Queen's Speech

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I first acknowledge the need so well expressed in the coalition document and the gracious Speech to reduce our national deficit and, alongside that, the moral dilemma faced by the Government in just how to do that. I want to explore that.

The most basic principle needs to be that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden. There is much more in the gracious Speech and its notes about cuts than there is about taxation, although there is a reference to fairer taxation, and I look forward to discovering just what that means. I hope that the Government will acknowledge that fiscal adjustments are also there to be used as a part of the economic proposals. Our taxes are not simply a way of purchasing public services; they are also the charge that we pay for the opportunities and security that go with a nation where social bonds are strong. Mutual responsibility must be recognised as the key to our social fabric. Those who have done best out of the boom years should be at the forefront of the desire for generosity in a more astringent economy.

Some of us are old enough to have been brought up on that oft repeated cartoon from an earlier period of austerity in which a row of men—I fear that they are all men—are on a ladder rising from a flood, with the rich man at the top, the middle-class man below him, then the worker and then the unemployed at the bottom, his head barely clear of the water. The rich man is saying, “Equality of sacrifice. That’s the spirit. Let’s all take one step down”. It is that sort of inequality dressed up as equality that we need to avoid in our society.

Does the Minister accept the thesis of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level, which has been cited several times in this House, that it is disparity of wealth that is most deeply damaging to society? Material inequality is harmful not only to those who are poor but also to those who find themselves having to protect themselves from resentment and discord. The last thing that we want is a gated society.

The notes in the reports that accompany the gracious Speech speak of the importance of mutuals and co-operatives in delivering public sector service. I welcome that emphasis, but I look to hear more about how that principle of mutuality is to be exercised in the economic sphere. What encouragement will there be of mutuals, from building societies to credit unions, to take a much more prominent place in the financial sector? Will the Government consider mutualisation as a way forward for the Royal Mail, with its unique loyalty to the Crown, and therefore to the whole of our society? Will its commitment to serving the whole of the population be preserved and nurtured? That will be one test for the concept of a big society, ensuring that that is more than a fig leaf for getting volunteers to deliver the state’s welfare obligations.

Welfare is in danger of following asylum as a term of abuse rather than of mutual generosity. The Government need to affirm and to celebrate welfare. One of the most distinguished previous occupants of these Benches, William Temple, coined the phrase “welfare state” in order to distinguish it from the “power state”, where those with wealth and power exercised coercive control over the citizens. The need for welfare at the heart of the state is as dramatic now as it was 60 or 70 years ago.

Finally, I highlight the needs of the third sector—not much referred to so far in this debate—because the third sector provides so much to enhance our mutual responsibility. Work in Leeds to enhance the learning of English, to encourage integration and to support children is holding its breath. Money destined for that work now appears to be threatened as departments assess their priorities. It is important for the Minister to reaffirm today the Government’s support for local initiatives—both by local authorities and by the third sector—which do so much to create that mutual dependence on which we rely for a flourishing culture, whether in times of affluence or in times of austerity.