there has increasingly been an appreciation that we need not just to build on the pillars of individual kinds of illness and care but to find a way of bringing them together.
At home in Northern Ireland, we ended up with an integrated health and social care system. That was the one that I worked in all my life. The political problems meant that social care and health care—mental and physical—were all taken together and were able to be dealt with without arguing about budgets, where services were or any of those kinds of things. It helped. There is no doubt that it helped. However, it is not just about an integration of structures. It is also about a cultural change that helps us understand that mental health is not about one bit of us, physical health about another bit of us and social well-being and our relationships about yet another bit of us. We cannot be divided up in that way in any helpful fashion. It is about dealing with each other as human beings—all of us, the whole package of being a human being.
One of the tragic and disastrous consequences of what is happening in politics now globally is that people are not treating others as human beings. We can do all sorts of horrible things to people when we do not treat them as human beings. We need to think about things in terms of mental and physical health care. Of course we need to have specialists to focus on this particular aspect of the problem or that particular disorder, but there is no part of our physical care that does not have a mental and emotional component to it. There is no part of our mental life that is not related to our body. There is no part of our existence that is not about relationships with other people.
My question for the Minister is not just about what is being done to promote parity of esteem in terms of funding and making sure that it is fair funding. I am not arguing about the equality, but is it fair or is it not? Is it becoming less fair and if so can we do something about it? Yes, of course there are issues about structures and questions of commissioning, but are there things that we can do to change the culture and approach that ensures that we are dealing with the well-being of the people who live in our communities and of the communities themselves? That kind of cultural change is necessary if we are to achieve what we want to achieve in terms of parity of esteem for these different components of ourselves and our fellow human beings. I am keen to know what the Government feel able to do to promote that.
Soft Power and Conflict Prevention
Lord Alderdice Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Alderdice (LD)
My Lords, like other Members of your Lordships’ House, I thank the most reverend Primate for securing the debate, but also for the manner of his speech and the leadership and encouragement he has given over quite a number of years to those of us who are interested in, and committed to, addressing conflict in non-violent ways. Many people from outside your Lordships’ House will read his speech and continue to be encouraged, as they have been in the past, by the approach that he has taken and by the active way he has engaged in these matters. I declare an interest as the director of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict, based at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, and of a new centre we are developing in Belfast, the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building.
At the start, I want to make clear that, as someone committed to this kind of work, I take the strong view that military and security roles are extremely important. As the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, said, it is quite true that military options on their own, without what we are calling soft power, can lead to wickedness and tragic results. However, it is also true that soft power as we describe it can often be wholly ineffectual and sometimes little more than a description of a wish list.
If one speaks to those involved in, for example, policing and military operations in most parts of the world, thoughtful people in our own services will say repeatedly that there is no security solution to this particular dilemma but there is a security role. I make an analogy with my medical background. Pharmacology rarely cures problems but, without that back-up, psychology rarely leads to the kind of cure that we want to see. We have to contain the problems but not leave it there; we have to find ways of working through them. Sometimes we can stop when we have contained them, only to regret the fact that it all goes to pieces again. We have many examples of that.
I make it clear that in everything that I say—and I am going to focus on the non-military side, which is the subject of our debate—the military and policing role is critical. If there is one great failing of the United Nations system, apart from our difficulty in reaching agreements with each other, it is that its lack of capacity to implement its decisions means that increasingly our people look at the UN not as a force for hope for the future but as a disappointment and a broken reed. There are issues there about the appropriate use of force that need to be properly considered.
Other noble Lords have given us a list and a description of some of the important institutions of soft power in this country, and they are extremely impressive. The Commonwealth was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby and the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, who is a stout defender of the importance of this quite extraordinary institution and network of relationships. Also mentioned was the British Council, which, tragically, is probably known much more widely in other parts of the world than in the United Kingdom, where it ought to be valued much more. The Foreign Office, the Department for International Development, the BBC and our English language have also been mentioned, but there are many others that have not.
It is interesting that your Lordships’ House has not been mentioned, yet it is a source of significant influence. A young colleague from Colombia was listening to a debate in your Lordships’ House earlier this week. He said, “You probably don’t think about it but there are other countries in the world that are probably going to implement the legislation that you have been discussing in five years’ time”—precisely because they look to this place because of the moral integrity that has, at least in better times, been a mark of this place. Gladstone was committed to democracy as,
“trust in the people qualified by prudence”.
I have always regarded the other place as “trust in the people” and your Lordships’ House as the qualification, “by prudence”—but the second is very important, too.
There are other elements that I would like to pick up. I do not want to focus on the institutions but, rather, on what is at the back of this. One is the notion of common law and the way we conduct ourselves. This is a remarkable contribution, but sometimes it is not well understood by liberals. Many liberal colleagues focus on the importance of creating law, institutions and regulations which hold people to important principles. The institutions themselves do not necessarily hold people to important principles, and in fact can mislead people into thinking that they are the key issue. Frequently, people come to me from other parts of the world asking for a description of the processes that we have and the institutions that we created in my part of the United Kingdom. I say, “I’m not going to tell you about that. You can read about that in a book—but simply adopting them won’t solve your problem”.
In the same kind of way, tragically, the European Union, of which I am strong supporter and defender, has in many ways lost its purpose. Why is that? It is because its purpose was to make sure that there was not another horrible war in Europe. All the things that we have put in place—the euro, economic co-operation and all the structures and bureaucracy, including the European Parliament—are for the purpose of making sure that we do not have another war. Yet, tragically, within Europe these institutions have themselves become the purpose for many people, and, sadly, many political colleagues see them as a way in which we can sit at the top table in political terms. That is not the purpose and it is one reason why the people of Europe are disenchanted—because that is not what it was about.
In the same kind of way, just because you pass a clinical room that says “Therapy Going On Inside” does not mean it is so just because there is a therapist and patient. They may simply be going through the motions. It is very important that we distinguish between the purpose of the enterprise and the mechanisms through which we can have things happen.
All of the things we have been describing are the mechanisms, so what is at the back of them? Common law helps us because it helps to facilitate relationships between groups of people. If one key thing came out of our experience at home, it was that finding peace was not about putting into place institutions; it was about dealing with historic disturbed relationships. We constructed a peace process that had three strands of three important sets of relationships and everything came after that. The key thing about common law, which distinguishes it from civil law in many ways, is that it looks to a degree of flexibility within structure that enables people to deal with relationships appropriately.
I will give an example from my own experience. We put into place certain rules and regulations for how the Assembly Chamber might operate in Northern Ireland, but it was clear that there were times when it was more important to give one group of politicians room and space than another. For example, if there was a big bomb in a nationalist area it was important to give more nationalists the chance to speak about it than unionists—and vice versa—rather than simply hold to a rule that says, “You have to have this number of minutes for this and this person”. If it was done in a context of concern and relationship, it was not only possible but an enrichment and people felt that something worthwhile was happening, whereas if we had simply stuck to the rules rigidly, everybody would have been frustrated. That approach, which is a characteristic of your Lordships’ House and of the culture of this country, is absolutely crucial.
If there is one thing that this country has lost over a number of years, it is a degree of confidence in its own culture and the things that are important about it. When we think about relationships between people we think about the personalities of those who are involved. In a way, the culture of our community is the personality of this whole country—the personality of the whole group. I do not mean the symbols of culture such as art, flags and all those kinds of things but the way of being in the world of our community and country—a way in this country that was characterised by a degree of stability, integrity, respect, ethical behaviour and rules that were there for the purpose of relationships, not in order to dominate relationships. It was characterised by an attitude and approach that was open, not nationalistic but international, and respectful of people with different faiths and different approaches.
However, that did not mean that the faith of the people in this country was something that they did not believe in because it was just one of many. On the contrary, it was that degree of certitude, commitment and faith that made it possible to be open to others who had a different approach. Maybe it was even the fact that this island was not invaded for most of a thousand years that gave us the possibility of having that kind of confidence and being outgoing to others. In a sense, some of this has been lost as people have begun to feel that it is all about everybody having the same values—and we do not. There are those cultures that promote female genital mutilation. I do not accept that such a culture should be allowed to survive and thrive. We should speak against it. We should not necessarily attack it militarily, but we should try to make a change and realise that our values have something very important to contribute.
I finish by speaking of two things. First, the most reverend Primate has shown great leadership. I will give an example of a place where I think religious leaders could do so. In Jerusalem, at the moment, there is a deep split between Jewish nationalism within the country and—largely but by no means exclusively—Islamic Palestinians. But Christians have a stake in Jerusalem. If His Holiness, the Ecumenical Patriarch and the most reverend Primate were together to say to the Israeli Government and Palestinians, “This is not just a fight between the two of you. We have a stake in this as Christians throughout the world”, you would change the psychological dynamic from a fight between two to a relationship with a larger body of people who have a say—not because they want to govern or to rule, and not because they want to send in the legions of His Holiness, but rather because they want to change the dynamic into something fruitful.
I shall finish by saying this. I have mentioned your Lordships’ House as an example of our culture. I suspect that relatively few places in the world have a Parliament in which religious leaders sit as of right—but there is one at least, and it is Iran. It may be the case that your Lordships’ House in this country has a very particular role to play at this time, when hard power and military might are absolutely impotent in dealing with the challenge of the relationships between East and West, between Iran and the western world. With our experience we can show respect for others who have a different religious perspective but who value matters of ultimate faith and transcendence. We could show them, by building and developing relationship, we can make a difference. The most reverend Primate has given us the leadership; I trust we will follow.
Electoral Conduct
Lord Alderdice Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Alderdice
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Electoral Conduct, and its various recommendations.
Lord Alderdice (LD)
My Lords, as a result of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, we know that it will be five months until the next Westminster election. Those of us who observe the culture and feel of politics also know that this election will find immigration as one of the top priorities and concerns of the voters and therefore of the political parties. When there is this degree of polarisation in politics, not just in this country but much more widely, one cannot but be concerned that the conduct of the next election may not particularly distinguish politics in this country. That is because of the possibility that, in the conduct of the election, some of those involved—whether in newer or more traditional political parties—might expose many of our people to unseemly conduct, behaviour and remarks. It therefore seemed to me appropriate to ask Her Majesty’s Government what their response is to the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Electoral Conduct, which was chaired by Labour’s Natascha Engel MP, chair of the Backbench Business Committee in the other place.
It may be helpful to your Lordships’ House if I reprise the history of this report. Back in 2005, John Mann, the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, commissioned a report on anti-Semitism in elections, because there had been a number of complaints. The report was produced in 2006. There were some 35 recommendations. In particular, the report suggested that the Electoral Commission should draw up a contract of acceptable behaviour outlining the duty of all election candidates to exercise due care when addressing issues such as racism, community relations and minorities during political campaigning. In the Government’s 2007 response to that inquiry, they advised that the matter was one for the Electoral Commission. However, in its submission to the inquiry, the Electoral Commission advised the panel that it believed that codes beyond the reach of the law were unenforceable. The committee essentially concurred with this.
As time went on, John Mann was increasingly frustrated by the lack of action on the basis of that report. It was clear that there was reason to be worried about racism, sexism, homophobia and discrimination against candidates on the basis of their mental health. He commissioned an inquiry that would go much more widely into all aspects of electoral conduct where these matters might arise. I declare an interest, as one of the Members of your Lordships’ House who took part in that inquiry. It had participation from across our parties in the two Houses. Its aim was to investigate electoral conduct with a focus on discriminatory behaviour, to assess current rules, to uncover models of good practice and to make recommendations for change. At all times, we were explicitly clear that we did not seek to inhibit freedom of speech. The report included 11 obvious and self-evident basic principles for free speech in campaigning, which drew heavily on the report of my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, Political Speech and Race Relations in a Liberal Democracy, produced in the early 1990s. Its principles still stand.
The response to our call for evidence was strong. We secured 50 responses from a wide range of concerned parties including, but not limited to, domestic and international elections agencies, the police, academics, trade unions, councils, elected officials, community groups and leading NGOs. We held two oral evidence sessions. At these we heard disturbing stories of racism from former Minister Parmjit Dhanda and the honourable Member for Ilford North, Lee Scott MP. We also heard from political parties including UKIP, the SDLP and the Liberal Democrats. In fact, all the political parties represented in Parliament, with the exception of Respect, submitted evidence.
When our report was published in October 2013, it received public praise from the Speaker, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the President of the Liberal Democrats, the Chairman of the Conservative Party, the General Secretary of the Labour Party and key stakeholders. So there was a good deal of encouragement, but it seems to me that it is now time to ask Her Majesty’s Government what their response is.
There were four main areas, the first of which was policing, regulation and the law. The response from the Association of Chief Police Officers was extremely positive. It already had a strong set of plans and a good programme and it wrote to advise that it would be implementing nearly all our recommendations. However, we found that, while in many ways there was sufficient legal provision to address incidents of racism and discrimination in UK elections, the law was underused or, perhaps in some situations, misunderstood. We recommended that some of the language of electoral law might be updated. We were advised by the Law Commission that it was undertaking a consultation on such a change. It wrote to tell us that our recommendations would help in the design of its consultation. It would be helpful if my noble friend the Minister could indicate whether the Law Commission has made any representations to the Government.
The Commission for Racial Equality had been very helpful in producing guidance and demystifying the law in the past, but the successor body, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, had perhaps been less impressive in that regard. However, at our urging a meeting was held between the Minister, Helen Grant, the EHRC and the committee chair Natascha Engel. The Minister said that an application for funding from the EHRC would be carefully considered, because the EHRC had said that it would have to access a project fund if it was to be able to take forward work on electoral conduct and on a guide for local authorities, as that was outside its core business plan. It would be helpful if my noble friend could update us on the progress of that bid and any consultations that there have been.
Press and advertising are another key element of the problem. We addressed concerns about discrimination in the media, having heard evidence of homophobia, racism and anti-Semitism. Under the former Press Complaints Commission code, if a group of, for example, Muslims was subject to alleged discrimination, an individual from that group would be required to complain under clause 1—accuracy—of the code and not under the relevant part on discrimination. The committee saw this as illogical and outdated. Since the inquiry, we have made representations to the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee. At the end of September, we were told that updating the code would be a key priority for the newly formed Independent Press Standards Organisation. We believe that attempts to secure a sensible balance between the defence of freedom of expression and the protection from discrimination should be possible. It would be helpful if my noble friend could reassure me that Ministers will reiterate these concerns to IPSO.
Another concern is the development of new communications media, which enables broadcasting on the internet, and, of course, the use of Facebook, Twitter and so on. This is a challenge for us all and the issue was raised by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I declare an interest as a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. In its 13th report, Command Paper 8208, on party funding, the committee expressed a concern about the impact of new media that went beyond the question of funding. Do the Government have any thoughts on this issue?
The key agents in elections are the political parties themselves. In order to ensure that there is appropriate behaviour, a draft framework has been put together for the parties. We will continue to seek cross-party agreement. This is something with a historic precedent. In the 1990s, the three major parties at that time agreed a compact on how they would behave, which was subsequently extended to the nationalist parties. Now, however, we are in a situation where there are even more parties which are significant in the electoral process and which may be considered significant in this matter. If my noble friend the Minister could take back the group’s shared, cross-party desire for a draft framework agreed by the various parties, and for the Government to encourage the parties to reach such an agreement, it would be most welcome.
Finally, we registered a concern, which was also mentioned by the Committee on Standards in Public Life in its report, that non-party campaigning groups may become an increasingly significant aspect of elections in this country, as they have in the United States of America. The Committee on Standards in Public Life was looking at this question particularly in terms of party funding, but we believe that the ability of parties to depend on third parties to behave in a way that would not direct opprobrium and guilt towards the official party but would nevertheless be inappropriate behaviour is a significant dilemma. We would welcome an indication from my noble friend the Minister as to whether this is an issue that the Government are also monitoring and addressing in the upcoming elections. It is timely for the Government, having had the report for about a year, to now give us a response. In view of the upcoming election, such a response would be very welcome.
Strategic Defence and Security Review
Lord Alderdice Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Alderdice
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they plan to re-examine the Strategic Defence and Security Review.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, in January the Prime Minister informed the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy that work was beginning on the next strategic defence and security review—SDSR. This work is in its preparatory stages and will intensify after the general election for the post-election SDSR.
Lord Alderdice (LD)
I thank my noble friend for that information. The last SDSR took place in the context of a Westminster election and the global economic crisis. From the point of view of many of us, it was overly impacted upon by those things. Since then the situation has changed. The Middle East is dissolving into chaos; the European Union is in disarray; cyberaggression has increased exponentially; and in our relations with Russia, we have not only found difficulties over Syria, Crimea, and Ukraine, but also an increasing statement by Mr Putin of the strength of its nuclear weapons. In the light of this, can my noble friend assure me that during this review, this House will be given an opportunity of having a number of serious debates on the question before the completion of the review, not merely a post-hoc debate after decisions have been made and a posture adopted?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I cannot of course commit the next Government in terms of managing the business, but there is time for this House to have a debate on one or two of these issues before then. Since the 2010 SDSR was published, we published in 2011 a cybersecurity strategy, in 2012 a climate change risk assessment and in 2013 the Ministry of Defence’s report on global strategic trends. We are keeping pace as far as we can with all the expected and unexpected developments that the noble Lord mentions.
Anonymous Registration (Northern Ireland) (No. 2) Order 2014
Lord Alderdice Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, unfortunately there has been a fatality on the line from Cardiff, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, is unable to get here. At short notice I am moving this Motion, which was tabled in her name, based on my modest expertise on the transition to individual electoral registration; noble Lords will recall that I have moved somewhere around 30 SIs on the subject in the last 12 months. I shall speak also to the four other Motions standing in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on the Order Paper, which are on the draft Donations to Candidates (Anonymous Registration) Regulations 2014, the draft European Parliamentary Elections (Anonymous Registration) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2014, the draft Northern Ireland Assembly (Elections) (Amendment) Order 2014, and the draft Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2014.
As noble Lords may recall, the introduction of anonymous registration to Northern Ireland was first discussed in March, when we brought forward the first piece of legislation in this series. The five instruments before the Committee today mainly complete this process. Two further instruments are required, one of which is subject to the negative resolution procedure and the other of which has no necessary parliamentary procedure. We intend to make all the remaining instruments at the same time after these five instruments have been approved by Parliament.
Anonymous registration allows a person who is at risk to register to vote without their name and address being included on the electoral register. Persons with an anonymous entry and their proxies will be permitted to vote only by post and not in person in Northern Ireland.
Collectively, these five instruments apply the provisions introduced earlier this year across all elections in Northern Ireland, and make additional amendments to ensure that the system of anonymous registration will work effectively. Let me now briefly describe in turn what each of these instruments achieves.
The draft Anonymous Registration (Northern Ireland) (No. 2) Order 2014 makes minor and technical amendments to ensure that the process created by the first order is crystal clear in relation to postal proxy voters and tendered postal ballot papers. The amendments ensure that procedures for proxy postal voters and tendered postal ballot papers are consistent across all elections.
The draft Donations to Candidates (Anonymous Registration) Regulations 2014 relate to donations to candidates at parliamentary elections. They provide that, where a donor is making a donation to a candidate at a parliamentary election and that donor is anonymously registered, a certificate of anonymous registration issued within the UK will be treated as evidence that an individual has an anonymous entry in the electoral register.
The draft European Parliamentary Elections (Anonymous Registration) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2014 implement the system of anonymous registration in respect of European Parliamentary elections in Northern Ireland and mirror the provisions for parliamentary and local elections.
The draft Northern Ireland Assembly (Elections) (Amendment) Order 2014 makes amendments to ensure that the newly amended provisions on anonymous registration will work for Northern Ireland Assembly elections.
Finally, the draft Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2014 implement anonymous registration for UK parliamentary elections in Northern Ireland. The amendments to electoral registration for parliamentary elections will apply also to local and Northern Ireland Assembly elections. These regulations specify how applications for anonymous registration should be made and determined, the relevant court orders and injunctions that can be used to support an application, and the individuals who can provide attestations in support of anonymous registration applications.
The system of anonymous registration will come into force in Northern Ireland on 15 September 2014. Over the summer, we will continue to work with the Chief Electoral Officer, the PSNI and the Electoral Commission to ensure that there is full understanding of the introduction of anonymous registration.
I hope that noble Lords will agree that it is important to complete the package of legislation necessary to introduce anonymous registration across all elections in Northern Ireland. Anonymous registration is an important safeguard that allows vulnerable people to exercise their right to vote without fear or threat to their safety. I commend the instruments to the Committee.
Lord Alderdice (LD)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for stepping into the breach at very short notice, on this occasion to ensure that the regulations can go forward promptly and that everything is in place in good time for the elections in 2015. I welcome that.
However, many people looking on from outside may find it a little strange that, after 30 or 40 years in which peoples’ lives were very much at risk, including anyone coming into the public eye for any purpose, it is now, when one hopes that we are at the other side of the peace process, that we are introducing anonymous registration. To some extent, the reason is that it has been introduced in the rest of the United Kingdom and this order ensures that Northern Ireland is not out of kilter.
I hope that that turns out to be the only good reason for it. One worry of very recent times has been that, perhaps out of a fear of pressing the nuclear button of sectarianism between Protestants and Catholics and unionists and nationalists, some nefarious individuals have turned their attention to others who have come into the community from other parts of the European Union and elsewhere, and we have seen a rise in the kind of racism and xenophobia that we have not previously seen in Northern Ireland. Tragically, every few days, one sees intimidation of people from other parts of Europe and the world. I hope that some of the campaigns that we have been trying to develop in recent times, including the Unite Against Hate campaign and others, will have a positive effect that ensures that anonymous registration is merely a harmonisation measure and not one that is necessary for the situation in Northern Ireland.
However, in general terms, I welcome this and the other instruments, which will put the house in order in time for elections next year.
Lord McAvoy (Lab)
My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for stepping in at such short notice. He is welcome to the Northern Ireland brief, even though it might be temporary—but we never know what fate awaits us.
Her Majesty’s Opposition, in the spirit of consensus and bipartisanship over Northern Ireland, also support the statutory instruments. Like the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, I have an “however”: however, this has been promised for quite a while. It has been a year since the miscellaneous provisions Bill was passed. The point was rightly made at the time on all sides that we wanted parity on anonymous donations, for instance, and anonymous registration. Has the Minister been briefed on what assessment has been made of what progress, if any, has been made towards removing anonymous registration and the provisions for anonymous donors?
As ever, we are at a delicate time in Northern Ireland, with a conference due on Wednesday which, we hope, will tackle the real outstanding issues in Northern Ireland which are blocking further progress. However, within the confines of security, which we fully understand, I am trying to get a feel for what assessment the Northern Ireland Office has made of the temperature in Northern Ireland, what is the nature of those assessments and what they entailed. I am also trying to get a feel for how active Northern Ireland Office Ministers have been in Northern Ireland itself. We all want them to be proactive—carefully proactive, but proactive. I would hate to get a sense that, for the past year, they have just sat on the situation and have not made any assessment of progress towards agreement on such statutory instruments.
I hope that I am not being unfair to the Minister—he is only just here—but can he undertake to give us in writing a summary of what Northern Ireland Office Ministers have been doing over the past year? We need a picture of the Secretary of State’s engagement, if any, with the Parades Commission, because that is a really sore point on both sides of the community divide. I am not looking for revelation of issues or contacts that would stir up the pot, if you like, but we need to ensure collectively here that Northern Ireland does not feel that Westminster is not bothering, not looking at it urgently and taking not an offhand approach—that would be unfair—but a light touch, when it needs to be a wee bit firmer.
We need to find out what the community approach would be. Several people have expressed concern to me about anonymous registration and anonymous donors. It seems that, a year later, we have stood still. Perhaps I am being unfair through lack of knowledge, but I should like to get some picture of what the Northern Ireland Office has been doing. If the noble Lord is unable to answer now, as I fully understand, I would appreciate a report in writing, because if we are proceeding to normalisation, why are we not moving a wee bit faster? Everybody—the SDLP, the Ulster Unionists, the DUP, the Government—says that they want it. What progress is being made? I should appreciate a response.
Chilcot Inquiry
Lord Alderdice Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Alderdice (LD)
My Lords, I suppose that if one were to ask many members of the public for their memory of the political story of Iraq, they would probably say, “Well, in the United Kingdom, the governing Labour Party and the Official Opposition, the Conservative Party, supported the invasion, and the Liberal Democrats insisted on a UN resolution, which they did not get and they opposed the war as a result”. On that kind of narrative, one might well expect that I would be standing here wanting to find out the legal background—what really happened in past—in order to produce some kind of simplistic blame. It seems to me that that would be an extremely foolish thing to do.
First of all, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, said—and we must be grateful to him for securing this debate—it is a lot more complicated than that. Almost exactly 11 years ago to the week, on 15 February 2003, between 1 million and 2 million people came out to protest. They were not all Liberal Democrats or anything like it. There were Conservatives like Ken Clarke. There were Labour people, including Robin Cook, Tony Benn and many others, who had their reservations. Indeed, within the community as a whole, there was a great debate about this question. It was not simple, and I have no doubt that when Sir John Chilcot’s report finally is published it will be a thoughtful, complex and detailed report. I got to know him very well when he was at the Northern Ireland Office and I always admired his acuity of perception and his integrity of conduct, and the same could be said of his distinguished colleagues.
From my point of view, the purpose of this inquiry is something quite different. It is to try to understand how we got ourselves into such a difficulty in order that we can look to the future with better understanding of how to deal with the problems. I will give one example. At the time of the first Gulf War, which was permitted by UN Security Council Resolution 678, there was a great debate as to how far it might be prosecuted. Noble Lords will well recall a lot of discussion as to whether it should actually be prosecuted right through to Baghdad to get rid of Saddam or whether Resolution 678 did not permit it. I had a great argument with my old friend and colleague, now the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, on exactly this issue. It was my view that, with this particular guy in these circumstances, you needed to go the whole way to Baghdad and get rid of him. It seemed to me that to do anything other was not just a poor reading of Machiavelli but a poor judgment of the psychology of the person one was dealing with and the politics of the region. Paddy said, “No, no, no. That is not possible under UNSC Resolution 678. We cannot do that. We can just remove him from Kuwait”. Well, it is a bit ironic that so many years later it was UNSC Resolution 678 which was prayed in aid actually without a further activating resolution. If I was so hawkish—as I would have been deemed then—in the first Gulf War—why would I have spoken in your Lordships’ House in 2003 saying, “This is not the time to go ahead with it”? It is because situations change. I will come back to that because I believe it is the importance of the urgency of the Chilcot report.
The situation was that in the first Gulf War we had a huge coalition, there had been a clear breach, it obviously required military intervention, and it would have been possible to prosecute it through to the end. In the intermediate years, the Clinton Administration and others had tried to find negotiated ways of moving things forward. Indeed, as I said in your Lordships’ House on the occasion of that debate, there was a suspicion that the weapons inspectors were being put in place simply to try to produce a justification to return to Resolution 678. It seemed to me that it was not going to end well. It was not going to resolve the problems of the region and stabilise Iraq.
How does that relate to the situation now? Noble Lords will recall that Parliament, in debates in the other place and here, made an extraordinary decision that set the Prime Minister and the Government back on their heels on the question of Syria. It was a watershed decision, in my view, in that a Prime Minister and a Government had decided that they wanted to undertake a military intervention, and Parliament, with the overwhelming backing of the people, said, “No. That is not a direction in which we want to go”. It seems to me that this puts up for serious exploration our whole approach to military intervention as to when and how it should be undertaken. Should it always be with military force or are there other ways in which we should intervene? Should we ever be doing it on our own? Should it always require a UN Security Council resolution?
These are very serious questions, but not for the past—of course they are interesting for the past, and, as the noble and learned Lord said, perhaps for some students of history in the future. They are important questions for us in the present and over the next few years, not to apportion blame but to see if mistakes and misjudgments were made, and I think everybody is clear that there were, and to try to prepare ourselves—but not to deal with the last war. One of the mistakes often made by military commanders and politicians is that they prepare themselves better to fight the last war over again. Our job ought to be to become clearer about the changing dynamics of the Middle East and of other regions in order to better make judgments about how we, as a country, play our role in that complicated region and elsewhere in a time when military strength is no longer any guarantee of military success. That is why I believe that we need the report with some urgency. The situation in the Middle East and in other places is developing very quickly. We are uncertain how to proceed and we need to understand whether and how mistakes were made so that we can find a different way of working.
I have no doubt that one problem is civil servants being wary about what things should be redacted and what things should not. I was reading just yesterday a letter by Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the FCO’s deputy legal adviser who resigned; her resignation letter was published some time later. The redaction made at the time by the Foreign Office and later released through the press is quite interesting. I read the redaction and I read what was originally published, and I could not understand why on earth they had bothered to take out what they did, because it did not tell us anything that we did not know. I was not the least bit surprised because my own experience with many security and Civil Service documents is that when there is a great dust-up about what to release and what not to release, more often than not, although not all the time, when you read what is redacted, the fact that it was kept out—and it was clear that it was kept out—actually produced more suspicion that there was something really serious there. When you read it afterwards, you say, “What on earth was all the fuss about?”.
However, perhaps it is not that. Perhaps it is that our friends in the United States are very nervous about some of the conversations between the two Prime Ministers, Mr Brown and Mr Blair, and the President. I am a friend of the United States and I think we have an extremely important relationship, but good friends sometimes disagree honestly. Indeed, we are not good friends if all we ever have to say is that we support the United States. I hear this all the time with the Middle East peace process. What is the British Government’s policy? It is to listen to what the American policy is and agree with it. That is no help to our friends. We need to engage in a proper public debate about these issues and then be supportive.
Therefore, I appeal to my noble friend the Minister to help us understand why there is such a delay and to appreciate on behalf of the Government that early publication is not a matter of the past but an urgent requirement for the present and the future.
Crime: Sexual Violence
Lord Alderdice Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Alderdice
My Lords, I suppose it is a tragic inevitability that shooting, bombing, injuring and killing people violently is part of war, and there is often debate about which incidents of bombing, shooting or violence are within the moral or legal framework. However, there is no dispute that sexual violence in the context of war is outside all moral and legal limits. I believe that those who in engage in this kind of behaviour know perfectly well that they are outside what is morally acceptable—unless they have so dehumanised those whom they are abusing that they have largely lost their own humanity. We should be clear about this: there are no contexts in which this is acceptable, either to the overwhelming majority of victims who are women, or as we are increasingly seeing in Syria, the minority who are men, often young men.
That is why I am proud that our own Government have seized on this issue as one of the most important for the G8 and for our foreign policy. Can my noble friend assure me that, as the Foreign Secretary and colleagues move to try to engage in negotiations about a new international protocol on this issue, these crimes will be taken to the International Criminal Court if such a protocol is accepted? Can my noble friend also assure me that we shall see not just a legal change but, as my noble friend Lady Hamwee has said, a cultural change, which will ensure that those who engage in sexual violence can never be regarded as national heroes, but always as cowardly and brutal people who damage their own humanity as they damage that of their victims?
PACE Trial: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis
Lord Alderdice Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Alderdice
Like the noble Lord, Lord Winston, I am grateful to the noble Countess, Lady Mar, for giving us an opportunity to look at this question, although I have some doubts as to whether your Lordships’ House is the best place to evaluate scientific evidence and do the exploration. I think that repeated research by other colleagues and demonstration within the scientific community is the way forward. I declare a previous interest as a consultant psychiatrist in the NHS, where I treated a number of patients with these types of symptoms.
The history of medicine is that we have tried to clump together groups of symptoms which appear relatively regularly together, and seem to have indication of possible outcome, and maybe of management and treatment. However, these are temporary constructs. It is perfectly possible that they are a whole bunch of different disorders which overlap in various ways. Even to talk about it as a condition seems to be making certain presumptions. Certainly, to conclude that there is a definite organic basis, other than to say that in every disorder there are organic and psychological elements, does not mean that we dismiss the psychological—on the contrary. When we think, we can only do so because some things are going on in our brains, which are a physical substrate.
My own position would have to be that we really do not know what we are dealing with. We are dealing with a whole range of symptoms and complaints. We do not know the etiology. The prognosis is variable with different people. We must continue working as best we can.
In the mean time, it is terribly important that we try to evaluate how to manage the problems that people come along to us with. We do not properly understand the schizophrenias; that is a group of different disorders. Yet we still have to manage the large numbers of people with these problems. That is the case with these people who come along with post-exertional fatigue, memory difficulties, pains and so on.
When we try to do that, it is not uncommon for patients to tell us that such and such a thing helps and that such and such a thing does not. I am not a particularly strong advocate of CBT, as some colleagues know, but I remember when I was using CBT with some patients suffering from depression. They would come along and I would ask them to write a diary of what they were doing every half hour and evaluate it. They would say, “I do not feel like getting up in the morning. I am too depressed and I cannot get out of bed”. I would say, “Look, I know that you don’t feel like it, but please try to get out of bed, structure some activity for the day, do it on an hourly basis and let’s see how you are”. Hey presto, when they did that, the thing that they felt would not make them better actually did. They were surprised about this.
That is one of the dilemmas about what patients think will help. Sometimes they are intuitively right and sometimes they are intuitively mistaken. The only way that you can understand this is to do some work in a scientific way. That is what these colleagues in this paper have tried to do. Some of them will have had particular notions about etiologies, but the point is that they were simply looking at what worked and what did not. What is the outcome? The outcome is that CBT and graduated exercise training are helpful for some people to some extent, and more helpful than the other things which have been suggested. It is not helpful to everybody and it is probably not completely helpful to almost anybody but it is better than doing nothing and better than the other things that have been suggested. There are a lot of scientific tables and graphs but that is the basic outcome.
To me, that is good news because it gives us some indication of things that might be helpful. It also tells us that an awful lot more work is necessary to find out what we are dealing with. If somebody came along and said, “There are such things as chest diseases, we should treat them in such and such a way, and the cause is this”, we would say, “Yes, that is true but there is a difference between asthma and cancer”. They might say, “Oh, really? Well, let’s explore that”. We are at that kind of level with this set of symptoms.
It is really important that when people give themselves to scientific enterprise in this area that we do not pillory them for their efforts. They may come up with some outcomes that people do not want to believe or that are not very welcome. We psychiatrists are quite used to the idea that often people would rather have a physical explanation for things than a psychological one. It is dreadful if we encourage that by saying, “Well, of course it is not psychological”, as though somehow it is a smear on a patient to have psychological difficulties. We must be very careful about that. I do not suggest that Members of your Lordships’ House would do that but it is something that happens out there in the community and about which we must be careful.
I am glad that we have had the debate. I trust that we understand the very early stage we are at. It is good that there is some indication here: the paper demonstrates that CBT and GET are helpful, and probably more helpful than other things, but there is a lot more to do. We should encourage people to get into the research work, not just for the ideology issue but to find what helps, and we should not pillory people who come in because that only drives people out of the research. That is the last thing we want to see.
Behaviour Change: Science and Technology Committee Report
Lord Alderdice Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Alderdice
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, I pay tribute to the chairman of our committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, for her enthusiasm and for keeping us to the task, which was not easy because it wa s a very broad task. As she did, I also thank Professor Charles Abraham and the secretariat, who served us extremely well. I also declare my own interests as noted in the register and in the report: as a retired consultant psychiatrist and as president of ARTIS Europe, a research and risk analysis company.
One could pick up on many things in the report itself, but I would like to pick up two or three of its broad principal outcomes and apply them to areas that were not referred to in the report. In particular, I will look at the important work of government in foreign and Commonwealth affairs and in the Ministry of Defence. My reason for doing so comes out of the very principles that emerge from the report.
First, there was remarkably little research into how one might affect population behaviour change, as distinct from the behaviour change of individuals. I came to understand this over a number of years. My own background and training was in the understanding of individual psychology and psychopathology and in attempting to bring about behaviour change with individuals, but when I tried to apply some of those understandings to the political field, particularly in conflict resolution, while there were important elements of read-across there are also differences in the way that groups function. One of these was referred to in passing by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, when he said that culture was an important element. Culture is important for the individual but it is essentially a shared phenomenon. I sometimes liken culture in the group to the personality of an individual, but the same rules do not apply in an absolute read-across. Unless we do research that demonstrates an evidential outcome, we simply operate by our own prejudices and rule of thumb. I will come back to that, because we may come to wholly wrong conclusions on that basis.
The second thing that the report pointed out was that it is unlikely that change can be brought about by non-regulatory interventions on their own—that regulation is relevant and important. That is clearly true and cannot be ignored. That takes me to the question of defence and foreign and Commonwealth affairs. Why? One thing that has become manifestly clear, if it was not clear before, is that the capacity of this country and others to create real change in the international community by the use of force is limited, at best, and ever more limited. It is not at all clear that we yet have an international process of law that can enforce itself, despite considerable efforts which I very much hope continue.
The capacity of the most powerful country in the world, the United States of America, to bring about its wishes by the use of hard power has been strikingly unimpressive in a whole series of events. Even if they had been successful, the strategic defence and security review and the more recent announcement of the reduction of our armed services to something like 80,000 full-time persons demonstrates that even if it were possible to make those changes, those possibilities are no longer open to this country because we do not have the capacity to enforce. That means that, however much in principle we would like to include regulation and force, in matters of defence and particularly in diplomacy and foreign and Commonwealth affairs, we are forced to look at non-regulatory methods—nudge, sometimes weaker than nudge, sometimes stronger than nudge but certainly non-regulatory and non-force elements must be brought to the fore.
I found it surprising when I started to look at these matters that the United States of America, which has much the strongest capacity to use force, spends enormous amounts of money—directly through the Department of Defense and through the various establishments of the navy, the air force, the marines and the army—commissioning external research. I remember, when I was training, being struck by the attributions at the bottom of many psychological papers that they were paid for by American defence organisations. However, in this country, where we do not have the capacity to use force, almost no money is spent on commissioning external research by the Ministry of Defence or other organisations. At best, it is modest and, in many cases, it is internal. One thing that we know scientifically is that if we do the research internally and do not share it with the rest of the scientific community, validation is doubtful.
It is critical, particularly in those areas of governance where enforcement is at its weakest, that we undertake research to find out what is the best that we can achieve in that way. Here I come to the non-intuitive outcomes of the limited research that has been done. Let me give a couple of examples.
In the Middle East, there are those who believe that change can be brought about by economic improvements for the population. For example, if we take Palestinians who seem highly unlikely to be able to achieve right of return, if they were given some resource—perhaps even a lot—would that help them to get over their problems? A couple of my colleagues went to do some research on the matter. They interviewed people at all levels of the community on the Palestinian side and the Israeli side and inside and outside the community and asked them some questions. First, if they did not get right of return, would some economic reward pay them for that? Secondly, if they did not get right of return, would lots of economic reward help them? Thirdly, if they did not get right of return, but the Government of Israel said: “We understand the pain that you have gone through as a community because of the decisions that we have taken and felt that we had to take”, what would their response be?
The realpolitik—those from outside such circumstances—would likely say, as they frequently have, that economic development in such a circumstance is bound to be helpful. The results of the research, however, were that when economic betterment was offered as an alternative to right of return, the response was anger; when substantial economic benefit was offered instead of right of return, the anger was much increased; and when no economic benefit was offered but there was a degree of apology and understanding, the response was that that was the basis for a conversation. There are many other examples of research that have demonstrated that the rule-of-thumb, rational approach that we might adopt may not always be correct and may even be counterproductive.
I know that the Minister has a particular interest in defence, development and foreign and Commonwealth affairs. Given the report’s clear indication that research into how we change populations rather than individuals is lacking and should be funded, and that in the areas that I am speaking of, force and regulation are not serious options, are the Government prepared to look more thoughtfully at how the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office might address questions of population and behaviour change?