Local Councillors: Recruitment, Retention and Well-being Debate
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Lord Sahota
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Local Councillors: Recruitment, Retention and Well-being
Lord Sahota Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Forbes of Newcastle for bringing forward this important debate. It is a subject that matters deeply to me, not only as a politician but as someone from a ethnic minority background who has experienced these issues personally. This is not simply a political matter; it goes to the very heart of our democracy.
I speak not only from my principles but from my personal experience. I have been in politics for more than 30 years, with 22 years as a serving local councillor. I have witnessed at first hand the ugly reality of racial hatred in public life. At an election count, a returning officer would sometimes refuse to show me the spoiled ballot papers because they contained racial abuse directed at me. When I stood for Parliament some years ago, I received numerous racist email messages, and I quote just one of them. It said: “I’m not voting for that rag head”, referring to my turban and my Sikh faith. On another occasion, during an election campaign, a party stake board outside in my garden was vandalised with deeply offensive racial language scrawled all over it.
Despite everything I have experienced, I still firmly believe that politics is a noble profession. Serving the public and my community is the greatest honour of my life. Our democracy depends on ordinary people coming forward to represent their community. We should be encouraging more people from every background to stand for public office, not fewer. But that will only happen if they feel safe, respected and properly protected. Therefore, I ask the Government what steps they will take to strengthen the protection for councillors and candidates to tackle racial abuse, online harassment and intimidation, to ensure that those responsible for such behaviours are properly held to account. We cannot allow hatred and intimidation to become accepted as a part of political life. Our democracy deserves better.