Trade Bill

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

I think the noble Lord is completely wrong. I have explained that it looks as though we will lose 7.5 million jobs because of the fourth industrial revolution; that is the first thing. Secondly, there is drastic underemployment among people aged over 50 who, when they try to get a job, cannot do so. It is seen that they have only a few years left to work and so are not reliable; youth is what people look for. There are plenty of available older people, but jobs will disappear. That is why I could not support this amendment unless we had done a lot more work on what the mobility framework advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, really meant.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I will depart for a moment from the beauty of facts to perhaps more abstract philosophy. We have heard about the movement of people with respect to the creative industries; there is an important point to make here. I look back over a career that has taken me from being a chorister at the Royal Academy of Music to working at the BBC and the Royal Opera House, working with orchestras, dancers and singers. In each of those cases a very important contribution was made by the movement of people.

I believe that one of the most important aspects of intellect and civilisation—I am sure many Ministers on the Front Bench would aspire to these things—is curiosity. To experience the best aspects of curiosity, you need freedom of movement, freedom of ideas and the freedom to travel. I am privileged in the way my life has been staggeringly enriched by the movement of people, whether it is my ability to go to a concert in Vienna next month where my music will be played, and another in Budapest, or people coming here to perform. These are people from whom I have learned so much, people such as György Ligeti or Witold Lutosławski, with whom I studied. This movement of ideas and curiosity is vital to the intellectual and cultural health of our nation.

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, I had no intention of entering this debate other than to support the amendment. However, I must make a point to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, because he raised it. What we heard from him is all too familiar. When my mother’s family came to this country 120 years ago as Jewish immigrants from Russia, exactly the same charges were being made about a flood of Jewish immigrants arriving in this country and, potentially, destabilising it and making it a more difficult place to live. Does any noble Lord in this House think that that generation of Jewish immigrants did anything other than contribute massively to the wealth and prosperity of this country? This absurd argument is trotted out every 100 years—mostly from his Benches, I am afraid—yet it is always fallacious and, frankly, very upsetting and quite disturbing.