Hate Crimes

Lord Bishop of Chichester Excerpts

Wednesday 21st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the Government committed to break down the recording of hate crime first by religion and then more recently by race. That provides us with an important insight into the experiences of different communities, which can be quite different across the country. Where I agree with the noble Lord is that part of the solution to some of these issues is focusing on where we have more in common than what divides us. We should emphasise that, particularly in our schools.

[The Lord Bishop of Chichester]

My Lords, this is an extremely difficult time, in which we hear profoundly disturbing reports of the rise in race and faith-based hate crimes. Tomorrow, the board of the UK’s Inter Faith Network will meet to confirm its closure following the withdrawal of funding by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. This comes at a time when we urgently need to promote interfaith dialogue and the expansion of religious literacy in schools, as has been mentioned, and elsewhere. What assessment have His Majesty’s Government made of the impact of the closure of the Inter Faith Network, and what will replace it?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the Government fund a number of organisations to work in the space. On the Inter Faith Network specifically, the Secretary of State decided to withdraw the offer of funding for this year due to the appointment of a member of the Muslim Council of Britain to the board of trustees of the IFN. Successive Governments have had a long-standing policy of non-engagement with the MCB. Therefore, the appointment of an MCB member to the core governance structure of a government-funded organisation informed that decision.

Levelling Up

Lord Bishop of Chichester Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

Can I respond? I listened to the noble Baroness, and I hope that she can listen to me for just a moment. I was depressed to watch the grant farmers at work, filling in forms and collecting the money—whether it was local, regional or national money—and not making a blind bit of difference. That was during the Labour years; I saw no progress at all, so I was depressed. But here we have 12 key missions, all measurable, backed up by an annual report. Admittedly, this is not the end of the programme and plan for levelling up—I would say that we are at the end of the beginning—but it is now a substantial plan, with 12 clear missions set out and milestones to get there, which will be measured in an annual report. I do not think there has been a Government who have tried to be more transparent than this one.

[The Lord Bishop of Chichester]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the enthusiasm of his presentation but also for looking forward to the rest of this decade. I also want to speak about those communities in which I have served that are the inheritors of decades of deprivation and need. I was intrigued to see in the executive summary that, even in the affluence of Sussex, where I serve, there are deep pockets of deprivation and need which are recognised. What I do not see recognised here is the vital importance of the social capital of faith groups, of which the Church is one, which make a significant contribution not only to sustaining life in those areas of deprivation but to sustaining hope for a better future.

When I was newly ordained and serving in Devonport in Plymouth back in the late 1980s, in those days, it was recognised by the statutory agencies that were our partners that funding to Church-monitored projects by the statutory agencies—such as the probation service, mental health service and social services—enabled those projects to be delivered in the most acute areas of need through a voluntary agency, the Church, which already had levels of trust that enabled the services to be more easily received than they would be from statutory agencies, for a wide range of reasons. I hope that the Minister will reassess the place of those faith and community organisations, which are part of our social capital. It has been the privilege of the Church to be a co-ordinator with other groups in that respect.

Finally, the focus here has been, understandably, on our towns—we have mentioned our cities and the balance between them—but I am also responsible for an area of huge rural deprivation, and looking at how levelling up in those rural areas can occur is another major need. I hope, once again, that the social capital of faith groups such as churches will be recognised.