Inclusive Society

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, on inclusion, I want to start with the Sewell report, which was long in preparation and deep in analysis. It concluded that, although of course there is still much we need to do, we are more tolerant and inclusive than some pretend. Yet even before the ink was dry, let alone read, the professional intolerants—the muck-spreaders—piled in to demean and diminish both the report and its excellent authors.

Everywhere that decent democratic people gather, the extremists try to infiltrate: into the Black Lives Matter movement; into Extinction Rebellion; into our schools and universities; even into our vaccination programme. The militants and wreckers—for that is what they are— are the real racists. They are the ones who try to divide, not include. They do not care about the facts. They simply insist on their truth, supported by nothing but their ignorance and opportunism. How long before our vaccination programme is accused of being institutionally racist? Forgive me: of course, it already is.

This country is changing. It is getting better. It is growing more tolerant and more inclusive. Anyone with a memory that goes back further than yesterday’s breakfast has seen the evidence with their own eyes. Is there more to do? Always, but work is in progress—and what progress since the days when ignorant racial commentary was used wholesale in our pubs, playgrounds and places of work. We were not being wicked; we simply did not know any better. Now we do.

Today, the biggest exploiters of racism are those who accuse everything in Britain of being institutionally racist—even the Royal Family, even though Her Majesty the Queen is the hugely successful head of the multiracial Commonwealth. Britain is one of the most generous nations on the planet in terms of foreign aid and charitable giving, yet apparently—allegedly—we are institutionally racist. It is a very strange way of showing it. This is a tolerant country. This is a compassionate country. During the past 15 years, 9 million immigrants have come here. They did not come here because they believed that they would be attacked, abused and tormented; that is what they were fleeing from.

The biggest threat to inclusion in this country is good men and women remaining silent and passing by on the other side. That is why I am so grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, for facilitating this debate. We will not remain silent while zealots try to pull our country to pieces. We will succeed. They will fail. To lean on the words of a very great man, I look forward to the day when our children and grandchildren can look into the eyes of their neighbours and judge them not by the colour of their skin but by their character and conduct. I believe that that day is closer than we think and I welcome it.