Civil Society and Lobbying

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I join all other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness very much for initiating this debate and allowing us an opportunity to talk about one of the brightest jewels in the crown of our national public life, which is our charities. I should declare that a number of the bodies with which I am involved as a trustee are registered charities, and these are listed in the register.

For me, as we have heard so often during this debate, there is one golden thread which links together all those organisations which make up the rich tapestry of Britain’s charitable sector, and that is the care they give to the vulnerable and the needy and the voice they give them. I want to talk about one specific group that looks after perhaps one of the most vulnerable groups in our society—our pets and animals. I welcome this opportunity to pay a heartfelt tribute to the vital work of the UK’s animal welfare charities. I was delighted that the noble Baroness, in her opening remarks, was able to put over some of the vital points that they have made to her. A great deal of the work they do, and how they deliver it, is highly relevant to this debate and to the important issues that have been raised.

We are a nation of animal lovers and pet owners. More than half of homes own, between them, 9 million dogs, 11 million cats and many other types of pet, including a growing number of exotic animals. I am an unabashed cat lover, and there is nothing my husband or I would not have done over the years to look after the seven cats who have been in our care. Indeed, the vast majority of the UK’s pets are looked after extremely well, but not all are so lucky. We have a real problem with stray animals and with pets being abandoned, often due to economic circumstances or because owners failed to do research about caring for a pet before buying one online. Tragically, there is the ever-present horror of animal cruelty.

Those are the cases where our nation’s animal charities—to quote the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I think—go to the places that government cannot go to. That is where Cats Protection, Blue Cross, the Dogs Trust, PDSA, the RSPCA and Battersea Dogs & Cats Home step into the breach. The scale of the challenges they face, and of their achievements, is huge. Dogs Trust estimates that 100,000 stray dogs a year are handled by local councils, and it cares for a significant proportion of them—more than 15,000 last year. With cats, neutering is a real problem, and Cats Protection helped neuter 159,000 cats and kittens last year, in the largest companion animal neutering programme in the world, as well as rehoming 44,000 cats. For those pets in need of urgent medical attention, the PDSA provides more than 2.7 million treatments to pets every year, delivering wonderful care alongside the RSPCA and the Blue Cross.

For me, all these great organisations share five things in common which are central to the issues we are debating today. First, they are all civil society organisations that rely hugely on the tremendous, selfless support of volunteers—highlighted so well by my noble friend Lord Lingfield earlier on. Cats Protection, for instance, has 9,700 volunteers, the stalwart volunteers at Battersea Cats & Dogs Home last year gave 73,000 hours of service, and the PDSA saves £12 million each year thanks to its voluntary workers. Those are fantastic achievements.

Secondly, all the animal welfare charities are major providers of independent advice, information and education, helping people look after their pets responsibly and preventing neglect and cruelty. Blue Cross and Cats Protection last year spoke to more than 100,000 children and young people about responsible pet ownership, while the Dogs Trust ran more than 6,000 workshops in schools and youth clubs. That work would be much enhanced if young people were also to learn about these issues at school. If the Government could do one thing to help these very hard-pressed charities and their volunteer armies, it would be to make animal welfare part of the national curriculum in primary schools. Would my noble friend perhaps be able to look afresh at that?

Thirdly, these organisations all provide services that government cannot provide and which otherwise would not exist, including Blue Cross’s Pet Bereavement Support Service, Cats Protection’s Paws to Listen helpline for those struggling with the loss of a cat, and the Dogs Trust’s Hope Project, which helps the dogs of homeless people—all important services provided with no burden on the taxpayer.

Fourthly, these charities are an invaluable source of data and information for government, and also provide front-line services which help deliver on public policy. The best example is probably compulsory microchipping of dogs, where charities campaigned for the change—and it was absolutely right that they had the ability to do so—and have now undertaken to deliver much of the chipping. Hundreds of projects nationwide are now involved in implementing this policy. Such has been the success of the initiative, I believe there is now a case to make microchipping of cats compulsory, too.

Another area where the sector works in partnership with government is in making online pet advertising more responsible, with excellent results. Thanks to the work of the Pet Advertising Advisory Group, more than 100,000 irresponsible advertisements—for instance, those advertising pregnant animals—have been removed from websites. Provision of data which government does not or cannot collect, for instance the PDSA annual benchmark about the well-being of companion animals, is also crucial in informing the development of policy and shaping future legislation.

Finally, perhaps the most important characteristic that all these charities share in common is that they provide a vital independent voice speaking out for animals and making sure they remain on the political agenda, and we must ensure they continue to have the ability to do just that. That message has come through loud and clear in the debate today. They all have skilled advocates researching issues, advising government, pushing for change and indeed holding us all to account for the delivery of policy. That is a hugely important role, and one we should cherish and encourage. We should not add any further regulatory burdens on to them.

We all know that our pets provide pleasure, companionship and a unique form of unconditional love which enriches our lives. We should do what we can to repay that. So let us salute the work of all those charities which, in advising and working with government, providing vital services at no cost to taxpayers, helping to educate young people and, above all, acting as champions for the voiceless, are a crucial part of the fabric of our civil society. These organisations do so much to care for some of the most vulnerable creatures in our society.

Deregulation Bill

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment, and in doing so I draw attention to my various media interests as listed in the register. Like my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, I believe that Section 73 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 is an outdated piece of legislation that was designed in a bygone age. As I said when we discussed this in Committee, we should always look very warily at legislation that binds the media that is 27 years old. When this legislation was put on to the statute book, we were all still having difficulty getting photocopiers to work—mind you, I still have that sometimes—and the fax machine was something of a novelty. The world and technology have moved on, and above all the broadcasting industry has moved on, yet this legislation has not. It should. As the noble Lord said, it seems to be quite wrong that at a time when the commercial public sector broadcasters are under real pressure, as indeed is the newspaper industry, it is the cable platforms that are getting content for free and receiving huge benefits from retransmitting content without payment or licence.

Something is very wrong, which I suspect is why, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, there was near unanimity of support and a clear cross-party consensus in Committee on this issue among Back-Bench Peers, many of whom are experts in the industry. I am rather used to being a lone voice when it comes to some media issues in this House, but on this occasion I am delighted that all of us agree that repealing Section 73 would help protect our commercial public service broadcasting industry and its investment in brilliant and original UK content and, indeed, in regional news. The creative industries across the UK would get a huge boost as a result.

Voluntary and Charitable Sectors

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, we are all indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for raising an issue which is so important to the sustenance of a compassionate and generous society. I am a trustee of a number of charities and draw attention to my entry in the register of interests. However, I will talk specifically about a group of charities, and tens of thousands of volunteers, who care for one of the most vulnerable groups in our society: the animal welfare charities that do so much to help care for our nation’s animals.

I accordingly make a declaration of interest as a cat owner. I am with Charles Dickens, who said:

“What greater gift than the love of a cat?”.

It is a gift I can return today by speaking a little about the challenges faced by those charities such as Cats Protection, at whose selfless work I marvel, caring for abused, sick or stray animals.

We are of course a nation of animal lovers: 13 million households have pets, including 9 million dogs and at least 8 million cats. Aside from the pure joy of a loving relationship, pets play an important role in the development of our society. At the start of life, children taught properly to care for an animal—often by the animal charities and their volunteers—learn important life skills about the need to be compassionate to those who are vulnerable. As we grow older, pets, particularly dogs and horses, provide physical exercise which is important to general health—perhaps I should have got myself a dog rather than a cat. Later on in life, animals play an absolutely vital role in providing companionship to the elderly.

On the other side of the coin, deeply regrettably, so much of what is wrong in our society, whether it be bullying in schools, anti-social behaviour or social deprivation, is intimately bound up with instances of animal cruelty, one of the most despicable of all human acts. Concern for animals is one of the foundations of a civilised society.

Of course, most animals are loved and cosseted but, tragically, not all of them are. That is where the voluntary and charitable sector steps in, tackling cruelty, finding caring homes for unwanted animals and educating the public about animal care and welfare. The leading charities in the sector, household names such as the RSPCA, Cats Protection, the Dogs Trust, Blue Cross and Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, have been playing a vital role in looking after vulnerable animals for many generations, and I take the opportunity of this welcome debate to pay tribute to them. Volunteer support is absolutely crucial to these great organisations, as we have heard from so many other noble Lords. Cats Protection, for example, has over 9,100 volunteers across the UK, working alongside around 500 full and part-time staff. The estimated value of that volunteering is around £60 million a year. Each year, those volunteers help care for 194,000 cats and kittens, rehoming and reuniting around 46,000 of them, and deal with 24,000 feral cats through trapping them, neutering them and returning or relocating them.

It is the same story across the board in this sector. Volunteers working for the Dogs Trust help to care for 16,000 dogs in a national network of rehoming centres, while last year the Blue Cross army of 2,600 volunteers put in 320,000 hours of hard work looking after more than 40,000 sick, injured and homeless pets. It is absolutely fitting in the debate today to honour all those volunteers, many of whom are in full-time jobs, with family commitments and animals of their own to care for, who work so hard to look after vulnerable animals. They are worth their weight in gold.

The scale of the challenges those charities and their volunteers face is enormous, as the economic downturn from which we are now emerging has taken its toll. The number of animals abandoned last year, according to the RSPCA, was up by nearly 60% since the start of the economic problems, while RSPCA inspectors had to investigate over 153,000 complaints of cruelty.

However, it need not be this way. In his introduction to the recent PDSA report in 2013, The State of our Pet Nation, its director Richard Hooker said:

“So many problems that are seen by animal welfare organisations across the UK are entirely preventable. People continue to make misinformed choices at every stage of their pet ownership journey, and consequently pet welfare is being compromised”.

Now for my tiny little bit of advocacy, led in this direction by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. Parliament and Government can do a lot to help these charities and their volunteers cope with what is a growing animal welfare crisis. I will highlight three things: education, regulation and funding.

First, over the long term the best way to tackle the problems animal charities and their volunteers face is for better education of young people. How much more optimistic the long-term prospects for animal welfare would be if all children understood the five welfare needs of animals. The charities themselves do a great deal in this area already. For instance, Battersea Dogs & Cats Home talked to 13,000 young people in 10 London boroughs last year. However, animal welfare needs to be a mainstream educational issue, and I urge the Government to look at making it part of the national curriculum in primary schools.

Secondly, we need to try to ensure that the statutory rules and regulations governing animal welfare, particularly relating to the breeding and sale of pets, are kept up to date. Legislation in this area is over 60 years old and is contributing to the animal welfare crisis by making commercial breeding and sale of pets too easy in a digital age. I hope that is another area that the Government will look at.

Finally, while animal welfare charities of course rely on voluntary donations, grants and legacies, there is a case for more seed-corn funding from Defra for community education projects of the sort piloted in inner London in 2012 to help the neutering and microchipping of dogs. As we have heard, the charitable sector itself can provide time, expertise and volunteers, but there is also a role for government, particularly in view of the wide range of public policy issues that are bound up with this area.

Shakespeare wrote:

“How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world”.

Today has been our opportunity to applaud all those extraordinary volunteers and charities whose good deeds and selfless acts of generosity shine in a way that makes so many lives better.

Commonwealth and Commonwealth Charter

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, I want to address the issue of freedom of expression within the Commonwealth, so I declare an interest as the chairman of the Commonwealth Press Union Trust and draw attention to my other media interests in the register.

Along with many other noble Lords who have spoken, I strongly believe that in order to ensure its future the Commonwealth must be seen to be relevant. The greatest danger to its long-term survival is inertia, as a prelude to irrelevance. The Commonwealth charter is a sound attempt to avoid that fate. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, put it, the charter is of no use unless words are backed by actions. I draw particular attention to Article V of the charter, on freedom of expression. It states:

“We are committed to peaceful, open dialogue and the free flow of information, including through a free and responsible media, and to enhancing democratic traditions and strengthening democratic processes”.

That is absolutely right. However, my worry is that this declaration is simply the latest in a long line of similar oratorical flourishes which will prove meaningless unless backed by firm action.

Back in 2002, the Coolum declaration for the first time listed freedom of expression as one of the principles on which the Commonwealth was founded. Since then there have been many other similar declarations. Just last year, for instance, the Commonwealth Secretariat published a message for World Press Freedom Day which said:

“Commonwealth leaders have consistently re-affirmed their commitment to … freedom of expression and freedom of the press. The challenge is to translate these commitments into action—moving beyond declarations to walking the talk”.

That is absolutely right, yet is precisely what has not happened, and the situation with regard to freedom of expression within far too many Commonwealth countries is desperate. Countries such as Nigeria, Rwanda, Pakistan, Cameroon and Bangladesh languish near the bottom of world press freedom league tables.

For example, in the Gambia, President Jammeh has explicitly said that he will not,

“sacrifice the interests, the peace and stability … of the Gambian people at the altar of freedom of expression”.

Perhaps he need not worry too much as there seems little chance of that given that, under the Newspaper Amendment Act, it costs around $17,000 to obtain a licence to produce a newspaper, making it impossible for virtually the entire population to exercise its fundamental rights. In Malaysia, the constitution specifically gives the Government the power to impose restrictions on press freedom where it is deemed “necessary” and the repressive Printing Presses and Publications Act, alongside the Sedition Act of 1948, is frequently used to suppress debate. In Uganda, journalists are licensed by the Government, and the state media council, operating under the Press and Journalist Act 1995—which the Government of Uganda now wish to tighten further—has wide-ranging powers to discipline journalists.

This state of affairs, in so many Commonwealth countries, is shocking and shows that good words over many years have not been matched by good deeds. It is surely time to put that right with a firm plan of action across the Commonwealth, demanding an end to draconian and anachronistic laws such as criminal defamation, an end to state licensing of journalists, the introduction of freedom of information and the promotion of effective self-regulation in place of repressive state press councils.

At the time of the introduction of the Commonwealth charter, the Foreign Secretary William Hague rightly said:

“The commitments in the charter should be upheld, adhered to and kept under review by member Governments, Parliaments and civil society organisations”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/3/13; col. WS56.]

I back that sentiment wholeheartedly, but it means in practice that we must begin now to tackle these fundamental human rights abuses. I associate myself completely with the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, about the state of affairs which sees so many Commonwealth countries still criminalising homosexuality, a stain on the reputation of the Commonwealth which is going to be a subject of a debate in this House next Wednesday.

Will my noble friend restate the Government’s commitment, as part of their very welcome plans to reinvigorate the Commonwealth, to promoting freedom of expression throughout the Commonwealth? Does he also agree that one way to ensure that deeds match words is for the Commonwealth Secretariat, in advance of CHOGM, to undertake a freedom of expression audit of all member states to act as a baseline for improvement, an audit against which we can check whether the noble words of the charter are being met with action on the ground? That could be a hugely important first step in ensuring not just that the Commonwealth itself remains relevant and effective but that it is an organisation in which all of us who believe in human rights can be proud to take part.