Queen’s Speech

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, the gracious Speech prioritises growing and strengthening the economy and helping to ease the cost of living for families. This will require strengthening families. The Centre for Social Justice established that family breakdown—divorce and separation, father absence and dysfunctional family relationships—is not just a consequence of financial hardship but drives poverty and financial stress. As well as leading to much emotional and physical harm and significant health costs, it undermines individuals’ productivity and creativity, which has a knock-on effect on the economy.

During the pandemic, parents who had never needed help with the practicalities of family life, as well as in their relationships with their children and each other, began to reach out to local services and charities because they were at breaking point. Their significant financial and other anxieties have not receded but increased. That is why, in the Government’s efforts to level up and support more people into work, their policy on family hubs is particularly important and needs cross-departmental collaboration. Family hubs help to ensure that children have the best start for life and help parents to get out of debt, address substance misuse and get into employment. They could support the separated families in which one-third of all children grow up, and of which almost two-fifths are involved in acrimonious court proceedings.

The levelling-up Bill will place a duty on the Government to set missions and produce an annual report on their delivery. Action for Children’s suggested measures for levelling up for children include investment in education and for a number of children who are school-ready. I would make requirements on the number growing up with both their parents, a regional version of the family stability indicator that was part of the Government’s social justice strategy. Nationally, around a quarter of families are headed by lone parents, where children are particularly at risk of poverty and disadvantage. In 2013, the CSJ took the most local view possible and published an analysis of lower super output areas across England and Wales. Ranking all LSOAs by levels of lone parenthood, the top area had 75%, and in the top 10 the proportion was around 66%. Others, such as the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, acknowledge such differences in family structure among factors driving inequality of children’s outcomes.

Reducing regulation on businesses must include farming. Freedom from European regulation may have come in the nick of time, because our farms must perform to the max, given the ugly spectre of world famine that stalks the war in Ukraine. Agricultural innovation is urgently needed to build a more sustainable future but, in the developing global food crisis, particularly for grain, the Government must prioritise food production instead of imposing any new restrictions—for example, on fertilisers and pesticides.

Turning to justice and home affairs, I very much applaud the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, who talked about prevention upstream and downstream. Numbers of victims will continue to increase and streets will not be safer unless crime is prevented, including by improving rehabilitation. Considerable attention is paid to the plight of women in the criminal justice system. My review pointed to the abuse and violence many have suffered as potent criminogenic factors. A similar narrative would fit the reality of many men and boys in trouble with the law, but no one is articulating it. There are roughly 77,000 men and 3,800 women in prison—a stark difference. Yet, given our swollen male prisons, this is an area where significant changes are needed.

On criminalisation, the Government should tread very carefully—I am backing my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay here—when introducing an offence spanning non-physical conversion therapies intended to change sexual orientation. The Government will need to be crystal clear what they mean by “conversion” and “therapy”, so that when under-18s explore their sexuality with their parents, or perhaps a youth leader in a faith organisation, such people who are sincerely motivated by young people’s welfare are not unintentionally criminalised. A wide spectrum of responses exists between unquestioningly affirming their sexual orientation and rejecting it out of hand. Treating young people’s transgender issues separately is right, but many of the same concerns are relevant to sexual orientation and should not be batted away as homophobic.

Finally, much has been said about the Online Safety Bill and that it might curtail freedom of speech. However, there is much disquiet about children’s and young people’s access to pornography. Moreover, responses to “tractorgate” in the other place reveal how adults, as well as children, suffer when abusive, violent, misogynistic and racist porn is prolific because it is so addictive. As with gambling, libertarian arguments sound very hollow when the utter human misery associated with porn addiction becomes apparent, from the inability to form relationships and/or perform sexual functions because of its effects, to the social isolation and financial burden. This is not about making moral judgments, but recognising insidious and very real harm.