UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I stand to introduce this Question for Short Debate on women, peace and security, but not because the subject is a pleasing one. No, I am pleased because the more we debate these matters, the more we place our commitments and concerns on the record, the more likely it is that women in areas of conflict, who desperately need our voices and our support, will grow in confidence themselves and will feel stronger and more able to fight off the degradations and humiliations all too frequently suffered.

I can also express my pleasure at the work currently being done by our Government. The UK leads on the women, peace and security agenda in the UN Security Council, which is a very practical demonstration of commitment to this issue. During the period of our leadership two further Security Council resolutions have been agreed. Security Council Resolution 2106 notes that rape and other forms of sexual violence in armed conflict are war crimes and calls upon member states to comply with their obligations by investigating and prosecuting those who are subject to their jurisdiction who are responsible for such crimes. Further, the resolution recognises the need for accurate information and monitoring and, importantly, calls for further deployment of women protection advisers. A second resolution, UN Security Council Resolution 2122, unanimously agreed in October 2013, looks at the UN’s own responsibilities by, for example, strengthening the Security Council’s commitment to deliver this agenda by ensuring UN departments provide effective reporting and increase women’s participation in conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes. It also reiterates the Security Council’s decision to hold a high-level review of UNSCR 1325 in 2015.

I am also particularly pleased by the Government’s commitment to the elimination of rape as a weapon of war, as demonstrated by the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative. In November 2013, when announcing the global PSVI summit, William Hague said:

“We intend it to be the largest summit ever staged on this issue. We want to bring the world to a point of no return, creating irreversible momentum towards ending warzone rape and sexual violence worldwide”.

These are, indeed, welcome words.

We welcome the positive moves taking place which we are all pleased about and which give us confidence on behalf of our sisters around the world. Now here comes the “but”. With any such complicated initiative with far-reaching implications, both across and between Governments, nationally and globally, there will always be room for improvement, both by better co-ordination and clearer resourcing. This is, therefore, a two-stage process with immediate and longer-term objectives. The need to focus, in the first instance, on keeping women and girls safe is absolutely understood. However, this is a problem based on power and women and girls will not be safe while they remain powerless. Plans which build on women’s involvement and participation in the decision-making processes in their neighbourhoods, regions and countries will contribute towards shifting the power away from men and towards women and will help to bring about the cultural shifts which are so badly needed.

The national action plan and the review document published in October 2013 both recognise this argument and there is government commitment to putting women’s participation at the heart of the new national action plan. What is meant by participation? I would argue that participation must be seen in its deepest and widest sense: at local, regional and national level; in policy development around access to education, healthcare, employment, finance, et cetera; in the drafting of relevant legislation; in constitutional change and in access to democratic processes which enable women to become involved in all levels of public life. I am not always a fan of quota systems but they can kick-start a change to traditionally biased bodies and the need for the presence of women throughout society is so great that quotas would be essential. Will the Minister confirm that Her Majesty’s Government’s negotiation and mediation teams will be at least 30% female, in line with agreed best practice guidelines?

We also need to see meaningful and robust consultation with in-country women’s organisations. That way, national action plans can best be developed and implemented and progress monitored to ensure the delivery of the NAP objectives. This work must also ensure that women’s NGOs are invited to participate in official meetings, particularly when those meetings are attended by Ministers or other decision-makers, where local voices can well make the decisions taken more relevant and more easily implemented. Involvement of local women’s organisations also informs and guides priorities; changes to so-called social norms can best be led by these organisations. Continued efforts need to be made to build on the in-country workshops which so helpfully informed the 2012 national action plan review and which should set the template for the development of the 2014-17 national action plan.

Turning to the question of funding, there needs to be the political will to allocate ring-fenced resources for this particular work, and there needs to be exemplar interdepartmental co-operation to make sure we get the biggest bang for our buck. Although significant sums have been allocated to various programmes, some run by DfID, some by the FCO and others through the MoD, there have never been any dedicated or ring-fenced moneys allocated to the national action plan. This can cause uncertainty and can also lead to a less than strategic approach. For example, women, peace and security criteria have been included in Strengthening Alliances and Partnerships within the Conflict Pool as part of the Building Stability Overseas strategy but it does not ring-fence funding for thematic priorities such as women, peace and security. Also, the Conflict Pool does not have a centrally driven approach and, although local influences are invaluable, an overarching strategy must surely be key to achieving the best delivery outcomes. With this in mind, how will DfID, the MoD and the FCO be sure that posts are implementing projects and that they are aligned to the principles of the NAP?

In summary, much good work has been and is being done. I have tried to capture the need to shift our emphasis away from dealing with the results of powerlessness towards enabling women to drive the agenda by knowledge, education, participation and influence. We need to ensure that the funding strategy enables local decision-making which fits into the overall strategy of the national action plan and that all departments involved in this project are taking an integrated approach. Successful outcomes will change women’s lives and, in turn, will provide security to the lives of all in areas that for so long have suffered conflict and a lack of security.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this is a rather tightly timed debate and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield has asked if he might speak in the gap. It would, therefore, be a help if all noble Lords could complete their speeches well before “6” comes up on the clock.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, for securing this important debate and for her tireless work in this area. I thank her and other speakers for the tributes they paid to the Government on the work that has been done, and note the comments about progress that is yet to come.

The noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, is right to say that the powerlessness of women is at the root of this problem, which is why the education of women, ensuring that they are independent, have bank accounts and participate at all levels of society is key. As she said that, I found myself thinking about groups that I met in India over the past few days. I could see that DfID’s support for women and girls was transformational, but also how far we have to go. It is in the light of this that we need to assess what is happening in terms of women, peace and security.

We firmly share the view so powerfully expressed in this debate that women must be at the heart of peace and security. They are central to efforts to prevent violent conflict overseas and to build strong societies yet too often, as speakers have said, women and girls are excluded from peace processes and continue to be especially vulnerable to violence, with dreadful consequences.

The UN estimates that at least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in their lifetime. Although women and children represent 90% of casualties of conflict, only 8% of participants in peace negotiations have been women. Of nearly 600 peace agreements signed between 1990 and 2010, only 16% contained references to women. Looking more widely, women are too often marginalised in society generally. For example, they account for only 21% of parliamentarians globally, and would not be at that level but for quotas.

There is international consensus on what needs to be done. The UN Security Council set this out in 2000, in its Resolution 1325, and in the six resolutions since mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser. The council called for action under four pillars: women’s participation in building peace; preventing conflict and preventing violence against women and girls; protecting them; and making them central to the provision of humanitarian relief and a society’s recovery from conflict.

The UK can be pleased with how far we have come across government to put women and girls at the centre of policy. As my noble friend Lady Jenkin mentioned, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary is leading an international effort to shatter a culture of impunity for sexual violence in conflict, building global momentum and taking practical action on the ground, including deploying experts to help in countries ranging from the DRC to Syria, and from Bosnia to Mali. The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, to which noble Lords referred, will take place in June, and 140 countries, international organisations and members of civil society will come together to discuss and agree what more we can do to tackle these terrible crimes. I will take back my noble friend Lady Falkner’s suggestion about the All-Party Group on UN Women.

My noble friend Lady Falkner flagged up those countries that do not have national action plans. I assure her that we are working bilaterally with such countries on security and justice reform, preventing violence against women and girls, empowerment, and tackling violence against women and girls in humanitarian settings. We are certainly encouraging those various countries to take that forward.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, mentioned Syrian women’s participation, and she will have noted that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has been urging that women are included in the discussions on Syria’s future, and we will continue to do so.

The Department for International Development, as many noble Lords will know, works very hard to try to prevent violence against women and girls. Its strategic vision for girls and women promotes women and girls’ health and rights, and their access to economic resources and education—very much building upon the ideas that the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, outlined. It builds women’s political and civil participation and puts women’s and girls’ needs at the centre of our humanitarian response. It makes the policy arguments, including at the UN Commission on the Status of Women and in the debate about what follows the 2015 millennium development goals. Noble Lords will know that the United Kingdom is pushing hard for a stand-alone goal on gender. My honourable friend Lynne Featherstone is the Government’s champion on tackling violence against women and girls, and has led groundbreaking work in this area, including on tackling FGM.

A number of noble Lords mentioned the Ministry of Defence. Its goals cover personnel, training and operations, as noble Lords will know. It regularly reviews the employability of women in the Armed Forces and aims to ensure that gender is understood in all that the MoD does. The noble Baronesses, Lady Kinnock and Lady Thornton, flagged up this area in particular. The MoD constantly reviews training and includes sexual violence scenarios in pre-deployment. Operational planning for new theatres will take into consideration tackling sexual violence. NATO has carried out a lot of work towards integrating UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and gender perspectives into its command structure. This is a template that the Ministry of Defence can apply. We are also looking at the example set by Canada in terms of training overseas, and are seeking to see whether that can be brought into the way in which we do things through the Ministry of Defence. In terms of senior leadership, which the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, mentioned, we have, according to this note here, two female air vice-marshals in the Ministry of Defence, so we are making some progress but are acutely aware of the challenges that the MoD faces. I am sure that her comments will be taken note of.

Action at home is equally important, whether through the Home Office’s work to end violence against women and girls or the Government’s agenda to see women play a greater role in public life. We want women to represent half of new public appointees by the end of this Parliament, and we have reached a figure of 45%.

The noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, raised the subject of quotas and whether negotiation and mediation teams will be at least 30% female. The Government are reluctant to set a specific figure on women’s representation, but we are pushing hard to improve numbers. I am sure that this will be kept under review.

The UN Security Council calls for member states to deliver on all four pillars through national action plans. The UK adopted its first such plan in 2006 and we will soon, as noble Lords mentioned, launch our third plan, for the next three years. My noble friend Lady Hodgson is right that this needs to be strategic and joined up across government for it to have its best effect. I read with enormous interest the independent review of the previous national action plan, which makes this point very clearly.

The challenge for the next plan is to bring together all the work that we do—we recognise that—and to ensure that we deliver both globally and on the ground and test our plans against what those in this field are saying to us. We will bring under one framework our work on the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, the strategic vision for girls and women and the call to action on protecting women in emergencies, as well as our work at the UN Security Council and at the Commission on the Status of Women. I hope that this reassures noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, that that is the approach that we are taking. My noble friend Lady Hodgson asked about the review of the national action plan and whether it will continue to be reviewed annually and reported to Parliament. We will continue to report annually on this, as well as to hold frequent meetings about it.

We are also learning from what appears to be working. DfID has a fund of, I think, £25 million—I do not have the exact figure in front of me—which is a research and innovation fund. My noble friend Lady Falkner asked about what we were learning; that fund is seeking to analyse what works and, therefore, what should be taken forward further. We are seeking to bring all this together; I think that that is vital. We will deliver multilaterally, through the United Nations, NATO and the European Union and now also in partnership with the African Union. We will put in place stringent monitoring and evaluation to assess the impact and outcomes of our actions and to capture the changes that our national action plan will make for girls and women on the ground. We will integrate women, peace and security issues into the work of the new Conflict, Stability and Security Fund. I hope that that reassures the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock.

I can reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, that there will be central guidance from the fund on women, peace and security, although our conclusion is that a ring-fenced allocation would in fact encourage programme designers to take a compartmentalised approach to women. We think that it is extremely important, as that review indicates, to look at this strategically and make sure that it runs right through all the various programmes, but I understand people’s concern and the necessity to make sure that is does indeed run though every programme.

We will also be consulting both in the UK and on the ground and we take very seriously the Associate Parliamentary Group on Women, Peace and Security and Gender Action for Peace and Security. They were instrumental in delivering a successful workshop at our embassy in Kabul in December and will remain invaluable as we plan and carry out more workshops before April. We continue to be very engaged as far as the position of women in Afghanistan is concerned.

As we prepare to adopt and implement a new national action plan, we can be proud of what we have achieved but we recognise that we have much more to do and that we need impact that helps to shift general attitudes in society, protects women and girls and secures a better place for them in delivering peace and security. What lies behind all this, as noble Lords have made clear, is gender inequality. They are right that addressing this is fundamental to ensuring that women and girls are at the heart of all that we do, everywhere and in everything.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we began this debate by having 62 minutes for a 60-minute debate, including the intervention in the gap. Thanks to the immense self-discipline of speakers—in particular, that of the opposition final speaker—we have now ended with three minutes to spare. Therefore, I beg to move that the House do adjourn during pleasure until 8.47 pm.

Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) (Amendment) Order 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) (Amendment) Order 2014.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I have been asked by others involved in the ERA process how many more electoral statutory instruments there might be to consider. I am pleased to report that in the case of individual electoral registration the preparations for implementation in June are well advanced and it is anticipated that there will only be a handful of additional SIs during the remainder of this year.

The two short instruments before the Committee today will enable some fine-tuning, getting IER off to the very best possible start, which I am sure noble Lords will all welcome. Perhaps I should say, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, will convey this to his colleagues on the Labour Benches, that some of them still seem to be very sceptical about the transition to IER, but so far this has been a remarkable success story, as the matching has been more complete than we had expected. That is part of the reason why we are continuing to adjust as we take this process along.

The draft order makes a small change to allow the start of confirmation matching to begin nearly a week earlier, from 16 June to 10 June. We hope and expect this to increase, from 64% to 83%, the proportion of unconfirmed electors receiving these invitations to register during July, rather than in the holiday month of August, which we expect to deliver a significantly better response rate. This is surely a common-sense piece of fine-tuning and well worth doing.

The second instrument, the draft regulations, will enable the testing of the IER digital service to continue for as long as may be necessary before it goes live, ensuring that the system will be able to do everything required of it once IER begins.

The Grand Committee will have observed that the order and regulations amend existing instruments, some of which were made only quite recently. Given that these are two more instruments, why do we need to make these now and add to the rather large ensemble that we seem to be creating?

To explain, the changes that we propose build on work carried out over the past year. The regulations now being amended to extend the testing period were made in March 2013 so that we could conduct the dry run of the process for confirming existing electors. In planning this, we had regard to the principle that the use of personal data for testing should be limited to a defined period. Last year’s regulations therefore provided for exchange of data to end around now.

In addition, not having a crystal ball, when those regulations were made we could not have known exactly what the testing schedule for 2014 would be, partly because the contracts with electoral management systems suppliers were yet to be concluded. However, a simple change to the dates in last year’s order will ensure thorough testing before we go live. When the dry run took place across Great Britain last summer, we got much better results than we had expected, indicating that at the transition to IER it should be possible to confirm an average of at least 78% of the electorate.

We were able to discuss with electoral administrators and the Electoral Commission options for making best use of the results of the live confirmation run. The solution emerged to allow the start of the transition to be brought forward a week from 16 to 10 June. The 2013 transitional provisions order was already before Parliament and to have withdrawn it to amend that one date would have caused uncertainty about all the other aspects of IER covered by the order, impacting everyone working on electoral administration across Britain.

In conclusion, these two short statutory instruments before the Grand Committee today will each, in their own way, play a further constructive part in the successful implementation of individual electoral registration in Britain. I hope that all parties will welcome this and I commend them to the Committee.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, it is good to be back here again to discuss these instruments with the noble Lord. To start off, the noble Lord made the point about some of my colleagues having worries about this, some of which I share. I worry about the speed of the transition and about what will happen if things go wrong. The Government have quite rightly put a lot of emphasis on voter fraud and on accuracy, but sometimes I feel that we put less emphasis on completeness.

As I have said many times to the noble Lord here and in the Chamber, on estimate around 6 million people live in our country who are not on the register but are eligible to be on it. I do not see much evidence that much is going on to get them on to the register. The Government should address that, and quickly. It is of equal priority to anything else that we are doing.

In general I support IER. Many noble Lords will be aware that I am a former member of the Electoral Commission, so I know about the work that has gone on in the Government and in the commission to get this right. However, I will keep pressing the noble Lord on the question of completeness, because it is important that all citizens are able to take part in our electoral process.

As the noble Lord says, the two instruments before us today bring forward minor changes, bringing IER into effect. The first order amends a previous order and brings forward the earliest date for the matching of existing electoral registers with data held by the DWP from 16 to 10 June. That is fine as far as it goes and I hope that the process will go smoothly.

I note in the order that publicity is to be undertaken by the Electoral Commission, which is welcome. I have some knowledge of the work that the commission is doing on that. However, I am not convinced that that is going to be enough. The Government will have to look at what else can be done. This is an enormous change that is taking place. I do not know what they can do; maybe the noble Lord can tell the Committee what other plans the Government have, or look at more plans. I certainly think that we should look at things such as specific funding to local authorities to do extra work. Noble Lords will know that EROs employed by local authorities do lots of the extra work, such as going door to door, and it may well be that additional funding is needed beyond what they normally receive. If at the end of this process there are fewer people on the register than there are now, it will be matter of much regret—in fact, we should aim to get many more people on the register. Perhaps the Minister could look at that.

How will the Cabinet Office monitor the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register throughout the process and after transition to IER? The second statutory instrument deals with the IER digital service. We have no issues with that, but I return to the general point that I made at the start of my contribution: with such a major change taking place, are we doing everything possible to ensure that those citizens who are not on the register now will be on the register in future?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments. I was conscious when I answered a question on this matter the other week of how long we have all been involved in this. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield asked me whether I had thought about the problems in Kirklees and I realised that it was the summer before last that I had been in Holmfirth talking to the Kirklees electoral registration officer. We have been at this, preparing for it, with local electoral registration officers and others for quite some time now.

I shared a lot of the concerns that others had at the outset and I have to say that I am impressed by the thoroughness shown by people at both the local and the national levels in working through to make sure that the transition is a success. We have in some ways the advantage of being able to learn from the Northern Irish experience, where there was a certain drop as one moved from household to individual registration, and we are working on several different fronts to deal with that. As the noble Lord will be aware, the biggest single reason provided by surveys for why people do not register is that they are not interested in politics and do not want to vote. That means that all of us in politics have to be out there arguing that it is in their interests both to register and to vote. National Voter Registration Day the week before last was an autonomous voluntary initiative, with which the Government were very happy to co-operate, to push that issue further up the agenda. We are co-operating with a range of voluntary organisations to get at particularly difficult, vulnerable groups who are less likely to register. We will continue to do that. We expect everyone to keep us up to the mark on this. We have allowed in the legislation for a final parliamentary vote to approve the transition after the next election, but so far, so very good and so much better than I expected, and I do not see it failing.

It was suggested that we might be more concerned about accuracy than about completeness. We are of course very concerned about completeness, which is why we are so pleased with the success of the data-matching exercise so far. We are providing additional funding to maximise registration; we have just provided an additional £3.6 million to be distributed to every electoral registration officer according to levels of electoral under-registration to help them with the costs of local activities for maximising registration. I remind the noble Lord that the boroughs that come up with the largest amount of under-registration are not those that have the strongest Labour vote or the highest poverty index. Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster come high among them, partly because there is such a rapid turnover in the population and people do not get round to registering while they are there.

We are providing funds to EROs because we understand that they are best placed to determine what local activity is most effective in maximising registration levels. We are not mandating how they make use of this funding; a great deal depends on local circumstances. I was shocked to be told some 15 months ago that in Wandsworth, for example, some 20,000-plus properties are now behind locked access, so that doing a door-to-door canvass has become a great deal more difficult. Those are not just council flats but the new blocks of flats along the Thames that sell for far too much money. So yes, we still face some difficulties but we are working extremely hard and providing extra resources and we are working with voluntary organisations to maximise registration and to make it as complete as possible. We hope to co-operate as actively as we can with all those concerned, including, of course, those within the Labour Party.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I hope that the noble Lord accepts that we all have a responsibility for getting people on the register, but the Government have a very special responsibility. Secondly, he has made this point before and I am getting a bit irritated: I have never, ever suggested that it is about getting Labour voters on to the register. It is about getting voters on to the register—I do not care who they vote for. The fact is that there are 6 million people in this country not on the register to vote. I want to get them on. That is what I am all about, as a member of the commission and as a Member of this House. I do not care if they are in Kensington and Chelsea and all vote Tory. That is absolutely fine. They should be on the register.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I apologise. I may indeed have been casting that comment at some of the noble Lord’s colleagues who have made that point very strongly to me. We all share an interest in this and we want to get as many people to vote as possible. We have no idea what they will do when they vote—whether they will vote for one party or another or even spoil their ballot papers—but rebuilding public commitment to democratic participation is a wider issue that we all face. I hope that we will all work together to ensure that this transition is entirely a success.

I am reminded to repeat, as I announced in the House during Questions the other week, that we have just awarded five organisations nearly £250,000 of funding to promote registration in their areas. So we are working on this and the transition is not yet over. But the noble Lord will know, as I do, that unfortunately some parts of the British public are not particularly engaged in either local or national politics, which is a problem that we all face.

Motion agreed.

Electoral Registration (Disclosure of Electoral Registers) (Amendment) Regulations 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Electoral Registration (Disclosure of Electoral Registers) (Amendment) Regulations 2014.

Motion agreed.

Chilcot Inquiry

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for that extremely constructive and helpful speech, which took a number of themes which I, too, wish to cover.

Perhaps I, like others, should admit that I am not entirely a neutral observer in this. I was my party’s defence spokesman at the time, and I was involved in the development of what was then Liberal Democrat opposition to the war. Part of my reason for being so was that I had been a relatively frequent visitor to Washington both before and after 9/11. I met there people whom I had known when I was a graduate student in the United States in the early 1960s and who had become some of the leading neo-conservatives within the Administration. It was because of what I knew of some of their underlying assumptions and of my participation in two National Intelligence Council-sponsored conferences in Washington, one in the autumn of 2001 and one in the summer of 2002, that I concluded that the Bush Administration were determined to go to war with Iraq against the advice of some of their own intelligence analysts who knew the Middle East well.

Having said that, I should say that this is a very different inquiry from the Franks inquiry. It starts with the examination of the Government’s Iraq policy papers in 2000, before 9/11, and concludes with the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq 10 years later. It therefore covers a much longer period than the short period of the Franks report and deals with a coalition war in which we were only a secondary contender. Franks was concluded in six months, but evidence was taken in private; the report covered only the period before the conflict; it did not publish many of the documents. I again declare an interest: I was one of those who reviewed it very critically on publication because it seemed to me that it had distorted the actual situation. The intelligence community had indeed got it right. The only mistake that it had made was in thinking that the Argentinians would not be unwise enough to try to invade the Falklands before the winter; it thought that it would do it six months later.

I also looked back at the Dardanelles inquiry, and reference has been made to the situation after Suez. What we now have with the Chilcot inquiry is a very much more thorough examination in which we are talking about several thousand documents—I must correct the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan: they have not been declassified by being released to the Chilcot inquiry. This is an inquiry by privy counsellors; they have access to everything that they wish to see, including intelligence documents et cetera. The question at stake is not access; it is publication.

I am informed that, when we see the eventual publication, a great deal will be published that it has not been the custom of British Governments to publish before. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, when you get into the question of how far you publish Cabinet minutes that appeared less than 20 or 30 years ago, clearly, whatever happens, you will be seen to have been setting a number of precedents. Another question is how far you publish documents which relate to conversations with some of our closest allies, whether or not you have their permission. There are here some very large issues of national policy and national interest which we all have to consider.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

I quote here from the Prime Minister’s letter of 5 November in reply to the letter of the day before from Sir John Chilcot. He states:

“I am aware of the scale of the task declassification has presented to a number of Government departments, and it is good to have the acknowledgement of the work that has been done by the Cabinet Office and other departments to deal with the disclosure requests, involving several thousand documents, including many hundreds since the summer”.

That seems to me to say—I may be wrong and I apologise if I am—that thousands of documents have been declassified, but I will be corrected.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I would distinguish between access and publication. The delay is very much about working through thousands of documents, many of them very lengthy, and deciding how much can safely be declassified for publication—how much therefore can be published, how much some documents should be redacted in part and whether there are documents which it would be safer not to publish at all. That has taken a good deal longer than was hoped, but it is now well under way and is what we are currently considering.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Is it true that the request by the inquiry was only made last June?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Sorry, which request?

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

The request to publish the documents set out in the letters.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am not informed on that matter. I know that, last July, they hoped to be able to start the process of Maxwellisation within a few months. That has been delayed because what happens in a Maxwellisation process—here again I have to correct the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan—is that those who are mentioned in the report will be allowed to see in full those elements of the report which carry their evidence and will be published. So they will not see more; they will see what will be published.

This is not, incidentally, a court of law. In no sense is this a legal inquiry. It is not a matter, if I may quote the noble Lord, of people against whom there is a case; it is a matter of those who may see themselves as being criticised in the report being given time ahead of publication to prepare their response to the criticisms. So, if I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, this is not a roadblock. It is, however, an obstacle course, and that takes a good deal of time and discussion among different government departments, which I regret has taken longer than we hoped. I very much hope that it will be concluded soon. The Maxwellisation letters will then be able to go out and we will proceed at the normal stately but sure pace of government publications to a publication of the final report.

I also raise the role of the Cabinet Secretary because I know that he has been criticised quite substantially in the press. The Cabinet Secretary is entitled to see all the papers of previous Governments. In the final resort, as we all know, the Cabinet Secretary only advises and the Prime Minister can always override, but I am old-fashioned about civil servants. Senior civil servants are servants of the Crown as well as of the Government, and they advise in their perception of the long-term national interest. That is what the Cabinet Secretary is doing and I regret that there has been some rather partisan criticism in the press about his role, criticism which I think is unjustified.

The question was also raised as to whether the Butler report covered intelligence, so that we do not need to take it again. The Butler report covered intelligence leading up to the war. This inquiry, which takes us several years past the war, may well need to address one or two other questions. I should perhaps also mention the Gibson inquiry, which, as noble Lords will know, provided an interim report last December on some of the issues of rendition and alleged ill treatment of British nationals and others. A picture of various different dimensions will come into that.

This does, therefore, take a good deal of time to complete. It has not been helped, sadly, by the illness of one of the five members of the Chilcot inquiry, but the other four are well under way and I stress again that Gordon Brown’s promise at the beginning that:

“No British document and no British witness will be beyond the scope of the inquiry”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/6/09; col. 23.],

has been carried out for the inquiry. The question that therefore remains, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, rightly points out, is how much of this it is wise to publish. That is what has caused the delay and it is what we are currently working through.

So there are questions about how fast we can work towards this conclusion and there are, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said, questions for the future. I disagree with those who have suggested that the report, when it comes out, will be simply a historical document gathering dust. I think that it will raise precisely the sorts of questions which the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, has suggested. What should be the conditions for future intervention? How much information should be shared with Parliament and with opposition parties in order to carry Parliament and the public with the Government? How should we handle the coalition aspects of interventions, given that it is highly unlikely that Britain will be involved in any serious military operations abroad in the future which are not in coalitions with others? There, I think, is where the debates will focus.

The Government are well aware of the sensitivity of these issues. I return to the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. What is a reasonable time before we disclose conversations with our closest allies and what precedents do we set if we start to publish Cabinet minutes of the previous Government, when others give their advice in Cabinet and elsewhere on the basis of full confidentiality? These are serious questions with which the Government are currently struggling.

I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, for raising this question. I assure the House that a large number of officials are working through those issues. The Chilcot inquiry and its four active members are still at work, and we very much hope to publish the final report within the foreseeable future. I will be pushing for that future to be as foreseeable as it can be.

Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Commencement No. 4 and Consequential Provision) Order 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the draft order and regulations laid before the House on 6 November and 18 December 2013 be approved.

Relevant documents: 13th and 17th Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 4 February.

Motions agreed.

Legislative Reform (Overseas Registration of Births and Deaths) Order 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the draft order laid before the House on 5 December 2013 be approved.

Relevant document: 18th Report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, considered in Grand Committee on 4 February.

Motion agreed.

Deep Sea Mining Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 7th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I start by saying that the Government give this Bill their whole-hearted support. I thank my noble friend Lady Wilcox for introducing the Bill for your Lordships’ consideration, along with her honourable friend in the House of Commons, Sheryll Murray, who brought forward this valuable Bill. Both of them have good links with the sea in south-west England—happier links than in the current conditions. I have had many conversations with the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, on the fisheries issue.

To some extent, this is a journey down Memory Lane for me. In the 1970s, as a young academic working on British foreign policy, I did some work on the British-Icelandic fisheries dispute and got from there into the question of international fisheries regulation. I then found myself invited to some of the conferences preparing the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and I remember hearing about manganese nodules and how they were very much one of the materials of the future. The future is clearly rather longer term than people in the late 1970s and early 1980s were thinking, but it is clear that, as some companies begin investigating whether one can mine asteroids, the deep sea will be rather easier than that, as we search for other resources.

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, efforts at global fisheries regulation, in treating global fisheries as the common heritage of mankind, have not yet succeeded in providing the level of enforcement of regulation that we all hoped for then. That raises a number of issues for how well global and regional institutions will be able to co-operate to make sure that, in these very deep oceans, regulations are observed. It is yet another area in which the idea that Britain on its own as a sovereign country, not co-operating with others, can do things—the myth of UKIP and others—is clearly idiotic. We have to work intensively with others to conduct the sort of research that the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, is talking about, and that is much better done in a European, OECD or UN context. That is the way in which any intelligent foreign policy has to go forward—a message that all of us who believe in international co-operation are going to have to make loud and clear over the next few months. We are better together in the European Union, in the UN and within the UK.

We have heard that deep sea mining has tremendous potential, but it is still potential. We expect that at some point in the next generation it will begin to play a very significant role in the world economy. We welcome this Bill partly as reinforcing the ability of the United Kingdom Government to be an active participant at the leading edge of such developments. The Government have already sponsored two applications to the International Seabed Authority by a British company to explore for polymetallic nodules in the north Pacific. We want to make sure that British business is well placed to take advantage of all future developments in deep sea mining. Britain already has substantial expertise in relevant technologies learnt through exploiting gas industries in the North Sea, in deeper and deeper waters. Much of this technology and the associated expertise could also be utilised in the deeper sea mining that is envisaged.

Last year, my colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills organised a very successful industry day to alert British companies to the opportunities which deep sea mining might in time provide for them. I am pleased to say that about 80 British companies participated. The economic opportunities which deep sea mining might open up are potentially very substantial. The Government have already taken action to bring them to the attention of British companies.

At present, we are only at the stage where exploration for minerals on the deep seabed is taking place. In due course, we can expect that the International Seabed Authority will move to consider exploitation—in other words, actual mining—of minerals on the deep seabed. The Government are, of course, committed to ensuring that the highest environmental standards are applied at the exploration phase, and even more so at the exploitation phase. The UK delegation made it clear during a first discussion of exploitation regulations at last year’s session of the council of the ISA that we would expect to see the exploitation regulations include the highest possible environmental standards, and we are determined to press this position. We also emphasised the importance of there being full consultations with all relevant shareholders, including, therefore, non-governmental organisations with an interest in the marine environment. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, that we will engage with the question of how we manage to enforce what is agreed as well as getting through the process of what is agreed. We certainly need to learn from the difficulties that we have experienced with regard to international fisheries.

During the debates in the other place, we were urged to look again at Section 5 of the 1981 Act. This section requires the Government, when issuing licences, to have regard to the need to protect the marine environment so far as is reasonably practicable. It is clear that deep sea mining cannot have no effect on the marine environment, but we can mitigate the effects, and that is what Section 5 of the 1981 Act already requires us to do. Therefore, the Bill does make amendments to Section 5 of the 1981 Act, but these are all purely consequential upon the fact that Scottish Ministers will now have the ability to issue licences under the Act.

However, in the light of the comments made in the other place, we have looked again at whether more substantive changes should be made to Section 5. We remain of the view that Section 5 is still adequate for our purposes. In particular, in carrying out their duties under Section 5, Ministers would necessarily have to take into account the terms of the advisory opinion from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea given in 2011. This made it clear that, in sponsoring applications to the International Seabed Authority, states must have regard to their environmental obligations. That includes specifically the precautionary approach set out in the Rio declaration. Therefore, we are satisfied that Section 5 is adequate as it stands and, indeed, that it is worded in such a way that account can be taken of further developments in the international law relating to the protection of the environment.

It was suggested in the other place that, since the ISA will shortly be considering the question of exploitation regulations, the Bill might be premature. I can assure the House that this is not so. On the contrary, it is important that the law of the United Kingdom should enable us to ensure compliance with the mining regulations once they are adopted, and that is what this Bill will do. The new Section 2(3A) will enable Ministers to include in licences a requirement on contractors to comply with any rules, regulations or procedures adopted by the International Seabed Authority. Therefore, the Bill is not at all premature. It is, in fact, very timely because it will enable us to give effect to the mining regulations as soon as they are adopted by the ISA. I am happy to reiterate that the Government are committed to applying the highest environmental standards in any applications which they sponsor, and will do all they can to ensure that the ISA also incorporates such standards in its regulations.

The Bill itself applies only to exploration and exploitation on the deep seabed; that is to say, the area of the seas beyond the jurisdiction of any state, including that of the United Kingdom. The Bill makes extensive amendments to the existing legislation— the 1981 Act, which has proved anything but temporary, being now of course more than 30 years old—and, in recognition of this, the Short Title will be amended to remove the reference to its temporary character.

There are two principal reasons why it was felt necessary to bring forward amendments to the 1981 Act. As has already been remarked, the first was that it was passed before the UK’s ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It is therefore not surprising that in some respects the 1981 Act does not fully reflect the requirements of the convention. However, the most significant reason for needing this Bill is that the 1981 Act covered only polymetallic nodules, or manganese nodules as they were known in those days. I have already explained what these are, and it was thought at the time that the 1981 Act was passed that they were the only mineral resources on the deep seabed likely to be exploitable. Now we are discovering polymetallic sulphides and cobalt-rich crusts; I am sure that all of us would instantly recognise these when we saw them. They happen to be a mere 3,000 metres down, under the ocean.

In the past few years, the ISA has adopted regulations about cobalt-rich crusts and polymetallic sulphides. I am told that cobalt-rich crusts occur on sea mounts in the western Pacific Ocean and there is already interest in exploring for them from China, Japan and Russia. I am pleased also that Brazil, one of the key emerging markets in the world, has just submitted an application to explore for crusts in the south Atlantic. As to polymetallic sulphides, these normally occur at the source of extinct volcanic activity on the deep seabed, as the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, said. There are now six applications to explore for these minerals, covering areas of the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean.

Obviously, I am sure all noble Lords will agree, the Government would like to have an open door to any contractor who wishes to explore for any of the mineral resources of the deep seabed. However, under the 1981 Act as it stands, we could not give a licence to a commercial company that wished to explore for cobalt-rich crusts or polymetallic sulphides. If a company came along with a request for the United Kingdom to sponsor an application to explore for either of these mineral resources, we would be obliged to say no. The company would no doubt simply then go to one of the other 160 states that are members of the ISA and seek sponsorship from it. To put it crudely, the United Kingdom would simply lose out.

It is for this reason among others that the Government fully support this Bill—indeed, they are enthusiastic about it. It demonstrates that the UK is open for business internationally and that we are keen to participate in what will, I am sure, in time—perhaps not in my time—be a ground-breaking and innovative industry. I congratulate again my noble friend Lady Wilcox on introducing this Bill and I hope that it will receive the unanimous support of the House.

Electoral Fraud

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hanham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the recommendations in the final report of the Electoral Commission Electoral fraud in the UK.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are carefully considering the Electoral Commission’s recent report and its three main recommendations and will respond in the coming months. We welcome the commission’s finding that electoral fraud is not widespread and agree that we should continue to consider ways to safeguard electoral integrity. That is why the Government are introducing individual electoral registration from June this year, which will help make registration more secure.

[Baroness Hanham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. I am sure that many Members of this House will welcome the proposals in the package put forward by the Electoral Commission to be introduced by 2014. However, it proposes to leave the introduction of one area until 2020: individual identification at polling stations. In responding to the report, will the Government consider encouraging the commission to bring that forward, as it is a very important aspect of preventing fraud?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government are considering that although I have to say that Ministers are not yet convinced of its desirability. We all know from the American experience that demanding qualifications and identification at polling stations tends to discourage people from going to vote and we do not wish to discourage people from going to vote. There is less evidence of personation at polling stations than there is of multiple registration—ghost voters being put on the register—or of postal vote fraud, so we are not yet persuaded that the response is proportionate to the problem we face.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not interesting to note in the detail of the report that the Electoral Commission is finally prepared to recognise that there are high-risk areas, which it identifies and lists, which are identifiable as having ethnic minority populations, where it believes that there is a particular problem? Is it not true that if the commission had been prepared to admit that four years ago, when the legislation was introduced, we could have avoided spending tens of millions of pounds on an individual registration scheme, which is a total waste of public money, and could have targeted that resource on the areas where there is a particular problem? We are wasting public money on a scheme which is utterly ridiculous.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I entirely disagree with the noble Lord on that. We are one of the few democracies that clings to the 19th century approach of household registration. Individual electoral registration is much more appropriate to the population we now have.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, given that my noble friend has already said that the most prevalent problem in the past has been fraudulent use of the postal vote system, is he confident that the returning officers, who will now have to check personal identifiers for every single postal vote returned, will have the necessary resources this year to deal with that? Will he assure the House that a proper and careful review will be carried out in advance of the 2014 elections to make sure that the system works much better than it has done in the past in this respect in preparation for a higher turnout, presumably, in 2015?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am informed that, in practice, almost all electoral registration officers are already checking 100% of postal votes, although they are currently required by law to check only 20%.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, coming back to the point raised by my noble friend and the issue of potential impersonation at polling stations, does the Minister recognise that in some places, particularly Birmingham, there are instances in which large crowds of men gather outside schools and intimidate some voters to prevent their going into vote? Does the noble Lord agree that that is what attention should be focused on and that the police need to be advised that they should take action when it occurs?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I do a lot of my politics in Bradford, as the noble Lord knows, and I am well aware of the differences between the local problems we have with the voting system. One of the reasons that the new regulations allow for police community support officers to be present in polling stations is precisely to deal with that sort of occasional outbreak of intimidation. There is, as we all know, a problem of registration fraud—ghost voters being put on the register—but, again, it is localised. As I am sure all noble Lords know, this is much more of a problem for local elections than for parliamentary elections.

[Lord Glentoran (Con)]

Is the noble Lord aware that personal identification is now in operation in Northern Ireland, has been for some time, and is, I believe, a success?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am well aware of that. Indeed, the Electoral Commission looked at the Northern Ireland scheme in particular and has estimated that if we were to extend it to Great Britain, with likely take-up, based on the Northern Ireland model, of 10%—mostly young voters—it would cost some £28 million.

[The Lord Bishop of Wakefield]

My Lords, following the question of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, about areas of high risk, in our diocese of Wakefield the local authority of Kirklees has been pinpointed as just one such area for the sort of reasons that the noble Lord mentioned. The local authority is working hard with a number of agencies to ensure the probity of the next elections. Will the Minister say what sort of support will be given to councils to enable them to fulfil this important duty?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I was discussing that exact question with the electoral registration officer of Kirklees the summer before last, including the authority’s co-operation with the police. We all know that there are pockets of problems within Kirklees. It is a matter for local co-operation with the police, who are well aware of this. We are also well aware that there is a certain tendency in some local elections for candidates to use allegations of electoral fraud against each other as part of the local campaign. That is one of the reasons why the police are occasionally a little sceptical about allegations being thrown around during the campaign.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the Electoral Commission is responding to complaints from members of the public about the Scottish Government using taxpayers’ money for propaganda purposes, as part of the independence referendum campaign, by saying that it is not the commission’s responsibility? Does that not make a mockery of having election expenses and rules for expenditure in referendum campaigns? What is the head of the Civil Service going to do about this continuing abuse?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am well aware of this; indeed, the noble Lord has made sure that I am well aware of it. I am conscious that the Cabinet Office owes him a letter, which is in process, in reply to his previous Question.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that this whole debate is riddled with political correctness? For the great majority in the United Kingdom, there is no problem whatever of electoral fraud. Why are we wasting tens of millions of pounds?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am not quite as confident that there is no problem of electoral fraud outside the South Asian Muslim community, which I think the noble Lord was getting close to saying. As a young Liberal, I listened to many people talking about quite considerable electoral fraud among the white population during elections held in the 1940s and 1950s. I am not entirely sure that it has completely disappeared today.

Social Mobility

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an invaluable debate. I was reading the debate that we had under the leadership of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, some six months ago, and I hope that we shall have another one in another six months’ time because there are some really serious issues that we all have to struggle with.

The noble Lord, Lord McFall, compared the British position to the American position. I recognise the comparison but I also recognise the differences. The American Administration are not attempting to push through a social mobility strategy as we are doing. Indeed, the inequalities in the United States, in economic and other terms, are much wider than they are in Britain. At least we have a consensus across all parties in Britain that we have to tackle what has been a long-term problem with a long-term response. The noble Lord mentioned the former Prime Minister John Major as well as Harold Macmillan; this issue has developed over the past 25 to 30 years and it will take 25 to 30 years to cope with it, against the headwinds of continuing economic and technological changes, both within Britain and abroad. After all, it is partly a result of global economic trends, with the collapse of the old mass-manufacturing industry that supported the skilled working class in stable working-class communities, with the institutions that held those communities together, such as the chapel, the trade union and the Workers’ Educational Association—a co-operative, heaven knows—which have also decayed with the decay of the economic structures that held them all together. I see the right reverend Prelate nodding. I can say from the point of view of West Yorkshire that the church has survived more successfully than many of the non-conformist churches in some of those areas, and I am very grateful for that.

[Lord Giddens]

The time when those organisations were dominant was a time when mobility was lower than it was later, for the reasons that I mentioned.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Yes, there was selective mobility, and that is part of the issue that we have. The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, talked about her father and her grandmother. My parents-in-law were the youngest in a working class family and their eldest brothers and sisters paid for them to stay at school through Bradford grammar school and university. There was in those years very small-scale social mobility for a small minority of the bright poor who got out, so to speak.

[Lord Giddens]

That is much more like it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Precisely. Britain’s situation also reflects the historic anomaly, of which I am very conscious as I have just come from a meeting of the advisory board on the centenary of World War I and have been reading into early 20th century history, that we have much more continuity of social structures over the past 150 years than many of our comparators. We still have the structure of private schools, which supported the Empire. We still have an unelected House of Lords. We still have a social hierarchy which is remarkably resistant to change, whereas in Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and, to some extent, also in France and Italy those old structures were swept away, which made it easier to have a more mobile and mutually respecting society.

The coalition Government’s social mobility agenda is something which we see as a cross-party, cross-government exercise, and it starts from the assumption that there has to be a partnership between economy, society and state—we have to get all those things in balance. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, that we shall be working on that against a number of very difficult global economic trends and against the challenge of the next round of economic and technological change, which may well sweep away a very large number of basic white-collar jobs, thus raising all sorts of issues about moving towards a society in which there are a number of extremely successful, very well paid people and, at the other end, a number of poorly paid, poorly skilled people. Dealing with that will take quite a lot of effort in our turn.

I should tell the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, that when I was an undergraduate, my most inspirational teacher was a graduate student called John Goldthorpe, so I have a great deal of respect for everything that John has written and continues to write. However, as the noble Lord knows well, perfect equality is not achievable; a reduction in the degree of inequality is. That is, after all, what a liberal society should attempt to work for. This Government are mounting an attack on tax avoidance. We face the problem of what I have to call the rootless rich, who have escaped the boundaries of nation states and thus managed extremely successfully to avoid tax. We need taxes on wealth, which is much less mobile than income. At the bottom, we have increased the threshold at which people start to pay income tax. There is the move towards universal credit and in encouraging more people into work. We are extremely happy that the level of youth unemployment is now on a downward trend, and we are doing as much as we can to ensure that that continues.

International economic trends help us. The Financial Times had an interesting article yesterday which suggested that there is now a downward trend in excessive executive salaries after the excesses of the past 20 years. We are affected by what is happening elsewhere, and we have to push very hard to provide for our own deeply interdependent society as much of a social compact in the global economy as we can. I worry about the impact on British society and the British economy of the influx of the super-wealthy from non-democratic states. That ought to be of concern, particularly to all those who live in London and the south-east of England.

We have now reached the stage where we all realise that the state cannot deal with a problem like that alone; the state cannot provide everything and our taxpayers are unwilling to pay for much more of what is needed. They want the services, but they are deeply resistant to higher taxation, so we have to talk about the role of independent social initiatives—what I still like to call the big society—the role of local communities and local action. Incidentally, we have to think about planning and building communities which hang together. Living in Saltaire, which is a very dense village where it is impossible not to know your neighbours, and having canvassed when I was the local candidate for Shipley in a number of the new housing estates where you do not know your neighbours, the husband has gone out in the only family car and the wife is marooned on her own, I am very conscious that the way in which we build communities in Britain also deserves a great deal more attention. We need more local government and local engagement and, as we have said about other areas, we need to persuade more of the young to vote and become engaged, because we know that all our political parties are pooled towards supporting the old and not putting enough money into the young.

On equality of education, the Government are now extending the pupil premium. In September 2014 we will extend 15 free hours of high-quality early education to 40% of two year-olds—not an easy task when at the same time the number of two year-olds is rising quite sharply. We inherited Teach First from our predecessor Labour Government and we have continued to expand it. The Teach First teachers that I have seen in various schools in West Yorkshire are absolutely first-class. We all know from what the All-Party Group on Social Mobility has said that raising the quality of teaching is a very important part of all this. Intergenerational equity, putting more money into children at the early stage, is very much part of what we need to do.

The noble Lord, Lord McFall, also mentioned the professions. I have to say that the figures on professions are deeply worrying, and I hope that whichever Government come in next time will look in particular at the question of recruitment into the legal profession as the one that sticks out most strongly as an inherited one.

Aspiration, character and resilience are clearly extremely important; I think that we have all now gripped that. Providing children with a sense of self-worth through school, careers guidance, music, sports, volunteering and mentoring is important. I am an extremely strong supporter of the National Citizen Service; I am about to ask the Cabinet Office whether it will be willing to provide an introduction to the NCS to any Member of the House of Lords who would like to see it, because I became enthusiastic when I had seen one or two courses myself. Through partnership with business, the Government now have a business compact. The Deputy Prime Minister has just given Opening Doors awards to a number of businesses that have been extremely good at pulling people into work. Apprenticeships are important, and I have to say that the apprentice that we had in the Government Whips’ Office was a classic example—a young woman who had been a hairdresser, and had not thought that she could be anything else, who blossomed in the six months that she was with us. All these things help to give young people a greater sense that they can do things. That is a very large agenda.

As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby said, we have to be careful to get beyond the idea that it is all about everyone getting to the top. The importance of the apprenticeship schemes, which I am extremely proud of this Government expanding, is that they are giving a number of young people a sense of self-worth in craft skills. That is a revival of an old mutuality of respect that we clearly need to do. Unfortunately, we cannot provide the independent business that also used to be part of the business of respect. I come from four different families and my great-grandparents were all small shopkeepers, so I am incredibly petty bourgeois. The mutuality of respect is part of what we all now need to rebuild.

We are out of time but we could have debated this for a great deal longer. I thank the noble Lord for raising this issue, and I repeat: I hope that we will continue to address this subject as a very broad long-term issue for this country over the years to come.

Committee adjourned at 4.59 pm.

Electoral Registration

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps are being taken to increase the number of people who are registered to vote in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have announced today that £3.6 million of additional funding will be distributed equitably among electoral registration officers and local authorities, according to levels of underregistration, to help with the costs of local activities for maximising registration. A further £215,000 is being used to fund directly a number of national organisations, as announced yesterday, to develop approaches to maximising registration among particular target groups. The Government welcome all initiatives that promote democratic engagement, such as Bite the Ballot’s National Voter Registration Day today.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome that announcement from the Government and I pay tribute to Bite the Ballot for organising hundreds of events with the aim of registering today thousands of young people to vote. The Minister spoke warmly yesterday of citizenship lessons but warm words butter no parsnips. I strongly urge the Government not to encourage but to ensure that an inspiring citizenship curriculum is taught in every school, including academies and free schools, and that every school should facilitate everyone of or near voting age to register to vote. Will the Government also consider enclosing electoral registration forms with all their official communications with young people, for example those regarding national insurance numbers and driving licence applications?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the last point is one that I will take back, as we are certainly considering how best to encourage all this. The new citizenship programme for study, which has now been agreed to be taught from September 2014, stipulates that pupils should be taught about parliamentary democracy and the actions that citizens should take in democratic and electoral processes to influence decisions locally, nationally and beyond.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the announcement by my noble friend. However, can he say how that money is to be distributed a little more precisely than he did to tackle the problem, as identified by the Electoral Reform Society, that some 800,000 young people are not registered to vote who are otherwise entitled to do so? Is the money to be directed towards the local authorities, which have responsibility for ensuring that people are registered? Will he indicate how the Government will check up on the effectiveness of what they are doing?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the money is being allocated among local authorities according to the results of the confirmation dry run, which showed that we are getting up to an 80% level of confirmation, and indeed sometimes up to 85%, from data matching. However, there are a number of local authorities, including Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, where, because of the transient population, registration is much lower. Places such as those, where people move frequently, and others with a large number of students or private landlords will be granted large amounts of money to target those groups.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister update us on the proposals to cross-reference the databank of the DWP with the electoral registration databank for the purposes of informing those who have not registered but are on the DWP databank, and to encourage them to register? What precedent does this cross-referencing of data from a government department set for information supplied by citizens to a government department for the exclusive use of that department and the purposes that it is meant to carry out?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a very good question on a very difficult and complex area. It raises questions of privacy as well as convenience. The DWP database has been used for data matching, but in one direction and with very careful procedures so that we were not transferring data, just checking their existence. There are a number of other local and national databases that have been used. It has been discovered, for example, that you can raise quite significantly your confidence that people are there if you use local databases, such as benefit boxes and council tax, as well as national databases.

[Lord Rix (CB)]

My Lords, what can the Government do to ensure that people with a learning disability receive voter registration forms in the easy-read format so that they can participate in the 2015 elections?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, one of the five organisations that I was able to announce yesterday that the Government are funding to deal with target groups and vulnerable groups is Mencap. We ask Mencap in particular to have regard to that.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

Could my noble friend comment on the initiatives being undertaken by the Hansard Society in conjunction with the Cabinet Office—initiatives that could have a marked effect on the number of young people registered to vote?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Hansard Society is working with Homeless Link on a project that is very much targeted at young people who are moving very rapidly or who do not have a settled address, who of course are one of the most difficult groups to reach.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Minister is well aware, the Government generally allocate funds to local authorities for the purposes of electoral registration through the local government finance settlement. As he is also aware, these funds are not ring-fenced. Will the Government say whether they know, rather than hope or think, how much of that funding is spent for the purposes of electoral registration?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

As the noble Lord knows from our previous discussions on this on many occasions, the Government are not in favour of extending ring-fencing. Having met a number of electoral registration officers, I have great confidence that they can look after themselves and ensure that the money is not siphoned off to other sources.

[The Lord Bishop of Wakefield]

My Lords, noble Lords will know that churches and the ancillary buildings connected with them are often the places where hustings take place, and indeed are used as polling stations. This is a key way of engaging local people in the democratic process. With the recent passing of the transparency of lobbying Act, will the Minister reassure us that churches and such places will continue to be used and will not be affected by the passing of that Act?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I cannot see any way in which the use of churches as polling stations, and indeed the role of the clergy in encouraging people to do their community and civic duty, will be adversely affected. I very much hope that the church will continue to encourage all those who are part of its community to take a full part in civic, social and political life.