Magna Carta

Lord Bew Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the excellent maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth. If, as he says, he owes something to the inspiration of the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, I can assure him that he is not the only person in this House who feels the same way. It was clear that, as a former professor of law, the noble Lord is extremely well equipped to discuss the legacy of Magna Carta. He brings to this House experience of, and a contribution to, the political life of Wales, and also to the charitable sector in Wales, which is enormously valuable. Noble Lords have heard the first of what I hope will be many decisive and helpful interventions from the noble Lord.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, for her Question, and her keen interest in the plans for 2015. I speak as the co-chair of the Speakers’ advisory group for the 2015 anniversaries. I share the post with Peter Luff, MP, from the House of Commons. I pay tribute briefly to Tristram Hunt, MP, who has for the past several months been the Commons co-chair of that committee, but who has recently had to resign because of his promotion to shadow Education Secretary. If, as I very much hope, the celebrations in 2015 turn out to be an event of significance and importance, that will owe something to the work of Tristram Hunt in the past few months.

There are currently seven Peer members and six MP members of this group, and we have additional support from two external members—Canon Jane Hedges from Westminster Abbey and Professor David Carpenter from King’s College London. As part of Parliament Week 2013, on 19 November Professor Carpenter will give a lecture in Portcullis House on “Magna Carta and the emergence of Parliament”, which we hope Members will wish to attend.

The advisory group has been established to act as a consultative body to support and advise the Speakers and officials on matters relating to the anniversary programme, and we are working to develop a set of activities to run throughout 2015. The group assists parliamentary officials in fulfilling ambitions to deliver an accessible, innovative and engaging programme. The advisory group considers and comments on proposals put forward by officials of both Houses for the anniversary programme, ensures a voice for the Members within the programme, monitors associated risks, and will ultimately participate in the evaluation process. Very importantly, the group advocates for the 2015 programme externally and across both Houses. To that end, I am glad to see here today the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord McNally, whose contribution to the work of our committee has already been outstanding. I am enormously in their debt.

Any critical decisions, in particular those relating to finances, are additionally passed through the usual House committee procedures. Although we have plans for a very full programme for 2015 covering educational, ceremonial and showcase events, much of this work remains in the nascent stages, so it is not yet possible for me to give full details of programme content at this point. However, I am moved to respond to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and to say that I fully understand the points that she made. We are endeavouring to deliver something that she will recognise as satisfactory. We are focused on that and are determined not to disappoint her, if I may put it like that. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, may be able to give some further detail in the concluding remarks of this debate. We very much wish to outline our desire to use these important and historic moments as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to increase public understanding and appreciation of the tradition and evolution of Parliament.

Beyond Magna Carta, the 2015 programme will commemorate the important anniversaries of the de Montfort Parliament, which can be seen as the beginning of a tradition which led to the House of Commons, and we will also have the anniversaries of Agincourt, Waterloo and the death of Churchill. When Churchill succumbed to a stroke in 1965 he interrupted the 750th and 700th anniversary plans for that year with a number of last-minute alterations and cancellations needed. Particularly in this Chamber, where many of Churchill’s most celebrated later speeches were given, it is of tremendous importance that we pay attention to the 50th anniversary of his death. I assure Members that the advisory group is mindful that all these anniversaries are marked appropriately. For instance, we will support the Churchill Alliance with its 2015 plans and are currently exploring the possibility of working with the History of Parliament Trust on an event to commemorate Members who fought at Agincourt.

Furthermore, we have chosen to use the medieval moments as a stepping stone into the whole story of our democratic heritage. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, is quite right. This is a complicated story. We want to use this approach to highlight other significant events that have led to the rights and representation that we enjoy today. We will develop partnerships which enable us to talk to communities across the United Kingdom about their local contributions to our national story, picking up on key moments and events on both a local and national level to tell the wider narrative of democratic evolution.

In the information pack that Members have received there is a very elegant St Albans Magna Carta lecture by Professor Vernon Bogdanor. He makes the point that, for example, in the 17th century the Levellers employed concepts from Magna Carta as a means of putting pressure on the king. That is an example of the appropriation of Magna Carta in the struggle for change in our country. There is of course a vastly important tradition of legal commentary that dates from the 17th century which might be seen as a similar attempt to assert the rule of law against the divine right of kings. The most celebrated example from the 19th century was referred to by Professor Malcolm Chase in a lecture on the Chartists given in the last fortnight in Speaker’s House, at the invitation of the All-Party Group on Archives and History. He pointed to the way in which the Chartists had again appropriated the language of the Magna Carta in a similar way to the Levellers, as part of a particular struggle.

We are trying to develop a partnership with the Riverside Theatre in Newport which I hope will work with us on a project to mark the important contribution of the Chartists. As well as stand-alone events such as this, the programme offers large-scale join-in opportunities for organisations. These will include Parliament Week, which in 2015, after a year of looking back, will take the theme, “What will the next 800 years look like?”, and will have the specific aim of engaging young people in forward thinking about the future of democracy. We envisage that by taking this broader approach we will be better able to deliver a programme which is directly relevant to communities across the whole United Kingdom.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, was quite correct to say that we have a problem. It is not so much that people are fundamentally questioning the institutions of liberal democracy in our society—in some ways the intellectual questioning of the institutions of liberal democracy has never been at a lower level, and was more strongly contested 150 years ago than it is today. However, because of events that we are all familiar with, which have lowered the standing of Members of Parliament in the eyes of the public, we have a problem with the perception of Parliament in broader society.

As an historian I am acutely aware of the power of history to provide lessons for our own time. Our long democratic heritage is something which we should be duly proud of and I believe we can use these anniversaries to raise awareness of the work and institutional value of both Houses to a range of new audiences. More specifically, many of our proposed activities in 2015 are designed for young people, whether in school, university, or informal settings. It is not a question of telling a naïve story about the growth of our democracy. The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, explained very crisply exactly what the relationship is between Magna Carta and the subsequent evolution of the rule of law and democracy in our country. We will be trying to adhere to the same degree of crispness, elegance and accuracy in presentation in all that we do. I conclude by saying that it is our hope that we will succeed in 2015 in not disappointing the noble Baroness.