Visas

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I agree with the noble Baroness that science alone will not solve the problems that we face, but science is hugely important, particularly given that we have a shortage of scientists in this country and a shortage of specialist engineers. That is why I think noble Lords focus on this area.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister’s definition of “the brightest and the best” extend to the brightest and best fruit-pickers?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I think that the noble Lord is conflating two issues. In terms of our future immigration system, yes, we want the brightest and best, but it must be a system that works for people coming here both temporarily and for work.

Homophobic Hate Crime

Lord Newby Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that those types of hate crime do not constitute aggravated offences. There are other types of hate crime that do not carry the aggravated uplift either. I said that the courts can pass the sentence that fits the severity of the crime that has been meted out.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, that was a hugely interesting answer but, again, it was not to the question. Could the Minister possibly answer my noble friend’s question?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I think I did.

Visas: Certificates of Sponsorship

Lord Newby Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am not complacent at all. I recognise completely the value that the entertainment industry gives to society and, of course, the economic value. We are working through a solution that will help those people entering through Ireland. It is predominantly an Irish issue.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I think the noble Baroness said in an answer to an earlier question that there had been no change in policy since 2008. If that is the case, can she explain why the experience of people organising festivals and of individuals trying to perform at them has changed so dramatically for the worse this year?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

As I said, because of the lack of immigration controls on certain routes from Ireland to the UK, there have been difficulties around the certificates of sponsorship, because there has been no immigration official to hand the certificate to. That is exactly what we are looking at.

Brexit: Customs Procedures

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

As the noble Lord will know, those are technical matters; it is officially for the Speaker in the other place to determine what is a money Bill and what is granted a certificate. On the importance of that Bill and debating it, he is certainly right. In the other place, the Treasury Select Committee and the Public Accounts Committee have been looking at and probing the system’s readiness, as they should. We published a trade White Paper, which had a tremendous amount of feedback that we have incorporated and learned from. We have also published working papers on future partnerships that we have shared with our European colleagues because we want to make sure that the borders work well together.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister implied in his Answer that because additional requirements were to be dealt with online, there would be no additional cost. Those of your Lordships who have done things online find this a somewhat dubious assertion. Does he accept that for small businesses even doing business with Norway now, which is inside the customs union, involves a significant amount of additional time and that if we are not within the customs union, and certainly being outside the EU, small businesses will need to spend much more time filling in customs forms online? For many, that will make the difference between trade being viable and not viable.

[Lord Bates]

We have to try to reduce that. The fact that manufacturing output is now in its fastest growth period for 23 years and unemployment at its lowest level for 42 years shows that businesses—the majority of which in this country are small businesses—are doing well in this environment. This was a particular consideration of the making tax digital discussion that we had: obviously, we believe that technology does not impinge on small businesses to a degree that reduces their competitiveness. We believe technology can enhance competitiveness, not reduce it.

Aid Reviews

Lord Newby Excerpts

Friday 2nd December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I thank the noble Lord for his welcome for the Statement and for the commitment the Secretary of State and the department have to continuing the fight against extreme poverty around the world. He asked a number of questions and I will try to address them.

The funding for bilateral country programmes is set out in the annual report, but for only two years. Obviously, the situations in question are fast moving and dynamic, such as what is currently happening in Syria and the Middle East. Therefore, resources have to be targeted where they are needed most. We will make clear our funding for future programmes when the annual report is published next year.

As to whether programmes will change or close, again, that will be driven by the priorities we face and the targets we have. We are rightly constrained by delivering on certain targets, not only by our manifesto commitments on education but by the sustainable development goals to be achieved by 2030, which will be a focus for us.

The noble Lord mentioned getting time for a debate. I personally support that but I am aware that I have by my side the distinguished figure of the Deputy Chief Whip. I am sure that, through the usual channels, time for these matters can be arranged.

On the point about exiting the European Union, we have, of course, a department for that. It is good to put on record and show up—it is a benefit of this process of bilateral and multilateral development reviews—who are the high performers and who are not. The noble Lord is absolutely right that among the high performers is the European Development Fund. Given that we have a global commitment to target disease, look at the humanitarian effort and reduce conflict, we will continue to work with our European colleagues in pursuit of that. The question whether that happens through that fund or through supranational institutional funds such as the UN’s, which also got a number of high ratings, will be dealt with in the course of that review process.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the challenges facing the world are no respecters of national boundaries. Will the Minister commit the Government to standing up against the retreat from multilateralism that can be seen both in our country and across the world and to defending global institutions such as the UN against the rise of isolationism?

[Lord Bates]

I do not recognise the retreat from multilateralism. We are gearing up on that—we are talking about the Global Fund and GAVI. In many of the areas we need to reach, we cannot work nationally or regionally, so it is essential that we work globally. We are absolutely committed to that effort.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Friday 27th February 2015 Lords Chamber

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 2, at beginning insert “Subject to the assent of the Treasury following each Spending Round,”

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I thought it might be to the benefit of the House if I reminded your Lordships of the rules of debate on Report. The Companion states:

“On report no member may speak more than once to an amendment, except the mover of the amendment in reply or a member who has obtained leave of the House, which may only be granted to: a member to explain himself in some material point of his speech, no new matter being introduced; the member in charge of the bill; and a minister of the Crown … Only the mover of an amendment or the member in charge of the bill speaks after the minister on report except for short questions of elucidation to the minister or where the minister speaks early to assist the House in debate … Arguments fully deployed either in Committee of the whole House or in Grand Committee should not be repeated at length on report”.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I make it clear at the outset that I have no objection to the Government committing themselves to the 0.7% target for international aid. As I said in Committee, I believe that the Government have both a moral duty and a national interest in doing what they can to promote the growth of the developing world, provided always that that development aid is effectively spent. My concern about the Bill is on two aspects. One is that since it does not apply to the present Government, its only purpose is to remove the freedom of future Governments on matters which it should be for them to decide. The second is that, uniquely, it seeks to exempt this public expenditure programme from the discipline which applies to other such programmes.

The purpose of this amendment is to address the second of those points. It is to ensure that this programme is subject to the same disciplines that apply to other public expenditure programmes which also have great merit, and where there are also legal obligations—programmes such as those on health, education and defence. When we read daily about the strains which are applying to those programmes and the challenges that face them in the years ahead I cannot see why this programme, whatever its merit, should not be subject to the same disciplines.

There is another reason why this programme should similarly be subject to the discipline of public expenditure rounds. In those periodic rounds, expenditure programmes are required to consider and make their case again to the Treasury, to face Treasury challenge, and indeed to make a case about why expenditure should remain at the same level or even be increased. As I also said in Committee, that is a very useful discipline and it is in the interests of the programmes themselves, because it helps to ensure continuous effectiveness and value for money. To give a particular programme exemption—to give it, as it were, a statutory entitlement to a sum of money—without the challenge of each public expenditure round is not in the interests of that programme itself or of the rigour which should apply to public spending.

It will not have escaped notice that the other noble Lords to have put their names to this amendment are all former members of the Treasury, and there is a reason for that. The Treasury has long experience of attempts to hypothecate particular types of revenue, or indeed, as in this case, of national income, to particular public expenditure programmes—and it does not work. We have always lived to regret it, and previous programmes have always been reversed. That is not something that we should depart from in this case.

The amendment proposes that the Secretary of State should indeed be subject to the duty that the Bill proposes, but that that duty should be subject to the discipline of successive public expenditure rounds. The fact that the Treasury has to signify its agreement is not a way of making the Treasury particularly powerful but to give an assurance that the discipline has been undertaken.

The nub of the matter is this: it seems incumbent on those who would oppose this amendment to make the case for why this programme uniquely should be exempt from the discipline that applies to other public expenditure programmes of great importance where there is also a moral duty and a national interest in providing first-rate public services. What justification can there be for dealing with this programme uniquely? That is the case that those who would oppose this amendment have to make. I beg to move.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Friday 6th February 2015 Lords Chamber

Amendments 4 and 5 not moved.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, in view of the fact that we have two Second Readings on the Order Paper, I beg to move that the House be now resumed to enable them to take place, and that the Committee stage of the Bill resume at the conclusion of the two Second Reading debates.

House resumed.

English Cathedrals

Lord Newby Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I add with great pleasure my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack—I can hardly restrain myself from calling him my noble friend—for providing us with this opportunity to reflect on the contribution that cathedrals make to our national life and how it can be sustained. For me, personally, it is axiomatic that it is a very important question. I grew up in the cathedral city of Winchester and was educated at the cathedral choir school. I now live in the cathedral city of Norwich, where we have two great cathedrals. Not only do we have the magnificent historic Anglican cathedral, where the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield was dean before his translation, but we are also blessed with the presence of the great Roman Catholic cathedral of St John the Baptist. Canon Duckett wrote to the 15th Duke of Norfolk to tell him of,

“our present great need of a new church”,

and ventured the exclamation and prayer:

“Oh, that God would inspire your grace to build one for us”.

And that is exactly what happened. George Gilbert Scott Jr was the architect—he was the son of George Gilbert Scott Sr, the architect of St Pancras station, which many people also believe to be a cathedral. The great church in Norwich was constructed between 1884 and 1910 in a consistently pure and beautiful early English gothic style, and was finally consecrated as a cathedral in 1976.

Between my beginning and my end, I had the privilege to represent another cathedral city, Newport in Monmouthshire. We were in the diocese of Monmouthshire, and St Woolos is the cathedral of that diocese.

For centuries, the cathedrals have shaped and expressed the spiritual, cultural and civic life of our country. They continue to do so and, as has been noted, they also contribute to our economy in attracting very large numbers of tourists. I am not a religious person, and it is hardly for me to talk of the spiritual value of our cathedrals, but non-believers also value the continuity, calm and beauty that the cathedrals afford us. The magnificence of the King James Bible and the cadences of Cranmer’s collects—on which the most reverend Prelate the Archbishop of Canterbury made some very illuminating remarks in a recent talk—are all part of the ceremony of our national life and our private solace. Of course, there are other vernacular versions, which no doubt rightly have their place.

Forty of the cathedrals of the Church of England are grade 1 listed buildings. Canterbury and Durham Cathedrals are world heritage sites. Our cathedrals are a fountainhead of music. After 60 years, I am still haunted by the extraordinarily beautiful anthem “Remember Now Thy Creator”—the words of Ecclesiastes set to music by Charles Steggall and sung by the choir in Winchester Cathedral—and uplifted when I remember the sounds of Stanford in B flat. When I was Minister for the Arts and Heritage, a brace of deans came to see me from Hereford and Southwark to share with me their anxieties about the cathedral choir schools and the problems of maintaining them. Sadly the Arts Council was deeply uninterested in their problem but the cathedrals found other ways and I understand that now, every week, more than 1,000 boys and 800 girls sing choral services. My successors did better than I did. I am pleased to say that the Government contributed £1 million a year, over four years, from 2008, towards the chorister outreach programme to enable choirmasters and choristers to visit schools. Some 60,000 children have had that benefit and around 1,600 teachers have been trained in how to teach choral singing. It would be good if, even in these straightened times, public funds could be found for a number of scholarships to enable children from poor families to attend cathedral choir schools.

The libraries and archives of our cathedrals are great repositories of the national memory. In Norwich, Camberwell College of Arts students have the opportunity of a placement in which they survey the bindings of the books in the great cathedral library. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, drew attention to the importance of cathedrals in sustaining heritage and traditional skills in this country and I pay tribute to him personally for all that he has done to support the maintaining of these skills.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham drew our attention to the impressive statistic that 300,000 children attended educational events at cathedrals in 2011. There is, I would think, no subject in the national curriculum that it is not possible to teach by using the resources that cathedrals provide. Of course many of our cathedrals—in fact I would imagine all of them—are engaged in outreach and Christian care work. I mention simply one example: the day centre for homeless and vulnerable people within the precincts of Sheffield Cathedral. We use the phrase “cathedral cities”. Cathedrals of this country engage and express the civic and the public realm. Again, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham told us that no fewer than an estimated £1.84 million people attended civic and public events in cathedrals in 2011. It is interesting that the Occupy movement decided that it would base its protests at four English cathedrals—not perhaps a very happy experience for all concerned; the jubilee celebrations more recently were a much better one.

In Britain, as the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler, reminded us, it is not our practice to nationalise our sacred and historic buildings—at any rate, not since the time of Thomas Cromwell. The cathedrals are independent ecclesiastical corporations and take responsibility for themselves. However, there are also responsibilities that should properly fall upon the community and the state. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, told us of the 2009 cathedral fabric needs survey, which found that more than £100 million-worth of repairs needed to be planned for over the next 10 years. I understand that the buildings division of the Church of England is only able to contribute around £750,000 towards those needs, so there is a decanal cash flow problem of formidable proportions in a country that is not getting any richer.

The cathedrals, as we have all acknowledged, provide immense benefits to the secular realm. What is the reciprocal responsibility of the secular realm? The communities, of which Cathedrals are at the heart, rise to this responsibility. Congregations and wider circles of local people are very happy to contribute what they can. I pay a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, who leads the fundraising campaign for Norwich Cathedral. He very much regrets that he cannot be here today because he is engaged in another public duty. The capacities of local communities to raise money to support their cathedrals of course vary. There is an inescapable responsibility on the state.

Over 19 years, English Heritage’s grants for cathedrals scheme contributed, I believe, £52 million towards this very important purpose, latterly supported, with its customary imagination and generosity, by the Wolfson Foundation. English Heritage has now been placed in a position in which it cannot afford to continue with a fund dedicated for this purpose. The Heritage Lottery Fund has also contributed £44.5 million to help the cathedrals since 1995. As our compatriots in these desolate times are consoling themselves by playing the lottery in some considerable numbers, we can anticipate that heritage lottery funding will be quite buoyant, so that is a source of hope.

However, it is not enough for the Government to rely upon the lottery to fulfil the public obligation. The Public Accounts Committee in 2009 urged that the Government should provide core funding for our cathedrals, on the analogy of the grant in aid that the Government provide for the national museums. If we think about it, it is strange to reflect that the National Railway Museum in York is subsidised by the Government to enable it to maintain free entry, whereas York Minster, without public support, has felt it necessary to charge. I admire the National Railway Museum in York but which of these institutions is of greater cultural importance to our country?

No doubt the Minister will say to me that we have a terrible problem with the deficit and that we have to cut it. But I would say that, when there is such a radical recasting of public expenditure, we need to think deeply about the proper responsibilities of the state. I hope that the state will accept that it has an inescapable responsibility to ensure that there is a decent public contribution to support our cathedrals. The public assume that there is. They would be shocked to know that there was not.

I do not want to overrun my time so I will not add to what other noble Lords have said about VAT. However, I hope that the Government will strenuously renew negotiations with the European Union to enable the anomaly between VAT on repairs and VAT on alterations to be removed. As the Government have graciously reconsidered some aspects of their recent Budget, I hope that they will also reconsider their very lamentable decision to increase VAT on alterations to 20 per cent because that will hurt cathedrals very badly, particularly when they come to develop educational or visitor facilities within their listed buildings. I look forward, therefore, to a fully considered statement of the Government’s view of their responsibilities towards our cathedrals when the Minister replies.

[Lord Newby]

For the benefit of the House, I remind your Lordships that this is a strictly time-limited debate and that when the clock says “10” that means that the time limit is up.