Housing Supply and Homelessness

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a real privilege to have the opportunity to follow the most reverend Primate. We first met in Durham cathedral. It was a great civic occasion, where I was the appointed preacher and he was the recently arrived—merely, at that time—right reverend Prelate. I preached at him and he blessed me, and it has been like that ever since.

A month or two later, in May 2012, the most reverend Primate made his maiden speech in this House. On that occasion, he was still the Bishop of Durham and he toured the heights of his experience, drawing massively on his secular as well as his religious experiences. He has played a large part in the banking and financial sector themes that we have pursued in this House and in Parliament generally. Indeed, he is a towering figure in many other ways. After all, he officiated at the funeral of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth and crowned the brand-new King and Queen in his turn.

He has been a great campaigner for women’s consecration to the episcopacy and to see that happen. We cannot divorce him from the achievement of that great step, which has greatly enriched this House. Another of his great themes is on investment that crosses between morality and ethics, on the one hand, and finance performance, on the other.

In a sense, I could pursue a tour d’horizon of the great themes that he has taken some part in, but it would not really get to where I want to be. In his maiden speech, as well as proclaiming the virtues and qualities of the north-east—we remember that Newcastle drew last evening with Manchester City; a very good thing—he also championed the issue of loan sharks and people with payday loans at extortionate rates of interest. They were gone within two or three years of him striking that note. From then until now—choosing to speak on housing and homelessness in his valedictory address—that for me is the theme that runs right through this particular Primate’s life and witness, like the word “Blackpool” through a stick of seaside rock.

Somewhere along the way, he has espoused the marginalised, the oppressed, the poor people of the land, and internationally too. He has travelled to every province of the Anglican Communion. We can only honour him for his stamina as far as that is concerned; stamina to get there, but holding it together is an entirely different challenge. Somewhere on that parabola he quoted a line from Nelson Mandela which is the hallmark for his particular ministry—that overcoming poverty is a matter of justice, not charity. That is a pretty high bar to set. I honour him for his work.

I am reading an enlightening book, which I am enjoying, that traces the history of John Milton’s Paradise Lost through its various iterations and its usefulness around the world. It is truly insightful, but it is called What in Me is Dark. There is not a Member of this House, not one noble Lord or Baroness, who has not had to face the dark at some stage in their lives. We can only feel with the most reverend Primate as he gazes into his, none of us feeling superior as we do so. However, it is a good thing to follow to the end John Milton’s quotation,

“What in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support;

That to the highth of this great Argument

I may assert th’ Eternal Providence,

And justifie the wayes of God to men”.

That is nobler than the cut-off title of the book that I am reading at the moment.

One last word, if I may, as I have some indulgence on these occasions—it is very dangerous to give such an indulgence to a Welshman, but I will do my best. It allows me to give vent to a long-nurtured secret desire of mine to quote some Latin, as an alumnus of Llanelli Boys Grammar School, to an old Etonian. It is from the Aeneid. In Carthage, Aeneas is looking at a mural of Juno at the fall of Troy and all his friends who died there. He weeps to see them fallen:

“sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangent”—

there are tears at the heart of things and the mind is affected by ideas of our mortality.

There are tears at the heart of things. I would guess that the most reverend Primate knows that as well as anybody. However, they can be tears of joy. We must hope that the future that he will enjoy with Caroline and the family will be full of joy, that joy will invade the darkness and dispel it, so that the man whom we know will have a chance to be himself again, breathe his own air and stand in his own dignity. Justin, I am going to miss you, and I think we are going to miss your family too. God bless you.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

And so to the business of the day.

I start with the most reverend Primate again. He says somewhere that his beginning—the opening chapter of his life—was messy, and I can say that mine was messy, too. For him, he was three; for me, I was five and a half when everything broke down and darkness descended upon us. I still have the letter from my father’s solicitor to my mother, indicating that she was to take her two boys out of his client’s home within a week—so, my mother, with two little boys, was on the street. For days we were on the street, and a kind neighbour in the little two-up, two-down houses would put us up, but the pressure on their space was great. In the end, my grandparents, who had two rooms as caretakers in a factory, decided they could live in one room so that we could live in the other. I grew up in one room in a brickyard. That was at five or six.

What can I say about homelessness? I have decided I want to say a word about the homeless—let others talk about construction, targets and all of that. What can I remember? I will tell you what I remember. I remember my mother’s face, tear-struck. I remember her despair. I smelled her panic. Before the welfare state, how was she going to put food on the table? How could she cope with life and its demands? How would her boys have a chance to wear shoes and underwear? I remember homelessness, and I have refused to call it homelessness ever since; I call it the plight of homeless people, in order to remind ourselves that homelessness is about people, their needs must be paramount, and we must find ways of forging policies that hold them and their well-being in mind.

Fast forward 40 years and I have inherited a programme of social work that was begun by Donald Soper, of beloved memory. One of his institutions was a homelessness centre, open 365 days in the year, a brilliant piece of work. The work I did in those few years enabled me to become friends to homeless people. One of them, called Tom, would take me around with him. He spoke Hungarian. He had a PhD. His life had fallen apart. He had resorted to alcohol. All of them have stories. Tom took me to where the IMAX cinema is now, on the Waterloo roundabout—I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Bird, knows what I am talking about—where the homeless would gather, often with a fire. They would send scouts from among their own community to the railway stations to see if any children were running away from home and before predators got hold of them. There was an advice centre in the Royal Festival Hall that helped people who were newly homeless to cope.

One night—just one—I spent a night in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Tom told me how to wrap my legs and my lower body in newspaper. He told me where to find the best cardboard, outside McDonald’s: there was not so much grease in it, and therefore the rodents would not bother me in the night. In the middle of the night, we were woken up by a soup kitchen that wanted to feed us with sustainable food. I have to say that, when the rain started at 3 am, I was a coward and went home, but I have never forgotten the comradeship of the people in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the jokes and the banter.

Homelessness is about people. This debate is about finding ways to solve the needs of people. If we do not do that, then all the statistics, trends, budgets and hopes are for nothing. I am so glad that I am being followed by the noble Lord, Lord Bird, who is a more authentic voice than I on these matters.

Housing: Modern Methods of Construction

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Horam, has just made precisely the points that I wanted to make. The time has come for these discordant experiences, this diffuse energy, to be pulled together. The Government must surely accept the role of ringmaster—or whatever other metaphor you want to use—pulling all this together, achieving a foreseeable path forward. I know nothing about building but I do know about homes, and it is urgent and of vital necessity that we crack this one and soon.

I am hoping to hear the Minister say what the noble Lord, Lord Horam, said was not in the manifesto, namely that as part of the solution that has to be worked out, an energetic and investing commitment to the MMC aspect of a housebuilding scheme is part of the thinking of the present Government. On the present evidence, I am hoping to hear it in order to resolve a disappointment. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, and I have been working with John McAslan + Partners on a very ambitious scheme from the private sector that would provide a real, focused attempt across the country to use, among other ways, these traditional methods. We submitted a lavish document and, more than a month later, have not even had a reply of acknowledgement. Those little things that are lacking need to be made good and a positive way forward, led by the Government, needs to ensue.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome my noble friend Lord Khan to his present position—not that I envy him in any way, having his first parliamentary exercise as a Minister to be to take this Bill through. I am very pleased, too, to stand here as a member of the Labour Party, now in government, and fully committed to delivering a national Holocaust memorial and learning centre. However, as we have heard in this debate, we should not automatically think that the two have to be next to or part of each other. I am told that Committee will be an opportunity to debate relevant concerns. I hope we do debate them, as I certainly have concerns.

I stand by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for her noble campaign to activate many of us and to increase our awareness of the nuances, as well as the broad themes that are in play, in discussing the Bill. Certainly, she has revealed to us the need to have more exact information about the location. I am confused by the various statistics aired in this debate. I stand with the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Lisvane, in the concerns they have expressed about security. It really will be a serious issue; who can doubt that? To have the centre in close proximity to Parliament raises its own questions.

My own feelings centre on the nature of education. What is education? It is the transmission of information, but it is more than that. We are dealing with a country that, at any odd moment, displays ugly anti-Semitism almost at will. How do we get into the genetic make-up of a whole culture in order to change that?

I can refer to the way that my own inner being, and my own unconscious biases and prejudices, have been helped and developed to get to a better place. I have had the privilege of living in north-west London. I remember sitting in a room in Hendon with a rabbi who had been a soldier in the Second World War. He was a chaplain, and he was with his unit as it liberated Belsen. The commanding officer said to him, “This one is yours, padre”, as all those emaciated people behind those fences just posed—well, did they? Did they paint a picture for us? It is beyond that. I do not even know how to find words to express what comes into my being—not my head, my being, my everything—when you see the capability of humanity to impose, extract and shape that and hand it over to a padre in that sort of way.

I remember being with my wife in the Odeon cinema in Golders Green when the first showing of “Schindler’s List” took place. In the darkened interior of the cinema—how many of us non-Jews were there, I do not know— I cannot forget the sobbing and weeping that was so audible as the film presented its narrative.

I also had the opportunity to visit the Kinloss synagogue in north London and other synagogues for mid-week meetings with pensioners and the like. These meetings were always better than the Methodist ones, by the way, because I invariably came away with a bottle of whisky, which never happened—nobody knows about that—in the Methodist equivalent. It was through informal conversations with people ready to show me the numbers engraved on their arms that trust was generated, and those circumstances made me aware of what we somehow have to achieve through whatever it is we call education on these matters in a broader sense.

We lived on a street with secular and religious Jews. We had reform, we had Masorti, liberal, United Synagogue; we had the lot. I remember being in a campaign for the eruv that they wanted to put around to enable people to push prams to the synagogue on a Saturday. On the Sunday that we left Golders Green, my wife and I were invited to have a little drink, a parting gift, with friends Sol and Claire, an ex-tailor from the East End of London. When we got there after my last morning service, what did we find? The entire street was there. The toast was, “To our Methodist rabbi”. I honestly want to convey to the House the feeling that, unless things happen in those profound ways to people’s whole aspect and understanding of themselves, education will not have happened. Putting up what I hear is to be put up does not get near that. I stand here just to offer this testimony, knowing of my inadequacy as far as most of this debate goes.