Inclusive Society

Lord Pendry Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Pendry (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to raise an issue which some 12 months ago would hardly have been considered a major concern within society. I refer to the mounting problem of loneliness, which the Covid-19 pandemic has led to. I hardly need tell that to colleagues in this Committee, who have in their own way suffered from the consequences of the pandemic, either because it has inhibited our ability to carry out the work that we would like to do or because of the self-isolation imposed on us.

Loneliness is indeed exclusionary and, as such, needs to be dealt with to make society more inclusive in the aftermath of the pandemic. The reports that have come out throughout the pandemic have all come to similar conclusions: more people worry that something will happen to them and no one will take any notice; people feel lonelier since lockdown; and more people believe that loneliness will get worse. These sentiments have recently been backed up by an Office for National Statistics report expressing concern at the increased levels of loneliness in our society. It found that the number of people feeling lonely has doubled. Similarly, the British Red Cross found that loneliness was on the rise, especially among the young in urban areas.

It was Aristotle who pointed out that we are social animals. We need to be part of the community. As we come out of lockdown, a priority of both national and local government should be to rebuild our communities by alleviating the causes of loneliness. The consequence will be the building of a more inclusive society at large. Before the crisis, most people would try to overcome loneliness by traditional means, such as exercising in gyms, swimming and other recreational pursuits. At least two of those have been alleviated by the easing of lockdown, but more still needs to be done.

The Loneliness Annual Report published in January also has some strong ideas to start tackling loneliness. For instance, over £30 million of funding has been awarded to charities tackling loneliness, including 1,157 awards to small or medium-sized charities supporting those who feel lonely and £4 million coming from the National Lottery Community Fund. However, I can see some fundamental flaws in that report; for instance, the causal relationship between financial difficulties and loneliness. By contrast, the British Red Cross highlighted the impact of financial difficulties on loneliness. I feel that this has been ignored by government and by our own cross-party group. The pandemic has hit employment dramatically and drastically. Those between 16 and 24 have been hit the hardest, where the reduction has been 300,000, with a figure of 200,000 for those below 25. Surely this should be a major priority for government now. I could expand on this and go on, but I need to hear that this is a problem for national and local government to counter.