Lord Addington
Main Page: Lord Addington (Liberal Democrat - Excepted Hereditary)
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for bringing this debate before us. I have just under three minutes in which to speak.
There are many British values but I want to concentrate on just one which should be close to us in this building—that is, the concept of having a loyal Opposition within the British system which can oppose the Government, question them, and state publicly that they are prepared to replace them, while still not being considered traitors. In my veneer knowledge of history, I have discovered that this concept was first coined by John Hobhouse in 1826, when having a go at George Canning, apparently. That was a period of liberal Toryism, if I remember my A-level history correctly. The concept that we could criticise the Government without risking impeachment or imprisonment or being sent to the gallows did not exist 100 years before that time, or had only just started to emerge then. This idea that those in opposition can criticise and talk to the Government and, indeed, have status, position and influence within the system of governance is something that we should extend to the rest of our society and move it out from here. Indeed, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, spoke of getting other faith groups et cetera to feel that they are part of this process of criticising and having a different agenda—but not being alienated or criticised is an important factor. Also there is the fact that politicians, when under pressure, think, “You’re not being patriotic—you’re not representing the true interests of the country”. If we carry on down that road, we get into a very odd position, because the only civilised position is to say that anybody who opposes you is well intentioned but wrong. If we start from that assumption, sometimes it is proven that it goes a little bit beyond that; if we do that, we have grounds for a discussion and civilised disagreement. If we go beyond that, we get into very odd places. I do not know what is going to happen when the hunting Bill gets here, but I think that this is one of those occasions when this position was left behind—as horns, hooves and forks were pushed into the hands of both sides who did not love each other or the rest of the world, or cuddly animals, or understand the countryside. Take your pick and go round it twice. Unless we accept that people in positions of opposition at least deserve the courtesy of being listened to for a period of time, we are going to end up in a period when we listen to nobody—and then nobody needs to listen to us.