Beyond Brexit (European Union Committee Report)

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Tuesday 12th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. The title of the report includes How to Win Friends and Influence People. Influencing people is made more probable by making better friends. That is because international co-operation is all about making friends between people and nations. Living on the border with the Republic of Ireland, we are aware of the importance of cross-border relations and friendships at every level. These links have been damaged by the Troubles, the lack of devolved government, and now Brexit at the government level. On VE Day 75 years ago, respect and friendship for this country were unsurpassed. Where has that skill in creating friendships gone? What of diplomacy?

We were slow to join the EU, and in joining it we lost many friends, especially in the Commonwealth, creating trade barriers and restricting immigration. The UK then became one of the most enthusiastic about EU expansion, allowing entry to countries such as Greece without it having fulfilled the financial criteria required. We were leaders in inviting the central European states to join. After all that, we are now the first to fight our way out of the EU. At present, we have angered our greatest friend, the US, through our dealings with Huawei.

During my 20 years of serving on various EU committees, I was always impressed by the friendship and welcome shown to us in Brussels and other European capitals. Our committees and their reports were always held in the highest esteem, mainly due to the leadership of chairmen such as the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. In contrast, it seemed it was not quite the same in the Commons. Perhaps the other place did not place as much importance on the work of the EU. One eminent former MP described appointment to those committees as rather like being put in the sin bin.

It is not always a matter of what we do, but of how we do it, and that means winning friends and keeping them. I ask the Minister: how are the Government going to improve our working relationships, both within the EU and, most importantly, worldwide?

Terrorism: Emergency Communications

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for introducing this very important subject and echo what we have just heard about the compliments about his service.

I accept that my experience is, or was, in Northern Ireland and that that time has passed. However, we may not have had all the technology, but a lot of the same principles exist today. There were occasions when I was on duty in an ops room when there were more than two bomb incidents going on at the same time, so I fully appreciate what happens with communications when a lot of people want to be on them about one subject. It makes a lot of systems very vulnerable—therefore, we have to have the best.

The first and most important principle is that there must be efficient command and control as soon as possible after an incident, and this can be achieved only with the use of communications technology and the complete inclusion within it all of the responding agencies. That is called interoperability, which is defined by the joint emergency services as the extent to which organisations can work coherently as a matter of course. That is very difficult to practise because, as a matter of course, they are dealing with everyday minor events, and we are talking about exceptional events. The foundation stone of all that has to be communications. Luckily, because so much has been said by the noble Lord, I can leave out stretches of my speech—so it will not be quite as joined-up as it might have been.

After Hillsborough, it is very significant that Lord Taylor said that,

“so many previous reports and guidelines must indicate that the lessons of past disasters and the recommendations following them had not been taken sufficiently to heart”.

There is no point in holding inquiries or publishing guidance unless the recommendations are followed diligently. That must be the first lesson. Many of us would feel that that is still going on today. Reviews come out with sensible answers and suggestions, and what happens? They disappear into desks in Whitehall, or elsewhere, and we definitely do not see the results on the ground.

I was going to talk about other communications, but that has been done. One thing was that, of course, they are not always capable. In Manchester, the casualty bureau was seriously hampered by a complete failure of the National Mutual Aid Telephony system provided by Vodafone. What is the future of this means of communication for that service? Again, with the overload of mobiles in mind, we have exactly the questions that were asked previously.

One of the other strategic issues, apart from communications directly, is doctrine. Doctrine involves communications because anything that goes on involves them. Can the Minister tell the House whether there is a common doctrine throughout the UK for reacting to major emergencies? Does he not agree that this is of the utmost importance regardless of the individuality of emergency agencies in different areas? We all feel that there is a bit of empire building and that this is difficult. For instance, some ambulance services have HART—hazardous area response teams, which are allowed to operate in hot areas or warm areas. However, not everywhere has such teams. We have had sad occurrences in Manchester and London, but they are centres of population and thus centres for emergency services. If we get something in more rural areas, the local services will have to be supported by others. I am not sure that I am confident that having reached the area, they will be able to integrate properly. This is about the human side rather the technology aspect. We really should do something about having a national doctrine to cover many of the things that happen.

The police, with their gold, silver and bronze commanders, are not always co-located with their equivalents in other agencies. In Manchester, the fire and rescue service was outside the loop by not being present at the strategic gold command location. That was an example of poor communication and procedures. We simply have to eliminate what are quite clearly errors in human planning, otherwise we cannot rely on our technology. It cannot work if the people are not there. Communication involves people and face-to-face contact as well as what we have been talking about.

The fact that a plan had been practised in Manchester really showed, and Manchester did not go badly; there were just ways of improving it. Another strategic issue is training, which is always difficult because it costs a lot of money. Police forces do not have a lot of money to do realistic training. Coming from Northern Ireland and all the problems and issues we faced over 40 years, I am amazed by and greatly admire the initial responders to terrorist events that we have had in London. They are fabulous and we should give them credit for that. They took out the threat, albeit sadly with civilian casualties, without—touch wood—collateral damage. Having lived in Northern Ireland for so long, I would not have believed that the length of training and preparedness the police officers have had for those events could produce such an effect. Not only are they to be congratulated, but again, it is utterly amazing.

My second issue concerns communications, about which I feel very strongly indeed. Are we briefing the media too much and are they debriefing the terrorists? I have three straightforward examples of this. Around 10 years ago, explosives or terrorist equipment was found in a garage located either in London or the Midlands; I cannot remember the details. The next day, a diagram of where the surveillance cameras and sensors were, along with an account of how the garage was found. In Northern Ireland, down to the lowest rank of policeman and serviceman, there was absolute confidentiality. Instead, they would have said something like: “Three or four children were playing football and one of them hit the ball at the door. It came up, and do you know what was inside?” What the media did in publishing that information and what the emergency services did was to let everything down because it begs the question: how did we know? That gives terrorists an opportunity. Why do we allow that?

The next incident was the tube bombings. One of the terrorists did not blow himself up and went to Italy, where he was captured. Two days later he was captured with mobile phone technology. It was remarkable: an off-duty policeman went on holiday in Italy and, lo and behold, he saw a face that he knew. We cannot afford to be like this—that is the honest truth.

More recently, for the bomb on the tube that did not go off properly, we knew within 24 hours why it had not gone off. That is ridiculous, because a bomb has to be put together with many things. I got into trouble in the ops room in Belfast because an ATO came in one day and he told us why a bomb had not worked. I put it on the nightly report in code; it was secure. It was something to do with silicon over bared wires. I leave the rest to noble Lords’ imagination. I was seriously reprimanded for doing that, even though it was secure.

We must be confident. There must be a good cordon and it must be secure. This chatter must stop. They are getting full details of the incident when we say that the bomb partially exploded. We are informing them of what went wrong. We are saying where the emergency service response came from and how. It is potential identification of intelligence. We have to get away from that—it is seriously not good at all.

Why do we not adopt the Northern Ireland policy to provide a watered-down version of events? Conceal methodology and make up a device. Do not release in detail why it failed to go off. Most importantly, we should develop a code of conduct with the media. We have to do this. We have to get out of our boxes and do it, because we cannot put up with things as they are. This would save lives. If you have a bomb, you set it and you do not know why it has not gone off—it takes an awful lot of rebuilding and trying to find out why it did not. If all you have to do is go to the TPU—time power units—you will have the answer and someone will die the next time round. We need that absolute confidentiality. This is about communication. I realise that that is not quite what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, was talking about, but it is very important, if not vital.

Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [HL]

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 13 takes us back to issues of education. The amendment focuses on the narrow aspects of our prior debate, namely a route to having financial education added to the primary school curriculum and having the Ofsted process take into account the extent to which financial education is provided in schools. These proposals were recommendations of the House of Lords Financial Exclusion Select Committee, as so much of our debate has been. Our debates both in the Select Committee and in Committee went wider than this, and the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, in particular was a strong proponent of the benefit of financial education. Given the limited ability to make financial education effectively compulsory in all schools, the recommendation of the Select Committee was viewed as a practical way of effecting this so far as possible.

Noble Lords may recall that we had a positive response from the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe. We were told that we would get a reply to the recommendations in due course and that discussions had already taken place with the Minister for Pensions and Financial Inclusion about joint working with the Minister for Education to take forward the recommendations of the report and to dismiss concerns, particularly those about primary school education. As that was more than three months ago, perhaps the Minister can update us on progress. I beg to move.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, as a member of that committee, I support this amendment. This is different from some of the other amendments that have come under Clause 2(7), because this is really already there as far as schools go, but it just falls short of doing what it should. For instance it talks about the “provision of financial education” and then says,

“working with others in the financial services”.

Your Lordships might sympathise with what Martin Lewis says:

“We do not ask GlaxoSmithKline to pay for chemistry. This is on the national curriculum. Why are we asking banks to pay for it?”.


Why are we asking financial institutions? I am perfectly happy that, as the Minister will say, “Yes, we do ask them and they do something”, but it is really small and does not begin to touch.

Here are just a few statistics to show why we are talking about education. I will not try to bore your Lordships with them all, but they put this into perspective: 40% of the working population have less than £100 in savings; one in six struggle to identify a single bank balance; around a third of the population, 17 million, cannot even manage a budget; and 26% of postgraduates —that is all—are confident in managing their money. The excellent FCA report which came out at the weekend also shows why it is important. I will come to education in schools in a minute, which is fairly horrifying, but the report says:

“Adults with postgraduate degrees are just as likely to feel uncertain about their abilities as those educated to GCSE level”.


So, with all due respect, there is simply nothing going on. Many do not understand the excessive interest rates on unauthorised overdrafts, for example, or revolving credit card balances and the interest rates that are put on those. They do not understand payday loans very much—although it is interesting to note, since we were ready to condemn them, that payday loans are actually cheaper than some of the other loans available, which is quite surprising. That is not because payday loans are cheap but because interest rates on credit cards and unauthorised overdrafts are not only ridiculous but incredibly unfair, as they do not even notify you. At least when you take out a payday loan, you know that you have borrowed £1,000. With most banks, you would not have a clue until you got the bill. So the question is not straightforward. These statistics are all true; they come from evidence that we took and the survey that I just mentioned, showing how very poor the understanding of basic financial matters is in this country. We are way behind others, including, I believe, China.

This whole problem ultimately causes so much unhappiness and stress and will mean a higher cost than otherwise to the welfare state, purely because of the number of people who could have managed but do not because no one told them how. It is all due to a single cause: the lack of financial education in schools. The Bill talks about,

“the provision of financial education to children and young people”.

Where are children and young people, and where are you going to educate them? Even I went to a school, and that is the only place where you have them all in one place. You do not honestly think that on a Saturday, instead of going to the cinema, they will go to a class on financial education. So there is only one place for it: the schoolroom. You have only to add “in school” to the wording and you almost have the amendment as it stands.

Financial education could be introduced into primary schools. However, although we are aware that there is some excellent work in primary schools—the Minister may come back and say, “There are good stories about primary schools because they teach people things”, and they do—in answer to question 179 in our evidence transcript, Adrian Lyons of Ofsted, who was incredibly useful and very nice about it, said of ex-primary schoolchildren,

“but then the children go to secondary school and hit a brick wall”.

That completely sums it up. What a condemnation that is from Ofsted itself.

What of the addition of financial education to the secondary school curriculum in 2014? The first point is that to most sane people a curriculum is what people have to learn. Believe it or not, though, there are actually two curriculums, one non-statutory and the other, the national one, statutory. You have got it in one: this is on the non-statutory curriculum, because it lies within the PSHE programme. It gets worse, as only 35% of state schools come under that so-called curriculum—all the free schools and academies are outside it. We need not say that financial education is being taught in schools as a curriculum subject; clearly it is not, as we would understand it, and it definitely does not go anywhere.

Financial education lies within PSHE subjects but they are not statutory. Guess what happens. Time devoted to PSHE has been reduced by 32% since 2011 because it is non-statutory and there is not enough time for it. Why? One reason for that was suggested by the PSHE representative, who said that schools,

“have so little time for it”,

characterising the situation as follows:

“We only have 20 minutes, and if we don’t do something on sexual exploitation or online safety we’re going to be in trouble over safeguarding”.


To all intents and purposes, that is the end of your secondary school financial education. Adrian Lyons said that Ofsted produces a state-of-the-nation education report. Our chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, asked,

“how much was there on financial education in the last one?”.

Mr Lyons’s answer was:

“I do not know the answer to that, but I would be surprised if there was any, to be honest”.


I think we know that it was zero.

Here we have something that is all about life skills. After all, school, at the end of the day, is concerned with life skills. You are not going to survive on geography alone; you are not going to survive on physics or other things alone. We are talking about very basic financial management; we are not talking about pensions. We are saying: if you save one sweet every day until the end of the week, you will get five sweets; and if you want to borrow five sweets from me, you can pay me 10 next week. As a foundation, it is as simple as that, but the inspectorate does not even look at it. This amendment could change all that.

Of course, Ofsted says that you cannot judge something—I seem to think that this is how it puts it—without having exam marks, and there are no exam marks here. Ofsted is about marking schools. It is also about encouraging schools to do the right thing and to teach life skills, so why not initially find a way of saying, “Do you teach financial education? How much do you teach? Okay, we’ll give you 10 points for that”? At least that would be an incentive to do what they should.

When we talked about education in schools, every reason under the sun was given for why they would not or could not do it. We did not have the teachers in front of us. I am terribly sympathetic about teachers’ time, so I am not getting at them. There is no time. Teachers are not confident to teach this subject but, as I have said, we are talking about the basics. Any teacher on a salary is going to know something about saving or spending or not having enough money or whatever. I just do not believe that that is the reason.

The FCA book shows a really poor record on everything, yet schools are the only place where we have young people’s attention. What are we meant to be doing? If we say that schools should not be the place—we have already had several amendments turned down because they were too well defined or because they have added too many lines—where should it be? It is not going to be in church, so I suggest that it should be in schools and that we do something to make sure that it is done; otherwise, it will not be done. When we talk to people about where it might be done, why it is not done and the problems with that, it is somebody else’s problem. No doubt we will be told that it is the education board’s problem, or whatever there is. I am telling noble Lords that that is passing the buck. The sooner we get “schools” written in the Bill, the better.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I will add just a brief comment in this area, as the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, has really made the case. A few years ago, when I was dealing much more with banking institutions, one of them very proudly showed me its pack for schools. All that I came away with was that its logo and colours were all over everything. Had this been presented to an adult, they would have regarded it as a sales pitch rather than an educational tool. That was rather worrying. We are moving into an era where there is huge disruption of all the traditional players. On a personal basis, many of the people making decisions to save or borrow will be looking at many of the new disrupters—the challengers, the peer-to-peers, the digital bodies and whatever else. If we are looking towards the handful of major high-street players to be the providers of financial education, particularly to the young, they will not be introducing that world, which they very much regard as threatening. Yet that is the world of the future that our youngsters will have to deal with. The Government have to be very cautious about how they use providers as a delivery instrument for this education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I was hoping for a moment that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, was going to wind up the debate and give some cogent reasons why his amendment should be resisted, but that falls to me.

Amendment 13, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, would alter the strategic function on matters relating to financial education. I am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and my noble friend Lady Altmann for their contributions because, once again, we have highlighted the important issue of financial education, which has been one of the themes running through our debate today. We had a good debate on it in Committee, and there is no disagreement that financial education is extremely important at all stages of life.

In fact, a key role of the new body as a whole will be to improve people’s financial capability and help them to make better financial decisions. Clause 2(7) states:

“The strategic function is to support and co-ordinate the development of a national strategy to improve … the financial capability of members of public”.


Then there is the paragraph quoted by the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough:

“the provision of financial education to children and young people”.

The noble Viscount outlined areas where the public need to be better informed, and I agree with all that he said.

The financial education element of the strategic function is targeting a specific area of need, which is to ensure that children and young people are supported at an early age on how to manage their finances—for example, by learning the benefits of budgeting and saving. As I think I said in response to an earlier debate, the new body will have a co-ordinating role to match funders with providers of financial education projects and initiatives aimed at children—those could well be in schools—and will ensure that they are targeted where evidence has shown them to be more effective. This falls four-square within the wider strategic financial capability work of the body, and should form part of the national strategy that we expect the body to deliver.

As has been mentioned, the Money Advice Service has been undertaking that role, and it is one aspect that respondents to the government consultation overwhelmingly agreed is important for the new body to continue to work on, build on, and continue the initiatives already under way.

The amendment makes provision for the new body to advise the Secretary of State on the role of Ofsted and the primary school curriculum. As the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, said, the Select Committee on Financial Exclusion made similar recommendations on the role of Ofsted and the primary school curriculum in its recent report. We will publish a direct response to the House of Lords ad hoc Select Committee report before Third Reading. The Department for Education, which has prime responsibility for this, will be a major contributor to that section of the response.

Again, as I said in Committee, the Government believe that the remit of the new body may cause confusion with regards to the school curriculum. Of course, it can work with schools to help children understand financial education and it can help fund lessons and explore further the barriers to school involvement. The Government are clear, however, that the school curriculum and monitoring of school performance are matters for the departments for education in England and in the devolved nations. Nevertheless, Clause 2(3) states:

“The single financial guidance body may do anything that is incidental or conducive to the exercise of its functions”.


It seems to me that there is nothing to stop the SFGB informally making suggestions to Ministers without the need for the amendment, as long as they relate to its functions. So I do not think that we need the amendment for there to be a dialogue between the SFGB and education providers. In practice, the body will be able to undertake activities to help schools provide financial education but we do not believe the amendment is an appropriate addition to the strategic function. For that reason, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.

[Viscount Brookeborough]

May I intervene for one second? I thank the Minister for his response. At one stage he said: “Well, we might get help, and it might be in schools. Maybe the education board will look at this and maybe the guidance authority will include this and this”. The whole thing is so wishy-washy. There are so many let-out clauses, I am simply not sure that it will happen.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

That is a fair point, but I ask my noble friend to give the Government the benefit of the doubt until such time as we publish the response to the specific recommendations he has referred to. If he finds that the response is inadequate and does not meet his expectations, I am sure there will be further opportunities for him to raise it. The point has been well made during this debate that further progress should be made. There is an outstanding recommendation to which the Government are about to respond. I suggest that the amendment is withdrawn and the Government given an opportunity to put their case forward when they respond to the Select Committee.