Middle East and North Africa

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con) (Valedictory Speech)]

My Lords, if one is setting off on a journey, it is a privilege to be sent off by a bishop. I thank the right reverend Prelate for the quality of his colourful send-off. I shall use his book Thomas Hobbes and the Limits of Democracy as a gazetteer for my return to private life.

Fourteen years ago, in October, in my maiden speech, I did not use my allotted span, but this evening I hope that I shall not unduly claim it back. Indeed, I must apologise for having proved, over the years, to be a lineal descendant of Autolycus in “The Winter’s Tale”, whose most famous line is as,

“a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles”.

I hope that the time left to me enables me to press for one practical point of information in this debate, and another final proposal within valediction. On the former, I am relieved that—once a Whip always a Whip—I share Her Majesty’s Government’s analysis of Britain’s current obligations and intentions in the present crisis. Her Majesty’s Government favour a Syrian-based, UN-assisted operation, one criticised by others in that it omits those migrants in transit. I should declare an interest—as I always do in charity-oriented debates—in that I control two small charities within the Charities Aid Foundation. With the national and international charities under the Disasters Emergency Committee now in double figures, small charities like mine are under constant pressure for donations, in present circumstances, from Sierra Leone in Africa to Syria in the Middle East, with the transit migrants in between. One significant and common, but not universal, factor that recurs is these mega-charities explaining to us that Her Majesty’s Government are doubling up the proceeds of their current appeal. However, this information always comes haphazardly from the charities and not from Her Majesty’s Government. It would greatly help if Her Majesty’s Government, or the DEC, would not only announce the practice regularly but say why they are helping a particular appeal in this way. Is it just to secure leverage or is it a method of research to test which appeals have specific public support, or both? Is it to establish a pecking order of need? Whichever it is, it makes for an inefficient map among small charities of where their money can make the most difference. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can shed illumination on this dilemma.

As to valediction, in my maiden speech in 2001 I paid the habitual tribute to the help afforded by the staff of your Lordships’ House in welcoming us. Fourteen years later, I quote the Queen of Sheba’s tribute in the First Book of Kings, chapter 10, verse 7:

“Behold, the half was not told me”.

My gratitude to the staff was beyond the telling of it. However, I have one suggestion to make in departure about those of us who contribute to the work of your Lordships’ House in this Chamber, the Moses Room and the committee rooms upstairs.

In the interests of brevity, I shall take the liberty of infringing the rubric in this final speech to call my parents just that, rather than having the mild confusion between “my late noble kinsman” and “my late noble relative”. They were, however, in 1966—seven centuries after Simon de Montfort’s Parliament—the first couple to sit on the Front Bench together in either House, although non-partisan honesty obliges me to say that they did so in opposition in the Lords whereas, within a year, Dr Dunwoody and his wife, Gwyneth, also did it together but in their case in government, and in the Commons, which was a no-trumps victory. It is in this instance ironic that when at home in the 1960s and 1970s I heard my parents discussing which professions were missing from your Lordships’ House, a key gap was then Dr Dunwoody’s own profession of doctor—since then remedied, of course.

Those of us who are retiring under the new dispensation will be doing so from a variety of motivations but there may be a common sense of regret or loss. One use of the new valedictory principle may be to allow a departing Peer to nominate their private hope of how his or her gap may be filled. It would have no statutory significance but may be interesting for those making selections later. For myself, I once followed my noble friend Lord Waldegrave as Civil Science Minister, when both of us had been classicists. He was far superior to me in both disciplines. Although I am conscious that in my time my party has produced the Chamber’s archaeologist and the Chamber’s vet, I am less conscious of our having produced a pure scientist. That would thus be my own nomination. If pure scientists prefer the Cross Benches perhaps, in the wake of the departure of my noble friend Lord Jenkin, we could at least have someone who had played a significant part in the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee.

Finally, as I come, after 38 years and 10 Parliaments, to what those who have ever sung “Abide With Me” in French will recall is known as le dernier rendezvous, I remember that my predecessor in the Commons—who was likewise the predecessor of my noble friend Lord Tugendhat—the late John Smith of Smith Square, the founder of the Landmark Trust, said that of all the human groups with which he had been associated, whether in school or university, in the army or in business, the one of which he was fondest were his colleagues in the House of Commons. Of course, he never came here and thus missed the spell of your Lordships’ House.

In closing, let me above all say—in familiar and oft-repeated words—thank you. I have been ever conscious of the hazards of such words since a member of my family wrote to me and said:

“The school did ‘Hamlet’ last week. Most of the parents had seen it before, but they laughed just the same”.

In this instance, the words of gratitude are wholly genuine and most enthusiastically true.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, perhaps I am not explaining this very well. Among the 20,000 coming in, Syrian refugees of less than 18 years will be provided with humanitarian protection for five years under the scheme. Under the Syrian protection scheme, we will not be looking to remove any such child once they reach the age of 18. I hope that that adds clarity.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

Will the Minister confirm an answer that was given this very day last week in response to a question about the number of further leave to remain refusals that have occurred to people formally granted temporary leave as children upon applying as adults? Those refusals rose from six in 2006 to 870 in 2010; whereas, after plateauing at 871 in 2011, they fell in each year of the coalition thereafter to 374 in 2014. I personally regard those statistics as encouraging.

[Baroness Verma]

I thank my noble friend for his intervention. However, I reiterate that the scheme we are operating, the Syrian vulnerable persons relocation scheme, is different from other schemes and, therefore, under this scheme, those reaching the age of 18 will remain.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Friday 27th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

It is not intended to be each year of the five years but an average of or a rolling over the five years. That is what I suggest. Of course, we would be open to amending the amendment if my noble friend chooses to give us his support. The confusion which can be caused by the different outcomes of GNI is also recognised under Clause 2(2)(a), where,

“under section 1(4) of the 2006 Act”,

it is possible for the Secretary of State in a subsequent year—this could be years later if it proves that, because of revisions of GDP, the target it was thought had been met had not in fact been met—to make a subsequent statement, which would not refer to the current year but to years gone past. Of course, one might have a whole series of statements where one year it was thought that the target had been met and then the next year it was thought that the target in the previous year had not after all been met. You could go on contradicting yourself year after year because these statistics bob around on a very thin margin which could easily affect the 0.7% one way or another. That is why I say to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, and others that the idea that the 0.7% gives certainty is somewhat fallacious and not very profound. Those are the external factors.

More importantly in terms of policy and what we are trying to achieve in debates around this issue, there may be factors other than external factors which affect whether the target was not met. These could be that projects were not ready or that there was not enough time to get them ready, However, if we want to place a premium on management, rather than just meeting the target on outcomes rather than input, again I suggest that that would be greater if we looked at this target not in one year but over several years. If we looked at it over several years, it would remove the incentive which came to light in Committee to hand over cash to multilateral institutions simply in order to meet the target. Although, as we learnt in Committee, it would take on average two years before the money handed over to a multilateral institution is spent, for the purpose of meeting the target it counts as though it was spent. Therefore, in any year, if you are not getting near to the 0.7%, there would be a tremendous incentive just to hand the money to a multilateral institution in order to say that the target has been met.

It also seems to me that the way in which the 0.7% works is that there will be a great incentive to spend money rather than to economise or to manage it efficiently. There is no way to claw back money in years in which there is an overspend. If the target is exceeded—if it is 0.8% of GDP—there is no way in which that money can be recouped. Therefore, the fear of the department will never be of overspending, it will always be the risk of underspending and, therefore, it will tend to overspend. For all those reasons, the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, would be conducive to good management of the budget and thoroughly consistent with the aims of the Bill as put forward by its promoters.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords, this debate is essentially about flexibility, and this measure is essentially one which has been brought forward by Members of the Liberal Democrats. I wish to say a brief word about my relations with their party. Before anyone accuses me of making a Second Reading speech let me say not only that I could not make a real Second Reading speech at Second Reading but also that my relations with the Liberal Democrats are an essential part of my contributing to this particular amendment.

In the 183 years since the Great Reform Bill—which amounts to six generations, at 30.5 years each—six members of my family, one per generation, have served in the House of Commons, the first four being Liberals and the final two being Tories. The first was Member for the Southern Division of Northumberland. He was said to be the richest commoner in England, and he was presumably a Whig. It was perhaps apposite for what was then essentially an Irish family that the second MP was the MP for Armagh, a niece of his having married into the Brookeses.

The third Member was my great-grand-uncle, the son of the richest commoner in England. He entered Parliament as a Liberal MP for Wakefield.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

May I help my noble friend? These amendments consider a rolling average of meeting the target, not a rolling average of former MPs of my noble friend’s family.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

I do not know on what amendment I am going to make this speech if I do not make it on this one. But I do take the point, and I am extremely grateful for the intervention.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may just ask noble Lords, if they would not mind, to stick to the amendment in a general sense.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

That is certainly what I am about to do. The third MP was my great-grand-uncle, a son of the richest commoner in England. He entered Parliament as Liberal MP for Wakefield. On reaching the Commons, he decided that he much preferred Mr Disraeli to Mr Gladstone, the latter having, of course, formerly been,

“the rising hope of the stern and unbending Tories”.

But being a member of our family—and thus, I hope, instinctively—he behaved honourably and never considered crossing the Floor, while being sufficiently practical as to advise his constituency association that it would be prudent to start identifying a new prospective candidate for the next election.

The family’s fourth Liberal MP, the MP for Wakefield’s nephew, was a Unitarian minister who had served as a curate to Phillips Brooks, the great carol-writing American bishop, and who became Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow—where I was later a constituent of the noble Baroness, Lady King. I have now finished my references to my Liberal ancestors and forebears and will proceed with the relevance and substance of my speech. The last two Members of Parliament were my late noble kinsman and myself.

The reason for this rather long prolegomenon is that the retirement of my family’s final Liberal MP in the East End almost coincided precisely with the retirement of the last Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, and so their party has certainly not latterly benefitted from any family contribution of advice. This is why I come back to the virtues of flexibility. I spoke only briefly in Committee on 6 February—although I did speak for half a column, at col. 930 of Hansard, that day. I wish to speak to the virtues of flexibility which have been alluded to already. What I did not do at that stage was to describe how we broke the deadlock between the Budget Council and the European Parliament when, for six months, the EU was without a budget at all.

The deadlock that arose, and which was wholly inflexible at the time, was that Parliament had to have the final say in the budget. In this particular instance, and indeed in others, its budget was, in one sense, a house of cards in that it would take 100% up to the maximum that it was allowed to have. This was secured by a great deal of horse-trading between individual Members of the European Parliament. Let us say for the purposes of this example that, in order to secure the Greek vote, a road through Macedonia, paid for by the EU, was the price. Therefore you could not change the budget in any way because the whole house of cards would collapse if you did.

What the British Government did on that occasion, which resolved the matter not only for that occasion but for any future similar one, was to introduce the concept of a negative reserve. As it was never the case that all the money in the budgets was spent, there was always going to be a surplus of some sort, and enough to take care of any overstatement that we went into when the budget was set.

We earned the good will of our colleagues on the Budget Council by a quite separate intervention that we made when the EU asked us all to pay what we would have paid if the budget had been passed. The amounts for which it asked had no legal or statutory cover, but the fact that we alone challenged them and secured victory in the European court meant that we were extremely popular with our colleagues. Thus, when we came in July to hold the presidency, we were able within two days to get a budget which had been unavailable for the previous six months.

I state that simply to say that I fear the absence of flexibility in a Bill which has been, as I said, brought forward primarily by the Liberal Democrats. Flexibility is so important. It is desirable that anything we can introduce to calm it down is to be looked for.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Friday 6th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tugendhat]

I am afraid that the way in which human beings are constructed means that error is endemic in all our assessments, but that should not be an inhibition in drawing on our experience to try to improve the proposals before us. I quite accept the point made by the noble Lord about how statements may be viewed and reviewed. I would also say to him that there is a danger of them being misrepresented and that what he has said will encourage that.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords, I have very few qualifications for speaking in these debates, although I had the extreme privilege, thanks to my noble friend Lord Lawson of Blaby, of serving as the British Minister on the Budget Council of the European Union for the four years when I was in the Treasury—I suspect that that is about as long as anyone has ever done that job. During that time, we had to deal with problems that were, effectively, intractable. The Budget Council is a body with which the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, will be familiar. I am delighted to say that it was this Government who found solutions that meant that we did not have a continuous repetition of the failure of the process at the end of the year in arriving at a budget, which, in the final analysis, was determined by the European Parliament. It was a rich and pleasurable responsibility to hold and we earned the respect of our confrères on the Budget Council—rather as DfID is earning respect—for our concentration on solutions rather than on argument.

The second thing that I wish to say—there is an enormous amount to read on this subject, particularly in the short space of time between Second Reading and Committee stage—relates to the extreme utility, on the subject that we are discussing, of the footnotes in small print in the NAO report. It propounds issues that the International Development Committee might wish to consider. At least 11 out of 15 such issues apply directly to this as a way of making what may also be relatively intractable problems easier to solve.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, I listened almost with amusement to the last forceful intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. He summed up in an excellent, succinct phrase exactly the content of my maiden speech in this House in 1997—namely, that economics is not a science, as many of its proponents insist, but an art, and a very ambiguous art at that, which is full of subjective views. To look back, frankly, at the development activities of the past 40 and 50 years, post the Second World War, the economists have not done a very good job. They have applied all kinds of economic rulings to the proposed triggers for development and have found that they have not worked. Of course, far more than economics is involved. There is a whole range of psychological and particularly local factors in all the countries that all of us have visited over the years—I have visited dozens of them—which are operating not to the laws of economics. I say “Well done” to the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. That is exactly the truth of the matter. We do not want to be guided too much by economists.

What we want is flexibility and room in which we can look to the future for once rather than the past and see the ways in which development can be triggered and promoted in the future. As my noble friend Lord Lawson said, the world has changed totally in the last 40 years. The developing countries are looking for new priorities and new ways of assistance. They are looking for ways in which they can graduate away from official development systems à la 20th century into new forms of support and development in the 21st century.

All sorts of distinguished reports from the other place and your Lordships’ House emphasise that. The latest report from the excellent House of Commons International Development Committee on the future—not the past—of UK development co-operation states:

“The impact of DFID’s support … depends less on the volume of financial support and more on its ability to act as a purveyor of development excellence, helping its partner countries to identify innovative solutions”.

Your Lordships’ House should be thinking about innovative solutions and not the past. The committee also states:

“As grants of aid become less appropriate in some countries, so new forms of development co-operation are necessary”.

It goes on to identify the evidence that it had gathered in the various countries that it had visited. That is the reality of the moment. New forms are required to promote development. If we glue ourselves into the old ways of thinking, we will deny ourselves the flexibility of this kind of goal, which our superb staffs in DfID, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and other areas will seek to be guided by, and we will do a disservice to development on a massive scale.

HIV and AIDS: Vaccine

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, but perhaps all noble Lords would be brief so that we can hear as many questions as possible. We will hear from the noble Baroness and then from the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. We should have time for both.

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord, Lord Walton, indicated the real challenges here. This needs basic research, and the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust are best able to assess what may have better prospects. They have stepped up their contributions.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, I declare an interest as I was the Civil Science Minister at the time when HIV came in. The late Lord Joseph and I had been advised by both the advisory board for the Research Councils and the MRC that there was no way in which research science could keep absolutely on the frontiers of all the subjects which were available to it. When HIV came in, they had to tell us that, unfortunately, research in virology had fallen back. Could my noble friend give us some indication of how far that setback has been repaired in the past 30 years, particularly given the salience of this issue in west Africa at present?

[Baroness Northover]

I just mentioned the level of research and development money going into product development for HIV. I expect the noble Lord will know that Imperial College is leading in this area. I visited the human immunology laboratory at Imperial, which is taking forward vaccine research in a number of different areas. The noble Lord will also know that the number of years it has taken to develop viable vaccines in various areas—10 years for measles, 16 years for hepatitis, 25 years for cervical cancer and 47 years for polio—bears out the particular challenge referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Walton.

St Helena

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Shutt of Greetland—now a considerable authority on the affairs of St Helena—on having secured this debate and on the germaneness of his wording in concentrating our minds. On 31 October last year, I intervened during the gap in a debate, initiated by my noble friend Lady Hooper, on the overseas territories. Today I seek to return to the questions I raised then. It is a pleasure and a coincidence, rather than motivations of egocentricity, which cause me to direct anyone interested in these issues to col. 1787 in the Official Report of that day, in which I alluded to a forebear of mine becoming Governor of the island in precisely the year 1787.

These issues are about how, when tourists arrive at the airport, they can be encouraged to recommend the experience to others through the fruits of improved conservation of both local natural history and Georgian buildings. I did not seek to be plaintive, but I did indicate that I had hitherto had difficulty in finding out how well meaning citizens in this country could assist in this project. The device I deployed through last year’s intervention was extremely successful in that it provoked responses from a worthwhile posse of interested and interesting correspondents. I have spent part of the seven and a half months since then becoming an octogenarian and the rest of the time seeking to put my affairs in order to respond to these intimations of mortality. However, I fear that I have consequently been guilty of discourtesy in not responding to each and every one of these very useful correspondents. I hope that if any of the writers pick up this debate too, they will regard my participation in it as evidence of my continuing interest.

I was especially grateful to the director of the St Helena National Trust for a long e-mail about the trust’s background and functions. I have been tempted to quote from it passim and verbatim but I felt that would be presumptuous without his authority. I would be happy to show the text to those noble Lords interested in the affairs of St Helena hereafter. However, I emphasise that there is no link between the St Helena National Trust and the National Trust in the UK, though both are members of the acronymic INTO, the International National Trusts Organisation, which is based at the National Trust in this country. This long and helpful e-mail, which embraced both the natural heritage and the built environment, went on to furnish an attachment from the St Helena National Trust on the immediate future of the built heritage on St Helena. This is, in the short term, my principal interest and I will return to it to ask a specific question of my noble friend who is replying for Her Majesty’s Government. However, I shall first seize the opportunity to make brief reference to the natural heritage in order to indicate its attractiveness. This comprises, inter alia, the very significant and tiny world populations of the critically endangered wirebird, the spiky yellow woodlouse, the black cabbage tree, the he and she cabbage trees, and other very special fauna and flora, and their natural habitats. I am not going to dwell on them, save to say that great attention has already been paid to them; however, I should declare an interest as a trustee of MEMO, which acronymically derives from the Mass Extinction Monitoring Observatory.

I return to the issue of the built environment, where there is a drawback from the lack of the assignation of responsibility for St Helena’s built heritage to any government department, office or institution. This is a discouraging first impression in the context of the terms of this debate and the concerns for tourism; for it implies no responsibility for these structures, nor yet support for their maintenance. To shine a searchlight on this dilemma, the small NGO that I mentioned is in receipt of a £17,000 annual grant from the St Helena Government, while the two core staff alone require almost £30,000 per annum in salaries. This shortfall’s cure lies with the 4,000 souls on the island and those who come to visit, who are the subject of this debate.

On a more cheerful note, after the initial six-week training exercise last year for Six Saints under Henry Rumbold MBE—a redoubtable heritage stonemason with form on Fountains Abbey and the Prince’s Trust—all six have been assured of their certification within the UK’s NVQ3. In that regard, I should declare another interest as having been a long-term president of COTAC. I am looking forward to hearing whether these skills have been successfully engaged on site. In that regard, the attachment to which I made earlier reference is constructive. There are 967 historic structures recorded in the St Helena Historic Environment Register, with new discoveries daily still to be properly recorded. All these buildings would respond to the care of Mr Rumbold’s six charges and, even more, if intact, would make a lively contribution to the island’s economy.

I am not in a position to report on progress on the Governor’s own initiative in this area, but I will cite the opportunities available to clarify what could be achieved. This is, to some extent, a laundry list: replacing the mass concrete fill of inner courtyard at Plantation House with locally cut island stone flags, repointing the upper storey of the Essex House frontage—the lower storey was properly repointed with a lime mortar four years ago, and completing the partial restoration of Lemon Valley Lower Farmhouse, which was the site for the Six Saints’ training last year.

In parallel, there are structures not in daily public use that need to be brought back into management in a planned programme, which, again inter alia, could be deployed towards tourist use as weekend and short-stay holiday accommodation for island visitors and tourists—which is relevant to this debate. Access, water supply, litter prevention, sewage works and day-to-day control would all help to minimise vandalism.

To identify specific target projects, I refer to Broadway House, which is now let to the trust—the NGO I mentioned—High Knoll Fort’s two major wall collapses, and urgent attention needs to be paid to Munden’s structures that are now slipping away. I shall mention a few more: Bank’s; the steps and railings of the Ladder; Ladder Hill Fort; Munden’s walls and paths; Man and Horse signal station; the Wharf Buildings and mortuary, and the Papanul wreck’s salvaged contents. I have tolled this requiem towards collapse in order the make the point that there is a ready-made programme available to the skills already locally acquired if financial means were available.

This brings me to my question for my noble friend. The 4,000 souls on the island and the present level of tourists will not be enough to capitalise on this opportunity, so the responsibility comes back to us. I have been advised that tax-advantageous devices are being devised to encourage heritage and conservation disciples in this country to make a contribution, which is what prompted my interest in the debate last year. Therefore my query to the Minister is whether Her Majesty’s Government are taking an interest in this domestic venture as regards a conduit, and if so, what progress has been made and in how long a future timeframe.

Women: Board Membership

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness is quite right. We have an aspiration, as she probably knows, that 50% of appointments to public boards should be women by 2015. I have seen the figures that are just being finalised for the current state of affairs, and it is looking encouraging that we are moving in the right direction, but we are not complacent.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, Damocles was a man. Will the Government consider a female sword?

[Baroness Northover]

I look to the noble Lord to come up with one.

Economy: Culture and the Arts

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, the second debate this afternoon is a happy foil to the one that preceded it, and we owe that agreeable conjuncture to my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft, who was admirably equipped by experience and avocation to launch it successfully. The noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, has forgotten more about these subjects than I shall ever know. It is a privilege to follow him, and a privilege, too, for your Lordships’ House that he is participating in this debate. The only footnote I will add to his speech is that the Greek Government have just been economically obliged to take the Greek broadcasting society off air, which is an index of the scale of that country’s present difficulties.

Arts Council England—I declare an interest because its chief executive was once my admirable Principal Private Secretary—is one of the heroes of this narrative. It deserves great credit for its conduct these past three years: first, for the worthwhile and coherent challenge it set its clients in 2010 to justify its claims on necessarily reduced resources; secondly, for the innovative initiatives that it mounted to assist individuals who, and institutions which, have been confronted by new and testing dilemmas; and, thirdly, for the logic and good sense with which it negotiated the potential impasse in which it is asked to justify itself to public and paymasters alike, without losing its self-respect or the respect of others in the process.

I will make one particular point that I regard as important and that other noble Lords may not make. First, I will illustrate the paean I uttered about the Arts Council with some examples of the initiatives that I outlined. I am drawing on developments since the most recent arts debate in which I participated, in 2010. I am thinking, for example, of the creation of The Space in May 2012, and of the Creative Industry Finance scheme to aid struggling exponents and creative entrepreneurs with development loans of £5,000 to £25,000, repayable over a maximum of three years. I am thinking especially of the Creative employment programme and the £15 million invested in providing 6,500 apprenticeships and internships for 16 to 24 year-olds. I say “especially” because for a quarter of a century I was a trustee of the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere. Its current chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, will speak later in the debate. The trust used its physical estate and the benefits regime of the Thatcher years—my remark about benefits is a technical one, not a commendation—to allow a series of able graduates in the same kind of age group to prepare for careers in museums while acquiring practical skills in the ordinary, day-to-day functioning of the trust’s activities.

I am thinking of the Arts Council’s partnership with its colleagues in the Creative & Cultural Skills group. I am thinking of the Momentum Music Fund for 50 to 75 bands and artists, with £5,000 to £15,000 loans over two years, similarly managed by a partner music organisation. On a longer and perhaps more traditional timescale, I am thinking of the linkage of creative businesses to cultural organisations close by, so that hubs and clusters may be created. I am delighted by the continuing use of public money to explore the potential of new ideas as a form of creative R&D, and to sustain the seemingly unthinkable.

On the question of self-respect, I like the chief executive’s measured clarion call about the unique ability of arts and culture to fire our imaginations and inspire and entertain us through the contribution that culture makes to our quality of life. Of course, these forces go back much earlier, but it is worth reflecting that it is only just over a quarter of a millennium since Mirabeau coined the concept of—and thus the word—civilisation. What is deeply impressive, in the same breath, is the ability of those involved to afford us a utilitarian justification of the straightforward financial return earned on this programme that can be rendered to the economy without shame or embarrassment. The most recent CEBR report is rich in specific and illuminating detail, and is an anvil for further R&D.

The one question I want to ask the Minister is how the sector is getting on with the opportunity it spelt out for philanthropy back in 2010. There are outstanding instances, like the Royal Opera House, but there are other institutions already surprised by the less satisfactory marks they scored in the Arts Council examination three years ago, and which may not have yet properly remedied their rejection by fundraising themselves, whose success is its own reward in moral as well as financial terms. In another heritage field, the efforts of small parishes to raise the finance to restore their listed churches are a useful signpost towards this goal, which can astonish and invigorate the individual stakeholders who take part in it. Is there an area here, where the Arts Council can enlarge its positive and practical quiver, by helping to teach people how to raise money?

Finally, there is one particular point I wanted to single out. I have not myself lost sight of the phrase, “We’re all in this together”, although I appreciate that some other people have. There are still disciplines in which we can look the world fully in the eye, and the extension of their number lends support to the efforts of those in other similar disciplines. When I was in the private sector, I once had a client who always put his international offices on the continent in cities where there was a good opera house, not just for his own pleasure, but also for that of his employees. Put at its simplest, beyond the ordinary tourism statistics, those foreigners who might have the need to do business with us on other counts, are more likely to do so if our arts, like our fighting forces, are world class. In this regard, I was struck by the disproportionate participation in the recent global lists of world-class cultural institutions in the Times of ones that are very much British.

In the mean time, however, I will close with the dying words of that artist who excelled in portraiture and landscape, and sometimes in both, as in his picture of Mr and Mrs Andrews. Here are the dying words of Gainsborough:

“We are all going to heaven, and van Dyck is of the company”.

Public Bodies: Reform

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boateng]

My Lords, the Caribbean Board—

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

At a similar point in a prior Administration, I was ministerially responsible for a department with 43 non-departmental public bodies. I received a Cabinet Office instruction almost to double the proportion of women on those boards within a matter of months. That order could have been carried out to the letter either by greatly raising the number of women board members or by conducting a massacre of male innocents on their own quarter-decks. At some risk to my own quarter-deck, I minuted back about which course I was to follow. Can my noble friend give an assurance that a competent mathematician will proof-read any similar instructions before they are sent out this time?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I cannot guarantee the standards of proof-reading or mathematical skills, but I am sure that we have a highly skilled Civil Service and that no instruction will go out which is neither numerate nor literate.