(10 years, 6 months ago)
Lords Chamber
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support National Voter Registration Day on Wednesday 5 February, which seeks to encourage new, especially young, people to register to vote.
My Lords, the Government are committed to doing all they can to maximise registration, including among young people. The innovation project, which the Cabinet Office announced today that it will support, reinforces the aim of National Voter Registration Day. For example, the funding awarded to the Scottish Youth Parliament will help it to develop peer education training and outreach programmes to increase democratic engagement and registering to vote. The Government also fund UK Youth, which will help to develop online tools for engaging young people in the democratic process, including registering to vote.
I thank the Minister for his Answer. I am sure that he will acknowledge, as I do, the dedication and the sometimes sacrificial commitment of a handful of youngsters, who are so concerned that only one in four young people votes in this country that they are having a National Voter Registration Day tomorrow, to try to encourage thousands more—hundreds of thousands, if possible—to register and become part of the democratic process here in the UK. Will the Minister consider evaluating whether what happens tomorrow, on the national registration day, could become an annual fixed event with full-scale government support?
My Lords, National Voter Registration Day is an independent initiative to which the Government give their full support, but it is not a governmental initiative. We are all aware, as we move towards individual elector registration and deal with the problems of underregistration, particularly among young people, that the Government cannot do it all on their own and do not have all the answers, so we enormously welcome the engagement of as many voluntary groups of this sort as possible.
My Lords, the Minister will be aware of the success of the schools programme in Northern Ireland in increasing the numbers of young people who are registered to vote. Will the Government consider introducing that programme more widely?
My Lords, the noble Lord will be aware that Bite the Ballot has developed a schools programme, Rock Enrol!, which is now also on the gov.uk website. We are encouraging schools to play that with 16 and 17 year-olds. We are also encouraging schools to continue the citizenship education programme; there will be a new element of that for the national curriculum this September. We are all conscious that PSHE has never been quite as good as we all wanted it to be. However, it is there and we very much hope that schools will be taking this further.
My Lords, the Minister has just announced that there will be a substantial grant for this purpose through the Government of Scotland. How will he ensure that it is expended in a politically neutral way?
My Lords, once you support other bodies you can never be entirely sure that they will do exactly what it was that you wanted. There are five organisations for which the Government have today announced funding. In addition to those two which I have mentioned the Hansard Society, in partnership with Homeless Link, Gingerbread, which works with young people, single parents and social housing tenants, and Mencap, which works with people with learning disabilities, have also received grants.
My Lords, the Church of England is involved in the education of more than 1 million young people and we want to play our part in supporting this. Will Her Majesty’s Government talk with the department to see if, in future, they will write not only to schools but to the 43 statutory diocesan boards of education, many of which employ full-time schools workers, and to dioceses? My diocese has an average of 30 to 40 full-time paid youth workers and many volunteer ones. We would be delighted to use our communication resources to support this sort of initiative.
My Lords, the Government recognise that they alone cannot do everything in this regard. We welcome conversations with all other organisations. I wondered whether the right reverend Prelate was going to promise that the Church of England would give sermons on the subject. Once, when I was a parliamentary candidate, I was taken by a young woman called Liz Barker—the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, as she is now—to the Methodist church in which her father had been a minister. The sermon came as close as possible to suggesting that the congregation might like to vote for me.
My Lords, the Prince’s Trust reported recently that more than three-quarters of a million young people in this country believe they have nothing to live for. How will the Minister seek to motivate those young people to engage with the formal processes of our democracy?
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.
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?
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.
My Lords, I welcome what the Minister said about grants to Mencap and Gingerbread because they target specific groups. However, what are the Government doing to target young people from ethnic minorities throughout the country?
My Lords, the noble Lord will know of Operation Black Vote, which has targeted people in that area. The statistics suggest that members of ethnic minorities are not as underregistered as some other target groups. However, young people of all groups are a problem and we all need to do as much as we can, locally and nationally, to cope with that.
Is my noble friend aware of the valuable work done by the Lord Speaker’s outreach programme in this context? I declare an interest as a member of that programme.
My Lords, I am well aware of that, and when I step down from this post I think that I might volunteer. I am not quite sure how people in our age group enthuse 16 year-olds to take part in the political process, but that is something that we will all have to deal with.
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Lords Chamber
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to take steps to resolve the West Lothian Question in the light of the impending grant of further taxation powers to the National Assembly for Wales and the forthcoming Scottish referendum.
My Lords, the coalition’s programme for government included a commitment to establish a commission to consider the West Lothian question. In January 2012 the Government set up the commission on the consequences of further devolution for the House of Commons. This commission reported last spring and Ministers are currently giving the report the serious consideration that it deserves.
I thank the Minister for his reply, but surely the SNP cannot be allowed to make a bet that it cannot lose if it fails to win the referendum. Why should Scottish MPs continue to have the right to vote on exclusively English affairs?
My Lords, this is not a new question. Some Members will remember Tam Dalyell very well. I do not think that there are many Members still in this Chamber who will remember the debates in the 1886 home rule Bill on whether Irish MPs should still have full rights once home rule had been granted for Ireland. This is a question that is not only to do with Scotland; Northern Ireland and Wales also come into it. The imbalance between the size of England and the other nations is important, but there is little support in England for the idea of a separate English Parliament.
My Lords, does the Minister accept that whatever the outcome of the referendum in Scotland, there is a pressing need for a more coherent, balanced and transparent settlement that is fair to England as well as the devolved nations? In the context of the report to which he referred, will he give a commitment that the Government will move forward rapidly, once the outcome of the Scottish referendum is known, to get changes made to resolve these difficulties?
My Lords, the noble Lord has not asked me about the Silk commission but he will be aware that we are still discussing the extent of devolution with the Welsh Government. He will also be aware that England is at the moment a highly centralised state. The Government are happily discussing with a number of cities devolution to major city areas within England. I remind the House that the population of the local authority area of Birmingham is slightly larger than the population of Northern Ireland, so this is an important question for England as well.
My Lords, I declare an interest as one who took part in these debates. It is 20 or so years ago since the question arose; is it not surprising that we have no new answers?
My Lords, some dilemmas never go away. We have an asymmetrical system of devolution in this country and we have to make it work. As someone who has spent most of his political career in the north of England, I have doubts about the imbalance of advantage within England itself, but that is another issue which we will debate another time.
My Lords, I do not have the advantage of my noble friend in remembering personally what happened in 1886, but I keep in close touch with Mr Tam Dalyell. I suggest that it would be very wise to take advice from Mr Dalyell on this issue. He still has the same vigorous intellect we all remember fondly and I am sure that he could bring some wise counsel to bear.
My Lords, I am sure that we all wish to send him our best wishes.
My Lords, I am very happy to pass on those best wishes to my good friend Tam Dalyell. However, is not the West Lothian question a misnomer? Should it not be called the English democratic deficit? Surely the way to deal with it is not to tinker with procedures in the House of Commons but to look at ways to resolve the democratic deficit within England, have more devolution within England and move towards some kind of federal, or quasi-federal, Britain?
My Lords, I think that I took part in my first debate on the question of an English Parliament at a conference in Edinburgh in 1968. It is not a new question for any of us here. The problem is that while you can begin to carve up parts of northern England into recognisable regions, once you get down to the south-west and the south-east there is not easy agreement within England about the sort of devolution you would have.
My Lords, while it is undoubtedly the case that the West Lothian question in its many guises deserves consideration, does the Minister not agree that many other constitutional conundrums cry out for resolution? In particular, under the Barnett formula, the Welsh people are unjustly deprived of about £300 million per annum. Looking at it in the wider context, is there not an overwhelming case for setting up a royal commission to look comprehensively into the relationship of this House to the Commons and the Commons to this House, and of Westminster to the devolved Parliaments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
My Lords, the noble Lord may be aware that the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons has, indeed, recommended the idea of a constitutional convention in a recent report. As someone who used to study the British constitution, I have to say that, on the whole, we have preferred to patch it, make do and then put a bit more in rather than attempt a complete redesign.
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one of the very positive aspects of devolving further taxation and fiscal power to the National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Parliament is greater fiscal accountability for those institutions? As a former Member of the Scottish Parliament, I agree with that entirely. Does my noble friend agree that the best answer to the old question of the West Lothian question is to address the issue that it is actually a Westminster question, and that the answer to the old question is perhaps the old solution of British federalism?
My Lords, that was exactly the question I was debating with Russell Johnston in Edinburgh in 1968. There is more appetite for fiscal devolution in England, which means restoring to the cities and local authorities a great deal more autonomy in collecting and spending money themselves.
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, this has been an excellent debate and we could have spent a great deal longer on it.
I am struck by the level of public alienation from conventional politics, which we find most of all among the young. I find it deeply frustrating that we are in this situation, partly because I spent some time as a member of the Government’s World War One advisory board, reading political literature on the first 15 years of the previous century. I reflect that we have a much less corrupt political system than we had then. Standards of personal morality among our politicians are far higher than they were then, but respect and deference have gone down.
There are many reasons for that. We are in the middle of a media war with politicians. The Leveson inquiry has not settled things down into a new relationship yet. A major trial is under way that will impact on our perceptions of the media, as well as the relationship between the media and politicians. We have some real problems to face. When I read in the report where politicians stood, I was cheerfully reminded of a conversation at a party in Saltaire the winter before last. A friend of one of my wife’s cousins asked me what I did. I said that I didn’t think that she wanted to know. She said, “You’re not a banker, are you?”. I thought: good, there are people who rank below politicians in public respect.
However, we know that there is a crisis in our institutions and in confidence in our elites—not just our political elite. The standing of the police will no doubt be much lower in the next survey than it was in the latest one. This is a general problem for all of us; it is a problem of trust. The question of how we re-establish trust in our institutions is enormous. There is also a sense that people have lost local community. They have lost the church as part of local community and that gives them a sense of loss of control. They have lost local democracy. I am struck in our big cities, such as Bradford, Leeds and Birmingham, that there are wards of 12,000 to 15,000 people where you cannot have a sense of contact between elected politician and the community that he or she serves.
Globalisation—the extent to which multinational companies come and go, and a sense that international organisations, be they the European Union for us or the United Nations for Americans, are somehow interfering in our lives—gives a sense of popular alienation. The question of how we deal with this ought to be one of our major shared concerns. It cannot be dealt with by the Government or political parties alone; it has to be dealt with by all of us, including the media, judges, the police and others.
I liked the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Bew, that Dutch MPs see public education as part of their role. That is something we all ought to think about in more detail. I also liked his remark about the gladiatorial style of our party politics being a major part of the public’s switch-off. Lots of other politicians watch Prime Minister’s Questions because they think it is fun but not very constructive. The way that we approach political and constitutional reform is pretty awful. We ought to bear in mind that, unless we see the process of political and constitutional reform as a way of regaining the trust of the public, we are wasting our time.
The noble Lord, Lord Patten, asked about the House of Lords and how that fits in. I am not sure how people see the House of Lords—I think through a glass darkly on the whole. Yes, we are too large; so is the House of Commons, but that is partly because the Government are too large. We are the largest collection of government appointees of any advanced industrial democracy, and perhaps that is something else that we need to contemplate. However, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Patten, that the Private Member’s Bill—the Steel Bill mark 5, or whatever it now is—which is now called the Byles Bill, will begin to correct the problem of lawbreakers subsequently returning to the Lords.
The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, asked the Government to review the decision to end this survey and I will take that comment back. I, too, read the Hansard Society survey on attitudes to those in public life. Part of the reason for deciding to end the survey of the Committee on Standards in Public Life was that a number of other similar surveys reach the same worrying conclusions, and the Hansard Society survey is clearly very much part of that.
The noble Lord, Lord Martin, talked of the importance of politicians being seen as serving their communities. One of the things that we have to combat is the sense that everyone, whatever they do, is doing it for their own benefit. That is part of the attitude that has grown up in the past 20 years. Economists bear a certain amount of responsibility for that with the growth of public choice economics, which argues that everyone is self-interested and no one has any altruistic feelings, as do the spread of libertarianism across the Atlantic and the disciples of Ayn Rand, who forget that the concept of public service—contributing to the life of the community—does motivate people. We need to reward those who are motivated by that. That is very much part of what we need to reintroduce in our public life because the cynicism of those who say, “You’re all in it for what you can get out of it”, is part of what has eroded popular respect for all our elite institutions.
My noble friend Lord Tyler talked about the power of money in politics as being part of that erosion. The power of money has always been there; it was just that previously it was disguised by deference. The extent to which we had mass political parties meant that they could claim to be funded by a very large number of people. I was rather shaken when I discovered, about two years ago, that in the previous year there had been more individual donors to the Liberal Democrats than there had been individual small donors to the Labour Party. The Labour Party had retreated to a position where it depended very heavily on union donations. That is a problem for all of us, and is one we all share. Why has our membership shrunk? Why have political parties ceased to be able to persuade people to share in contributing to political life at all levels, which is what we attempt to do?
The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, talked about the need to reconsider the language of politics. That is very much a problem for all our public educators, journalists and others. The war between the BBC and the written media is part of the problem that we currently face, as the noble Lord well knows. There is the sense that the BBC is trying to address public service broadcasting and is being attacked; that it is an inherently left-wing concept for the Daily Mail and the Telegraph is part of what has gone wrong. How we gain that sense of a shared discussion about limited issues is very much a part of what we have to do.
I suggest that part of it is that politicians have to explain to people the limits of what is possible. I come from a party that, much against my efforts within the party’s policy committee, attempted to persuade people that we could somehow abolish tuition fees. We could not; we needed to spend the money on early years and education. It was a mistake. Politicians in some parties are now trying to persuade people that we can tell the world that we want to get off and go back to national sovereignty. We cannot. There are things that people want that politicians cannot provide. We cannot put up pensions, provide everything free on the National Health Service and cut taxes at the same time. Anyone who suggests that that is possible is misleading the public dreadfully.
The importance of expanding citizenship education is an issue on which the noble Lords, Lord Norton, my noble friend Lord Phillips and others touched. Yes, it is vital. No, we have failed to do that, as have successive Governments over the past 20 to 30 years, and more. It is something that other institutions, such as the churches and local politics before local government was cut so badly, used to provide. We have to find a way of doing that and I thoroughly support the work of the Citizenship Foundation and my noble friend Lord Phillips in promoting it.
We all feel that good men and women are needed to hold political life and democracy together. We also recognise that to some extent the professionalisation of politics has undermined that. We have a problem with political recruitment and getting people into politics who will want to serve. In many ways it is sad that David Cameron’s efforts to bring a number of people from outside politics into the Commons through his A list has not been more successful. He was trying to find people from outside political life who would contribute to politics. We need a broad common effort by all political elites to rebuild public trust. That has to come from parties, Parliament the media and others—heaven knows, business and bankers. Until bankers begin to make their own proper efforts to reconstruct the trust of the common public in the financial system, there is a limit to what we can do to rebuild public trust as well. Most of all, we need to explain to and educate our public about what is possible and what is not, and to accept that we are not just politicians but, as the noble Lord, Lord Bew, said, we have to be public educators.
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Grand Committee
That the Grand Committee do consider the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Commencement No. 4 and Consequential Provision) Order 2013.
Relevant document: 13th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
My Lords, as noble Lords will know, there are a great many consequential orders in introducing individual electoral registration, and in changing some of our voting regulations and arrangements. There was a time when I knew almost nothing about this area; I am learning more and more.
There are three instruments for debate today. The Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Commencement No. 4 and Consequential Provision) Order 2013, brings into force, for parliamentary elections, provisions in the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 concerning the ability of voters to cast a vote at close of poll. The two sets of regulations—the Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2014 and the Neighbourhood Planning (Referendums) (Amendment) Regulations 2014—update the rules for the conduct and administration of local mayoral elections in England and Wales and neighbourhood planning referendums in England. They do so by applying or copying provisions, including those on close of poll, in the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 and associated secondary legislation, which made a number of changes to the rules for UK parliamentary elections.
In the main, the changes in all three of these instruments are intended to come into effect for polls held on or after 22 May 2014, which is the date of the European parliamentary elections and scheduled local elections in parts of England. The changes are designed to improve the accessibility and security of the voting process and to implement a number of recommendations which have been made by, amongst others, the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators. The regulations concerning neighbourhood planning referendums contain an additional provision on calculating the campaign expenditure limit for campaigners at a neighbourhood planning referendum. We intend that this should come into force on the day after the regulations are made. I will set out this change in more detail shortly. The instruments are part of a comprehensive package of statutory instruments which make various changes to the rules for conducting elections and referendums in the UK. The Government have consulted on the changes with the Electoral Commission and with others such as the Association of Electoral Administrators.
The close of poll order—the first order being considered today—brings into force Section 19 of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013. That section provides for voters queuing at a polling station at close of poll to be issued with ballot papers and to vote, despite the time of close of poll having passed. This provision addresses the concern expressed during the passage through Parliament of the ERA Act about the need for a mechanism to deal with any queues which could, in some circumstances, form at polling stations at close of poll, given the isolated but highly publicised instances of queues at polling stations at the 2010 general election. Counting officers and returning officers will of course still be expected to carry out planning for polls, to the same high standards as now, to ensure that there are sufficient polling stations and adequate staffing levels to manage the volumes of electors likely to vote in person and to avoid such queues forming wherever possible. The order also makes provision for persons queuing at a polling station at close of poll in order to return a postal ballot paper or postal voting statement to return it despite the time of the close of poll having passed. This provision has effect in England, Wales and Scotland only.
I turn now to the provisions in the neighbourhood planning referendum regulations and the mayoral elections regulations. I will first discuss the measures that are specific to the neighbourhood planning referendum regulations before turning to the key measures that are common to both these regulations and to the local mayoral elections regulations. The neighbourhood planning referendum regulations change the basis on which the campaign expenditure limit is calculated at these referendums. The limit is currently calculated by reference to the number of electors on the register published after the annual canvass in the year preceding the referendum. However, under the transition to individual electoral registration, a post-canvass register was not produced in 2013. We are therefore providing that in future the limit will be calculated by reference to the register as it exists at the beginning of the referendum period. This period begins at least 28 working days before a residential poll and at least 56 working days before a business and a residential poll that happen together. We intend that this provision would take effect on the day after the regulations are made and affect any referendum where the referendum period begins on or after that date.
I turn to the measures that are common to both the neighbourhood planning referendum regulations and the local mayoral elections regulations. Where any variations exist, I will point these out. Provisions on these matters were included in amendments previously made to the European parliamentary election regulations and debated by Parliament, in order to apply the provisions to the European parliamentary elections this May. Both sets of regulations update the forms used by voters, such as poll cards and postal voting statements, that are intended to make the voting process more accessible. The changes continue the work carried out to modernise the appearance of forms used by voters at newly created polls, such as the police and crime commissioner elections and the 2011 referendum on the parliamentary voting system. The revised material has been produced following a programme of public user testing and consultation with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, Scope, SOLACE and territorial offices and following discussion with electoral services suppliers. The regulations also provide for police community support officers to enter polling stations and counting venues under the same conditions as police constables. This will allow police forces additional flexibility in deploying their resources on polling day, and will allow them to provide a greater visible reassurance to the public.
The regulations additionally make the same provisions as those to which the close of poll order relates—that is, they provide that voters waiting in a queue at the close of poll, at 10 pm on polling day, for the purpose of voting may be issued with ballot papers to enable them to vote or may return postal voting statements or postal ballot papers despite the close of poll. Members of the Committee may wish to note that relevant provisions in the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001 apply to mayoral elections and residential neighbourhood planning regulations, so amendments recently made to those regulations will also apply to these polls. These recent amendments include: a requirement for 100% of postal votes indicators to be checked, rather than the current minimum of 20%; the extension of emergency proxy provisions to those absent on grounds of business or military service; and the removal of the restriction on postal votes being despatched earlier than the 11th working day before the day of the poll. Where relevant and appropriate, the neighbourhood planning referendums regulations make similar changes for the purpose of business referendums.
Overall, these provisions make sensible and relevant changes for the conduct and administration of mayoral elections and neighbourhood planning referendums, in line with those that have been made already for UK parliamentary elections. They are designed to increase voter participation, further improve the integrity of our electoral system and ensure that the processes underpinning our elections are both more robust and more relevant to the needs of voters. I commend these instruments to the Committee.
My Lords, I shall deal with each of these regulations in turn. I intend to be fairly brief. The Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Commencement No. 4 and Consequential Provision) Order 2013 is welcome. It seeks to deal with the, frankly, appalling situation of voters turning up at polling stations and being denied a ballot paper. None of us will forget the scenes at the most recent general election of angry voters being denied their right to vote. That was wrong and reflected badly on us as a nation and as a mature democracy.
I note that the Electoral Commission has raised some concerns. As a former member of the Electoral Commission, though, I say that the Government are absolutely right on this. The concerns are slim and are a near impossible eventuality. It will, however, be important to get the guidance right across the piece. Unfortunately, when you are dealing with hundreds of returning officers, thousands of electoral staff and thousands of presiding officers on polling day, there is a risk of someone getting the application of the regulations wrong. I very much hope that the commission and the Government will seek the expertise to be found at the AEA, SOLACE and the political parties on getting the guidance right. It needs to be crisp, clear, straightforward and useful to implementing these regulations.
We also have to ensure that police officers or PCSOs are available as we get to the close of poll. I do not want to see disputes outside polling stations about who arrived at what time and who did not arrive on time. I am aware that we have already passed a previous SI in respect of the European elections, and these SIs refer to the UK parliamentary and local mayoral polls as well as neighbourhood planning referendums. Can the noble Lord confirm that we will pass SIs in respect of local authority and parish council elections in time for this year’s local election on 22 May? Can he also tell the Grand Committee when the SIs will be laid for the local mayoral referendums, council tax referendums and PCC elections?
It is important that all these rules that relate to elections are kept under review. I was first involved in fighting elections 35 years ago—which I am sure noble Lords will find it hard to believe—and the changes that I have seen in that time have been enormous. The Government have a duty to ensure that the law keeps pace with the changes we see all around us. I have responded to a number of these statutory instruments in this House, during my time as a member of the Electoral Commission and as an official of the Labour Party for over 20 years. If there was ever an area of the law that needed consolidating and bringing together under one Act of Parliament, it surely must be the law in respect of elections and electoral registration. There are so many different aspects of the law in force in numerous Acts of Parliament, going back to who knows when, frankly, that it is confusing for everyone involved, in particular for members of the public, let alone practitioners.
I noticed in the amendment regulations that there are no numbers for the people standing in mayoral elections. I understand that that has been in force for some time—it is not new—but it had completely passed me by. Can the noble Lord tell the Grand Committee how taking away the numbers from the candidates helps people understand which candidate they are voting for? Normally you would vote for Gardiner number 1, Kennedy number 2, or Wallace number 3, but you now cannot do that because the numbers are not there. I hope that that will not be a trend in further SIs for other elections, particularly in local elections and where there are multiple candidates, as it would cause complete confusion.
I also note that the noble Lord made no mention of political parties. In parties, you have to have practitioners to understand elections—that is how processes work. The Government should consult all parties on these issues, not just leave it to the Electoral Commission, the AEA and SOLACE, great bodies though they are. There are also important views to be had from practitioners on the other side of the fence. I hope that the noble Lord can respond to those points in his reply.
I thank the noble Lord for those helpful comments. As he was talking about his long experience in local elections, I calculated that my first election campaign was a mere 52 years ago. I say that with particular enthusiasm because, when I said during Questions this afternoon that I recalled debating the question of an English Parliament in 1968, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, was kind enough to turn to me and say, “You couldn’t have been old enough”. However, I was. The second election campaign I took part in was the Orpington by-election, which returned Eric Lubbock, now the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, to the British Parliament, which was a short while ago. So we have all struggled with election regulations and their proper consideration for some time.
I can recall as a young man talking to someone who had stood in a by-election during the Second World War, who told me just how many regulations had not been observed under those conditions and the efforts which some locals took to ensure that some votes were not counted. Nowadays we have some highly effective and dedicated EROs and others at local level with whom we have to co-operate in close partnership. The noble Lord is quite correct to say that perfection is not possible in every single polling station throughout Great Britain, but efforts are taken to make sure that, as far as is humanly possible, the same regulations are obeyed in the same way throughout the country.
The Minister may be correct about the effect of removing the numbers from the mayoral election ballot papers, but one of the big problems that such ballot papers cause is that many people go to vote and put a cross or mark by the second column and not the first, and are then disqualified. A huge number of people do that. It may make the ballot papers clearer to remove the numbers—I am not sure by how much—but the amount of votes discarded is a real problem. Can the Minister confirm that there is no intention to remove the numbers from ballot papers for local elections? As he will know, in the local elections in May, particularly in London but also elsewhere, there will be a number of candidates.
On that, I must write to the noble Lord. I am conscious that some extensive research has been done on the best design of all the papers used. What is coming back to us is information on what is felt to be most friendly and easy to understand for the local voter.
I can now tell the noble Lord, through the miraculous device of having officials behind me, that the Government recognise the concerns that have been raised by parties and electoral administrators about the proposal to remove numbers on ballot papers at local and parish elections and the impact that it would have in contests in multimember wards where the voter is electing more than one candidate. We will carefully consider the concerns that have been raised before we finalise the form of the ballot paper at these elections. I therefore look forward to further conversations off and on the Floor with the noble Lord and others on this question.
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Grand Committee
That the Grand Committee do consider the Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2014.
Relevant document: 17th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Grand Committee
That the Grand Committee do consider the Neighbourhood Planning (Referendums) (Amendment) Regulations 2014.
Relevant document: 17th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Grand Committee
That the Grand Committee do consider the Legislative Reform (Overseas Registration of Births and Deaths) Order 2014.
Relevant document: 18th Report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee
My Lords, this legislative reform order concerns a minor amendment to legislation that would allow the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to centralise and modernise one of the consular functions it offers to British nationals overseas. It would allow a minor change to Section 41 of the British Nationality Act 1981, which would in turn allow the FCO to amend its own regulations in order to centralise in the UK the registration of births and deaths of British nationals which occur abroad.
Consular birth and death registration is not a legal requirement. It is an optional service available to those born overseas who could have an entitlement to British nationality at birth and to British nationals who die overseas. There is no UK legal requirement for a consular birth or death registration. Consular birth or death registration does not confer British nationality.
To go into greater detail, Section 41 of the British Nationality Act limits the regulation-making power in such a way that, in nearly all cases, the registration must be done overseas. Once both the British Nationality Act and the FCO’s regulations have been amended, the FCO will be able to establish a central consular birth and death registration unit in the UK, responsible for registering all consular births and deaths for British nationals overseas.
The draft legislative reform order was laid on 5 December 2013 by the FCO. It is proposed to be made under Sections 1 and 2 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. This allows a Minister to make provision by order for removing or reducing any burden resulting directly or indirectly from legislation, and for improving the delivery of a service.
The FCO conducted a 12-week public consultation, from July to October 2013, which was sent directly to 18 expatriate organisations around the world and was promoted both on the gov.uk website and on the FCO’s travel advice Twitter account, which has more than 47,000 followers. There were seven responses to the consultation; only three of these completed the survey’s online questionnaire, all responding that they supported the proposed centralisation of the service. Some respondents did ask practical questions about how the new system would operate. The low response rate reflects the fact that this is a relatively low-volume and non-essential service. Following the consultation, the FCO decided to proceed with its plans. It concluded that, although the change may mean that a few expatriates may incur slightly greater costs in the short term because of the need to post original documents to the UK, the majority will benefit from not having to travel to an embassy or a high commission to submit an application.
The FCO intends to reduce fees for this service once the new central unit is up and running. The unit will provide a more consistent customer service, be more effective in determining complicated nationality decisions and provide a more modern online application and payment system, in line with the Government’s digital by default strategy. Another determining factor is that centralisation will free up consular staff in the FCO’s overseas network, allowing them to focus more on their primary purpose of assisting British nationals in distress overseas, particularly the most vulnerable. This is completely in line with the FCO’s new consular strategy, which was launched in April 2013.
Following the laying of the LRO in December, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee confirmed its satisfaction that the order meets the tests set out in the 2006 Act. The committee was satisfied that the legislative reform order procedure is an appropriate way to amend the British Nationality Act 1981 and that the affirmative procedure is appropriate for the change proposed. The LRO is required to amend the British Nationality Act 1981 to allow the FCO to register in the UK births and deaths that occur overseas.
The current method of registration is inconvenient for many customers and inefficient for the FCO. This is partly because FCO staff are losing their nationality decision-making expertise overseas since the overseas passport service was transferred to Her Majesty’s Passport Office and centralised in the UK. The FCO plans to centralise this service into a new single-purpose unit by the end of 2014. Centralisation will allow the FCO to make efficiencies, pass on savings to customers through reducing fees once the service is up and running, reduce the risk of making wrong nationality determinations and give greater focus to its primary consular function of assisting vulnerable British nationals in distress overseas.
Consular birth and death registration is not, I repeat, a legal requirement. It is an optional service taken advantage of by a small number of people, but it is available to those born overseas who could have an entitlement to British nationality at birth and to British nationals who die overseas. Consular birth registration is a separate service from passports and immigration. It does not confer nationality and does not necessarily lead to the issuing of a British passport. It is solely an optional means of recording a local birth overseas with an official English-language document. To manage customer expectations of the value of a consular birth certificate, the FCO will include a disclaimer to explain that the registration is not a UK birth certificate, does not replace the original birth certificate issued by the authorities in the country where the birth took place, is not a certificate of identity and that the holder does not acquire British nationality through the registration.
Moving to an online system, with a common online application and payment procedure, will provide a more efficient and convenient procedure for customers. The IT will be ready and tested ahead of rolling-out centralisation from April. It will be a simple upgrade to the FCO’s existing Compass system, which has been in use for many years. The FCO aims to be fully centralised by the end of 2014. If a customer has no internet access then the application may be made at the appropriate overseas post. As registrations are optional and rarely time sensitive, the FCO anticipates providing this assistance in only a small number of cases. It may help if I remark that in 2012 the UK registered some 6,200 births and some 550 deaths overseas; this is a small number.
In conclusion, I stress once again that the proposed amendment to legislation is a minor one that will help the FCO to modernise and make more efficient the consular service that it offers to British nationals overseas. This will help the FCO to reach its major goal of streamlining non-essential services and helping our most vulnerable citizens in trouble overseas.
My Lords, in respect of the legislative reform order, I have a few brief comments. The present regulations oblige the FCO to register births and deaths overseas of qualifying British nationals when asked. These procedures are different, depending on where the events took place. I accept that it is a complex process which needs trained and qualified staff to undertake this work.
I understand that the passport issuing service has been centralised from around the globe back to the UK some time ago. I can see the merits of setting up a similar procedure back in the UK, with a unit of trained staff which can develop real expertise in this area of work. Can the noble Lord assure me that this is genuinely seen as a sensible efficiency measure and not some sort of back-door reduction in services? Can he tell the Grand Committee that he is confident that, in all cases, this new system will be better and that at no point will a British citizen living abroad be disadvantaged by moving to this new system?
Whether it is the joyous occasion of a new life being brought into the world or the death of a loved one, the official processes that have to be gone through should be done as simply and quickly as possible. In the case of deaths overseas, there will also be conditions from the country in which the death occurred that will need to be complied with. From the points that the noble Lord made, he has assured us that in no case would getting a body back from abroad be more difficult with the adoption of the legislative reform order. In respect of births and death, is this purely an optional process that people and families can use, or not, as they decide? If that is the case, I have no further points to make on this order.
My Lords, the noble Lord touched on a number of wider issues. On British citizens resident abroad, we are in a different world from 50 or 100 years ago. That is part of why we need to adjust. After all, communications are now infinitely more rapid and easy than they were even 50 years ago. My wife spent five years working in Florence, and we spent some time talking to the British consul-general in Florence, who used to play a large role in the days when a relatively small number of rich British people lived in Italy, out of touch with Britain and needing the help of the local consul. Now that they fly whenever they like from Florence airport to Gatwick, there are instant communications and we are all within the European Union—and long may that last—we do not need consular services of that type.
Part of what has shifted has been that we are therefore operating on a different level. The numbers of British citizens living abroad and, even more, the number of British visitors abroad has mushroomed on an astonishing scale over the past 50 years. I find it quite surprising how small the number of registered births and deaths from abroad has been, given that I have this image—partly from my elderly parents’ stories of holidays in Spain and Portugal—that lots of elderly people go on holiday to those countries and do not quite make it back afterwards. Obviously, this is not a wide-scale activity.
I would argue that this is a sensible efficiency measure, which allows for careful checks of people’s backgrounds and allows the local staff to concentrate on those who are vulnerable—including, of course, those who fall ill while abroad—those who are charged with crimes or indeed imprisoned while abroad and the families of those who die while abroad.
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Lords Chamber
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what advice they issue to Ministers about making public statements on allegations about the general behaviour of ethnic minorities.
My Lords, Ministers are expected to behave in a way which is consistent with the Ministerial Code.
My Lords, when Ministers, or officials on their behalf, refer to homeless Travellers as a blight on the community, or as having a negative impact on business, does this not reinforce local authorities’ failure to produce a five-year rolling programme, as required by the Government’s planning policy for Traveller sites? Will they desist from using pejorative language about Travellers and instead embody the PPTS in statute law, with a power for the Secretary of State to direct local authorities to grant permission for such a number of sites and caravans as he may specify, as already happens in Wales?
My Lords, I think the noble Lord is referring to a DCLG press release of last summer which used the unfortunate term “blight”; the word was shortly afterwards removed and replaced by “problem”. In the previous survey of Travellers’ caravans, there were estimated to be 20,000, of which 15,000 were on authorised sites of one sort or another and another 5,000 were on non-authorised sites.
My Lords, last week we commemorated the Holocaust, which encompassed the genocide of about one-quarter of the Roma people of Europe, whose violent persecution still continues. Should not our political leadership be more mindful of where prejudice and bigotry lead?
My Lords, we remember the Holocaust and that, I hope, although the Jews were the primary target of the Holocaust a great many others also died: nearly 2 million Poles, perhaps 200,000 Sinti Roma, gays, people with Asiatic features and others. The West German Government recognised the Roma dimension of the genocide in 1982; I understand that in 2012 a memorial to the Roma and Sinti who died in the genocide was unveiled in Berlin.
My Lords, what is the advice given about migrants? Can the Government publish the apparently mysterious reasons why the report commissioned on migrants by the Home Secretary has been shelved?
My Lords, I think the noble Lord is referring to the EU balance of competences review, particularly the free movement of persons report. In view of the considerable uncertainty about the impact of the free movement of persons this January, it was felt that we should postpone that paper until the third semester, this coming summer, to make sure that we had accurate figures.
My Lords, the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, concerns all democratic parties, and how we ensure that racists and extremists are pushed back into the political margins where they belong. Are HMG committed to ensuring that all their Ministers have a self-denying ordinance not to pander to the racists by echoing their messages for short-term gain? Secondly, how will HMG ensure that our laws to combat racism and xenophobia are reflected in the language that their Ministers and MPs use?
My Lords, the Ministerial Code is entirely clear on the way in which Ministers should behave. I am not aware of many other occasions on which such language has been used. Ministers are extremely careful about references to particular communities, migrants or others. We all understand how very delicate this area is.
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the sort of language we saw in the run-up to 1 January in reference to the latest wave of migrants—Bulgarians and Romanians—was wholly unnecessary and negative, and had an impact on the ground on the perception of people from other countries coming here to work? I mean words like “scroungers”. Does he agree that this sort of language has no place in our society? After all, are we not all part of the big society?
My Lords, I entirely agree but I think it is a question for the editor of the Daily Mail more than for any Minister in the current Government. There was quite absurd language and, indeed, some entirely untrue stories about extra planes, packed buses and so on that appeared in December, and which have not been denied since by the newspapers that published them. That is very unfortunate in an open, free and democratic society.
Could the Minister remind the House how complaints against the Ministerial Code are made and to whom, and how they are dealt with?
My Lords, they are dealt with by the Cabinet Secretary. The only other case I am aware of during the last year was where a Minister was thought to have referred to electoral fraud within the south Asian community in an unfortunate fashion. The Minister responsible apologised immediately.
My Lords, would the Minister not agree that his very welcome words about Ministers being careful about using any words that might encourage racism or xenophobia would be rather more believable if the Government were not opting out of the European Union’s decision on racism and xenophobia?
My Lords, the noble Lord makes an extremely strong point. I offer no further comment than that.
(10 years, 7 months ago)
Lords Chamber
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the current situation in Georgia.
My Lords, we are encouraged by continuing progress in Georgia in building democracy and embedding reform, including the well conducted presidential election that took place on 27 October 2013 and the initialling of Georgia’s association agreement with the EU at the Vilnius summit.
Following a period of cohabitation, Georgia now has a new President and Prime Minister, both from the same political coalition. The current political situation is calm but it will be important that parties work across the political divide in 2014 to ensure stability and that the rule of law is upheld.
My Lords, I thank the Minister. As he knows well, under the previous President, President Saakashvili, Georgia was a strongly pro-Europe country with a flourishing economy. The present Government seem a great enigma. Can the Minister enlighten the House with more detail about their political and economic policies? In particular, can he say something about their treatment of associates of the previous Government?
My Lords, the new Government are becoming a little less of an enigma as we get to know them better. There have been a number of exchanges. Their new Interior Minister was in London last week and a number of British Ministers have visited Tbilisi, including myself last year. We are coming to terms with the new Government, which sustain the European and Atlantic orientation of their predecessors. There are a number of worries about the treatment of former Ministers and officials of the previous Government. We are actively concerned with these and make representations to the new Government about them.
My Lords, there are still issues of division and conflict inside Georgia, as there are in Moldova and the Caucasus nearby. These have never been resolved and remain, in many ways, frozen. Do the Government believe that there is any benefit in the UK’s example of peaceful devolution being used to help move along some of the issues that have frozen these conflicts for so long?
My Lords, if it were possible to move towards peaceful devolution with Abkhazia and South Ossetia we would be very happy. The problem is that it is very difficult to get a dialogue going at all, although talks continue now between a new government representative in Georgia and the Russians. As he will know, the approach of the Sochi Olympics and the problems of the north Caucasus also affect Russian policy towards the south Caucasus.
My Lords, will the Minister tell us a little more about the relationship between Georgia and Russia and between us in the European Union and Russia? Russia has a crucial role to play but we hardly ever mention it. It is very hard to work out what Russian policy is in some of these areas.
My Lords, some years ago I said to one of my friends in Moscow that the Russian attitude to the Georgians reminds me very strongly of the English attitude to the Irish in about 1850. There is a certain refusal to accept that Georgia is an independent country, capable of governing itself. The new Government have tried to open a dialogue with the Russians. So far, the Kremlin has not been very open to responding to that dialogue.
My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest as the Church of England’s lead bishop on Georgian affairs. Last year, I had the good fortune to meet the outgoing President Saakashvili and, independently, some of his associates. I then met a number of members of the present Government. The antagonism could be felt in both directions and was seriously affecting stability and development. The previous Government had done some good work on corruption, tax collection and so on. If the economy is to prosper, the next thing that needs to happen is a building up of the infrastructure. Can Her Majesty’s Government assure noble Lords that the new Government will do that?
My Lords, on my last visit to Tbilisi I had lunch with MPs from both the governing party and the opposition party. That would not have been possible in Armenia or Azerbaijan. One has to put these things in perspective. Yes, of course we are assisting with developing the infrastructure in Georgia. The European neighbourhood partnership is putting a lot of money into Georgia and, of course, BP and other foreign investors are also assisting with the development of the country.
(10 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, some debates are more difficult to sum up than others, but this one is simply impossible. Let me start by thanking the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds for everything he has done as a Member of this House and for the many contributions he has made. I hope that he will not be losing touch with his diocese entirely, which I know well, having walked across substantial parts of it, and having canvassed in such different areas as the Gipton and Harehills estates in Leeds and the Duchy estate in Harrogate—to take two extreme ends of the social spectrum. Only those who have walked over the Yorkshire Dales know quite how extraordinary are the boundaries between the different dioceses of West and North Yorkshire: Bradford, Wakefield, Leeds and Ripon. I know that the retirement of the right reverend Prelate is partly an adjustment of the boundaries of those dioceses, which will relate more to the 21st century than to the early 20th century when they were drawn up.
Let me start by talking about the Government’s response to issues of resilience. I stress that it is not just about this Government’s response because we have inherited a lot from our predecessors. I hope that we have improved upon it, although as has been said, we are all conscious that Governments tend to think about the period between now and the next election. However, good government apparatus needs always to think about the long term. The Civil Contingencies Secretariat of the Cabinet Office, with the horizon-scanning that various members of the Cabinet Office undertake, always tries to look 15, 20 and 30 years ahead. That did not start with this Government; it is something that any Government should be doing.
When this Government came into office, I was struck by the list in the national security strategy—a document produced mainly by the Ministry of Defence—of what were thought to be the major threats to Britain. What was most striking was how few of the threats identified were primarily military. The first was international terrorism affecting the UK, with hostile attacks against UK cyberspace listed as the second of the really serious threats. It cited a major accident or natural hazard such as flooding affecting three or more regions or an influenza pandemic as the third threat, and an international crisis between other states which might draw in the UK and its allies, as well as non-state actors, as the fourth. Under tier 2 were listed the risk of major instability, insurgency or civil war overseas that might create a surge of terrorists or asylum seekers, a significant increase in the level of organised crime affecting the UK, and severe disruption to information received, transmitted or collected by satellite either as the result of deliberate attack by another state or through the impact of space weather. So the Government do try to think ahead, but the idea that any Government could ever be entirely coherent in their response to every possible contingency is asking for the moon, and possibly even for the sun as well. As I struggle to come to terms with the many different things that the Cabinet Office does, and which I find I am responsible for reporting on to this House, I have to say that this Government are doing a fairly good job.
On two occasions I have been briefed on the question of cyberdefences and the threat of cyberattack. I told my wife that when she visits Beijing in a few weeks, she is certainly not taking any phone other than one she might buy to go there and come away with. Again, the Government are well prepared for many of the risks that we face in this new world: the government structure is in place.
Of course, the Cabinet Office works in collaboration with the DCLG, Defra, DECC and a number of other departments, and in co-operation with local government because many local issues, particularly flooding or other weather events, are dealt with much better in the first instance by local responders at local level.
Incidentally, I am struck that no one has mentioned national or global population increase as a long-term source of insecurity. It evidently is a matter of concern to our population. It is certainly a source of potential problems if there is climate change in other parts of the world or, perhaps, due to the declining effectiveness of antibiotics in controlling disease, which is a problem with which the Government are already actively engaged.
I will make what is perhaps the party point that very few of these threats—indeed, almost none of them—can be dealt with by national action alone. National security requires international co-operation, both European and global. The defence of national sovereignty, about which some newspapers in particular seem to go on at great length, does not fit in well with protection against external, regional and global threats.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris, asked whether or not foreign ownership of key national assets is itself a potential source of national insecurity or threat. That is a very large question, which perhaps he would like to promote an entire debate on. All I will say is that it is very odd that the anti-European right does not focus on that issue when it is talking about the defence of national sovereignty.
The right reverend Prelate asked about UK policy on climate change. Again, UK policy on climate change has to contribute to European and global policy on climate change. We are engaged in an active negotiation within the European Union about how we and the other 27 member states adjust to climate change. The discovery of shale gas in the United States has not made that any easier because the higher price of energy in Europe compared to the United States is clearly a very major issue here.
I say in passing to the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, who doubts that we should depend so much on renewable energy from wind, if you walk around Yorkshire, you are always conscious that there is an awful lot of unused hydropower available. I have just had to keep my head very low in an argument within Saltaire village about whether or not you could put in an Archimedean screw on our weir, which we are now doing, which will provide a small amount of local hydropower. There are about 100 other weirs on the River Aire and if one were to harness all those weirs that we used to use in the 18th and 19th centuries for power in Yorkshire, we would provide a small additional contribution to renewable energy from land-based fresh water, which incidentally would be most effective at the point where wind power was likely to be least effective.
While I am on the international theme, I will quote the Peer Review Report from the European Commission, OECD and UNISDR on the United Kingdom’s resilience:
“Since the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) was enacted in 2004, the UK has continued to increase the resilience of society to disasters. Sophisticated mechanisms have been put in place to coordinate the actions of various levels of government and its agencies at national and local levels … In many respects, the UK resilience approach shows state-of-the-art innovations, including: large use of science to support policy … attention to business-continuity issues and full partnerships with the private sector … flexible institutional mechanisms and partnerships focused on delivery through voluntary approaches … professional and dedicated co-workers in the field of DRR”—
disaster risk reduction—
“throughout the country … national commitment to continue improving policy-making and pushing further implementation”.
Again, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that of course none of that started in 2010 but we are continuing to pay active attention to this extremely important issue.
It is not only the Government; there is a role for Parliament and for society as a whole in all of this. We talk about government resilience but of course there is also economic resilience and social resilience. There is a role for Parliament in promoting public awareness of challenges to resilience and of the need for the public as well as government nationally and locally to play a part in response. I suggest that Parliament could do more, through debates and committee activities, to scrutinise government on these long-term threats.
The noble Lords, Lord Touhig and Lord Brooke, talked about local communities, local government and the involvement of the public and charities. The revival of local government is one of the things that this Government have begun to make some progress on, although I have to say that we have been frustratingly slow in doing it. Clearly the city deals and getting people back into local engagement are part of the way in which we have to improve social and political resilience. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, on the extent to which charities should be as dependent on government funding as many became in the 13 years of the Labour Government. I have occasionally been shocked in Yorkshire by just how intensely overdependent some charities are on government funding. It is an unnatural dependence. That is a question that we will need to discuss with the charity sector.
In many ways, civil society more broadly has become too passive in Britain. I am a fan of the big society partly because it says, “Government cannot do everything for you. You have to help to do some of these things yourselves”. I remember the shock that my wife and I had when, during a very heavy snow storm some winters ago, one of the many young people who have stayed in our house in London over the years—because it is too large for us and we are away at the weekends—said, “Why haven’t they cleared the paths?”. We both turned on him and said, “Why haven’t you cleared the paths?”. This is part of the problem that we have across too much of our society. We need to get people back into the sense that they share in citizenship and in their local and national community. I will flag up a number of government programmes which help with that. The national citizenship service scheme pilots, as they still remain, have done a very encouraging amount to show to some young people from the deprived sectors of our society that they can, and would be happy to, help and work with others in building local community initiatives. I have also watched the arrival of the apprenticeship programme and have seen in Leeds and Bradford the extent to which young people who thought they were never going to work, have got themselves back into work and are finding that it is an enormously valued part of their life within the community.
The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, remarked how we have a coherent and cohesive society and have never had a revolution. As he spoke, I thought of what my father told me many times. When he was a sergeant in the Gordon Highlanders in 1919 during the miners’ strike and was sent off with a platoon to guard a Nottinghamshire mine, he was sure that the Sherwood Foresters were probably there guarding a mine in the Scottish lowlands—I think we got pretty close to it in 1919. The question of social cohesion and social resilience is one which we cannot neglect in Britain at present. A topic for another debate would certainly be whether the growth of the extreme inequalities which we see in our society, as well as the increasing ethnic diversity, weakens social resilience.
The ageing population, to which a number of references were made, also raises considerable problems. For example, I would say to the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, that it tends to make society more resistant to change and innovation. As we have seen, it also increases the pressure on all Governments to spend more on the old and less on the young.
I am sorry to interrupt, and I know it is a timed debate, but did the noble Lord imply that increasing ethnic diversity would reduce society’s resilience? If so, could he explain the point?
I merely said that it is a risk. It is a risk that we have seen over the past 20 or 30 years. On the whole, we have managed the diversity of British society extremely well, but it is not something—I say this again from my experience in West Yorkshire—that can be entirely ignored. It is one that we all have to be aware of. My noble friend Lady Eaton, a former leader of Bradford council, is actively engaged in Near Neighbours, which works across West Yorkshire in bringing those different communities together. We have to work on these things.
Animal disease was mentioned. Defra and the veterinary agency are dealing with scanning surveillance capability on the threat of animal disease. I assure the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, that a large number of scientists in universities, in government laboratories and in the private sector are working together on this.
The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, and others spoke about spending on flood defences. The noble Baroness was absolutely right: spending overall is going up, which is partly because, under partnership arrangements, private providers are increasing their contribution as the Government have squeezed the rate of their contribution. Those who say that there has been a reduction and those who say that there has been an increase are therefore both right depending on whose figures you take. We are all conscious that flood defences are a highly emotive issue. I would contradict those noble Lords who suggested that the Government are not thinking about the future of peatlands and tree-planting in the uplands. We had a Question on peatlands from my noble friend Lord Greaves the other day. These are matters where the Government, local authorities and water companies are working together.
I am conscious that time is running out. I have mentioned the flood mitigation measures which are already under way; clearly, more needs to be done. I was looking up what an earth bund was this morning— perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, already knows what that is—but experiments are under way to prevent heavy rainwater on saturated land going immediately downstream by holding it in artificially created water meadows. The Government are experimenting as far as they can in all this.
Would the Minister care to comment on my questions about the Flood Re provisions and the number of households which it is feared may not be able to apply for flood insurance under that scheme?
I have some notes on this which I have not had time fully to absorb. Perhaps I may write to the noble Baroness. I am conscious that the Government are engaged in active discussions on that. I know that it is matter of great concern to householders who live on flood plains. I think that about a quarter of the population of Wandsworth lives in houses built on the Thames flood plain. That is part of the reason why we need the Thames barrier. Their houses were built 100 years ago or more. This is not a new problem.
Many other issues were raised in this debate. They included the need for innovation; the advantages of greater globalisation—referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley—and the risks of globalisation in terms of undue energy dependence or undue food dependence. I always think that I am contributing a great deal to Britain’s energy security by the amount of food that we produce on our allotment. We have just finished our last courgettes from last summer and there are still apples in the basement, so we are doing our small bit for British energy security.
Perhaps I may end by saying that government can never anticipate all risks. When the great fire at Buncefield went up some years ago, my wife reminded me of a conversation that we had had with the head of the international energy programme at Chatham House when we both worked there in the mid-1980s. He had said, “I’m not terribly worried about civil nuclear problems; what I’m really worried about is what would happen if one of those oil distribution depots went up”. We had not a clue what he meant by it at the time, and probably very few people even in government were thinking about the potential for that. That was the largest fire in Europe since the Second World War, and a major national emergency that I suspect that we had not entirely prepared for. One of the problems that government faces is how much you insure against risks which would be severe but which are not terribly likely, and how far you insure against smaller risks which are more likely but less severe.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for his, as always, wonderful and extremely wide-ranging speech. I look forward to many more interventions from him in the future.