Integrated Communities

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend very much indeed for his comments and for the work that he does in chairing that excellent Select Committee. Without hesitation, I can say that the person who is driving this forward is, of course, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, Sajid Javid. He is not doing it alone, as he indicated in the Statement, because it involves many other government departments. It is cross-government and involves education in particular. We also mentioned the Ministry of Justice in relation to the situation regarding marriage. But I assure the House that the person who is driving it—and he is driving it very hard and is committed to it—is my right honourable friend Sajid Javid.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, on whose committee I am pleased to serve under his excellent chairmanship. I also draw attention to a non-pecuniary interest on the register. If I may bowl the Minister a bit of a googly—I suspect that he might agree with me, but he certainly will not want to say so—there is a bit of a paradox in the very welcome updating of the Life in the UK Test and the extraordinarily out-of-date booklet that goes with it, which actually ensures that those who seek naturalisation have learnt something about British citizenship while their children and, to pick up the words of the Statement, those whose heritage goes back to Norman times, do not have a mention at all in terms of education for citizenship in this document. Will the Minister inquire whether a cleaner in Downing Street could find the two or three pages that obviously got ripped out inadvertently before the document was published?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, very much indeed. I know that he plays a vital part on that Select Committee and I join in his praise of the chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. On his question, I have great sympathy with the point he is making. I was asked by a friend to provide some testing of model questions—which did not come with model answers, rather curiously—one of which was, “Was Richard III left-handed or right-handed?”. I had absolutely no idea at all and still have no idea. I do not know whether noble Lords can help me, but it struck me as a rather strange question relating to British life. It obviously needs a little attention.