Voter Registration: Students
Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government are doing a great deal. We have provided an additional £14 million over the last 18 months precisely to deal with help in those areas. Most of that has gone to EROs in local authorities, with the largest proportion going to those in areas with a substantial number of students. We have also just funded a number of groups, many of which work with young people and disadvantaged groups, to assist in this process.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that it sends at best a very weak message to young would-be voters if we do not equip them while at school to take their place as citizens in a highly complex society? Will he do something about the steady decline in citizenship education?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, that is a different question. However, as the noble Lord knows, I strongly support that and have worked to support it in government. I point out that young people are increasingly online. One of the things that government and local authorities are doing is to provide links to registration when you go into GOV.UK. For example, we have links for those inquiring about student jobs or paying tax, those looking for higher education courses who need to find and apply, those looking for tenancy deposit protection, a careers helpline for teenagers and so on to make registering to vote easier and to nudge people into thinking about it.
Iran: Ghoncheh Ghavami
Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
When the noble Lord mentioned an orange box, I thought we were getting into Mosaic dimensions. Of course, we thank him for his contribution.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, does my noble friend accept that it is a delicate business to seek to interfere with the judicial and legal process of another country? However deplorable we know it to be, the law of Iran is the law of Iran. We must therefore act delicately, let us say, in seeking to assist this young woman.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are certainly acting delicately. We all understand the delicacy of raising human rights issues with other countries. However, the human rights situation in Iran is dire. The periodic universal review of the Iranian position on human rights by the Human Rights Council, which is now under way, has raised a number of serious issues. Her Majesty’s Government contributed to raising those issues and we look forward cautiously to Iran’s response at the next meeting of the Human Rights Council in March 2015.
House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]
Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on bringing forward the Bill. I am sure she will not mind my calling it a modest Bill because she herself acknowledged that. Both she and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, referred to the context within which we are having this debate, which is one of unparalleled public mistrust. There is mistrust generally but, I am afraid to say, mistrust of Westminster in particular. It is idle for us to pretend that all the mistrust relates to the other place when we are caught up in its tentacles.
If one had a jury of good and honest men and women, unrelated to Westminster, who were to consider what the Bill is doing, they would be amazed that it is not already the law. It seems blindingly obvious, I suggest, that it should already be the regime by which we are here. We are here as an extraordinary privilege; I do not think that there is any greater privilege in this land than to be a Member of this place. We are not like Members of Parliament, who scrimp, save, work and year after year commit themselves to winning a seat in Parliament. When here, we do not labour under a set of obligations to our constituents in the way that they do, because we have none. Being here is an absolute privilege, and there comes with that a commensurate duty to police and regulate ourselves with absolute rigour.
Of course it is difficult—the law says impossible—for a man to judge himself, but we have to do our best, and there is no doubt in my mind that we should pass this measure not only without any reservation but with acclamation. My concern, rather, is that we are not going far enough, but I fully understand why the Bill is limited as it is, because we want to get this through before the election.
We also have to face up to the fact that there are some who do not want us to improve our affairs because they want a stronger case for a more radical reform, including election of this place. There is no getting away from it: they do not want accretional ameliorations. So I think self-reform is vital. This is the very least that we can do and it should be the first of many such measures.
Voluntary and Charitable Sectors
Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, like everyone else I thank my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market for instituting this debate. It is entirely my own incompetence that I am speaking in the gap, having failed to put my name down in time.
I have spent most of my professional life in the charity world. My firm, Bates Wells Braithwaite, spends most of its time in that world and it has been a privilege and a pleasure to have been so immersed in all that is charitable—large, small, all sorts, all conditions. I had the lucky chance last month to speak about charity to a senior Minister of the Chinese Government and her delegation. They were absolutely fascinated and, indeed, gobsmacked when I explained the range, depth, reach and historicity of our charity sector. I am hugely proud of it, as all of us are. In many ways it is our greatest achievement and gift.
However, it is in danger. It is in danger in terms of the values of our society, which has never been so commercialised, so self-centred, so—how shall one put it?—wholly immersed in pursuit of material things. Of course that is a huge generalisation, but I suspect all noble Lords will know what I mean. As to the values of today’s commercial world, we need only look at the shareholders—the ownership group—to see how totally divorced they are from the values of charity.
Compared with charity, the difference is striking. As we all know, charity exists—we just need to look at the law—for exclusive public benefit. That is not some idle phrase; it is the truth. Trustees of charities are unpaid. We must never underestimate the independence of charities. I say to the Minister, although I do not think he needs it said, that we must maintain that independence at all costs. We must also avoid pretending that actually we here in government can do much about the real, grass-roots health of charity.
As I have said, that health is not good. We have had indications today from different speakers that young people in particular are not taught to understand their place in this complex world of ours; to be citizens. There are some good recommendations in the CAF report. If we look at the examples that we set as leaders of our society, the rich—because they are glorified today—and the senior business and professional people are failing abysmally, compared with my years of growing up, to provide an example to young people and to our society about what our role as people of public spirit should be.
We are not walking our talk. We have only to look at the City now: I would be surprised if one in 10 main board players in the City or senior managers—including in my own profession of solicitors—was directly engaged in giving of their time. When it comes to example, time is more important than dosh. It is a tragedy, because not only does society lose but they lose. The joke about charity is that it is not charity at all: you get back far more than you give. Everybody would say that. The rewards of engaging with all sorts and conditions of men and women are simply incalculable.
Finally, I want to draw us back to caritas. Charity comes from caritas, which means love. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby and many others who have spoken have touched on that point. It is central. We need much more love in this society of ours.
House of Lords: Labour Peers’ Working Group Report
Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Labour Party for having brought its group together and congratulate it on the outcome of its deliberations. Like every other speaker, I cannot resist mentioning the affection in which I held Lord Grenfell. I am sure that he will read this debate and note how many noble Lords thanked him for his part in all this.
I would like to draw to the attention of the House the broad political context in which we are holding this debate and looking at these issues, which has not been much mentioned. That context is one of considerable crisis in this country, not just in the political sense. By all the yardsticks, at no time since the last war has politics been held in such confused and, I am afraid, low repute, and it behoves us to look at the issues we are discussing in the light of that. I share the concern about young citizens expressed by a number of noble Lords. The society that we have constructed is of such barbaric complexity that it is almost impossible to get to grips with it, particularly as our schools do not have a compulsory citizenship programme; in fact, it is being cut back as we speak.
I do not know about other noble Lords but, time without number, when friends and acquaintances discover that I am a Member of the House of Lords, they say, “Thank God for the House of Lords; it at least shows a bit of independence”. Much as I am naturally inclined to support an elected House—it seems on every conceivable, theoretical basis to be the obvious thing—as things stand in this country, and as the Commons is now, an elected House is not an option.
The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, gave some statistics about the occasions when we in the Lords have defeated the Government in the Lobbies. I obtained some statistics a couple of years back from the Commons research department, and they are even more striking than his. In the 11 years up to 2012, we defeated the Government 503 times. In the same period in the Commons, the Government were defeated six times—once in every two years. That allows production-line legislation, which in turn has led to us having the fattest statute book in the whole of the free world, which in turn leads to citizen perplexity, which in turn leads to the impossibility of normal, interested citizens being able to engage with what we do here, because the legislation flashes past in droves so fast that many of us sometimes think, “My gosh, has that already come before the House?”.
Preservation of our independence here is, therefore, the first and foremost priority. That is closely related to what many noble Lords have mentioned—most recently the noble Lord, Lord Cormack—the flight path of Peers getting into this place. Let me emphasise that I do not wish to denigrate the House of Commons or MPs in any way; they are a fine lot of people. I am talking about a system. The fact is, however, that if you come into this place having been a businessman, a doctor, a judge, a vet, a teacher or whatever, you have a complete experiential wisdom that, I am afraid, is not available to young men and women, however able, who have led their entire lives in the House of Commons.
Lord Maxton
Very few MPs spend their whole lives as Members of Parliament. I was a teacher before I became an MP. Others I knew were doctors, lawyers, miners et cetera. The range of experience in the House of Commons is wider than the noble Lord suggested.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
The noble Lord would have to agree that the trend—statistics have been published in the press in the past three days—is very much towards full-time politics, I am afraid. The number of MPs who have been in politics before they came into the Commons is increasing all the time.
As I say, independence is inconsistent with being a full-time Member of this House. I am anxious about the numbers game because if you are going to have only 450 Members, let alone the 312 suggested by my party, that is not consistent with people having a duty and presence here while continuing their careers in whatever walk of life. Those people are infinitely valuable to this place. Again and again, every day, we are beneficiaries of that experience which is brought into our arena, and is bang up to date.
I therefore hope that we will resist the temptation to have a specific number of Peers. I absolutely agree that we have to reduce numbers. For that reason, I am in favour of a cut-off at 80 years of age—which does not leave me with many years—and although I fear that all age limits are to some extent arbitrary, this proposal is a reasonable compromise and avoids any possibility of judging retirement on any other basis.
I should like to say a word about secondary legislation, which the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, referred to and is important. We should do more to make our oversight of secondary legislation, which is much greater in volume than primary legislation, more effective. Our inability to amend secondary legislation is weird. Is there another legislature in the world that prevents such amendments? It was only dreamt up to prevent the House of Lords being an obstruction to the smooth passage of Commons legislation, but that is not good enough. In fact, some noble Lords may not know that it is possible to put in primary legislation a provision that allows amendment of secondary legislation to be built on the back of that primary legislation. It has happened in only six or 10 statutes—I remember the India Act of the 1920s, for example. We should put in all major legislation, under which huge powers are left to secondary legislation, a power for Parliament to amend it. I also agree with the proposal for a three-month delay, which need not be at the expense of rejecting a piece of secondary legislation altogether. We have done that only half a dozen times in our history.
As a low and doubting Anglican, I cannot resist mentioning the reverberating debate about the Bishops. I do not see why—indeed, I see every reason to the contrary—the Bishops cannot be paralleled by the leaders of other faiths. I would like to see a leading Hindu or Muslim or two and so on. That would add to the richness of our debates. Finally, I cannot resist taking up the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who, I think, wanted to abolish titles altogether. That might never see the light of day, but why on earth can we not have an option to choose whether we take a title when we come in here? That at least would ease the feelings that some of us have.
Electoral Fraud
Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, postal vote fraud has always been there. I am old enough to remember constituencies in which representatives of at least one party would go round old people’s homes and fill in the ballot papers with the matron. I will not name which parties might have been engaged in that. That is not new. Postal vote fraud is a problem with which we are all concerned. That is why postal vote identifiers have now been tightened up.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, having correctly pointed out the appallingly low turnout for elections and, on top of that, the appalling low registration figures, does my noble friend accept that a major contributor to that parlous state of affairs is that so many young people feel outside the tent, so to speak, vis-à-vis politics, which is complex, and that people need some sort of education before they leave their schools? Will the Government do something about that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, has a Question on exactly that to be debated next week, which I look forward to answering. I must say that during the transition to individual electoral registration, the level of registration that we have so far achieved has been much higher than some of us originally worried might be the case.
Charity Commission
Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Barker for this debate. It is sad that it is so short. The issues that it seeks to cover are immense and deep, so I am going to have to be as selective as everyone else. I declare my interests, which are in the register: I have been a charity lawyer for 40 years, and I suppose I have had as many dealings with the Charity Commission in that time as anyone alive. I want to come to their aid, though it has many shortcomings. I have one point, which I know is a dangerous one to make but it is at the root of those shortcomings, of which I have been the victim over the years: it is grossly under-resourced.
The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, made that point, as did the NAO. It is fruitless for any of us to go on saying, “They must do this better,” “They must do that better,” “There must be better inquiries, more inquiries, more of this and more of that”. In its report, the NAO says that in the past six years the commission’s income has declined by 40% in real terms. None the less—like everyone else—it makes a list of recommendations, more than half of which require greater resources of men and women. The lawyers in the Charity Commission oversee more than 330,000 charities. Half of those are registered, but more than half are below the levels for registration. They all have to be registered. They are ruled, governed and led by volunteers. I hope I do not misconstrue what the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, said, but the charity sector is essentially and at its heart a volunteer movement. That is its ethos. That is why altruism is still the central legal purpose of charity. You cannot conceivably do what it is asked to do.
As I was saying, the NAO made a huge number of recommendations, over half of which need extra resources. The legal department, where I was, has only 10 to 12 lawyers. My firm, one firm of solicitors, has over 10 to 12 charity lawyers. What sort of farce is that? They do their best and on the whole they are jolly good, but they are pathetically underpaid. Any good lawyer can go out of the Charity Commission any day of any week and get paid two to five times more than they are paid at the commission. How can we ensure that it can therefore recruit the people that it needs, let alone extra people, to do the job, which—I could not agree more—is so important?
I end by emphasising how important all this is, and that the funds that I am talking about—the actual resources—are but a drop in the bucket compared with what the voluntary and charity sector does. Frankly, without the charity sector, this country would be in a profound mess; it is in enough of a mess. We live now according to money, sex and celebrity. The charity sector is wonderful counterbalance to the phenomenal materialism that engulfs us now, with 1 million unpaid trustees. Think of that: over half the adult population giving of their time willingly and lovingly in a country that is parched of those characteristics. I therefore, like my noble friend Lady Barker, do not emphasise the shortcomings of the commission. Of course it has them—I could give your Lordships 10 things that it could do. However, it must have more support and help. Without those, it is a load of hot air.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I welcome this debate. Given how important the charities sector is for the country, holding regular debates on aspects of charities law and charities regulation seems to be one role that the second Chamber might usefully consider as particularly valuable for itself. These are immensely complex issues, as we all know. We have inherited charities law as developed over the past 400 years, and it continues to adapt. I have spent some time looking at public benefit issues and think I am persuaded that if we were to define “public benefit” now, in statute form, we would find ourselves having even more legal cases about the edges of public benefit. I am therefore persuaded that allowing it to evolve through case law is very important, in particular, for those elements of charities which are concerned with religion. For the first 300 years of charities law, it was almost entirely concerned with charities associated with the Church of England or, after some time, with a number of non-conformist churches. That eventually included a small number of Jewish charities and, as we all know, it now extends over a much wider area, in which the questions of what religion and belief are have come to be very much part of where we all are.
I will take on the question of the Preston Down Trust case, which went before the tribunal. One of the things I think I have learnt is that using the charities tribunal, which was intended to save money and time, has now become a very expensive legal activity. It was felt more useful therefore to negotiate. We have negotiated an agreement which will be reviewed after a year and we will see where we are then. The noble Baroness is well aware of the intensive lobbying that there was on both sides, including by a number of MPs from within her own party—not always, I think, necessarily wisely. However, this is now in train, it will be continued, and a review will take place.
To come back to where my noble friend Lady Barker started, this is an important sector which has a gross income of £61 billion, although I suspect that contains a certain amount of double counting because some charities give money to other charities. It includes more than 160,000 different charities, although 1,000 are the most important and account for the largest amount of spending. As the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, said, the sector has become much more professional, and in certain ways some of the larger charities have become a good deal more ruthless, which is part of what I discovered in the extensive consultation I had with large charities over the transparency of lobbying Bill. It is a much more professional sector than it was. Reading through the evidence given to the PAC and others shows that the Charity Commission has been going through a change of culture from one in which you automatically assume that almost everyone in this sector is full of good will and altruism and that the role of the Charity Commission is to be helpful and offer advice, to one in which we recognise that a small number of charities, whether small or large, test the limits or are involved in actual fraud, and that the Charity Commission has therefore got to be a less trusting regulator. Questions have been raised by a number of noble Lords about whether it can do that and whether its resources are too small. Reading through the various reports and the evidence given, it is quite clear to me that if the new Charity Commission board and chief executive can make a strong and positive case for additional resources, the Government will look at it very carefully. Whether some element of charging for larger charities becomes part of that larger package may be for a further debate on another occasion, but we recognise that resources are now extremely stretched and that the clear regulation we need requires to be strengthened.
Digital transition is an important part of this, as the noble Baroness said. The Government have provided a further £500,000 of capital spending to the Charity Commission to assist in moving towards an easier digital openness strategy. As a trustee of a couple of musical education charities, I agree strongly with the noble Baroness that simple provision in digital form of accounts, declaration of public benefit and all the things that one needs to do, as well as advice to trustees, is exactly what one needs. When I went around the Charity Commission’s website last week looking for a simple definition of public benefit, it was not as easy to find as I had hoped and expected, so there are improvements to be made.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I reassure the Minister that he has not been deficient in his trawl of the website: it is just that there is no simple definition of public benefit. It is intrinsically complex.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That is one of the reasons why charity lawyers can make such a good living.
The Cup Trust, into which I have looked in detail, was raised. As has been said, clearly that was fundamentally a tax avoidance scheme. The Charity Commission decided that it could not take up the case. I am assured that HMRC has not paid out any money on the tax avoidance scheme. It issued guidance about such schemes at an early stage in the process and is now resisting paying the gift aid refunds that the scheme was set up to gain.
On the transparency of lobbying Act, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, on a number of issues, but I also disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. I have learned a great deal about the shift in a number of big charities towards campaigning, but campaigning has always been part of what charities have done. One of the most impressive discussions I had was with the dementia trust, which has managed by campaigning to raise public awareness of the importance of the issue—to raise the quality of understanding of an extremely important public issue. That is entirely legitimate and desirable in the public debate. The idea that charities should not have a campaigning dimension is something that I hope we all accept is not appropriate. Let me reassure the right reverend Prelate that the Act in no way affects hustings in the run-up to the 2015 election. A great deal of exaggerated concern was put out during the passage of the then Bill about what it might do. If you read CC9—I must have read it 15 times in the last year—it is entirely clear that it is not affected by that Act, and that churches will continue in their extremely valuable role in public education in this respect.
I hope that I have now answered a number of the issues raised. Why not charge charities? The question is out in the open. Needless to say, charities do not respond with much enthusiasm to that suggestion. The Government are looking at the question of how we provide the resources needed for regulation. I have also discussed public benefit. We all have a concept of public benefit. Happily, no one today has mentioned public schools—that is out there as well. Public benefit can be provided in a range of different ways. Case by case, you look at the sort of public benefit being provided, but it has to be public. The noble Baroness will know that, in religious cases, those religious bodies that do not open some of their facilities to a broader public and do not provide wider benefit to a broader public are therefore not accepted as charities.
On the question of executive remuneration, the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, said that he regretted that the new chairman of the Charity Commission had offered some criticism. Charities are in the public sector and in the public view, so they need the respect of their members and people who give money. During the consultation on the transparency of lobbying Bill, I remember being told by representatives of a large charity that it is important that the charity should maintain its reputation because the people who give small sums of money need to know that it has that reputation. That is part of the reason why charities need to be aware of the dangers of becoming overly professional and corporate. Some of our big charities have edged a little far in that direction.
On the question of co-regulation, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Best, the Charity Commission now has a clear partnership strategy and works with a number of partners. Incidentally, we are aware of the question of accepted charities and how to move towards a different situation with them without swamping the Charity Commission.
The question of a charities ombudsman has also been discussed. The Government are not yet convinced that the case has been made. The Charity Commission does its best to respond to queries from charities. Part of the reason why the Charity Commission has been swamped in recent years is because many charities throw a lot of queries for advice at it which get in the way of its compliance activity.
I hope that I have answered most of the points raised. I encourage the noble Baroness and other noble Lords to return to this question regularly. This is a large and important part of our social fabric and economy, and we need to be sure that it continues to command the confidence and respect of the public, politicians, government and financial accountants.
Standards in Public Life
Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Bew, and want to concentrate on the issue of the ignorance of our young citizens of this place and its workings and the impact of that. The report says:
“One particular cause for concern from the research is the number of people, especially young people, who feel disconnected from the political system and political parties”.
It says that the growth in the size of that group represents a challenge to us all. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and the noble Lord, Lord Norton, all referred to that.
Yesterday, the EU produced its first anti-corruption report. If noble Lords want to feel really miserable, they should look at that, because it shows that 64% of the people of this country consider that there is widespread corruption, from the private sector to the public sector and back. If noble Lords want to feel more miserable still, they should concentrate on the statistic in the Bew report to the effect that 41% of those polled in the youngest group—and a great number of people were polled—have no connection or sense of belonging to any political entity or party and are certain not to vote.
It is not good enough for us just to say that it is down to the Government. We are the legislature and we produce more legislation every year than any country in the free world: roughly 10,000 pages of new statute law a year. Much of that is beyond our comprehension, let alone the public’s. I am not making a trite point. If we go on as we are, the chances of the British public catching up with us are frankly nil. It becomes an exercise in cynicism. If you do not understand the basics of your democratic society—and, my word, they grow in complication year by year—let alone the law, how can you expect young people to identify with the system, feel ownership of it and want to contribute to it as active citizens?
I must declare an interest as the founder and president of the Citizenship Foundation. It is the biggest civic educator in the country. The situation is critical. Half our secondary schools do not even have to teach citizenship education. The rest have scarcely been Ofsted-ed. The numbers taking citizenship GCSEs are falling. The number of those teaching citizenship is falling. This is a crisis and we must start at root with our young people and give them the chance to be citizens.
Electoral Registration: National Voter Registration Day
Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, that is a huge question which engages—or should engage—all of us in political parties and beyond. We recognise that alienation, of the younger generation in particular, from conventional politics is a problem which has developed over the last 25 years or more and it will take 25 years or more to reverse that trend. It will take a whole host of initiatives including, I suggest, some changes in our constitutional arrangements.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, in light of the regime coming into effect in September, what will my noble friend the Minister do vis-à-vis free schools and academies, which do not have to teach citizenship at all? What will the Government do about the decline in teacher training in citizenship and the take-up of citizenship exams, given that this flies in the face of the ambitions of all of us that young people should vote?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are very conscious of the problems of teaching citizenship in schools. According to the School Workforce Census, in January 2012 there were nearly 9,000 citizenship teachers in publicly funded schools in England and Wales. I am going to duck the question of how far the national curriculum should be extended to free schools and academies.
Electoral Registration
Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I remind the House that it was the previous Government who started the move to individual electoral registration. I also remind the House that the number of people registered has been going down for the past 10 years or more. Research shows that the largest single reason for declining registration is a decline in interest in politics more generally, followed by a more mobile population and the greater difficulties we now have with canvassing. We all share an interest in raising the level of popular interest in politics and making sure that the turnout in the next election is not low.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, on the point that my noble friend has just made about creating an interest in and understanding of politics, will he please ensure that citizenship education of young people in schools is increased? At the moment, that is declining rapidly and it seems wholly counterproductive to his last remark that that should be so.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I entirely take the noble Lord’s point. Next week my right honourable friend Greg Clark will announce partnership arrangements with a number of voluntary organisations to encourage young people to register and take a greater interest in politics.