Economy: Personal Savings

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, on behalf of the House, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, for his splendid maiden speech and look forward to many contributions from him in future. He mentioned the kingdom of Mercia; Chester was the northern outpost of that kingdom, so I look forward to collaboration with the noble Lord, as we do collaborate on a think tank concerned with energy and climate policy. The noble Lord had a very distinguished record in the other place, but some of us remember him most for singing at the Conservative Party conference, to the tune of “Land of Hope and Glory”, words which I have deliberately forgotten for the purposes of today’s speech. He brings an incisive mind and great integrity to the House, and we look forward to his further contributions.

I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, for securing this debate and for his informative and skilful introduction. I shall look up Monzo, one of the saving apps to which he referred, afterwards.

Given that around 40% of people of working age have no savings and that half of those who use credit cards apparently do not pay them off at the end of the month— to choose just two of the multiple range of indicators one could choose from—there are deep, if complex, issues facing our society at the level of personal finance.

I happily and gratefully acknowledge the various recent government initiatives which have attempted to respond to these, notwithstanding the possibility that they may not be as effective as hoped. The Help to Save scheme for low-income families, the various manifestations of ISAs—including the recent Help to Buy and lifetime ISAs—and the National Savings bond, which offers a slightly more generous rate of interest than can be achieved elsewhere, will all have some helpful impacts for individuals and families over the coming years, I do not doubt.

I would like to offer some comments on broader aspects of the situation which we face. I refer first to housing because buying a house used to be the main way in which individuals and families saved for the future, as the principal on a mortgage was gradually repaid. Until about 10 years ago, the proportion of people who owned their own home was on a long-term rising trend. The process of paying off a mortgage, typically for people who might have got into the housing market in their 20s or 30s, was essentially a form of steady saving. A majority of young people now have to rent—in some cases, they choose to rent—which means that they do not have the stake in wider society which saving and house owning itself help to provide. This debate is not about home ownership and housing policy as such, but the issues are quite deeply connected, as the intentions behind the Help to Buy and lifetime ISAs indicate.

On the housing front, we seem to have reached an unsatisfactory position, with the lack of a clear national policy that is likely to deliver the houses we are going to need in future and need today. For my part, I see little alternative to a return to more direct government and local authority investment as part of the necessary response, along with appropriate management and regulation of the mortgage market. I do not see how just leaving things essentially to the market will work. That has been the fundamental approach for the past 30 years; it has clearly not generated the housing that we need but has generated quite fundamental problems. For those on the housing ladder, it has worked well, of course. The persistent and progressive rise in house prices has been popular with home owners. For those who have benefited—and I have been one of them—wealth and savings have increased almost without effort.

Now, however, we have a real dilemma. Let us suppose that the supply of houses for sale increases to the point where the market starts to reduce their prices. Those who have bought houses in recent years will then experience a loss in their investment—that is, their savings—and all sorts of political stresses and strains would result. This is why I have come to think that the Government really have no choice but to act to control and regulate aspects of the housing market much more proactively than has been the case in recent decades. If this does not happen, I fear that the well-meaning ISA schemes which are designed to help people on to the housing ladder, will not be very effective.

The housing-related aspects of saving are only part of a larger picture, of course, which properly includes pension saving and a wider provision for care needs in old age. I wholeheartedly welcome the auto-enrolment provisions on the pensions front, but they must not be allowed to mask the fact that very many employees are now in defined contribution pension schemes, which are much less generous than the defined benefit schemes that they would have enjoyed in the past. The same is true for the self-employed, as annuity rates have lowered the pension value of the funds for which they have saved.

From whichever angle one views the situation, there is a need to encourage a culture of greater financial responsibility and one more orientated towards saving in our country. Our savings ratio is way below other developed countries, and that is simply storing up problems for the future.

This is a subject in which the Church has taken a certain interest over the years. Some time ago, in collaboration with the Church of Scotland, the Church of England launched the Churches’ Mutual Credit Union, and it would be helpful to have a renewed interest and support for credit unions in general. Perhaps when he responds, the Minister will say something about the contemporary view of the role of credit unions. For some reason, they seem rather to have slipped from our attention.

More recently, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, who served on the banking commission after the recent financial crisis, set up a task group on responsible credit and saving. Out of this has come a submission to the current consultation on PSHE arguing that serious financial education should begin at primary school and continue throughout a child’s school career. The most reverend Primate’s Just Finance Foundation is helping to run financial education programmes in 120 schools, in partnership with the financial education charity Young Money, under the title LifeSavers. LifeSavers helps children learn how to manage money wisely and provides training and resources for teachers to carry on that work in the classroom. Nearly 15,000 children have already taken part in LifeSavers, and 1,000 teachers have been trained through the continuing professional development scheme that LifeSavers offers.

There are wider social dimensions and impacts, of course. Disputes and strains around finance are a significant factor in adult relationship breakdown, with all the trauma and cost, both to the individuals and to wider society, which generally result from relationship breakdown. I hope the Minister will comment on how the recent government savings initiatives can be supported and complemented by much better financial education, in partnership with the charitable initiatives I have described and which other noble Lords have mentioned.

I conclude with a final, rather broad and perhaps disputable comment. In my adult life, I have watched the development of a more consumerist culture based on the primacy of the freedom of the individual. This has had many benefits—and I would not deny that for a moment—but it has also had a downside. The more that a society is based on the freedom of the individual, the more likely it is that that society will generate winners and losers, and reinforce the winning and losing outcomes. America is the prime example here, with its persistent and large underclass, and it has also fed the gambling problem in our society, which we are attempting to deal with now by, for example, reducing the stake on betting terminals from £100 to just £2. There is a grinding of gears going on as the Government try to implement that.

It is the task of government and of society as a whole to be alert to the downside that results from a free society, which is intrinsically the right way to organise ourselves, and to counteract the unfortunate consequences that tend to result. We also have a growing underclass that sees little point in saving seriously for the future, just as we have a prison population that is twice what it was earlier in my adult life.

The issues behind today’s debate are for the whole of society and touch on these broader social issues. That is why the recent pension and ISA developments, welcome as they are, risk merely scratching the surface of the challenges we face unless they are faced more comprehensively.

Class 4 National Insurance Contributions

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I have some sympathy with that as a person who has had to defend manifestos over 10 general elections. It is important that the public have some idea of the direction in which a political party will take the country if it is successful in a general election, and that manifestos give some idea about the big issues such as public ownership, tax, defence, the police and law and order. However, 600 commitments, which I think is what we made, may be on the high side. By the time we hit 2020, I am sure everybody will learn that there is something to be said for brevity.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I think I can paraphrase the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, by saying:

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often”,


as Churchill said. It is a strength that the Government can change their mind so openly and directly, and I wish that politicians would more often simply and openly accept that they have changed their mind in the light of the evidence. So, in that sense, I welcome this announcement. My concern is about the further measures. One of the problems with the triple lock and the guarantee on tax rates and so on is that tax increases tend to be stealth taxes of one form or another. In a healthy democracy, the more open, direct and progressive taxation is, the better. I wonder whether the Minister is willing to make some comment, from his heart, on that suggestion.

Parliament and Central Government: Relocation

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I thank my noble friend for that very interesting point. We are encouraging people to join the Civil Service and looking for highly intelligent, motivated people. As I said earlier, a lot of those people will be working in the north; they will also be working in the east, the west and the south. That is why we are encouraging departments to have hubs outside the centre.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords—

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)]

My Lords, we will go to the Bishops’ Bench.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

Are we quite sure whether the people of the north would want Parliament in the north?

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

NHS England: HIV Prevention

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

Truvada is clinically effective for HIV, as we know, but a number of other issues are also important to consider, including uptake and adherence, sexual behaviour, drug resistance, safety and prioritisation for prophylaxis and cost effectiveness. Clinical trials certainly did find that Truvada reduced the relative risk of acquiring HIV for between 44% and 86% of cases, and the PROUD findings showed the figure was 86%.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, the Minister has twice referred to difficult decisions. Are the Government sure that spending about half the proportion of GDP on health that North America spends and significantly less than, say, France or Germany spends will enable us to make the right decisions in the face of these difficult ones?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I agree with the right reverend Prelate, but it is necessary for these drugs to be properly assessed in relation to cost and effectiveness, as I said. It is not up to government to decide this; it must be done between the clinicians and the NHS.

Algorithmic Trading

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, I am certainly not complacent. The noble Lord raises a good point, and I reiterate that the Government take the matter of regulating financial markets in their entirety very seriously and closely follow developments in these markets. As I said, investment firms and trading venues should ensure that robust measures are in place to prevent automated trading creating a disorderly market and being used for abusive purposes. The new rules under MiFID II will ensure that such measures are in place.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I am a bear of little brain in relation to algo-whatever-it-is trading, and I speak as a fool. However, would this not all be solved if there was a rule that if you bought shares, you had to keep them for more than a few nanoseconds—maybe a few minutes?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The right reverend Prelate makes an interesting point. I refer him to the excellent Foresight report, which says that,

“liquidity, as measured by bid-ask spreads”—

I will test him on that later—

“and other metrics, has improved”.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendments 2 and 3, which have been spoken to by the noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord Norton, have the combined effect of making the provisions of the Bill even more severe than they now are and of weakening the capacity of the House of Commons to discipline its Members itself. That seems to me to be an unhappy combination.

The noble Lords believe that a Member of Parliament found guilty by a court of any offence—not necessarily an imprisonable offence, but any offence—ought to become subject to the recall petition process. As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, suggested, a minor motoring offence could expose the Member of Parliament to that process. He was optimistic that constituents would have the moderation and kindliness not to take advantage of that, but it does seem to me that a lot of politics could quickly come into this and that an opportunity might well be seized by those who wanted to see a Member of Parliament of a certain party displaced. Perhaps more seriously, a Member of Parliament who was found guilty in a court of some offence of obstruction during the course of protesting against proposals for fracking or wind turbines—or perhaps the tripling of tuition fees—would, again, be subject to the recall process.

This means that the Member of Parliament, instead of being subject to the rounded judgment of all his constituents in due course at the general election, becomes immediately subject to the wrath of all the Mrs Grundys in his constituency and of the censorious minority—only a small minority, 10% of registered electors, need to sign the petition to trigger the process. Members of Parliament will have to be paragons of virtue and constantly on their best behaviour. Those of us who know the character of the House of Commons well may think that pressures in that direction are not likely to be very positively productive.

The amendments would mean that suspension by the Standards Committee was irrelevant—that would be struck out as a trigger. Even if the amendment would not mark the formal abandonment of attempts by the House of Commons to regulate itself—I acknowledge that the rather substantial volume that the Committee on Standards has released today indicates that it has not given up on that process—it would certainly seriously undermine the capacity of the House of Commons to police itself.

The noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord Lexden, made much in Committee of paragraph 13 of the report of the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House. However, that report does not recommend removing the jurisdiction of the Standards Committee. What it does is to point to an inconsistency in the Bill, between its desire to increase the direct accountability of Members of Parliament to electors and its desire to retain a significant role for the Committee on Standards. There is a tension and a contradiction there, but for those of us who believe that it is grievously misguided to introduce this recall procedure, that tension or contradiction is something of a mitigating factor. I certainly do not think that the noble Lords can pray in aid the Constitution Committee as endorsing what they are seeking to do. They have decided that it stated a very important problem and that it is a problem that they want to solve.

Amendment 6, in the name of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, takes us, as he has explained, only a small part of the distance that he wishes to travel. While I deeply respect his knowledge of the ways of the Standards Committee, on which he served for many years, I profoundly disagree with him. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, has reminded us that the stated purpose of the legislation is to restore the reputation of MPs and Parliament. The way for Parliament to restore its reputation is to demonstrate to the public that it has found better ways to handle, discipline and organise itself.

I am against what has already begun to happen. I am against the introduction of lay members. There is everything to be said for the availability of high-quality advice. I am much in favour of the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards but, as a famous parliamentarian once said, expertise should be on tap, not on top. It is for the House of Commons itself to find more convincing ways to regulate itself and demonstrate to the public that it is doing so.

Some people may ask what all this has to do with us in the House of Lords. I simply reply that we are a House of Parliament. We have a particularly close interest in the good functioning of Parliament, as do all the people of this country. I think that it is legitimate for us to offer advice. I agree that the House of Commons will surely wish to consider this important report from the Committee on Standards. That may mean some delay before we reach Third Reading, if matters are to be properly and decently conducted. There is no doubt that we are entitled to take a view on these matters. However, I disagree with noble Lords who have proposed these various amendments.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on this. I think that it is a mistake to play off these conditions against each other, as if you were to ditch one and get a quid pro quo strength in another. In principle, one should take and look at each condition on its own merit and principle. I do not want to refer to the second condition, as I do not quite understand the dynamics of what happens in the other place; other Members will understand.

The first recall condition needs to have about it a certain level of trigger. Simply to be convicted of any offence and then potentially to find this juggernaut or sledgehammer process kicking in seems wrong. As we all know, when these processes begin, the issues to which they are supposed to refer are not those on which they are fought. At the moment in our political system you need to get only 10% of the electors to agree to recall the MP and have a by-election. It would be easy for people to use a minor indiscretion that leads to a criminal conviction to generate this rather costly and unfortunate process. I believe in the Bill in principle, but there should be a healthy trigger. As set out, the trigger requiring that a conviction leads to a sentence of imprisonment, which I assume also includes a suspended sentence, seems about right.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

I will briefly comment on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Norton. I may be mistaken but he seemed to be painting an idyllic picture of what life is in the real world outside, in which the decision taken to discipline the Member of Parliament for whatever reason will be looked at with great objectivity by those reading the newspapers, listening to the radio and watching the television—you can imagine someone saying over their breakfast cereal, “I wonder what this is all about. What should we do? What considerations should we take into account?”. It does not work like that.

My noble friend mentioned the “f” word. We are not supposed to use the “f” word in your Lordships’ House. He mentioned fracking. The other “f” word I would like to use is fluoride. As the House will know, fluoride is a chemical which, put in the water supply, can bring immense dental benefits. For those who support it, it is a wonderful thing. For those who oppose it, it is responsible for every ill known to mankind and beyond. I know from personal experience how once the issue of fluoride comes up, all sorts of judgments come into play. The resources that people put into this are enormous. We know the facts of the modern world—Twitter and Facebook and all that sort of thing—of which, I regret to say, I know little indeed, except that I occasionally get them and delete them straightaway.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, I do not intend to go through all the arguments as I have dealt with them on previous amendments and they have been dealt with eloquently by my noble friend Lord Howarth and particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who did a splendid job in moving the amendment. I am not sure which Minister is going to reply. It will be good if it is the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, as we might get a straight answer. Perhaps, in his reply, the Minister could say why it is 10%. That is all I want to know. Why is it not 5% or 20%? My amendment has it as 20% because I do not want to make it too easy to unseat Members of Parliament, but it could be any figure. Why did the Government alight on 10%?

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I think that only these Benches could participate in these petitions since we have a right to vote in general elections, although there is a convention among us that we do not. I think that the last person who did so was Archbishop Runcie, who simply could not resist voting against Mrs Thatcher. He was found out and promised not to do it again, so there is a convention that we do not do it but we could.

As I have listened to the debates and read the previous transcripts, I have thought that there is a difference between the theory and the reality of what we are talking about. The theory that an MP would be subject to this petition, which would have reached the 10% or 20%, and that he or she would stand in the subsequent by-election backed by his or her party is pure make-believe. That is simply not going to happen but that is the theory and it is why a by-election would not be a counterpetition. It simply seems unreal that that is going to happen and, for that reason, there is therefore an argument for increasing the threshold from 10% to a higher figure. It corresponds to the reality of what we are talking about, rather than the theory.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, perhaps I may just add to my point. I take what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, and I can see the argument both ways. I do not think that any political party would support a candidate in those circumstances. Maybe I am misreading this but, given the dynamics of the media, I simply cannot see the reality of a political party supporting the MP in those circumstances.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I think this goes to the heart of the issue. If one believes that the three serious triggers for serious wrongdoing that have been set and agreed in the other place are to be adhered to, there would be this opportunity for the electorate in that constituency to have another opportunity. We are obviously at the heart of whether or not there should be legislation. The Government believe, as I think do the opposition Front Bench, that for certain conduct there should be an opportunity for the electorate of that constituency to have their say again on who represents them.

We have almost got to a point where I know that there are noble Lords who are very unhappy about the Bill, but the point is that the Government and the other place feel that there should be triggers whereby recall should take place. It is perfectly respectable for noble Lords to oppose this, but I am afraid that I disagree with the view that there should be no opportunities for recall—hence this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I have great respect for the Minister, but I am afraid that he is exhibiting a little bit of naivety with regard to that. If he thinks back to some cases in the past, he will see that on occasions decisions have been challenged as being made for less than dispassionate and objective reasons, so that can arise. I am saying that it is very easy for that trigger to be pulled in that kind of instance: a seven-day sentence would initiate it. That is not—as other noble Lords, such as the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, have described it—a very serious wrongdoing. It could happen because of a series of parking or speeding offences, or some other matter. All sorts of things could trigger that—such as getting your wife to say that she was driving your car.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I am sure that the Government do not wish to prolong this debate unduly, but that is a very important point. In our society a dumbing-down effect happens because of a lot of legal provisions. I am thinking of suffragettes, who were sent to prison, or people who protested against nuclear weapons in certain circumstances. Alternatively, it may be about ethical issues where we have changed the law, such as same-sex relationships. One can think of all sorts of situations in which a limited period of imprisonment might well have arisen. If an MP thought that if that happened there would be a petition process and you would need only 10%, I fear that it would result in a certain dumbing down. Some issues here need to be carefully teased out.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

With the greatest respect, both to the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes—and I have great admiration for both of them—is not the real problem that a person of unimpeachable character could be sentenced to 14 days’ imprisonment for a motoring offence with regard to a momentary lapse of concentration over a span of two or three seconds? That is the reality—it happens every day.

I do not believe that the danger of judges or magistrates acting in a cynically political way is at all a real one. If Mandy Rice-Davies were alive she might say, “He would say that, wouldn’t he?”. But be that as it may, that is the real point. One is assuming that even a short period of imprisonment is of necessity to be regarded as a serious matter even if it does not involve moral turpitude at all, given that it is a serious matter from the viewpoint of the law, perhaps because of serious injury done.

Social Policy

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, this debate is about partnerships. What does the word “partner” conjure up in your Lordships’ minds—a business partner, a transient dancing partner or perhaps a serious domestic companion? My wife detests being called my partner, and “domestic companion” refers only to our cat or our dog.

The dictionary defines a partner as a “sharer”, someone of equal standing in a relationship—not a wholly owned subsidiary or a camp follower but someone on an equal footing, a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, made at the beginning of the debate. When we speak on the Motion about partnerships between government and civil society, we must avoid any latent assumption that the Government are inevitably the senior partner or the managing director, the holding company that at the end of the day calls the shots. Perhaps the Motion would have been better worded the other way around: to call attention to the role of partnerships between civil society and government. Which is the more primary reality, society or government? Surely this society.

The various agencies of civil society should stand alongside the agencies of government, whether local or national—or big or small, for that matter. Partnerships on education illustrate the point. The churches, especially the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, have a major stake in our education system. The Church of England alone sponsors nearly 5,000 schools, and our schools and boards of education have many fine people working for them. We have great expertise. Head teachers, teachers and education officers welcome the wider partnership with government, but they sometimes feel that they are not taken as seriously as they deserve to be and that local education authorities regard themselves as the senior partners. Perhaps the same feelings surround academies. I chair the governing body of a newly formed academy, and for all the theoretical freedoms of the academy it can feel like quite a regulated environment, not so much by local government as by central government.

There is a prevailing sense in some areas of the media, particularly encouraged by vociferous secularists, that church schools are interlopers in the state system. Actually, considered as a matter of history, the state interloped on the original church provision. The churches should not feel the need to be defensive or compelled to explain and justify where we fit into the partnership that we have with the state in the provision of education. Our record speaks for itself, as generations of parents have acknowledged. I am quite sure that other faith communities will come to enrich the provision of education in our country, and they are already doing so. This is the case with the many newly founded academies that have sponsors with no religious foundation at all.

The growth in the size and power of government in recent decades is a complex phenomenon, as we have learnt already in the debate, with many factors and causes behind it. In the circumstances of modern western society, it is inevitable that government, central and local, will have an important and vital role, but Governments always need to know their limits and avoid the slide into an ever greater role in the lives of citizens. A key way would be through a commitment to work through partners and civil society not just functionally in delivering services but in the self-understanding of what makes for a mature and healthy society, as many speakers have emphasised. We can easily oscillate between the corporate power of the state and the rights and freedoms of the individual, flowing a little this way and that way between the two, but both depend on a multitude of intermediary bodies including and especially the family.

Politics is fundamentally about power, as events surrounding the recent election and the emergence of the coalition Government so clearly remind us. Most of the headlines in recent years have been about either power or wealth. The management of both are central to society and important, but our vision of society is deeply impoverished if we focus too much or too narrowly on the dialectic of power and wealth. Civilised society is about much more—about the virtues of altruism, love, mercy, beauty, truth and justice, which are not subsets of power and wealth. It is those virtues that lead to a civilised society, which government and private businesses will not easily sustain without the deep partnerships with the agencies and institutions of wider society.

Much is already happening in society but it does not make the news. It is not bad news; it just does not make the headlines. I turn for a moment to the role of faith communities in promoting the common good. A number of surveys have been conducted in recent years in various parts of the country. The north-west of England, where I come from, has taken a particular leading role. Ten years or so ago, the various denominations in the north-west got together and funded a full-time churches officer for the north-west specifically to promote the interaction of the churches with the various agencies of government. The post has been held by a very able Roman Catholic priest, Monsignor John Devine, and the Northwest Regional Development Agency recognised the potential of this appointment by providing office space while we provided all the salary costs.

For 10 years or more, he has tirelessly promoted partnership working between the churches and other faith communities in government at all levels with striking results. Several surveys have been conducted in the north-west, and they have revealed a wide range of activities sponsored by and centred on the various faith communities. The NWDA has supported that research. Steve Broomhead, the distinguished chief executive of the NWDA, said in the latest report published last autumn, Faith in England's Northwest:

“One key finding in our research has been the strength of faith communities, their buildings and volunteers, in areas of highest social need”.

That is a key finding. It is in the areas of highest social need, where the agencies of government find it hardest to deliver the services that are needed, that the faith communities are there on the ground and most able to work alongside those in need. It is non-governmental agencies, charities, that are best able to meet these needs.

I illustrate this briefly by reference to two or three examples where I have some personal involvement. These examples are not exclusively faith-based. Indeed, it is interesting that partnership working is often between faith communities and other agencies on the ground with a common interest, rather than others who share the perspective of the faith concerned. Take a major social priority to which several noble Lords have referred, including the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis: the rise in the prison population, with persistent reoffending as a major cause. The noble Lord, Lord Low, also touched on this in his speech. It is becoming clear that programmes of restorative justice have a key role to play in reducing reoffending and, beyond that, in re-establishing people in society.

In my diocese there is a young offender institution, Thorn Cross, where an excellent chaplain runs a Sycamore Tree Project. This was originally developed by the charity Prison Fellowship and it is the leading example of a restorative justice programme in this country. It takes the parable of Jesus and Zacchaeus, the crooked tax collector, as a model for raising victim awareness and helping prisoners to understand the dynamics of criminality and crime. Last year the course ran in no fewer than 36 prisons and involved nearly 2,000 prisoners. More than 90 per cent completed the course and were credited with level 1 credits in the Open College Network. Research that is being carried out at the University of Sheffield is beginning to show benefits in reduced reoffending. It will be interesting to see what the longer-term statistics and evidence show in this area. I could say more about the splendid work that is being done, but the key point is that a restorative justice programme is more likely to be effective if it is not run by the Government or the prison authorities but delivered by agencies of wider civil society. It makes it much more credible for the prisoners involved. Already, the funding for this sort of programme is a soft target when the prison budget is frozen. That point applies across many of these issues.

I provide another example, again from the margins of society where social need is greatest—work with homeless people. When I first became Bishop of Chester, each day two or three homeless people, or groups of people, would call at my house asking for a mug of tea and a sandwich. Today, there are one or two a month, if that. I rather miss the conversations that I used to have with these interesting people who regularly turned up at my door. The change has been made by the founding and development of a splendid charity, Chester Aid to the Homeless, which provides a range of services and support to homeless people. The charity has had some support from local government but has drawn most of its support from the wider community, including local churches. I declare an interest: my wife is now a director of Chester Aid to the Homeless. She took part last year in a sponsored sleep-out overnight in the depths of winter. I had to stay at home to attend to important duties with our domestic companions. Again, this excellent work is done most effectively—and more cost-effectively, too—by a charity that operates at arm’s length from the agencies of government but in partnership with them.

I could give many other examples, both sacred and secular, of the value—in every sense—of partnerships between wider society and government, especially in our support for those on the margins of society. In the current cost-cutting climate, these activities are soft targets. I hope that the Minister will reflect on this and comment on the Government’s approach to try to prevent local authorities simply diminishing the grants that are given and that multiply their value many times over due to the partnership relationships in which they stand. The wisest course would be to promote many of these partnerships, which are key to the development of the common good in our society.