Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

My Lords, I support the amendments to which I have put my name and agree with everything that both noble Lords have said so far.

When the Higher Education and Research Bill was first introduced, both Ministers pointed out that the environment in which higher education takes place has changed dramatically in recent years, and indeed it has. Very large numbers of students now take out large loans in the belief, and with the confidence, that the institutions they attend have in some sense been guaranteed by government—that what they are doing is safe in that they will be able to complete their studies. Fortunately, in most cases that is true, but of course it is not always or necessarily true. Anybody who looks at the experience in other countries will realise that institutions do fail, and indeed some of our non-degree-awarding institutions have failed in the past. The Competition and Markets Authority says cheerfully on its website that the sign of a healthy sector is that some exit occurs. Exit sounds quite cool—unless you happen to be one of the students in an exiting institution.

At the same time as this Bill is going through, the Technical and Further Education Bill is being debated, mostly in the Moses Room. As I attend the sittings of both Bills, part of the time I whinge but mostly it is a very informative exercise because we now have a tertiary sector as much as anything else. However, the protections being introduced for students in further education colleges go well beyond anything that has been specified for students in higher education, and that is highly regrettable. It is really important that in this new and changed environment, we realise that students need new and changed protection.

To give an example, for a long time the training sector has had many quite small, and sometimes quite large, rapidly changing institutions. Just before these Bills were introduced in the House, we heard the first story of a training provider that went into liquidation, leaving many people with outstanding loans and no obvious recourse. In the few weeks that both Bills have started to work their way through the House, there have been two other such failures. I shall be happy to give their names to anyone who is curious to know them, but, once again, we are left with, in this case, adult learners who have loans but no ongoing course.

When I raised this issue with the Minister and officials, I was told that the risks were lower for university students because they were more mobile and less local. However, that really is not true. It is not true of my own, but it is true of many of our university institutions that they have home students who are almost all highly local—often because they come from less advantaged families and are very unhappy about taking out major maintenance loans. So they are very local, and if their institution fails, they do not have anywhere else to go.

I hope very much that Ministers feel able, ideally, to accept Amendment 57, which seems to me the least that we can do in an environment where we are, in effect, making a promise to students. If it turns out that, for good reasons, that promise cannot be kept, they ought to be looked after.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I have spoken before in this context as chancellor of the University of Birmingham, chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School and an alumnus of Harvard Business School. However, years ago, when I was qualifying as a chartered accountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, I spent a year at what is now the London Metropolitan University, where I would later spend time as a visiting professor. I want to draw an analogy. In 2012, the London Metropolitan University lost its right to recruit international students. At that time there were 2,700 international students with valid visas, who had come here in good faith. They were given 60 days to find a place at another institution. That not only jeopardised their lives and futures but jeopardised and placed in crisis an institution with 30,000 students and 2,000 staff. That has implications for not only the institution but international students—as I know as the president of UKCISA, the UK Council for International Student Affairs.

Today, Universities UK has released a report showing that there are almost 450,000 students in the UK, of which almost 130,000 are from the European Union. The contribution they make to the British economy in gross terms—what they spend directly and indirectly— is £25 billion. With Brexit coming up, the uncertainty for international students, let alone EU students, is already there. It is not right that they have the added uncertainty that if, for whatever reason, the institution they join fails, they will be left high and dry. It will affect our economy and our ability to recruit international students. As it is, we have immigration rules that are against international students, which we will talk about later on Report.

I urge the Government to take this measure very seriously. It will give security to our domestic students and it is important for our international students and our reputation around the world.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak on this issue but I want briefly to say something very important. If any of us had children who we sent off to higher education, we would expect that institution to give them the support and development they needed. There are private colleges that have their courses validated by individual universities. Of course, those private colleges could, under certain circumstances, get into difficulties and cease trading. What happens then to the students and to their student loans? As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, rightly said, we are seeing this already in further education, where training providers are going into liquidation. They are all right—they have gone into liquidation—but the poor student is left high and dry. I hope that when the Minister replies he might give assurances on this matter.

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

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and his committee on this excellent report, Persuasion and Power in the Modern World. In fact the report shows why we need a permanent foreign affairs committee in this House.

In his evidence to the Select Committee, Professor Nye said that in today’s international relations it is,

“not just whose army wins, it is also whose story wins in an information age”.

I was in India, speaking on smart power, soft power and hard power—I am glad the committee made those connections—and I visited Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram. I reflected that if you are talking about soft power there is no better example than Mahatma Gandhi. One of his great quotes is “The battle of right against might”. He inspired Nelson Mandela. He has inspired so many people. I am delighted to say that on Saturday 14 March we will be unveiling a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square with the Indian Finance Minister and our Prime Minister. That is wonderful news.

There are so many examples of India’s soft power. One is yoga. There is going to be an international yoga day on 21 June. We should have yoga in Parliament. Another is Bollywood films. You could go on. We have heard example after example of the soft power that we have here in Britain. There is the BBC, to which almost every speaker has referred—and wow, this is the House of Lords, where we have the former director-general of the BBC, the noble Lord, Lord Birt, speaking so brilliantly about it. Then there is the British Council. I have been privileged to work with the British Council. It does amazing work and its budgets keep getting cut.

When we talk about soft power, it is also, in India’s case, the 25 million people of Indian origin around the world who are now reaching the very top—running some of the biggest companies in the world. The dean of the Harvard Business School is an Indian. The head of MasterCard is an Indian. The new head of Deloitte’s is an Indian. It goes on. That is also power. The British diaspora around the world is a huge source of power for us.

However, the worrying aspect of this, particularly in today’s world, is hard power. That is where this country—a tiny country with less than 1% of the world’s population—still has one of the most of the most powerful and effective defence forces in the world. Yet we had an SDSR in 2010 that was appalling, negligent and neglectful. We cut our Armed Forces brutally. We got rid of our aircraft carriers and our Harriers. As one of the world’s leading defence powers, we are without carrier capability in today’s environment. We needed them for Libya and we need them tomorrow. We do not have them. Who knows when they will arrive: perhaps in five years’ time if we are lucky. We also got rid of our Nimrods, while right under our noses the Russians are sending their submarines. We could do with those Nimrods. Yet we physically, brutally, destroyed those aircraft. I was at Wembley Stadium seeing Chelsea win the other day. Our army would not fill Wembley Stadium. That is shocking. To think that we could make this up by recruiting 30,000 reserves is wrong. Reserves are meant to be reserves. It is an oxymoron to say that reserves are permanent forces. We have, in any case, had difficulty recruiting them. That is very negligent. Are the Government committed to spending 2% of GDP on NATO now and in the future, with no further cuts to the Armed Forces going forward?

The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is now one of the most powerful people in the world, with an outright majority in India. He is a brilliant orator in Hindi—I would say one of the best orators in the world. In one of his speeches in India he kept using the Hindi word “takhath”, which means strength or power. He was talking about hard power, soft power and smart power.

In this excellent report, almost every one of the witnesses testified that the Government’s new visa policies are harming the assets that build the UK’s soft power. In fact, the editor of the Economist, John Micklethwait, was scathing about how increased visa restrictions and costs have affected UK commerce, describing the system as—I use his words—“bananas” and “suicidal”. He said:

“All you need to do is to talk to businesspeople or, indeed, students in any other country who want to come and spend money here … It is completely useless in terms of recruiting people”.

I can vouch for that. It is the impression that we have created. Today, I was proud to host an event on international students, chaired by my noble friend Lord Hannay, with the Russell group in Parliament. Thirty-four per cent of academic staff at our Russell group universities—I am proud to be chancellor of the University of Birmingham, a Russell group university—are of non-UK nationality. Nineteen per cent of the undergraduates at Russell group universities are from outside the UK and—wait for this—47% of postgraduates are international students. That is how valuable they are to us. I know it; I was an international student myself when I came to this country. I know how difficult it was to raise the money to pay for the education over here. Yet, as a percentage of GDP, Britain spends half as much as the United States on higher education. As a percentage of GDP, we spend less than the OECD and EU averages on higher education.

When it comes to research and development and innovation—another great soft power—we way underspend as a percentage of GDP. Cambridge University, with 19 Nobel prizes, has won more Nobel prizes than any other university in the world. That is how well we do as a country. Yet we make it so difficult for international students, who bring in £14 billion. Education is one of our best exports and higher education is one of our strongest areas of soft power. In the United States it was found that of all patents registered at the country’s top 10 patent-generating universities, 76% had a foreign-born inventor. One of the founders of Google is foreign.

Yet you look ahead and you see the difficulty created by and the rhetoric that comes from—I am sorry to name her specifically—the Home Secretary. Forget Nigel Farage—even he objected to the vans telling illegal immigrants to “Go home”. When a £3,000 bond was proposed for all foreigners from countries such as India, alarm bells rang around the world. There were headlines in Indian newspapers when the Home Secretary stated that foreign students should leave the day after they had finished their studies. The Bangalore Mirror said:

“Come to the UK: Graduate, and then get the hell out!”.

The Times of India’s headline was:

“UK to ‘kick out foreign graduates’ to curb immigration”.

Is that the rhetoric that we want from the jewel in the crown of our higher education soft power?

We should introduce exit checks immediately. Can the Minister confirm that exit checks are carried out, whereby passports—EU and non-EU—are scanned for everyone coming into and going out of the country through our ports? When that happens, we will have more control over our borders.

Our music industry and our sports, with the Premier League, Chelsea and Manchester United, produce household names around the world. Does the Minister agree that we should set a target to increase the number of international students? I believe that we should have a specific target to do so every year. Also important are our creative industries. The Royal Family, too, was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper. Seventy-one per cent of Americans rate the Royal Family in terms of popularity. That figure is almost as high as it is here, at 77%.

I hope that the SNP never gets into power, because getting rid of Trident would be the most negligent act in this country.

My noble friend Lord Hannay said something about Britain punching below its weight. I am sorry; I normally agree with my noble friend but I think that Britain is a country that continually punches well above its weight. Our capability in every area lies at the heart of this debate, whether in high-end manufacturing, aerospace, beer, universities, the creative industries, film, music or our institutions. We are the best in the world.

However, what underpins it all—I conclude with this—is that there is one thing in the world that we are respected for more than anything else, and that is integrity. It was described to me best by our noble and right reverend friend Lord Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, when he said that integrity comes from the Latin word “integer” or “integrum”, which means whole, complete and not fragmented. It means that you can stand up to the light and the fire and be absolutely pure, and this country has integrity.

Commonwealth: Young Entrepreneurs

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is not just a question of DfID programmes: there are also UKTI programmes and British Council programmes. The British Council is concerned particularly with a creative young entrepreneurs’ programme, which covers the Caribbean as well as some other areas. It is clearly the sort of area where services and new industries can develop.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, last week I spoke at the opening event of Global Entrepreneurship Week here in London. I was delighted that a report released at the event showed that London is one of the top two cities for entrepreneurship in Europe. Is the Minister aware of the Sirius programme backed by UK Trade and Investment, which attracts young entrepreneurs from around the world and which I was involved in launching? Will the Government assure us that they are promoting this Sirius programme throughout the Commonwealth, along with countries such as India?

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, in the summer of 2003 my late father, Lieutenant-General Bilimoria, was here in the UK on a visit. It was his last visit to the UK because he passed away a couple of years later. At an event he was approached by a prominent journalist who said: “General, do you think that we should have intervened in Iraq?”. My father, without blinking, said: “No. Intervention should only have taken place with the authority of the United Nations”. My father spoke from experience because as a young captain he had served with the United Nations in the Congo.

The Joint Intelligence Committee report says that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons 14 times since 2012, and yet the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, in a brilliant speech, said that with 100,000 lives lost and 2 million refugees, we have not intervened, but now we want to do so. The noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, in another brilliant speech, said that we have held back all these years from intervening in Syria but now, this week, the drums of war have been banging. So what has happened? This awful chemical attack is the straw that has broken the camel’s back.

We have not intervened so far but there is a point to consider which nobody has raised yet. Although we are expected to intervene, in 2010 the Government, in the SDSR, cut our Armed Forces. They got rid of our aircraft carriers. I was in India just recently. India has aircraft carriers. It might be getting new ones, but it has kept its old ones until it gets the new ones. We have cut our Harriers. We have cut our Nimrods. We have cut our troops. We are reliant on reserves, and yet now we are expected to intervene. I said in 2010, three years ago, that we did not know what was going to happen next. What happened next? Libya. What happened after that? The Arab spring continued. What happened after that? Mali. What happened after that? Oh, the Olympics. We needed our troops in the Olympics.

We do not learn. We feel that we can just call on our troops. As the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, said, we expect our troops just to perform—“Switch, go, fight: give up your lives. Make the ultimate sacrifice”. But what about the nation; is it behind us? We know that the country is completely not behind intervention in Syria.

We are caught between a rock and a hard place. We feel that we have to do something. We have our allies, the Americans, who for a century have stood by us and saved this country. We feel that we have to support them. However, in Iraq the biggest mistake in 2003 was that we had not thought through what would happen afterwards. We imagined that everything would be fine. We had not thought of the aftermath, we had not planned it. As the noble Lord, Lord King, asked, did we plan on the retaliations that would take place? I was an ambassador for the London Olympics and we were celebrating on the steps of Trafalgar Square on 6 July 2005. We all know what happened the next day, on 7/7.

We know that if there is a clear strategy, it is very effective. In the first Gulf War, in Kuwait, we were in there and then out of there, mission accomplished. My father fought in the liberation of Bangladesh, when there was an East Pakistan and a West Pakistan. India waited and planned for over a year. The Prime Minister was putting pressure on the army chief but he said, “No. When I’m ready we’ll go in”. They went in and the job was done in two weeks. Here, however, we go and intervene. We say that we will do it in a proportionate manner. As we have heard, however, what about Russia, what about China, what about Iran, what about Lebanon? What about all the domino effects? We will take proportionate measures but will we get a proportionate reaction? Just yesterday the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said:

“The Middle East region is like a gunpowder store and the future cannot be predicted. If President Obama gets stuck in this trap, he will certainly leave behind bad memories of his presidency. The intervention of America will be a disaster for the region”.

Those are threatening words. President Obama says that a red line has been crossed. But I question the Government’s judgment. They have cut our budgets, cut the Armed Forces and then want to rush in and intervene without even waiting for the UN inspectors’ reports. I do not understand it. Yet we have this wonderful House, with the brilliant speeches that we have heard, one after the other, and we are not even to have a vote today. The other place will have a vote but we will not. The expertise of this House is 100 times that of the other place and we do not even get a vote.

Every day we delay action, we feel guilty. A humanitarian crisis is getting worse every single day. It is only natural that we want to intervene, but we should only do that when we have exhausted all other opportunities and have a proper strategy that we have thought through. Then we can do it. In conclusion, I have always been taught that a fool makes a mistake, makes a mistake again and does not learn. A sensible person makes a mistake, learns from it and does not make it again. A wise person learns from other people’s mistakes and does not make a mistake in the first place. It is too late for us to be wise, but let us at least be sensible. Otherwise we will be foolish and the consequences will be disastrous.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is very kind of the noble Lord to ask me to respond three minutes after that happened. I am sure that plan B is to consider the situation. We will continue to discuss with a wide range of international partners the possibilities and implications of these circumstances.

To conclude—

[Lord Bilimoria]

The Minister started off by saying that this was not Iraq II. He then spoke about the 10 to 14 times that this had happened before. According to the report, it has happened exactly 14 times. The Minister then said that we do not know whether it was a senior or junior officer, and then that it could be, should be, possibly was or must have been a senior officer. The preliminary report talked of a strong possibility. Then came the phrase, “as far as we know”. We have heard from many noble Lords who spoke in the debate on Iraq 10 years ago, when there was a two to one majority against going into Iraq. The Government at the time did not listen. Now the majority is nine or more to one. Why did the Government want to rush in last week with all these uncertainties? That is what we find very difficult to understand.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, briefly, when a clear breach of international law has taken place, there is a very delicate calculation about how rapidly you respond or how long you should wait until the evidence is entirely clear. If you wait too long, it becomes impossible to respond. Of course you do not rush in immediately, but you should, as we have done, at least indicate rapidly that you intend to respond and that you do not intend to let it pass unnoticed.

Critical National Infrastructure: Ownership

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer]

My Lords, surely one of the good things about foreigners owning bits of our infrastructure is that they cannot take these bits away with them—

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords—

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

We shall hear from the Cross Benches first.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, today the former Governor of the Bank of England has taken his seat, and we welcome him. His successor is a Canadian. How many other countries would have a foreign national as the governor of their national central bank? We do. Do not the Minister and the Government think that we should be proud that we are one of the most open economies in the world, and that that is a great strength to this country? Regardless of that, and on the other hand, how much longer are the Government going to dither and procrastinate about increasing our airport capacity in London?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I shall exclude the second half of that question from my response. I rather hoped that the noble Lord would welcome the degree of foreign investment in our automobile industry. Ten to 15 years ago, many would have sneered at the whole idea of Indian investment in our automobile industry. The recent announcement of the expansion of investment in Jaguar Land Rover is extremely welcome for the prospects for British exports.

Social Mobility

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, the claim that social mobility in Britain has been falling is made regularly. On the other hand, a lot of the research on class mobility does not support this. Lots of studies have found that, if anything, relative class mobility—the probability of a working-class child getting into the middle class and a middle-class child ending up working class—has been rising since the 1950s. There is no question about it, however, there is a relationship between inequality and earnings elasticity. The Gini coefficient—a measure of inequality—has been rising over the last 20 to 30 years, particularly in countries like the United Kingdom and the United States, but also in Australia and Canada.

There is no question that there is a relationship between earnings and the benefit of going to university. On the other hand, there is a correlation between higher spending on higher education and higher levels of mobility. The reality is that we underinvest in higher education compared to the United States, compared to the EU average and compared to the OECD average. We do not invest as much in higher education as we should.

Despite this, however, our universities are doing a good job. Universities UK has shown that there has been a 30% increase in the proportion of young people from our most disadvantaged backgrounds entering universities since 2004. Progress is therefore being made. Are the Government are aware of a fabulous programme called GEEMA, the Group to Encourage Ethnic Minority Applications, at the University of Cambridge started in 1989 and in which I have taken part? It is a wonderful programme whereby the ethnic minority undergraduates at Cambridge take a week off during the summer and state school children from ethnic minority backgrounds, whose families invariably have never had a background of education in their history, come to spend a week in Cambridge and experience a week in the life of Cambridge University. This programme has a phenomenal effect on creating aspiration among these children, many of whom end up going to Cambridge itself. The programme has helped increase the number of BME undergraduates from 5.5% to 15%. Could the Government roll out this sort of programme in more universities around the country?

Our academies are doing a great job, but as somebody born and brought up in India who came over here to be educated like others in my family for three generations, I believe that the biggest mistake this country made was getting rid of the grammar schools. We have deprived so many of our bright children of their ability to progress. I know that this is a controversial subject, but I strongly believe this.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for leading this debate. She spoke about character and resilience. The headmaster of Eton College, Tony Little—and I declare an interest; my older son is there—has noted that boarding schools are the nation’s untapped asset. He has said that children learn more from each other than from adults. They learn more from outside the classroom than from within. There are so many ways in which we can learn from schools in the private sector—as the noble Baroness said they make up 7% of the total and they produce so much excellence—but unfortunately they are not available to everybody.

I conclude by saying that I have seen with my own eyes the change in this country from when I came as a student in the early 1980s, when there was no aspiration but there was a glass ceiling. That glass ceiling has now been shattered and there is the ability in this country for anyone to get anywhere, regardless of race, religion or background. That culture is so important because those people’s success creates inspiration; inspiration creates aspiration; aspiration creates achievement; achievement creates inspiration. It is a virtuous circle.

Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 1st May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria]

I thank the Minister for giving way. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said that the public, when polled, would prefer an elected House of Lords, but other polls show very clearly that the public admit that they do not understand how the House of Lords works. That is what we have to convince the public about. If we are going to rely on polls, at the moment they show that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats together rate lower than the Labour Party, in which case the Government should be out of government.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am talking about a wider and longer-term sense of public disillusionment with all political parties and all politicians, of which we need to be aware. The test for our House is how we handle ourselves on the question of further change in the unfriendly light of media attention and public cynicism. I respectfully suggest that we should not be too pleased with ourselves as we are. We have not entirely escaped popular disillusionment with the metropolitan elite. A run of hostile articles in the press would easily puncture our sense of how high our public standing is.

There is almost a consensus in the House on our self-image as a repository of wisdom and experience that stands above grubby party politics. There is even a hint that people like us would not stoop to stand for election—that, as the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, argued, an elected House would never attract candidates of comparable quality. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, stated sharply that an elected Chamber would bring in,

“a whole new gang of second-rate … politicians”.—[Official Report, 30/4/12; col. 1983.]

Not all elected politicians are second rate and, if I may suggest, not all appointed officeholders are first rate. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, declared that an elected House would consist of 450 superannuated politicians. As a superannuated politician, I am not sure that he should regard that as necessarily a bad thing. What does he think this House consists of now? Seventy per cent of us in this Chamber are political appointees—here by patronage—and half of us have held elected office within the Commons, the European Parliament, the devolved Assemblies and local authorities. Indeed, when I first entered this House, I observed that much of the detailed work of scrutiny was carried out by former chairs of city and county councils. They had the most relevant experience and expertise and the strongest commitment to holding the Government to account.

Remembrance Day

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 10th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, my younger son is 10 years old and I remember that when I turned 10, my father, the late Lieutenant-General Bilimoria, went to war, fulfilling any young officer’s dream: to command his battalion—the Second Fifth Ghurkha Rifles Frontier Force—in battle. He took part in the Indian Army’s liberation of Bangladesh. I remember reading in the papers every day a list of casualties and the sacrifices made, and dreading seeing my father’s name. Watching my mother enduring the anxiety was awful. My father’s battalion sadly lost several of its members in action. As we speak today, the Second Fifth Ghurkhas are celebrating their 125th anniversary on their Raising Day, and the whole regimental family is together in India.

When I say regimental family, that is what the army family is; it is the serving troops and their families, but also the ex-servicemen and their families and the widows like my mother and their descendents. At every one of these reunions, we always remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. My father’s battalion won three Victoria Crosses during the Second World War: one was posthumous, awarded to Subedar Netra Bahadur, and the other two were awarded to Havalder Gaje Ghale and Naik Agan Singh Rai. I was privileged to have been brought up from childhood with Agan Singh Rai and Gaje Ghale, and in fact Agan Singh Rai was my father’s subedar major—his regimental sergeant-major—when my father commanded his battalion.

I congratulate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk, for this debate and his inspirational speech. We as a nation are tremendous in the way we remember the sacrifices made by our service men and women over the years. As a public, we show this support and remembrance year after year through Remembrance Sunday and a multitude of services that go on in every corner of the country, the Royal British Legion’s poppy appeal and the millions of poppies worn. Thank God that FIFA was finally made to see sense after its nonsensical banning of the wearing of poppies, which it saw as a political statement. It never has been and it never will be. This is about remembrance, appreciation and gratitude, and particularly about making sure that future generations never forget and are inspired by the noble sacrifices made.

Yesterday, my six year-old daughter took part in a Remembrance Day service at her school, which included a minute’s silence. She brought home the poppy that she had made and showed it to me with pride. We have the wonderful memorial gates commemorating the service of 5 million volunteers who served in the First and Second World Wars from South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. I was proud to be the chairman of the commemoration committee for six years, and these gates exist thanks to the drive and commitment of the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, who no doubt will speak about this inspirational living memorial.

The public spirit and support for the Armed Forces are probably at an all-time high in modern times, with Royal Wootton Bassett, the hugely successful newly-founded charity Help for Heroes initiative, the work of the Army Benevolent Fund—the soldiers’ charity—and the amazing warmth and respect shown to the Chelsea Pensioners of the Royal Hospital of Chelsea, where I am proud to be a commissioner.

We never needed to be told about a big society. The British public have been practising this instinctively for years. I was really happy to read the report of the task force of the military covenant a year ago, which made so many excellent suggestions.

This debate is also about the Armed Forces covenant, which states:

“An Enduring Covenant Between The People of the United Kingdom, Her Majesty’s Government—and—All those who serve or have served in the Armed Forces of the Crown And their Families”.

We are told that the Armed Forces community includes regular personnel, reservists, veterans, the immediate families of those categories of individuals, and the immediate families of service personnel and veterans who have died. The level of support has been categorised into four areas.

The first is to give recognition and gratitude, which I think we do. I am grateful to the Government for establishing a Chief of the Defence Staff commendation scheme. The second level is to take positive measures to support disadvantage. This is because our service men and women have such an unsettled way of life, and it worries me that initiatives such as the boarding school scheme for officers’ children are under threat. Could the Minister confirm this? It is disappointing to see that the formal ID card for veterans and service families has been rejected, with “value for money” being the reason why the scheme is not being supported. Could the Minister confirm this? The Armed Forces’ housing—particularly the Army’s—is on the whole below standard. Is there any way the Minister could confirm whether these long-term housing contracts are going to be renewed before 2021? Could the rent that has been set at below-market rates be looked at?

The third level of support is the financial package. Here, there is no question about it: the Armed Forces get paid a pittance compared with what we expect them to do. The Army doctrine publication tells us:

“All British soldiers share the legal right and duty to fight and, if necessary, kill, according to their orders, and an unlimited liability to give their lives in doing so. This is the unique nature of soldiering”.

Do we genuinely, hand on heart, feel that we are correctly compensating them when the salary for a private is only £17,265 at the low end, and the new entrant rate is £13,895?

The fourth level is special treatment. We keep hearing about the Armed Forces covenant meaning that the Armed Forces community should get fair treatment. I think the term “fair” is inappropriate; they need to get special treatment always. This is where we fall short of countries such as the United States in the way they look after their veterans and their special hospitals. In India, all retired soldiers and their families are entitled to free medical care from armed forces hospitals for life. This is special treatment, which is so well-deserved.

The Armed Forces are all about esprit de corps and morale. Where morale is concerned, we have had issues. There has to be mutual trust and respect between the Armed Forces, the Government and the Ministry of Defence. I am sorry to say that this mutual trust, particularly between the MoD and the Armed Forces, is breaking down. I have spoken about huge issues of morale across the services. The Government rushed through the SDSR last year with resulting cuts. On the one hand, our forces are stretched, just having completed Iraq; the Afghanistan operations are now 10 years on; and we have to deal with situations such as Libya at the drop of a hat. Our noble service personnel feel that they are out there in these conditions knowing that their jobs are not secure and seeing their comrades being made redundant. They know that the public are on their side but feel let down in many ways by the MoD and the Government. What is more, we are made to look a laughing stock in our short-sightedness. Almost a year ago, in our debate on the SDSR, I said in my speech:

“nobody predicted 9/11 and nobody predicted the Falklands War; they both happened. Sadly, no one knows what is going to happen next. We have to be prepared for the unexpected”.—[Official Report, 12/11/10; col. 404.]

What happened just a couple of months later? The Arab spring and then Libya. We as a country had decided by then to do away with our aircraft carriers, our Harriers and our Nimrods, and we could have done with all of them in the Libyan operations.

The SDSR was all about means and not ends. We in Britain are a major player on the world stage with our hard power and our soft power, and we will be required to intervene again. Once again, it could be “known unknowns” such as in the Iran situation, or it could be “unknown unknowns”, in the way the Arab spring happened overnight. With the eurozone crisis, Chancellor Merkel has already said that if the euro falls, there will be war in Europe.

We may have stayed out of the euro—and thank God we did—but we are a key integral player on the world stage and we will not be able to stay out of any forthcoming conflict. We have an Army now of fewer than 100,000. This is so short-sighted. We strive for peace, but, unfortunately, as the noble Lord, Lord Lee, said, conflict is inevitable whether we like it or not. The defence of our realm is the Government’s No. 1 priority, and that rests entirely on the amazing sacrifices made by our Armed Forces. Last month, I chaired an event as president of the UK India Business Council on east and north-east India. It was attended by a senior Minister from Nagaland, where of course the famous Kohima epitaph reads:

“When You Go Home

Tell Them Of Us And Say

‘For Your Tomorrow,

We Gave Our Today’”.

We as a nation will never forget. We will always be inspired and we will always be grateful.

India

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, 2011 is the 20th anniversary of India’s economic liberalisation. In 1991, India was a closed, protected, insular, inward-looking country and economy. Over the last 20 years, India has taken a gigantic leap on to the world stage as an emerging global economic superpower. As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, while our economy is struggling, India’s GDP is today is growing at over 7 per cent.

In 2003 I was appointed the UK chair of the Indo British Partnership by the British Government. Subsequently I was the founding chair of the UK India Business Council and am now its president. I have been privileged to accompany our current Prime Minister and both his predecessors on their visits to India, and the relationship between Britain and India is today stronger than ever.

Trade between our countries has increased from £5 billion a year in 2003 to £13 billion today. However, we are just scratching the surface. As the Indian Cabinet Minister Kamil Nath said when I shared a platform with him in London last week, investment has to be a two-way street, and we have seen huge investment going both ways. As the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, said, Tata is now Britain’s largest manufacturer, owning Jaguar Land Rover and Corus, British Steel. We have seen giant investments going the other way into India—for example, Vodafone.

My own business Cobra Beer formed a recent joint venture with Molson Coors, the last of the global giant brewers to go into India, and we now own the only brewery in the state of Bihar. I am a director of Booker Group plc, a FTSE 250 company, and the original sponsors of the Man Booker Prize, which is being announced this evening. At Booker we have just opened our second wholesale cash and carry branch in Pune after having opened up in Mumbai two years ago.

This investment has been happening but it is against a backdrop where actually very few reforms have been taking place in India. The major reform of air service between the two countries opened up in 2004, and now there are over 100 flights a week, but there are so many other barriers and so many reforms we are crying out for. As the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, said, foreign universities still cannot operate in India. British lawyers cannot operate and open up offices in India. British banks can only open a handful of branches a year. Our insurance companies can only own 26 per cent of Indian insurance companies. Lloyd’s of London is the world’s most important reinsurance market but India is the only major country in the world where it cannot operate to this day.

I chair the Cambridge-India Partnership Advisory Group and we have so many exciting plans for India, to build on our strong links going back to Jawaharlal Nehru and beyond. All these reforms, if they took place, would benefit India and would help it attract the $1.7 trillion of infrastructure investment it desperately needs. As members of the EU, we cannot even enter into a bilateral free trade agreement with India, but have to do this through the EU. Could the Minister inform us when the EU-India free trade agreement that we have been talking about for four years will actually be signed?

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, for initiating this really important debate. We sit together on the Prime Minister of India’s global advisory council. India is a country of two stories: an emerging global economic superpower on the one hand and a country where, as we have heard, hundreds of millions of people live on less than a dollar a day. India is a country where corruption has now reached tipping point in its prevalence and magnitude, leading to the emergence of Anna Hazare and the Jan Lokpal Bill.

There are those in the UK who say that we should not be providing aid to India. However, I have seen the amazing work that DfID, the British Council and our team at the British high commission are carrying out on the ground; for example, in Bihar, where we have our brewery. Bihar is a state of over 100 million people and one of the poorest states in India, but through sheer good governance it has been turned around over the last six years under the leadership of its inspirational Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, and the Deputy Chief Minister, Sushil Modi. There are initiatives to provide bicycles for schoolgirls and uniforms and books for schoolchildren. The Chief Minister is recruiting 300,000 school teachers and introducing the Right to Public Service Act—all this is turning around the state. However, we are talking about a country of 1.2 billion people.

As a country, Britain is so close to India. Our relationship is wonderful and yet we shoot ourselves in the foot by introducing the new Immigration Rules. Until 2010, the number of Indian students had been increasing multifold. I am a member of the advisory board of the Judge Business School at Cambridge University and the Cranfield School of Management. Both institutions have seen a significant drop in the number of applicants from India, and I am hearing that the Indian students are saying, “Does Britain want us any more?”. What are we doing? Do we not want to attract the brightest and the best? Dr Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister, is himself a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge. My own family has been educated here for three generations. These are generation-long links.

What are the Government doing to rectify this situation? I am a member of the UK-India Round Table. I fought so hard for foreign graduates to work in the UK for two years after graduation, as the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, spoke of. There is a perception that this rule has been removed and this is deterring so many foreign students, especially Indians, as this is a way of earning extra money to pay for the expensive higher education and to gain some work experience in this country. To build bridges, can the Minister clarify the situation?

Our links with India are so strong, whether it is the armed forces, culture, sport, cricket or the four Indian Booker Prize winners. We could do so much more to further our political links; we could have more exchange between our two Parliaments. Could the Minister look into this opportunity to further our political links?

To conclude, the reality is that the whole world has woken up to “incredible India”. In the words of Dr Manmohan Singh:

“India is an idea whose time has come”.

India was highlighted in the Queen’s Speech by the Prime Minister as a country we want to have an “enhanced partnership” with. However, we need to do so much more. We are competing with the rest of the world to engage with India. Given our special relationship, we in Britain could do so much more to encourage British industry, particularly SMEs, to do business with India. If only India would implement all the reforms that have been on the cards for so long. If those two things happened, I would be happy, and in the words of Mahatma Gandhi:

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony”.

Small Businesses

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, the big society is defined by many in this House as being what most of them have done for most of their lives. It is a volunteering, social action, philanthropic approach to life, but it is also about the opening up of public services to local control and devolution of power. The regional growth fund is a discretionary fund to stimulate economic growth and employment and will operate over a period of three years. In particular, it will help those areas and communities that currently depend on the public sector to make the transition to sustainable, private sector-led growth and prosperity. Small and medium-sized enterprises have a vital role to play in that.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords—

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that, if the big society means nothing more than what many of us have been doing for most of our lives, that would be a disappointment? I say this on a purely non-political basis. We now have an opportunity to regenerate local communities and to help them to become much more involved in their own quality of life. However, we can do that only if we get out into local communities and stimulate people to become involved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, we are committed to reducing red tape in all sectors. Noble Lords will agree, and the Benches opposite will recognise, that business has been stifled over the past decade by excessive red tape.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords—

[Lord Cotter]

My Lords—