London Attacks

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Archbishop of Canterbury

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Newby, has reminded us, many of us were taken to the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey or to Westminster Hall as events unfolded yesterday afternoon. The Dean of Westminster invited those in the Abbey to join him in a prayer for the deceased, the injured and their families. Such information as we had at that stage gave us little idea of the enormity of what had happened—of the horror and brutality of the attack—until we saw the reality later on television. We on these Benches join with everyone else in this House in expressing our deepest sympathy to the family of PC Keith Palmer, so tragically taken from us as he sought to deter the attacker.

We remember, too, the families and friends of the members of the public who were killed and all those who were injured, including the students from France whose visit to our city was so devastated by what happened. The fact that the incident did not develop into something very much worse owes much to the teams of security personnel and police officers who guard us every day. Like others, I pay tribute to their courage and dedication as we seek to follow their example of standing firm against attacks of this kind, from wherever they may come. I pay tribute, too, to others in the security services up and down the country who work so hard in the service of this country’s peace and security. For that, amid so much sadness, we must all be grateful.

[The Archbishop of Canterbury]

My Lords, I associate myself with the thanks and tributes paid today, and especially our prayers and thoughts for PC Keith Palmer and for his family. I also acknowledge the work of so many members of the public who pitched in and did what they needed to do when faced with things for which they had never been trained or prepared. Yesterday afternoon one of our own security staff at Lambeth Palace, a Muslim, arrived at the gate having been very narrowly missed by the vehicle and having spent time helping those who had been injured. It was typical of this community and this country that he refused to go home until the end of his shift and simply spent the time doing his job as he expected.

This was typical of so many in this city, including the emergency services who contained the incident within six minutes and the staff at this extraordinary place who give so much of themselves on both normal occasions and extraordinary occasions. Especially in our hearts today are those who wait at bedsides, who are suddenly caught up in things for which they could never have been prepared and which they never expected. Our prayers continue for them on this day. Much shock has been expressed, but we know from the reactions we saw yesterday that we have the strength to persevere through it. We will talk more generally about that later.

London Attacks

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Archbishop of Canterbury

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, it is not the usual custom for the Convener of the Cross Benches to respond to a Statement of this kind, but this is a very special occasion. I pay my own thanks to the Leader for repeating the Statement in the other place by the Prime Minister.

There are lessons to be learned from yesterday, and they certainly will be. One of the things that struck me as the evening wore on was the challenge faced by the security forces, police and staff—indeed, the doorkeepers in this Chamber—in moving so many people about without risk to themselves. It was an enormous undertaking. I do not have the exact figures but something like 800 people were in Westminster Hall, while it was said that 2,500 people were present in Westminster Abbey. You have to imagine the process of moving people from place to place. They included children who were kept in Westminster Hall, who kept themselves and many other people happy by singing songs, which was a remarkable achievement by their teachers. That is just one of the examples of the good-natured way in which people responded to the demands of the evening.

I pay my own tribute to the doorkeepers, because we depend upon them. It was stressed in a recent rehearsal for something similar to this incident that we would be subject to the direction of the doorkeepers and, with their usual tact and firmness, they made sure that we were in the right place at the right time and guided to the places where we ought to be taken.

As I said at the end of my short statement, there are things to be thankful for, and there are certainly things we can learn from. Thank goodness the incident was not worse than it was. Just imagine the real horror if the person had broken into the Chambers with his knife. It is for that, the fact that the incident was stopped so early, that we owe so much to PC Palmer and his colleagues.

[The Archbishop of Canterbury]

My Lords, I add a welcome from these Benches to the Statement by the Prime Minister, which, as the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition said, rightly set the tone and spoke for this country. I also convey to the House the messages of sympathy and support that I have received through the night from faith leaders around the world and across this country who want this House and Parliament, particularly its staff and those who have suffered, to know how much those people are in their hearts and minds.

With regard to values, I want to refer to something that seems to me to go deeper, to something that is at the foundation of our own understanding of what our society is about, and I want to do so in three simple, brief pictures. The first is of a vehicle being driven across Westminster Bridge by someone who had a perverted, nihilistic and despairing view of objectives, and of what society and indeed life are about, that could be fulfilled only by death and destruction. The second is of that same person a few minutes later, on a stretcher or on the ground being treated by the very people whom he had sought to kill. The third is of these two Houses, where profound, bitter, angry disagreement is dealt with not with violence, despair or cruelty but with discussion, reason and calmness.

Those three pictures point us to deep values within our society—deeper even than those that have rightly been mentioned in the Prime Minister’s Statement and other statements. You would expect to hear this from these Benches, but it is the sense that comes from a narrative that has been within our society for almost 2,000 years. It speaks at this time of year, as we look forward to Holy Week and Easter, of a God who stands with the suffering and brings justice, and whose resurrection has given to believer and unbeliever the sense that where we do what is right—where we behave properly, where that generosity and extraordinary sense of duty that leads people to treat a terrorist is shown, where the bravery of someone such as PC Keith Palmer is demonstrated—there is a victory for what is right and good over what is evil, despairing and bad. That was shown yesterday; that is shown not just in our expression of values but in our practices, which define those values; and that is the mood that we must show in future.

Tributes: Baroness D'Souza and Lord Laming

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Archbishop of Canterbury

Monday 5th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I may be permitted to add a few words from these Benches, as both of those to whom we are paying tribute this afternoon were previously Convenors of the Cross-Bench group and it is to this group that they have both now returned.

The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, came to the Cross Benches when she was made a Member of this House in July 2004. Her warm and generous personality made an immediate impact, and it came as no surprise when she was elected Convenor only three years later, in 2007, in succession to Lord Williamson of Horton. She held that position for nearly four years until her election as Lord Speaker in 2011. Then it was the noble Lord, Lord Laming, who was elected by the Cross Benchers to take her place as their Convenor. When he retired after serving his full term of four years, he must have thought—as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, suggested—that the time had come for him to take a back seat and lead a quieter life. But, of course, those who were wondering who was best suited to take over as Chairman of Committees at a critical time had other ideas. We were so very fortunate that the noble Lord was willing to be persuaded to fill the gap. No one was better suited to do this than he was.

I well remember the day when the noble Baroness contributed her own words as Convenor to the farewell to the Law Lords when the appellate jurisdiction of this House came to an end in July 2009. We the Law Lords were all sitting that day on the Cross Benches as members of her group for the last time before we were disqualified on our move to the Supreme Court. We appreciated her kind words very much. For me, four years of disqualification followed. So I was unavoidably absent for the rest of her convenorship, for the first two years of her time as Lord Speaker, and for the first two years of the noble Lord’s time as Convenor. However, when I came back in the summer of 2013 I was able to see them both in action.

It struck me at that time, and has been borne in on me even more now, that we expect an awful lot of our Lord Speaker. It seemed to me that her position on the Woolsack, although always dignified, was a rather lonely one. As others have said, her real contribution to the House has been in the work she has done outside the Chamber. For many of your Lordships much of what she did there was not obvious, but it has been my privilege during the past year to see quite a lot of her. I had regular meetings with her when she was Convenor, attended functions over which she presided and saw her work as chairman of the House Committee and as a member of the Procedure Committee and the Committee for Privileges. On each of these occasions she played an important and valuable role, always putting the needs of the House before all other considerations.

As for the functions, I remember the great ones, which included the addresses in the Royal Gallery by the President of China and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, over which she and the Speaker presided, as well as the more intimate ones on her own in the Reading Room, particularly the one that both the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, mentioned, when Jimmy Carter came to talk to us about his work to eradicate the Guinea worm disease. My recollection of that event is that she took the risk at the end of the lecture of asking whether anyone had any questions on what he had been talking about. Anyone who has chaired a lecture knows how risky that can be. I still remember the look on her face when a wholly irrelevant and really rather naughty question was asked by a journalist: “Trump or Clinton, who will it be?”. That was six months ago, long before we knew who the final candidates would be, and I remember the look of sheer relief on her face when Jimmy Carter dealt with the cheeky question head on, generously and at length, instead of refusing to answer it—although, of course, skilled politician that he is, he did not really answer the question.

The noble Baroness did us proud on these occasions, charming our visitors with her grace and the warmth of her welcome. There were hard times for her, too, as the holder of any great public office must experience from time to time. Whatever she felt inside, she bore them with remarkable courage and fortitude. We have much to be grateful for. All of us on the Cross Benches wish the noble Baroness well on her retirement from the many responsibilities that she has borne so well. We look forward very much indeed to welcoming her back to these Benches, where she still has so much to contribute.

We welcome, too, the return to these Benches of the noble Lord, Lord Laming. Let us be clear that it is certainly not because of what he has done that the role of Chairman of Committees has been reformed. He brought to that office a charming mixture of kind, self-deprecating humour and quiet efficiency. Committee meetings under his chairmanship, for which he always prepared very carefully, were always a pleasure and he struck exactly the right tone when presenting his committee’s reports to the House. We have much to be grateful for and I know that I have the support of all of those who are with me on the Cross Benches when I say how much we appreciate what he has done in that role. As has already been said, we are very fortunate indeed that he has agreed to serve from these Benches as the first chairman of the Services Committee as it settles into its new responsibilities. So, as I am sure he knows only too well, the work that he is doing for the House is not yet over.

On behalf of these Benches I also extend a very warm welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, as our new Lord Speaker and to the noble Lord, Lord McFall, in his new role looking after the committee system, which has been so carefully reformed. We look forward very much indeed to working with them both in the future.

[The Archbishop of Canterbury]

My Lords, on behalf of the Lords spiritual I join in the tributes to the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and to the noble Lord, Lord Laming. The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, has been a great friend to the Lords spiritual, who normally arrive with even more trepidation and less familiarity with the processes of a House such as this than anyone else coming here. She has been assiduous in seeing new bishops and advising them, and then advising them later when they did not quite make it—something that I appreciated on more than one occasion. She always did it with the greatest tact and courtesy and I think that we would all say that she was an encourager of great aptitude.

I associate these Benches with the tributes to her for her work in publicising the work of the House in schools and further afield, and for her work in bringing forward the place of faith in public life. I remember well her hosting the visit of the Grand Imam of al-Azhar in her state rooms in 2015. It was a challenging and difficult meeting which, as always, she handled with extraordinary skill. She was also continually prodding us to make sure that the presence of women on these Benches became both a possibility and then, through the women bishops Bill, which she supported, a reality.