Knife Crime

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when I put my name down for this debate I had a series of points that I was going to raise, most of which, of course, have been covered. The basic premise, though, from reading all the information is that the spike in knife crime—let us hope it is a spike, as opposed to an upward trend—merely ties into what has happened before. The profile of the offender is almost exactly the same as it has always been. The first common denominator is that they are out of school by the age of 14. That is the one that has always been there. Anybody who has worked in prisons has discovered incredibly low levels of educational attainment and a fear of authority. Only while working in a youth offender unit have I been threatened and grovelled to in the same sentence. These people are difficult to reach.

One of the contributing factors is clearly the fact that, in our current education system, it has become okay to get rid of your failing pupils: off-rolled, excluded, you name it, you get rid of them because of the way we are going. The Minister looks shocked. I did not say that the Government had done it; it is something schools have to do to preserve their status. The argument of losing your academy status has clearly had an effect here. There can be no real argument with that. There is something there: you are going to punish a school or change its status if it gets bad results. If you have pupils who will not get their five “C”s or whatever it is now—I think it will be five “4”s in the exam system my daughter will present to me in August—and there is a punishment, the perverse incentive is absolutely there. Very good schools will resist it, but it will still be there.

Of course people have always excluded themselves from school and there have always been people who did not like it. Schools do not want them there and say, “Just go away”. It has always happened, but it is becoming more prevalent and exclusions are rife. We have this lovely growth that can be exploited for criminal or social reasons. If I remember correctly, my noble friend Lord Dholakia said that fashion and fear lead to people carrying these blades. It has always been there, but it is now more common.

We have this horrible situation where something has become more prevalent and more exploited, then gangs move in to exploit it for a criminal activity. Drugs have mainly been spoken about, but there will be other areas of activity as well. So what we do to try to get out of it? One of the things civil society can do is encourage people who are very good at reaching these groups. Sport is one of them. It sounds a little like you are going to say, “Oh, if everybody played jolly good sport and had a cold shower afterwards, everything would be fine”. Having had the cold shower, believe me, it does not help you turn up next time. But all sports have a cohesive effect. They have an objective and discipline.

Bizarrely, from certain attitudes taken by the Government, boxing and martial arts are the best for reaching this group. They just are. Learning how not to get punched in the nose is a great way to make sure that you are less likely to get involved in violence. You have a community, a group and a reason to stay fit. If you are staying fit you are not hanging around drinking and taking drugs on street corners. If you do, when you go to the gym you will get hit. There we are: a great incentive for you.

Since we have this there, what are we doing to encourage it? We could bring boxing into prisons, but apparently we do not like that because it encourages violence. Possibly somebody should have a look at that at some point, but martial arts are a very good way in. Other sports, such as basketball and other good urban sports, will have opportunities as well, but the lead one seems to be boxing. Are we going to encourage these groups to integrate with the rest of society? There is a very good organisation called Fight For Peace. Its centre in the London Docklands, which I saw, grew out of the activities of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Since boxing is acceptable there it could cross gang lines. If noble Lords want to look at real problems when you get this wrong, they should look there. It is not a couple of people with knives; it is people with automatics and spare clips of ammunition on street corners and the police go in in armoured cars. We should bear in mind that it can get worse.

What are we doing to help groups such as this encourage into their gyms and training sessions social workers and people in careers support to make sure that these people can re-engage? We have a way in. All sports have it; boxing might have the best one. Anything that will build on what we are doing out there will work, because what they are saying is, “Re-engage with society”. The people who these young people respect, who are not the establishment or the teacher who failed them, should be the ones to come in and say, “You can succeed”. Bring in people who have the same accent as them to tell them, “You can succeed”, and to help. That is a way forward.

What are we doing to encourage these groups to have easy access to what the state can do to support and help them? This is a real question. We do it in small pockets and say, “Wonderful, isn’t it great?”, and then leave and do not change the rest of our activity. Ministers will have to lead this because they will always be punching through the Chinese walls of, “That’s not my budget”, or, “I don’t get the credit for it”. Everybody in Parliament can give a 10-minute speech on that any day of the week. What will the Government do to make sure good community projects can become part of this public health solution, which seems to be the only one we have identified? What are we do to make sure it happens? If we are not going to embrace this, we will probably end up losing out on one of our quick wins.

Equality and Human Rights Commission: Disability Commissioner

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is an interesting debate and, as many people have already stated, it comes down to this question: is disability something that easily fits with the rest of the commission? Personally, I think it should be there but that it needs to be treated slightly differently.

I and my noble friend Lady Thomas are both disabled people under every term of the Act, but our problems in day-to-day life could not be more different. As the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, said, if you have a disability—in my case, dyslexia—you often have to plan to do the normal differently. I am in a total mess if the voice-operated system on my computer breaks down. I cannot function as a normal Member of this House because I do not have access to email. It does not happen very often, but it does happen. Suddenly everything changes.

The perceptions of disabilities always exist in certain contexts. For example: “everyone in a wheelchair is only affected by transport”. That is something I went through many a time on many a Bill. “Dyslexia”, my own disability, “affects you only in the education system”. Both perceptions are patently absurd under any examination.

I recently took part, in the company of Barry Sheerman MP, in a commission on the neuro-diverse community and recruitment. We discovered—I throw this in merely to explain the great diversity—that the neuro-diverse community has tremendous difficulty with big-firm recruitment. It uses a series of online tests that we are bad at. I suspect that nobody else in this Room knew that, although you should have read our commission’s report. The difference is there and although all the other sectors here will have a great degree of difference, it is greater still. Many of the disabilities in the two groups which are to be discussed in the next debate have a great diversity of influence.

I have given the Minister warning of this question, although not much because I probably sent it to the wrong email account. I ask her: is there any evidence that the new approach is working better? I ask because that approach is not one that is reassuring to the huge and diverse disability communities—not “community”. We need to know that there is something working better and that information is getting out there. That is the important bit. Unless the Government can give us that assurance, we are going to have problems because we do not know what is happening.

Also, if your Lordships are looking at this huge, diverse and multifaceted group of things, yes, every disabled person happens to belong to at least one of the other groups in the commission but they will have little turns and changes in emphasis as things are gone through. Everything will be that little bit more complicated and, as my noble friend already said, we need to take some positive action to adopt this. Most bits of that action are actually much easier than people think, certainly with modern technology, but it still has to be taken. Somebody still has to be told that it is their duty to take it and, most of the time, it is my experience that people have to be shown that they can deal with the problem fairly easily.

In my professional life—I have to declare an interest here as chairman of Microlink, which deals with disability adaptation—often merely the structural changes in how something is paid for make life easier. For instance, it is often cheaper to do it without referring to somebody else’s budget and putting a central core down, but that is for another day. We need that reassurance that the information is getting through and that there is a central point, which is going down. If we do not have this, we will come back to this subject. We need the reassurance that it works, so is it being tested and, if so, how? What are the results? Make those public and we can move on.

International Women’s Day: Progress on Global Gender Equality

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I am another of the minority that is welcomed into this gathering. We talk about female leadership; I cannot help but reminisce that when I first got here, a huge chunk of that leadership was provided by one Baroness Seear. I did not mention her the last time we had the debate on women’s suffrage. There is a military saying: “Anybody who takes the first step and says, ‘Follow me’ is a more efficient leader than anybody who shouts, ‘Forward!’, no matter how loudly”. Baroness Seear not only took the first step but shouted “Follow me!” in a very commanding tone. That is more of an aside.

I was going to talk about women’s sport but I was beaten to it by the noble Lord, Lord Pendry. We all know that things are getting better there, but there is that old problem that there is still much more to do. Sport tends to think of its traditions, and the question is how you break out of those or adapt them to allow this new group in. The new group constitutes the slight majority of the population. We are addressing most of the institutions and structures, and we have an excellent example of how successful this approach can be if you give women in sport their moment in the sun: the winter Olympics.

The great success stories and great failures were female; they provided the drama. Elise Christie—a great champion who has not quite delivered at the highest level—crashed out three times. A defending champion came back, defying the odds and reasserting herself. There was the “nearly!” struggle of the curling. That provides the drama and the approach. Many people—at least one or two noble Lords in this Chamber—will say, “But does sport matter?” If you can think of a better way of expressing soft power and bringing nations together, I will be happy to listen. Is there something else that has such a mass appeal, bringing people together? I cannot think of anything. It is able to cut across, using an understandable language of activity and unity, and admiration for what somebody else does. Sport probably takes that all on. To come back to the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, I remember that trip to South Africa. The noble Lord may remember that it was a Parliamentary Rugby World Cup. I was playing, and the noble Lord was looking very elegant in a blazer. By the way, if anybody is interested, we are still turning out. I still have my jersey; I would like to say that it fits, but let us just say that I can still get into it.

If you look at the Olympics for examples of how women’s sport has taken off, you will find the perfect example in hockey. The women’s hockey gold medal has done more to lift that sport than just about anything else I can think of. Women’s football has done very well too. I was kept up very late watching England in a tournament the name of which I forget, taking on the world’s best in the USA. I was probably something of a jinx, because I decided that I could not stay up to watch the second half—and they lost. Then again, I support Scotland, so who cares? They have taken great steps. Rugby union has expanded its base and has made sure that it reaches out to schools. Those are traditionally male sports, which are moving on, but hockey has done it. It is true that for hockey, it is easier. I was chatting to somebody who said that one of the great problems in female sport is that the changing facilities seem to be too primitive for women. I do not see that at all in hockey; mind you, we built our clubs for women as well. An old rugby union player takes a bow on that one.

The fact is that you have to bring them in, but once you have done it, and if they are successful or at least competitive, you will build up the whole sport. The whole of hockey has expanded thanks to the shot in the arm that was provided by women. Everybody knows that sport is a social good, a medical good and an economic good. What’s not to like? If the women can do that, we must encourage them. All the sports I have spoken to are taking action in this area—for example, the government initiative whereby 30% of the board has to be female. However, the real challenges are coming not in recruitment but in establishing the underlying structures.

The difficult area is coaching—making sure that we get better female coaching, with more depth. You have really succeeded when, in football, there is no discussion about why you have not got a male coach. I was at a breakfast meeting here at which the FA basically said, “We wanted a coach who was good enough, and as we couldn’t get a woman coach we took a male coach, because of the need for quality at elite-level sport”. That is pretty unanswerable, unfortunately.

Unless you work on this and government encourages this, you will not get past the issue of who takes on the leadership role. Who is the person that will take this on? There is virtually no reason why females cannot take over in male sport. What attitude surveys have been done here? I have been coached by women in my time, such as the incredible and formidable Margot Wells, when I was in the second team at London Scottish. She was a person you did not mess with. I remember cowering in a corner when she shouted at a large group of men for not eating enough for her training programme—an experience that most people in this Chamber will not have been through.

Women have the capacity to get through if they are given the chance, knowledge and drive. What are the Government doing to encourage these sports to make sure that their coaching and development programmes reflect this? I know that work is going on and it is being looked at internally but what are we doing to help? If we do not do this, the hierarchical structure at the business end of a sport will dominate for a much longer period. How are we going to provide encouragement and make sure that the leadership—the person who makes the decisions and picks the team—is female, not only in female sport but male sport, and often enough to make a difference? Once that has been done, we will be close to achieving full equality.

Role of Women in Public Life

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I am a representative of the minority 25%. Indeed, it is slightly worse than that, because I am a hereditary Peer with an older sister.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Addington]

Yes. I thought that my spiritual gum-shield might be required today.

If we accept that we have a society comprised of more than 50% of one group, that group should probably be represented in roughly that number among those who make the decisions about it. You will understand it better and have a better way in and so forth. You will be able to understand the pressures and things going on. That is a reasonable assumption to make. But it is one that has the weight of history against it. It also has a great track record of people trying to change that. That is what drew me to this debate. Why has it not happened?

A hundred years ago, women arrived as voters, and very closely after that they arrived as representatives. Then there was a very staggered process through. The amazing thing, looking at the guidance provided by the Library, was that in 1964 we had 29 female MPs. We did not exceed that number until 1987—six general elections in a row there were fewer. That suggests that positive action is required. Then we should discuss what type of action.

We have heard two primary schools of thought here—either to change the structure or to drive change through by action out there with shortlists. I suspect that we will have to work from both to achieve change if we are not to wait another 100 years to get close. But if we achieve change only by affirmative action, we have also failed. You have achieved balance when getting 50% is not a big deal and is not a surprise. You have it when you get to the point where you can say, “This time it was 52% and then it was 48%”. That is what happens when you achieve true equality.

How do we get there? The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, who is also a friend, said that we should work across the parties and learn from each other. That is because we seem to agree on the target. There are different ways to move forward and different pressures, but unless we start to learn from each other, we are not actually going to achieve the target. The cultures and political stresses in the parties will fight against each other and slow things down unless we can establish a degree of consensus. The great virtue of this House is that we can probably start to get some consensus a little more easily than you can down the Corridor, and that is a fact. We are dealing with a practical question, and unless we work together, we will not get there as quickly, easily and sustainably as we might otherwise.

The other thing that attracted me to this debate was the fact that gender balance in representation is another example of how, if you want to change society, you have to be incredibly persistent. Most of the activities I have taken on in this House have been in the area of disability, where you hear similar types of arguments in different packages: “Oh, you can’t do that because”, or, “I know we can make the change, but really we haven’t done it before”, or, “What do you mean I have got to change the way I behave?”. That last is the worst one, and if anyone who has worked in this field has not come across it, I will buy them many beers. It is something that we have to address, so taking the messages from this area of social change is very valuable because, let us face it, it is the one which has the most experience and the most form. You also have potentially the biggest lobby, and it might set good examples to help you carry on. But unless there is a coherent attitude of persistence by saying that certain changes must be made, all of these areas will struggle.

We hear things like, “It doesn’t concern me and it’s okay because no one’s complained”. That is the best one. “We have never asked the question, we have never considered it, it has never arisen, so there is no problem and let’s move on”. You might hear, “We’ve passed a bit of legislation, so for the politicians the job is done”. We only get dragged back to look at an issue when the campaigners say, “It hasn’t worked”, or, “It hasn’t worked properly”. We must take this example into all areas of social change so that we go back, re-examine and make sure that what we are doing is right. Ultimately, time has to be spent on readdressing issues.

What we do not do, and this is a problem across Parliament as a whole, is say, “Okay, we have passed the law, so now let’s see how it works in practice”. If we had done that in the areas I have talked about and in the areas other noble Lords could talk about it—if passing a law were enough—there would not be a problem. “We have the Equality Act. Hey, job done and problem solved. Go away”. But it does not happen like that, because you have to go in and back it up. We have two models in this area: affirmative action and culture change. Unless we learn to bring them together, we are going to come back and applaud ourselves for making small changes, not for the big ones. I hope that we can make progress and take the examples set in this area into other parts of our society that desperately need them.