Florence Nightingale: Bicentenary

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, as the DCMS Minister, I am aware of course that it is Data Privacy Day. Council of Europe Convention 108 is the only binding international instrument which is signed by 54 states, including Russia. Data Privacy Day celebrates the anniversary of its signing in 1981 and I agree with my noble friend that it is an important day. She is right that Florence Nightingale was an important statistician, and she was the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society in 1858. The national data guardian legislation that my noble friend took through the House as a Private Member’s Bill is excellent because it promotes trust in health data so that we can gain the maximum benefit from it.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness rightly said, Florence Nightingale not only cared for the sick and wounded but was a statistician, thus providing the foundation of our infection control today. Does the Minister agree that the best tribute to Florence Nightingale is to ensure that nurses today have enough time and resources to continue their own professional development, which contributes not just to the National Health Service but to the health and economic status of this country?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I completely agree with the right reverend Prelate: we want more nurses and we want to encourage nurses to join the profession and, importantly, to stay in it. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has recently launched his long-term plan, which addresses in part the problem of the lack of nurses.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, I would not have wanted to give way to any Bishop other than the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who has extensive experience of her own in this very field. We have noted the body of people who will be organising the celebration—quite properly—and we look forward to those celebrations, but they have insisted that if we are to honour nursing properly, we should be looking forward rather than back. Some 40,000 health service nursing vacancies need to be filled. Might something as simple as reinstating bursaries for nurses become government policy? Others have thought about it; I am sure that the Minister will want to say something positive about it, too.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

Of course, that is not directly relevant to the DCMS, but I am aware that it is an issue. That is why the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who was previously Secretary of State at the DCMS, established a DHSC-led nurse supply board to drive progress with health bodies on a range of measures, including a national recruitment campaign, action to encourage nurses who have left the NHS to return to practice, and a programme to encourage nurse retention and to look at situations where suitable nurses might be turned away by disproportionate language controls. We are addressing the issue. The one thing on which I think we all agree is the tremendous benefit that the nursing profession brings to us and countries abroad.

Electronic Communications and Wireless Telegraphy (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Adonis]

I fully accept what the Minister said. He has been very forthcoming in making further information available to noble Lords. It would be very useful to us to have that further information before these regulations go to the House. We need that further information so that we can form a judgment on whether the Government’s decision as to how they will frame the regulatory regime after 29 March, if we crash out of the EU, is correct or whether it would have been appropriate to have in domestic arrangements some function equivalent to that performed by the European Commission; for example, by requiring the CMA to approve certain of Ofcom’s proposed regulatory measures. I hope that the Minister will be able to make that information available to the House so that we can form a judgment when this regulation comes to the House.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I suspect that all present will be delighted to hear that I do not intend to detain your Lordships for very long. This has been a clash of the Titans, and a lot of material has come out from the noble Lords, Lord Foster and Lord Adonis, and the Minister’s responses. Having read diligently the papers that I had and highlighted the questions which concerned me, I find, alarmingly, that they have all been dealt with. For that reason, and hearing the question about repetition, I shall not go over the ground again.

However, I would make one or two observations, perhaps from a different angle. For example, I note at the beginning of the Explanatory Memorandum the number of Acts of Parliament and other measures that have had to be gone through with a tooth comb to produce 10 pages of minutiae—which in their totality are more than minutiae—affecting legislation in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, says. I would like to know as a point of information how many hours have been spent on teasing out these details in order to produce this one statutory instrument. On page 2, it deals with minor affairs and states that it must not be confused with other statutory instruments which will soon come through. It beggars belief that all this lies ahead. I read The Pilgrim’s Progress when I was a young man. The slough of despond and the swamp of despair are lurking and waiting for us before we will get to the celestial city.

[Lord Adonis]

Dante is more appropriate because he talks about the circles of hell.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

We will have to have a consultation about that in order to find out who forms which view about Dante’s Inferno.

There are two focal points to my remarks. I wanted to ask about the data adequacy agreement but the Minister has answered that. I also wanted to ask: who regulates the regulator? I was very interested indeed to read about Ofcom. While I in no way have the level of expertise of other noble Lords who have spoken, just reading the text—I know how to do that—what hit me between the eyes begged questions: is this regulation or supervision? Are we talking about harmonisation? I have sat in on several debates to try to gauge what is happening in consideration of these statutory instruments and I am beginning to form the view that between where we are now and where we expect to be if all goes according to plan, in several instances there will be a lessening of the oversight and direction that we have currently through our membership of the European Union.

For example, I listened to the debate on nuclear safeguarding yesterday. I was not convinced by either the debate or the material I read that the concerns being expressed would be adequately met. It was a similar case as regards non-native invasive species. Again, I was left with questions which may be answerable: I am not an expert in these fields. However, simply because we are under pressure to agree to these statutory instruments, we must not go on driving them through in such a way that in the end the accumulation of feeling about what we are achieving is that we are making too much haste and should have a bit less speed. I know that there are just 70-something days and the pressures that we are under, but in the end we will have to live with what we decide now.

All of those Acts of Parliament were carefully gone through. I have just one brief observation to make about Ofcom because the others have been made. Most of my consideration was on paragraph 10, but I will not cover that at all. However, in paragraph 7, I find that again and again what Ofcom is required to do while we are a member of the European Union “may” turn into something later. The indicative mood turns into—what? Is it the optative or is it the subjunctive? The word “may” allows itself to be interpreted either way. The optative reflects the mood of wishful thinking while the subjunctive reflects the mood of doubtful assertion. I am truly interested in knowing whether Ofcom’s different field of endeavour and focal points amount to it having the same quality and weight of oversight that it currently enjoys and whether the subjective element which is being introduced by the verbs I have described allow for a different way for it to operate or a different mood to be generated. I do not know, because the words do not allow me to make a deduction and I have certainly not heard this mentioned or dealt with in our discussion thus far.

I said that I would not detain noble Lords for long and I shall not. I am normally an optimistic person and I end my short interventions by saying that I look forward to the next one. However, I sit down on this occasion in a more desultory manner, not sure that I do.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am sorry that the noble Lord is not looking forward to my reply—he would not be the only one. Let me answer some of his points.

He asked how many hours have been put into the production of the SI. I cannot tell him exactly, but we have been working on it for about 18 months to allow for the engagement of stakeholders and other government departments and the appropriate legal checks. The consultation might not be to everyone’s liking in the sense that it was not formal, but it was real and I shall share some more information with the Committee about who turned up. It was real and, for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, gave, we may be vindicated in our decision not to include another regulator on top of Ofcom. I think I have covered that.

When the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, talks about whether it is regulation or supervision and a lessening in oversight, the point to bear in mind is that telecoms have always been regulated by national regulators. The EU Commission has a very particular role in this connected with EU matters—namely, the single market. It is obvious that if we are no longer in the EU and the single market, not only will that supervisory function not be performed by the EU because we will not be in it but there will not be a harmonisation problem.

Children and Young People: Digital Technology

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an extraordinary debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and I met on the internet, or at least in a debate on the internet. I had responsibilities thrust upon me that I was quite unprepared for when the Data Protection Bill came to this House. There were three female Members of the House, the noble Baronesses, Lady Harding, Lady Kidron and Lady Lane-Fox. The three graces were truly extraordinary in providing the educational material that I took away, most of which I had been ignorant of before. It is so nice to see sitting beside the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, who once upon a time I interviewed when she arrived in startling fashion on a motorbike and in leather gear. It is good to see her in her place. She has extraordinary expertise and I do not know what kind of neuroscience it takes to produce the results that she has clearly mastered.

Last week, we had a debate about the influence of sport and the arts on the well-being of children, so this issue is clearly in the air. We do ourselves no favours if we simply forget the fragility of the young. I have always felt that poetry can tell us about how children have within them the capacity to flourish but also the readiness to live and die. Dylan Thomas wrote a famous short story about a visit to Swansea beach and he said it all:

“But over all the beautiful beach I remember most the children playing, boys and girls tumbling, moving jewels, who might never be happy again. And ‘happy as a sandboy’ is true as the heat of the sun”.


We must hold on to a picture of the child who is ready to become an adult and inhabit a world that the rest of us would want to warn them about. We must treasure the moment of a child being not quite there yet. I love the spring. I love flowers in bud. I love everything that has potential rather than the actual. It is that potential which I hope we can keep in mind as we talk about these things here today.

Since that meeting on the internet, I have made it my business to become more educated about something I was so ignorant of. My latest incursion into that field is to read this extraordinary book, Democracy Hacked: Political Turmoil and Information Warfare in the Digital Age by Martin Moore. It truly is an eye-opener about not just the potential but the real danger that faces us. Now I am retired, I never buy a book other than on the basis of two good reviews, one of which said:

“The digital age was supposed to be democratic, but under Google, Facebook and Twitter it has become a quest for profit at any cost”.


Let me read just one paragraph from the bit of the book that looks at young people and education:

“Tech CEOs know nothing in particular about education, for another thing”—


he had been talking about the health service—

“but are canny enough to see that it is a huge potential revenue centre, if only they could persuade schools to use their software and computers. Actually, Google is already doing a very good job of that. By mid-2017, the majority of schoolchildren in America were using Google’s education apps, which of course track the activity of every child, creating a store of data that—who knows?—might come in useful when those children grow up to be attractive targets for advertising”.

These are the algorithms to which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, referred.

We have aired well enough the dangers and our fears for the uncritical use of these various modes of imparting information. Various learned bodies have given it their attention too. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, about the report from the Royal College of Paediatrics. It talks about the impact of children who lose parental control, are compulsive in their use of media, indulge in self-harm and suicide, et cetera—a whole list of stuff—but prefaces that list of potential difficulties by admitting that research into and training on the concept of addiction and gaming is needed. We can pick up the remarks about gambling by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and others. I have made the point in previous debates that the research deficit is worrying. We need to have empirical research and to dedicate real resource to accumulating it in a managed way so that we can all use and learn from it.

I must not go on, because we have run on longer than we should have, and I will try to be responsible. I read in the Library briefing that:

“Children see as many as nine junk food adverts during one 30-minute episode of their favourite TV shows, so it’s not surprising this leads them to pester for, buy and eat more unhealthy foods”.


It seems the world of advertising is geared towards getting profit from whatever strata of society it can, including children and young people, and at the expense of their well-being.

I will respond to hints and body language from across the Floor. We attended a meeting earlier this week where the Secretary of State promised a significant piece of legislation that will be all-encompassing, the first in the world and the greatest ever made. We will, of course, measure success as it unfolds. That meeting has put me in a position to be able to inform the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, of the real meaning of “shortly”. But I believe that is a responsibility for the Minister, and I leave that to him now.

Gambling: Children

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I certainly will look at that. We are looking at treatment for all problem gamblers and for children in particular. That is why I am pleased that the NHS long-term plan is committed to expanding dedicated support for those experiencing problems with gambling. As the noble Lord says, GambleAware is setting up a new clinic in Leeds. We will see how that goes, and we are working with the NHS to see if more treatment centres are needed.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had a number of questions relating to gambling in recent times. Indeed, there is another Question tomorrow relating to advertising, which is why I would like to ask a question elsewhere in the arena, as it were. I have seen the figure of 450,000 mentioned—it comes in the Gambling Commission report—but a different interpretation is put on it according to where people come from. I have a briefing paper here from Sky Betting & Gaming that puts an entirely different interpretation on the figure and even questions the way in which it is being used by those in favour of clamping down. So my question is—and this has come up in debates again and again—is it not time, in all these consultations and studies that are being done, that we had a serious, focused look at compiling evidence upon which comments can be made? At the moment, there is far too much of a fissiparous nature that allows people to draw whatever conclusions they like. I just wanted to use that word; I am sorry, it just came to me. I wanted to put the Minister on the back foot. Secondly—

[Noble Lords]

Too long!

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

Have I finished?

[Noble Lords]

Yes.

Internet Safety

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I completely agree that it is important that UKCIS helps to contribute to online safety. That is why we expanded its role from concentrating just on child internet safety to include, as the noble Baroness mentioned, hate crime, serious violence and extremism. As far as resources are concerned, the previous body—the United Kingdom Council for Child Internet Safety—has demonstrated that getting together a mix of tech companies, public bodies and government achieves good results. That is not the only thing we are doing. The online harms White Paper, which is coming by the end of the winter, will address some of the other issues, one of which will have to be funding.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Minister said, the body we are speaking about has developed from being concerned specifically with children to having a more generic nature. It has a complex set of relationships with various departments of government, including health, the Home Office and education, especially the part dealing with young people’s mental health. It is a complicated structure. In the consultation, a lack of direction in the previous body was bemoaned. Can the Minister assure us that there is a sense of direction and purpose, appropriately monitored, in this voluntary body? Given that we have extended the remit from just children to a generic range of interests—and given that in the past month or so in this House, children and obesity, knife crime, bullying, gambling, image and performance-enhancing drugs and the internet have all been discussed—can the Minister assure me that the needs of children are not being diminished as a result of being wrapped up into a more generic body?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

On the noble Lord’s first question, there has just been a board meeting and the council has reaffirmed the areas of focus: first, online harms experienced by children; secondly, radicalisation and extremism; thirdly, violence against women and girls; fourthly, serious violence; and fifthly, hate crime and hate speech. So there is a definite desire to address these very important matters. As I said in my previous Answer to the noble Baroness, we will look at other areas in the online harms White Paper.

There is absolutely no doubt that children are still a prime concern, as the composition of the board shows. The director of BBC Children’s, the CEO of Childnet, the Children’s Commissioner, the CEOs of Internet Matters and the Internet Watch Foundation, the lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, the head of child safety online for the NSPCC and the deputy director of child protection for the Scottish Government are all members of the board and they will certainly make sure that children’s issues are at the forefront of their work.

Sport: Drugs

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, we can only be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for his perseverance in this cause. I have had occasion, as others have, of reading the Library briefing, and the piece de resistance was the debate in late 2015 when the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Moynihan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, laid out the case perfectly. In a sense, all we need to do is resurrect what was said then in such an authoritative way. The Government in their response made it clear that they are aware of the seriousness of this question and are anxious to address it as creatively and as generously as they can.

In reading about all this I did not want to go over the ground so ably covered before me in so far as this problem affects sporting practitioners. For the very first time in my life, I read one of the annals of epidemiology—the things you get drawn to by membership of this House. One long article states that this is the very first meta-analysis of the global lifetime prevalence rate of anabolic-androgenic steroid use. I cannot oblige the wish expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, to avoid acronyms. I think that AAS is what that will have to be from now on.

However, the findings in that article suggest that the use of AAS is more prevalent among teenagers than among those older than 19 and that non-medical use of these steroids has steadily increased in recent years. Indeed, it has become a major global public health problem that requires the attention of policymakers and researchers. However, it is the spread from the focused sporting evidence to something rather more general that has really caught my attention.

When looking at the material put our way by UKAD, which is concerned with the use of drugs in sport, I found myself looking most specifically at the fact that it has found users as young as 14 indulging in these substances. The fact that we cannot yet control the internet sufficiently makes it possible for young people to access these drugs. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, injecting has become normalised.

It is disturbing that UKAD sets out the programmes for dealing with the problem. For the 16 to 24 age group, there is a programme with gyms and leisure centres in mind; for the 16-plus age group, there is a programme with university and colleges of education in mind; for those aged 14 to 18, there is the Clean Games Policy, for use in major sporting events; for children of 11 to 16 years of age, there is Think Real, delivered in PE lessons with the collaboration of Sport England; and for those aged 10 to 14, in years 7 to 10 in schools, the Get Set for the Spirit of Sport material is taught in the classroom. What worries me is the fact that all those strands of educational initiative have clearly been devised in response to what is perceived as a prevalent problem.

I was surprised to see turn up on my desk material from the Welsh Rugby Union, with its anti-doping protocol and guidance. We know that rugby lends itself to a massing of the body, and there is a great temptation for those who want to get on in the professional game to resort to that. However, in its protocol and guidance the WRU targets under-15 squads of amateur players, who are beginning to get the idea that using these drugs and massing their bodies in this way will help them when one day they turn to a more representative form of playing the game.

Out of all this, and without repeating what others have said, I have become aware of something that I want to leave as my contribution to this debate. I have been standing in this position at the Dispatch Box for only a few months and we have discussed doping in sport more than once, as well as how it affects children. Only a year ago, the Minister and I, together with my dear friend Wilfred—my noble friend Lord Stevenson—were engaged endlessly in discussing the Data Protection Bill, which became an Act. Significant parts of that legislation had children and the internet in mind, and a number of amendments were framed to help deal with the problem of children being exposed to possible misuse of the internet.

Only a month ago, I stood here talking about children and gambling, and the way that the advertising industry and television target children by exploiting their interest in sport and other events. I think that the number of children quoted was half a million. So children feature across all those fronts. We have also just heard about a debate that took place here last week on the subject of knife crime—again, involving teenagers—and only yesterday the head of Ofsted talked about obesity among children, as well as knife crime and bullying.

In all those things, I see a common thread. There is a need to take the specificity of this debate and incorporate it holistically with all the other concerns that have been expressed in this Chamber in recent times, recognising that perhaps the time has come for us to look generically at how the needs of children are addressed. The Children Act 1989 was a great step forward and a real turning point, and it seems that we are now ready to look generically at this question all over again. Therefore, I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Armstrong of Hill Top has tabled a debate for two weeks on Thursday that will simply ask us to look at the state of young people in our society today. It sounds vacuous and general but it could be the key to entering this very necessary area of consideration, looking at the needs of children in general across these fronts so that they might again just enjoy being young.

Gambling Industry

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, for most people—the vast majority of people—gambling is not a problem; problem gambling is less than 1%. But I take my noble friend’s point that, for a small number of people, gambling can be a problem, and advertising could contribute to it. There is no reliable evidence on the extent to which it contributes, but we are putting tough new guidance into advertising to protect vulnerable people, including children. A large advertising public service campaign is being put out to promote responsible gambling. But advertising is one of the things we are considering, so I shall take my noble friend’s point on board.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, on previous occasions when we have looked at gambling and fixed-odds betting terminals were considered, there was a perceptible measure of support for the rather humble measures we proposed, which have now been accepted. I suspect that the mandatory rather than the voluntary levy would command equal support from all Benches. Although I am repeating the Question asked by the right reverend Prelate, I ask again: how long do we have to wait for studies in an industry that generates an enormous amount of money—so much so that one person can have a pay rise of £45 million? It would not be onerous to ask for a mandatory rather than a voluntary levy, which I am sure is the next step that as a House we should responsibly be advocating.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The question is why you would want to introduce a mandatory levy. At the moment, GambleAware gets more than the money it asks for. It says it needs £10 million a year, and it is getting an extra £5 million from penalty payments, so it is getting more than it asks for. As I said, if we find that there is a need for more money and the voluntary system is not producing it, we will consider other options.

Armistice Day: Centenary

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to play a part in a debate of this kind and I am very grateful for the opportunity.

As it happens, the first speech, by the Minister, and the last, by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, have both referenced the participation by the German President in our commemorative events this weekend. That emboldens me to begin by quoting from a German philosopher, Leibniz, who once said that the present is suffused with the past and charged with the future. There is, then, no time like the present, this centenary moment, to take stock of what has gone before while positioning ourselves for what is to come.

This debate has been a perfect vehicle for exploring this dynamic, and we can only thank all who have contributed for their evocative, personal and challenging remarks. From this vantage point, we in this Parliament, and the nation at large, must bring the past alive again, not for its own sake but in order to recommit ourselves to the future—a note that has been struck again and again during this debate.

A kaleidoscopic array of experiences has flooded my mind, as it has the minds of us all, and shown us just how connected we all are to the events of 1914-18. Let me run down a short list of such memories that spring from my own mind, not in the hope of being exhaustive but in an attempt to illustrate the wide spectrum of our national and international life that was drawn into this conflict 100 years ago.

The Sunday school room in Burry Port where I used to play and learn as a boy was a simple, lean-to, wooden affair—not Lincoln Cathedral. A certificate on the wall carried the name of Bert Owen. Many years later, I discovered that he had survived the horrendous battle for Mametz Wood in 1915 but died two years later at the battle of Messines. A photograph on our kitchen wall at home shows Private Robert Edward Rhodes with his simple medals, from Staffordshire. He would have been my wife’s great-uncle. He died aged 21 in Flanders fields. These were two lads from small towns, just like millions of others, and many references have been made to just such people. “Short days” they,

“lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved”.

My student holiday job was as a male nurse in St David’s mental hospital in Carmarthen. I shaved and bathed a poor man who had been gassed and shell-shocked 40 years previously before being committed to that institution where, as far as I know, he spent the remainder of his days. I remember the geriatric ward of a local hospital at the very beginning of my life as a Methodist minister. The mere sight of a young man wearing a clerical collar was enough to set off a barrage of abuse aimed directly at me—there was no place for God in the minds of so many of those who endured the trenches. Those were two hospitals where veterans were victims, just like millions of others, who had heard,

“The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells”,

but were now left to deal with their ghosts and their unresolved anger, or else just kept out of sight because their cases were too hard for us to contemplate.

Another of my holiday jobs was to help demolish what had been a national explosives factory in Pembrey. Millions of shells and tons of explosives were manufactured there. The factory poured its toxic chemicals into the sea where I and my pals used to swim and cavort. Its workforce during the Great War was largely made up of women—their yellowing skin and hair making it only too obvious where they worked.

Margaret Broadley was deputy matron of the London Hospital. She lived out her life as a spinster, sublimating the deep energies of the love she once had for her sweetheart through her chosen vocation of nursing. She never forgot, as she told me often enough, his kisses and caresses. Those were women, like millions of others, working tirelessly behind the scenes, so many of them widowed before they were wed.

I am wearing a khadi poppy, of which much mention has been made. Let it stand this evening, with permission, for Indians, Africans and Caribbean soldiers, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians.

Let us remember that not only soldiers served from our imperial regions. I can picture the endless supply lines that supported the military effort. Recently, I visited Kenya and met a number of people from a sprawling township on the edge of Nairobi known to this day as Kariokor—the Carrier Corps. The place name survives in its strange and mutilated form.

“Gathered like pearls in their alien graves”,

lay what the poet Sarojini Naidu called the “Gift of India”, and she would surely have added those of so many other places from around the Empire too. The reading of that poem was one of the highlights of our Parliament Choir’s commemorative performance of Mozart’s Mass in C minor just last week.

I might also mention a cantata, a composition of Brian Hughes performed in Cardiff by the National Youth Choir of Wales, accompanied by the National Youth Orchestra of Wales, called “Sorrows of the Somme”. Indeed, as has been mentioned often, the wide cultural response to the safeguarding of the memories of that awful time have been very striking.

I come towards the end of my list of memories. I remember the memorial I dedicated in the National Memorial Arboretum in my capacity as president of the Boys Brigade. We remembered 11 members of our movement who had been awarded the Victoria Cross for their courage and leadership during the Great War. I remember that the names of hundreds of young soldiers are written in magnificent copper-plate on a vast, framed roll of honour in the parish of Saint John, in Croydon, where I now live—or chiselled on large marble slabs on the chapel wall at Trinity College, Cambridge. They remind us of all those who paid the supreme price on the battlefields, and they remind us of the classlessness of those from across the social spectrum who gave what was their today so that we might enjoy what would become our tomorrow.

“At the going down of the sun and in the morning


We will remember them”—

the words of Lawrence Binyon, will ring out across the land over the next few days. I feel a need to hold these words up for greater scrutiny, especially the word “remember”, and I hope noble Lords will forgive me for this. The verb “to remember” is one of the English language’s precious jewels. It has a distinctive meaning which is often lost in the way we employ it. I suspect we would do well to pronounce it differently: to “re-member”, with a hyphen in it, rather than simply “remember”. We “re-member” that which has been “dis-membered”. Memory serves a greater purpose than merely recapturing something that is in danger of passing out of our minds. “Re-membering” is about rebuilding a fragmented world, putting flesh on the ideals we have for our world. How better to honour the memory of those who paid such a price for our freedom?

What followed the First World War, far from “re-membering” a dismembered social order, too often simply added to its fragmentation. It concerned itself with punishment and revenge rather than reconstruction. The Second World War became an inevitable consequence of the failure to win the peace.

As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has said, it was in the years following the disintegration caused by the Second World War that the world seemed at last to have come to its senses. The founding of the United Nations and its various agencies, the Bretton Woods agreement, the Marshall Plan, the European Union and NATO were all aimed at “re-membering” a dismembered world. We set our target—let us not forget this—on: saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war; reaffirming faith in fundamental human rights; establishing and maintaining the rule of law; promoting social progress. The object of our emphatic intention to honour the memory of those who served their King and country in that godforsaken war surely has to be to build a world worthy of their sacrifice.

Abraham Lincoln saw it that way—and only too clearly—when he stood at the battlefield of Gettysburg during his nation’s Civil War:

“The world … can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated … to the great task remaining before us … that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion … that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain … that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom … and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.


Gosh, those words ring true now. Lincoln! Thou shouldst be living at this hour: the world hath need of thee.

I am grateful for the privilege of adding my voice to those who have contributed to this debate, and of giving thanks for the Armistice which brought the First World War to its end. The challenge it leaves us with is clear enough. We must work hard for the “re-membering” of our dismembered world. We will truly honour the memory of those who have gone before when we put our best efforts into building a world fit for those who have yet to be born. Remembering is a forward-looking activity.

Pornographic Websites: Age Verification

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I agree that there are areas of concern on social media sites. As the noble Baroness rightly says, they are not covered by the Digital Economy Act. We had many hours of discussion about that in this House. However, she will be aware that we are producing an online harms White Paper in the winter in which some of these issues will be considered. If necessary, legislation will be brought forward to address these, and not only these but other harms too. I agree that the BBFC should find out about the effectiveness of the limited amount that age verification can do; it will commission research on that. Also, the Digital Economy Act itself made sure that the Secretary of State must review its effectiveness within 12 to 18 months.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, once again I find this issue raising a dynamic that we became familiar with in the only too recent past. The Government are to be congratulated on getting the Act on to the statute book and, indeed, on taking measures to identify a regulator as well as to indicate that secondary legislation will be brought forward to implement a number of the provisions of the Act. My worry is that, under one section of the Digital Economy Act, financial penalties can be imposed on those who infringe this need; the Government seem to have decided not to bring that provision into force at this time. I believe I can anticipate the Minister’s answer but—in view of the little drama we had last week over fixed-odds betting machines—we would not want the Government, having won our applause in this way, to slip back into putting things off or modifying things away from the position that we had all agreed we wanted.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I completely understand where the noble Lord is coming from but what he said is not quite right. The Digital Economy Act included a power that the Government could bring enforcement with financial penalties through a regulator. However, they decided—and this House decided—not to use that for the time being. For the moment, the regulator will act in a different way. But later on, if necessary, the Secretary of State could exercise that power. On timing and FOBTs, we thought carefully—as noble Lords can imagine—before we said that we expect the date will be early in the new year,

Public Sector Television Content

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I pretty much agree with that. The Secretary of State said last month that,

“the government will support PSBs to ensure they continue to thrive, and stay prominent, as part of a healthy, sustainable and dynamic media landscape”.

If Ofcom, which is the expert on this, makes it clear that there is a problem that needs fixing by legislation, we will look to bring that forward.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I have the same quote from September 2018 in front of me, and I am delighted to hear that the Government are aware of the urgency of this. Three months before that report, Ofcom indicated that legislation would be necessary to achieve the objectives we have all agreed about. Post Brexit, where will such legislation figure in the queue of legislation ganging up on us, in order to do justice to the sense of urgency that has already been accepted?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I would like to say that it will have prominence, but obviously I cannot give a guarantee today. Brexit will involve a lot of legislation. The fact is, we understand the urgency, that the media landscape is changing and how technology is changing. The old linear EPG is not fit for purpose. It is not for me to say where it will fit in the legislative programme because that is not my responsibility, but we understand the issues. We are waiting for the Ofcom report following its consultation, which has now finished; I believe it is due early in 2019.