Older People: Their Place and Contribution in Society

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Friday 14th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

I, too, congratulate the most reverend Primate on this Motion and on his inspiring speech. He included an economic insight into the important contribution of the elderly, but we shall perhaps have more of these economic archiepiscopal insights with his successor.

As a former city councillor in Cambridge, under the stern mayoral discipline of the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, it was a pleasure to hear her powerful words again. It was certainly my experience as a city councillor visiting retirement homes to see the loneliness and sadness that we have been thinking about in this debate. During one such visit, during an election campaign, I was asked about my policy on euthanasia. I hummed and hawed and said that it was not quite the role of Cambridge City Council to deal with that. The lady asking the question said that she would prefer to be off by lunchtime; she was a precise Cambridge mathematician who was actually a founder member of the Euthanasia Society, along with the Shaws and the Webbs. This is the sort of challenge that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, spoke about.

From my experience as a scientist in academia and government, like other noble Lords I benefited hugely from the wisdom and insights of older colleagues in my career. The remarks of my noble kinswoman Lady Bottomley on her experience in business and the health services is certainly paralleled in the world of science. An old don in his 80s at Trinity, Samoilovich Besicovitch, asking me about my teaching load, helpfully commented that it had been much easier under the tsar. That is the kind of thing that you can learn about from older colleagues. Many universities maintain the civilised practice of entitling retired academics as emeritus, providing opportunities for them to talk and collaborate with students and fellow academics. That is very much a feature of the scene in China. I was at a conference last week, and it was remarkable to see quite young scientists questioning and collaborating strongly with scientists in their 80s from the Chinese Academy. In Japan, some of my colleagues have stepped down from responsible professorial positions to become lecturers at junior colleges. That kind of thing could perhaps be done more in the UK.

How can government and Parliament also benefit more from the contributions of the elderly and retired? I notice that there are no people of our age in the Box. This is particularly important as the Government keep reducing posts. The Government contribute to the pensions of former civil servants such as me who would like to contribute. When civil servants were more numerous, government departments and, indeed, society benefited greatly from their representation in all sorts of national and international organisations. Regrettably, the UK is now almost notorious for its absence of representation in many such bodies. Retired civil servants could do this job—occasionally, I have seen this being done—and could feed back information to Whitehall and make sure that the UK is represented, just for the price of the train fare and a cup of tea on the train. This kind of thing should be thought about as part of the Government’s policy on slimming down the Civil Service.

In this debate there has not been much discussion of the medical and technological contributions to the welfare of the elderly and the ways in which they can help people, particularly those who are elderly and disabled. At one end of the spectrum, the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, referred to athletic achievement. At the other end, as a colleague of Professor Stephen Hawking at Cambridge, I was fortunate to see how technology enabled him to talk, be understood and continue his remarkable scientific contribution. However, he had the benefit of the latest technology. When she replies to the debate, will the Minister say what is being done to achieve this vision?

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich said that human beings were not machines. However, machines can help humans be human. That is a very important point. For example, we can use high technology to understand what whales are saying to each other through the funny little noises they make across the ocean, but we are not using this technology to understand what people who can make only rather funny noises are trying to say to each other. It is just a matter of science, but the science is not being applied. We should have computer programmes that analyse the sounds and gestures of disabled people and enable them to communicate and to be seen as people. If we look at this in a very positive way, we may even be able to make an intergenerational leap from the very oldest to the very youngest techie children who respect only communications that come through the ether. Communications made through sound or touching are very old-fashioned and utterly uninteresting to them. We may be able to make a great breakthrough in that regard.

Government research agendas have an appreciable content of work focused on matters connected with the elderly and on the associated science, technology and social science, but I believe that a stronger vision of where this is leading is needed. This is a tremendously human-oriented programme. I look forward to the Minister’s response to that question.