Voter Registration: Students

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Bishop of St Albans

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have switched from group registration to individual registration, but the Government are working with the Student Forum, which brings together universities, student organisations and representatives of FE colleges, to raise awareness through a whole range of activities for students arriving in universities. There were pilots in Sheffield and Manchester linking registration at university with registering to vote—so we are very active in this area.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for referring to last week’s National Voter Registration Day. As part of that, I went into Townsend School in St Albans with two dynamic members of Bite the Ballot, who were able to bring the whole thing alive in an interactive and very lively session. They handed out registration forms at the end and offered to take them back in—so they are already doing this sort of work. Have Her Majesty’s Government considered supporting that organisation and other similar ones that are already doing this work in a very creative way?

Food Poverty

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Bishop of St Albans

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this report is a serious contribution to an important and wide-ranging debate, which recognises the multiple factors behind demand for emergency food assistance. As a country, we have enough food to go round. We agree that it is wrong that anyone should go hungry at the same time as surplus food is going to waste. There is a moral argument, as well as a sustainability one, to ensure that we make the best use of our resources.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I pay tribute to my colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, for co-chairing the inquiry. When the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury launched the report, he said that a party -political approach will not solve a problem such as this because of its complexity. I wonder whether the Minister would agree with that sentiment and whether, therefore, a genuine cross-party approach can be adopted to implementing the recommendations of the report. In particular, will the Government liaise and work closely with voluntary agencies, with the food banks and with industry to address the pressing problem of food waste and redistribution, whereby millions of tonnes of perfectly good food are going to waste at great cost, at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are still hungry?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government are very happy to do that. After all, the whole food bank movement is a major civil society initiative. I entirely agree with the right reverend Prelate that this is a long-term problem and that we should not approach it in a partisan manner. Perhaps I might quote from the report:

“How a society protects the poorest from what appears to be a fundamental change in the way economies of the Western world are operating – which results in cuts in their living standards”—

that is, those of the poor—

“faster than other groups – calls for developing a political agenda which can only be delivered over decades”.

South Sudan

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Bishop of St Albans

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this is, of course, a very new country and there has not been very much time for either state or nation building so far. We are certainly working through IGAD to pull in as many civil society organisations as we can in order to ensure that we do not have warlord-dominated negotiations of the sort the noble Lord suggested.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, it is evident that the long-term process of finding an inclusive Sudanese-led reconciliation can begin only once hostilities cease and a political settlement and resolution is reached. This is why international diplomacy is so vital. Will the noble Lord tell the House what plans the Government have to address the current understaffing of the UK Sudan unit, which has a role in this?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the number of staff in the UK Sudan unit has fluctuated over the past few months; my understanding is that it is now rather larger than it was two or three months ago. I do not think that we can wait until the fighting stops to begin negotiations; local fighting is likely to continue for some considerable time and we have to start to move to construct at least the basis of some form of government now.

National Voter Registration Day

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Bishop of St Albans

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is partly because we want people to register to vote online. It is more efficient and cheaper. A number of efforts are going on with universities to ensure that students are also encouraged to vote. There will be various activities during Freshers’ Week. I will take that back as a suggestion but we feel that we are covering this in another, more effective way.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, the Question is about encouraging educational establishments to encourage a whole new generation of people to engage in the electoral process. Of course, next year is a hugely significant year, with the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Can we not only encourage our schools to use this as an opportunity to really inspire people to think about civil participation, citizenship and so on but find some imaginative ways to give people the information in the educational packs that will be used next year?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, certainly. We trust that the churches will play their own role, and perhaps we will have mentions in sermons of civic duty and what one should render unto Caesar as well as unto God.

Electoral Registration: National Voter Registration Day

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Bishop of St Albans

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

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.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

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.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

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.