Religious Intolerance and Prejudice

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I shall tell you a story. Three years ago in Kerala in South India, the heart of a Hindu man was transported across Kerala for a Christian patient in dire need of a new one. Funds were raised by a Muslim businessman to pay for the operation which was performed by the state’s top heart surgeon: a Christian. Kerala is known as “God’s own country”. Over the centuries, people have come from different cultures and communities and travelled to live in Kerala—Jewish and Christian migrants, Arab merchants, European traders and colonisers. The city of Cochin—Kochi, as it is now called—has the oldest active synagogue and the oldest European church, both from the 16th century. Kerala is a symbol of religious co-existence—not just tolerance, but co-existence in a world that is struggling with virulent intolerance and violence, which is what this debate is all about. The state has a mix of three of the world’s largest religions—30% Muslim, 20% Christian and 50% Hindu.

The essence of all this is that when it comes to religion we are all too quick to focus on what divides us rather than what brings us together. The former Indian President, Pranab Mukherjee, said that a society as diverse as India can be governed only as a democratic, federal and pluralistic polity.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, for leading this debate and for everything that he does for the communities in our country, which I have seen first hand. He wrote an article in the House magazine, headlined:

“We will not allow hatred and intolerance to go unchecked”.


He summed it up by saying:

“Britain is a proudly tolerant nation—a nation where everyone has the right to live according to their beliefs. Indeed, this is a quality Britain champions and recognises as one of its great strengths. We believe that our differences make us stronger—that together we can learn from one another and grow as individuals and as a society”.


Yet if we look at the statistics in the data provided to us, they show that Christians have declined from 72% to 59%; Muslims have increased from 3% to 5% and the number of Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists rose slightly, while the Jewish population remained broadly the same. There were 80,393 offences recorded by the police in which one or more hate crimes were a motivating factor. The majority were race hate crimes—78%—but 7% were religious hate crimes. There has been a surge in reports of hate crimes directed at people in England and Wales because of their religious beliefs. They rose by 40% from 5,949 to 8,336 this year, according to Home Office data. To back up what the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said, most religious hate crimes—sadly, 52% of all offences—were aimed at Muslims.

I am so happy that the Government have appointed the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, as a special envoy to promote religious freedom. As the Prime Minister said:

“Tolerance for those of different faiths is fundamental to our values, and is an issue I know is already of great importance to Lord Ahmad, who is constantly looking for fresh ways to promote religious liberty in his role as Minister for Human Rights at the Foreign Office”.


I commend the work that he does.

Minorities in this country make up 14% of the population. We have to keep this in context. Sadly, we have heard, and I shall not repeat it, about the religious prejudice that exists at the moment within political parties. These statistics were again provided to us. In the Labour Party in particular there have been statistics after statistics of anti-Semitism, and I shall cite just some of them. The Conservative Party and the Labour Party were prejudiced against six groups: Christians, British Jews, British Muslims, British Hindus, Sikhs and atheists. In the case of the Conservative Party, definite or probable prejudice was said to range from 13% against Christians to 27% against Muslims but for the Labour Party it was 11% against atheists to 36% against Jews.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Bilimoria]

I am just quoting the figures I have been given—36% and 34%. These are really worrying statistics.

An omnibus survey was carried out demonstrating the relatively low significance attached to religion by a cross-section of the population. Given 12 options to define personal identity, just 7% chose religion. Asked how important religion was to them, 72% said that it was not important at all. This is worrying. Another survey included the statement that religions are inherently violent and 32% agreed. On the question that the teachings of religion are essentially peaceful, 61% agreed. On the statement:

“It is religious extremists, not religions themselves that are violent”,


81% agreed. That is the important statistic. Here is another example:

“Most of the wars in world history have been caused by religions”—


70% agreed. Here is another worrying one:

“On balance, religions are much more peaceful today than violent”.


With that, 44% agree and 44% disagree.

On anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, another poll revealed that 34% of the entire electorate—even 16% of the Labour Party—believe that it is a serious problem within the party. The noble Lord, Lord Kestenbaum, spoke about that. Another very scary fact is that 1 million people in our country have experienced faith discrimination.

There is one other fact that nobody else has mentioned, or probably will mention. One of the best lectures I attended at Harvard Business School was given by Professor Mahzarin Banaji, who is a fellow Parsi—and, ironically, hails from Hyderabad in India, where I too am from. She creates awareness of unconscious bias in self-professed egalitarians. She studies human thinking and feeling as it unfolds in social contexts, and her focus is on mental systems that operate in implicit or unconscious modes. How much unconscious bias exists, most often unintended, within social groups? We should all be aware of this. Professor Banaji has written a book, with Tony Greenwald, entitled Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who I have had the privilege of meeting, said:

“India’s treasure is that all major religious traditions co-exist in harmony”.


The Nobel laureate talked about

“education for wisdom and compassion”,

and said:

“There are different spiritual traditions whose philosophies are also different, but all of them carry the same message of love. All religions teach us the practice of tolerance and have the same potential of bringing inner peace”.


He stressed the need to get rid of conflict in the name of religion, and called upon people to

“acknowledge each other as brothers and sisters and develop a sense of oneness with others ... a concern for other human beings without being self-centred or short sighted. We need a sense of global responsibility”.

Last year when the Foreign Office celebrated UN Human Rights Day, its theme was “freedom of religion or belief”. Here I should read out Article 18 of the UN declaration of human rights, which says:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”.


Yet look at what is happening; look at the sadness of what ISIS—so-called Islamic State—is doing. Its behaviour in the Middle East has been absolutely appalling. Article 18 has been completely disrespected around the world. Religious intolerance is the virus that causes the persecution, and if not treated it will lead to more and more of the atrocities that we have seen.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu—a fellow fellow of my college at Cambridge, Sydney Sussex—said about Nelson Mandela that he was a magnanimous individual. In a situation of ongoing conflict and violence, we should try to achieve conflict resolution. That is what the archbishop and Mandela did so brilliantly. The principles of reconciliation should be based on truth, justice and forgiveness.

The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, when he led a debate two years ago, said:

“At their heart they bring true integration based on the God-given dignity of all human beings whatever their ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability or economic worth. A vision of this kind will promote cohesion around the common good, it will encourage courage and creativity, it will lead us to train young people in new skills, it will give us the strength to open new markets, to share our wealth and wisdom fairly and not only to our advantage, and to welcome the alien and the stranger. It will challenge us to be consistent and to have an eye to our relationship with future generations, notwithstanding the events that intervene”.—[Official Report, 2/12/2016; col. 418.]


From a Zoroastrian perspective, my community—one of the smallest communities in the world—has full freedom to practise our ancient religion over here in the UK. We have never been persecuted. Yet to see the persecution of the Zoroastrians in Iran is very sad. One thing that worried me greatly when I came to this country in the early 1980s from India, is that I was told that this country had a glass ceiling for foreigners, and that if I ever wanted to work after I finished my studies I would never get to the top because I was a foreigner. That was so true, I am afraid to say, years ago. Today it has changed, and this country has evolved into a country of aspiration, where anyone can get anywhere, regardless of race, religion or background. I led a debate here a few years ago on the contribution of minority and ethnic religious communities to the culture and economy of Britain. In that debate, which some Members here tonight spoke in, it was said that we would not be where we are today—the fifth largest economy in the world—without the contribution of those minority communities.

In India there are only 59,000 Zoroastrian Parsis out of a population of 1.25 billion; here there are less than 6,000 of us out of a population of 65 million. Yet wherever you go, people know who a Parsi is. Mahatma Gandhi said: “In numbers they are beneath contempt, in contribution, beyond compare”. Ambitiously, I say that by achievement per capita we have done so well, going back to Cyrus the Great. Forget Magna Carta: that is modern. In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great, with his cylinder in the British Museum, issued the first bill of human rights, in which he allowed people in his kingdom to practise whatever religion they wished and allowed the Jewish community to go back to their homeland.

In the context of the European Union, Brexit, as the noble Lord, Lord Gadhia, said, is dividing this country. Immigration was the highlight of that—yet where would we be without those 3 million immigrants from the European Union who came to this country and contributed to it? The most reverend Primate spoke about assimilation and integration. My father, the late General Bilimoria, said, “Wherever you live in the world, integrate as best you can, but never forget your roots”. It is important that people can integrate but also be proud of their roots. That is the difference between secularism and pluralism: we are proud of our own religions but we celebrate, not just tolerate, all other religions—and we do so with integrity.

The most reverend Primate’s predecessor, Rowan Williams—Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, and now master of Magdalene College, Cambridge—spoke about integrity. That word comes from the Latin words “integritas” and “integer”, and you cannot practise integrity unless you are whole and complete as an individual, as an entity or as a community. You cannot be fragmented in front of the light; you can only practise integrity if you are whole.

Yet, as the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, said, we have had a chilling reminder that many people around the world live in fear purely because of their beliefs. We must never let ourselves fall victim to such intolerance and divisiveness. That is where my favourite poem by Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel laureate, starts:

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high …


Where the world has not been broken up into fragments


By narrow domestic walls”,


and ends:

“Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake”.


Although the fundamentalists in each religion affirm that their religion is exclusive, and look on other religions as enemies, according to their scriptural and theological traditions all religions have a notion of a god who is inclusive. This morning I was talking to my elder son Kai, who has just graduated in theology from Cambridge. I said, “I’m speaking in this debate, Kai. Have you got any advice for me?” He said, “Yes dad: where religion is concerned, we are more similar than we are different”. He talked about the difference between secularism and pluralism, and about celebration rather than tolerance. Then he reminded me of his grandfather—my father—and said that when he was in the army there would be cavalry regiments with a Sikh squadron, a Hindu squadron and a Muslim squadron, not just living together but fighting together as comrades in arms. Finally, he said, “Dad, there’s a Chinese proverb: there are many paths to the top of the mountain, but once you’re there, the view is the same”. Brexit is dividing this country and threatening the existence of our precious union. My wife is South African, and there is a wonderful South African saying: if you want to go fast, go alone, and if you want to go far, go together. We have to go together as a country, and then we will go far.

Immigration

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is very kind and her point is well made. It is certainly the case that a significant number of people who work in construction are from communities that were born overseas. We have regular discussions with the construction management board to ensure that the needs of that sector are taken account of, in view of the independent Farmer review which looked at that area.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that our universities are—along with those in the United States of America—the best in the world? This is greatly because of the foreigners who make up almost one-third of our academics. According to a recent report, almost 50% of academics in some subjects are from abroad. Without them we would not have excellence. It does not matter that they were foreign born: they are of benefit to this country.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a very important point about our universities, which I think are the best in the world, independently of America. Many people in them are undoubtedly from overseas, including many students.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 39, to which I added my name. I also support the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has just said. As it is the first time I have spoken today, I will place on record my interests in the register as a member of Sheffield City Council.

In Committee, the Minister generously asked for examples of where the asset of community value scheme was not working well in particular authorities. He will be aware that I contacted CAMRA in Sheffield to ask whether there were any incidents of such difficulties with the scheme in regard to pubs. I was quite surprised at the amount of information CAMRA gave me—which I am sure the Minister has seen. It became quite clear from reading about what was going on that this is not isolated to Sheffield, which merely exemplifies what is happening in many communities across the country. This is a burden on communities. It is a David and Goliath fight where the community must fight sometimes a large local authority to prove that an asset is of community value. We talked many times in Committee about the difference between pubs and other commercial operations. It is about not just the economics but also the community and social value that a pub has in binding communities together.

I have come to the view that the asset of community value is not enough in itself to protect those pubs, particularly given the time needed and the burden put on community organisations to save a pub. It is an unbalanced fight between the giant and the small community organisation. For that reason, pubs should have permitted development rights taken away. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, that would give the community an equal voice in the planning process. It does not necessarily mean that a pub will not be converted to a particular use if it goes through the planning process, but it gives a statutory right to every single member of the community, without cost, to have a say within the planning process, and to be able to explain why a particular pub should or should not be changed and the effect that that will have on the community and the setting of that pub. For that reason I have come to the conclusion that we need to take the permitted development rights away from pubs if they are changing specific use or will be demolished and put them properly and correctly within the framework of the planning process.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I must declare my various interests in this area: as the founder and chairman of Cobra Beer; as the chairman of the Cobra Beer Partnership Ltd, a joint venture with Molson Coors, one of the largest brewers in the world and the largest brewer in Britain; and as an officer of the most popular and largest all-party parliamentary group—the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group.

I came to this country as a 19 year-old student from India and remember my first evening here, staying at the Indian YMCA in Fitzroy Square in London. Opposite was the White Horse pub. That was my induction to Britain. Pubs are a way of life in this country. I have been lobbied and lobbied by various organisations, including two of the most prominent associations in our industry. The British Beer and Pub Association, or BBPA, represents companies that between them own 20,000 pubs and brew more than 90% of the beer sold in the UK. The ownership ranges from UK plcs, large companies such as my joint venture partner Molson Coors, privately owned companies, independent family brewers, microbrewers and divisions of international brewers. The association is campaigning to support a thriving brewing and pub industry in the UK. After all, pubs are at the heart of our community.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

I certainly cannot. There are 37,000 pubs in the country and I am not able to stand here and say that the 37,000 pubs have been operated completely to the highest standards or that people have not tried to run them down. I shall return to the point about how there is already adequate protection for the community if it chooses to use it. One of the ways to improve a pub is to improve your kitchen facilities or enlarge your car park, but some of these pubs do not have the land area or curtilage to be able to do that.

It is not as though there is not already an opportunity for individual communities, using the asset of community value—the ACV facility—to apply for it to be listed. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, suggested that this was not an adequate remedy and that in some cases local authorities were reluctant to get involved for a series of reasons. I am sure there have seen cases like that, which is why I shall come in a minute to the question of one of the remedies for this. But equally, it is fair to say there are cases where local authorities have blanket-classified a whole series of pubs in their area—the lot—and that is also not what the ACV arrangements were designed to do.

Am I suggesting that every pub is being run scrupulously? Of course not: there are thousands of them and there will be outliers, on both sides of the case, in every community and every part of the country. But to introduce new legislation on the basis of a small number of cases—and it is a small number of cases, some of them anecdotal—is in my view a mistake. What the industry needs above all is more investment, not less, and nothing is more likely to put off potential investors than restrictions on how they can, in the end, realise their investment.

It has somehow gained credence that the groups at which these amendments are aimed are the allegedly rapacious pubcos and integrated brewers. If that is the aim, I have to tell the House that the target is being missed. The losers will be the independent operators, for example the many thousands of mum and dad operators. There are probably 20,000 couples who have worked long and hard, maybe after inheriting the pub from parents, and who now wish to sell up and retire. But because of restrictions like these, they find the sale price of the pub—also their home and their only asset—reduced in price drastically and maybe even unsaleable pending the ACV negotiations. If it is felt that the ACV process is not working well, I agree that it should be reviewed—but reviewed in the round so that the cases that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, refers to and the other cases where there have been block listings can be looked at and we can see how the balance of the ACV operation has been proved to work.

I urge those who support the amendment to be careful what they wish for. Legislation about the pub industry in the past has all too frequently led to some very unhappy unintended consequences. It is worth remembering that the emergence of the pubcos—companies that only own pubs, buy in all their beer and alcoholic drinks and are most disliked by CAMRA—came about only because of legislative action. The beer orders had the intent of opening up the market by reducing the power of the large brewers to dictate which beers were produced, and which owned and controlled the vast majority of the pubs.

Forced divestment of pubs did not lead to the anticipated happy outcome. It led instead to the emergence of what were essentially specialist property companies, all too often highly geared, with all that that implied for reinvestment in the pub industry. In my view, a similar unintended consequence may result if my noble friend were minded to accept this amendment, or the noble Lord was minded to put it to the vote and won the subsequent Division. My reason is this: because of the highly competitive nature of the market for the sale of alcoholic drinks and other changes in our socioeconomic life, pubs have increasingly turned to food, as a means of improving their profitability. Increasingly, they are becoming, in effect, restaurants. If I were an independent owner of a pub, faced with yet further changes, I would consider what the balance of my business was like; I would boost my food offering and apply for a change of use from my current A4—drinking establishment—to A3—restaurant/café. As a result the loss of pubs would accelerate, not slow down.

There is no evidence of widespread running down of pubs to accelerate closure. Where it happens the ACV procedure is available for the community to use. A handful of cases do not justify the imposition of additional restrictions on the whole industry. Hard cases make bad law—

[Lord Bilimoria]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I made the point about pubs increasingly offering food. That is happening—it is part of their offering, along with the drink. But the noble Lord’s argument seems to imply that he is not for the British pub industry and British pubs. The BBPA, which represents 20,000 pubs in this country—the majority—and CAMRA, which represents a huge part of our beer industry, feel that these amendments are good. The noble Lord has not convinced me, for a start.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

I hear what the noble Lord says. Actually, I am not sure that the British Beer and Pub Association does approve of these amendments. It is concerned at further restrictions being placed on the operation of pubs which will deter investment. What the British Beer and Pub Association favours, with which I entirely agree, is a review of the operation of the asset of community value system in the round. We are taking a sledgehammer to crack a very small nut. The danger is that we will miss the nut and damage the industry.