Antisemitism

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, and the Government are committing £7 million of funding to tackle antisemitism in schools, colleges and universities. We launched the tackling antisemitism in education innovation fund to help identify and tackle misinformation, improve media literacy and promote tolerant debate among our young people. We will also respond to the findings of the review led by Sir David Bell into antisemitism in schools and colleges. The review looks at whether the policies, processes and support are available to help our schools and colleges across England to identify and tackle antisemitism when it arises.

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, last autumn, Sheffield City Council entered into a faith and belief charter with local faith leaders, setting out our expectations of one another for mutual respect and kindness. Yesterday, I spoke to a rabbi who observed that antisemitism inevitably increases in seasons when society is more divided and polarised, and decreases when the culture of our common life is kind. Does the Minister agree with me that faith charters, such as the one in Sheffield, play a vital role in fostering precisely the virtues of kindness and mutual respect that counter the evil of antisemitism, among other things?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I commend the work being done in Sheffield to promote tolerance between faiths. It is important that we do that. The problems do not lie in people in our communities getting together; they lie with those who want to cause division and hatred between communities. If we work more to bring faiths together in communities, so that we properly understand that we all have more in common than divides us, when people get together they will support each other and we will see a wonderful synergy between them. I hope there will be more of the type of charter to which the right reverend Prelate referred.

Homelessness: Homewards Initiative

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to tackle homelessness following the launch of the Prince of Wales’s Homewards initiative.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

We welcome the Prince of Wales’s Homewards initiative and his interest and support in tackling homelessness. The Government have made the unprecedented commitment to end rough sleeping. In September 2022 we published our cross-government strategy, setting out how we were investing £2 billion over three years to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping.

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

I thank the Minister for that helpful response. Sheffield is one of six places where the Homewards initiative is being piloted, and in South Yorkshire it seems to us that two things make this new venture distinctive and highly promising. The first is that funding is secure over the medium term, and the second is a partnership approach which encourages local agencies to co-produce solutions with built-in flexibility to allow for ongoing learning. Does the Minister think that this longer-term and partnership approach is one from which the Government might learn in their own support for homeless people?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate is right; Sheffield City Council has been allocated over £4 million through the rough sleeping initiatives, which will run from 2022 to 2025, to help end rough sleeping in the city. It has also been allocated £2.4 million through the rough sleeping accommodation programme, again until 2025. So these are not annual nor short-term amounts of money. The right reverend Prelate is right; these things cannot be done by government alone. We know that individual local authority areas have specific problems and that is why we are asking them to deal with these issues. I will also say that the third sector, in particular churches and community groups, are absolutely necessary in a city such as Sheffield.