King’s Speech
Lord Archbishop of York Excerpts(1 year ago)
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The Archbishop of York
My Lords, from these Benches I too express our sadness at the news of the death of Lord Judge and offer prayers and condolences to his family. I look forward with others to the speeches of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, and the noble and learned Lords, Lord Houchen of High Leven and Lord Bailey of Paddington.
The focus of my speech is devolution, looking particularly at devolution in and within the regions of England, not least because devolution and devolved government allow us to seek consensus in our decision-making, and therefore to be better able to take a longer view, which in turn is the best way of tackling some of the huge issues facing us that were mentioned in the gracious Speech: the greening of the economy; poverty; and criminal justice. Yesterday, the order was laid by the Government for the establishment of the mayoral combined authority for York and North Yorkshire, the area where I live and serve. This is very good news for the north and is the first deal of its kind that includes a large rural area in combination with a small city, and therefore is an opportunity for a new model that does not require a big city for its success.
I know, or at least I think I know, that I do not need to tell this House about the benefits of this kind of devolution. The understanding and representation of local needs allow for good value for the money spent and it is something we have often discussed. Certainly, in York and North Yorkshire, a regional view is required to understand the area’s huge variety and opportunities, but also its inequalities, and to address them. What is needed in our Government is consensus and longer-term planning, which is the sort of thing devolved government can deliver. Last week I was with people who have been working on this in York and North Yorkshire, and I was struck most by the incredible renewed hopefulness and togetherness that longer-lasting change could be achieved. This will renew our regional identity and enable us to better face issues of huge inequality. In turn, therefore, it will tackle the hopelessness that so often leads to crime.
I know today’s theme is not transport but that is inextricably bound up with the conversation about devolution. I welcome the designated powers and funding allocated as part of the deal that have been a success in other cities. However, transport is the most contentious part of all devolution work and, to state the obvious, the failure to join up the east and the west in national-scale transport projects remains a very serious issue for all of us who live in, but sometimes struggle to travel across, the north. The Network North proposals given in lieu of HS2, and announced yesterday, feel like an afterthought. They were announced so quickly that they eluded consultation. They do not seem to point to a well-measured decision that prioritises levelling up or investment in the north. Although the gracious Speech said that the most frequently taken journeys are prioritised, it is unfortunate that those journeys are mostly and most frequently made by car. Whatever anyone feels about HS2, I suggest that the contrast in functioning transport systems within regions and between them demonstrates a problem with the length of our view.
We have heard in the gracious Speech the legislative ambitions of the Government for this forthcoming Session, many of which I look forward to engaging with, as do my fellow Bishops on these Benches, including the Media Bill. Although I am glad to see that the measures trailed over the weekend around homelessness were not brought forward, there are other worrying inclusions, such as the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill and the announcement of new oil and gas licences. We on these Benches will be looking at all this in detail as it emerges.
What is missing is any recognition of the serious hardship that families are currently facing. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s most recent statistics note almost a million children in destitution, triple that from 2017. The Trussell Trust is expecting its worst winter ever and is planning to provide more food parcels than ever before. We need to take a longer view. We need to stay awake to the persistent and debilitating inequalities that exist in our nation, and to the danger of dividing communities with polarised voices. These things will get better only if we take a longer view, build cross-party consensus and change the way we do our politics. We look forward to taking opportunities to work together in this House and in other places to engage with this as we move forward.
Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Lord Archbishop of York Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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The Archbishop of York
My Lords, like most Bishops from these Benches, I have stories to tell; stories of doing jigsaws in Sandringham on Sunday evenings and of barbeques in the woods at Sandringham in the middle of January—I even have a slightly scurrilous story about healing the Queen’s car. Perhaps I will tell it.
I had preached in Sandringham parish church. We were standing outside and the Bentley was there to get the Queen. It did not start. It made that throaty noise cars make in the middle of winter when they will not start, and everybody stood there doing nothing. I was expecting a policeman to intervene, but nothing happened. Enjoying the theatre of the moment, I stepped forward and made a large sign of the cross over the Queen’s car, to the enjoyment of the crowd—there were hundreds of people there, as it was the Queen. I saw the Queen out of the corner of my eye looking rather stony-faced, and thought I had perhaps overstepped the mark. The driver tried the car again and, praise the Lord, it started. The Queen got in and went back to Sandringham, and I followed in another car. When I arrived, as I came into lunch, the Queen said with a beaming smile, “It’s the Bishop—he healed my car”. Two years later, when I greeted her at the west front of Chelmsford Cathedral, just as a very grand service was about to start and we were all dressed up to the nines, she took me to one side and said, “Bishop, nice to see you again; I think the car’s all right today, but if I have any problems I’ll know where to come.”
When I became the 98th Archbishop of York, during Covid, I paid homage to the Queen by Zoom conference. I was in the Cabinet Office; everyone had forgotten to bring a Bible, including me, but there was one there—which is kind of reassuring. Just as the ceremony was about to begin, the fire alarm went off. The Queen was at Windsor Castle, but we all trooped out of the Cabinet Office, on to the road, and were out there for about 20 minutes until they could check that it was a false alarm and we could go back in. When I went back into the room, there was the screen, with Her late Majesty waiting for things to begin again. I do not know why I find myself returning to that image of her, faithful watching and waiting through those very difficult times. That was a very small part of a life of astonishing service.
The other thing I have noticed in the last couple of days is that we are all telling our stories. Yesterday, I found myself sharing stories with somebody in the street. I at least had had the honour of meeting Her late Majesty; this person had never met her, but we were sharing stories. I said, “Isn’t it strange how we need to tell our stories? It’s not as if she was a member of our family.” Except she was. That is the point. She served the household of a nation. For her, it was not a rule but an act of service, to this people and to all of us.
I remind us, again and again, that that came from somewhere: it came from her profound faith in the one who said,
“I am among you as one who serves.”
The hallmark of leadership is service, watchfulness and waiting. It was her lived-in faith in Jesus Christ, day in and day out, which sustained, motivated and equipped her for that lifetime of service. How inspiring it was last night and this morning to see the baton pass to our new King, King Charles, in the same spirit of godly service to the people of a nation.
Her Majesty the Queen died on 8 September, the day on which the blessed Virgin Mary is remembered across the world and the Church. Another Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, said of her when she knew she would be the mother of the Lord:
“Blessed is she who believed that the promises made to her would be fulfilled”.
Shot through all our tributes in this House and another place, and across our nation, is that which we have seen, especially as it was only on Tuesday—I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, for reminding us—that the Queen received a new Prime Minister. Can it really be possible? She served to the end—a life fulfilled.
I will finish with a handful of her words. This is what the Queen wrote in a book to mark her 90th birthday, reflecting on her faith in Jesus Christ in her life:
“I have indeed seen His faithfulness.”
I am not supposed to call noble Lords “brothers and sisters”, but dear friends, we have seen her faithfulness too, and we see it now in our new King. May Her late Majesty the Queen rest in peace and rise in glory. God save the King.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, I rise with no sense of provocation in following the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, but, when our new King spoke to the country last night, he mentioned a number of new responsibilities for the Prince of Wales and for his wife. He too had taken on a new responsibility from his mother—the Duke of Lancaster. I wear the tie today of the Association of Lancastrians in London because Her Majesty the Queen, throughout her long life, was our patron. Many noble Lords will have been at dinners where the toast was to the Queen, and heard someone in the audience say, “the Duke of Lancaster”. That responsibility as Duke of Lancaster is where I begin my remarks.
In the 1960s and 1970s, I had the honour and pleasure of working for two Prime Ministers, Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan. Both affirmed what has been said by all the living former Prime Ministers: what a comfort, guidance and help it was to them in doing their job to have the opportunity of an audience with the Queen, with no leaks, briefings or anything else—just the benefit of her wisdom.
The nearest I got to finding out anything about it was when I accompanied Jim Callaghan to visit President Mobutu in what was then Zaire. In advance of our visit, Jim told me that, when Mobutu had come on a state visit to London, he was put up at Buckingham Palace. It was only after he had arrived, and his suite was ensconced there, that they found he had brought a dog with him, which had come through without quarantine for rabies. Jim said that, quite often when meeting the Queen, she would refer to “That dreadful man who nearly gave the corgis rabies”. I wondered how this would be handled when we met President Mobutu. Sure enough, when Jim and the President met, he said, “And how is Her Majesty?” “Very well, Mr President”, said Jim, “She speaks of you often”.
The other memory, which again ties in with the Queen’s interests, is going to a Privy Council meeting at Windsor, after which she kindly invited the three privy counsellors present for lunch. Before lunch she invited us into her study. Two things stuck in my memory. One was that on her desk was a photograph of her sister, Princess Margaret. The other, as has been referred to, was the BAFTA that she won for her performance at the opening of the Olympics. That epitomises two of her strong personal virtues: her commitment to family, and a sense of humour that did not take all of majesty entirely seriously.
I have one final reflection. I was alone in my office on Thursday evening, with the television on, when Huw Edwards suddenly interrupted what he was saying and said, “It’s just been announced that the Queen is dead.” I was shocked at how sad I was. I have worked around Whitehall and Westminster for over 50 years, and you become fairly hard-boiled to the passing of various personalities around this village. However, I really felt a sadness—I thought, “You’re getting soft, McNally”—but I found over the next 24 or 48 hours that that emotion, that initial feeling that she is gone and feeling sad about it was shared by millions of people in this country and around the world. In a way, that is the biggest tribute to a life of service that any words can convey. It was that we will miss her and that service, that dedication and that example but, in so doing, we know that she has worked so hard to pass that baton on to our new King, so that we can with confidence say, “God save the King.”
Age of Criminal Responsibility Bill [HL]
Lord Archbishop of York Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, in rising to support the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia—and, indeed, pledging the support of the church to this campaign—I need to declare an interest: I was a child once and got into some scrapes. Now I am a parent and in the work I do hardly a week goes by when I am not in schools. Indeed, last year I had the sad but very moving honour of opening a garden of remembrance in the diocese where I serve in east London for young people who were the victims of, indeed had been killed by, knife crime. So I do not underestimate the seriousness of the crimes that we are talking about, nor the fact that children and young people do commit them.
It is often said nowadays that children grow up too quickly. I wonder if we have rather short memories. Although there are invidious and unspeakable pressures on children today, it was only a century or so ago that many of our children—who are now safely tucked up in our primary schools—were going out to work in pretty difficult and challenging conditions. Until 1875, a 12 year-old could have sex legally in this country. It was changed that year to 13. Since then, over the past 150 years, a succession of laws and protocols have recognised that with regard to all sorts of things, from smoking cigarettes to going to the cinema to watching certain sorts of films to sexual intercourse itself, we grow and develop gradually.
The decision about when someone is an adult is best made looking back from a point where there can be certainty or at least widespread agreement that at this age—it varies for different activities; it is often 16, sometimes 18—this person really has developed and is able to take responsibility for who they are and what they do. So why, in the case of criminal responsibility, do we make the decision speculatively, hoping that it might be the case that because there is some general growing sense of what is right and wrong, that person so knows what they are doing that they can be held culpable for their actions as if an adult and in a court of law?
But a child of 10 is just that—a child—not yet at that point where there could be such widespread agreement about their ability to know the consequences of their actions, nor developed morally or socially, so that we could be sure that they know what is right. That is why the law does not let them buy cigarettes or watch certain films or go to bed with each other. Therefore, when crimes are committed—for they are still crimes even if the child is no longer labelled a criminal—to deal with them in a court of law not only contradicts every other measure we have made, not only offends against common sense, not to mention the day-to-day experience most of us have as parents and grandparents, but it makes—and perhaps this is the biggest reason for supporting the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia—any possibility of rehabilitation or amendment of life that much harder. Of course, we agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that this is a civilised society, but this legislation diminishes us. As has already been referred to more than once, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has called on the United Kingdom to raise the age of criminal consent. Quite simply, we should heed that call.
My right reverend friend the Bishop of Derby made this point well in a previous debate on this matter: there are interconnected social and familial roots which combine to make us who we are. Here, the consistent teaching of the church is at odds with a society that by defining everyone as individual misses the deeper, interdependent influences and relationships that form our personhood. As my right reverend friend said:
“Human beings are formed through relationships”.
Crime tends to happen, he said,
“when relationships go wrong or are handled destructively”.
Do not therefore curse the fruit if the soil in which the tree is planted is poisoned and unkempt. To jump to calling a 10 year-old a criminal may play well to the gallery of a certain sort of public opinion that too quickly craves a scapegoat and an easy answer, but misses what my right reverend friend then called,
“the science of social formation”.—[Official Report, 8/11/13; col. 483.]
That science is about where someone is made a person, particularly in the family but also in schools, churches and other faith groups and community groups.
Where this breaks down, criminal behaviour is of course not inevitable; but where crime occurs in those so young, these influences—or the lack of them—must be taken into account. Furthermore, as has been mentioned, neurological and other scientific advances illustrate that maturity in young people, especially boys, is slower than we may have thought. The male brain carries on developing until the age of about 25. Many of us wish that it would carry on for a bit longer still. To brand a 10 year-old as a criminal therefore fails to understand who that person is and who they are becoming, and our collective responsibility for that. It also risks excluding the possibilities of finding better ways to work with them to ensure that such crimes are never committed again, not just by that person but in the whole of our society. So to my mind even a move to 12, which I wholeheartedly support, is just a step in the right direction. As in France, where the age is 13, Italy, where it is 14, Denmark, where it is 15, and Spain, where it is 16, there are other steps which I believe we should take.
Jesus famously said of those who nailed him to the cross:
“Father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing”.
He was speaking to adults. How much more should those words apply to children? We can still abhor the crime. We can still, where necessary, impose compulsory measures of supervision and care, and in rare and extreme cases—like that of Jamie Bulger’s killers, which has been mentioned—we could still impose long-term detention in secure accommodation. But that would be part of a care and welfare proceeding, rather than a custodial punishment imposed in a criminal court. In other words, our starting point and our hope would be that as this child develops, because they are children and are still developing, they would come to a point where they would truly know what they had done and truly be enabled to live a different life.
Forgiveness is never just wiping the slate clean, as if a human being were simply a vessel to be emptied or, for that matter, something to be discarded or excluded—nor does forgiveness fail to take crime seriously. Instead, by holding and nurturing someone within a new set of relationships, it means believing that the future can be different. It is for that different future for children who offend that I support the Bill and hope that it is taken forward.
Legal Aid: Social Welfare Law
Lord Archbishop of York Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Faulks
I am indeed aware of the noble Lord’s commission and its report on the future of advice and legal support on social welfare law. Indeed, I answered a debate on the subject on 25 February this year. As I told the House, we keep the position under review and are keen that there should be effective mechanisms to help individuals. However, it was made clear in the Cabinet Office review of the not-for-profit social welfare advice sector that while the Government accept the role they have in supporting the sector there is a need for the sector to adapt to the new funding realities. Indeed, that was very much acknowledged in the noble Lord’s report and during the course of contributions made in that debate.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, I, too, should like to make reference to the Low commission. The church, faith communities and charities are all too keenly aware of the impacts of some of the cuts in legal aid on the poorest communities in our country. Sometimes a professional lawyer is needed. Would the Minister still regard the proposals of the Low commission for a nationally resourced strategy to provide support and legal advice as an important priority?
Lord Faulks
My Lords, as I said in response to the debate, it was a valuable contribution. The LASPO reforms were implemented only in April 2013; it is relatively early days. We are considering carefully the effects of these reforms. We have not ruled out the possibility of further changes but, at the moment, the various steps we are taking are helping to ensure that those who need representation are receiving it.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Archbishop of York Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I think that the correct medical term for my condition is imposter syndrome. I have suffered from that for a long time. How could a boy from Southend who was not brought up going to church and who, aged 11, fell the wrong side of the line and went to a secondary modern school end up sitting on these red Benches and speaking in this House? Because of this, I want to say something today about the place of education in the life of our nation. However, I must begin by thanking your Lordships for the welcome I have received in this House and the staff and officers of the House for showing me the ropes. I also pay tribute to John Gladwin, my predecessor as Bishop of Chelmsford—he is well known to many of your Lordships—and to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, who first took a punt on me 10 years ago when he invited me to be Bishop of Reading. These and many others are people who believed in me and, as I shall go on to say, without affirmation none of us can live well.
The diocese of Chelmsford, where I serve, is 100 years old this year. We have recently enjoyed splendid visits from Her Majesty the Queen and his Grace the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. The diocese is vast and varied, from the Olympic park in Stratford—yes, the London Olympics were in the Chelmsford diocese, as I like to tell the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London—to the end of Southend pier; from Tilbury to Harwich; and from Harlow to Saffron Walden. We are the second largest diocese in the Church of England and, without doubt, the most diverse. And we are in good heart. Many churches in east London and Essex are growing. More and more people want to engage with the possibility of faith and are rooting around for a set of values and a moral compass that shape and direct human flourishing.
As the church of this land, we exist first and foremost to make Christ known, but where Christ is known there is joy and well-being and this is something that people notice, particularly in our schools. One of the few things that parents and politicians agree on is that they want education to be about more than results. Ethos is what everyone is after, but how is it achieved? Most would agree that it comes from a common set of values, articulated by the head and shared by staff, governors, pupils and parents. As Madeleine Bunting wrote some years ago:
“This is where faith schools can have an advantage. They can fall back on a well-known, religious narrative to which there is still considerable adherence in some form. As the last census showed”,
over 50% of people in this country,
“still describe themselves as Christian; that may not mean going to church but it may mean wanting children to grow up with broadly Christian values”.
It is not that other schools cannot achieve this; of course they can, but it may be harder:
“Secular ethical traditions are honourable but they lack the familiarity, the symbols, the narratives and histories that bring the abstract to emotional life”.
Those are her words, not mine, and she was writing in the Guardian, not the usual champion of faith-based schools.
In Newham, the most culturally and ethnically diverse borough in the country, the diocese of Chelmsford has recently accepted an invitation to be a co-sponsor of—it is not a very snappy title—the London Design and Engineering University Technical College. Although pupils at this school will receive the very best technical and practical training available, all the school’s sponsors agree that that is not enough for either the modern workplace or the communities that we want to build. Religious education will therefore be given a high priority on the curriculum, for the trustees recognise that it is impossible to understand and inhabit the modern world, especially in east London, without a critical appreciation of faith and, even more than that, a mature spiritual, moral, social and cultural worldview. Moreover, good religious education has been shown to be one of the best ways of countering religious extremism.
Consequently, one of the first things that the school is doing is recruiting a chaplain. To me as a secondary modern schoolboy, it has always seemed rather strange that in English public schools, where many of our political class send their children, the presence of a chaplain is deemed essential, their role is understood and their contribution prized, yet in the state system this is seen as either irrelevant or an excessive luxury. If we want our children to be mature citizens of a cohesive multi-ethnic and multi-faith society, and if we really want to combat extremism by helping each of us to understand and appreciate the other and to love the stranger in our midst, we may need to think again.
Down the road in Dagenham, a community school that was struggling two years ago has become a Church of England school. I have visited it twice. Within 18 months of it reopening, with basically the same staff but a new set of values, a recent report has said that these values have transformed,
“the quality of relationships and effectiveness of learning within the school”.
This school, too, has a chaplain.
As this care needs to span the whole of a child’s upbringing, the diocese has recently pioneered a childcare venture called sparrows. We aim to support and strengthen churches and communities by providing high-quality, mixed-delivery childcare with Christian distinctiveness in church settings. This will provide the places that the new scheme to pay for childcare announced in the gracious Speech will make possible.
In my own life, I have experienced the best and worst of education. The school I went to, though good and well run in its own way, had pretty basic expectations. You left at 15 and got a job—“Bishop of Chelmsford” was all the job centre had when I went—and you took CSEs not O-levels. Clever children went somewhere else. The choice had already been made. I somehow managed to get three O-levels. As a consequence, I was considered at my school to be something of an intellectual. However, three O-levels were not enough to swap to the grammar school which had a proper sixth form. Believing I was capable of more, but not being in an environment where more was on offer, with two friends I enrolled in the sixth form of the secondary modern girls school next door. Since a school, whatever its title, is only as good as its teachers—although various politicians over the years do not seem to have grasped this fact—I found myself in an environment where teachers believed in me and saw my potential. Under the affirming gaze of their encouragement, I flourished and became, I think, only the second or third person from that school to get a degree.
Human beings need affirmation to live well. That attitude of believing and encouraging needs to encompass family, school, community and church. I was blessed to receive that affirmation in my family and eventually through that school. Without it, I do not know where I would be. The best schools—church schools serving their local communities and all sorts of others schools as well—know this. The proposed introduction of the so-called Cinderella law, which will criminalise the emotional abuse of children for the first time, is very welcome, for not only do thousands of children suffer in this way, but the need for this Bill is the shadow side of what the church believes should be at the centre of all educational policy and praxis: namely, that dogged and persistent determination to value and affirm every child and to nurture the God-given potential in everyone by giving them the greatest gift of all, which is the knowledge that they are valued and loved.
This is the Christian ethos that makes our work distinctive: you are valued not because of your birth, wealth or achievement, but because you are. Of course, it is our greatest desire that children receive this affirmation in their home, but the need for this law sadly reminds us that this is not always the case. It also reminds us that our schools should be places where this affirmation is commonplace. That will lead not only to better results but to a more loving and cohesive society. I am able to love and affirm others in their difference and their diversity, with their different gifts, cultures, faiths and personalities, because I have seen and received love and affirmation myself. It is therefore vital that resources for much needed school places go to where there is greatest need, and the Church of England stands ready to help the Government open new schools and develop pre-school childcare so that more places can be provided with the same high standards.
Coupled with my interest in the arts and with issues of peace and justice, I hope that my experience as someone who did not get an education the easy way, and who now leads a huge and diverse diocese, will be of service to this House and this nation as we seek to build a fairer education system where there is opportunity for all, especially for the poor and the excluded—and a set of values upon which a fruitful, cohesive and fairer society can be built. I do not know how to end speeches without saying “Amen”—so I will say thank you.