Soft Power and the UK’s Influence (Select Committee Report)

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when you are number 26 in a list of 30, everything you thought you might say that might be original has usually been covered. I shall run through these areas quickly.

The BBC World Service is an incredibly good institution but, as has been said, it would not exist in anything like its current form without the BBC. The BBC’s greatest claim to fame is that it bears the name “British” and has consistently been a pain in various parts of the anatomy of every single British Government that I can remember. Trying to explain that abroad, and the fact that a society such as ours supports such an institution, says more about us than we can imagine from sitting here.

It has been suggested that we should enhance our Diplomatic Service to access the power and influence that we have. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said about power and soft power. I, too, have problems with how much power and influence is concerned, but there must be something that takes it forward. It is also quite clear that hard power still has a role to play—it is probably the backstop to smart power and soft power. You name it, we need it. If we are to be any sort of player in the world and to be sure of our own security, we will need hard power. We can argue until the cows come home about exactly what form that should take, but we will need something there.

There is one thing that I do not think has been touched on much, which was something of a surprise to me. The report mentions the Olympics but there is not much mention of sport generally. If ever there is something that goes beyond the normal confines, it is sport. Sport is something you can talk about and relate to. Britain has given the world football. The figure I saw was that the Premier League reaches 212 territories—I am not quite sure what that is in terms of countries. Billions of people watch it. We have the most watched league; that is massive power. In the current row about the placement of the World Cup, if we have not brought the FIFA house crashing down, at least we have shaken its door a bit. We can probably say that, yes, we have power there.

We also have the Rugby World Cup coming up. For anybody who wants to see the comedy version ahead of it, do you know that the British Parliament is hosting a parliamentary World Cup tournament? I do not know if I shall be the only player from your Lordships’ House and, with the amount of hobbling I have been doing, I may not be playing in all of it. This is something else that we have given the world. Other sports have come to us; we have given these. These sports cut across even the high networking worth that has already been spoken about. It goes beyond the Commonwealth Games and it travels beyond the European Union. Even in rugby union, that British-dominated game, France, Italy and Argentina, as full board members, might just object to thinking that they are naturally part of our sphere of influence.

The whole idea of sport as something in which you can compete—where you can join in, participate and have an interaction with others—has not really been touched on, other than in relation to the Olympics. With the Olympics, we were talking about the structure of getting the Games and running them well. That ties in because, if you look at our history, we have had a series of disasters in organising events over the past few years. There was Pickett’s Lock and the Wembley fiasco—projects that had to be publicly taken on. It was not until the Commonwealth Games in Manchester that we got it right. Effectively, we invented a new way of doing things: regeneration, creation and giving something permanent back to society. All of that enhances these events. Our volunteer structure has been widely taken up by others, and it is clear that it allowed us to have the confidence even to bid for the Olympic Games.

The Olympics themselves seem to have become something of a beacon. It was a regeneration project that has proved useful to society since and it gave us kudos. It was also incredibly useful in building up an awareness of disability rights because of the success of and drive behind the Paralympics. That is an incredible achievement. They were the first Paralympic Games for which you could not get a ticket; that is a massive contribution and one that still has repercussions all over the world. You cannot build up a prestigious Paralympic team unless you actually do something with your disabled community. These people are not a drag; they are a bonus and a boost to society. We hope that it will go further than that, and the legal framework and the full range of civil rights that are expressed in the rule of law tie in with it.

We must bear in mind that we can take the idea of projecting ourselves as a sporting nation and tie that in with everything else as we go forward. We must build on it, because if we do not, we will miss out on something which, shall we say, carries less obvious baggage than most of what we have been talking about. You have to try slightly harder to misunderstand a sports team going on to a pitch than, for instance, a cultural programme about Shakespeare. You have to go forward and create something positive there. If you do not, you miss something that is universal, in which we are a leader and where we can touch the rest of the world without offending anyone in any way.

Equality (Titles) Bill [HL]

Lord Addington Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, any hereditary Peer who speaks on this Bill probably has to declare a series of interests. My interest is that my only child is a daughter. I have checked under all the beds and cannot find anybody else in the house; and she is definitely a daughter.

Would I like my daughter to inherit my title? Yes, I would. Do I think my younger brother, or either of his two sons would do a particularly bad job if, by some miracle, the hereditary peerage process is still going by the time it comes round to them? I touch wood in saying that and will ensure that I cross the road carefully when I leave the Chamber. Would they be any good at the job? Who knows? My two nephews are still far too young to even consider this as a realistic prospect as you cannot sit in this Chamber before attaining the age of 21. But, would my daughter be any worse? I do not think so. Would my older sister have performed worse than me, had she sat in this Chamber? She would have done things differently, but would she have been worse than me? I doubt it. However, we are talking about history here. I am a direct descendant of the first Lord Addington through the younger sons’ line. Had this Bill become an Act in an earlier era and been implemented, I would be very surprised if there had not been a few females succeeding to the title. The fact that it has always been done and chance has always worked in that way is not a good reason for carrying on with the present system. The fact that things can change and there is a pool of talent out there that could add to this place is something we should embrace.

If hereditary Peers’ automatic right to sit in this Chamber is cut within the next few years—we have been waiting a decade and a half and there does not seem to be any great hurry to reduce it—it would be merely a courtesy that should be carried on in the fairest way to reflect society. It is a bit of history that does not hurt very much. We should embrace the fact that history is living and changing.

I have a good memory for previous arguments on this issue that I have listened to, and my noble friend has probably found a way forward that will allow us to take that important step. It may not be the end of the argument but it is a step forward. In embracing the idea I suggest that if we pass this measure the world will carry on turning. There will probably be a few family squabbles but there always will be, some of which are quite entertaining, provided that you are out of punching and throwing range at the time. We should take on this part of our history, make it slightly more up to date and let it carry on. While we still have an entrance into this House, it is absurd not to do this, given that we have the opportunity. This measure will not hurt anyone and I totally support it.

English Premier League Football

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I have a confession to make: I am not a football fan. It is an odd thing. What does Premier League football—this great, iconic game in this country—mean to me? My home city is Norwich. I still look for the result when it is announced on a Saturday. I still take that bit of time to find it. I might not take much time to watch the team play, but in a strange way the result matters. It is part of my identity. That tells us much about the importance of football in our society. It gets through to people who play another sport—in my case, rugby. It has a dominant position, which explains why the Premier League, when it broke away from all those years of tradition with all the gloom and doom that came with them, has gone on to be a wholly new, global thing.

How has football transformed itself? My memories of it as a young person were of something that you went to in order to shout abuse—often of a racist quality—at people and to get into fights. That was the general impression. The game at professional level has transformed itself after some very unpleasant experiences, and continues to transform itself. It now accepts its social role. Parliament is a slightly reactive body. There has to be a problem, it has to get reported and then we generally do something about it at some point after that. We now have interaction with the system, which has broken down the anti-social aspects of football and allowed this new thing to flourish. Now the Premier League has gone global and encourages huge amounts of expenditure.

What are the downsides of the changes that have happened from the world I grew up in? The idea of the local boy playing for his club and coming good is something that is now almost guaranteed not to happen because of the free and global market in players, and the international market structure. That has been used to explain the lack of competition for our national team. I repeated this argument once and somebody who knew something about the game said, “Don’t talk rubbish. The people who are beating us often have their players in our league as well”.

It is a huge, comparatively new thing. One of its downsides as a sporting event is that the championship is won too often by the same few clubs. Manchester United seems to have a timeshare on the championship with whoever else is coming along in the queue at the time. Greater diversity would be beneficial. However, as we look through the briefing, we discover that investment in other sports—for instance, the Olympics—and their competitors is important. So are the continuation of talent spotting, and support for the teaching of training techniques. The Premier League is showing the way here, and investing in sports science produced by other bodies. This movement is gaining momentum and reflects the world in which we live.

However, when things go wrong—we remember the disappearance of Leeds United and Portsmouth—it can be cataclysmic. A club, which is a great social entity that brings pride to a local community, can disappear. Under this system, I do not think that there is great enthusiasm for saying that you have a franchise rather than a place in a league with the possibility of promotion and relegation. It can all go horribly wrong. It can even cause losses to the Revenue, as it did in the case of Portsmouth and other clubs. If we look north of the border to another great icon of the football scene—Rangers—and the trouble it has got into, we see the need to temper the ability to strive for success with realism. It reinforces the point about management structures and the fact that things come with a preparation cost.

It is a romantic idea even if much of the romance is being stripped out by money. However, if you do not prepare, you will lose this thing that people have a relationship with. The managers of many clubs have been hounded out because they would not invest sufficiently in their club for their fan base. The English Premier League as it stands now does good works and the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, has pointed out one of its activities. It is an icon of sporting activity. However, it has also shown that it needs management, investment and to be observed. The Government cannot totally turn their eyes away from it. To get the best out of it we have to live and interact with it. It cannot be left to itself but must link to its community. Politicians must make sure that it remains linked, too, to our structure. It is simply too big and too influential to be left to one side. We must to talk to and engage with it. Otherwise we will lose many of the benefits that are potentially there.

Elections: Registration

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, successive Governments have struggled for some time with the whole issue of citizenship education in schools, and as the noble Baroness knows well, schools have struggled with how well PSHE as a whole is taught. I have asked about citizenship education and students tell me that they have had a bit on the European Union and a bit on Parliament in between the instruction on how they should behave in relations with the opposite sex. We all know that citizenship education remains a problem. It is a problem with which the Department for Education and others are grappling, but I encourage the noble Baroness to keep pushing.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, it seems, as my noble friend will undoubtedly be aware, that the young are interested in single issues in politics. Would it not be a good idea to encourage those single-issue groups to inform the young of just how important it is to get involved in the political process in order to get anything done, and that voting is part of that?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the localism agenda—and, indeed, reviving local democracy—is clearly one very important part of getting young people re-involved in democratic politics, because it is easier to understand how they interact with local politics. I have to say to all Members of the House that the way in which we handle the issue of constitutional reform over the next year will send a signal to young people about how responsible we are, at Westminster, in reacting to constitutional reform issues.

Public Services (Social Value) Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Friday 27th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, when your name appears towards the end of a speakers list, it is not unusual to discover that everything you wanted to say has already been said, often more eloquently than you could have done. Therefore, I shall not detain your Lordships' House for long.

This is one of those Bills where you ask yourself why on earth it has not been introduced earlier. Then you have a look and think that there was nothing to stop it being introduced earlier; so why has that not been done? The simple reason is that, until now, this subject was considered as something that was jolly good but which should be tagged on to something else. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, touched on that when he spoke about corporate responsibility in relation to many big firms. Indeed, we have all seen projects of varying quality and heard the associated razzmatazz about corporate responsibility. However, corporate responsibility has not been an essential part of the services we are discussing and the concept has not been open to challenge prior to the introduction of the Bill. I hope that the concept is also applied to non-traditional, first-choice suppliers; when you come out with an expression like that without thinking about it, you wonder whether you have been here too long. Such suppliers could offer models of best practice that may be absorbed by bigger groups.

Whenever you have a good idea and it is purloined by somebody else, you always cry foul, but as long as action is taken that is a good thing. I hope that the Bill, which is a short measure when compared with the huge Bills that we have discussed over the past few months, will help to start a process. Following the enactment of other good small pieces of legislation, battles have commenced in terms of enforcement, monitoring and making sure that people take them seriously. The Bill constitutes a good idea that has been given a few teeth. Whether those teeth are sharp enough, or the jaw that contains them is strong enough, we do not yet know. However, the Bill is a good start. We should see it as part of an ongoing process as opposed to an end in itself. Nevertheless, it is valuable.