Climate Change

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Monday 24th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, we are watching two very bizarre events at the same moment: the intense tragedy of people fleeing a burning Europe and trying, mid-holiday, to get out of a desperate place and survive, and the political shenanigans of the two main party leaders being equally indecisive about whether they believe climate change deserves intense heat action—lasering in on what must be the duties of government rather than just the short-term gains of a by-election.

I had responsibility for the climate reduction plan at one of the big four audit firms, with 200,000 people and 170 countries; I was head of corporate responsibility across KPMG. We met and achieved more than our target of 29% carbon reduction over 10 years—we achieved over 35%. That required one major action that I do not yet see contained in any government documents: a deep and detailed information and public awareness campaign for all the staff of the organisation, let alone their families and the public in the towns and cities in which we operated, to ensure that people understood the savage costs of inaction, the necessity of taking action and what that would cost each individual.

Just recently, we watched the end of Glastonbury—how fantastic! But the day after—in particular if you watched on the BBC, which covered it live—you saw literally millions of tonnes of deposited rubbish left behind after the final concert. People abandon carelessly and believe somebody else will take responsibility. This goes to the heart of our adaptive problem; we still do not believe that it is down to us. We still think it is about what government must do, but so much of it is about what I must do, what we must do, and the costs we must be aware of. Then people say, “You’re naive—we can’t afford to add cost burdens on our shopping and energy bills so that we can mitigate appropriately and adapt effectively”.

Given the Rhodes situation, I decided to check how many British adults and children are going on holiday in 2023. The figure will work out at just in excess of 53 million adults and children who will take overseas holidays in 2023. There were 49 million last year, and even in the year of Covid it was 8.2 million—how that happened is interesting, but never mind. The reality is that people can afford, in mass numbers, to undertake easy pleasures, but when it comes to affording the cost of responding to the cataclysmic crisis of climate change we are told that we cannot afford it. We can, but citizens will not be aware of that unless the Government make them aware. The Government were remarkable, in the multiple alliances—“a-lie-ances”—of deceit around Brexit, at telling everybody of all the great gains they would have, but now we wonder where anyone is. We must become serious about this issue. If public campaigning is not taken seriously, and if I do not realise what I am costing and what everyone is costing, we will continue to holiday at random and do nothing to change our behaviour.

Standards of Behaviour and Honesty in Political Life

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, gratitude goes to the noble Lord, Lord Morse, for allowing us to have this debate. We all hope that in the end, the Minister will be truer to his instincts than to his brief. So, we wait.

A week ago, the former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave an interview to the Financial Times, where the banner headline read:

“We are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy.”


She went on to say that

“everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window.”

We know what she is referring to: the hearings on Capitol Hill for the next few months will reveal the extent to which the events of 6 January 2021 were not the response to a wind-up speech from the former President wanting to get his supporters to go and upset the balance but were pre-planned. The evidence now revealed shows that those who are supporters of QAnon and the Proud Boys had planned their insurrection many months in advance. We are told on the latest evidence I looked at this morning that somewhere between 20 and 30 million Americans are still active supporters of QAnon and believe that its views about the Democrats are to be held as a truth worthy of re-electing the former President on. These are frightening realities, not just because they will affect America but because they affect us. The tone of all democracy is fragile.

I came across the assessment of the journalist, HL Mencken, rated as one of America’s leading political analysts, writing in the Baltimore Evening Sun 100 years ago, on 26 July 1920. He said:

“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people … On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.”


You have to wonder: how did he know? It lies in the phrase

“the inner soul of the people”.

What had been allowed 100 years ago to begin this erosion of understanding, this wiping away of principles, that would lead us to this moment?

We all wish that the noble Lord, Lord Geidt, was here in the Chamber so that he could explain what was especially “odious” about the dealings he was having in Downing Street. It leads one to one obvious conclusion. There is no point having an ethics adviser if the key person either seeking or receiving the advice has no proven core of ethical conduct. We do not need purity and perfection, but we need what is captured in the Nolan principles: honesty, truth-telling and integrity of purpose.

I noted that in a number of the briefings sent, at least to me, in preparation for this debate was the inevitable series of demands for more regulation, more accountability, more committees and more assessment bodies—all with good intent. The answer is not to add to the weight of those objectively assessing the behaviour of individuals: that just adds cost; it does not bring clarity. Simply to rely on regulations, structures and even laws is to miss the point.

I uncovered an article written by one of the great former Members of this House, who sadly passed some years ago, Lord Sacks, on 8 September 2011, 10 years on from the events in New York City. The article was headed:

“Bin Laden saw that the West was in decline”.


The subheading reads:

“The attacks are linked to a wider moral malaise, including the loss of authority, integrity and family unity”.


If our great friend Lord Sacks was here, I am sure that what he wrote then is what he would say today. To bring his words back to life, I shall quote them. We all had profound respect for him as an individual and for his wisdom. He wrote:

“all great civilisations eventually decline, and when they begin to do so they are vulnerable. That is what Osama bin Laden believed about the West and so did some of the West’s own greatest minds … If so, then 9/11 belongs to a wider series of phenomena affecting the West: the disintegration of the family, the demise of authority, the build-up of personal debt, the collapse of financial institutions, the downgrading of the American economy, the continuing failure of some European economies, the loss of a sense of honour, loyalty and integrity that has brought once esteemed groups into disrepute, the waning throughout the West of a sense of national identity … These are … signs of the arteriosclerosis of a culture, a civilisation grown old. Whenever Me takes precedence over We, and pleasure today over viability tomorrow, a society is in trouble … The West has expended much energy and courage fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq abroad and defeating terror at home. It has spent far less, if any, in renewing its own morality and the institutions—families, communities, ethical codes, standards in public life—where it is created and sustained. But if I am right”,

says Lord Sacks,

“this is the West’s greatest weakness in the eyes of its enemies as well as its friends … Our burden is to renew the moral disciplines of freedom.”

That is why we have debates of this nature: we want those disciplines renewed—who would not? I must ask members of the governing party, when many said, as they did to me as friends, as I am sure they did too many of us, that they stood aside from what they knew to get Brexit done: are they still content that that win was worth it all?

Covid-19: Public Wealth Investment Fund

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton [V]]

I am very happy to meet my noble friend to discuss that, but I stress that we expect the private sector to step up to the mark in investing in these small businesses in future. We have the EIS and the SEIS, and we will continue to review them.

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB) [V]]

My Lords, given the heightened and highly appropriate focus on justice and opportunity for black and minority communities, what considerations has the Treasury given to working with existing black business finance networks, such as the number one black lending and investment agency, Lendoe, led by Mr Demi Ariyo? Will the Minister chase a reply, due a month ago, to Mr Ariyo’s letter to the Chancellor of 12 May, setting out practical and detailed advice on how to boost black business recovery?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton [V]]

I certainly commit to chasing up a reply to the letter that the noble Lord mentioned. Businesses run by the BAME community are of course vital to our economy.

Income Equality and Sustainability

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, we are most grateful to the most reverend Primate for his tremendous life example. I wish him well in the future. This is also a moment to be grateful for the welfare state, for the furlough support scheme, for food banks and the support of good neighbours—grateful for an infrastructure that protects people from the worst extremes.

I will focus on one particular area: the absence of savings among people in the United Kingdom. According to information received, savings levels are roughly half what they were 10 years ago. People on average are saving less every year than they might have done previously. Some 53% of those aged between 18 and 35 have no savings at all, and for the average person in the population, one in three has savings of less than £1,500. When a big crisis hits, such as coronavirus, people have little to fall back on. We have developed not a savings culture, but a capital expenditure culture and a commercial culture.

I have benefited from the experience of being an ambassador for Tearfund. Just a year ago, I went to see how 400,000 women in Ethiopia had saved nearly $30 million between them by putting their 2ps together. That is like the Grameen Bank model. It is now working in New York; it could work in London. What will the Government do to encourage saving clubs along the pattern of the Grameen Bank? It is successful in Bangladesh and in the USA; it could be successful in the UK. Also, what will the Government do to develop a savings culture so that people can better protect themselves, even with the little they have, as long as they also look to dependency on the state, quite rightly, and the support of good neighbours?

Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 13th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, I am excited to stand with my great and noble friend Lord Bird behind this measure which seeks to give time, in strategy and planning, to future generations. It was 500 years ago that the great philosopher Machiavelli said:

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”


This is a new order of things. Long-termism ought to be the zeitgeist of today’s complex issues: climate change, inequality, public health and lifelong learning. We agonise over every one of them, and then we get elections and short-term outcomes. I believe that the philosophy contained in this Bill, which I support 1,000% and am happy to work on, will also lead us to some discomforts, as well as positive approaches.

I say that taking account of the fact that, on the justice agenda, in the past 15 years, sentences for serious offenders in this country have more than doubled. Our prison estate has more than doubled, and the public costs have more than doubled, but repeat offending has not decreased. We lock more people up than any other country in Europe, and we treat them worse; we stick them away for between 20 and 35 years, thinking it is good that we should be vindictive and have punishments that make it harder and harsher. At the same time, with a long-term lens, it fractures and shatters families, it destroys people’s confidence and it is not a fair and just return for crimes that men and even sometimes women have dealt with the consequences.

As a trustee and chairman of Crime Concern for 21 years, I fought for neighbourhood watch schemes, victim support services and restorative justice. Restorative justice allows people to break away from the bitterness of perpetual fights and vindictiveness, and come together to restore wholesome, sensitive and warm communities which can accept that there are some individuals who may put themselves beyond reform. However, long-termism asks, “Why waste billions and wreck lives when it is possible to build cultures of forgiveness and freedom?”

Many of the things that this Bill sets out and the new commissioner will pursue will cause discomfort, but the consequences will have wide public support. However, others may cause wide public fear. The core philosophy is wise. Reactions and realities are not necessarily the same, so in support of my noble friend Lord Bird, as ever, one can do no better in this House than to quote Winston Churchill. In April 1938, when he was reflecting on the power of the arts to form and frame our future, he said:

“Here you have a man with a brush and a palette. With a dozen blobs of pigment, he makes a certain pattern on one or two square yards of canvas, and something is created which carries its shining message of inspiration not only to all who are living with him in the world now, but across hundreds of years to generations unborn. It lights the path and links the thought of one generation with another, and in the realm of price holds its own in intrinsic value with an ingot of gold.”


That is what you are doing.

Brexit: Stability of the Union

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, I also thank my noble friend Lord Lisvane for this vital discussion. The Brexit settlement, whatever its final nature, has had to include discussions about Gibraltar. It is technically outside the United Kingdom, but the Gibraltar discussions have an impact on Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man. The attitudes and approaches of the United Kingdom Government or, more correctly, Her Majesty’s Government, have an implication for territories where Her Majesty remains sovereign and Head of State. It is not just a fact of the nature of our unwritten constitution; it is also about the nature of the constitution that we display beyond the borders of the United Kingdom to the territories where Her Majesty is sovereign.

In this Parliament—certainly in another place—we are used to what might be called disputatious debate, where things can be aggressively said across the Chamber, one to the other. It can be extremely distracting, and the tone of how that debate is conducted has affected whether we believe that this United Kingdom will hold together, which has wider implications. It could be said that this Brexit process has caused distracted debasement of our national political order. The tone of what should have been the representation of the best of British democracy, as seen abroad by Her Majesty’s other territories, has instead been a dogfight of refusals and an inability sometimes to accept and consider compromises in the national interest or to hear one another through. It is even possible that we might suffer the greatest broken promise of Brexit: based on party arguments, Westminster could be seen as untrusted and incapable of serving the national interest. I am sure that is not a model that Her Majesty would wish her other territories to follow, given that we set them free in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s to follow a model that allowed proper politics and proper democracy based on compromises.

We often speak about the importance of soft power to the United Kingdom—soft power framed in great institutions such as the NHS, the BBC, our archives, our museums, our universities and, of course, Parliament. If the display of this important soft power in a world that needs the reality of that soft power to be for its benefit, not for its dismissal, is one that cannot settle issues of union, collaboration and partnership, and even our relationship with our nearest neighbour—by country, let alone by community—this Parliament will have failed in the soft realities of Brexit. This is not about how we leave the European Union but about how we conduct the processes by which we leave, the relationships between the parts of the United Kingdom and the display of what this mature democracy should be for the nations that are forming, from fledgling beginnings, what they want to be—the ideal model of responsible and honourable leadership.

Race Disparity Audit

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I welcome the work which the right reverend Prelate has been doing in east London, in his diocese. If there is a template there, a model of working which can have wider application, of course the Government would be interested. One thing that I discovered from going on to the website this morning, which I had not appreciated before, is that black people are disproportionately more likely to engage in voluntary work than any other group. If one digs into the audit, there is a lot of good news there about ethnic minorities, which I hope we can now put in a wider domain. If we can build on the good work that the Church has done in east London and apply it to some other areas where there are big ethnic minority populations, the Government would be delighted.

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, congratulations have already been received by the Government on publishing this race disparity audit. It has been well presented and the Prime Minister has done the country a good service. I understand from inside information that, of the 25 people around the Cabinet table this morning, there was only one under 40 years of age. It would be interesting to see the list of those who attended the Cabinet discussion this morning and to know why there was only one person under 40, given that some of the information made available to the newspapers reveals that many of the key factors affect those under 30. Does it indicate whether the Government’s relationships with people under the age of 30 may need a little enhancement and support to ensure that this race equality audit is put into place?

As the Minister referred to the fact that he looked at the audit this morning, perhaps he could also tell the House whether it says anything about the race profiling undertaken by customs officers, border control and police services. Although that may not necessarily relate to education or employment, it is infuriating, especially for black people, who find themselves consistently stopped, undermined and picked on. Sometimes it actually reverses their commitment to nationhood.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

In response to the last question posed by the noble Lord, I have looked at the website and I think I am right in saying that it does not contain the data to which he has referred about those who are stopped at border control or customs. I shall double check that and, if I am wrong, I shall write to him.

On the broader point, I was not sitting around the Cabinet table this morning but, if I had been, I would certainly not have scored as being under 40. I shall make some inquiries but, in the Statement made by my right honourable friend in the other place, he said that there were 12 representatives of NGOs at that meeting and that there was a universally positive response. The representative of Black Vote said that this was a real opportunity to make transformational change.

I take the noble Lord’s point about those under 40. My party has a challenge in that regard, which we need to address between now and the next general election. But one good thing about the audit data is that they break down by age, showing for example that those offenders most likely to reoffend are between the ages of 15 and 18. So there is a lot of information about age there—but it is also broken down by ethnicity, which will help us to tackle particular areas in the criminal justice field.

Civil Society

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, for initiating this debate. I am also very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, for her comments about the private sector. I declare an interest as the vice-chairman of the Global Agenda Council on the Future of Civil Society at the World Economic Forum. I draw to the House’s attention the report published at the World Economic Forum in Davos this January. I retain that position for a further two years. The essence of the report, which contains 80 expert interviews and insights from 200 analysts, including those from the charity, not-for-profit, business and government sectors, is that there is a new and very different paradigm for civil society going forward. It is far too easy to think of civil society as the domain of NGOs, charities and foundations and to miss the point—I am not suggesting that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, did—that there is a lot beyond corporate giving that the private sector actively, persistently and continuously does. We need to see civil society not in purely cash terms but also in engagement terms.

I will give one or two examples and then try to draw a point. I was pleased to have a short conversation in the Bishops Bar with the noble Lord, Lord Livingston, who was introduced into the House this week. He will be the Government’s trade envoy, although he retains his position of chief executive of BT. For the past nine years, I have sat as a non-executive member of the BT responsible business board. The noble Lord and I spoke about BT’s Net Good ambition, which the noble Lord announced the day before the Prime Minister announced his responsibilities in this House and as trade envoy.

BT’s Net Good commitment is that for every tonne of carbon it consumes as a result of its activities, it will replace that effectively. Instead of putting carbon in the atmosphere, it will remove 3 tonnes from the atmosphere—a 1:3 ratio—by working alongside its stakeholders, suppliers and customers to help them learn about not just energy efficiency but different lifestyle approaches. This is not something BT needs to do. As one of the largest consumers of energy in the country, from a profit base it need only pay its bills, but the opportunity to engage the public in a responsible civil society approach to environmental responsibility goes way beyond merely the corporate saving of carbon or the massive contribution of BT to multitudes of charities and voluntary organisations around the country. That is part of the business/civil society engagement.

Another example is another organisation to which I am connected, as a trustee: the Vodafone Foundation. At a board meeting last Friday, we agreed to continue the active support that Vodafone is giving to the establishment of communication hubs in emergency centres around the world. The latest is being established in Goma in the Congo this very week. It will allow refugees to communicate closely with their families and in doing so not only retain those communications but benefit from the opportunity of a life beyond disaster. Again, this is not something that a mobile phone provider needs to do, nor is it CSR. It is the active collaboration of three sectors: the humanitarian relief sector, which would traditionally be seen as civil society; the responsibility of government; and the opportunity of the private sector.

Let us get a little more grainy. Just over a week and a half ago, I visited Wormwood Scrubs as a trustee of the Vodafone Foundation and in connection with the charity Only Connect. Only Connect was established by the great man Danny Kruger, who has written many speeches for David Cameron. It is a great charity that we all respect. It helps offenders and ex-offenders learn how to bring their lives into coherence by using the arts and by connecting to one another in prison to enable them to work together outside prison. During a meeting with the governor, we heard that one of his express desires was to help prisoners begin to build their own groupings of communication connectivity so that they can establish family networks and not be isolated individuals who return to repeat crime. We approved a grant on Friday to enable Only Connect to create its own LinkedIn-sourced connecting system for prisoners within the British system. That is not something that a mobile phone provider needs to do. It is not in the P&L and it is not CSR. It is the combination of all the factors that civil society now represents: the responsibility of government, the opportunity of the charitable sector and the privilege of profit to serve the interests of the public.

In just a few moments, I shall meet the Prime Minister’s special envoy for development in Afghanistan. He is coming to this House, having served in that role in Iraq and having previously been chief executive of KPMG International. Why would he take on that role? It was because, as Gordon Brown and David Cameron acknowledged, you need that kind of private sector expertise to deliver public goods in an efficient, effective and consummate way.

What is the future for civil society? In the judgment of this report—KPMG authored this report with the World Economic Forum, and I am directly responsible for its content—I firmly believe that the new civil society that we all need to welcome is where we allow the three sectors to stand as equal legs of the same stool and find solutions that are not based just on seeking cash from the private sector. I share some of the deep concerns about public sector cash restraints, but the reality of our new world is that we need to bring the three sectors into common understanding to find solutions that are not based just on more money.

I was proud to serve for 21 years as a trustee of Crime Concern and for 15 years as its chairman. One of the most important things it did before it merged with the Rainer Foundation and created Catch22 was to create in 1989 not just the backbone of Victim Support but the basis of Neighbourhood Watch. We all recognise the power of those realities as civil society truths through which we enjoy our safety and community to this very day. Unless we are prepared to take an open stance to involving the private sector, government, NGOs and common institutions in finding solutions, we will have three sectors fighting one another. There is no need for that in the future, and I hope that our speeches and the Government’s response will acknowledge this new opportunity and embrace it.