Asylum Seekers: Hotels
Lord Patten Excerpts(1 week, 5 days ago)
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Lord Patten (Con)
My Lords, it has become something of a trope to call the first day of the third week in January—that is today—Blue Monday, when people feel at their lowest and nothing much works. Sometimes people make that accusation of migration policy. When I got to work today, I was cheered, in the office where I am, to see that the people who run the building were making a valiant effort by turning Blue Monday into what they called “Brew Monday”. None the less, I think today is appropriate to debate the horrendous growth in the cost of housing asylum seekers in hotels. This is still a fast-growing practice and it represents just the very tip of the iceberg of migration policy in the UK.
A generation ago, the problem seemed possible to handle. Numbers were much lower, and they were easily divisible into asylum seekers generally fleeing persecution and economic migrants seeking betterment; no more. The escalating numbers all seem to claim to be genuine asylum seekers needing lodging, while the ever-lengthening queue waits to be processed. The situation we are in is a major state failure by all parties, for government, political parties, think-tankers and policymakers are nowhere near a solution to the situation that faces us, despite great efforts, which I recognise, much thinking and huge expenditure. In saying this, I make no partisan attack on the Benches opposite; I assure the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, of that.
All parties have had a go over the past 40 years, but when good ideas have emerged, such as using more redundant military camps, in the end, both major parties, Labour and Tory alike, have balked in the face of “No migrants in my backyard” protests. We might be a bit better off if we had not collectively balked at that. Of course, there have been all the headline-seeking suggestions about leaving the ECHR. Sure, some of those who make it to our shores might be easier to remove, but to send them back to where? It is a practical issue, and it is unlikely to stop migrants making the attempt in the first place anyway.
So, at the beginning of what I think over the years will come to be called “the long Parliament”, between now and 2029, it is absolutely right that my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower should have introduced this Question for Short Debate. I want to ask the Minister whether HMG now—I cannot quite see it and I am happy to be educated by him, as he has done in the past—have a clear plan, underpinned by verifiable, practical policies, to have at least reversed, no better than that, present trends by Blue Monday 2029.
Domestic Abuse: Victims and Survivors
Lord Patten Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Patten (Con)
My Lords, I take a pretty broad view of the phrase “domestic abuse”, for it includes not just men and women battering each other, using emotional abuse or battering children, but sometimes partners jointly abusing the elderly, the frail and confused men and women of some age. I have been interested in this for some while, and I can do no better than unashamedly borrow a phrase from a campaigning outfit called Hourglass: often, people of age are left out of the conversation on domestic abuse.
I hope that the Minister addresses it in his reply. If he cannot find time, understandably, to mention it in his wind-up speech, he may choose to write to us and place a letter in the Library of the House on what exactly the Government propose to do. A considerable number of elderly people have a pretty horrible time domestically.
How to reduce domestic violence is one of the great social challenges of the day; it is going to take time to resolve. The mention of the word “time” causes me to pause over just one word in the title of this excellent debate put forward by my noble friend, on which I congratulate her—“eliminate”. I wish that we could eliminate it, but it is never going to be an easy challenge when people have been violent with each other over generations.
Lastly, we need to take a broad view of how we deal with domestic violence. Of course, legislation, new orders and the panoply of political undertakings are very important, but education as a background is terribly important too. It is nothing like as important as stopping people being beaten up or abused, but I believe that social change is brought about by getting messages across, whether through the use of media or in schools. Schools cannot do everything, but it is very good for schools to address their attention right through to what I have learned to call the “manosphere” and messages being put across online through new mediums, which we have to use in subtle, non-specific and non-harassing ways. I am convinced that educational messages have a limited but very important part to play in the long term.
King’s Speech
Lord Patten Excerpts(6 months, 1 week ago)
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Lord Patten (Con)
My Lords, we are all lucky to have been here to listen to the notable maiden speech by my noble friend Lord Goodman of Wycombe. On the grounds of transparency, I must tell noble Lords that I have known him for many decades, and we are friends. Over those many years, he has developed his thinking, and his maiden speech is evidence of his very deep knowledge of those key issues of social cohesion and community integration, following, as we heard, 10 years as an MP of Jewish heritage representing an awful lot of Muslims. Faith and trust matter to both those heritages very much indeed. Then, much to my surprise and delight, I next saw him when he popped up as an interviewer for my favourite newspaper, the Catholic Herald, showing his extreme breadth of interest in these matters.
Before addressing the pressing issue of prisons, I want to make two points of a more general nature that are relevant to the topics of both today’s debate and every other debate on the King’s Speech. First, I heartily wish to hear no further—we have heard much too much of it—excoriation or abuse of civil servants as the “blob” or, worst of all, as experts. I rather like experts, particularly if they are about to operate on me surgically. Needless to say, there are good, bad and indifferent civil servants, just as there are good, bad and indifferent Ministers—I am tempting myself, but I will not go on—and good, bad and indifferent businesspeople and academics, but none should be caught up in the vulgar crossfire of culture wars. I would like to see all that pushed to the footnote of debate. Political culture wars are, to use the jargon of my daughter, so yesterday. We do not need them any more.
I would also like to see very much more transparency. I talked about transparency as I began my speech, and we have an awful lot of think tanks now that send us valuable information and brief us, but we have very little information about the think tanks that exist—who they are, why they are there and who pays for them. I am not suggesting the regulation of thinking—some sort of Ofthink variant of Ofwat—but what I would like to see very much is absolute transparency in where think tanks get their funds, because more and more they are moving to the centre of our political discourse: they are often quoted in the mass televised media almost ex cathedra, as able to make judgments on Governments and Oppositions. I believe that they are almost morphing into some new fifth estate. So I would like to know where the money is coming from that pays for the briefings that we get.
On prisons, so much has been said and will be said again that I do not want to go over the same ground, but I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, said in his admirable opening speech: prisons are key to our internal security and we should be very grateful indeed to all the prison governors, prison officers, prison chaplains, educators and others who strive, very often in filthy and disagreeable conditions, to make sure not only that dangerous inmates do not escape but that other inmates come out hopefully not wanting to go back inside again and, indeed—that old-fashioned but good word—are actually reformed.
I know there has been no proper evaluation since the two government departments that we now have were sprung out of the old Home Office back in 2007 and I would love to see that—from a think tank, perhaps, if I knew where the money was coming from. What I do know is that all the good-will words about the need to do good in prisons, to do good in crime prevention, are not worthless—but they have to be substantiated, and the sums of money that are needed is the one sum that dare not speak its name, which is how much it is going to cost. We have heard nothing of that from the Front Benches on either side.