Tell MAMA: Funding
Lord Bishop of Lichfield Excerpts(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I can reassure the noble Baroness and the House that the service of monitoring and reporting of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred will continue. I understand the point the noble Baroness made. Of course, I cannot predict the future of applications. The process is going to go live and open for a competitive bidding process to secure the best value for public money.
The world has changed since 7 October and the Southport disturbances. It is only right for us to have the opportunity to go out to the market and find the best value for money. But I can confirm that there will be a continuous service of reporting and monitoring of anti-Muslim hatred.
The Lord Bishop of Lichfield
My Lords, I welcome the Government’s launch of a new working group to provide a definition of Islamophobia. I ask the Minister: whom does this group plan to consult, both within and beyond the Islamic community, to inform that definition and ensure that it accounts for the lived experience of the Muslim community?
Integration and Community Cohesion
Lord Bishop of Lichfield Excerpts(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Lichfield
My Lords, I sincerely thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for securing this important debate. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Raval, on his excellent maiden speech, and I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rook. I thank the noble Lord for all the work he has done over the years with the churches, including the Church of England, in which he is an ordained priest, and with communities of other faiths. I commend his tireless advocacy, as a key adviser to the Government, of the important role that faith plays in the life of our country. I know that his vast experience and expertise, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Raval, will add great value to this House.
We only need look at the events of last summer to see the importance of and need for cohesive communities. The riots showed how easily hostility can escalate when groups of people live alongside one another, and yet are divided by barriers of fear and mistrust. A cohesive community is not one in which every person is the same, but in which they each share a sense of belonging despite their differences. They may have different cultures, beliefs or religions, but each person feels respected and valued. I was deeply moved by the account of the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, of her schooling in Leicester, a city which I love and know well, and where my children were brought up. Probably two decades after the experiences described by the noble Baroness, my son Frank was the only white child in his entire school year. Like the noble Baroness, he experienced nothing but friendship, respect and support from his schoolmates, who were almost all of south Asian heritage.
It is relationships that are at the heart of bridging the social and cultural gaps that can divide our communities. While we can and must speak of policy at a national level, integration work is best done by those on a local level, who can listen to and understand the needs of their communities. Local authorities, alongside the voluntary community and faith sector, are critical to integration and to bringing people together to build trust and understanding through creating space for cross-cultural interaction, interfaith dialogue and friendships across difference.
I welcome the community recovery fund that the Government have made available to local communities impacted by last summer’s riots. In our diocese of Lichfield, that fund has enabled Tamworth Borough Council to launch its “We Are Tamworth” programme this month, which empowers local groups to develop projects that strengthen bonds between people of all backgrounds and ages. The same fund has made possible, also in our diocese, the “One Stoke-on-Trent” campaign, which will administer grants to local initiatives while listening to and working with residents to explore what must be done to make the city a place where everyone feels welcome.
Although this funding in response to the riots is necessary and valuable, strategic long-term approaches are crucial to ensure meaningful and lasting impacts. I am glad that the Government have launched the Communities and Recovery Steering Group to oversee a new approach to community cohesion. I recognise that its terms of reference and membership have just been announced this week, but I ask the Minister: when might we know more about the details of the work that the group will oversee?
Education is also a vital part of successful integration and building community cohesion. In particular, religious education in schools plays an important role in enabling understanding of different cultures, religions and world views, equipping pupils from an early age with the knowledge and tools to understand and thrive in a multicultural society. However, RE is too often neglected as a subject, with pupils frequently being taught by teachers with no qualifications in the subject. What steps are the Government taking to increase the number of teachers who are properly trained to deliver RE?
As we have heard throughout the day, we are living in a time of increasing global uncertainty and conflict. We do not want that global situation to be the case locally. Let this be an opportunity to build trust and seek understanding. Let us foster communities that are strong and resilient, where everybody can feel they belong.
Holocaust Memorial Day
Lord Bishop of Lichfield Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Lichfield
My Lords, it is an honour to participate in this debate. I anticipate hearing many more thoughtful and powerful contributions like those we have already heard, and look forward to hearing the words of the noble Lord, Lord Katz, who will follow me. I congratulate him on making his maiden speech today, along with the noble Lord, Lord Evans, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt.
I declare my interest as a former chair of the Council of Christians and Jews. With that in mind, I was very glad to see on the speakers’ list today my friend the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, who shared with me as a trustee there. I look forward to what he has to say.
On Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember the lives of the 6 million Jewish men, women and children, along with other groups, who were murdered by the Nazis. This year has been particularly significant, as it marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. As the Minister pointed out, as each year goes by, the number of living people who have their own personal accounts of surviving the Holocaust diminishes. It is the responsibility of us all to ensure that their lives do not simply become statistics in a history book but that they are remembered as people, each with their own stories and experiences.
In that regard, I commend to your Lordships the Forever Project, an interactive experience that I visited at the Beth Shalom National Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire. This project gives people the opportunity to hear from and to have a question and answer session with a hologram of a Holocaust survivor. Through the use of AI and voice recognition, it is an innovative way to preserve their memories and to enable future generations to learn about their experiences. Those memories serve as a reminder and a warning of where anti-Semitism can lead when left unchallenged, and we must be alive to prevent such atrocities recurring. This is why commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day each year is so important.
It is a matter of fact and a matter of shame that, through a distortion of Christian theology, the Church in almost all its branches has historically contributed to the immense suffering and injustice experienced by Jewish people over the ages. It follows that the Church must have a vital role and duty, in partnership with others, in actively standing against anti-Semitism. This is a major task for our renewed theological understanding today.
The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “For a Better Future”, but to build such a future we cannot be passive; it requires commitment and action from each one of us. Genocide is not inevitable, nor does it happen overnight. It is gradual, beginning with the othering of those whom we consider different from ourselves, and the normalisation of acts of discrimination and hatred. While the horrors of Auschwitz move further into history, sadly, anti-Semitism does not.
One persuasive analogy of anti-Semitism is that of a virus which mutates over time and reinfects society in different forms. The most recent statistics published by the Community Security Trust, cited by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, underline the dimensions of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in our own time, in our own country. The use of social media has only fuelled this, exposing more people to hateful content and enabling anti-Semitism to spread further and faster.
This is preventable. We can choose to shape a better future, built on our shared humanity and on strengthening the fabric of our communities through mutual understanding and trust. We cannot afford to be complacent bystanders. We must actively challenge anti-Semitism and all discrimination wherever we see it, to seek understanding rather than fearing those who are different from us. We must personally question the small remarks, whether they be so-called jokes or throwaway comments, which can appear insignificant but can so easily build to destructive hate on a greater scale.
Interfaith dialogue plays an important role in this, as well as being an example of how those of different beliefs can come together to find common ground and connection. On Holocaust Memorial Day this year, the Council of Christians and Jews organised a profound morning of testimony, reflection and prayer as a testament to the power and significance of that dialogue.
I finish with some words that Rabbi Charley Baginsky shared at that meeting. She said,
“Optimism, in this sense, is not the denial of pain, but the radical choice to imagine and work toward something better, something more just, something that can heal the divisions we face. This vision of a better future is not a distant dream—it is a call to action. It is a call to reject the forces of hate and division, and to embrace the transformative power of empathy, of connection, of community”.
Let us not forget the horrors of the past, but let the memories of those who experienced them spur us on to build a better future, free from hate and division.
Homelessness
Lord Bishop of Lichfield Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble Lord will be aware that new targets have been set for building homes across the country, and in London no less. Local authorities use out-of-area placements to provide temporary accommodation, as he rightly mentioned. We are enabling more funding to go into London so that we can reduce the level of temporary homelessness accommodation. However, the long-term solution is to get more houses built, which is why we have increased the housebuilding target for London.
The Lord Bishop of Lichfield
My Lords, according to data from the Ministry of Justice, the proportion of all prison leavers who were released homeless in 2023-24 was 13%. Considering that people are 50% more likely to re-offend if they are homeless, what steps are the Government taking to reduce rates of homelessness among prison leavers?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate is right to highlight homelessness for ex-offenders. Since 2021, more than £33 million has been awarded to local authorities to support nearly 6,000 ex-offenders into their own private rented accommodation. The number of individuals still enrolled on the programme and sustaining tenancies is nearly 3,000. The funding provided allows schemes to offer a range of support. It is very important that, alongside housing, we get that support, consisting of rental deposits, landlord incentives, and dedicated support staff with landlord liaison and tenancy support officers. That complements the MoJ’s community accommodation service. The right reverend Prelate is right that housing is key to preventing re-offending.
Anti-Muslim Prejudice and Hate Crime
Lord Bishop of Lichfield Excerpts(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
I reassure the noble Baroness that I am happy to meet any noble Lord, in particular about any concerns about religious hatred of all kinds. In relation to our approach on the definition of Islamophobia, as I just answered, we will come forward and update the House and discuss the actions we will take to tackle the problem of Islamophobia in our country.
The Lord Bishop of Lichfield
My Lords, some of the most valuable and effective work that is being done to improve community relations, and so to counter religious hate crime and prejudice, is at a local and grass-roots level; for example, in Walsall we have community iftars, church-mosque twinnings, multifaith drama groups, and so on. Can the Minister tell us what the Government are providing in funding and support for local initiatives and groups of that kind?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
First, I express my gratitude to the right reverend Prelate for his question. He makes the point that faith groups play a huge role in working to promote community cohesion and attacking the problems that we face in society. Moving forward, we are looking at having an approach that best supports communities. A lot of work is now being led by the Deputy Prime Minister; in the next few days we will see some measures that will take not just a national but a cross-governmental approach to social cohesion. I reassure the right reverend Prelate that we are looking at these challenges at the moment.