Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, an amendment on this topic was put before the House in Committee. I have now had it reworded to take account of the Minister’s objections on that occasion. Essentially, the amendment concerns access to student support for higher education for people who are either refugees or have humanitarian status.

In fact, people with refugee status are eligible for this support and they do not have to wait three years to receive it. The anomaly concerns people who have come here under what is called humanitarian protection—mainly, but not all, Syrians who have come under the vulnerable persons scheme—and if they wish to get student support for access to higher education they have to wait three years. That is a pretty long time for people whose education may already have been harmed by what happened in their lives before they got to this country.

In every other respect, those with humanitarian protection have the same rights as those who have refugee status. Refugee status comes under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, whereas, as I understand it, humanitarian protection comes under domestic and EU law. But it is only in not having to wait three years if you have refugee status that there is a difference between the two. That is surely an anomaly. To make things even worse, the position in Scotland is better than it is here. I am not sure that this is a day when I should refer to Scotland in glowing terms, but certainly they do better there.

I hope the Government will look at this. I think it requires a statutory instrument to put this right. I am concerned both about people who are already here and are waiting to get access to higher education and about people who will come here in the future. In the year to September 2016, there were nearly 2,000 decisions about Syrian nationals but only three grants of humanitarian protection; virtually all the rest got refugee status. So we are talking about people who are suffering from a couple of anomalies. One is that if they come with humanitarian protection they have difficulty getting access to higher education. If they can only get refugee status, that will all be sorted out.

I am optimistic that the Government will move. I had a meeting with the Home Secretary, at her request, earlier this afternoon. I was left with a feeling of hope and optimism. I did check that it was all right for me to mention the meeting. I hope I am not excessively optimistic about this, but if the Government speak with one voice I hope to hear that voice reflected in what the Minister says in response to the amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I just want to say how much I appreciate the fact that my noble friend has moved this amendment. He referred to the anomaly. In view of what he says about his meeting with the Home Secretary, I hesitate to make this point, but I disagree with him—I say that it is unworthy rather than an anomaly. He says he hopes the Government will look at it. It seems the Government are looking at it, and I congratulate my noble friend on having got it this far.

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[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 150. At Pembroke College, Cambridge, where I have the honour of being Master, some 10% of our undergraduates and 30% of our postgraduates are international students from beyond the EU. They add enormously to the well-being and distinction of the college. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made the financial case very clearly; the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, made the soft power case very clearly; the noble Lord, Lord Broers, made the industrial case very clearly. I would add that there is a very strong educational case as well.

Having international students among the mix of students at our university adds enormously to the quality of the students’ educational experience. They share with each other, learn from each other, associate with each other and hear from people of different backgrounds with different experiences and from different parts of the world. The education that comes from the ability to do that and from that richness could not be replicated by the best teaching. It comes only from being among, and sharing with, students from very different national backgrounds. That is an enormously important part of the value of our higher education in this country. Let us make sure that we keep that. This amendment is one way of doing it.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I feel compelled to respond to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Smith. I am a long-standing governor at the LSE, where I am now an emeritus governor. Recently, we have been rated second in the world as the most prestigious centre of higher education learning in the social sciences, and as the highest rated such place within the United Kingdom. I do not go much on league tables myself but I cannot help being proud of that statistic. The evidence speaks for itself. A very high proportion of our student community comes from overseas. Of course, it is a case not just of the atmosphere of a centre but of the quality of the education which benefits from the input of people with different insights from different parts of the world.

I fervently believe that a centre of higher education worthy of its name should be part of the international community and should recognise that Britain is inseparable from the rest of the world and cannot operate in higher learning without an international community and, indeed, international staff. They are a very important part of the LSE as well. What worries me is that it does not take very long for an impression to grow. We are hearing too much anecdotal evidence that people elsewhere in the world are beginning to wonder whether the UK is the place they want to come and pursue their studies. Indeed, one hears of academics who question whether they want to go on developing their careers in the United Kingdom because they are not certain that it is the sort of place in which they want to live and bring up their families. We have a huge challenge here and we have a great opportunity this evening to put it right.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 150 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and, in doing so, declare my interest as set out in the register. When, many years ago, I went from a Midlands comprehensive school to Cambridge University, in many ways I felt that I was a foreign student. That aside, there is no social, economic, political, moral or legal reason not to support this amendment.

I wish to add the following comments to those made by noble Lords, with which I wholeheartedly agree. “You want our trade, you don’t want our children”, said the Prime Minister of India, Mr Modi. If that is the impression being received in India and other nations around the world, how can we possibly expect to attract the brightest and the best to come to study in the United Kingdom? That is what we need and want. Our doors and our arms should be wide open to the brightest and the best to come to study here because there is no downside to that. International students come, pay and study. If they stay, they work and contribute. If they go home, they are the best advocates for soft power. The GREAT campaign is indeed, as its name suggests, great, but it is as nothing compared with the advocacy of international students who have had that experience in the UK. British higher education is the most gleaming jewel in our soft power crown.

There is absolutely no reason not to support Amendment 150. I urge every noble Lord to do so because it is in the interest of international students and of the United Kingdom. We would want this at the best of times, but given what is ahead of us, we should not just want this, we absolutely need it. We should absolutely pass this amendment this evening.

European Union Subsidiarity Assessment: Electoral Law of the EU (EUC Report)

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I am a member of the sub-committee and I would like to put on record how good it is to serve on a committee chaired by my noble friend. She is a very effective chair and I think everybody on the committee recognises that and is rather inspired by her from time to time. It can be quite entertaining to watch her irresistible charm being put to the cruellest effect.

This report is very important. Of course, all of us who serve on committees that produce reports think that every report is important. But this is a particularly significant one because it touches on much wider issues, which are very close to the current negotiations led by our Prime Minister. I will touch on some of those wider issues.

History is a long process over many decades and centuries. It will examine the proposition that Europe might have had a more effective and powerful story had it gone for a confederal as distinct from a federal approach. Sometimes, what confederations produce has stronger meaning than top-down federal institutions. But that will be resolved in history. It just leaves me to say that I do not believe that the negotiations in which our Prime Minister is involved will be anything like the end of the story. This debate will go on for a long time. Indeed, in much of the evidence that we took this kept coming up as a reality.

I am totally convinced that strong parliaments come from struggle. If we look at our own Parliament, we see that a great number of struggles led to its evolution. We like to talk about it being the most successful parliamentary system in the world. We would do just as well to remember our forebears who struggled, and fought on occasion, to make that a possibility. There is an inevitable struggle going on within the history of the European Union. The struggle is for the kind of Parliament we want. That will go on. If the Parliament is to be effective and to mean anything, it will create awkward occasions. But that does not mean we have to succumb to everything it says. Its recommendations will always be stronger if they have been thoroughly tested. If they do not stand up and are rejected, in the long run that will be a good thing for the evolution of the Parliament itself. The distinguished chair of the EU Select Committee made the point—and I am very glad that he did—that we are not in a war but in a meaningful debate about strengthening institutions. So there our report is highly relevant and should be taken very seriously.

However, there is another issue. I do not know what the perfect description of democracy is and I always feel a bit concerned about people who think they do, because the whole concept of democracy is being tested all the time and going through evolution and change. But for democracy to be successful it must be about empowering citizens—empowering people to be part of the process of the formation of policy that affects their lives. That is what it is about, and that means accountability is very important. One of the fundamental weaknesses of the European Parliament is that it is too remote from people.

I therefore look at the proposition of the European Parliament itself and say that I do not think it is helpful. Should we not be looking instead at how we strengthen the indirect representation of parliaments at the European level? How can a hard-working Member of the European Parliament, many of whom work very hard and with great dedication—the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, was no exception in this respect—on a whole range of issues at the European level with which they are confronted, be effectively part of the politics of the community in which they are living? The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, was a very good exception because he was very much part of the politics of the community in which he lives—I know because I live adjacently to it. But it is asking a hell of a lot.

Similarly, how do you breed a sense of relationship to the big issues that are coming before Europe if national parliaments have no direct feeling of responsibility for Europe? They can have the luxury of being negative, rather than facing up to the responsibility of making a positive contribution. There is a lot to be thought through here. The European Parliament has been getting a bit ahead of the game on this one and may actually be kicking into its own goal—well, perhaps not its own goal as an institution, because it may have institutional ambitions, but in terms of what it is theoretically there to achieve.

I am very glad to have been part of this. It is always extremely challenging for somebody who is not a lawyer to sit on a committee on which there are so many effective lawyers arguing so well, but it is an extremely stimulating committee on which to serve, and our chairmanship is tremendous and has a great strength about it, and is all the time facilitating our work. I hope the House will take this report very seriously and endorse it.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, have the honour of being a member of the sub-committee and I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said about our marvellous chair. I will spare her blushes and not repeat it—he put it far better than I would anyway.

As another non-lawyer on the committee, perhaps it is helpful for me simply to put succinctly what I believe this matter is about. A case for subsidiarity was not made. We are asking for one to be made. It is really that simple and if, rather to my surprise, this does test the mood of the House, I hope we will all support that proposition.

Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]

Lord Judd Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, in supporting the amendment, perhaps I may revert to a point which came up in Committee. It concerns what exactly we are to believe is the position under the present law.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, gave a long disquisition on party political support—which we knew was not charitable—but there are many examples of where the objection “this is political” is used against the registration of charities which in no sense are party political. The charity that I have been the chairman of is an example which your Lordships have heard about possibly to the point of tedium, but it demonstrates the fact that the dividing line at the moment is drawn in a place which the Government say is different from where it actually is drawn. It is drawn somewhere in the murky middle by arbitrary and subjective decision by the Charity Commission, which is dangerous for its credibility.

I have raised the example of an anti-EU charity putting out in a press release a narrative beginning, “In the latest outburst from the gauleiter of the European Commission, Mr Juncker”. As I pointed out, “gau” and “leiter” are two quite straightforward German words—“gau” means district and “leiter” means leader—and until 1933 there was nothing wrong with “gauleiter”. But ever since 1933, there has been a lot wrong with “gauleiter”. And so that is not political. How on earth can the Minister defend the arbitrariness and subjectivity of the commission when it pronounces that it objects to the Hammarskjöld inquiry commission on the grounds of it being “political” and says not a word about other charities which find favour with it?

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I spoke at some length on this issue in Committee and will therefore not try the patience of the House on Report by repeating all that. I simply say that, as somebody who has worked in the charitable field for quite a lot of my life—I have been chief executive of more than one charity; I have been an honorary officer and a trustee, and I am currently a trustee of one charity—there is an underlying issue here which is of profound importance.

Charities with great experience of front-line engagement have come to realise that they are sometimes aiding and abetting the problems which exacerbate the difficulties faced by those whom they are trying to help, because they are removing the unpalatable symptoms of what is wrong and disguising what is causing the problem. They have come to see that through the experience of their own work. There are many trustees and many staff in some of what I think everyone would on balance agree are the better, more experienced charities who have come to realise that they simply cannot go on doing this, because they are treating symptoms and settling for that, and that one of the most important things they can do in the service of those whom they seek to help is to advocate their situation and to seek the changes which will overcome the causes of the problems of those who are the victims, and that it would be dishonest to do anything else.

Personally, I find the way in which the law on charity has operated in recent years to be perfectly acceptable, and charities have responded to that very well by recognising that they have a duty to ensure that what they are advocating really does arise out of the experience of what they are doing. That is not just a matter of legal, moral responsibility; it is also one of effectiveness, because if they can be seen to be speaking out of real experience that is a very strong muscle in their campaigning.

However, we have to face the reality that there are those who have never been comfortable with this situation and there have been noises in recent years that people would like to curb the sector. That in my view would be disastrous and totally unacceptable and unfair to those who are really trying on our behalf, sometimes valiantly, courageously and bravely, to do the things that are necessary. From that standpoint, to have it explicitly stated in the Bill has great merit. I am therefore glad to see the amendment here and I hope that the House will find its way to endorsing it.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, I have no difficulty at all in accepting the premise of the amendment—and much that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said—which states that charities should be free to campaign where that is an effective means of furthering their charitable aims. Speaking up for their beneficiaries, who may have no voice in the democratic debate, stands long in the tradition of the charitable sector. Yes, it may be uncomfortable for some to hear the hard truths that they are told, but that is democracy at work and freedom of speech in action.

Charities have always campaigned, which is as it should be in a free society, and charity campaigns have brought about much good, opening our eyes to issues others have overlooked, often resulting in beneficial changes to the law. Examples are legion and stretch back over generations, and long may that continue. My objection to the amendment is not therefore that what it says is wrong. Indeed, it is not even seeking to have the right to campaign reflected in law, for it already is enshrined in law, through case law, as the noble Baroness said. My concern is that seeking to compress that case law into an amendment in the Bill is difficult, to say the least, and would be likely to inadvertently shift the boundaries of what is permitted under the law in unanticipated and unhelpful ways.

As well as being fraught with difficulty, such an amendment is unnecessary. The implication of the case law is set out in Charity Commission guidance CC9 and, with very few exceptions, that guidance is well understood and observed. Unlike primary legislation, commission guidance can be updated, with proper consultation, to ensure that it remains congruent with case law and up to speed with developments such as the rise of social media.

The introduction of the Transparency of Lobbying Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act, to which a number of noble Lords referred, has recently made the relationship of the law and lobbying a matter of intense debate, and I can understand why. That Act is part of electoral law, and this is clearly not the time to rehearse that debate. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, was one of many noble Lords who referred to the so-called chilling effect that it might have had at the last election, so I am pleased that my noble friend, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, has explicitly called for evidence from the voluntary sector and from noble Lords in his ongoing review of the third party campaigning rules that were updated by Part 2 of that Act. A clear view of the evidence about what impact the updated rules have, or have not, made in their first year is exactly what is needed on an issue that has aroused such strong feeling. The Charity Commission would obviously need to take account of my noble friend’s findings should it decide to review CC9. If there were any such review, the commission has committed to say so publicly and consult widely and wisely.

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lea, the Charity Commission does indeed take action in cases where charities of all political persuasions are seen to have crossed the line. During the last election, a charity that was making a point that could be construed as being supportive of the Conservative Party was pulled up short. I therefore do not think it strictly true to say that it does not take action.

This Government welcome and support the campaigning role of charities, properly regulated and properly understood, and acknowledge the benefit that that brings to wider society. I hope that on that basis, and given what I have said to reassure the noble Baroness, she will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and speak as the former chief executive of Carers UK, a very successful campaigning organisation, which, arguably, could be credited with making caring and carers, once an entirely private matter, the public issue that we all recognise today. I submit that that came about almost entirely through the campaigning of the carers’ organisations. I very much agree with my noble friend that there is now confusion, since the lobbying Act, about what is legitimate and what is not so far as charities are concerned at election periods.

At present, we do not have the maximum clarity which my noble friend has called for. I draw the attention of your Lordships to the lack of profile which charities had in the recent general election. In the past, it was commonplace for charities or groups of charities to hold hustings at which all parties could set out their wares. We heard very little of that in the last general election.

I hope that the Minister will confirm that he supports the rights of charities to campaign for policy changes which will benefit their client group. Of course, that could be called political—changing policy is political—but it is very much small-“p” politics, not party politics, and charities are very much aware of that.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very glad that this amendment is before us but I noticed that in introducing it my noble friend emphasised very heavily that it was not endorsing in any way the concept of charities becoming involved in party-political activity. I was glad that my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley also made that point.

I want to speak very honestly as a former director of Oxfam in the 1980s, when we were campaigning very hard to get a change in charity law. We had quite a skirmish with the Charity Commission at the time. It was done in a gentlemanly way but very firmly by the commission, which was quite right, and in the end the laws on campaigning were rewritten and we could have almost dictated word for word what the new regulations said because they were exactly what we were after.

What was happening in Oxfam, as I saw it, was that the charity was maturing and growing up. It was saying, “We can’t go on simply alleviating poverty or whatever because in doing that we may be condoning the causes of what we are dealing with. We are repeatedly putting fingers in the dyke without seeing that it is the dyke itself that is crumbling or which is the problem”. There was a very strong feeling developing among staff and trustees—and the trustees held very firm on this, which I found very encouraging—that we were being dishonest: that in our work we were coming up against the real causes of the issues we were encountering and, in order to not just alleviate the consequences but deal with the causes, we had to spell out what we had come to see as the causes.

I think I have shared this personal anecdote with the Committee before so I hope I can be forgiven for mentioning it again. Once when I was on a visit to Latin America at a very difficult time to visit our programme there, I had a very long and interesting conversation with the Bishop of San Cristobal, who was bravely standing up for the Indians in Chiapas who were under terrible pressure. He was being denounced by the Government of the time and so on. It was quite ugly, with people disrupting his church services and standing outside his little house shouting all night, but he was just getting on with the job. He spoke fluent English; he was a really strong man. I asked him, “Have you got a message that you would like me to take back to the UK, to my staff colleagues and my trustees but also more widely in Britain?”. He said, “Yes, I have”. He made several points but the point I shall always remember is that he said, “In situations of this kind, you cannot be neutral. I believe that solidarity is the real meaning of charity”. If you are getting into a position of solidarity with the people you are trying to help, you must recognise that they are talked about a great deal, they are talked to a great deal, but in the major debates that are taking place that affect policy who talks for them? Of course, that is one step short of talking for themselves in those debates.

I was very privileged to have held that post in Oxfam. I came away from my time in it absolutely convinced intellectually and emotionally that if a charity was to be true to its purposes and was dealing with really severe social problems, one of its most important tasks and one thing it should never equivocate about was advocacy—to speak out about the issues that it had discovered in its work were the real issues. Of course, that is not always comfortable but it is absolutely essential to integrity. We received terrific support. We relied in those days on a widespread constituency support, and regular giving from the wider public increased while we were making this stand. Clearly many people in the country agreed with our position. It is a tremendous achievement and of great credit to the Charity Commission of the time that it took the point and amended the laws on campaigning. We must stand firmly by that because it could become easily eroded.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name has been mentioned in this debate and perhaps I should intervene. I spent a good two months of my life much preoccupied with this issue and I came away from it content with the law as it stands. It is quite clear that there is a line between advocacy—which is an entirely appropriate and proper part of what charities should do—and moving too close to party-political campaigning. This is not purely a matter of, as it were, good-works charities on what one might describe as the left, but also about think tanks on the left and on the right. I can think of one or two think tanks which have got quite close to the line of moving from research to a highly partisan presentation of the research they provide. Having worked for 12 years in a think tank, I am conscious of the lines that one has to draw.

In speaking to 50 representatives of different charities, I certainly came across the advocacy point. Some first- class charities raised public awareness of mental or physical conditions, the problem of women unnecessarily in prison and so on—all of which are entirely within charity law. I also came across a small number of organisations which appeared to want to get a little too close to party campaigning, including on one splendid occasion meeting a group of rather large charities, one of which said, “We do not want to have to register for this because the little old ladies who give us money would not want to know that we were doing it”. That seemed to be a recognition that they were indeed moving towards a line that they should not be too close to.

I am happy with a restatement of the position as it stands. I think we all accept that advocacy is a part of what charities do in furtherance of their charitable purposes, but that they should not move too far into the party-political area. Anyone who has been involved in the think-tank world knows how conscious they have to be that that is a line they should not cross.

[Lord Judd]

Does the noble Lord agree that this is not altogether simple? He and I clearly agree on this important matter, but it is not simple because if a charity finds itself strongly advocating a position and a political party is doing the same, that is open to misinterpretation. We have to be absolutely clear that the way in which the law is administered is also transparent. There have been arguments that campaigning should be curbed in the last year before an election. It is absolute nonsense for a charity, which feels strongly, passionately and morally obliged to put forward a case because it wants policy change, to have to lay off in the year of a general election. That would be condoning something they believe is wrong and that is not what any of us would want to imagine happening in Britain. It is very important that the Charity Commission is held to account; that the whims of a particular commissioner are not prevailing and that, from an objective, analytical position, very strict rules are fairly observed.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, I am happy to be associated with this probing amendment. As I suspected, there is scope for talking at cross-purposes about the commission’s present understanding of “political”. I have been at the receiving end of an objection on the grounds of that word. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, whose attention I do not have at the moment, equates “political” with “party-political”. As I understand it, that is not the Charity Commission’s feeling about the word. I have been at the receiving end of criticism that this is political, but when I speak to Amendment 15 no one would think there is anything party-political about it.

I will give one illustration from the press in the last six or nine months, to show why there is a need for a minimum of clarification on this question. We all get round-robin emails from organisations: we agree with some and disagree with others. This is one about a breakfast discussion to be held on Wednesday 15 October 2014, arranged by a Eurosceptic organisation concerned with EU regulatory issues called the CSFI; someone will probably know what this stands for. It said that the CSFI was,

“now accepting online donations via the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). This is the most cost-effective way for the Centre to collect one-off donations online, which can also be GiftAided. To support the Centre, please click here”.

That clearly establishes that this is an all-singing and all-dancing registered charity as I understand it, or else it could not enjoy the benefits of the gift aid scheme. The first sentence by the director, Mr Andrew Hilton, states:

“As I am writing this, the Commission’s new gauleiter”—

being the European Commission—

“Mr. Juncker, is busy trimming the edges of the various portfolios he has offered individual Commissioners”.

Noble Lords who speak some German will know that, until 1933, “gauleiter” was a pretty everyday word, with “gau” meaning “area” and “leiter” meaning “leader”. But since 1933, no one would think that “gauleiter” was without very strong connotations and, I would say, strong political connotations. On the basis of what I have come across, this should be viewed by the Charity Commission as being out of bounds because it is political.

The Minister has a very sharp brain, so my question to him is this: does he acknowledge that there is an issue here? How should the commission go about its business if an organisation which can get gift aid refers to the President of the European Commission as the new gauleiter, while in other areas it says, “You cannot get Charity Commission registration because you are political”? That is my question.

Constitution: Gracious Speech

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much thank my noble friend Lord Wills for having introduced such an important debate and for having done it so well.

It is clear from what he said—and this was very much reinforced by my noble friend Lord Lipsey—that the present arrangements are just not adequate. In fact, they are fundamentally flawed and lack credibility. Piecemeal reform is not the way to proceed; we need a road map and a destination which the road map will assist us in reaching. I am inclined to believe that we will have to go down the road of federalism and regionalism, even if we have several attempts, and whatever happens in Scotland. I also believe that it will also be necessary to introduce a new approach to voting that enables a far wider cross-section of the population to identify with those who claim to be representing them.

In recent times there has been a lot of talk about Magna Carta. I am as excited about Magna Carta as anybody—it has tremendous significance in our history. But we are trustees of a great deal more than just Magna Carta. It opened a door by taking on the exclusive power of the king and demonstrating that this could no longer prevail, but it also opened a door to a process of evolution to which the role of the people was absolutely essential.

Let us cast our minds back over our history just for a moment to William III, the Bill of Rights, the Levellers, Peterloo and the Tolpuddle martyrs. My wife, who is a historian, said to me this morning, “Aren’t you talking about social issues here rather than constitutional issues?”, but of course my point is that social and constitutional issues are essentially linked because the constitution has to reflect the social realities of the time in which one is living. There is a post-First World War endorsement of the essential role of women. We in this House should never forget the incredible courage of the Suffragettes, but of course they were preceded in the previous century by the Tolpuddle martyrs, and before that, more generally in politics, by the Great Reform Act 1832.

After the Second World War we saw very significant developments. There was the drive for the UN declaration on human rights, in which great people such as Eleanor Roosevelt played such a key part, as did leading statesmen in our own country from both left and right. They were central to the creation of that declaration. That then moved on to the European convention. Of course these had implications for our constitution—it was part of the process of evolution.

Another thing happened after 1945. We began to see in a highly interdependent world the indispensability of international institutions. Some people would ask whether this raised issues of sovereignty. Of course it did, but we were recognising that the interests of the people who happened to live in the British Isles could best be served by contributing—let us not talk about sacrificing—some of that sovereignty to the wider international community, because that was indispensably in our interests. More recently—and it will be with us for a long time—we have had the struggle for identity in Ireland and Scotland. In Scotland—I am a half-Scot—let us never forget that very much lingering at the back of a lot of people’s minds has been a feeling that the Act of Union was not something that they brought about but was very much a stitch-up between the Scottish establishment and the English, and that the day of reckoning will come.

I am trying to describe the fact that it has been evolution and struggle that has brought us to where we are, and we still have a very enviable society in many ways. Now, we are trying to engage in top-down management. We are saying, “We’re the people who manage things at the moment. How are we going to get it right for the future?”. I believe that that is destined to fail unless we re-engage the people in the process. We are practitioners within the existing constitution. We do not own it; the constitution belongs to the people. Therefore, if we are to have a lasting and sustainable way forward, it has to re-engage the people. It seems to me from that standpoint that a national convention on the constitution, with wider representative participation in society as a whole, is critical. I sometimes fear that we are determined in all we are doing to retain the power of the Executive. The time has come when we have to re-examine the role of the Executive, which is to reflect the will of the people. It is their servant, not their master.

Civil Society

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I am rather disappointed that we have not had the duet. The noble Lord, Lord Patten, has put three very pertinent questions, and I am glad he has done so. As one who has led one of the largest charities, I think every one of those questions needs serious consideration.

I thank the bishops for their letter, which I have been rereading in preparation for this debate. I find it penetrating and challenging, and its analysis of what confronts us is very profound.

In introducing the debate, the right reverend Prelate spoke of connectivity. I could not agree more with the importance of understanding this need in society. I have the privilege to be the honorary president of Hospice at Home West Cumbria. We all know that all the research that has been done indicates that the overwhelming majority of people want to die at home—in the security of home, with friends around, in a familiar setting, and the rest. That is not cheap. I do not like to use these words, as they sound rather impersonal, but it is fairly labour intensive.

In my experience of Hospice at Home West Cumbria, I have been thrilled—and I do not use the word lightly—by the joint spirit between staff, volunteers, patients, families and the wider community, and that is typical of many other hospices working in the field. I do not want to overegg this but I keep being encouraged by the fact that in west Cumbria there is a very widespread feeling that this is our charity, and that is lovely. When there are fundraising events, the wider community is there participating in a lot of fun, because dying should not be a miserable business. It is therefore a real stimulus and a real joy for me to be involved in this work.

In picking up various messages in the letter, the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, emphasised immigration and asylum. I am glad that she did because I think that the report relates not only to those issues but to changing our psychology so that we celebrate diversity and see it as the essential richness of creation. We should therefore try not to manage it and react to it defensively but to embrace it as a new dynamic in our society.

However, there are one or two issues surrounding the role of the charity sector, in particular, which we need to consider. One is that, as the sector takes more and more responsibility for services which perhaps for too long we have seen as the exclusive preserve of the state, there is a danger of a subcontracting culture creeping in and of a management priority being to think about where the grants are going to be available and about what sort of work would enable the charity to continue its activity and so on, rather than saying, “On the basis of our experience and our analysis, what are the challenges we see? How can we persuade society to enable us to do that work?”. It is pioneering catalytic work which is the responsibility. The key to successful charitable work is, in my view, to be a catalyst for informing and generating a concern in society.

That brings me to the substance of yesterday’s business. I am very content to see the measures that are being taken on the regulation of charities, but let us be careful that we do not inadvertently become involved in a dumbing-down operation and that we do not throw away the baby with the bathwater. In introducing the charities Bill yesterday, the Minister said that the most trusted people in society are charity workers and that in fact it is politicians who are least trusted. There is a funny sort of contradiction there—that we are taking upon ourselves the responsibility of promoting regulation when the public trust the charities more than they trust us. We need to be very conscious of, and sensitive about, that.

My last point is that through my work in the voluntary charitable sector I have become completely convinced that one of the most important ways in which to serve the poor, the disadvantaged and the oppressed is through advocacy, but it must be advocacy based on engagement. The moment it starts to be just theoretical advocacy, it may still have great validity but it loses the key dimension of the advocacy that is available to charities—that they speak with the authority of engagement. We have to look very keenly at how we support and encourage charities and voluntary organisations to develop their advocacy and to be very full participators in the debate about public policy and the rest, because then that debate can be really informed from the grass roots upwards.

Of course, what none of us must ever forget is that if we are to have any kind of future worth living in, solidarity must be rediscovered. The right reverend Prelate was absolutely right: we have to stop just talking to the poor and the disadvantaged, and least of all to lecture them on their responsibilities; we need to stop talking about them and start talking with them, listening to them and speaking for them.