Integration and Community Cohesion

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

That was a rather sobering speech from the noble Baroness, which I listened to carefully. It was a more uplifting speech from my noble friend about her personal journey. There were uplifting speeches from the two maiden speakers, which I also enjoyed hearing very much.

The vital nature of what my noble friend has introduced today can be contained in one statistic: last year in this country, 31% of all children born were born to mothers who were not born in this country. That is the scale of social change that is going on and which the noble Baroness’s speech and the other speeches today have to address. That is not a criticism; it is just noting the rate of change.

About five years ago, I chaired a cross-party Select Committee of your Lordships’ House on citizenship and civic engagement. We had a fairly powerful group, including two previous Labour Secretaries of State for Education—the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. Many of our findings, I am afraid, have not found favour. I hope the Minister might dust them down and see whether any have particular application. I offer just three for our debate this afternoon.

First, as a committee, we felt there was a need to distinguish between what you might call integration and assimilation; in other words, if you come to this country, what do you have to give up to be a full member of our society—which you might call your civic identity? What can you keep, and by keeping, enrich our society as a whole—which you might call your sociocultural identity? This country does not exist in a moral vacuum. There are essential values that have to be respected. However uncomfortable it may be, there are red lines that have to be enforced. We have heard some of them from the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, gave evidence to our committee, and she said:

“The laws that protect religious minorities are the same laws that say I am equal to a man. You do not pick which ones you want. It is not a chocolate box of choice; it is something you have to embrace. If you are uncomfortable with that, I now say that is tough”.


Secondly, tackling these very difficult issues will not happen by osmosis. This needs to be taught and taught well. That is why citizenship education is so vital. I am afraid my party did not do well in government in introducing this and maintaining it. But I am also afraid, I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Khan, I am not sure that this present Labour Government are doing much better. There is a persistent conflation between PSHE and citizenship education. In reality, they have completely different focuses. PSHE—personal, social, health and economic education—is about “me”. However, citizenship education is about “we”: the society in which we live. It is really important that we maintain that distinction and have a proper understanding and proper teaching of how our society operates and how people live within it.

Thirdly—I will say only two words about this, because both the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, referred to it—there is an absence of any co-ordination at all. To make this thing happen, you need a Secretary of State—someone with power and influence. We found initiatives all over the place that, frankly, just ran into the sand. Some were good and others were bad, but nobody picked up the good ones and developed them; no institutional memory was developed at all. That is our report.

For my last minute and a half, I will talk about scale. In the last year for which records are available, we gave entry rights to 1.259 million people and about half a million left, so our population increased by about three-quarters of a million. I have some doubts as to whether we can integrate that number successfully—not just whether we can integrate them socially but whether we can provide them with an adequate supply of housing and access to health and other social services, not to mention avoiding damaging our environment, ecology and achievement of net zero. Moreover—this is the point made by my noble friend Lady Bottomley—we need to do so without selling short our existing settled population, 20% of whom are now from minority communities; they have rights that need protecting.

The noble Lord, Lord Rook, may think that I will start attacking asylum seekers and refugees—absolutely not. Of the figure I gave, just 100,000—7.5%—were asylum seekers. Obviously, particular issues are raised, but in terms of the numbers, they are virtually irrelevant. The big challenge comes from British industry and commerce, which simply cannot wean itself off recruiting overseas as a “default option”—the phrase of the Migration Advisory Committee. It also comes from British higher education, which has built a business model around recruiting ever-increasing numbers of overseas students, sometimes, as some people say, at the expense of the education of our settled population.

To conclude, of course everything we are discussing today is absolutely critical, but we need to be prepared to think about the central challenge of how many people we can take in every year. With all the different moral, economic and other objectives, how can we take them in? If we do not settle that, all that my noble friend said and all the speeches we have heard today are like trying to empty the bath without first turning down the taps.