G20 Summit
Lord Judd Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, first I applaud the work of the noble Lord, Lord Howell. I have the good fortune to know him quite well, since our days as young politicians on different sides of the House in the other place. We worked quite closely together in a group that dealt with world issues and particularly Anglo-American relations, the Middle East and Africa. Those were good days, and I have always respected his wisdom and judgment. They were again evident in the debate today, and we all want to thank him for the contribution he has made.
I found the attendance by the Prime Minister, both at the Council and the G20, a sad picture to witness. It was hollow, as everybody looked over her shoulder to see what was going to come next in Britain. The noises coming from the debate between the two principal candidates for the premiership are far from reassuring. The challenge to Britain is to rejoin the world, be part of the world and play a constructive part in world affairs. What have we heard about this in the debate between the two candidates? Instead, we have heard hollow and rather disturbing populist statements playing to the gallery in the short term, but with no vision, sense of statesmanship or sense of how great the challenge is. This is not a good time for Britain.
Coming to the occasions themselves, I was also saddened by the declaration by participants at the G20 in the paper they issued after the meeting. We have been having debates in this House and Parliament as a whole about the overwhelming importance of climate change and the challenge it poses to humanity. We are all doubly conscious of our responsibilities to future generations. We all fear lest we betray those future generations if we do not give the right priority to tackling climate change—and of course, climate change is central to the management of the world economy. However, what do we find? We find in the G20 leaders’ declaration that climate change appears in paragraph 35. That seems to be an indication that the issue clearly lacks the priority that it should have.
Similarly, migration is a symptom of a world in turmoil and full of challenges, but it is also an issue of how we ensure global stability and security, because large migrant populations and large numbers of displaced people are hardly a way to build a secure and fulfilling world. However, what do we find? We find this mentioned in paragraphs 41 and 42 of 43 paragraphs in the document. Where is the sense of priority? The clear message I want us to send to our leaders from this debate is that we want real priority established in international relations for the issues which concern us, such as migration and climate change. We therefore want leadership which is determined to be second to none in saying that Britain belongs to the world and wants to share the burden of responsibility for managing world affairs. An inescapable issue for us all is that the countries of the world are entirely interdependent. We shall be judged in history by the success we make of meeting that challenge. As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, has just said, it is by working together that we can make a responsible contribution to the future.
Boards of Public Bodies: Representation
Lord Judd Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I invariably enjoy the speeches from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. He makes his points well and they are always important. I find myself endorsing much of what he said; he speaks with great expertise and I hope the Government listen.
I want to raise a couple of wider points. First, we must look at the wider cultural dimension. Of course, what the noble Lord said about diversity is crucial. If we are a multi-ethnic, multicultural society, that should be represented on public boards.
In my formative years, as a youngster post the Second World War, public service was regarded with high esteem. It was a great thing to be involved in public service; you were respected across society and expected to deliver in the context of that respect and trust. But the motivation for being on a board would be, hopefully—there were of course exceptions—because you wanted to make a contribution in the public sector. I am afraid that the balance in our society has tilted far too far towards a complete reverence and esteem for the private sector, and a neglect of the public sector. I suspect that this undermines the self-confidence of those who operate in the public sector, on boards or whatever. It is not a very clever thing to be doing; if you are a clever thing, you are making a great success in financial or commercial circles.
We have to get a great deal of leadership put back into our society, stressing the vital importance of the public sector so that we begin to build up again an atmosphere in which it is an esteemed and deeply respected form of activity in which to be involved. That of course goes into the priorities of the management of public bodies and boards. Of course, we want efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Those are crucial in dealing with public money but it is not just about cost-effectiveness, or measuring the economic efficiency of the board with the terminology and priorities of the private sector. The priority of the public sector is to deliver the service for which it is there, doing so at the same time as ensuring value for money, efficiency and effectiveness—I underline “of course” again. But it is not the same as just saying at the end of the year, “We can produce results showing that we are operating more financially effectively than ever before”. That is not an end; the end is the public service, and we have to re-establish that sense of social priority.
I would like to take a specific example because one of the issues which is very important—the health service is a crucial example of what I have been talking about—is the national parks movement, where I have been very involved for many years. I often reflect on just who the people on the boards of the national parks are supposed to be serving. Are they serving the local community or society as a whole in the United Kingdom, for which the parks should be a deeply valued asset? What are they supposed to be providing? They provide a quality or dimension of life which is not available in the hurly-burly of normal existence. They are there to provide space for physical development and fulfilment, but also space for qualitative mental activity and reflection—if you like, the spiritual dimension of the parks. I sometimes detect park authorities being tempted away from this precious and special role into demonstrating their financial effectiveness—of course, I want that anyway—but at the same time, they might say, “If we became more of a theme park, we would be more effective public organisations”. That would be calamitous. It would be a tragedy, because the point of the parks is to provide a totally different dimension—space and pace—in our society.
At this point, I always tell the same story—colleagues will have heard it before and I do not apologise for that. It is the story of a youngster from an inner-city area in Britain, who was at a training centre near Windermere. She was looking terribly excited and animated one day, so was asked by one of her instructors, “What have you done today?”. This girl, who was not yet 10, looked at her with wide eyes and said, “I’ve seen far”. A few days later, the same instructor asked the same girl, who was looking even more excited, “What have you done today?”. She said, “I’ve seen very far”.
That is a precious and special calling for the members of park authorities. Of course they have to take fully into account the economic, social and political lives of the people who live and work in the parks. That is a given, but their job is about something bigger and greater than that. That same approach and analysis applies to many other dimensions of British life. While I therefore applaud all the practical propositions that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, put forward, we need again the realisation that we have to promote the whole standing of public service and its special dimensions to far higher esteem in public life.
Social Housing
Lord Judd Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Whitty for introducing this debate. Its quality so far shows how right he was to choose this subject. I also thank most warmly my noble friend Lady Osamor for a powerful and moving speech. I believe she has a great deal to offer this House in the future.
I want to make a plea: I hope that in our concern about housing we do not underestimate the significance of the rural housing crisis. The sale of council houses and the subsequent profiteering is an indication of the difficulties and challenges, but also an indication of how misguided a policy can be. I would like to put to the Minister a specific question on the part being played by the Land Compensation Act 1961 in England. It has obviously gone wrong, and it seems that unless we tackle the ground it covers, we will be in difficulties with whatever housing programme we want.
My experience in politics says that what matters most in all this is the political will to do it, which means not just one Minister but all the interrelated Ministers. We have the problems of health, mental health, poverty and acute unhappiness in old age. All are related to housing, and unless we get everybody behind this and a determination that we are going to do it, it will not get done.
In particular, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for his terrific speech. He reminded us that a house is not just a house but a home. That means that in our programme and determination, we must think of the social issues, integration with health and schools, the police and the probation services—all these things—so that we make an integrated society where people are not stigmatised but part of the community, and so that we enable people to live rich lives.
Brexit: Stability of the Union
Lord Judd Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, this debate has demonstrated just how timely and important it is that the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, introduced it. We should all be grateful to him for that. The debate so far has emphasised that we are in a bit of mess with our constitution. There has been a lot of piecemeal, pragmatic activity in our recent history, but where has been the sense of strategy? What is the objective towards which we are working? Where is the road map?
I have an overriding conviction that the most challenging aspect of political life is that we live in a world that is totally interdependent. The challenge for government and political leadership is to come to terms with that and to find a way in which we enable the British people to play a constructive and full part in meeting that reality. It seems to me that anything else is escapism from fundamental reality. I also accept that, in the impersonal and technological age in which we live, in which the very thought of global interdependence is intimidating to so many people, there is a yearning for identity. What has gone wrong is that we see these two things in conflict. They are not. We should encourage a sense of identity and look for ways in which people can find their identity.
The next challenge is for leadership to explain that there is no way we can find a successful part in the world, or have a stable world, simply on the basis of identity. We have to co-operate, and the challenge now is to see how these people with different identities come together and work in the interests of humanity. That is the challenge which has been brought home by our agonising over Europe.
What is this identity? We have to be honest with ourselves. I am conscious and glad that I am a Scot and English. My mother was a Scot and my father was English. It is interesting that they came together in an international context. They always said that learning to bring their two cultures together in their personal life was part of understanding the challenge I have just described.
I come down in favour of a convention on our constitution in which we can give strategic consideration to all these matters and see how far what we have shapes up to the challenge and how we might make it better. I know that people who look at and talk about this matter have an anxiety—it has come out in the debate—first, about the English dimension and the fact that the English, cussedly, do not seem to have an English identity and, secondly, that England is so large. A regional approach that gave real significance and political structures to regions within England would help resolve that issue.
Living in Cumbria for the past 25 years—having been very much part of the south-east before that—has demonstrated to me that people have a strong Cumbrian identity which can be related to a northern identity. These are the kinds of issues which would come out, and with which we could begin to grapple, in a convention.
I end with an anecdote. Immediately after the referendum my younger grandson, who was then 13, coming up to 14, rang me in an activated frame of mind because they had had in his comprehensive school a mock referendum and 80% had voted in favour of remain. He was struck by this and said to me, “Grandpa, I want to ask you a question. Was your mother Scottish?”. He had not known her; she had died before he was born. I said, “She certainly was Scottish”. She had become very much part of England during the war and so on, but she was Scottish. He said, “I thought so. Will you give me a promise that if Scotland goes independent and remains committed to staying in the European Union you will immediately apply for dual nationality?”.
Third-party Election Campaigning
Lord Judd Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure that the whole House would like to put on record how much it appreciates the fact that that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, has introduced this debate. He has a long-standing commitment to the charitable sector and has been a steadfast representative of it in the issues that we are discussing. I have a personal reason to be grateful to him, because when he was Bishop of Oxford I was a member of his diocese, and in the early 1990s he asked me to chair the diocesan board of social responsibility. That board was made up of the most committed people working in the front line of social challenge, and it was a stimulus and a challenge to work with such people.
We also have every reason to be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, because he too has been a steadfast ally of the voluntary sector and has brought a lot of wisdom and good guidance to bear, as we have heard this afternoon. He always speaks in constructive and helpful ways about the problems that confront us.
I declare an interest: for a great deal of my life, I have been heavily involved in the charitable sector, both professionally and voluntarily as a trustee. I will give a few examples because I think my background will help the House understand how strongly I feel about these issues. I was glad to work with the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, when she led Nacro, and to serve on the Nacro board; incidentally, my noble friend Lord Christopher was chairman of the board at that time. I have also been privileged to work as general secretary of the International Voluntary Service, director of Oxfam and director of VSO, as well as being president for six years of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies, which brings together organisations involved in voluntary activity from across the world, with its headquarters in Geneva.
The relationship between the role of charities and the issues of politics is terribly important. I have formed a strong view that, in many charities large and small, there has been an outstanding cadre working for those bodies and serving the public. They have been outstanding intellectually, in their moral commitment and in their effectiveness. I saw how the Civil Service, for example, came to enjoy working with the charitable sector, discussing and evaluating issues that faced us and working out the best way forward. What has happened, it seems to me, is that charities have matured and grown up. I am not sure that this was not always true. Was Wilberforce campaigning or was he administering a charity? Of course he was campaigning, and in many ways he was very active in his interface with politics, including mainstream politics.
What charities—both leaders and ordinary people in charities—have come to understand is that it is not good enough just to minister to those in need: the casualties and the victims. If one was not using the experience gained by doing that to speak out and help the public and society as a whole to understand the nature and origins of the problems with which charities are dealing, and their need to raise funds, one was in many ways betraying their very objectives. I do not put it too strongly when I say that, by the time I had finished my professional work in the charitable sector, I had become totally convinced that responsible campaigning—I emphasise “responsible”—was one of the most effective ways of serving those we sought to serve.
The most effective charities had a very special contribution to make because they spoke not just with intellectual and moral force but with the authority of engagement and experiences. How many people who tell us what is wrong with charities have themselves ever really engaged in the work in which the charities are involved? Of course, some have, and that is very good, but I suggest that more could.
If I had the opportunity, I could spend some hours giving examples to show why I personally became so engaged in this work. I remember once, after a long overnight bus journey, ending up in a dusty township in Brazil in the early dawn. There was a quiet stillness about the place. I was with the field director and as we looked up, perhaps a bit sleepily, we saw a great banner around the spire of a church. I asked for a translation and it said, “Prison bars will not prevent the truth escaping”.
When I got into discussion with the people there, I asked what it was all about, and it was clear that there was a lot of strong feeling in the community. Poor peasants had been working on land on which they had worked for a long time but a greedy landowner—“land-grabber” would be more appropriate—recruited some toughies to drive them off their land. With no social security and no other means by which they could make a living, what were they to do? They were taken before the local judge, who told them that they had to get off the land. However, they had no alternative but to stay if they were to exist, so they went back to work the land. They were then taken before the judge again and the leaders were thrown into prison.
People noticed that some of the judge’s land had cattle on it that looked awfully like the cattle that had been on the land-grabber’s land not long before. We sat down with the community and asked, “What do you really need at this juncture?”. They said that what they really needed were the bus fares to get to the provincial capital so that they could take their case to the provincial court. The field director and I did some work on the back of envelopes and so on, and thought that we could just about assure that they had the bus fares to get to the provincial court. Imagine my joy when I got back to Oxfam’s headquarters in Oxford and received a telex saying that the provincial judge had released the men, they were back on their land and the local judge was in prison.
That illustrates the nature of what real charity is facing, and is a particular example; but I think also of the Bishop of Chiapas in Mexico, who did such valiant work with the people of Chiapas, who were constantly being harassed by the authorities. He said to me, “You can’t be neutral in a situation like this; you have to stand up and be counted”. He continued, “I believe that solidarity is the real meaning of charity. How far are we really speaking with and for these people, as distinct from about them, to them and at them?”.
That is what mature charities, large and small, working domestically, nationally or internationally, have discovered—that to be true to their purpose, motive, cause and objectives, they must speak out in a democratic society and share what they have come to learn.
Referendums: Parliamentary Democracy
Lord Judd Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, whenever I listen to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, I always think how immensely fortunate we are in this House to have somebody who approaches matters of this kind with so much clarity and convincing analysis.
I thank most warmly my old personal friend, the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, for having given us the opportunity to discuss this matter today. I have always been persuaded that the constitution in the broadest sense belongs to the people and that we are the practitioners. But of course it is not as simple as that, because what has evolved with our constitution—and it is just as well to have been reminded by a former Cabinet Secretary that it is changing every day—is that we have representative democracy, and we have very firmly as the pillar of our democracy the concept that communities send representatives, not delegates, to Parliament. Of course, they are morally and intellectually party to the manifesto to which they subscribe, but in Parliament they are expected to use their judgment and wisdom in the interest of the people. That is very precious if democracy is going to work.
Going with that is the concept of consensus. Within whatever constraints come out of a general election, there is a certain limit on absolutism. Other views have to be taken into account; no Parliament can be binding on its successor. Others may come and change the situation. This leads to give-and-take and modification, a process of self-education in Parliament about the issues faced and the solutions advocated.
After quite a long time in Parliament, I feel more strongly than ever that parliamentary democracy will work successfully only with strong, clear political leadership. It is essential for leadership to spell out to people what the issues really are, their implications and what is needed to put them right. We cannot abandon that process to the media and the ill-prepared public.
I must recognise, however, that the people were given the opportunity to express their views in a referendum. I cannot for the life of me see how—in the light of all that has emerged since, all the discussions and all the realities that have been revealed—we can possibly seal such a significant change in our constitution without the people having had an opportunity to endorse again whether they accept what is being put forward. I am not sure that I favour another referendum. However, if not a referendum there must be a general election before the situation is sealed, because the people must have had an opportunity to hear the arguments and to listen to contrary points of view on what should be done, before making their decision.
I do not think that it was right to go down the road of a referendum, and I am uneasy and a bit disturbed by the rationalisation that is now going on. With great respect to my noble friend Lord Parekh, I question how you constitutionalise that process: I do not believe that referenda and parliamentary representative democracy can work alongside each other. One is about intelligent and critical debate and outcome, cut and thrust and building consensus and so on, and the other, when it comes down to brass tacks, is about oversimplified, emotional decisions.
Forgive me for coming back to this theme pretty well every time I am on my feet, but one of the saddest things about the whole referendum process is that anyone who thinks and experiences life in this country knows that we are totally interdependent with the rest of the world: defence, the economy, security and migration all require an international approach—working out what is the best way forward in the interests of our people by working together. That is why I believe that we must seek the endorsement of the people through a general election in which these issues can be fully debated.
Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun Freezing Order 2018
Lord Judd Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I am very glad indeed to hear the resolute terms in which the order has been brought forward.
It is very important to remember just how brutal and horrible the murder was and how it was deliberately arranged in a way that would send a message to dissenters and others in Russia itself. From that standpoint, I think that this issue, quite apart from its legal rectitude, has important political significance in terms of our relationship with Russia. I could not agree more with the noble Baroness about the widow, who is an absolutely delightful woman and has come through this remarkably well. It must have been sheer, undiluted hell to see her husband dying in that way. The only way that the present regime in Russia gets messages is by being tough. Any tendency to rationalise or prevaricate on the issue would be disastrous; that is wrong.
I want to make one other point, quite apart from the victim himself. Two weeks before this happened, I heard him speak at a meeting in London, in which he was outspoken in his criticism of the cold-blooded brutality of the regime. He was a very courageous man, standing by the very principles we like to claim as central to our society. My point is this: do we really let agents of a regime like that travel around London trailing radioactivity with impunity? Where are they going? At the time, I found it astounding that they were just wandering round London and leaving trails of radioactivity. This is a very serious case indeed, with the most important issues behind it. I therefore do nothing but commend the Government on the resolute terms in which they have brought the statutory instrument forward.
Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, I welcome this order but I think it would be helpful to the House if the Minister could tell us how many persons are subject to orders similar to this one and what the approximate total of the now-frozen assets is. I apologise to him for not warning him of these two points but I hope he can deal with them.