Queen’s Speech

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, listening to the various topics debated this week, I could not help but think about how interrelated so many of them are. Indeed, these days of consideration of the gracious Speech provide a valuable opportunity to foster joined-up thinking where, in the coming months, we may sometimes suffer from tunnel vision. I am always exhorting students to look beyond their own sphere of interest and at other disciplines to help to clarify their own.

Why is this pertinent to today’s debate, particularly on culture? Let me give some examples. My greatest concern in this field is the provision of music in schools, which has suffered dreadfully over the past 15 years. Not only should music-making be the right of all and not just the privilege of the wealthy few, but research has shown that music and choral singing lead to a more cohesive society, one where the individual’s ability to express personal turbulence through an artistic outlet acts as a release of internal pressure. Improvements in behaviour and academic achievement follow, as the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, pointed out earlier. So culture, education and health are all stakeholders in this.

I accept that everyone has to take their share of the current cuts, and many small and large arts companies are really struggling. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, told us about the difficulties facing the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and if a world-renowned organisation such as the CBSO is struggling, just imagine what is happening to chamber groups, small theatre companies and the like. Yet it is precisely here that we find the seed bed that feeds talent into our international successes, which bring a fortune into the Treasury, as we have heard. So we must fight for the arts at grass-roots level, but the primacy of the need for children—our next generation of artists and audience, after all—to be versed in the arts seems to me of paramount importance.

There is, too, an aesthetic element involved in planning. In my area of mid-Wales, which, incidentally still does not have efficient digital coverage let alone high-speed broadband, there is considerable rejoicing that the Government are set to strengthen the representation of local communities in deciding about onshore wind farms, since one threatened Offa’s Dyke and a Repton grade 1 park. This issue is not confined just to energy, which we discussed yesterday; it also embraces agriculture, tourism, landscape and culture. I sincerely hope the Government will give this proposal real teeth.

We failed lamentably in the previous Parliament to curb, let alone stop, female genital mutilation. We simply must do better in this Parliament, even if that requires more draconian action by the state, as in France. It is a national disgrace that this appalling practice has been illegal since 1985 and, as the late and much-missed Baroness Rendell consistently pointed out, we have still to secure a single conviction. Part of the problem is cultural and part is educational, while the implications for health are truly shocking—I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Winston, would confirm this—including loss of sensation, sepsis, haemorrhage and complicated childbirth, to name but four.

Finally let me touch on the BBC and its future. I must, of course, declare an interest here, but I speak not just as a broadcaster but as someone who has been educated, entertained and enlightened by the BBC. Several noble Lords, especially Conservative Peers, mentioned this week their pride, which I share, in your Lordships’ record of scrutiny and improvement in this Chamber, and urged the Government not to overreact to constructive criticism in this place. I would say that, inevitably, parties in power, of whatever hue, are going to feel got at by an organisation such as the BBC if its journalists are doing their job properly in reporting the workings of Westminster, as we are charged with doing our job of scrutiny—but not, in the final analysis, of obstruction—in this Chamber. From my vantage point, I see and feel the huge cuts that have been made in the BBC. Many arts programmes have been cut to the bone. The noble Lord, Lord Hall, in his role as director-general of the BBC, is gradually turning this huge vessel in the right direction, but it cannot be done overnight. So I would counsel Ministers and the Government to tread carefully and sensitively when looking at the licence fee. Once lost, valuable and much-loved aspects of public service broadcasting, not available anywhere else, will, I fear, be very hard to retrieve.