Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Bristol Excerpts

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I was referring to both. Clause 1 says the applicant has to initiate it, but I want it to cover both.

[The Lord Bishop of Bristol]

My Lords, I may not be the only one who is a bit confused about what is happening. I stand to speak in support of Amendment 12 tabled by my noble friend Lord McColl, but I would like to address noble Lords’ attention to Amendment 77, which stands in my name. I rather hoped it might have been grouped with Amendment 85, but they stand separately grouped now. I would like to reserve the right to come back to Amendment 85 at a later occasion and I hope a later occasion will occur for that to happen.

Amendment 77 deals with something slightly different. Quite rightly, most of our debate today has focused on the decision to apply for assisted suicide and to sign the declaration. However, it is fair to say that the request for assistance with suicide involves two different and discrete decisions: first, there is the decision to apply for it, and then there is the decision to ingest fatal drugs. The Bill makes it clear that there has to be a minimum of 14 days between the application and the actual ingestion of the drugs, except in the case of somebody who is given a prognosis of a month or less and then the time lag reduces to six days.

I want to draw noble Lords’ attention to the fact that there can be quite a considerable time lag between requesting assistance and the act of having the drugs administered. I do not like to keep going back to Oregon because, quite clearly, there are some good things about the Oregon experiment. However, it does need to be said that in Oregon the range between the first request and death has been a minimum of 15 days and a maximum of 1,009 days. In Washington, there has been a range of between three weeks and 150 weeks.

Amendments 77 and 85 are an attempt to try at least to give the opportunity to the person, as they come to the moment when they will actually have the drugs administered, to return to that decision to make sure it is robust. In a sense, it asks questions about two things: the settled nature of their decision but also their continued capacity, given that there are two aspects to the decision that is going to be made. Each decision ought to be subject to some level of scrutiny. Clearly, the first one needs to be subject to a very high degree of scrutiny, but we need to give some attention as to whether the second decision also needs a degree of scrutiny.

These decisions will be made, as I say, at the very least after a 14-day interval in most cases, but some will likely occur after a much longer gap. Consequently, it is necessary to reconfirm that the conditions by which assistance was granted still apply. It is also necessary to confirm that the decision to accept assistance is free from,

“pressure, coercion or duress from others or from a sense of duty or obligation to others”,

and that there exists a level of,

“capacity commensurate with the decision”.

The actual decision to ingest a prescribed dose of lethal drugs should be subject to the same, or very near the same, scrutiny that the initial request for a prescription was.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 77, to which I have added my name. I am sure that many noble Lords will have had instances in which patients known to them, whom they are looking after or caring for in some way or another, have declared that, yes, they would want to commit suicide and would want help to do it. Then there is a gap. When the decision comes—when the decision is, “Do they actually want to take those drugs? —the decision is frequently no. I have known several instances of that. I therefore firmly support the proposal by the right reverend Prelate in Amendment 77, and I very much hope that the Committee will accept it.

Economy: Sustainable Jobs

Lord Bishop of Bristol Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Bristol]

My Lords, like other speakers in your Lordships’ House this morning, I would like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for introducing this significant debate about the importance of sustainable jobs to the Exchequer and to the British economy. To this, I would add their importance to the millions of people whose lives are currently blighted by unemployment, and the communities in which they live. With the noble Lord, Lord German, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, I am thinking in particular of the nearly 1 million young people who are out of work.

I want to use this opportunity to highlight the potential contribution that co-operatives and other social enterprises have to offer to sustainable job creation. In delivering the spending review yesterday, the Chancellor talked about the need for growth, reform and fairness. The growing social enterprise sector meets all three of these criteria, providing a business model that delivers sustainable economic growth while fostering innovation and social change.

Damage to the reputation of the important parts of the UK economy in the wake of the financial crisis and concern about the social impacts of the recession and public spending cuts have brought social enterprise to the fore. People want a different way of doing business that is about creating shared value, not just profit—where the motivation is more than just making money, where the proceeds are reinvested locally for the benefit of the whole community and where employees and customers are actively engaged in decisions that directly affect them.

Here are a few statistics that demonstrate the potential of this sector, courtesy of Social Enterprise UK. At present there are around 70,000 social enterprises in the UK, contributing at least £24 billion to the economy and employing more than 800,000 people. Social enterprises are twice as likely to have grown in the past year as other small and medium-sized businesses, and 82% of social enterprises reinvest their profits in the communities where they operate. Social enterprises create more jobs relative to turnover than mainstream businesses, and 39% of all social enterprises operate in the 20% most deprived communities in the United Kingdom, helping to create jobs where they are most needed.

This is a dynamic and fast-growing sector with the ability to create and sustain employment. One in seven social enterprises is less than two years old, more than three times the start-up rate for small businesses generally. At the same time there is a core of older, well-established social enterprises. Nearly half of all social enterprises have been trading for more than 10 years.

Jobs created in this sector are sustainable in other ways, too. Research shows that employee engagement correlates with increased productivity and performance. Engaged employees are much less likely to leave their organisation and are more likely to report high levels of job satisfaction. For a voluntary sector organisation, income from social enterprises can provide a more reliable source of income than external grants.

Enough of the statistics. Now for two examples that I hope will show why I believe that social enterprises have so much to offer. The first is an initiative set up by Portsmouth’s Anglican cathedral to support entrepreneurs and business start-ups. The Cathedral Innovation Centre provides entrepreneurs with office space, start-up loans and mentors, helping to create jobs at the same time as providing a new purpose for underused buildings. There are already nine businesses at the Portsmouth Cathedral Innovation Centre, including a computer games firm, a catering company and a business that redevelops old land for wider civic use. Together they occupy 14 desks and are currently recruiting three new apprentices with support from the centre. With hardly any resources, they have levered in-kind support worth around £500,000. The initiative is also being funded by local people who are being asked to invest £75 or more as shareholders. Discussions are already taking place to open similar centres in Derby, Cheshire, East Anglia, Bournemouth and the north-east. As the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, who attended the official launch in May of this year, said:

“This isn’t just one cathedral innovation centre, but the start of a movement. It’s about providing jobs, which is the best expression of hope [and] providing a real sense of self-worth”.

The second example is Worth Unlimited, a Christian charity based in Birmingham, which has established a family of social enterprises offering skills training and employment opportunities for disadvantaged young people at risk of social exclusion. One of these social enterprises is the DevenishGirl Bakery, which produces a range of home-baked cakes using locally sourced, organic and fair trade ingredients, as well as vintage tea parties and picnic hampers. Young unemployed people are given accredited training in how to run a small business, as well as practical cookery and personal development skills. The six-month programme is specifically designed to help move the young people they work with into sustainable employment, whether through job creation within the organisation or other opportunities outside the enterprise.

These two examples illustrate that, as a church, we are not just about high-flown rhetoric; we are very much on the case and very willing to partner with others who seek to meet the noble goal of sustainable jobs for the young. I am also encouraged that the Government, too, are beginning to see the huge potential of the social enterprise sector. I urge the Government to do all they can to maximise the contribution of social enterprise to economic growth and sustainable job creation.

Budget Statement

Lord Bishop of Bristol Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Bristol]

My Lords, I recognise the limited amount of wiggle room that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has in the current economic climate, so much of what he proposed yesterday has to be cautiously welcomed. Arguments will continue over whether austerity has yet again trumped stimuli to growth, and will no doubt continue to smoulder for a time to come. I do not myself propose to pitch in on that topic, but I should like to make a few brief comments on one or two aspects of the Budget Statement.

First, and positively, from these Benches—understandably empty today of all days—we welcome the Government’s decision to keep their promises to the world’s poorest by committing 0.7% of our national income to overseas aid. From my own point of view, this is particularly bold in the context of the growth expectations, which have been revised downwards. I hope that this is something that we can all be proud of. Poverty is of course a relative concept but, together with many of my episcopal colleagues, because of our diocesan partnership links, I have travelled to some of the world’s poorest places. I can tell noble Lords that when you stare into the empty eyes of those who are starving to death, the argument that “Charity begins at home” wears a little thin. Through the Government’s commitment to the poor, many millions will benefit.

We are getting better at ensuring that the aid given is kept away from the grabbing hands of corrupt politicians. The distribution of such funding needs to be monitored and held in a framework of accountability. Of course, even though in my own mind this should not be a principal driver of aid, there is a very real sense in a global economy that such aid has an element of investment about it, for today’s aid may well be the foundation of tomorrow’s trade.

Aid is important but, as noble Lords know well, it is only part of the solution. The Government could be doing more to help poor countries to collect more of the tax that they are owed, by requiring multinationals to reveal the tax avoidance schemes that they are using in the developing world. Christian Aid estimates that poor nations currently lose $160 billion a year as a result of tax-dodging by multinationals—far more than they receive in aid from all rich countries. The pronouncements by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor on tax avoidance have so far been commendable. Now we look forward to the Government leading ambitious global action against tax avoidance at the G8 conference in June. That would show that the UK is serious about an international agreement to fight tax avoidance that hurts the poor.

I welcome the plans to invest an additional £750 million into subsidising childcare costs, in a country that has some of the highest childcare costs in the world. However, I want to note the concerns of Barnardo’s, the Child Poverty Action Group and the Children’s Society, which are worried that these changes will fail to help the families most in need of support. The Government’s scheme will assist those on high incomes, potentially up to a joint income of just under £300,000, but will do nothing to help parents working part-time on the minimum wage. In these times of austerity, it feels unjust not to be targeting help at those who are trying to work their way out of poverty.

I am also concerned about the proposal to set a firm limit on certain areas of welfare expenditure as part of controlling annually managed expenditure. Page 26 of the Treasury’s budget report seems very thin on detail, promising an update in June’s spending round. Assuming that these limits are binding, that is likely to put further pressure on millions of low-income families who are already being disproportionately affected by welfare cuts.

There are very good reasons why there is flexibility in this part of the Government’s balance sheet. The need for welfare expenditure varies with the economic cycle and, as the Chancellor has discovered for himself, it is not always easy to predict the future state of the economy. However, I hope that this announcement does not mean, for example, that every increase in unemployment will lead to a corresponding reduction in benefit rates. While I do not wish to overreact to an announcement that is clearly work in progress, I seek the Government’s reassurance that this will not mean further cuts in the real value of benefits and tax credits.

I sincerely welcome this Government’s commitment to overseas aid, and I hope that this bold act of generosity will be extended to ensure greater awareness of the needs of low-income families living in this country.