Queen's Speech

Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells]

My Lords, I, too, add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, on his new office and on his maiden speech. Hope is a fundamental human need. Times of election provide people with the possibility that things can be different. They hope so at least. I believe that the gracious Speech offers some signs of hope, as does much legislation in all governments.

In recent days, the Prime Minister has spoken of his desire to see people happier in this society, which is a laudable aim. But happiness can be ephemeral where hope is not. Hope takes into account reality and seeks to overcome obstacles that prevent its fulfilment. As the philosopher Ernst Bloch once put it, only when hope begins to speak does a hope begin to flourish in which there is no falseness. The role of legislators in a democracy is not to seek to play God, controlling every aspect of human life. Neither, in an increasingly secular society, is the role of government to abolish God. GK Chesterton reminded us that,

“abolish the God and the government becomes the God”,

and who would want that?

I welcome the commitment in the gracious Speech to end the detention of children in immigration centres. I note the answers given by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, in her reply to questions yesterday. We simply must not allow a return to the situation of the testimony of a 14 year-old boy, Wells Botomani, who described in the Guardian his 65 days in Yarl’s Wood as “hell”. His plea to this Government is to,

“think of us children. We do not deserve this treatment. We deserve a future”.

He concludes:

“It is my prayer that the British government shows mercy towards children. Detention for us is hell and detrimental to our fragile minds”.

I believe that the Government accept that. However, turning intention into reality or hope into accomplishment may prove more challenging given the Government’s priority to reduce the economic deficit.

Border police charged with the responsibility of improving immigration controls will come in contact in many cases with vulnerable children. There is a fundamental requirement that such persons should be appropriately trained in the safeguarding and welfare of children. Despite their desire, and the need to make cuts, the Government must ensure that existing and future policy is consistent with this duty, and above all that children are not separated from their families.

I welcome too, in a spirit of hope, the Government's intention to address child poverty. It remains a scandal that little has improved since the publication of the UNICEF report in 2007 on the well-being of children in rich countries. In the report, the UK ranks third from bottom in five of the six categories, including material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviours and risks, and, in particular, young people's own sense of well-being.

The previous Government set themselves the task of halving child poverty by 2010. Despite a good start to that policy, momentum was lost. Evidence seems to suggest that, while those falling below the official breadline in 2008-09 decreased by 100,000, the figures effectively rose in the three previous years by twice as much, thus creating a wider gap between rich and poor than in 1997. Again, I ask, with the Government’s priority on deficit reduction, how can the fight against poverty reduction, to some extent, be ring-fenced?

There is much to welcome in the proposed national insurance and welfare Bills. But for child poverty to be eradicated within a generation there is a need not simply for parents and young people to find work, but for children to be able to grow up in households where the earnings are sufficient to lift children out of poverty. In our desire to capitalise on the nation’s human resources, and to provide work for all, we must not allow either oversimplism or dogma to determine policy. I share some of the concerns expressed earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan.

There are many different and often complex reasons why people are not able to work. If vulnerable children are not to be penalised in a benefits system that is conditional, there needs to be adequate support to help adults and young people into work, with measures that address entrenched worklessness. There are real concerns. I refer, as have others, in particular, to the Sure Start programme. Anne Longfield OBE, chief executive of 4Children, said that it is important that the Government have recognised Sure Start centres as a primary means of support for children and families, and that, while of course it is important that Sure Start should target the most vulnerable families in any community, the support of children’s centres is crucial for all families regardless of their social background.

Finally, just as society is more than state and families and includes charities, churches, synagogues, gurdwaras and mosques, so are our children more important than simply mini adults waiting to grow up. Neither are all childhoods the same. There are those experienced in urban and remote rural environments, from multiple families, from different cultures and much else besides. Like each of us, all children are unique. They want to make sense of their lives and be taken seriously. They do not want to be patronised or to be the subject of endless educational experiment. And when they go seriously wrong and become the subject of the law, they want and need to be treated as children, and their total experience of life to date taken into account—not subject to adult courts, however well meaning the attempts to reduce their formality.

Children need to be free to discover jouissance, that association of play and joy which offers an infinite opening out to delight and beyond delight. This means allowing for the development of children’s spirituality. Dr Rebecca Nye has identified the criteria for such spirituality as space, process, imagination, relationship intimacy and trust. Children enjoy silence, with the space to think and to reflect. As Fleur Dorrell of the Mothers’ Union has observed:

“It is not atypical for a child to be contemplating the stars, who made them, and wanting ice cream at the same time”.

Adults may find this contradictory, but children see it as wonderfully connected. Perhaps a lighter point might illustrate this. A nun taking a class put a box of apples on the table and left a note saying, “Take one apple. God is watching you”. She then put a packet of biscuits on the table, and a young person with a quick wit wrote, “Take as many as you like. God is watching the apples”.

In conclusion, let me plead with the Government not to risk the future of children in their desire to balance the books, and not to overlegislate or require too much too soon in the education process. Let hope be fulfilled in such a way that happiness can become possible, and above all, let us end the curse of child poverty in this nation and work tirelessly to end it throughout the world.