Integration and Community Cohesion

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Raval and Lord Rook, on excellent—and very funny at times, which is always lovely in this House—maiden speeches. I welcome them to your Lordships’ House, and I look forward to working with them on these issues in the future. I thank my noble friend Lady Verma for bringing this important debate to us today. I particularly thank her for sharing her story and for her long-standing and passionate service to, and love for, the city of Leicester and its communities.

I am proud of our diverse country. A recent study by Oxford University’s Migration Observatory found that Britain is one of the most successful ethnically diverse countries in the world. Some of our greatest achievements as a nation have been by people who have chosen to come to Britain and contribute fully to our country. I think of Mo Farah and his Olympic excellence, Freddie Mercury, who was born and raised in Zanzibar to Parsi-Indian parents, and Dame Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win the Pritzker prize in architecture, who was born in Iraq. Indeed, many Members of your Lordships’ House were born in other countries and have committed their lives to public service in this country.

It is important that people who come here abide by our laws. We embrace people who integrate, but we know that when immigration is too high, it sometimes presents challenges to effective integration. Nearly 1 million people in England have little or no English proficiency. Specifically, 8.6%—approximately 794,000—of our residents born overseas struggle with the English language, and 1.4%—about 138,000—cannot speak English at all. This language barrier poses significant challenges to migrants’ integration. I echo the question from my noble friend Lady Verma to the Minister and ask him to set out the Government’s plans to improve English language skills for all as a part of work to foster greater cohesion.

We have a rich culture in this country which we should be proud of, but there have been too many examples of UK public bodies apologising for our national traditions. Let me give just a few examples. Stoke-on-Trent City Council referred to its Christmas celebrations without explicitly mentioning Christmas, aiming to be considerate to all community members. Newcastle University advised staff to use terms such as “winter break” instead of “Christmas break” and “spring break” instead of “Easter break”, supposedly fostering inclusivity among a diverse student population. We are, however, culturally a Christian country, and people from all faiths and backgrounds can enjoy the Christmas and Easter breaks even though they may not be Christians themselves. I would be interested to hear from the Minister his thoughts on the role that public institutions have to play in fostering inclusivity without seeking to undermine our traditional cultural values.

As a Minister, I spent a lot of time going around the country visiting many of our fantastic faith communities that were encouraging and supporting integration. I visited Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and London, and there were groups of Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and Hindus—mainly women, I have to say, which is interesting —using Christian church halls, in particular, just to chat between themselves, have a cup of tea and share skills and their cultural heritages. That is local integration. I even saw them running wonderful community food banks, helping all their communities. These projects still need some local and, I suggest, national support to keep them going because it is from the bottom up that real community cohesion happens, with support from the top—so government, both local and national, is critical in this.

I want to talk briefly about British laws. I am very proud of our laws and our way of life. One area where we need to see more action on integration is women’s rights. We have a responsibility in your Lordships’ House to protect women in all communities, across all faiths and all cultures. We cannot allow the progress that we have made to be hindered by groups that have refused to accept our support for women’s rights. It is a fundamental principle in English law that we are all equal before the law, and I believe that every woman should have the same equal protection under the law regardless of her faith, culture, background or ethnicity.

It is the same in policing. We must ensure that policing is fair throughout our country. Where there are failures, whether they be heavy-handed policing in certain communities or failure to act in other areas, we must call them out and correct them. The Government are right to look again at the grooming gangs. Although we were disappointed that they did not launch a national inquiry, it is important that that work continues at pace.

In the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill—noble Lords are probably asking why I am talking about that—there is a requirement for strategic planning bodies to create spatial development plans. In that, there is a gold-plated plan on consultation requirements. It claims that there must be consultation of bodies that

“represent the interests of different racial, ethnic or national groups in the strategy area”.

We cannot support this; it is where we perhaps go wrong. We believe that on policies of this kind we need to consult the public, not pull out different ethnicities or religions. I believe that it potentially creates division when we go too far.

Broadly, we need a clearer approach to an integration strategy from the Labour Government. Integration is about uniting communities across class, ethnicity and creed, celebrating shared local and national identities that bring people together rather than atomising them into protected characteristics. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how Labour intend to achieve that.