Songbirds

Viscount Falkland Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Grand Committee

[Viscount Falkland (CB)]

My Lords, at first glance I thought this Question was rather daunting, and that the reference to invasive, non-native species was a sort of new bird-Brexit talk. Having heard the excellent speeches which preceded mine, I now understand exactly what people are talking about. From the perspective of someone with a 95-foot garden, I am not equipped to talk about a lot of the things which large landowners will mention in this debate. I have noticed extraordinary changes in my garden over the nearly 30 years that I have lived there. I have not found a particular problem with the invasive ringed green parakeet on the bird table, although there is an awful lot of noise and pushing around. The only confrontation I have seen was with a greater spotted woodpecker, who stood and maintained his ground. There are very few songbirds—and I agree that there is probably an overall decrease in them. Of course, they eat insects more than they go to bird tables.

My interest in birds began at a very early age. My father took me to the coast, close to where we lived in Devon, to try and take the oil off the feathers of puffins, whose wings had become immobilised. I was only three years old, so I was hardly fit to judge whether he was very effective at that, but I enormously admired his efforts. From that point, birds have been an important part of my life. I luckily ran pretty well free and without discipline through my childhood during the Second World War, as both my parents were involved in the war effort in one way or another. Birds were one of my interests when I was in both the south of England and Scotland. I had all the necessary books to identify them and to pontificate to my friends on the subject, and that was maintained throughout my life until I went to an organised boarding school. What shocked me there was that I saw very little of birds outside but I saw a lot of stuffed birds, stuffed fish and stuffed everything—stuffed teachers, if you will. So that was a bleak period, except that I qualified for a bicycle by joining the natural history society. I used to say that I was using the bicycle to watch the mallards at the Binfield brickworks, but that was an excuse for going to the cinema in Bracknell, which at that time was a one-horse town.

One notable time for me during my bird-watching life was when I went to Africa on business, and I went to Lake Nakuru and saw the flamingos. Back then, in the early 1970s, there were between 2 million and 3 million flamingos. It was a fantastic sight and they made a fantastic sound. Their food source was the algae in the alkaline lake. Unfortunately, the lake has been subject to pollution in east Africa, and now there are just a few flamingos around the perimeter of the lake. So the reduction in bird numbers is a worldwide problem.

I end by saying that the public need much more information about birds. I highly praise the BBC for its “Springwatch” and “Autumnwatch” programmes. The other day I spoke to the chairman of the BBC and said, “That really is a star programme. Do keep up the good work”. I think that he was quite grateful for my words.

That is all I have to say. I continue with my bird interest in the mornings. I sit there with my porridge and coffee and have my field glasses to hand. I look at my garden and the bird table. I agree with the noble Earl, who in his excellent speech made a point about cats. That is where education is needed. People who have cats need to realise that they need to be controlled and kept away from the birdlife.

Bee Population

Viscount Falkland Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Falkland (CB)]

I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, for the opportunity to speak on the wonderful subject of bees. I came across her by chance in the Tea Room and she said she was going to speak on this subject. I was particularly upset that day by some acerbic remarks in a Brexit debate and I thought this would be a gentle outing. I then suddenly realised that I did not know much about bees. I am afraid I have been rather a bore to my friends, and people who are not necessarily my friends, by stopping everybody and asking, “What do you know about bees?” I went to one or two authoritative sources. My former noble friend Lord Taverne introduced me to the head of the staff who look after insects at the Natural History Museum. He started our conversation off with the rather alarmist term—I think it is American—“colony collapse disorder”, which made me rather nervous.

I was also nervous about, but looking forward to hearing, the speech by the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley. I was rather fearing it. I do not know why—perhaps I had been listening to the wrong people. Yet I was vastly reassured by it; it dispelled a lot of my fears. I was in my club today and sat next to a young man whose father I know. He has recently come from Nottingham University, from where he has a very good degree in biology. I asked him, like I ask everybody: “What do you know about bees”? He said that he had learned, either at university or not, the alarming fact that the human race could survive a kind of Armageddon of bees for 50 years—the noble Baroness mentioned that. He added that there had been an article on this subject in Science Today some time ago which said that the world would then be a better place for non-humans, because we are the biggest polluters. That is an interesting thought.

I am a great honey eater. I eat it in the morning with a bit of turmeric. For those who have not heard of that fine spice, it is excellent with honey and porridge. The noble Lord, Lord Marland, alluded to the health properties of honey, particularly that grown in one’s vicinity. I understand that there is a reason why that is better for health—if you can get it—than relying on honey bought in a shop. I was convinced by an article written some years ago by Rose Prince, the excellent food writer in the Daily Telegraph. She wrote very informatively about honey and bees. I wish somebody else would do something similar now, so that people can have some of their fears allayed, like I have today, and learn about the health effects of honey.

I am told that the throat in particular is an area of the body which, if you have problems, is improved with honey. However, it should be crystallised honey. I understand that in crystallised honey the water content is reduced, but that is something you can do yourself—you can also buy it, but it will be more expensive because it has been done for you. Then, all that you do, rather than put it into your cocoa at night, is take a lump of the crystallised honey and put it in your throat and swill it around a bit, and your throat discomfort is gone, I am told. So I have learnt a great deal—I do not suppose many people will learn a great deal from my speech—and I am very glad to be able to speak in the debate today.

Initially, my major interest in the bee was from having been an arts spokesman in the House who is still rather keen on the arts. The bee is an astonishing creature, in that over centuries it has caught the imagination of rulers and others. One thinks of Napoleon, who chose the bee as his emblem because he thought that Charlemagne, who was his great guide before he became the emperor that he did, had a great fixation with the bee. Napoleon did not understand the image; it was in fact the cicada that Charlemagne had.

Actually, if you look up bees on your computer or iPad, you can get the most wonderful definitions in works of art and so forth. One of the most remarkable escutcheons is that of the Barberini family, one of whom became Pope Urban VIII. Although he was always at war with Galileo, he was nevertheless a force for good. The Barberini family, who were Tuscan by origin, became part of baroque Rome, and there were many reproductions, in carvings and so on, of the honey bee. The honey bee lends itself to gilding, particularly in the baroque world, because it has a remarkable shape, with remarkable eyes. It was also taken up by many others—in ancient Greece, and also in ancient Egypt I understand, there was the same fascination with the shape and the nature of the bee in terms of creating images.

Having said that, I do not think that I have anything very informative to say, other than to thank the noble Baroness for allowing me to spout on like this, which I rarely do these days—I think I am too old but, since I can ride a motorbike, surely I can get up in the House and talk about something from time to time.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

[Viscount Falkland]

I am very cheered by the reception that I got there—whether it was honest or not, or just good banter, I do not know. I am very much for banter, particularly since the House was advised to discourage banter among the staff. I actually rang up the company involved, which had been consulted at great cost, which said that banter must be discouraged. Mainly—I do not know why I have gone on this bifurcation of subject—it is discouraged “Not because of what you say in your banter, but because of what people may overhear and understand from it”. Apparently, that is why the staff are not supposed to banter. I encourage them to banter, because I think they are happier in doing their work and we have a wonderful staff.

Having said that, I would just like to say thank you very much for giving me the chance to speak briefly on this subject. I have really enjoyed it, and I will come back at future dinner break debates.

Littering from Vehicles Bill [HL]

Viscount Falkland Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Falkland]

My Lords, extravagant praise has been given to the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for introducing this Bill, and I join in that. I put my name down for the debate, knowing full well that the details of his very precisely architected Bill would be dealt with more ably by others. My interest in the subject leads on to wider matters, which I hope the noble Lord will agree are suitable for a Second Reading debate.

Why is it that people nowadays behave in the way they do, having won the freedoms as individuals that they have? Why does the balance between individual freedom and the common good seem to have got out of kilter? Yesterday I drifted into the Chamber, as one sometimes does when there is a debate, thinking that there might be something helpful in the debate on civil society. I had nearly dropped off to sleep when suddenly, to my surprise, I heard the most astonishing speech by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby. I recommend that all those noble Lords in this debate who are interested in why people behave in the way that they do, and something of the culture and history behind that, should read his excellent speech. It is quite short. Surprise, surprise, he mentioned TS Eliot—and I thought, “Things are really improving here in the House. We are moving to different levels of intellectual gravitas”. I did not know that TS Eliot was so concerned with,

“the building blocks of a civil society”.

The right reverend Prelate added:

“The more we are concerned about individual good, the bigger the problem with the common good. The more people have individual freedom, the more chance there is of becoming isolated, lonely and marginalised”.—[Official Report, 18/7/13; col. 931.]

I think that the right reverend Prelate is absolutely right. How many of us have walked down the street—those of us of a certain age, and I think that I am roughly of the same generation as the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford —and really been astonished, on a fine day in a street with fine buildings, to see young people walking with an electronic apparatus screwed firmly into their ear, with a glazed look in their eye, completely disassociated from what surrounds them? This is something that is quite alien to me, with the way I was brought up, because, of course, we did not have all those electronic gadgets. Nowadays, when one walks along the street and one sees what I have described, one has to avoid people engaged in sending text messages on the pavement, zigzagging in and out without looking where they are going. So there is a problem with our society, because these people are much worse mannered than they were when I was growing up.

As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has said, we were encouraged to be aware of litter. In fact, there was advertising about litter bugs and people of that kind, and people were aware of it. Local government should be involved in engaging people more with their local society, but how can it, with the constraints placed on it, take up the social responsibilities of getting more engaged in people’s lives so that they are less likely to be ill? Depression nowadays among the young is a very big problem; I have had it in my own family, with one son. With his friends and colleagues at school—I do not know what brought it on—he became enormously lacking in confidence. He is quite a talented boy, actually, but he began to lack confidence and become, frankly, neurotic and depressed. So I have become very interested in this subject.

In yesterday’s debate, another noble Lord introduced the concept of the three legs of the stool, which used to govern our behaviour in our society—the nation, the family, and the church. We may have rebelled against some or all of what was contained in those three legs of the stool, but we knew where we were. There were always rebels and miscreants in society but, generally speaking, people worked according to what was expected of them in that way.

I think that I know what the Minister who is answering the debate will say, despite the encouragement of his neighbour. I realise how difficult it is for government to legislate for individual behaviour. In his usual elegant and polite way, I am sure that he will find a very good way round that with his brief and, perhaps, one or two comments of his own.

We all travel now during the holidays, I think, although I do not travel far; I usually go to France. I confess that I am rather a Francophile. It is quite noticeable in France, and in other European countries, that they are markedly cleaner than we are in terms of what we are discussing today. Normandy, for example, which I particularly like, and where I go to wander round the countryside and go to the seaside and the races in the short time that I spend there, is a very enjoyable experience. Of course, the French know that this is an important issue because France relies on tourism, albeit that is a decreasing contributor to its economy. According to the old American economic mantra, every dollar that is spent by people coming to an area becomes $7 through the economic activity generated in that area. I think there is an element of truth in that. I know that we do not like learning from the French but it is a question of political will and priorities and of trying to make life more agreeable so that people become less depressed and more hopeful.

It is no good the Government coming out with meaningless slogans such as “the big society”. That is wrong in every respect. Things in Britain which are big are usually a problem. Someone should tell the Mayor of London that. People are now calling London Dubai-on-Thames—I did not make that up—because of the plans to build skyscrapers and the like here which will dwarf our wonderful domestic architecture.

The most cheerful thing this week for me was listening to a debate on television on the butchery of the Buckinghamshire countryside to create a fast rail link which will cut 15 minutes off the journey to Birmingham in the hope that that will lead to an increase in economic activity to the north of that fine city. However, it has now been discovered that the estimated cost of that project, which will be completed long after we are all dead, certainly after my death, is complete nonsense. We should get away from big projects and stop talking about the big society. As regards the slogan, “We are all in this together”, we are not all in this together. How can we be when you have the kind of bankers’ bonuses that are being paid, people in the public sector being rewarded for failure and the BBC in the vanguard of people throwing money about hither and thither, and yet, at the other end of the scale, some people hardly have enough money in their pockets to feed themselves and their children? We are not all in this together.

I see a friend of mine in the House who I sensed was becoming rather a Francophobe. I suggested that he might go to Normandy for a holiday. He did so and was so taken with it that he bought a house there. He thinks that it is a beautiful place and has told me, “It is absolutely marvellous. They take the rubbish away six days a week”. There is a different picture in different countries and we do not look good in comparison. We should not dance to the tune of the Government’s advertising slogans but get back to local government and listen to the comments of people such as the right reverend Prelate who spoke yesterday. I thank the noble Lord for introducing the Bill. I hope that it makes progress but I would not like to bet on it becoming law. I thank him for letting me hang my remarks on it.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Viscount Falkland Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, Amendment 41 is intended to be a probing amendment. The Advisory Council on Libraries developed the policy document that formed the basis of current public library provision. Public libraries are one of our national treasures and in all the countries that I have visited, including the most developed, I have never seen public provision to match them. Nobody would say that advice to the Government on how best to provide this unique service can be done only through a structure such as that of the ACL, but advice there must be or the provision will wither. Even the best educated policy officials do not have the skills and experience of professional librarians—nor perhaps the needs of many library users.

It may be that noble Lords opposite do not themselves use public libraries much, but many of us do. More than 320 million visits are made to our public libraries every year, and that would include visits by primary school children who may have little other opportunity to experience the enjoyment of choosing and reading books. Many writers testify to the resources of the public library that started them on their careers. Over the weekend, the rising young pianist Paul Lewis was interviewed. From the age of eight, he made visits to the local public library to borrow albums of the music that he discovered. He was the son of an unemployed Liverpool docker. What use the public library was to him.

At my library, I see scores and scores of students using the library’s resources as well as elderly people who may not be able to buy as many books as they want to read. It is no surprise that library use plays a part in driving up literacy rates and in raising and changing skills levels at all ages, as the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, said in Questions on 2 December 2010, at Hansard col. 1574. Public libraries help small business start-ups, promote healthier lifestyles and engage people in local democracy. They also help to bridge the digital divide by providing facilities and support to help the reluctant and fearful take the first steps towards digital skills. They are an essential player in the Government-sponsored Race Online 2012 campaign.

Libraries themselves do not necessarily have to be housed in separate buildings—as most of them are in their current form—but housed they must be, with enough room for their stock and for people to study it. What is government policy on public library development and where is the Government’s expert advice to come from? The Arts Council has many responsibilities, a severely truncated budget and little expertise in libraries. In the absence of specific policy for this truly magnificent national resource, the Advisory Council on Libraries should stay. I beg to move.

[Viscount Falkland]

I rise to support the noble Baroness on her interesting probing amendment. Over the years, I have spoken several times about libraries, particularly during the previous Conservative Administration when there was some concern that local authorities were not supporting libraries as they needed to be supported to react to changes in demand, new technologies and so on. Libraries are as useful as they ever were. The demands placed on them may be different, but with an ageing society even those who are now young may turn to books when they get old.

I have a bad habit of reading a book and keeping one eye on the television to see whether there is anything on the breakfast programme that might be interesting. This morning, I caught an interview with a man who has just written a book about having been unjustly imprisoned for some time. He was asked by the interviewer how he dealt with spending so much time in solitary confinement in the United States. Without hesitation he said, “By books”. Books are more than just information. There are people who say that books will not exist long after you are dead because books will be replaced by new electronic technologies, which have already had quite an impact. Such people are missing the point about books and particularly their usefulness to those who are poor, deprived or lonely—whom we find, I am afraid, in increasing numbers.

Local authorities often do not have the budgets to pay too much attention to the demand for libraries. I do not know—and in her interesting speech the noble Baroness did not mention—what the Advisory Council on Libraries does, but I take her point. When libraries in London, for example, decide whether to order new books, have more talking books or invite people to discussions and that kind of thing, what kind of advice do they get from the advisory council? I take her point that advice of some kind is obviously needed. Taking an overall view, as one would expect of a council of that kind, and seeing the changes in population, their needs and the budgets available, the advisory council may be able to spot things that make libraries better places.

When I have visited libraries in America, I have been impressed that there is almost always a cafeteria, which brightens them up. There are always bright colours and the impression of innovation, which goes apace with changes in the population. I support the concerns of the noble Baroness and am interested to hear how the Government view libraries and whether they agree with the idea—with which I disagree—that libraries have a limited lifespan. Do they agree that books are not only information but also therapeutic things to handle, whether they be history, biography or fiction? A lot of people ignore the fact that a book is paper that has wonderful print on it; there is the quality of the cover and all kinds of things. Particularly for people living through a stage in their life when they are lonely, depressed and poor, a book is a wonderful thing.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

If the Advisory Council on Libraries is allowed to continue, it may be about to have its finest hour. I suspect that my local authority, Suffolk County Council, will be the same as many councils in having to shed a great many of its libraries on to charitable bodies that have yet to be formed. If ever there was to be a time when the advisory council came into its own with knobs on, it is surely in this important transition. Could the Minister say a little about that?