25th Anniversary of the World Wide Web

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a director of three companies listed in the register which conduct their business on the internet. The world wide web is a veritable miracle of science and technology, captured brilliantly by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, in her opening remarks. Information can be uncovered in seconds which once would have taken days; pictures and news can be shared instantly with friends and family; grandparents can Skype their loved ones in Australia; anyone can set up shop, or start a business, for next to nothing; and individuals are free to express their political and other passions, convictions and beliefs, as never before, unmediated. Events can be broadcast that repressive states once covered up with ease. The internet has enabled, empowered and enriched us. But it also brings worries as well as wonders, and neither nationally nor internationally have we developed an appropriate policy or institutional framework to address them.

In the UK, we have a lively start-up sector, yet we have to look abroad for many of our skills. There is a huge shortage of programmers in some web languages, especially those needed for developing mobile applications, and the UK’s educational bodies are not fleet-footed enough to meet that shortfall. We are tolerating behaviour and actions on the internet that would never be allowed in the physical domain. For a while, Facebook, with spurious justification, believed that videos of beheadings should be allowed on its service. If our banks exploited information about our private transactions in the manner of Google, there would be uproar. If the ugly, threatening, sexist abuse that is harboured routinely on Twitter took place in a pub, it would more often be prosecuted. When Lily Allen criticised online copyright theft, her website was the target of a DDoS—a distributed denial of service—attack by online anarchist warriors, no doubt using malware placed on millions of computers known to the ISPs, but not to their innocent owners, all mounted with impunity.

Online fraud takes place on a gigantic and global scale. In the UK, we neither measure its impact on our citizens, nor do we do anything material to counter it. Without threatening in any way the precious, priceless benefits that the world wide web has brought us, the task over the next 25 years is to extend to it civilised standards and the rule of law.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Lord Birt Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, I just wish to add that the process here has been admirable. Had we simply stuck with forcing through an amendment to do the trick, it would not have held in the other place. There would have been ping pong and no public consultation. Including sexual orientation discrimination in the 2006 Act and caste discrimination in the 2010 Act by regulation and consultation seemed to be the best way forward. I am extremely glad that that approach, which is in the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and now reflected in the government amendment, does the trick.

The Minister has not mentioned Amendment 135, grouped here, which amends the Long Title. Although this sounds like me being a lawyer, I am very glad that it is there because I raised the point in the previous debate that, on the face of it, this was out of order. Once we amend the Long Title, it is in order and it means, in Amendment 135, that the Bill will also be for,

“permitting marriages according to the usages of belief organisations”,

and so on. I have one—not exactly caveat—point, which is that there are belief organisations and belief organisations. A line has to be drawn because there are some belief organisations that have no proper structure and may be in favour of witchcraft, paganism or matters of that kind. It will be necessary using the test of the European human rights convention or the Human Rights Act to make sure that the Government draw the line properly. A consultation is important to be sure of that. However, I congratulate the Government on doing this and the way in which it has been done. I think we will remember it in the future.

[Lord Birt]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Government for bringing forward the amendment, and all those who worked on all sides to make that possible. The amendment offers the possibility but—as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, makes clear—not yet a guarantee that humanists, and perhaps in due course other groups, will be able to conduct lawful marriages. As we have heard, that already happens in a fast-growing number of countries. Humanism is a movement. It is not bound together by belief in a supreme being or a formal body of doctrine, but by ethical conviction, a belief in rationality and the virtues of science, respect for nature and a commitment to optimise the sum total of human happiness here on earth.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, mentioned this. Anyone who has ever attended a humanist ceremony of any kind will attest to its spiritual power, to the sense that it viscerally captures and conveys a strong sense of community feeling and the wonder of human existence. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, who I see in his place, spoke most eloquently—in one of the most powerful of many powerful speeches at Second Reading—explaining why overall he supported the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, emphasising that it extended freedom, the freedom of gays to marry. This amendment, it is hoped, paves the way for a further extension of freedom for humanists to marry as they would wish. Like everyone else, I congratulate the Government, and I look forward to the first gay humanist wedding.

[Lord Harrison]

My Lords, as mover of the original amendment in Committee, along with my noble friend Lady Massey, I rise not to detain the House but, first, to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for so cogently presenting the case this evening. For all those who spoke in Committee, I think we have universal support. I reserve my particular thanks for the Minister for working so hard behind the scenes to bring to fruition today the amendment that she moved this evening. I thank her on behalf of all humanists.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Lord Birt Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt]

My Lords, my upbringing was in the intense, enclosed environment of post-war Liverpool Catholicism. Until I went to university and until I was first exposed to the tentative calls for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, I had not the slightest idea what it was. I knew that Oscar Wilde had been imprisoned, but for what exactly was a mystery.

I was not alone. In the 1960s, on the first television programme that I ever produced, I worked with Kenny Everett—a supremely talented iconoclast, who was the programme’s main presenter. Kenny was only two weeks younger than me. He had lived on Merseyside but a mile away, although I had not known him, and he went to another Catholic school just down the road from mine.

In his teens, Kenny appreciated that he was different. He would tell me that he had experienced stirrings in the presence of handsome young men, but these feelings were unfathomable to him. It was not until later when he worked in London in his early 20s, and not until after he had indeed married, that he came finally to understand and slowly to embrace his true nature—the one with which he had been born. In the decades that followed I worked in broadcasting with many other people who were gay but who would not admit it. I recall vividly that in the 1980s a close and esteemed colleague came with tears in his eyes to tell me both that he was gay and that he was about to die of AIDS, which, tragically, he shortly did.

Even in the 1990s, friends and colleagues who were clearly gay were unwilling to acknowledge it, especially in public. Yet social and cultural attitudes have changed rapidly. One of the most profound and progressive changes I have witnessed in my lifetime is how many men and women are now unabashed about their homosexuality, and feel free to present their partners with pride and confidence. Openly gay couples are now commonplace in almost every section of society and almost every walk of life.

The introduction of civil partnerships was a vital step, allowing gay couples to enjoy the legal privileges afforded to heterosexual marriage. This Bill goes the whole hog and rightly allows gay couples who wish to do so to match opposite-sex couples, and make the powerful public statement of love and commitment that marriage proclaims.

On the question that so basically divides the two sides in this debate, I feel not a scintilla of hesitation or doubt. If gay couples want that option—that unequivocal equality with heterosexual partnerships—then they should have it. Of course same-sex marriage will not eliminate prejudice or discrimination, but it will certainly hasten the day when homosexuality is accepted as a wholly natural state.

Two parts of the Bill cause me sadness. Along with everybody else who has spoken, I accept the need for religious freedom. I accept it and I respect it. I recall the persecution of Catholics in this country. However, I do not have to admire the fruits of that freedom. The perspective of the other side of the argument is that the Bill entrenches and legitimises the discrimination that still exists in the established churches. The notion that a gay in a civil partnership may only be a bishop in the Anglican Church if he is celibate, for instance, I find both astonishing and repugnant. Yet over the past two days we have heard that there is already some diversity of opinion within the established church on the matter of gay marriage. I do not expect to see it in my lifetime, but the day will come when age-old discrimination within the churches against both women and gays—born of ancient attitudes, in different societies and in older times—will simply wither away. The inherent values of tolerance and respect, reflected in Christ’s essential teaching, will one day prevail.

My second sadness is that the Bill narrowly missed an opportunity to follow Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland and allow the growing ethical but non-religious movement to which I proudly belong, the Humanists, to conduct legal marriage ceremonies. That is a regret and a missed opportunity. However, I recognise that this brave Bill brings us one historic step closer to a better world, and I wholeheartedly support it.