National Life: Shared Values and Public Policy Priorities

Lord Addington Excerpts

Friday 2nd December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the most reverend Prelate for introducing this debate. It falls to me, as the first speaker from these Benches since the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, to congratulate her on her maiden speech. Many years ago, I too was the youngest Member of the House. The noble Baroness is infinitely better qualified to be here than I ever was, and I have survived a good few years, despite one or two attempts to get rid of me. I welcome what she and the other maiden speaker said, and welcome that much of what she and other noble Lords said today was about things that can be embraced around the House. There has been a degree of commonality of purpose, even if there has also been a difference in approach.

The heavy intellectual lifting in this debate has been done by others, particularly by those on my own Benches, whom I thank. I will draw attention to some of the things which help to shape the values we have in our society. That is those myriad voluntary groups, which share two things. They need to have a treasurer and a secretary. I started with sports clubs. We are told that exercise is the great wonder drug of the National Health Service. It gets people out there, gets them involved, leads to social interaction, stops loneliness, makes sure that people get together, supports societies, and supports education. Then I remembered certain things: we discovered that these clubs do not interact with each other terribly well; they become competitive; they do not talk to each other properly; and they do not realise that they have the same problems across the board. Now, the overarching body is going to try to bring them together, but there will always be that tension.

Exactly the same applies to other groups. Let us take amateur dramatics. What do amateur dramatics groups and rugby clubs have in common? Well, you might come across dramatic interaction with the referee every now and again. Other sports clubs come into this category as well, and they have exactly the same virtues—the one difference perhaps being that your heart rate does not go up quite as much during a questionable performance of “Macbeth”. However, they still have to gather people together and interact with each other.

Then there are the charities. We all deal with charities and they lobby us persistently. Dozens of charities campaign for virtually the same thing but compete with each other. Which of us here has not come across a charity that basically tries to outsuffer its neighbour? One will say, “The problems I am dealing with are absolutely world-turning”, to which another will reply, “No, mine are”. You discover that they are dealing with the same pieces of legislation and the same failures within the system, often in enacting laws that we have passed.

This House and another place have a key role in encouraging these groups to talk to each other and become coherent. If they do not, they will become incredibly easy to ignore. I do not know how much time I have spent in the years I have been here encouraging them to talk to each other so that a Minister can give a coherent answer without having to fend off several competing positions. In the field of education I have on numerous occasions said, “Speak to the other people, even those with hidden disabilities”. As president of the British Dyslexia Association I have got into rows when people have said, “Dyslexia is the big problem”. My response has been, “No, it is one of the problems”. Those working in the field of autism, dyspraxia and dyscalculia do not talk to each other, despite the fact that they all come together under one spectrum.

I have been waiting for the opportunity to thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash— although as yet I have been unable to do so—for the work he did in changing teacher training to make sure that all these strings were brought together in the national curriculum. That is an example of an area where we have worked together. Unless we do that across the board and get a more coherent strategy, we will lose many opportunities to obtain shared values. If we do not come together in one big cause, we will find ourselves fighting little battles that ultimately will be doomed to failure.

We should look back at the voluntary groups which have a common purpose, or similar purposes, and which have succeeded at being fellow travellers for at least part of the time. If we do not do that, we will miss many opportunities to get a coherent answer to problems—one where you look to your allies. Indeed, looking to your allies can create some of the answers if you bring yourselves together as a whole. If groups need treasurers and secretaries and are working in a similar field, they have a common cause. I hope that those in this House and all the political class will go out and talk to these groups. If we do, we will probably start to find out the perceived problems, the true ways of reaching them and the true ways of enjoying ourselves that are common to this society.