LGBTI Citizens Worldwide

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, I am very glad to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, for initiating it and for his excellent speech, as well as for the excellent speeches of so many of your Lordships.

As has been made abundantly clear by all those who have spoken, LGBTI people worldwide face an appalling, inhumane situation. Same-sex intimacy between consenting adults in private, which is now regarded as a fundamental right in Europe, remains a crime in 78 jurisdictions. LGBTI people are liable to be arrested, imprisoned, harassed, blackmailed and, in eight jurisdictions, still put to death. To avoid criminal prosecution they have to live lives that are isolated, fearful and above all subject to humiliation.

Again, as has also been made clear, we are dealing not just with a few people but with millions. On a conservative to moderate estimate that 2% to 6% of adults in the general population identify as LGBTI, we are talking about 58 million to 174 million people. In India alone, there are 41 million to 63 million people who are potential criminals as a result of the law.

The Human Dignity Trust, which does such excellent work on this issue, helpfully sets out 10 recommendations to the Government on how this issue can be made a fundamental feature of policy, and eight spheres in which action can and should be taken. Others among your Lordships have mentioned many of these actions, all of which I very strongly support. However, I want to focus on one area that the trust did not address: namely, religion. There is no avoiding the fact that hostility to same-sex relationships is shaped and fuelled by the teaching of most religions, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, so eloquently indicated. We cannot sensibly address this challenge without facing the uncomfortable truth head-on. In the Middle East, the dominant religion is obviously Islam. In the target areas that the Human Dignity Trust suggests—the Caribbean, west Africa, southern Africa and parts of the Pacific—it is Christianity.

On the whole, religious institutions, like all institutions, are slow to change. There is an understandable rationale to this, in that their role is to garner the insights of the past and convey them through time and space to future generations. But, as Cardinal Newman said:

“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often”.

Religious institutions, while remaining true to their foundational principles, have to unfold and develop in response to the new insights of each generation. Inevitably, in every age there will be turbulence caused by disputes about what is an authentic development and what leads people astray. This process of discernment is not any easy one. Change can take a long time but it can take place: we know it has happened in at least some churches.

That change can take two forms. One is a change in the teaching itself, so that churches might come to see committed lifelong partnerships between people of the same sex in the same way that they understand marriage—in the lovely words of the Book of Common Prayer,

“signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church”.

The other change, which is the one I want to focus on, does not involve any change in the teaching on the issue itself, at least in the short term, but involves an acceptance of the civil sphere as valid in its own right. Some Christians, while not able to accept same-sex marriage as a Christian option, have, however reluctantly—some have been very reluctant indeed—come to accept civil partnerships as a valid option for society as a whole. It is that second kind of change that I believe we have to work to achieve first in relation to conservative religious institutions.

In short, church leaders and institutions in those countries where LGBTI people are criminalised have to be urged to make a distinction between teaching which may be applicable for their own members in their private lives and the basic rights and dignity that need to be accorded to everyone in their society, whatever their religion or belief. Of course, working through secular channels to challenge the laws in those countries is fundamental. But behind those laws is a culture, as the noble Lords, Lord Black and Lord Paddick, mentioned and stressed—very often, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, a “toxic” culture. That toxic culture is, sadly, intertwined with religion.

It is no secret that the Anglican Communion has become very frayed at the edges on this issue. That is what I wrote in the first draft of this speech, but from what we read on the front page of some papers today, “frayed” is much too weak a word. The churches in countries such as Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda are taking a very conservative and hard line and see themselves as quite apart from churches in North America. Nor is that the sum of it: the frontier of the culture wars in the USA has moved to Africa, with conservative forces in America lining up with and reinforcing the conservative forces in some African countries, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, quite rightly mentioned. Indeed there is evidence, which the Human Dignity Trust has on film, of some American churches actively proselytising in Uganda with a view to strengthening hard-line attitudes to gay and lesbian people.

In those countries, the Christian churches have been and continue to be very strong. In contrast to Europe, they are a major influence in shaping the lives of people. If it is unrealistic to think of changing the minds of those churches on the issue itself in the short term, what can and should be done is to work on getting them to accept the legitimacy of the civil sphere, and, in particular, laws which protect the rights of minorities, not least LGBTI people.

The way that such people are treated in those countries is an affront to any concept of human decency, and the church must be challenged to see that its support for their criminalisation is a direct cause of this. It is an offence against the human person: the unique value and dignity of the individual, whatever their sexuality. It is a violation of everything that the Christian faith is meant to stand for. As a minimum, those states must be urged to act against those who commit acts of violence against LGBTI people.

In its excellent set of recommendations, the UNHCR recommended among other things that those states should:

“Conduct prompt and thorough investigations of incidents of violence against LGBT citizens, holding perpetrators to account and providing redress to victims”.

Further, they should:

“Collect data on the incidence of such offences”.

Of course, such offences are encouraged by the harsh laws, and there can be no fundamental change until the laws themselves are repealed, but states can be urged to see that such violence is criminal even by their own standards, and churches must be forced to see that, whatever their teaching, this kind of cruelty is totally unacceptable and they must speak out against it.

The UNHCR and the Human Dignity Trust outlined various forms of action that can be taken in the way of working for legislative reform, highlighting breaches of human rights according to the UN charter, working with businesses, and so on. All these are important, but behind the opposition to change will be a highly influential culture that has been soaked with religious attitudes, and this must be faced.

I have not addressed this issue in relation to Islam, and I recognise that the challenge there is even greater: first, because of the decisive influence Islam has over so many societies; and, secondly, because of the claim that its teaching applies to all society in all its aspects. The distinction between a secular sphere with its own legitimacy and the religious one is not one that is natural to Islam—at least as it has developed so far—but it has always been a proper option for Christian churches, and it is this that the churches in countries that have harsh penal laws against LGBTI citizens must be urged to see.

As a number of your Lordships mentioned, there is a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta. Some 40 members of the Commonwealth’s 53 countries still criminalise homosexuality: the laws are a hangover from the time of the British Empire. The Royal Commonwealth Society has written about these laws:

“This harsh legal situation is exacerbated by wider discriminatory social attitudes and in some cases violence”.

It states that the situation is now very,

“polarised between those in favour of improving LGBT rights and those who are more reluctant”.

So the November conference is not going to be easy.

Behind those wider discriminatory attitudes there is a strong religious influence because, as I mentioned, most of those Commonwealth countries still have a strong Christian presence and continuing influence. That has to be addressed. I know that the main focus of diplomatic work is Government to Government, but there are opportunities to relate to wider civic society.

My concern, of which I hope that the Government take account, is that all those involved in setting up diplomatic meetings or organising conferences recognise the key role that Christian leaders play in many of the countries which have the most conservative attitudes, such as Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda. If they are not to change their church teaching, they might be encouraged at least to acknowledge, and to help their churches to acknowledge, the validity of the civil sphere in its own right as safeguarding the rights and dignity of all human beings, whatever their sexuality.

I recognise that the main responsibility lies with the Christian churches here to help the churches in those countries to acknowledge the validity of this distinction, but I believe that our Government, through our normal diplomatic channels and intergovernmental agencies, also have opportunities to engage with wider civic society. Here, the Christian leaders, especially in the countries I mentioned, the Anglican archbishops and bishops, have an influential role. They themselves need to be decisively influenced to speak out for the human rights of LGBTI people.

Nigeria

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, it is the custom that, in answering a Question, we are confined to the particular country under consideration. I can say to my noble friend that, of course, terrorism is wrong per se. He will know our absolute commitment to ensuring that it is rooted out in whichever country it may be.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

Boko Haram has been creating havoc in north-eastern Nigeria for years now, yet Nigeria is a hugely wealthy country with a large army. Can the Minister shed any light as to why the Government in Nigeria seem so helpless in dealing with this situation? In an earlier reply, she mentioned the help the British Government were giving in terms of aid and intelligence. Could she say a little more about what help we might be able to give the Nigerian Government in terms of military strategy, so that they can deal with this much more forcibly than they are at the moment?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I entirely agree with the noble and right reverend Lord’s assessment of the situation. The economy of Nigeria is the largest in Africa currently, and if it were not so beset by corruption and by difficulties in administration—if I can put it that way—Nigeria would have a thriving economy. It clearly does not. It spends 20% of its budget on security, yet the security forces have great difficulty in facing and containing Boko Haram. We have ensured that there is technical assistance and advice; indeed, we have ongoing projects with the army to ensure that it can build up resilience over the coming years to try to defeat Boko Haram and that, having done that, Nigeria has an army capable of preventing a recurrence.

Faith Group Relationships

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

As an ex-chairman of the Conservative Party, I wish I could get the media to stop publishing demonising articles. The noble Lord raises an incredibly important point. One of the strands of the work of the cross-government group on anti-Muslim hatred is looking at how we can work with the Society of Editors, among others, to ensure that headlines are, first and foremost, not sensational, but secondly, reflective of facts.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that in many parts of the country, relations between Muslims and other faith communities are extremely good? This was true in the diocese of Oxford when I was there and continues to be so. Because of the good relationships between faith leaders, including Muslim leaders, it has been possible to dissipate many potential signs of trouble.

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble and right reverend Lord makes an incredibly important point. I am incredibly proud of the work that the Government have done in harnessing the power of faith groups to create that understanding. One flagship has been the Near Neighbours programme. The Government have invested £8.5 million since the start of this Government in the Church of England’s Church Urban Fund, using the network of the Church of England to create better understanding between different faith communities.

South Sudan

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, for initiating this debate. I claim no special expertise on this subject but, like other noble Lords, I am extremely keen to hear the Government’s assessment of how the peace process is proceeding.

It is indeed tragic that so soon after South Sudan came into existence as an independent country in 2011 such a vicious civil war should have broken out. I do not think that the world as a whole has yet woken up to the scale of the disaster, with more than 10,000 dead, according to the latest Economist report, and close to 1 million internally displaced people, according to the report of the United Nations Secretary General on 6 March. As we have already heard, major towns such as Bor, Malakal and Bentui have been totally destroyed.

Sadly again, as we know, it looks as though the conflict has taken on a horribly strong ethnic dimension, with Dinka and Nuer pitted against one another, and, even more tragically, that atrocities have been committed on both sides. However, it is important to note that the Government were formed from and still contain people from both ethnic backgrounds—and, furthermore, that they remain the elected Government.

The parish in which I reside and help when not working elsewhere has close links with South Sudan and, through this, I have information from a source who is not only very well placed but, in my view, is utterly to be trusted. He is quite convinced that the vice-president, Riek Machar, tried to depose the president in a coup and that he and his associates were certainly guilty of embezzlement. As we know, Riek Machar denies this and says that the spark for the conflict was fighting in the presidential guard. Nevertheless, we know that he broke away from the SPLM in 1991, signing a peace deal with Khartoum in 1997 and accepting arms from the north.

Furthermore, it is absolutely undeniable that he is now leading an armed conflict against the Government. If this reading of events is true—as I say, I know and trust the source, who is a good position to know what is happening—the wording of the Motion does not quite reflect the situation when it refers simply to “opposing armed groups”, as though there was an equality of blame. There are indeed some other breakaway armed groups and both the Government and Riek Machar’s forces are to blame for the atrocities, for local troops on both sides have got out of control.

However, the conflict is at heart one between a constitutional Government and a faction that has tried to overthrow them by force. In these circumstances it is difficult to see how the President could agree immediately to a power-sharing agreement, which he has been asked to do, without at least some adequate international backing to ensure that what has happened in recent months does not happen again, if and when first a ceasefire and then an agreement have been reached. Nevertheless, the UN Secretary-General was surely right when he said:

“While the declared intention by Mr Machar to remove an elected government by force is unacceptable, both sides now bear full responsibility for bringing the senseless fighting … to an immediate end”.

It will be very interesting to learn the Government’s assessment of Sudan’s role in all this. We cannot help wondering whether Sudan is once again trying to influence the course of events in the south, not least with a view to the oil fields, a significant portion of which are occupied by rebel forces. However, against this there is the fact that according to the latest Security Council report from the UN, President Omar al-Bashir and President Salva Kiir of South Sudan have met, and President al-Bashir has agreed to support a cessation of hostilities, and to participate in a monitoring and verification team.

We cannot underestimate the sheer difficulties that this country now faces. As we know, it is very poor. The Government are limited in the resources that they have to bring to bear. There are high expectations among the different tribal groups, and there is a long history of conflict that is still simmering and erupting. The number of troops on the ground is limited, considering the country’s vast size. Despite these difficulties, clearly every effort must be made, first, to bring about an immediate ceasefire, because nothing can happen until there is one. Secondly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, emphasised so forcefully from her long and passionate engagement with the country, there must be an immediate stepping-up of humanitarian aid. There must be a serious examination of the kind of political system that might work there—without forgetting the fact, as I have emphasised, that there is a constitutionally elected Government in place and there is surely some duty to try to support them.

Georgia: Islamophobia

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

I know that our embassy in Tbilisi is engaged with all religious organisations on the ground, but I am not sure whether it has had specific discussions on the rising concern about nationalism and Christianity being associated as the only form of Georgian identity. My noble friend makes an important point, and I shall certainly ensure that it is now put on the agenda.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

I wonder whether the Minister would allow a slight extension of the Question on the grounds that freedom is indivisible. Not only has Georgia been disfigured recently by actual violent hostility towards Muslims in some areas, but a gay rights demonstration was violently broken up with some connivance from the authorities. Would the Government continue gently to press the Georgian Government, with whom we have such good, close relations, by saying that the Europe that they aspire to join finds both Islamophobia and homophobia totally out of place and unacceptable?

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble and right reverend Lord makes an important point. Indeed, we raised concerns about the violence at the IDAHO rally in May of last year, for example. LGBT rights, along with the rights of religious minorities, are a cause for concern. They stem from the concern in parts of the Georgian Orthodox Church about a conflict of values—a conflict between Georgian values, which are laid out in a very orthodox way, and what they see as European values, and the kind of anti sentiment towards them.

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

I am not sure what the precise nature of the final delegation will be, but I will certainly write to the noble Lord with details of what representatives of UKTI will be there. Of course, we encourage trade not just between Commonwealth countries but between Commonwealth countries and other nations, but I will write to the noble Lord with more details.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that one of the most distressing features of the Commonwealth is that in 41 out of the 53 countries, same-sex relationships are a criminal offence, and that in some countries, such as Uganda, they carry the possibility of life imprisonment or even, sometimes, a capital offence, if the present law gets through? Will there be any opportunity to raise this distressing situation at the conference?

[Baroness Warsi]

That is, of course, a matter of concern. Indeed, it was raised in a debate only last week. The Commonwealth charter says clearly that there will be opposition to all forms of discrimination, but the human rights situation in all the Commonwealth countries still leaves a lot to be desired. That is one issue. The noble Lord will be aware also that 38 Commonwealth countries retain the death penalty.

West Papua

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2013 Grand Committee

Asked By

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the human rights situation in West Papua.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

My Lords, violations of basic human rights in West Papua are not only continuing but becoming more frequent. In 2012-13 there were numerous incidents of West Papuans being shot, arrested and tortured simply for taking part in peaceful demonstrations. Leaders of the West Papua National Committee—the KNPB—are particularly targeted. To give just one example, at a peaceful demonstration on 1 May this year, three Papuans were shot—killings which were rightly condemned by both the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, and Amnesty International. A list of 30 such incidents involving arrests for peaceful protests in just two weeks in April and May this year was sent to the OHCHR in Geneva by TAPOL on behalf of eight international organisations concerned with West Papua.

It will therefore be no surprise to learn that in 2012 alone there were some 200 political arrests and that there are at least 40 political prisoners in jail. Raising a West Papuan flag, for example, can lead to a charge carrying a life sentence. At the same time, sweeping operations by the Indonesian military in the highlands of West Papua continued throughout 2012-13, displacing thousands of villagers, with homes being burned and subsistence crops destroyed, as reported by the Asian Human Rights Commission. Despite the fact that foreign reporters and NGOs are severely restricted in their attempts to enter and report on what is going on —an issue that other noble Lords will raise—these facts are becoming ever more widely known in the world outside.

I know that our Government are aware of and concerned about these human rights abuses, as they have made clear in their Answers to several Parliamentary Questions. However, is it not also a matter of concern that an Indonesian counterterrorism unit, Special Detachment 88, trained by the UK, is believed to be operating in Papua, targeting leaders of the independence unit? We know that the training for this detachment includes issues of human rights, but we do not know whether that has had any effect at all on its operations. In view of the fact that human rights abuses are increasing, will the Minister ask the Foreign Office to undertake, as a matter of urgency, an impact assessment of the training that this detachment is receiving to see whether in fact it is making any difference at all?

Juan Mendez, the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, wrote in 2008 that West Papua was among those countries whose populations were “at risk of extinction”—a very serious charge. With the huge influx of Indonesians from Jakarta, the West Papuans are in danger of becoming a minority in their own country.

What are the Indonesian Government and the Indonesian elite in West Papua doing about this very serious situation? The policy in recent years has been to divide the country into two provinces, West Papua and Papua, give a degree of local autonomy to each one, deliver economic benefits and hope that this will lead to an end to the increasing unrest. The International Crisis Group, in its thorough and balanced 30-page report of last August, provided as part of the Library’s helpful briefing for this debate, evaluated that policy in these words:

“To date the law has failed to produce either improvement in the lives of most Papuans or better relations with the central government”.

Because even the Indonesian Government can see the failure, a special organisation, the Unit for the Acceleration of Development in Papua and West Papua, called UP4B, has been set up through presidential decrees to achieve what its name suggests. The polite language of the International Crisis Group’s report, in the chapter entitled “UP4B: Good Intentions, Diminished Hopes”, cannot disguise the fact that this policy continues to fail very badly. There is failure at the economic level—very little of the huge wealth being generated in this oil and mineral-rich country is being channelled to the people whose land it is—and there is a fundamental failure at a political level to engage in a political process with representative leaders of the indigenous people. Does the Minister agree that there is no serious chance of progress in West Papua unless the Government in Jakarta set up a serious process of engagement with West Papuan leaders, and will they urge them to do so?

I know that Indonesia is an important ally in the worldwide fight against terrorism and has made big strides in recent years towards genuine democracy in some parts of its legitimate territory. Our own country, like Australia, has important business links with it. West Papua has vast oil and mineral wealth; BP alone has a £7.5 billion stake in it. We can all understand the pressures of realpolitik coming from both Governments, to whom we need to relate, and international capitalism, whose money is needed for development.

However, the truth cannot be hidden forever. The 1962 New York agreement signed between the Netherlands, Indonesia and the United Nations guaranteed an “act of self-determination” for the people of West Papua. In 1969 that so-called Act of Free Choice took place. On 13 December 2004, when I was Bishop of Oxford, I asked the Minister at the time, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, about what happened in 1969:

“Is she aware that Suharto’s Indonesia handpicked a little more than 1,000 people, out of a population of 800,000, and forced them to vote 100 per cent for union with Indonesia? Is she further aware that the secretariat of the UN advised the UN Assembly to accept the result of that vote as fair, even though it had agreed to be a guarantor of the fairness of the election? Does she agree that the present unrest in West Papua and the violence by the Indonesian Government are in part responses to the failure at that time?”.

On behalf of the Government, the Minister replied:

“I agree with the right reverend Prelate’s summing up of the position … He is right to say that there were 1,000 handpicked representatives and that they were largely coerced into declaring for inclusion in Indonesia”.

Sometimes, a chink of truth comes through. In her reply, the noble Baroness went on to say that the largely coercive vote was 35 years ago and that since then,

“the 2002 special autonomy legislation has been passed … It grants, for example, 70 per cent of oil and gas royalties originating in Papua—as well as 80 per cent of forestry, fishery and mining royalties—to the people of Papua”.

She concluded by saying that,

“these measures ought to be given a chance to imbed in order for us to see whether the greater autonomy thereby granted eases the situation”.—[Official Report, 13/12/04; cols. 1084-85.]

The first question that arises in my mind is whether that 70% and 80% of the royalties has been going to the West Papuan people. Is there any evidence of this? More fundamentally, the special autonomy measure has now been in place for 13 years. It has had plenty of time to embed and show results. What is revealed is the total failure of the policy itself, because it fails to address the fundamental issue, namely the political aspirations of the indigenous people. Given that the former UN Under-Secretary-General, Chakravarthi Narasimhan, admitted publicly in 2004 that the 1969 so-called Act of Free Choice was in effect a sham, will the Government join with International Parliamentarians for West Papua and International Lawyers for West Papua in asking the UN to conduct an inquiry into what happened in 1969 and then to instigate a referendum on the issue in West Papua itself?

Given the 2010 referendum on self-determination in South Sudan and the upcoming referendums on independence in New Caledonia—Kanaky—Bougainville and Scotland, and bearing in mind what happened in East Timor, would it not be prudent, as well as absolutely right, to press for a true, internationally monitored referendum? This issue is certainly not going to go away, however much the Indonesian Government might wish that it would.

UN Arms Trade Treaty

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

I can inform the noble Lord that resource has been set aside to make sure that we work with those countries which do not have the developed, sophisticated arms control systems that we have. The treaty will be effective only when 50 countries join; thereafter, it comes into force. We will, of course, use the network—as the noble Lord is aware, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has one of the most extensive networks—to make sure that we work with our partners to ensure that countries which need the support get the support.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

What changes, if any, will be necessary in the UK arms controls guidelines on exported arms?

[Baroness Warsi]

We think that we may have to implement some secondary legislation. Once the treaty has been signed, it will be laid before both Houses, I think for 21 sitting days. We hope and anticipate that we will be able to ratify before the end of the year. We think that there may be some amendments to secondary legislation, but that will take place before the end of the year.

Syria

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

I agree with my noble friend’s first point; of course our support in the region has both a humanitarian element and a stabilisation element. Countries can find themselves with a large number of refugees and that can lead to internal challenges for those nations. We are therefore supporting countries in the region in dealing with those issues.

My noble friend makes an important point with regard to chemical and biological weapons. We have had these discussions with the opposition coalition. We have asked them to appoint an individual who will be specifically responsible for co-ordinating the discussion of these matters with a view to ensuring, if at all possible during the crisis, that these weapons are safeguarded, and we have urged them, at the end of this, to sign up to the chemical weapons convention and the biological and toxic weapons convention. The opposition coalition is in agreement with us on that.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

My Lords, I am glad to hear from the Statement that the coalition is enlarging its membership to include Christian, Kurdish and other minority communities. With regard to those Christian minorities, as the Minister knows, Christians are particularly vulnerable at the moment because they have been relatively protected under the Assad regime, they are disproportionately represented among refugees and people who are internally displaced and of course they are particularly at risk with the wholesale outbreak of sectarian violence. What are the Government thinking with regard to the particular protection of those minorities?

The second question concerns the Kurds. As we know, since the First World War the Kurdish people have been seeking their own country, which they feel they have been denied. There are reports that they will look for an opportunity to bring this into being now. In what way are the Government bearing this possibility in mind?

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, as I said in the Statement, the inclusion of minorities in the national coalition has formed a large part of our discussions. The president of the national coalition is Sheikh al-Khatib; below him are four vice-presidents, one of whom is from the Christian community. A further two have been appointed from the Muslim community and a fourth position has been reserved for the Kurdish minority. However, that appointment has not yet been made because there are discussions within the Kurdish minority as to who would be the most appropriate person. The rights of all minorities, including the Christians and Kurds, have formed part of the discussions in relation both to the way in which the national coalition has been set up and to how those reforms are to be taken forward.

On the wider question about the Kurds, I hope that, in the discussions that we are having with the national coalition, those are matters that we can move towards resolving, certainly as far as Syria is concerned.

Older People: Their Place and Contribution in Society

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Friday 14th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

My Lords, I have sometimes said to the most reverend Primate, “Rowan, God has given you every possible gift under the sun, and as your punishment He made you Archbishop of Canterbury”. Very sadly from the point of view of the Church of England, the good Lord did not hand down a life sentence. In His mercy, the most reverend Primate was awarded early release on grounds of good conduct, but it comes with the proviso that he will continue to make his very remarkable contributions to public life in Cambridge.

My starting point is the same as his, and it is one that everybody in this debate has shared. It is the fundamental value, dignity and worth of every single old person. Unless that fundamental value is in place and fully affirmed, our political policies will be skewed and the care patchy. Our society shares that value, which is why there are protests when it can be shown, for example, that care has not been what it ought to be. However, it can be undermined, even against our resolve. I think we need to be aware of some of the assumptions in our society in order to challenge them, for otherwise, despite our best intentions, they will undermine what in our good moments we want to affirm.

I want to look at a few of those unthinking assumptions. The first is thinking of human value only in terms of our capacity to be productive. I know many noble Lords, notably the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, have emphasised the capacity of older people to contribute, and I do not in any way want to deny that, but many people become very elderly and frail, and we cannot possibly value them simply in terms of what they can physically produce or physically contribute.

The second assumption that we need to challenge is thinking of our human value simply in terms of our ability to consume. While in recent years there has been a great deal of talk about grey financial power, we cannot forget that 1.7 million pensioners are living below the poverty line and another 1 million are living very close to it, and I doubt very much whether this grey financial power will apply to future pensioners in the same way that it has in the golden age of pensions in the past 30 years.

The third assumption that we need to challenge is thinking of the human person as essentially someone who is independent and in control of their life. As we get older, many of us become rather dependent on others, but life is a mixture of dependence and independence. We begin dependent and, after a period when others are very dependent on us, we might possibly become dependent on others again, but we do not thereby cease to be a person who is to be accorded proper respect and dignity.

The fourth assumption that we need to challenge is thinking of the human person in essentially individualistic terms, a view which has taken increasing hold in Europe and the United States since the Enlightenment. As the Africans like to say, we are Ubuntu: we are persons only in and through our relationship with other persons.

To resist the undermining effect of these assumptions, we need to affirm that we are essentially social, that mind is a social reality, that we become persons only in and through our relationships with other persons and that we do not lose our essential dignity as a human person, even if we become dependent on others or if our capacity to think, choose or even speak is impaired. This means that we need a vision of society not as a collection of isolated individuals, but as a network of mutually supportive relationships and mutual giving and receiving. Only if we have some such vision will we have a proper place for old people in our society and will we value the contribution that so many of them are now able to make.

Only if we have such a vision will we be able to resist the corroding effects of late capitalism with its individualism, material values and “devil take the hindmost” attitude. With such a vision, the values of the market economy will have a proper, indeed an essential, place as serving the wider good. Only with such a vision will we have the conviction to put the right policies in place and the determination to press for the highest standards of care in every aspect of our lives.

The kind of vision I have outlined can be recognised by anyone. You do not have to be religious or a Christian to see it. As human beings we have the capacity for moral discernment through the sheer fact that we are human. From a Christian point of view, that is part of what it means to be made in the image of God.

It does mean, however, that we cannot see life simply as a process of physical growth followed by physical decline. It is a process of physical growth which is integrally linked to growth of other kinds—from a religious point of view, particularly spiritual growth. Even as the forces of diminishment take hold of us, the words of Yeats come to mind:

“An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress”.

It is very difficult to put into practice but, without claiming the high moral ground, I believe that a Christian understanding of what it means to be a human being in society—made in the image of God, with an eternal destiny and vocation to become part of that ultimate community, of which the communion of saints is the harbinger—does underpin, strengthen and give an impelling power to a purely ethical vision.

In short, behind policies towards old people there must be a continuing deep conviction about their dignity and worth. This means a vision of what it is to be a properly human society; one that is characterised in relation to old people as well as to everyone else. From them according to their ability and to them according to their needs: only some such vision can withstand the eroding effects of rampant capitalism, which by its very nature will measure everything in economic terms. This is a vision which, I believe, secular humanists and religious believers alike should work to maintain and strengthen.