Public Services: Economic and Climatic Challenges

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for securing this debate and for his wide-ranging introduction, which, as the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, said, suggests that we can talk about almost anything. Perhaps that is the point. Perhaps the fact that we can talk about a very wide range of issues this afternoon will challenge the way in which we all tend to think in silos and fail to link up our thinking on a range of issues. Perhaps we need to return to the age of the polymath. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, has the equipment to enable him to become one of those renewed polymaths in our society.

I return to the subject of floods. On Sunday I was standing above the damaged sea wall at Whitley Bay, watching the high tide submerging it again and reflecting on the costs that that would mean for the borough of North Tyneside. That reminded me of the sheer power of water. It is no accident that the Psalms, from which we choose our prayers here, emphasise that power when they want to describe nature’s devastation and the need to combat it, for example:

“The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly”,

or, from Psalm 46, that I used today:

“Though the waters thereof rage and swell”.

Society has always recognised the need to combat the destruction caused by water, and to do so coherently.

This winter, we have expressed our concern for those who have suffered, particularly in the southern river basins—the Thames, the Brue in Somerset and the Severn, for example. In the autumn we reeled from the effects of the east coast floods. In west Yorkshire, we know the power of Pennine streams, bringing havoc to Hebden Bridge, Sowerby Bridge and other places well known to the Minister. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, yesterday spoke of the response to the latest flooding and gave details of the way in which the authorities are responding. That was welcome.

Yet I do not yet sense a national and coherent policy to respond to natural calamities. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, pointed to the way in which we have not got our agricultural policy working with our policy on calamities over issues such as planting trees and preserving green areas. We tend to go for a piecemeal approach and to patch up, rather than establish national criteria to respond to future challenges, wherever they may occur. In doing so, we often set one part of our country against another—“Why are they being helped when we are not?”.

These issues need to be set in the context of climate change, despite the Trappist vow of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, over this subject. Our response to climate change needs to be linked with our practical dealing with calamity. I listened hard to and respect what the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, said about the distinction between weather and climate. He is right; when we naively start to blame climate change for particular problems in the weather, that is clearly much too simplistic. However, given the way in which we are thinking this afternoon by bringing together our thoughts on a wide range of issues, the link between weather and climate change needs to be explored a good deal more than it has been so far. Scientists are working on that. They do not seem yet to have reached a point where they can make specific links, but that work nevertheless needs to continue. The climate change initiatives seem to have flagged over the past two or three years. Unless we respond to the need to reduce our and the world’s carbon footprint, we shall continue to place sticking plasters where damage is caused.

Therefore, the Government need to make it clear that their climate change emphases are a response both to the practical problems that we face and to the problems that the world is going to face over the next century and beyond. We need in particular adequate successors to the millennium goals, and I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to those goals. However, I wish that the climate change proposals were more strongly emphasised by the Government and linked in to our dealing with flooding and tidal surges, now and in the future. They need to be part of a single strategy that also includes green energy, rural-proofing, transport issues—we have considered those a little in this debate—as well as issues involving the food chain, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, referred in the previous debate, and which are crucial to our future as a nation and to the whole world.

We need this vision for the sake of our children and their children. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, raised the question of whether there were going to be enough school places for our grandchildren over the coming years. I can offer him the support of the Church of England, its dioceses and their education department, which are providing an increase in the number of primary school places, working along with local authorities and academies to grow the size of primary schools and, where necessary, opening new schools that are fully equipped with the technological equipment that children need. It is our children and grandchildren who will suffer if we do not take action.

We have become almost immune to Bangladeshi floods, the spread of the Sahara and the Philippines tornado. They disappeared from our screens within a week or so. The generosity of the people of this country is immense when they are asked to respond to need. We need to channel that generosity much more effectively into a coherent, long-term strategy that includes climate issues and their effect on our future. My basic question to the Government is: what plans do they have to explain the importance of tackling climate change as a response both to current tragedies and the future welfare of our country and our world?

This is my final contribution to your Lordships’ deliberations because I retire next week. I just wanted to say thank you for the help and colleagueship that I have received, both from those who believe that there should be Bishops in this House and those who do not. It has been a privilege to work with noble Lords and to benefit from the immense experience and expertise of this House, in both the careful examination of legislation and the high quality and variety of debates such as this. I wish the House well in all its future work.

Egypt

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are working through a number of multilateral and bilateral channels to argue to the Egyptian Government that they need to have a much more open attitude towards minority opinion of all sorts. Article 44, as the noble Baroness rightly says, prohibits blasphemy, but Article 45 advocates freedom of speech. Given the continuing conflict about the role of the judiciary in Egypt, it will take some time for the new Egyptian constitution to be applied in full.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that freedom of religion involves the right to change one’s religious beliefs and that Egypt and other nations need to be pressed to ensure that those who change their religious affiliations are defended in doing so? How far are the Government able to put pressure on countries to ensure that blasphemy laws do not prevent that happening?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, religious tolerance is something that we in the United Kingdom learnt about the hard way through religious persecution. We have to argue as vigorously as we can to all other countries that religious tolerance between a whole range of different religions is highly desirable in the development of an open and stable society.

Retail Prices Index

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have gone back into the area of statistics and I am happy to tell the House that there is a range of different measures of inflation in Britain—the RPI, RPIJ, RPIX, which excludes mortgage costs, and the RPIY, which excludes tax changes. Then there are the CPI, CPIH, CPIY and CPICT. I hesitate to explain all these in detail to the House.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, what advice does the Minister have for those widespread organisations which have historically used the RPI to alter pensions and salaries? They are unclear as to which of the various measures that the Minister just mentioned they should use for those purposes.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, they should not be unclear. The decision to maintain the RPI was taken precisely to leave clarity on the various forms in which the RPI is used as a reference point. I am quite clear from what I have read that the RPI as measured has an underlying upward bias of currently about 0.9% a year above CPI. That means that the Government end up paying more for index-linked bonds and elsewhere, which, in the long run, is against the interests of taxpayers although very much in the interests of investors and pensioners.

Freedom of Religion and Conscience

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford for raising this profound issue for our world, of freedom of conscience, as a human right involving the ability for human beings to make their own choices as to which, if any, faith system they wish to follow. That means that individuals must have the opportunity to change their adherence as a matter of personal conviction and call.

I want to concentrate on two areas. The first is the increasing abuse of blasphemy laws across the world. The Church of Pakistan has actively challenged the misuse of blasphemy laws in that country, which has led to the persecution of both Hindus and Christians and which, in particular, appears to be used to prevent Muslims from converting to another religion or to no religion. Although it is perfectly appropriate to deprecate the insulting of any religion, it is a denial of human rights to prevent anyone from changing or abandoning their faith stance. In principle, Pakistan continues to uphold the rights of religious minorities but, in practice, the existence of the blasphemy laws encourages illegal persecution and rejection.

The same sort of danger exists, for example, in Sri Lanka, where Muslim and Christian minorities fear the effect of blasphemy laws in a predominantly Buddhist society. Will the Government make it clear that countries which pass discriminatory legislation such as repressive blasphemy laws, or Pakistan’s anti-Ahmadi laws, risk their reputation in the international community?

My second point of emphasis is on the way in which our Government could, and I believe should, make it clearer that this country rejects all forms of religious bullying, by providing proper protection for those who flee here having suffered from it. In the discussions last night about North Korea, I was very pleased to hear the Minister say how wrong it would be to return any people to North Korea.

I am aware time and again of those who have fled to this country from Iran, Pakistan and elsewhere having suffered abuse and being terrified of being returned to their countries of origin because of it. My experience is that freedom of religion, conscience and non-religion is not taken as seriously as a human right in this country as is political persecution. Those who change their religion in particular are regarded with suspicion by tribunals and find that their faith is not taken seriously.

I recently met a taxi driver accused of blasphemy by Muslim leaders in Lahore, who fled here with his wife and children after hiding in the hills in their homeland. They faced deportation back to Pakistan. Among the reasons for the negativity of their tribunal seems to be that they found a home in a different Christian tradition here from that from which they came. Roman Catholics in Lahore, they attended an Anglican church in Leeds. This was taken to be evidence that they did not take their faith seriously. I do not ask for comment on a particular case; what I ask for is for it to be stressed by the Government that those who flee persecution in their country must and will receive an equivocal welcome here.

We have in the past couple of days recognised the need for faith groups to work together. The Minister knows that West Yorkshire in particular needs to be a welcoming society for those of all religions who come here. I look forward to hearing a firm assertion of the Government’s commitment to defending religious freedoms in this country as elsewhere.

House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Friday 29th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, for his sponsorship of the Bill. I, too, will speak strongly in favour of it. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively to the Bill. It is a contribution to Lords reform that does not inhibit any of the more radical reforms proposed this week but means that we would not need to wait for the long drawn-out debate on the Lords Reform Bill in order to achieve sensible reforms to our practice.

I recognise that I am among the few Members of the House who are not personally affected by the Bill. As the Explanatory Notes say, rather darkly,

“provision is made elsewhere about retirement and discipline of Bishops”.

It sounds rather like a Star Chamber from somewhere or other.

I welcome the proposals in the House of Lords Reform Bill that will bring Lords Spiritual under the tax-deeming, disqualification and disciplinary proceedings of the House, but that debate is for another day.

Meanwhile, I speak as one of the few Members of the House who can and will retire, a provision that Lords Spiritual have found helpful and purposeful in renewing the contribution of this Bench—and which, incidentally, keeps us below the average age of the Members of this House.

This simple Bill provides a necessary reform. It enables those who wish to do so to retire, which must be in the interests of the whole House. It is right, too, that those who deliberately play no part in the proceedings of the House should no longer be Members of it. There may be entirely honourable reasons for this. Members may have moved on from the responsibilities that they had which enabled them to make a contribution to our debates. That is the basis of why Bishops retire. When we cease to have the responsibility for our dioceses that is the reason why we are in this House, then we cease to be Members of it. That seems both sensible and a right use of the provisions of the House.

We should all be reminded of our responsibilities. I rather regret that Clause 2 cannot apply to Bishops if they never attend the House, although I do not believe that any of my current colleagues would be caught by it.

In welcoming Clause 3, I press again the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, and ask the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Steel, to comment on why it applies only to those sentenced to imprisonment for a year or more, which is a substantial sentence. It is difficult to justify membership of this House with any period of imprisonment. I would like to see the clause toughened, particularly as there is a lack of confidence in our society in Parliament and its Members. Alongside that, like the noble Lord, Lord Wills, I would prefer to have some kind of mechanism for appeals, not only for sentences from outside the UK but for those within it, where a Peer has acted outside the law for reasons of ethical conviction.

We shall have plenty of opportunity to debate major issues around the nature of this House when we are presented with the House of Lords Reform Bill, if it ever gets here. Meanwhile, let us demonstrate our conviction that some reform is right—and maybe even achieve it—by getting behind this excellent Bill.

Voluntary Sector Funding

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they will take to support the work of publicly funded voluntary groups in deprived areas in the light of cuts in local authority budgets.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, the voluntary sector in our society is effective, innovative and massively underfunded. The other day I was standing in a Leeds street discussing with community leaders why there were no riots or disturbances in the city in August this year. There was a good deal of sensible discussion about the key points of what had happened in the summer. But the point upon which people agreed was that the immediate presence on those restless evenings of the youth workers who mingled with young people gave expression to their authority and calmed nerves. Some were directly employed by the city, but more were members of a variety of organisations, many of them publicly funded and many of them faith-based, which run or have run youth work within the city. One of the community leaders said, “If this happens next summer, there won’t be the youth workers to provide confidence for the young people of Leeds”.

Those issues are key to a discussion of the work of voluntary groups in deprived areas. So much work is done by this collaboration between local authorities and voluntary organisations. I am sure that the Minister, when he replies to the question, will want to affirm that work. Yet, there is now such a massive threat to so much of it. I take as an example Thrive West Midlands, which is a faith-based infrastructure organisation in Birmingham founded by the Church Urban Fund, which has worked with the city to obtain continued funding for daycare centres for the elderly. That fits so well with the social care debate that we have just been having.

There has been some success, but, for example, the Weoley Castle Community Project has had to pull out of direct daycare making two staff members redundant because of a failure of funding. The impact on the elderly in situations such as that is immense. Individuals suffer and those individuals are often among our most deprived citizens. I know that we face cuts, but it should be for those of us who can afford it to bear the weight of those cuts; not those under most pressure already. There would be no great loss if the dustbins of our comparatively well-resourced suburb were emptied fortnightly rather than weekly. Many of us could afford higher council taxes, yet the pressure is always on the weaker members of our society.

To its credit, Manchester City Council has tried to ring-fence homeless support, but the Booth Centre for the homeless there has had a £40,000 cut from DCLG which means that it is unable to bear the burden of homeless people coming there because of the closure of other advice centres.

Leeds has a good record of collaboration with the voluntary sector through Third Sector Leeds and I pay tribute to the collaboration that we try to express in the city. Yet we have seen cuts, for example, to English as a second or other language provision, which helps people to integrate more fully into our exciting multiethnic society. This has made it all the more difficult for asylum seekers and refugees to be served and helped as we try to support them through charities such as Meeting Point in Armley. That means that the volunteer provision is often unused because we cannot find premises or expenses. There are volunteers who would like to be involved. It is becoming true that some of them cannot afford to be so.

The examples could go on, and I know that the Minister, as a good Yorkshire inhabitant, will want to respond to the particular pressures that we have in the north. Hope Housing in Bradford writes of the increase in clients becoming homeless because of higher rents in the city. The Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations points to the probable closure of Oxfordshire Children and Voluntary Youth Service, which has placed 3,100 young people in volunteering positions. We know that closures such as those mean a waste of talent, energy and commitment and yet we have not yet found a way to circumvent it. It is not impossible. Philanthropy and generosity have remained remarkably buoyant during the financial squeeze. There could be tax encouragement to make that philanthropy more effective, but philanthropy is not enough. There needs to be some specific ring-fencing of government money, public money, for areas such as mental health, where charities struggle as mental health issues grow, with increasing homelessness and fear. There need to be incentives for money to be directed to areas of most need, and to those organisations which use most volunteers. Earlier in the day, we thought of how there could be incentives for firms which have most apprentices as they seek to provide facilities for the Government. There could be a parallel in direct incentives for those who use volunteers. It is no use exhorting local authorities and then squeezing the amounts they have to work with in the voluntary sector.

There needs to be a greater fairness in the allocation of local authority funds. It is those under most pressure which face the most substantial cuts. So I looked at the authorities with the maximum cut of 8.8 per cent in 2011-12. I began to feel that there might be a personal vendetta in this, because they were most of the places in which I have lived and worked—places like Knowsley, St Helens, Doncaster and Manchester—whereas those with the small cuts are the places where I go on holiday: Dorset, Rutland or West Sussex. The most challenged include some London boroughs: Hackney and Tower Hamlets. For the most part, however, the cuts to local authority funding represent a significant transfer of money from the north to the south. That can only widen the north-south divide which plagues our economics, and which I am quite sure the Minister regrets.

There are a variety of ways forward. I have tried to suggest some of the possibilities. I look forward to hearing proposals from others who speak, and to hearing which of those directions the Government will follow in fulfilling their desire to encourage both volunteering and voluntary groups in their contribution to our society.