National Well-being

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I think that the time permits me to speak briefly in the gap. I was not sure that I could be here in time for the debate, so I did not put my name down.

Well-being is a very fluid and flexible word, as we have heard. It is quite closely correlated with happiness. Surveys of people in employment in different professions show the clergy as among the happiest groups of workers in our country, which I do not believe has any correlation with GDP.

Certain things such as well-being or happiness arise best if you do not try to achieve them directly. Some things in life are a bit like the soap in the bath: if you try to grab hold of them, they slip out of the hand. It is a little like the character of love: you cannot force someone to love you, whoever they are. I cannot get one of my clergy by the scruff of the neck and say, “You will love me, won’t you?” They may well squeak back, “Yes, Bishop”, but I know that they will not really mean it. Love has to arise out of the truth, the reality and the richness of a relationship, but you cannot force it. Often in the long dynamics of a happy marriage, it is as the partners in a couple realise that they have to let the other person be who they are and not try to change them into what they would like them to be that the happiness in a marriage often develops better. In the average marriage, each partner tries to change the other one into what they would like them to be. This causes trouble for about 20 years; then they give up and are happy.

While the Government of course have a place and a role to play, part of the wisdom of government is to realise the limited place that it has. If I were to look to the future and to well-being, it would be to allow our children to be children. The surveys of the well-being and happiness of children in our society are a major worry. I correlate that partly with the fact that we start children at school so young compared with many other countries. We almost try to force children on life’s journey too soon. The same is true generally of the place for what I call the intermediate institutions between government and the individual. We tend to see an oscillation in our society between the power and reach of government and perfectly proper emphasis on the freedom and rights of the individual. Both are key aspects of the dynamics of society, but they very easily squeeze the intermediate social or human institutions, which are largely those which promote well-being and happiness. We have gone through a period of almost trying to grasp after well-being too much.

In our increasingly diverse society, key to promoting well-being is to recognise that diversity, to allow a genuine tolerance, even of things that we do not particularly like ourselves, and almost to get into the way of thinking, “That is the way in which a mature, diverse, pluriform democracy will have to work”. To some extent, that means the Government employing a self-denying ordinance.

Perhaps I may end by quoting a verse from the Bible—many on these Benches are very loath to do so in your Lordships' House. One of my favourite verses is simply:

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God … and all these things shall be added unto you”.

Happiness and well-being are in a sense the other things that are added unto us, but it is only if we divert our attention to truth, beauty and justice and all those other values that real well-being and happiness will emerge, as a by-product in one sense but as a real fruit of that perspective.