Conduct of Debate in Public Life

Lord Winston Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Harris for his introduction to this very useful debate, and also acknowledge what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester has just said about the role of the House of Lords, which I want to address in this speech.

Social media has been outlined as a big problem, and certainly there is no question that we have now reduced debate to mere assertion. This is an increasing problem, as a result of the issue in our education system. I do not want to pre-empt what my noble friend Lady Morris may say, but I am sure she would agree that it is very clear that the real problem we have is the failure to teach debate, particularly in primary school. No doubt she will talk about some of these issues.

I want to return to the issue of Parliament. My second speech in the House of Lords was on higher education and a piece of chemistry I was rather proud to know something about. I talked very volubly, asserting various things; then, as soon as I could, I decided I needed to let my pulse rate settle and my blood pressure come down, and so went through the voting corridor and to the bar to get a stiff whisky. Behind me, I heard an elderly voice say: “Lord Winston, that was a very interesting speech”. I turned around—it was Lord Porter, the Nobel prize winner for that piece of chemistry. I then had to spend a lot more on the whisky than I had intended, and we subsequently became friends. He was a remarkable man—though his use of the word “interesting” I will come back to.

One of the issues in our society now is the need to get attention—the love of celebrity. If I may say, we see this so often in the conduct of the House of Commons. It is astonishing that Prime Minister’s Question Time has been a showpiece for Parliament. It is absolutely unacceptable that that is how we judge our political measures in this country; it does us a great disservice. Unfortunately, it is generally copied; not just the arguments but somebody on one side making strident assertions and somebody on the other doing nothing but reading a prepared answer. That is not debate. In fact, it is quite destructive to proper debate, and we have to consider that.

If I may be impertinent, in 24 years in the House of Lords, I have never spoken on issues of conduct; I have avoided it. However, far too often, people come into the Chamber to give a prepared speech with no intention of debating or interpreting what has been said before, of putting some flavour on what is being said, or of speaking without notes. I think that is very derogatory.

There is competition to speak. We jump up together at Question Time and now lack the courtesy to give way to each other. That courtesy, now lacking, was an important part of that role model which was very impressive when I first came into the House of Lords. The acerbity in debate which we sometimes see has become political rather than rational, as we in the House of Lords should be as an advisory Chamber. This goes back to an Act of Parliament in the 1630s, when I think it was suggested that that should not be part of our business. Truncated business in the House of Lords is not always a good idea. Very short speeches do not always allow Members to give an adequate view of sometimes quite important topics. But I accept that I have only six minutes and am halfway through that already, and I do not want to disturb the order of the House.

In some respects, one thing that we in the Labour Party did in 1999 was rather derogatory. In the reform of the House of Lords, there was something that we forgot. Surprisingly, the presence of the hereditary Peers gave the House a kind of dignitas. I know we decided that we had to be much more ecumenical and popular in what we did, but we lost the wig on the Speaker’s head and the hats that we raised to the Speaker, and we stopped kneeling to the Speaker when we were admitted in introductions. That courteous and remarkable panoply of traditional respect was quite important in many ways. We still of course have the State Opening of Parliament, but we lost something with the loss of the traditions.

I am not a Tory but I am a conservative; I believe in conserving what we have of value and remembering why it is important. I am reminded of the novel by Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo or The Leopard, in which that character sees the gradual change that needs to happen in society. As a great aristocrat in Sicily, the Leopard recognises that he has to give way, but it is of immense interest that he gives way with courtesy and always sees the other side of the argument, even finally, when he recognises the need to give way to the new aspect of the Risorgimento. That brings me back to Lord Porter, who used a particular word when he approached me from behind in that voting corridor. He said, “Lord Winston, that was a very interesting speech”. He did not say anything pejorative, although he obviously felt quite angry about it.

Church of England: Disestablishment

Lord Winston Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree with my noble and learned friend. The Government’s policy, in a word, is antidisestablishmentarianism.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I am one of those people who is unrepresented, as my noble friend suggested. In my view, the Church of England is hugely important to the nature of this country and in this House as well. Indeed, it is one of the reasons why I am proud to be British.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord. Perhaps the Labour Party should disestablish the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Winston Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, that is why I proposed that we should keep going on this Bill. We have made good progress on it and, as the noble Lord has indicated, there is no assurance of getting further time for it. I accept that an agreement has been reached through the usual channels but the House is sovereign on these matters and I would like to put it to the House that, after we have heard the Answer to the UQ—

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Although I personally have every sympathy for the Bill of my noble friend Lord Grocott, and I would like to hear whether he feels that there is a way of getting it through the House, the second Bill raises some very significant ethical issues which it is important to discuss. The conscientious objection Bill is not a trivial measure and it is right and proper that we discuss it in Committee, as arranged by the usual channels.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, although I am no longer a proper member of the usual channels, I can tell the Committee that, in discussions with those channels, it was decided that the fair thing to do was to split today between the two Bills. In answer to the question from my noble friend Lady McIntosh and without betraying any private discussions, I have every reason to believe that further time will be made available for the Committee stage of my Bill, which has the overwhelming support of the House.

Cannabis

Lord Winston Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Baroness is a long-standing campaigner for drugs reform. I listened to her exchange a few days ago with my noble friend Lady Williams on this very subject. When I saw officials last week, I pressed them hard on the medical advice. The professional advice of medical experts in this country is that cannabis in its raw form has no medicinal value, which is why it is a Schedule 1 drug and subject to strict controls. I am very reluctant as a layman to second-guess those officials. However, the noble Baroness referred last time to the moving case of Alfie Dingley. The Home Office will do all it can within the framework of the current legislation to ensure that Alfie gets the treatment he needs

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, some 15 years ago, the Science and Technology Select Committee of which I was chairman at the time had a six-month inquiry on the medicinal uses of cannabis. We found and reported overwhelming evidence of the value of cannabis, that people taking cannabis did not get high on these drugs and that they were not dependent on the drug but it eased their symptoms, particularly with neurological conditions. As a result, we got at least one drug licensed for market. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness that there is great urgency. It is 15 years, and it is about time the Government did something about this.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I will report back to the Home Office the strong views expressed by two noble Lords—I gather they are impatient and not anxious to wait for the outcome of the WHO review, which I think will be completed in 2019. Any decision will be evidence based. On the general use of cannabis, I note that the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs said in its last report that,

“cannabis is a significant public health issue. Cannabis can unquestionably cause harm to individuals and society”.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve, said, this is a technical Bill. But, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds and my noble friend Lord Davies so ably pointed out, it has human consequences. We cannot escape these consequences, which are massive, and I want to dwell on them briefly.

When Ministers talk of science, they talk about and quote Nobel Prize winners and great scientists. However, when perhaps the greatest scientist of the last century, Albert Einstein, died, within seven hours his brain was taken out of his head, cut into small bits by a pathologist, looked at under a microscope and put in a jar marked “Pickles”. Subsequently, a lady pathologist at Stanford University, miles away from where Einstein had died in New Jersey, had another look at his brain. After excessive dissection, she decided that there was no difference between his and anyone else’s: it had a 100 billion neurons and each was connected in the usual way to 5,000 to 10,000 other neurons. There is a message here, which is rather well explained by my two noble friends on the Front Bench: put together, they have more brain capacity than Albert Einstein—I exclude the Whips and, of course, the Front Bench on the opposite side.

The fact of the matter is that our best innovations and attempts at becoming human come through collaboration and co-operation. This has been said repeatedly in this debate but it is often forgotten; increasingly, it is the key to Europe. Do not forget that for a long time we have stood at the head of science in this country. I genuinely believe, and I think there is evidence to support the belief, that this will slip away. Other European countries are starting to overtake us and we are being left behind. The economy, which has been so important to the Government, must be considered as well.

I want to explain the consequences for one scientist I have come across who is not from my university but from University College London. I left the Chamber to print out his email to me just 10 minutes ago as what he says is a revelation about how many European scientists feel, though he represents far more people than just scientists. He says that he is married to an Englishwoman and has two children, but does not want to take British nationality. Why should he, when he is Italian? He feels totally insecure. This professor—his name, which he has said I can use, is Professor Andrea Sella—wakes up at night with cold sweats worrying about his position in Europe. He says that this is common among many of his friends and I see this at Imperial College as well. He describes what he feels so amazingly that I want to read it to noble Lords. He says:

“The government keeps claiming that in regard to EU nationals all is settled. Yet it remains completely unclear what rights we will have in the UK after the UK leaves the EU. We’ve paid our taxes for decades but everything is uncertain. What is our access to healthcare? What about other services?”.


He goes on to ask about elderly parents who live overseas who may need care and who may wish to come to this country for that care, with their children’s help. He says he had always assumed that people might be able to bring their elderly parents over but now he is not so certain. He talks about the 3 million people who can apply for citizenship but points out that the Home Office is completely overwhelmed—that passports are missing for months on end and that in the past people have had to fill out an 85-page document, which adds to the complication. Of course, this becomes completely impossible for many people to manage.

He goes on to say something rather sad:

“Just a few days ago David Davis sat in front of Hilary Benn’s parliamentary select committee and waffled about our ‘anxiety, real or imagined’. What planet does he live on?”.


That is a really serious issue. There is an aspect of unreality about how this affects so many people whom we regard as our friends and colleagues and who contribute massively.

I shall tell your Lordships about Andrea Sella. This man is a leading chemist in this country—a professor. He regularly goes into schools and has probably spoken to around 100,000 schoolchildren in the United Kingdom over the last five or seven years. I have seen his activities—they are immense and purely charitable. There are very many scientists like him who help with our civilisation, and what is happening is a real risk.

He ends his email on a very poignant note. Perhaps in saying this, I could point out that I watched the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, shake his head when he heard my noble friend Lord Triesman speak. At the end of his email Andrea Sella talks about a maternal ancestor. He is not Jewish but his ancestor was. Apparently she called him early in the morning when the result of the referendum became clear. She said, her voice choking with emotion:

“How can these people forget so soon where nationalism leads you?”.


I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, that, amazingly, a number of Jewish people are now applying for German citizenship, so perhaps he will understand that some of us feel a bit offended when he talks about the House of Lords in the way that he apparently did—if what my noble friend Lord Adonis said is true. I hope that, when he comes to sum up at the end of this debate tomorrow evening, he will put the record straight and point out that these human issues are really important—and really important to us in the House of Lords.