King’s Speech

Lord Godson Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Godson (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to His Majesty’s gracious Speech and particularly to join in the pleasure of the House in welcoming my colleague and noble friend Lord Goodman, whom I have known for over 40 years. The pleasure is particularly great because he was an outstanding Member of the lower House, an outstanding constituency MP and an outstanding shadow Communities Minister. His time in that role ended all too quickly, so his advent here is a wonderful closing of the circle, not least because, as he pointed out, as MP for Wycombe he dealt with many of the issues of faith and communalism that he referenced in his remarks. We will have much need of his expertise and wisdom on those matters in the years to come.

I join in the congratulations across this House to the two newly minted Peers and Ministers, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, in the Home Office, and the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, in the Ministry of Justice. Their track records belie the idea that politics no longer attracts people of high calibre into public service, and we wish them well in their responsibilities. They too will have to address some of the thorniest issues in our country, which my noble friend Lord Goodman of Wycombe addressed in his maiden speech.

From his period of service in the Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, in particular will recall that the matters referred to by my noble friend Lord Goodman were sometimes as controversial within the Government as they were between the parties across this Floor, and indeed between the bureaucracies at hand. In this regard, noting the change a fortnight ago in the name of what was DLUHC and is now MHCLG again, I ask him how the department’s balance will work in respect of counterextremism vis-à-vis the Home Office. I understand that this is still not settled between those departments, so I would be grateful for his guidance on that tonight. It is rightly of interest to us in this Chamber.

However, what really matters to the public and what really has changed is the growing incivility of our public life, alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and the noble Lord, Lord Mann, opposite. It is illustrated by the abuse that candidates from all parties, particularly women candidates, endured in the recent general election. The noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, also served in the Northern Ireland Office, and the levels of physical and verbal abuse hurled at candidates, their families and supporters in this year’s campaign bore at least a family resemblance, at times, to some of the abusiveness of Northern Ireland during the worst of the Troubles. His Majesty’s Government are therefore right to carry out a rapid review of extremist intimidation and violence during the election and to mobilise the defending democracy task force, as has been described.

The Government’s investigation of extremism in the context of the general election campaign certainly has the advantage of specificity, but it is not enough on its own, as implied by the noble Lord, Lord Mann. The Government’s approach needs to encompass the wider issues of the spread of destructive ideologies and disinformation, as well as sophisticated and malign authoritarian forces from overseas trying to undermine our country.

As is well known in this House, the noble Lord, Lord Walney, the government commissioner on political violence, has rightly argued that what took place during the election was not a sudden rise in isolated acts of intimidation and harassment but rather, in his own words, a

“concerted campaign by extremists to create a hostile atmosphere for MPs within their constituencies to compel them to cave in to political demands”.

The noble Lord made a range of practical recommendations to defend our democracy against rising extremism, including the better protection of Parliament and other spaces that serve our democracy, such as constituency offices. I would therefore be grateful for the Minister’s early thoughts, in his early days in office, on the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Walney.

The orderly and dignified transfer of power in the recent general election is one of the great virtues of true democracies, but what happened along the way is obviously a cause for grave concern. In particular, I am concerned that the rise of explicitly communalist appeals from campaigning groups such as the so-called Muslim Voice has had too large a part in our deliberations. This was not the only such campaigning body—indeed, hardline Hindutva ideologues have also played their part in this process.

Why should we worry here? It is worth recalling that, over 50 years ago in Northern Ireland, Ian Paisley, later Lord Bannside in this place, changed the name of his political party from the Protestant Unionist Party to the Democratic Unionist Party, precisely because the sectarianism inherent in the previous name was too raw, even in those polarised circumstances in the Province. Now, however, too many candidates in this month’s general election have sought to ride this sectarian tiger. This legacy will be one of the new Government’s greatest challenges to ensure that, in Great Britain, we do not go back to old, far off and unhappy things that we thought we had seen off after the Second World War.