Education (Values of British Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Baroness Warsi Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble and right reverend Lord’s tabling of this Bill and support much that has been said, particularly the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and my noble friend Lord Bourne. It is timely and necessary and allows us to discuss some vital issues that will determine the kind of nation that we will be in the future.

The summer riots saw violence, arson attacks on places of worship and street attacks, and are evidence, if further evidence was needed, that many in our society do not abide by what we have deemed fundamental British values—this, despite those FBVs having been a key plank of government policy on fostering cohesion and promoting a shared sense of belonging since 2011. The failure is to some extent borne by successive Governments, including the one that I was a part of, because we implicitly and explicitly implemented this policy and promoted FBVs in ways that suggested that it is an issue for immigrant-background communities, recent arrivals and asylum seekers—that they and only they are in need of education on what it means to be a British citizen and how to live well with others in British society.

We also failed because of our insistence on coupling citizenship education with counterterrorism. It was a debate that we had at length in government when FBVs were introduced in the Prevent strategy in 2011. This was considered by the Lords Select Committee, which was right to argue that it does an injustice to the innate worth of the teaching of democracy and democratic values in our education system. It is not just terrorists who undermine our society’s democratic status and the freedoms and rights that we enjoy as British citizens but extremists, far-right racists, and anti-refugee and anti-asylum-seeker demagogues. These too are a threat to the functioning and flourishing of our democracy. The teachings of these values should not be a minority problem but a majority concern.

I also welcome the shift from FBVs to values of British citizenship. It underlines that all citizens in the UK, whatever their background, race, ethnicity, wealth, geography, sexuality, age or gender, share and live by these values as citizens of a common entity—the United Kingdom. The term “FBV” came to be perceived as values that are somehow native to some and therefore fundamental to their identity and history, and foreign to others, who were therefore in need of education.

The far-right chanting heard during the summer riots, of “We want our country back”, is paradoxically an illustration of this very point. Ethnicising our values or employing ethno-nationalist language in speaking about them suggests that the majority ethnicity possesses them, even as it breaks the law and engages in thuggery, and that the minority need to be taught them. This divests our democracy of its most basic characteristic—that democratic values do not belong to one ethnic group but are held by all people of British citizenship, whatever their ethnicity. I welcome and support this Private Member’s Bill as a positive step in the right direction.