Conduct of Debate in Public Life

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate about how government and Parliament can improve public debate on the critical issues affecting public organisations, communities and specialist groups, such as immigration, relations between religious groups, social and economic interests and private organisations working in the public sphere. We need to know what has caused the great deterioration of interrelations involving members of these groups, especially over the past three years, although the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, was quite right in her remarks about many of the big problems occurring 30 or 40 years ago.

It may be because the UK’s controversial national vote, with its huge numbers voting, involved a large proportion of the whole community, on one side and the other, in debate about the European Union. There may be long-term differences between societal and community groups, and the problems are growing to significant levels—for example, leading to disturbances in local areas and involving thousands of people in city centres. Many of these involve tensions between religious groups. At some of these events, political parties and groups have not always played their traditional role of calming social conflict and, in fact, have sometimes stirred it up. Even groups within the Labour Party have exacerbated, rather than calmed, social and religious conflicts, as mentioned by other colleagues.

An equally important role for Parliament and government is to improve understanding about the processes of public debate and involve schoolchildren, students and political societies. We may hear later about this from the noble Baroness. It is also important to hear how the public debate influences public decisions about crime or funding for schools, for example. It is not just abstract debate; it leads to decisions that affect lives.

At the international level, the United Nations Association has been influential in the UK and other countries. My grandfather was secretary of the United Nations Association in the 1930s, so we used to hear a lot about this. The number of young people involved in similar organisations is perhaps less now than in the past. In the 1930s, as we have already heard and may hear more about, millions were involved. Now, we need to think of how we can expand the involvement of pupils and students. We have seen that this year, most recently with the bold invasion into businesses’ and politicians’ debates by the Swedish pupil campaigning here in London and elsewhere. It is interesting that the individual campaigning was working with non-governmental organisations and public media, so we perhaps begin to see a new way in which different communities can influence decisions.

We have also seen conflict within social organisations, including universities and schools, which should be centres for reasoned debate and provide welfare and comfort to affected students. Sometimes, the TV, media and internet have amplified conflicts between social groups and warring parties, particularly those affected by people coming from abroad. That has led to groups in the UK being far from welcoming, but hostile to these incoming groups, as we heard earlier. Government could do more to monitor and assist UK and international social and political groups that are sensitive to adverse debate and criticism. There is a new role for government and the organisations it sponsors for this purpose.

Other organisations have played a different role in improving and calming society. In advanced countries, the debates of industrial, governmental and commercial organisations have steadily improved management methods. Again, I refer to the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, whose father ran the Industrial Society when I was head of the Met Office. We had an extraordinary visit from Garnett in the 1990s, discussing how dealing with complex issues in a business or governmental organisation can be effective. It is noticeable how little conflict there is within many of these large business and governmental organisations, so perhaps we should learn more about them. They have had to deal with difficult organisational problems, and I believe we should think about that.

I am an engineer, a former chief executive and member of the Hazards Forum. Another aspect of this is that staff can be frustrated if there is no internal debate about critical issues and decisions. At present, several hugely important technical debates are ongoing around the world. Examples include the recent situation with Boeing—I worked with Airbus and can see this issue is of great importance—people dealing with the combustible behaviour of tall blocks of flats, and the factory workers of Bangladesh. These critical social issues are being debated.

Given the general experience of Members of Parliament and of committees of both Houses, we should be well placed to investigate different organisations dealing with controversial issues, general and technical, in important debates. I add the caveat that physical, natural and medical scientists and engineers make an important contribution to the role of Parliament, and we should hear more about that.

Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by my noble friend. I speak as a scientist. I tabled a Question some eight or nine years ago about when there are scientific questions in a legal case and lots of money is spent by the Crown on some prosecution and little or zero money is available for the defence. It would be more appropriate, as in many civil cases, to have some sharing between the two sides of the nature of the scientific study and the interpretation of the data. When that does not happen—for example, it did not in the case of R v Sion Jenkins—you get serious miscarriages of justice and lots of money being spent: £10 million, I think, in that case. This amendment is very important.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, many years ago the “Marchioness” inquiry had to have a second coroner’s inquest. The parents of the people who had sadly lost their lives came to me and asked for legal aid, because there was no legal aid generally speaking in that situation. It was possible for me to authorise a fixed payment. In other words, I would decide how long their matter should last. Having had regard to the submissions made, I was able to fix an amount that defrayed the cost of the second inquest for the parents, which was extremely satisfactory.

A police force may be an interested party without being represented, but where it is represented, money should be available to the people affected on the other side. I agree that a judicial officer should decide that. The obvious judicial officer in this case is the coroner, who is already fixed with the ideas and matters likely to be litigated in the inquest. Therefore, if the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, was to go for the coroner instead of the elected police commissioner, that would be worth putting on the statute book now, subject to any argument we may yet hear from the Government. It is true that a considerable inquiry is already initiated, but it is primarily related to what happened at Hillsborough, which was a very special case. This is a much more general proposition. There is a good deal to be said for it. If the police want to save public money they should reduce their representation.

Soft Power and the UK’s Influence (Select Committee Report)

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an important debate on a very valuable report. In plain English, the theme is about how best to develop mutually beneficial relations with other countries. Strength and commitment are essential for policy. The word power, however, as other noble Lords have mentioned, has some rather old-fashioned connotations that I am sure foreigners sometimes find off-putting. Other countries in Europe do not use this word so strongly. I declare my interests and my experiences as a scientist, an academic and a consultant in business. I worked with various UK government departments and agencies in various aspects of foreign relations.

An interesting feature of the debate this afternoon has been the classical references. It seems like one ought to add that to one’s speech. In my case, on my first day as a civil servant at the Met Office, I went to the library and found the meteorological works of Aristotle. I thought that I had better read those if I was going to be a proper civil servant, and they were quite interesting— very analytical with beautiful descriptions —but probably not a very good weather forecast.

We all agree that the UK has a very high reputation for its global contributions in many fields, as other noble Lords have commented. These have contributed greatly to the rising health, well-being, and education worldwide. In many cases, they are done in collaboration with other countries in Europe and with agencies of the United Nations. The achievements include protecting culture, which is a really critical problem at the moment, of course, in the Middle East; pure science, such as the great atom-smashing experiments in Switzerland in the space agencies; applied science, such as weather forecasting, in which the UK excels; health; and the international infrastructure which we participate in through international bodies, in shipping, aviation and space.

The big theme of this report is the importance of the networks of telecommunications and the internet and even the so-called softer ones of intellectual property. It is important to realise that none of these networks has been taken over by the private sector or by individual countries—although there has been some muttering about the internet being owned by one particular country—despite the wishes of some corporations and countries that it should all be handed over to the private sector.

The Government make use of the Civil Service to work with these international agencies. In some senses these government agencies help these international bodies to help countries to help themselves. However, more could be done to encourage and co-ordinate the UK government agencies to perform this vital international task. They were hardly mentioned either in the report or in the Government’s response. Over many years, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s United Nations department has been responsible for how UK agencies work with UN agencies. The department has now changed its name, and this morning I tried to find out if anyone on the switchboard knew what it was. I received a negative reply. Neither the Library nor the internet nor even Wikipedia knew the answer. However, I was assured late this afternoon that the name has now been changed to the international organisations department. That is a good idea and is very much consistent with the whole idea of this report.

The importance that the UK foreign service assigns to understanding technical and commercial matters in order to assist UK business is to be welcomed. That feature was strongly highlighted in both the report and the government response. However, instead of making our ambassadors become polymaths in technical matters, perhaps the alternative is not to cut some of our UK government agencies too badly, but to enable them to help the embassies. The United States often does that. US embassies have substantial technical support from their own government agencies, and those agencies support the US private sector much more extensively than we support ours.

Although the government reply to the report was interesting, it was noticeable that it did not address the points about how Parliament should receive information about these international arrangements and bodies. We in this House have had two or three debates on that point, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, has previously replied to remarks I have made about it—so this is a repeat performance. However, the issue is important and has been raised again in the report.

The report recommends that UK foreign policy should not only do its own work but support small and large networks around the world. Some UN agencies are dominated by major countries, many of which are in higher latitudes. If one is a meteorologist, one knows that different things happen in the tropics and that the people who are interested in and knowledgeable about the tropics may not be very influential on some of those UN agencies. One example is a new network set up in Cambridge: the Malaysian Commonwealth Studies Centre, with support from some countries and DfID. These regional and local networks, which are touched on in the report, are important. Such networks, international and regional, are important in helping UK SMEs to work in this field. It is also important that when Ministers make announcements about UK technology—two recent examples regarding Heathrow and the Olympic Games were interesting—they refer to the government agencies that do the work and not to the private sector. I declare an interest in that respect. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, gave some good examples in which the Government are making strong announcements in the field of health.

The report did not strongly link international collaboration in UK science and technology with collaboration in policy and other academic fields. I have had several very frustrating conversations with the directors, officials and chairs of the British Council on this point—and I will return to that issue.

I should mention one feature of the lack of connection or comprehension between the science and technology fields and the political, cultural and economic fields which I observed when I was director of the Met Office and involved in science and government. I was running the Met Office and represented the UK at the United Nations, where I worked with an excellent technical person whose job was to develop international policies. As is the case with many British scientists, the person’s education in politics, history and international affairs was limited. I asked the colleague, who was working for me, how often she read a newspaper. “Once every three weeks”, she said. I began to realise then that we needed to have a wider education. I raised the question with the Civil Service College, but the situation has not changed. There is not a broad education for technical civil servants in this country, and the number of civil servants with such an education is declining.

I return to the issue of the British Council. I have been on many British Council visits and lectures and found them valuable. However, the council is totally uncomprehending of the fact that although it pays for scientists and engineers to come to the UK, they are real people who will go back to their countries and probably rule those countries—they certainly do in China. It is really important that when these people come to the UK, the council pays for their tea and biscuits on the train journeys to bring them to London to attend our cultural events. Many visiting scientists come to the UK, go to the lab, spend three years there and then go home again. I have found it impossible to penetrate this blockage. However, some visitors—those on the Chevening scholarships—are specialists in economics, politics and so on, and they get the full works. It is important to understand that the technical and scientific people who come to this country will be very important in their countries and they need to receive the best possible welcome, understanding and education.

Economic Leadership for Cities

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—and indeed the arrival of his new colleagues on the Lib Dem Benches. But I was surprised, from his opening remarks, to hear that somehow the clocks started in 2010. In 2010, as you will recall, the Lib Dems did not demur from the coalition Government’s reduction, or taking away, of the regional economic organisations. This of course is another example of stop-go—and now we are going again with more funding and providing more impetus to these areas.

It is, however, excellent that the House of Lords is debating the issues of urban areas. We had a discussion on planning a month or so ago. I believe it would be advisable for the House of Lords to have a Select Committee to review all the relevant aspects of the development of urban areas. There has been a circular note from the Chairman of Committees, the noble Lord, Lord Sewel—and if noble Lords are minded like me that this should be a very topical and appropriate area for the House of Lords, I ask them to write in with their views, as I am doing. If they would like to copy me in with what they say, I would be very pleased.

Another important feature of this discussion is that the Government Office for Science has been producing documents. Maybe these have the statistics that have been referred to. For example, in August it produced The Evolving Economic Performance of UK Cities: City Growth Patterns 1981-2011. There are interesting and surprising results in it. There are statistics of employment, population, output and productivity. The biggest qualitative change seems to have been in small and medium-sized cities, and these seem to be the ones most successful in employment, health, environment and output. The largest cities have either grown, like London, or have, as it were, reduced in northern areas —northern cities—as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.

Whether or not they are growing or not, there seems to have been a significant growth in inequality in these large cities—also inequality in health. Indeed, Sir Michael Marmot has pointed out that the mortality for males between one part of London and another may be affected by as much as 20 years. In fact—this might have been raised earlier—as Jonathan Glancey wrote in his powerful essay in the book on London’s environment, the morality of London is more like that of piracy than civic duty. I applaud Sheffield for remarking that this is an important area which cities should think about.

Over the past 20 years in the medium-sized cities mostly in southern England—Telford, for example, is counted in the north in these statistics—there has been a substantial rise in population and in output. For example, the economics of these areas has been associated with services, commerce and retail. But a clutch of northern cities have experienced a much lower population growth and output growth, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, explained.

The surprising result of these government reports is the question of whether high-tech cities are the future. Surprisingly, it shows that in the high-tech Meccas of Oxford and Cambridge, where Nobel prizes abound, the average income and growth rate have in fact not been very impressive. The argument given is that a lot of these people work in the public sector and, as noble Lords all know, if you work in the public sector you have pretty low pay. The cities that are in fact growing fastest in population and productivity in income are those such as Milton Keynes and Crawley.

The other feature of these high-tech cities—I have some experience in this area, having been a city councillor in Cambridge and set up a company—is that quite a few companies have been set up and then all sorts of takeovers have occurred. Very few significant companies have grown, so it is very far from the Silicon Valley phenomenon. ARM is of course a great company in Cambridge, as is Oxford Instruments in Oxford. In fact, if you are involved in running a company in Cambridge you will get endless e-mails from people in London saying, “Can I invest in your company?”. However, you know that it is a trap; they want to raise the value of the company and then sell it off. It is all a kind of gambling operation as opposed to a long-term investment using companies to develop services and products. The word “start-up” in the English language now almost means a company that is on a path to making a lot of money for someone who then sells it off.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are very short of time.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

The other important feature of the cities is that we have not yet developed enough of the citywide companies, such as those in France, that are developing cities around the world.

Deregulation Bill

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I do not intend to have any dialogue at all, but I would just point out that it is the local authority that decides where a 30 mile an hour limit should be. Many of them overdo it and that is a pity, but I put up with that. It is their right. I am merely saying that I do not think that the clause as drafted would have the most local effect. I would prefer the clause to give powers. I want powers to be given and then people can make up their own minds. That is not what this clause does and I am sure that it could be done in such a way as to satisfy both of us. There is not much point in us having a dialogue, but can we please have a local solution?

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

I think we may be about to have a dialogue. I used to be a councillor in Cambridge and we spent a lot of time stopping people driving over 30 miles an hour because of Mr Toad characters who wanted to go at 40 miles an hour.

If we go too far down this road we would have to have a little leaflet about every town that we visit about parking on the pavement or not parking on the pavement. In the country as a whole, we need to have some broad rules. If a city does not allow you to park on the pavement, that should be stated very clearly as you enter the city. It is very important to have broad rules in a country, otherwise we begin to be like countries several hundred years ago when every city had different rules. We should have a broad rule and then local authorities should have the power to exempt, but there needs to be some information.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low, and already spoken to. I feel nervous about standing between two noble friends. Luckily, I am not right between them, so I feel safe at the end of the Table. Also, it is a pleasure to be speaking to my noble friend the Minister. Two hours ago we were speaking on sport and now we are on parking. We should all bow down in awe at the extent of his knowledge and the range of expertise demonstrated in just one afternoon.

We all know very well that there are three subjects never to be discussed in polite conversation. I would certainly add a fourth, parking, to that. It raises temperatures—sometimes justifiably and sometimes the solution is actually in the hands of the person holding the steering wheel at that particular moment. Looking at the amendment, the situation is clearly set out and has worked not just perfectly but incredibly well in London since 1974. It has not impacted on the economic, social or cultural success of this great city. I would never say that what is good enough in London is good enough everywhere, but it is a very useful case in point to consider.

As a guide dog user, I obviously have a particular interest in this. In many cities and towns that I go to, trying to walk along the pavement is impossible. One steps out to avoid one car then realises that there is a second, third and fourth car and one is walking down the centre of the road while the cars are on the pavement. What a curious world one has entered there. It is almost as if pink flamingos are used as mallets for croquet and we are all diving down rabbit holes when we have reached a change of roles to that extent.

It is not just about visually impaired people, though—it is about the very nature and essence of inclusion. If you have a pushchair or pram, or you are walking with friends or family, if you have toddlers or if you are on a mobility scooter, if you are a pedestrian you should be able to access and enjoy the environment on the pavement. The clue is really in the name, “pavement”; it is not a carriageway. The Americans get it quite well—it is a sidewalk, not a side road or a side car park. That is where we should aim to guarantee everybody free, unimpeded access along the pavements, not just of London but across the entire nation. As we have already heard, there is a very clear local element here. Politics is nothing if it not only listens but acts locally. This amendment offers the right local solution to enable unimpeded access of the pavements up and down this nation.

I turn to the economics of it. Pavements are not designed for cars. Unsurprisingly, they crack and the tarmac sinks and they become not only unsightly but dangerous for pedestrians. Between 2006 and 2010, £1 billion was spent on pavement repairs as a result of parking. That figure does not even cover the costs that we can all only think about of people who have had to bring claims against local authorities for having been injured on pavements that have broken down as a result of people parking on them. Again with reference to the local agenda, that is why it is hardly surprising that 78% of local councillors believe that there should be prevention of pavement parking, as is the case in Greater London.

There is an economic argument and a social argument, as well as a legal argument. It would be good if my noble friend could strongly consider the wording set out in this amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, as we are in Grand Committee, the rules ensure that I have no choice but to withdraw my amendment, which I will of course do in a moment. I am grateful to the Minister for expressing sympathy and understanding, but what the 20 organisations and thousands and thousands of other parties—including a majority of councils and councillors—are looking for is not sympathy but action.

I accept entirely that it is complex but I just remind noble Lords that it was introduced in Greater London in 1974—coincidentally, the year in which I first became a councillor for the ward that I have already described, which has a number of streets that have to be exempted from the ban for practical and physical reasons. When a road or pavement is exempted, it is marked accordingly on the pavement and with a prescribed street sign, so that everybody knows that it is exempted and the extent of the exemption. The important point that we are trying to get across here is that in Greater London parking on pavements is illegal unless exempted, and that should be the situation in the rest of the country. People will then know where they stand: it will be illegal unless there is a sign and marking on the pavement that says it has been exempted. The local authority will deal with those exemptions and will have drawn up and published criteria for dealing with them, so it will be publicised in that way.

I do not want to provoke him again by saying this, but I do not think that my noble friend Lord Deben and I are that far apart. All I would say is that we have over 40 years of experience and practice in dealing with these issues in Greater London, which is arguably one of most densely populated urban areas in the country, and it works reasonably well. There is always an issue of enforcement, but there is something there to enforce. So what I and, in particular, the supporters and campaigners on this issue seek from the Government is rather more than sympathy or understanding, or leaving the situation, which is widely recognised as cumbersome and inadequate, as it is. We are looking for them to actually take action and to say to people that parking on pavements is illegal unless it is exempted.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

Would the noble Lord not agree that it is pretty clear in the Highway Code that you do not park on the pavement? As I understand this legislation, with the new Highway Code you had better ring up your council to see whether you can park on the pavement.

[Lord Tope]

It is certainly in the Highway Code and is certainly good practice, but it is not illegal outside London. That is the point that we are making. I am sure that we will return to this debate, both on this Bill and when my honourable friend gets the Second Reading of his Private Member’s Bill, but in the mean time I have no choice but to withdraw my amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

There was a strategy at the end of the previous Labour Government. I accept that it had been disappointing in terms of some of its delivery, but there was a clear strategy. It could have been improved on, but instead we have had effective abandonment of that strategy and this is just another little bit of the Government’s knocking out of the tools that were there to tackle what is a very real problem. I remind the Committee that this problem ends up with 29,000 people dying prematurely. I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, I support the amendment. Air pollution in the UK is pretty serious and getting worse. We now have a better understanding that the larger the city, the more cars there are. In fact, cars travel longer distances in smaller cities. There is increasing awareness about air pollution, particularly in London, and the parties involved realise the seriousness of this. Other cities will have to make their own air quality assessments as they grow, so it is surprising that a Government who wish to make the UK seem like a desirable place to live and set up industry have introduced this measure. We know from experience around the world that incoming businesses and industries take a great interest in the environment but, under the Bill, local authorities will not be compelled to produce these assessments.

There is an equity aspect to this. We see large differences in life expectancy across London. Studies carried out every day in London show very high levels of pollution in areas with poorer housing. Therefore, it seems strange that we should be moving backwards in this respect. Websites show that the best city in Europe in this regard is Zurich and show how bad other cities are in comparison. The Government are taking a retrograde step in this regard. That is why this amendment insists that the Secretary of State takes this issue very seriously.

I regret that the amendment does not refer to noise, because the situation in the UK is pretty bad in that respect. If you drive round Germany, you see notices on the road advising you to drive slowly to reduce noise. The North Circular road is extremely noisy. People accelerate between traffic controls and the residents have to put up with that noise. There is no attempt in this country to tell people about the danger of noise pollution and how they can moderate their behaviour to reduce it. Local authorities are not encouraged to do that. Part 5 of this schedule takes a regressive step in not insisting that local authorities not only designate noise abatement zones but inform people how to reduce noise in these areas. I hope very much that the amendment will be carried.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think there are some limits to how far we would necessarily take this as a general model in this area. The noble Lord will be well aware that all efforts to agree speed limits within the European Union and to deal with the problem of cars going extremely fast are blocked by the Germans, who have a very powerful lobby, not unconnected with BMW and Mercedes Benz, which insists on having cars which are extremely powerful, which we all know also produce more pollutants when they are being driven very fast. They are driven very fast across Germany, rather more quickly than they are allowed to be driven through other countries, so Germany is a mixed example, I think.

This government proposal is not to lower air quality. I recognise in the admirably clear speech of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, the much wider issues which he is raising about the Government’s overall strategy on air quality. This is a deregulatory measure which simply aims to remove the requirement for a further assessment when an air quality zone has already been agreed. The Government give active support to local authorities when it has been decided that a low emission zone or strategy is the appropriate action. We have so far funded 15 separate low emission zone-related projects or feasibility studies for our local air quality grant scheme. We have also disseminated the results that have come from these studies as good examples for local authorities. Since 1997, over £52 million has been spent to support local authorities in delivering low emission strategies, including feasibility studies with low emission zones and the uptake of clean vehicle technology and programmes to change behaviour.

There is regular feedback from local authorities, and an independent review of local air quality management in 2010 indicated that this requirement for a further assessment, or a second round of assessment, did not add to the understanding of local air quality and actually delayed the production and implementation of local action plans required under the Act. This was confirmed in a consultation with air quality stakeholders in January 2013. I refute the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has put forward—that this is an attempt to weaken the local air quality regime. This is very much an attempt to support what local authorities do and to speed up their implementation of such zones when they are agreed. The Government continue to give active support in this regard. I recognise what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said about the overall problem of air quality. As I sat listening to him, I recalled that, as a boy, when I first came to a choir school in London, I was here just in time for the last great smog, in 1953 I think it was. Air quality has improved a little since then, and life expectancy has improved with it.

However, this change is a limited one, as are many others in the Bill. It will allow local authorities to prepare and implement air quality action plans more quickly and to avoid duplicating information gathered either in the earlier, detailed assessment stage that is required or in the preparation of the air quality plan. That is the limit of what we are attempting to do here. We remain actively committed to higher air quality throughout Britain. We have supported local emissions zones: I have just been handed a note which remarks on the local emissions zones in Oxford, York, Bradford, Southampton, Birmingham and Hackney. With that reassurance, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the trenchant remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart. The framework of this debate about government action has been the 1920s international convention about chemical warfare and the practice of intervention by foreign countries for humanitarian purposes, but in the 1920s there were no satellites or internet. One of the important changes is the role of communication, to which I shall return.

Chemical warfare was one of the heinous methods deployed by Saddam Hussain. There was plenty of evidence for it in his attack on the Kurds, but it was not so clear, as the noble Lord, Lord Reid, reminded us, whether he was planning to use those weapons in 2003. There was, however, enough suspicion that the allies intervened. I voted to support the Government. Scientists were particularly doubtful at that time about the estimates of the range over which his weapons could endanger other countries and about how rapidly they could be deployed. No United Kingdom or United States scientific report was produced before, during or after that conflict. The Chilcot report may have some evidence of that sort.

In the case of Syria, as the excellent Joint Intelligence Committee report stated, toxic chemicals were discharged last week with a devastating impact on thousands of people. The timings and location of some of the releases have been reported and intelligence has identified which weapons were used, but we must now have much more open scientific data, which should be produced by several countries. Unlike in previous conflicts, this information is now available in near real time. For example, complex chemicals can now be detected though satellite measurements in the urban areas where this conflict is taking place, and the gases that enable these chemicals to be dispersed can also be computed so that it is possible to make predictions.

This work is going on in the United Kingdom and European laboratories of space and environment companies, and if more of this information were made available, particularly in collaboration with Iran, Russia and China, which all have these instruments and can make these measurements, it might be possible through the much wider distribution of information for us to understand what is going on and particularly for people to see what is going on. As we now know, people are much less suspicious of data in real time. Any report, such as the report of the United Nations inspectorate, excellent as it is, may take several weeks to be produced and people then wonder what has happened in the report.

My first point is that it would be very important to enable people on both sides in Syria and in the Middle East to have more information about what is happening. I believe it will make more likely collaboration with other countries with which we want to negotiate, which has been a theme of this afternoon. Ultimately, this may be the most powerful way to put political pressure on parties, and this will surely support other organisations in their humanitarian efforts.

I should like to make a final remark. Perhaps the government chief scientist, the chief scientists at the MoD and other organisations, and people with military and political experience might consider in some detail how we could distribute more information on the internet and broadcast generally—in all countries and produced in collaboration with countries—whereby it might be possible to have confidence in what is happening. At the moment, there is little confidence because the information comes from different countries. We might enable wide populations across the Middle East and other areas in conflict to track and communicate the illegal use of weapons.

G8 Summit

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, for this debate about the G8 in Northern Ireland. Of course, the G8 is more than about just trade. As the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, reminded us, it is about people, culture and science. Ireland’s unparalleled contribution to culture, with its great scientists and poets, is familiar to us all. A connection between trade and culture comes to mind. When Oscar Wilde went to New York in the 1880s, he was asked as he went through customs whether he had anything to declare. He replied that he had only his genius to declare.

Of course, I approve of the enthusiasm expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, for trade and the contribution of the European Commission in those negotiations, which has a dominant role in determining non-tariff barriers, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. Without the role of the EC, we would not be in this position of influencing and participating in these extremely important global determinants of trade.

I will not repeat the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Bates, about a more realistic approach in the international world of negotiation, which I was delighted to hear. I will say only that the extraordinary issue of how the international framework of discussions should be changed cannot be solved by a collection of Prime Ministers sitting around the table. Surely it should proceed by initiating research programmes of many think tanks and universities around the world. The first step would be to put it on the agenda. If we could all agree that there should be an international research programme on that, involving all the countries the noble Lord mentioned, that would be a way forward. We cannot just have a snap decision, obviously. So are the Government thinking about this?

Secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, mentioned, we live in a highly networked world. At the meeting in Brussels on Tuesday on global systems, organised by the European Commission, a colleague working on energy from University College put up a slide of Buckminster Fuller’s 1939 vision of a global electrical power network. As he commented, in fact we are now having a transfer of electricity from the UK, Europe, Russia to China; before long it will be India. While we are having these extraordinary technical collaborations, which are growing consistently, our political masters are blowing hot and cold about how we should collaborate.

It was rather the same in the Cold War when, for instance, all weather forecasts were exchanged. The only person who did not play cricket about weather was Saddam Hussein, who turned off the weather when he arrived in Kuwait. This was considered a very bad show. It had never happened before. The point is that there is a technical world and a political world. Fortunately, the technical world carries on, but of course we need to connect the two.

The other important point about the 2006 UK G8 meeting, which the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, emphasised, was that despite the terrorist bombing in London—which I heard from my office in UCL; it was very frightening for many people in London—important commitments were made to reducing third-world debt, increasing aid and tackling climate change. One of the important events of that G8 meeting was that the UK Government, with backing from many other Governments, supported a parallel meeting of global legislators that began a sustained programme of introducing new laws and regulations in countries to deal with climate change. That is an absolutely necessary underpinning of international agreements.

That work was extremely controversial when it began. For example, only in 2006, many countries regarded deforestation as a neo-colonial word to stop people cutting down trees. It just shows how concepts have developed and collaboration has increased. Now this kind of approach is very much supported by the World Bank, the FCO, and UN climate agencies. In fact, progressively the G8 has undertaken many of its projects in conjunction with other bodies. It is no longer regarded as just an exclusive body. In Italy in 2007, for example, I attended a remarkable meeting of G8 and UNESCO. It was a meeting on innovation and education which involved innovation from countries all over the world, such as pioneering development of inexpensive medicine in India. This progressive outreach of G8 is something we should continue. Again, this is why, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell said, the notion that G8 is just an in-group of a few leaders is not how it is working out.

I also want to make the sideways comment that Canadian legislators have taken a very strong lead in this idea of legislators working together on climate. I am afraid they have to regret the policies of their Government rather forcefully.

In 2012, the G8 under the United States chairmanship focused on the Arab spring and the contribution of science and technology with natural disasters. Its focus on the former has not been very successful, one might say, but its work on the latter was a continuation and a building on the work of the United Nations report in 2012 bringing together UN agencies and other parts of the United Nations systems in explaining the impacts connecting natural disasters and climate change as well world population. Again, the G8 helped to underpin a very broad United Nations-wide initiative.

This year, as we learn from the House of Lords Library paper, to which the noble Lord, Lord Bates, has also referred, the Government have organised some specialised conferences to deal with specialised issues. Some of them have only involved G8 countries—for example the G8 science meeting—but others have had a broad membership of civil society groups in the G8 and other countries. I hope that theme will continue. There were two separate meetings on nutrition and innovation. However, these two themes need to be connected. For example, there are remarkable improvements in India with people now using social media to learn about the best use of agricultural aids as well as acquire data about weather and climate. This is having remarkable effects. To start with, there was some resistance to the use of social media. The idea of giving people mobile phones in place of seed was, as it were, an issue to be discussed. Now we realise that these two things have to go together.

Despite the remark of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, about too much data, there is not enough data in African countries. African farmers are not collecting and measuring their rain. You must collect your rain if you want to know how your crops will develop during the season—knowing whether you have less or more rain. Many other areas of data are collected by many different agencies in African countries which are simply not exchanged. Some noble Lords will have heard me banging on about this before, but I still find it hard to get that sharp focus on the simple question of data exchange being accepted as an important issue by aid agencies and even DfID. They are very keen on global computer models, and so am I, but I am also keen on people measuring rain.

Finally, this G8 meeting, like others, raises issues and starts initiatives. I hope that the UK will set an example which other countries have not followed very much: reporting on the G8 meeting during the following year, so that we know what has happened. For example, we have our Library document, which covers initiatives this year, but it is difficult to find out how it connects to initiatives in previous years. That would be very helpful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

Will this report be in the Library?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I do not know whether it is yet in the Library. It was published two days ago. I will do my best, looking hopefully at the Box, to put it in the Library as soon as we can. I must say that I have been briefed by a number of officials who are working incredibly hard for the G8 exercise. I am very grateful that one of them has been able to spare a bit of time out of her 14-hour day to come here and assist me in this and I wish to add my compliment on her remarkably clear handwriting.

The G8 is an informal directing group and the discussions within the G8 then feed out to others. On the final lunch the secretaries-general of the IMF and the OECD will be there and the tax transparency agenda will be carried on quite largely through the OECD. The land ownership agenda, which was mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, will be carried out partly through the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Discussions are part of a very intricate network in which we work as we can with others. There are a number of associated conferences now. We have had a Foreign Ministers’ G8 with very active engagement from the Russians on issues such as Syria and elsewhere. We do not always agree but we are actively discussing these issues. There is also the Science and Innovation conference mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The Nutrition for Growth compact has been signed by 24 Governments from the developed and developing worlds, 22 business groups, four science organisations and a number of major international non-governmental organisations.

Sessions at the G8 will cover the global economy, including trade, and the very important bilateral negotiations which have been taking place between the EU and Japan and which will be taking place between the EU and the United States. There will be a session on international political issues and foreign policy, a session on countering international and cross-border terrorism, a session particularly devoted to tax and transparency, and a final lunch at which the delegates will be joined not only by the secretaries-general I have mentioned but also by a number of other senior figures from Africa and South America.

The Prime Minister has focused on the three Ts—trade, tax and transparency. I have already spoken about trade. We very much hope that we will be able to get back to a global trade agenda with the World Trade Organisation. However, some of the leading members of G20 have not been particularly co-operative on a global trade agenda which is why we are having to pursue regional trade negotiations. If we are able to achieve a trade agreement between the United States and the European Union to follow those with Japan, Korea and Canada, we will have made a major contribution to global economic growth. This is about the rules which shape global trade and the fairness and openness which characterise them.

We have also discussed tax. Britain has a particular responsibility here because of the number of overseas territories and Crown dependencies which have become offshore financial centres. The Prime Minister has been in contact with all of our overseas territories and Crown dependencies. They have now all agreed on a number of measures. Bermuda is still discussing the question of a multilateral convention on mutual assistance on tax matters but we hope to resolve that issue with Bermuda before we have sorted out the complete agenda for the G8.

I was asked about the fourth money-laundering directive. This is an EU measure and proposals are currently being negotiated by member states and the European Parliament. They would require that companies obtain information on their beneficial ownership, hold this information and make the information available to competent authorities. The European agenda, the global agenda and the G8 agenda overlap and complement each other. In all of this one has to recognise that tax sovereignty and global markets do not go easily together. That is why we have to pursue these international negotiations on tax transparency in order to regain a degree of our tax sovereignty. The Government have been relatively successful over the past three years at regaining tax from multinational companies. I am told that HMRC has collected more than £23 billion in extra tax since 2010 through challenging large businesses’ tax arrangements and tackling transfer pricing issues, and we continue to hope that we will raise a good deal more through tax transparency.

As noble Lords know, transparency is about not only tax but beneficial ownership. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked particularly about transparency over land tenure. The problem with land tenure in developing countries is that often records do not exist, so in terms of technical assistance, as part of bilateral or multilateral aid programmes, helping these countries to establish clear records of land tenure is a necessary part of what we do to establish who owns what, where foreign companies are buying in and how far we protect local farmers on their own. There is very careful work on greater transparency with less developed countries, starting with proper land records.

On 22 May the Prime Minister announced that Her Majesty’s Government intend to sign up to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which was set up to tackle corruption, to improve the way in which the revenues from oil, gas and minerals are managed and to ensure that people across the world share in the economic benefits of natural resources in their country. A lack of transparency there, as with land transactions, is very much part of the obstacles that we have to overcome in ensuring that free trade and open markets benefit everyone, including the poor and weak countries, which are often open to these sorts of extractive industries in particular.

The lunch on Tuesday will focus particularly on Africa, looking at the millennium development goals and, as we have already mentioned, talking about the larger issue of nutrition. I am disappointed that we are not paying more attention to population on this occasion. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, is disappointed that we are not spending more time on climate change, although there will be preparations for a major conference in 2015 under different tutelage—the UN Committee on Climate Change—which will be a main focus.

With regard to our political discussions, I was asked particularly about Syria. At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, the Prime Minister said:

“We should use the G8 to try to bring pressure on all sides to bring about what we all want … which is a peace conference, a peace process, and the move towards a transitional Government in Syria”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/6/13; col. 331.]

This has been a worthwhile debate. I was nervous that the agenda of the G8 was so wide that I would be unable to cope with many of the questions that would come in. I sat here trying to imagine the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talking to his Soviet colleagues during the Cold War about eastern and western approaches to weather forecasting and whether there was a Marxist approach to it as well as a capitalist one.

We have looked back to the previous UK-sponsored G8 in 2005. Gleneagles was a great success and helped to push the G8 on to the development agenda to a much greater extent than before. It is still managing to push that forward. This Government, as the Nutrition for Growth compact shows, are still attempting to use the combined efforts of the developed democracies, non-governmental organisations and international organisations as such to promote a more open global market and a more equitable global society.

We look forward to a successful G8 summit next week. This is of course only one in a long series of heavy intergovernmental negotiations, but Her Majesty’s Government are using this opportunity to press forward what I hope all noble Lords will agree is a very worthwhile and constructive global agenda.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

Will the Minister respond on the issue of water? This is the United Nations International Year of Water Co-operation and the water issue has not really had the emphasis it should have had, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McColl.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, has sponsored one or two conferences on water in the Middle East in the past year with the support of the Foreign Office. We are all well aware of the many complexities of water. Those of us following the argument between Ethiopia and Egypt over the dam on the Blue Nile will know that water wars are not necessarily too far away. There are a great many complications and the Government understand that not only clean water but also cross-border water supplies are very important matters for us to deal with. It is not neglected simply because it is not a major item on this year’s G8 agenda.

Antarctic Bill

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Friday 1st February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, on having introduced this Bill and on his succinct definition of environmental catastrophe. He is one of the few people who could get a laugh from such a thing. It was good to see him deal with it so ably.

I am happy to support the Bill, even if it is slightly surreal, since no one owns any part of the Antarctic, which is as it should be. Seven nations have claimed territory there. The claims are legal according to the laws of the nations in question, which makes this Bill worth pursuing. However, some countries do not recognise any national claims on the Antarctic; others assert their right to make claims in future. The Antarctic Treaty 1959 has been conspicuously successful, so far anyway, in preserving the region as a continent for science, as I think has already been mentioned. Long may that continue. Today, there are more than 40 scientific research stations dotted across the vast continent, attracting scientists from many countries.

I enjoyed reading the debate on this issue in the Commons from 2 November last year, where the Bill achieved impressive cross-party support. Amazingly, one or two Eurosceptic contributors managed to get in some obscure digs against the EU, even though it has no connection at all to the proposals, although it did liven up the debate. As a whole, the discussion in the Commons was good and balanced.

I spoke in the debate in your Lordships’ House to commemorate the centenary of Scott’s second expedition to the Antarctic. Many of us in that debate took it as an opportunity to oppose the plan to close down the British Antarctic Survey. As with those who spoke in the debate in the Commons, virtually everyone took the same view, I am happy to say. It is a relief that the BAS has been saved, even if there is work to do on the issue.

As has been said, the UK has long been the dominant scientific presence in the Arctic and, if anything, research in that vast frozen land and sea mass has become even more important than it was. Current research spans biology, geology, oceanography, medicine and many other sciences. The Antarctic is a laboratory for the study of climate change, and it is very interesting what is going on there in that respect. Some areas of the Arctic are becoming more frozen, not less, as a result of violent winds that circulate in the centre of the land mass, yet other areas are becoming warmed in a very significant way. The BAS research shows that the level of warming on the Antarctic peninsula,

“is among the highest seen anywhere on Earth in recent times”.

It is likely to have a profound effect on the ecosystems in the local area, but more disturbingly—

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, this discovery of a great warming and how it happened was the joint effort of many universities and the British Antarctic Survey.

[Lord Giddens]

My Lords, I stand corrected, although I endorse the quotation, which does come from the British Antarctic Survey. Of course, almost all research in the Antarctic is collaborative, as the noble Lord points out. That is a good part of the British presence there.

I was about to say that the changes going on in the Arctic peninsula and the rest of the Antarctic could also have profound impact on wider world patterns. That is why it is so important to have a very strong scientific presence there. The significance of the Bill is that it shores up the UK’s treaty obligations and makes them part of British law. One clause applies the polluter pays principle to those operating in the Antarctic, and environmental disasters include cruise ships bashing into icebergs, which one or two of them have already done. Numerous other instances could be mentioned. This part of the Bill includes the need for insurance provision in relation to such incidents, while another part helps to provide protection for indigenous flora and fauna, as the noble Viscount said.

I endorse the Bill on the understanding that it is a contribution to the safety and sanctity of the Antarctic as an international zone of peaceful research. I do not support any geopolitical claims that might be drawn from it as giving the UK special rights that other nations might not have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, I speak in the gap to welcome this Bill. I have been working at the University College London Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling with the BAS for the past 14 years. I would like to emphasise two aspects. As the Antarctic environment is changing, it becomes more liable to artificial risks, a point made by the noble Earl, Lord Selborne. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, commented, some of these accidents may well be deliberate. Indeed, a novelist approached me recently to ask for various fiendish methods by which we could destroy the environment, so I came up with some interesting ones, which I will not tell you about.

I welcome Clause 5(2)(a) on the obligation to reduce risk, but Clause 8(1)(a) should surely be modified. Currently, it gives the Secretary of State power to require information about activities that “have given rise” to “an environmental emergency”. Surely, the Secretary of State should have power to require information about the risks of possible future emergencies. I believe that that clause needs to be changed. Indeed, I believe that the Secretary of State, in conjunction with the international panel in Buenos Aires and so on, should establish with other countries an ongoing and openly published document or website about future risks, as they keep changing.

Behaviour Change: Science and Technology Committee Report

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, I welcome this report and the discussion with esteemed colleagues. Outside colleagues are also quite impressed with this. I am sorry that I did not give evidence. I was asked whether I did not hear about it—I am not asleep all the time—but I wonder whether all Members of the House of Lords receive e-mails requesting evidence. I have never had an e-mail requesting that I give evidence to the committee.

Many branches of central and local government will use this report from the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on how policies can be more effective in considering and influencing how people can change their behaviour. I commend the committee for taking a broad scientific look at this approach to developing and implementing policy. As always, a new catchphrase can usefully draw attention to old ideas, as we saw with tipping points and now see with nudge. Innovative decisions always show that quite small changes to governmental commercial practice can have quite large effects. Sometimes they can be predicted; sometimes they can be beneficial; sometimes they can have unintended adverse consequences.

The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, commented, as did outside colleagues, that this report has all sorts of worthy things in it, but there is a slight lack of an intellectual theme. Curiously, for the modern day, it does not particularly emphasise how data are an integral part of this whole approach, nor the use of modern telecommunications, the internet and so on.

From a scientific point of view, behavioural change can be considered as one component of the system dynamics approach to policy-making, to which behavioural scientists have contributed greatly, as have natural scientists, mathematicians and so on. For example, Sir Alan Wilson—a fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society, and a former vice-chancellor of Leeds University—showed how system approaches could work for commercial purposes and many others.

The methodology referred to here—as is so common in Whitehall—is evidence-based decision-making, which is just one component of system analysis. The noble Lord, Lord May, might touch on this. From the first studies of models and statistics of complex systems, including societies, species and countries, such as the one in the 1930s by Lewis Richardson on conflict using statistics and modelling, it was clear that behaviour can change quite suddenly. An example is when some threshold is reached or barrier is formed, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, pointed out, or a particular disturbance is introduced.

To give a parliamentary analogy, I have an Icelandic friend who tells me about the Icelandic Parliament: it is the earliest in the world, founded in 1000. A bored parliamentarian used to throw gold coins in the air. He was blind and getting bored in the debate so everybody got out their sword and had a tremendous sword fight on the floor of their House of Commons. He enjoyed that. The trouble is that now they do not know where he stored all his gold coins—that is still a problem for Iceland. That example is not totally dissimilar to changing expenses rules in this House, but that is another point.

To come back to systems thinking, many of the recommended policies here involve people in networks,— for example, WeightWatchers. Networks, as we can see, lead to beneficial effects or problematical ones, as we saw last night with the secret Conservative vote, which is a new network that suddenly appeared on the scene. Therefore, networks are an important part of this process.

I wanted to emphasise that the European Commission is sponsoring several projects around Europe about the use of system thinking and system dynamics as a general framework for governments and organisations. I hope that we will have more connection in that way.

I want to make four points and to illustrate them from my own experiences as a scientist acting variously as a city councillor, an environmental consultant and an executive. The first is how to find good ideas for economical ways to encourage behaviour change for the purposes of policy-making and implementation. This is also particularly valuable in developing countries, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, pointed out, where local innovation can be very effective and indeed extremely ingenious methods are often found. DfID should be part of the discussion taking this forward.

The next point concerns obtaining effective data and the communication of data to the public, and from the public, to help policy through behavioural change, which is not much emphasised in the report. With modern electronic methods you can give information and receive it back and the many possibilities of social media are only just beginning to be used. The other important point that is touched on in the report on page 49 is the use of pilot schemes to explain in a sort of vivid, practical way how behaviour change can work, particularly in local areas, and then to demonstrate the effectiveness of unfamiliar ideas. Local pilot schemes often enable people to understand the wider implications of policy. We should make a greater connection between local pilot schemes for energy saving and the global importance of climate change.

Here is another story. In Cambridge in 1971 we had double-decker buses in tiny medieval streets. They knocked bits off the buildings as they went down the road and were responsible for incredible levels of pollution. What could be done? As a scientist I suggested we first measured the air pollution in these narrow streets and publicised it. That got people interested and then, being a scientist, I said there would be arguments about it and that we should have an experiment. The city council closed the street for a month and then, following the instructions of this report, we did a survey. The survey was done by students and we had a Stalinist result of 99% in favour and so the process went ahead. The other point made by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, was that culture changes slowly. It took the taxi drivers in Cambridge 20 years before they decided that pedestrianisation with preferential arrangements was a good idea. That was a top-down initiative, but surveying was essential.

Over the past 40 years, many small initiatives in local communities in Britain have transformed family life, particularly on housing estates—which are, after all, probably where most people live. My wife is a landscape architect. One curious thing is that by the choice of planting schemes—having prickly bushes in some areas and green grass in others—you can guide or move people. That can transform the behaviour level and behaviour patterns on housing estates, as can the use of roads and dead ends. That is remarkable. You can go to many areas of Britain where you see quite different social behaviour as a result of those small, extremely inexpensive and economical methods.

The other important point is that many of those small changes can now be tested electronically. You can ask people on the internet. There was a good example in the east end of London, reported in a book that I edited on London’s environment, which noble Lords can find in the House of Lords Library. Increasingly, communication of information in a timely and local way changes behaviour and is a vital part of public policy. London leads the world—other countries are following—in providing detailed forecasts of air pollution sent to individuals. For example, adverts on the No. 73 bus say that if people are having breathing difficulties and want information about air pollution, they should ring this number to obtain it. That is an example of using sophisticated data, coming from satellites, models and fine linear data. It enables people to use their drugs appropriately and change their exercises. Some of those ideas have also been tried in the United States.

Now that approach is being extended to local temperatures. Another important example is the question of heatwaves in cities; that is not a problem for us this summer but, in 2003, 20,000 people died in France. Mortality varied from one kilometre to another depending on the exact temperature in an area of Paris. It is therefore important to be able to inform people about the temperature but also to find ways in which you can control it. The Lord Mayor of Westminster, who is a green Tory—I admire her greenness—explained to me how, on very hot days in the street where she lives, she draws her curtains so that, when she comes back in the evening, her house is cool. Most people do not draw their curtains and they remain very hot. That is an example where the nudging process can have a considerable effect. Now that such people all have air conditioning, it is a question of whether you turn your air conditioning on. That is an example where energy behaviour could be changed.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned transport, which is covered by the report. I have had very unsatisfactory communications with the Department for Transport on the question of nudging of information. The UK Government are much less ready than those in France or Germany to use information on roads to change behaviour. On French motorways, the electronic notices inform drivers that excessive speed is not only dangerous but leads to greater carbon emissions. In Germany, notices on motorways near housing inform drivers about noise. The DfT refuses absolutely to put environmental data on our screens. Indeed, it does the reverse: it encourages drivers to go at 70 miles an hour. It says, “If you go at 70 miles an hour, you will get to Bristol in 25 minutes”, or some damn thing. Excuse me, that is unparliamentary language. That is a case of negative behavioural change produced by government. I hope that that can be changed.

My conclusion from those examples and those in the report is that there could be a more systematic approach to optimal behaviour change: first, by studying through models and experience how different nudges and types and levels may be effective—or ineffective, if not dangerous; secondly, by evaluating the data provided and the feedback of information; and, thirdly, by assessing what kind of pilot schemes are necessary and how best to design them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

The Minister has talked a lot about evidence and performance but there are people in Whitehall who say: “What has data got to do with policy?”. Data and information are very important. We receive very little information from government. They want to give us a good form but does not the Minister think that the programme of examples that I tried to give him of telling people much more about the information will help to make decisions? That is largely absent from the government response?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I take the noble Lord’s point that perhaps the government response should have taken more care with the question of data. There is another debate to be had—I encourage all Members of the Committee to participate in it more actively—about government data collection, government data sharing and access to government data which relates to the census and questions of privacy. We all need to engage in that debate because government is now collecting a great deal more data, as are private actors. Government behaves with much more caution about the use of that data than Tesco or Marks and Spencer. As with obesity, there are important questions as to how far we lower privacy issues in government in order to gain benefits in public health and elsewhere.

I mentioned the White Paper Test, Learn, Adapt, which has been recommended by Ben Goldacre and Tim Harford. That suggests to me that there are those in the media who recognise the importance of government data and at least think we are attempting to move in the right direction.

The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, talked about corporate power and how to confront it. That is also part of a much larger issue. We are left with business and the media setting a large amount of what becomes the social norm. The power of advertising—and advertising is absolutely about covert nudging as opposed to overt messaging—is an issue that again we cannot answer here. It is fundamental to our debate about the balance between government, society and market, in which that we all need to engage. I look forward to the noble Lord’s next written contribution on that fundamental issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, talked about the international dimensions of behavioural influence and cultural change and whether we should be following US research. There is a fair amount of independent research in this area. The German Marshall Fund does some very good research, which I follow. There are some mildly puzzling outcomes. From the surveys that I have seen, the most pro-Western public in the entire Middle East is the urban population of Iran. Whether or not that suggests that the behavioural impact you should be having is to impose sanctions on the regime, it raises some very large questions about what policies and interventions you pursue and what you get back in return. I will feed that back in.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, raised a number of questions about transport, which I have touched on. Government studies have shown that cost, time and reliability are clearly very important factors. There is some evidence for providing better, simple information. The new signs at bus stops which tell you when the next bus will arrive increase the number of people who wait for the bus. That is another nudge if you like. Information helps.

David Halpern, the head of the Behavioural Insights Team, is very interested in the built environment and how far it impacts upon behaviour. That is a really difficult, long-term issue, the sort of thing that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was talking about. Redesigning public spaces and how you design footpaths and cycle ways help with this, but part of the answer to improving the urban environment and encouraging people to walk rather than use cars is persuading them to live more closely together and not to wish to live 10 to 20 miles from where they work.

Another area in which the provision of information would help—and here government has a great deal further to go—is on the concreting of front gardens, which over the past 20 or 30 years has contributed very substantially to the problems of urban flooding. The provision of information about the utility of digging up your front garden again and providing green spaces through which the water can drain is clearly something that government can do without enforcing it.

I love the term “cognitive polyphasia”. We are all stuck with that. As someone who, when in opposition, campaigned for the pedestrianisation of further squares in London and, in particular, of Parliament Square, I am conscious that there are a number of people who think that it is very good to have pedestrianisation so long as they can still get their limousine to take them to St Margaret’s for weddings and do not have to spend two to three minutes longer in their taxi from Smith Square. Individuals often resist things that in the long run will be to their advantage.

This is a broad initiative of government—I stress of government because it is not a partisan move from this Government. We all want to find ways in which the range of government interventions—from information through to pressures and financial disincentives to tighter regulation and, in some cases, prohibition and penalties, as in seat belts and some areas of health—will help to change behaviour. That is not something that the Government can do alone. We have to work with publics whose attitudes are often highly contradictory and whose willingness to accept evidence when presented as mediated through the media is sometimes relatively limited.

What I hope that the Committee is persuaded of, into which the report provided a useful insight, is that this is one of the many tools available for government which helps government to be more self-conscious. The Behavioural Insights Team is in the Cabinet Office to provide a resource across government and its many departments to encourage them to use more of those interventions to affect behaviour. On that basis, I give way to both noble Lords.

Government Procurement Policy

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Sugar and the other speakers for their remarks about how government procurement needs to improve fast, first, to make government services more effective and, secondly, in order for the Government to support and stimulate UK industry, commerce, technology and medicine. It is important to note that procurement is the purchase not only of goods and services but increasingly of research, software and manpower. I declare an interest as a government scientific consultant and as director of a consulting company that is not growing, but that is deliberate. We are providing all sorts of information to companies that are growing. It is rather hard work, growing a company.

The key to the effective use of procurement to the development of industry, commerce and technology is for the Government to have long-term plans, as the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, has just pointed out, and to consider at the outset how they will be implemented in partnership between the private sector and relevant departments and agencies. In addition, the process of planning procurement should always think of the long-term export possibilities of the decisions, an aspect of policy that needs emphasising. Can the Minister give us some assurance that this aspect of procurement is now firmly on the government agenda? Furthermore, this should be part of the job description of departmental and agency managers. I used to be head of the Met Office. Of course, at no point in my job description was there anything to do with procurement efficiency or improving British industry, unlike that of my colleagues in other countries.

Procurement must also be at the highest standard internationally. Harold Wilson knew this when he initiated government programmes in the 1960s. He was perhaps the last technocrat in No. 10. He realised that it was absolutely vital to have advanced electronics. The transputer came from that. It was interesting to be on the House of Lords committee when we heard from, for example, the managing director of ARM—one of the most successful British software companies—that that came out of Harold Wilson’s programme on transputers.

Over the next decades, there will be huge investments, both in the UK and globally, in various areas, such as coastal defences, for which the Environment Agency is responsible, high-speed trains, carbon capture and storage, and innovative types of nuclear power. Will these investments lead to the greater competitiveness of UK companies? Only if the Government specify high standards and encourage innovative solutions.

The lack of funding for UK privatised and public laboratories—again, unlike what happens abroad—makes this more difficult. Already, other European and Asian countries in the areas that I just mentioned are raising the technical standards in these projects which the UK is not currently planning to follow. Therefore, these other countries will become more competitive in future. For example, the Netherlands is integrating coastal defences with coastal wind power. Norway’s work on carbon capture and storage has higher environmental standards than are planned for the UK. China has more than 600 engineers working on hybrid nuclear; we have a small company that is trying, with China, to begin in this area. In these areas, there will be world expertise in the UK, but it may not be used in the UK if we are not encouraging these advanced solutions.

The UK Government are still not publicising as vigorously as they might on their websites what they are sponsoring, particularly from contractors. In some cases, where there has been some advertising of advanced technology by the Cabinet Office, it is rather strange that the relevant UK companies have not been mentioned. Noble Lords may have heard the remark that I have mentioned before and which many companies in other countries have made that if any small company survives in the UK it must be jolly good.

I will just touch on the indirect aspects of government procurement, which has become increasingly important and has changed significantly since the 1960s. At that time, of course, Parliament regarded it as essential for all organisations in government to have their own very substantial research programmes. Parliament said that the electricity generating board should spend 10 per cent of its turnover on research—of course current electricity companies spend much less that that. I was privileged in the 1960s to work in the world-class Central Electricity Generating Board laboratories. Americans used to come and were amazed at the high-level research that was being conducted there. I was also, incidentally, branch secretary of the local trade union, the EPEA, which shows how these things go together.

The United Kingdom then looked like France, the United States and the Netherlands today, with their world-class government and industrial laboratories. What is to be done? The Government, instead of having their own laboratories, now have to rely on ad hoc advice from consultants and universities, neither of which have the experience of unbiased government experts. The Government need to have a very rigorous programme of using external advice to make their decisions. Of course, this should include international advice. For example, DfID, having eliminated its own natural resources lab—subsumed into the University of Greenwich—now funds much of its advice from centres in the United States or relies upon NGOs such as the ODI.

I hope that the Minister will explain how this procuring of expertise is managed so as to get the best advice about major procurement programmes and the business of government and regulations. One fears that a few big names are often used. I will give noble Lords a little story. When I was head of the Met Office, we asked a very large consultancy company—let us call it WP; you might imagine who that was—to advise the Met Office how to improve its financial controls, which it said would require the installation of a new system that would cost £1 million. On this basis, the Met Office then asked companies to say whether they would bid for this. The company said, “Oh no”, and that it would now cost £2 million. Fortunately, this was the 1990s and the Government had an excellent lab called DERA, the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. We went down the road to them and we got the job done for half a million. Of course, DERA does not exist any more and doubtless you would have to go back to “WP” and get a very expensive answer.

I believe that we now need much more serious vigilance in real-time monitoring of such contracts, since we have moved to the present position.