I have been to Ukraine for maybe up to four months since the war began. I have been four times, all over the country; I spent a lot of time in Kyiv and in Odesa. Two very intense and conflicting emotions characterise the people of Ukraine. The first is a visceral loathing of Russia and a desire to protect their homeland and their freedom. The second is a genuine weariness with the war and a genuine sense of grief over the loss. The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, mentioned the 300,000 Russian dead, but he did not mention what looks to be over 200,000 Ukrainian dead over this period—a huge number relative to the size of the country.
I also commend the Government on the policy they have pursued from the outset. One of the very strange experiences of being in Ukraine is the uniform affection for Britain that characterises people throughout it. We have established trust, which is an incredible thing. It is to be noted, as well, through the Belvedere process and other things that the noble Lord, Lord Risby, mentioned very powerfully, that we have assumed a leadership position in relation to the eastern European states, most particularly Poland but also the Baltic states. I noticed that Scandinavia too is looking to Britain for not just military leadership but political leadership.
This is an extraordinary circumstance, not unrelated to the fact that Germany and France both remain deeply confused, which we have not mentioned in this debate so far. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, mentioned that one rule of politics is that it is not what you say but what is heard; I commend to the House the other golden rule of politics, as developed by Muhammad Ali, which is that you never get knocked down by a punch you see coming. It seems that Germany and France are still both reeling around; they still cannot comprehend the scale of this. It is important to note that the two new parties that have come out explicitly for peace in Germany—the AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance —are both now polling above any of the coalition partners in the German Government. There is a very strong feeling within Germany; we also know that Le Pen in France, who is most in favour of peace in the Russia-Ukraine war, is also leading in the polls. Extraordinarily, we have an outstanding capacity, as the noble Lord, Lord Risby, pointed out, to actually take a leading role if we can co-ordinate with the different aspects of the help.
I also commend the speech by the noble Earl, Lord Oxford and Asquith. I do not think that there is any significant difference between Vladimir Putin, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great in terms of besieged imperial Russia. But I have one element of dissent; the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said that this is not an academic debate, and I apologise to him—it is really difficult to leave the field. In international relations terms, I am a realist. The words of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, have to be heard very strongly in the long-term development of our capacity within defence, most particularly the Navy.
That brings me to my one area of dissent with the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, which is also with the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria. The port of Odesa is essentially besieged by the Russian army. Very little gets in. Some stuff is allowed out, but this is leading to long-term consequences for the import of the fundamental needs of Ukraine, such as white goods and medicines. Everything is coming in from Poland by land, which is 10 times the price. Effectively, Ukraine has been cut off from Black Sea trade, which is stymied.
Building on other contributions—I will be as brief as I can—we have to conceptualise some form of ceasefire here strategically, so that we can build up our arms and long-term strategic relationships with partners. Therefore, we have to acknowledge that the assumption that was very prevalent at the beginning of the war—that Russia would fall; that Putin would fall—is in the levels of fantasy. The Russian state has consolidated its alliances with China and North Korea, and, particularly in drone technology, with Iran. These are very serious, but the economic sanctions we imposed have not had the effect we wished. Therefore, Russian interests and capacities have to form part of our calculation of how we pursue this.
The first conclusion is that we need to build up our own, which will take several years to do, but we also have a great interest in some form of ceasefire because the losses inflicted on Ukraine are, frankly, unendurable. We have to notice the looming dark shadow: President Trump will not even meet representatives of the Ukrainian Government. It is not that he is indifferent; he is actively hostile. So we will have to bear an enormous burden. One aspect of the ceasefire would be to go back to a previous tradition: like Gdańsk or Danzig in the First World War, Odesa becomes a free city so that the Russians lift their naval blockade. That would enable Ukraine to reconstruct its economy and rebuild its civic institutions.
]]>I spent all of August in Ukraine. Moving through Ukraine, I travelled from Kyiv all the way down to Odessa, and it brought home to me the reality of genocide. I was treated extremely well by my Ukrainian hosts and invited into the cathedral of St Michael for the mass of St Barbara, and into the cathedral in Odessa to observe the mass there. These masses were full, but all the way down—even in Odessa, which in 1941 was almost 50% Jewish—the synagogues were closed. There was no one there.
President Putin says that the goal of the war is denazification; I would say that a small footnote of the war is that it is the end of the Jewish community in Ukraine. They have left and it is abandoned. A community that in 1941 was more than 2 million and that gave us Jabotinsky, Leon Trotsky, Isaac Babel and the Baal Shem Tov is decimated. That incredible centre of Jewish civilization has gone, and that is the reality of the Holocaust. There are now no longer any Jews in Ukraine. When I was in Odessa, on Friday night I went to the synagogue, where a man just stood there and said to me, “All gone—Jews all gone”. That is the reality of what we are looking at.
I witnessed some extraordinary things when I was in Ukraine, not least that the majority of the soldiers who were fighting for the freedom and sovereignty of Ukraine were Russian-speaking. To develop this point, and I would like the Minister to take note of this, the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, said in his opening remarks that there was a rinsing of reputations. I want to raise this issue because the dead scream at me; when I am there, it is not the dead who I miss but those who were not born. I go and I have no family to visit or people to welcome me. The ghosts of the unborn are alive, and the abandonment and fate of my people is clear.
What really disturbed me when I was in Ukraine was the restoration of the reputation of Stepan Bandera. Wherever I went in the small towns, his image was there. When I met soldiers, they had portraits of him. Bandera was an ally of Hitler, an active proponent of the OUN and the UPA. We should remember that between 1941 and 1943, there was no Auschwitz or industrial slaughter; it was all done by hand. The decimation of Ukrainian Jewry was done by all too ordinary people. In the village where my grandfather was born—in his shtetl—they were just slaughtered. In Odessa, they were taken into the main square and slaughtered. In Babi Yar, as we should remember, 100 at a time went into the pit. They were all slaughtered in an alliance between the Einsatzgruppe, the German Nazi group, and local Ukrainian groups. Bandera was a central part of that.
I absolutely support Ukraine. I went to Ukraine to show my solidarity with its people against the invasion, but they created a national holiday for Bandera’s birthday only last week. I urge the Minister to please say that in this war, we absolutely support Ukraine but we must also resolutely oppose any rehabilitation of the murderers and perpetrators of the Holocaust.
]]>I will concentrate on something that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has been working on, and that is technical or vocational education. I want to talk about the changes which I think are necessary in relation to this. I completely agreed with the first two points made by my noble friend; this relates to the third point.
Somewhere in the 1980s, despite evidence that the growth areas in employment were in relational care, building and maintenance and cooking and cleaning, it was decided that we were moving towards a knowledge economy. I would strongly argue that it was a great mistake to abolish the polytechnics and turn them into universities. Essentially, it was an exclusively academic concentration on the pathway which, as my noble friend Lord Knight mentioned, is not for everybody and is not what is wanted. There was also a definition of social mobility as a velocity concept that judged you by how far you moved away from your mum. That led to the denigration of place and of belonging, particularly in relation to working-class communities. There was no way out of abandoning those communities if you wished to pursue your career. In 1974, the funding for apprenticeships and university places was at parity; 14% went to university and roughly 14% did apprenticeships. The apprenticeship system has been decimated, whereas now about 48% or 49% go to universities.
What is required is to look at the concept of vocation. The noble Lord, Lord Lingfield spoke about the cadets, but generally the vocation is good work. In the labour market, the rise in jobs is in the vocational sector—social care is one example where there has been an enormous rise in jobs, which are low-grade but should be dignified work. Building and maintenance, plumbing and all these areas were assumed to be a relic of the past—a bit like the working class, the ultimate relic of the past but a very decisive force in our society and our politics and rooted in those areas.
I suggest we look carefully at pathways from the age of 14. If you look at the bottom third of the educational cohort—a bit like social class—in terms of Cs, Ds and Es at GCSE; there is a real failure at the bottom end. If you look at the UTCs and what is being done by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, there is an alternative, but the pathway should be towards genuine vocational colleges. In those colleges, we should think quite radically about putting medical schools, dentistry and—heaven forbid—accountancy, in those vocations. Remember, vocation is linked to virtue, and virtue is not “do-gooding” but “good doing” or being able to do things skilfully, which is essential for our society.
I urge the Minister and the Government to look very seriously at those educational pathways, at the skills we need and at the low attainment at the bottom end of schools. We need to give genuine dignity and vocation to working-class communities.
]]>At the heart of this is that the ILO represents an international framework of law, not a globalised one. We have been too quick to accept globalisation as the only rule. If globalisation just means that capital wins —that there is free movement of labour and capital—it limits the capacity of national democracies to set limits. The ILO opened up those possibilities and offers an inspirational framework through which, when we leave the European Union, we can think about an international order in which labour has an important and primary role.
I thank my noble friend Lord Jordan again. I hope that this is the beginning, not the end, of the debate. The ILO represents a great future. Will the Minister commit to rejoining those conventions that Margaret Thatcher denounced? It is vital that we establish a framework of labour relations in our country that respects the dignity of labour. When we talk about labour, and labour markets, we are talking about human beings. Labour is just another word for human beings. They cannot be moved around, exploited and discarded as they have been. The discontents of our times are rooted in what happened under Margaret Thatcher’s Government, when labour was despised and money and capital were worshipped.
My second question for the Minister is whether the Government can put in to all their trade agreements the right of free and democratic trade unions to be established and organised. That is the very heart of an internationalist, not globalised, foreign policy. I sincerely hope that the Government commit to that and that our party honours the debate today and begins to have a proper discussion about the international order we wish to see.
]]>It is worth the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, remembering—if he would like to go into the history lessons—that the ILO was negotiated while the First World War was in progress. While the biggest bloodbath in our history was happening, the trade union movements in Germany —and Britain in particular—negotiated this. It is important to say to the Benches opposite that it was not just David Lloyd George who supported it; Winston Churchill also supported this as a pillar of the international order. Noble Lords need only look at Harold Macmillan’s third way, which was very far to the left of my noble friend Lord Giddens’ third way, to see that the ILO was a central feature of this global order that, as my noble friend Lord Jordan said, would create a floor—but not only a floor. William Appleton, head of the General Federation of Trade Unions in 1919, said that the ILO and the Treaty of Versailles was the first time in history that working people had a place at the table, where the peace treaty was not only about the protection of private property, national borders and the rights of capital but workers had a place in it; it was a very noble thing.
It is wonderful that my noble friend initiated this debate. It has unleashed many ghosts that we should remember who have been Members of this House, such as Ernest Bevin. It was the British occupation force in North Rhine-Westphalia that initiated the tripartite system in German industry. We did not do it here—that is our tragedy—but we did it there. It was all those people in the trade unions who initiated the representation of workforce on boards, the vocational economy and the regional banks. All of this was the work of the British occupation force.
The noble Lord, Lord Goddard, has reminded us of Paul Kenny. I have an anecdote about Paul Kenny—
]]>I really appreciated the speech by my noble friend Lord Howarth. There is a general malaise in a society based on individualism and an economy in which, if you really want to get on in life, you have to come to London. I cannot count the number of people I have spoken to who are distressed to be separated from their elderly parents and cannot care for them. We have to look at that issue in the context of regional policy and the economy. These are really huge issues. Obviously, I agree with my noble friend Lord Foulkes and others who have spoken. The noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, spoke extremely eloquently, saying that television and radio are a crucial part of people’s lives. As I say to my children all the time, “The friends you’ve got on Facebook aren’t your friends”. Nothing can beat relationships and real contact.
We sometimes ignore the beauty of this House. What amazed me in the first year I was here was that it is an institution where older people have power and responsibility, and they do work. If you go anywhere else in our kingdom, it is so rare to see vital, alive and engaged older people. To rephrase a somewhat tarnished ex-Prime Minister, I believe that we are at our best when we are at our oldest.
I will put forward three things we can think about, because I hope the Chamber takes responsibility for the debate and thinks about the role of older people in a sustained way. First, it is very typical that there is an initiative called Teach First. I do not know whether noble Lords have heard of it. Young, bright people go into schools—as if they know anything. What about “teach last”? What about getting older people into schools? What about getting them in front of classrooms? What about genuinely showing honour and respect, and giving some power to older people?
I am the Lord of Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill. In the Orthodox community in Stamford Hill, at Yesodey Hatorah School, every single student is paired with an older person who has been widowed or widowered. They visit them every day. They are a part of their lives. When I took that to Hackney Council it said, “Can’t do it—health and safety”, and so on. We have to think of relational ways to integrate older people into the joys of life, such as birthdays. That is what they are excluded from. They are not part of that.
Thirdly, it is now clear that we have to rethink vocational training and skills. How about getting retired workers in as teachers in vocational colleges? There are so many ways in which we can honour older people. I do not think that we should be greedy and keep the privilege of participating in public life strictly for the House of Lords. We should make the argument for it and extend it, because the key aspects of health and life are loving, stable relationships, a sense of dignity, empowerment and participation. That is the key to our treatment of older people.
]]>I have huge respect for all who have spoken, but I dispute the claim by the noble Lord, Lord Polak, that Hezbollah has not changed. There has been a remarkable journey over the last 20 years: it has joined the political and democratic process; it is the largest single party in Lebanon and got 300,000 votes, which is 100,000 more than any other party; and it has played a key role in brokering a broad-based coalition Government there. It has not been mentioned today, but Hezbollah played a significant role in restoring the synagogue in Beirut. Unfortunately, the number of Jews in Beirut is smaller than the number of Peers here, but none the less it has restored the synagogue to pristine condition, and that is something we should hear.
I found it very odd to hear the Minister say that Hezbollah was prolonging the suffering of the Syrian people. I say to the Minister that it is Daesh, or ISIS, that is prolonging the suffering of the Syrian people. It is a remarkable thing to describe a group that resisted Daesh and fought against ISIS—our principal enemy and genuinely a terrorist organisation—as prolonging that suffering. In a small way, we should all feel some gratitude for that. We can all understand in our historical consciousness—beginning with the Israeli invasion in 1982 and the occupation that lasted for somewhere between 12 and 18 years—why there might be some resistance to that and some feeling that it was wrong. Hezbollah essentially began as Khomeini’s shock troops in the Bekaa valley and the Jabal Amel, but it transferred its allegiance from Khomeini and Khamenei to Sistani in Najaf. There has been a very significant shift in its religious allegiances.
Palmerston said that our interests are eternal and our allies are temporary. I subscribe to that view of foreign policy. In Iraq, as well as in Lebanon, the Arab Shia have tried to underwrite some form of democratic Government. They are to be distinguished very much from Iran, which is Persian. Our Foreign Office used to have an understanding of that but has somehow lost it; it should retain some historical understanding. We should develop some form of independent foreign policy that does not just follow the United States, which is extremely pro-Saudi and pro-Sunni, and therefore hostile to Hezbollah.
We need to recognise that Hezbollah has made this journey towards democracy and towards preserving the territorial integrity of the Lebanese state. As the Minister mentioned, Hezbollah represents the Shia community—but not just the Shia community; it also has votes from the Sunni community and from the Christians. I am not suggesting to the House that Hezbollah is like the Lib Dems; it is obviously more successful and slightly more significant than that. I do not doubt that there are very bad people in its midst, but it is a political party that represents the largest plurality in Lebanese politics and has committed itself to democracy and pluralism in its deeds. We should always look at the deeds rather than focus exclusively on incendiary words. I ask the House to reflect that maybe it would be foolish to block conversation and possible negotiation with Hezbollah.
]]>I mentioned on Monday that I had been to Syria. I came back 10 days ago. I was in the north-eastern part of Syria for five days as a guest of what they call the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, and in order to get there I had to go via Baghdad. I want to share some of my reflections and observations with the House because I think they are pertinent. On arrival in Baghdad, it is impossible to escape the fact that the Shia have won; the city is festooned with tower-high luminous green posters of Ali and Hussein and in miniature form they are on every soldier’s heart, including sayings about people being prepared to die for Hussein and Ali. I was driven by a driver through a very congested area at 140 kilometres an hour so it was not a really calm reflection, but there are now high concrete barricades keeping the Sunni Arab community in their areas. Baghdad is now 65% Sunni. I met Ministers and MPs from the ruling al-Dawa party, and they left me under no illusion that, having had more than 1,000 years of living under the Sunni Arab yoke, as they put it, this was now their time and they were not going to relinquish that easily.
I will share with the House a golden political rule that I was taught. In order to get to the world as it should be—and I think we can all agree what that is: reconciliation between divided communities, democracy and the rule of law—you have to begin with a sober analysis of the world as it is. So, however difficult it is to digest, in the world as it is in relation to Iraq, the Shia have won nationally, Iran has won regionally and Russia has won globally. We have to begin our analysis from that realistic point. When I was preparing this speech, I went through the Hansard of the debates on the Iraq war in 2002-03 but I could not find any analysis that presented that outcome, so I suggest that we proceed with some humility in this reflection.
A kind of mirage or delusion governed our foreign policy: that there would be some form of moderate Sunni Arab force that we could ally with, but that did not exist in Iraq and it certainly does not in Syria. According to what I saw in Syria, we seem to be in alliance with the Free Syrian Army, whose troops are overwhelmingly constituted by al-Qaeda, al-Nusra and defeated ISIS forces. Russia and Assad—again, we are talking about the presence of Russia—have fought against ISIS, and it seems that they are ultimately going to win that conflict.
Any national security strategy requires an analysis of the primary enemy. It is important to look at the latest research on how ISIS—Daesh, as it is known over there—ruled. It was based on the systematic rape and subjugation of women. I spoke to women in Syria and Iraq who were sold in cages in public markets. That was the mode of life. Equally important, the property of the Shia, Christians, Yazidis and Kurds was immediately confiscated and then sold legally, through a ministry, to the Sunni Arabs—this in a land where those people had been living together for more than a millennium.
The tragedy for us is that a third force did and does exist in Syria that is not Assad on the one hand or Daesh on the other. It is not too strong to say that we have betrayed that force. I am talking about the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, which hosted me. They are made up of Kurds, Yazidis, Christians—I met the Syrian Christian communities that were participating—and Sunni Arabs. They went to the city of Kabani, where Daesh/ISIS was first resisted and beaten. When I met their families, I honoured the very young soldiers who had died there. I met the YPJ, the women’s forces, whom our troops fought alongside all the way, ultimately, from Kabani to Raqqa; we had a very close military relationship with them. They fought fearlessly and heroically.
The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, who opened the debate, mentioned that there is a British initiative to encourage the participation of women and girls in the reconstruction of Syria. We have a huge amount to learn from them. I saw a very deeply embedded democratic system. I have coined an unusual phrase to try to describe it: try to imagine a “parish commune” system. It is a very local form of democracy, involving the participation of all the different communities in local assemblies, with only one rule: there has to be a minimum of 40% female participation for that to hold.
So we had allies we fought alongside who were upholding democracy and the participation of women, and who were winning, but we did not stand by them. A very important part of this debate about national security is a reflection on Turkey. I am very reluctant to dissent in any way from the noble Lord, Lord Owen, but in this regard we have to take very seriously the idea that the Turkish state is not a reliable ally at the moment. Not only has it arrested and imprisoned a record number of journalists and sacked more than 100,000 public sector workers, under this very curious combination of Ataturk and the Muslim Brotherhood—a certain Islamist nationalism—but it has invaded its friend Syria. It has conducted 58 consecutive days of bombing using 78 aircraft, so a NATO partner has invaded Syria. The relentless bombing has led to the displacement of the population, so we can talk without any exaggeration of a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing. It has also paid al-Nusra, al-Qaeda and their Daesh forces to do the actual local fighting on the ground to displace the local population.
So the first question to the noble Earl is: whose side are we on in this? Why are we not being much more resolute in supporting our allies, whom we have fought alongside consistently over the past two years? Why have we stood back? Secondly, we have forces in Manbij, and there are American forces there. There is every indication that Turkey will extend its annexation and invasion to the east. What commitment can he give that the British forces will stay there, because I imagine that Turkey would be reluctant to bomb a fellow NATO partner? That is very important. To what extent are we trying to rebuild and renew our relationship with the PYD and the YPG, which we have fought alongside, and what humanitarian assistance are we giving to the 100,000 refugees who have been displaced from the home they have lived in for 4,000 years?
]]>I saw something very inspirational in northern and eastern Syria. I saw the building of a genuine democracy, led by women. There were women and men co-chairs in a local democracy. I saw the participation of the Assyrian Christians as well as the local Sunni Muslims in building that democracy. I went to a cemetery where, for young men and young women, the average date of birth was 1995, in a war that went on four years ago in Kobane; they gave their lives to resist Daesh/ISIS. I also met injured soldiers who had fought with British forces all the way to Raqqa in order to defeat that iniquitous force. So I saw something extraordinarily inspiring, but I also saw something terrible that has not really been mentioned—the fact that Turkey has invaded Afrin, which is part of Syria. It has actually bombed for 56 consecutive days and has paid local al-Qaeda and al-Nusra forces, as well as defeated Daesh forces, to expel the Kurds and Christians from their homes in Afrin. They are now refugees from a land that they have lived in for more than 4,000 years.
I find it disquieting that I have not heard anything from the Government on this issue. Very specifically, will the Government maintain the British forces in Manbij to deter Turkey from expanding its war into the other areas that are controlled at the moment by the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria? What steps are they taking to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees, of which there are now many tens of thousands? In what way have they expressed their disquiet to the Turkish Government about a policy of ethnic cleansing?
]]>I would like to share with noble Lords a couple of anecdotes from that time. The first was during a visit to Kirkuk, when it was under Kurdish government, and to the church of the red stone, where the congregation still spoke Aramaic. It was extraordinary that that was still alive in their lives. There used to be a congregation of many thousands, but it is now a few hundred. When I went to visit, each of them carried a photograph of a relative who had been killed in the previous 10 years—assassinated for being Christian. As they sat in the church, I said to them, “What are you doing? What are you waiting for?” They said, “We are waiting to die”. They claim that the church was founded by St Thomas, and so it is a story of the terrible loss of a culture that has existed since that time. It is extraordinary that there is still a continuity of Christian communities that speak the language of Jesus, and it is terrible to see their loss and decimation. In 1914, Baghdad was still a majority Jewish city; there are now no Jews left in the area. We should not be narcissistic: the Iraq war accelerated trends, but it did not create those trends, which are long-standing.
My second anecdote comes from a refugee camp near Kirkuk at the time that ISIS, having captured Sinjar, had just been pushed back from Sinjar and Nineveh by the Peshmerga. I met the noble Baroness in one of those dreadful marble hotels in the green zone in Irbil during that time. I spoke to the Christians and the Yazidis there, and they told me stories of rape and theft. The Bibles that they had carried through generations had been stolen from them, and that was as great a dispossession as the loss of their homes. The Peshmerga had just liberated that territory from ISIS and the governor of the region announced joyously to them that they were all free to return home. Not one moved. They did not move because, as the right reverend Prelate said, their neighbours had attacked them. They were subjected to murder, their homes were taken by their neighbours and they felt no security. It is extremely important to understand this rupture of trust.
As to what the Government should do, it is time to think boldly, initially in regard to the refugee camps. I witnessed in the refugee camps that there was some degree of solidarity for the Sunni Muslims there, sponsored by Turkey and Saudi Arabia; the few Shia who were there had support from Iran; but there was no systematic solidarity for the Christians or the Yazidis. There was no prayer space for Christians and no support. Another dreadful anecdote is that Bibles were sent, but they were in Arabic and not Aramaic and so were of no use to the local people there. The Government may have given up on the big society in our country, but perhaps they could revive it in these refugee camps and introduce leadership training for Christians and Yazidis who have had their communities smashed. There is no leadership there. They felt that no one was speaking for them and that they had no champions at all. They are the weakest and poorest, and it is right that we should show some special solidarity. As I mentioned, although there is the story that the Christian community is somehow colonial or that they are collaborators, this is far from the truth. Christians have been established in the region since before Islam, having been there for 2,000 years. Given what they have been through, it is right that there should be some solidarity with them.
I want also to echo what the noble Baroness said because it is not to be underestimated. We are talking about religious and ethnic freedoms, but the systematic subjugation and rape of women under Daesh was one of the most wicked things we have seen in our lifetime, so it is important that women are part of the leadership and community rebuilding effort. The Government should turn their attention to the very weakest and poorest who have been marginalised. Christians and Yazidis, particularly the women among them, should be given direct support by us, in particular in the refugee camps, where harassment and rape is still going on. That was recounted to me by the people there, and they said that they really had nowhere to turn.
Following on from that, the noble Baroness mentioned the referendum. Kirkuk is now no longer under Kurdish rule, along with the disputed territories, but it is still worth mentioning that the Kurdish Regional Government took in so many refugees that the population was increased by a third. It is absolutely vital that we continue to support the KRG in the solidarity that they are providing for these refugees. That is one way in which we can sustain meaningful relations. I would be very interested to know, because it is difficult to get information—all I have is anecdote—about the situation for minorities, including the Kurds in Kirkuk. I hear that it is not good since the Iraqi army took over, and there has been a suppression of the Kurdish language. That situation is worth keeping an eye on.
Once again, it is with gratitude that I have participated in this debate. We must persevere in showing solidarity with the Christians and the Yazidis in the area, who have experienced the worst possible dispossession.
]]>The real reflection I would make on the referendum is that the people of our country made a distinction between free trade and free movement. It has never happened in the history of the world that free trade has been tied to the commodification and movement of people. This is what the EU has brought about and what has led to its undoing here, because it led to the democratic state having no possible control over the movement of people. That is a fundamental issue that relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, said. It is a very strange thing for a socialist party not to comprehend fully that people are social beings, tied to the places where they live and to their relationships, institutions and history.
As regards this particular debate, there are three areas of negotiation, including the trade negotiation and the framework agreement, which I mentioned—but this is just triggering the divorce. Divorces are ugly. I recommend that your Lordships read the dissenting judgment in the Supreme Court, which is excellent. It says that there was no marriage in the first place and that it was always a matter for Parliament to make its move. I agree with that. I was very interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, said about the three couples who got back together again. We mix in very different social circles, but I am very impressed—I know people who are married who do not have that degree of intimacy. But whenever there is divorce, it is entirely appropriate to ask, “What about the children?”. That is a legitimate question. This is triggering a divorce. It is a time-bound issue, it will be ugly and it is about the distribution of property and all those things.
I was very encouraged by what was said by the Leader of the House in the opening statement. There are clearly six areas where we have got to offer deeper co-operation. We have to offer it in the areas of scientific research, universities, police, counterterrorism, workers’ rights and our mutual interest in the environment. We have to go further and deeper, saying that relations with Europe will be based on reciprocity and that we will play our role. When it comes to the military aspect, I think that NATO is the best area to organise that, but it is clear that we will pay for the continued necessary co-operation in Europe.
At that point we can really raise our sights and talk about what I felt was the dominant factor: the yearning in the country for national renewal and a national purpose, and the way that people felt that that was stymied. As I said, I worked overwhelmingly with trade unions for the leave campaign, and there was just this idea that politics did not matter any more—that it was all legal and administrative and was working within that framework. In those terms, I agree that, as has been said, there was a working class insurrection.
In response to that, the Government brought forward the suggestions about workers on boards. I suggest that we really engage with that so there is a genuine sense of embedding the economy in areas, and I commend the idea of pursuing a vocational economy. We need precisely to heal the relationship with the people who feel that they were utterly disregarded by the previous settlement. That is necessary for civic peace, social order and our national renewal. We should move further towards thinking about regional banks so that there can be some capital for people to have access to in the malnourished regions of the country.
To conclude, it is vital that we just get on with this, initiate the divorce—which is never pleasant—and get through it. Within the framework agreement that is in Article 50, I suggest that we make positive and friendly offers to Europe in the areas that I have described, and then we will see how it goes with the trade negotiation. However, we should remember that those in Europe are committed to a very peculiar thing, which is that free trade requires free movement—and that is precisely what was rejected in the referendum.
]]>Very occasionally, I am criticised by people on my own side for working so closely with the Church, as I have done throughout my life on issues such as the living wage and limiting usury. I always reply in the same way: at least Christians and people of faith do not believe that the free market created the world and that it is something inherited and anterior. Of course, it must also be said that neither did the administrative state create the world, and I really appreciated the balance the most reverend Primate gave on that. I would also say that I love liberty much too much ever to be a liberal, and the reason for that is because of the emphasis put, which he did quite correctly, on institutions and practices. The thing when we are talking about British values is how we care for our covenantal inheritance. These institutions are inherited: the law is one crucial part and the Church is another, along with autonomous self-governing universities. We used to call these intermediate institutions that nurture virtue the body politic.
I would call virtue good-doing rather than do-gooding. It is a way of excellence of practice. When the most reverend Primate talks of hospitality and generosity, these are not values but a way of relating to other people. These are practices that can be done well. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ely said, the notion of character embedded in institutions is the most precious part of our inheritance, through which we protect liberty and democracy. That is why we should really concentrate now.
I had a very funny conversation with a Member of the other House, Michael Gove, who said to me, “What we need with Brexit is a quickie divorce”. I asked him, “A quickie divorce like Henry VIII wanted a quickie divorce?”. There is a certain lack of historical understanding of where quickie divorces can lead—that one obviously led to the Reformation. This is what we have to think about: what is the covenantal inheritance that needs to be embedded in a self-governing nation, which is what we are to be?
One of the ways of doing that is definitely, as the most reverend Primate said, through the notion of the common good. A certain precondition of the common good is not to despise or dehumanise people who voted for Brexit as racists and nationalists but to try genuinely to engage in renewing the institutions that assert this fundamental point that the Church has always been faithful to, which is that human beings are not commodities. The madness of neo-liberalism is—as I said, I love liberty much too much to be a liberal, and I am much too conservative ever to be associated with the party opposite—the idea that human beings and nature are commodities to be bought and sold and find their price, which is an idea that is as wicked and pernicious as the idea that the state should control and administer the very nature of the person. It is precisely the intermediate institutions —the schools, the universities, the Church, the unions, the law—that protect the nature of the person from their domination by these two external forces. That is essentially the path.
The really crucial virtue that I wish to concentrate on is one that has been protected by the Church and neglected by us, which is that of vocation—the idea of good-doing and having a calling. A very terrible thing about our country is that in 1832 we protected the notion of vocation for lawyers, doctors, dentists and accountants but abolished it for plumbers, carpenters and engineers. There was a free market in those manual crafts, and we made the distinction between a profession and a vocation, and we degraded the concept of vocation essentially to mean unskilled or semi-skilled labour. I share with your Lordships the fact that we never hear in football the notion of a “vocational foul”, but we certainly hear of the “professional foul”. We saw the degradation of our professions in the crash, where accountants paid by companies were writing things off and concealing massive deceit, exaggeration and vice. If we can extend this concept of vocation institutionally through the idea of the building of character through an inheritance of a skill and a trade, then we can talk about internal regulation, rather than external regulation, and the pursuit of a common good embodied in the covenantal institutions of our inheritance.
Among those, this Parliament is supreme, where we have the representation of workers, of capital and—one of the glories of our House—of the common good between the religious and the secular. The common good derives from the very strong stress on vocation and virtue in our institutions, without which we are always prey to incoherent lists and the domination of both the market and the administrative state.
]]>The first is that it is not only the state that centralises power; it is also capital that centralises. There is a consistent tendency to oligopoly and then to monopoly, unless there are constraints on that. What we have seen, and what we continue to see, is that 80% of our banking still goes through the same failed institutions, and what we have is more of the same, rather than something distinctly different. What we have is a collapse of regional business investment, which is extremely harmful and manifests itself in two ways: in constraints on productivity on one side and, on the other, the extraordinary growth of payday lenders, as the banks cannot deal with local needs. So centralisation is one
aspect of the crash, and a lack of accountability in the structures of the bank is the other. This is where I am very much in favour of what my noble friend Lord Eatwell says, with one proviso.
Relationality is crucial and, when there is representation of interests in the corporate governance of banks, you have a greater degree of honesty. If you look at the story with the Spanish banks and the German local banks, you find that the constraints on them were eased and they were, in fact, acting like normal profit-maximising banks. They had lost their regional commitment and got themselves involved in series of overextended loans, very similar to ours. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Flight, that that is not a condemnation of regional banks; it is a condemnation of the fact that they ceased to be regional.
One anecdote that crystallises the problem is the example of Northern Counties Permanent Building Society, which was established in 1850 and flourished through 150 years. It went through four depressions, grew and merged as a mutual in 1965—noble Lords will see where this story is going—with the Rock Building Society. It then became the Northern Rock Building Society, which did well until 1997, when it was demutualised. It became the fourth largest mortgage lender in the country and sponsored Newcastle United but it also, by the maximisation of returns, completely lost its asset. We do not need any symbolism here; Newcastle United Football Club used to be sponsored by Northern Rock and now it is sponsored by Wonga. That is the reality of the circumstance that you confront, and there is no virtue in that; it is of no benefit to anybody. There is centralisation, lack of accountability, recklessness and deceit. They are all part of the same story of being unable to hold anybody to account. Without incentives to virtue, unfortunately, you get incentives to vice. That was the system, and it is the system that we still have.
I want to speak for the logic and the virtue of the amendments proposed here. The first element is regionality. As I say, all the cases that my noble friend Lord Eatwell and the noble Lord, Lord Flight, referred to, concerning Germany and Spain and their regional banks, were due to those banks no longer being regional. When there is a constraint on the bank to lend within a prescribed geographic area, banks will flourish. We can see how effective that has been from the Sparkassen in Germany. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Flight, a while ago referring to the stability of the German system being based on its currency, but it is also based on the fact that there is a regional banking system that sustains business through ups and downs, and where there is a genuine local knowledge of what is going on in those businesses as well as a vocational work scheme.
The third part of this is the most important—that is, the representation of the skills and knowledge of the workforce and stakeholders in the corporate governance of the firm. This leads to a balance of interests that holds people accountable. I completely agree with my noble friend Lord Eatwell about the stress on regionality and relationships in the second part of the amendment; relational banking is absolutely essential. However, that implies local knowledge and the restoration of what we have lost, which is trust. So
this is not a quick fix. I commend the work of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury in talking about a 10 to 15-year structure of reconstituting credit and trust in the nation. There will have to be a coalition between different stakeholders in doing so. But it is a terrible missed opportunity when we have an asset that has not been regionalised and has not been subject to proper balance of power in corporate governance, with no regional accountability in it to look at bad practice and correct it before it reaches the taxpayer. Above all, as the story of Northern Rock teaches time and again, if you maximise immediate returns on investment, you will lose the asset. There have to be constraints on that which allow capital to maintain its presence in areas and be a partner to business and families. In terms of regionality, relationships, stakeholder accountability and non-maximisation, this amendment holds the key to the establishment of the banking system that must come now.
]]>I declare an interest: I worked for many years for London Citizens and the Industrial Areas Foundation. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, spoke excellently about the community development funds. An aspect that may be of interest to the Government is that the seed money was provided by President Nixon. It is not the case that Conservative Governments are hostile to the conditions of the urban poor. The interesting thing was that the initial seed money was £9 million. The assets of the urban development funds, looked at as a mixture of venture capital, urban development and loans, are now well over £1 billion. I have worked with them and looked closely at that in terms of Baltimore, and the effects that this has had there.
That is very inspiring, but we have nothing like it. We have no such framework; no initiatives have been taken. This speaks to the heart of the issue. I here put my head on the block in relation once more to what the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, said. My noble friend Lord Hollick spoke about Barclays: it made a loan of £120 million to the Money Shop six weeks before Christmas. I believe that the rate was 7%. The rate that was lent at to people was 4,000%, and now Barclays discriminates against its own customers and
will not give them loans. This is completely out of order. The conditions of the working poor and the debt in which that they have to live are, as they say on the 73 bus where I come from, bang out of order. People cannot find access to money. They do not earn enough; they cannot find a decent, meaningful and honest way out of the poverty wages that they receive. Yet there are no new institutions in the banking sector that address this issue.
I am involved in a conversation with Salford about establishing a bank of Salford, working on the credit unions. An interesting addition to the suggestions made, which the Government should look into, is that if you put the payroll through the new institutions of local government or city governance, it transforms the financial status of those institutions, and suddenly they are able to lend. That is one important issue. We need to notice that there has been no innovation in institutions relating to the banking system.
We must go back to 2008 and assert sadly that none of us is innocent. Between 1997 and 2007, of the £1.6 trillion invested in the British economy, 81% was in mortgages and financial products. Family and personal debt exploded. People cannot find a way out of that debt. It is not outlandish to say, as we did in 2008, that 5% of the bailout should be used to establish regional banks, as part of this story. Why is quantitative easing going through the same failed banking institutions that are refusing to lend to local businesses and the working poor? It is important to stress that the overwhelming loans owed to these payday lenders are not from those on benefits. They are from working people who do not earn enough and cannot discharge their fundamental responsibilities to their loved ones and their absolute obligations to pay their taxes and rates. Overwhelmingly, the money goes on food.
I conclude by saying another thank you. This is the most fundamental issue that we face. Debt is exploding. We have not moved to value—we still have debt. We need to look at community development funds and the decentralised way in which they work, and the way in which they are controlled by local people. I worked with the Industrial Areas Foundation. To ease the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, let me say that when the interest rate cap was set in Maryland, because of access to the alternative finance system there is no evidence that it led unavoidably to loan sharks. That is not the case. There were alternative financial institutions, and many were set up by a partnership between churches and local unions.
There are many creative ways in which we can deal not only with the issue of the working poor but by which we can reactivate the civic institutions to a common purpose, which is value. We need to move absolutely from debt to value in the economic system. We must stop subsidising, bankrolling and giving all the perverse welfare incentives that we had to the banking institutions that are not fulfilling their role. We must create new institutions that have local people’s ownership and control, people who serve their own interests. This debate is a wonderful opportunity to investigate the genuine opportunities to bring some credit to the starving people of our country.
]]>I want to concentrate on the issue that the noble Lord brought up regarding youth unemployment and the way that faith can cast light on it. He has a unique
voice, but he is not alone in what he said. Two weeks ago, I was invited to Rome, where I received a medal from the Vatican. One must understand that, as someone who grew up in Jewish north London, receiving medals was not something that I ever expected to happen. They would normally have been for sporting or military activities, neither of which, according to the comparative division of labour, was a speciality of Palmers Green and Southgate Synagogue.
However, the Pope also has a very pro-business and pro-worker agenda. Issues regarding usury and interest rates are extremely important to that. Above all, what faith brings, and what we neglect, is the realisation that there is no solution to youth unemployment without bringing older people into the equation. There needs to be intergenerational solidarity. Traditionally, we have always put a strong emphasis on our elders. It is essential that we retrieve the idea of vocation and bring in older people, who should not be abandoned and whose wisdom and experience are so important in generating the values that will be essential to earning a living in the world and generating employment. We need to find ways to allow older people to relate to younger people, who should hear their stories and learn their skills. I commend the Chief Rabbi for this debate.
]]>In terms of this debate, I know that the most reverend Primate is now going to re-enter academic life, so I shall gently remind him what it is like. I want to talk about the slight concern that I have with the thinness of the concept of resource. When we think of human beings in terms of human resources, we diminish them in almost every case. When we think of older people, we think of an inheritance. We think of something that constitutes us that is not simply a resource to be used but something that is part of us. In that spirit, I should like to talk about one very practical aspect of how we have to change our conceptualisation of older people, and that is by renewing the idea of vocation. We have an imminent problem, which could be viewed as a resource problem. When we have a resource problem, what do we do? We import people and try to do some training.
I should like to introduce a new concept to the House. We talk about lifelong learning; I would say, in honour of what the most reverend Primate has taught me, that we have to talk about lifelong teaching. It is the partner to lifelong learning, and the greatest degree of neglect that we show older people is when we cut them off from their teaching role in society. A tragedy that is yet to be redeemed in our society is the abandonment of the wisdom, the skills and, above all, the experience of old people and the virtues which they still have and which we desperately need. It may be the case that my generation and generations younger than mine have neglected skill, virtue, honour, tenacity and fidelity in the workplace, but older people still have an echo of that, and it is a virtue that young people have to relearn. Therefore, when we think of vocation and of renewing skills, it is absolutely essential that we bring older people back into teaching and passing on the skills that need to be renewed.
Two very good ideas have been raised today. One was put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and concerned the chaplaincy. This is a much neglected area. The University of Cambridge is a very effective, modern institution, and one reason that it is a modern institution is that it has preserved its traditions, its institutions and its relationality. One of the key ways it has done that is through the chaplaincies. The chaplaincies within the colleges are not an irrelevant luxury; they are not to be subsumed within the human resource diktats of student retention and progression. They are a way in which the colleges have retained humanity and a set of relationships.
The hospital idea-that the chaplaincy should honour humanity and always oppose neglect and abuse-is fantastic. This is a classic way in which tradition and modernity meet. However, to go further, we have to reconceptualise our skills so that we view the old as a resource, certainly, but also as a constitutive part of the way that we shape the future. On progression, while you hear of a professional foul, you never hear of a vocational foul. It is an important addition that old people should be put in positions of status and power.
When I first came into this House I was amused by the concept of elevation and my children made a lot of jokes about it. However, I have been truly elevated by the company here; by older people having status, power and authority. It is very rare in the whole realm to have institutions where older people are heard, but this is one of them. In this very important debate, I urge that we take practical steps to reintegrate older people into the training of the young. The primary contribution that faith makes to citizenship at the moment is that, unlike in many secular institutions, there is still an honouring of the elder in the faith tradition. We can learn from that and return it into the way we train people in vocation so that the abandoned workers of the past three decades, such as shipbuilders, can finally be given status and honour in reconstituting the common good, not the least part of which is intergenerational.
One of the great problems that we have is the segmentation of ages. We know that Christmas is coming; I do not want to rehearse the data about the older people with children and family who will be alone. This is heartbreaking in itself but, as the most reverend Primate said earlier, it is really about marketing being segmented according to age. However, genuine goodness always brings people of different ages together in relationship-not through a sense of moral obligation but through learning and growing. That is not only through prayer and eating together, it is through the other practices of the working life.
In considering that beautiful phrase of calling our attention to the place and contribution of older people, we must look at how the older generation are going to constitute the flourishing of the young. We cannot deal with the issues of the young without honouring the old and bringing them into relationship with the young to pass on the traditions which they hold.
]]>There are two concerns that I should like to share with the House. First, I asked the representative from Leeds council whether she could name one world-class institution that came out of Leeds. It was obviously not the football club. She could not quite put her finger on it. I tried to prod her, telling her that Marks & Spencer was the institution and that Simon Marks started off as a pedlar. The idea that pedlars-poor people coming to this country, moving around and showing some enterprise-would be stamped on here was astonishing to me. I completely echo what the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, said about the desire to homogenise the shopping experience and shopping centres. There was quite a whiff of local enforcement going on against the pedlars that came through from the witnesses, and I found that quite unpleasant and disturbing.
My second concern is a constitutional one. "Pedlar" is from the Latin for feet-as we said in the committee-as in pedalo. It is true that pedlars were pushing their bags rather than walking them in some cases, due the size of the things that they had, and we originally based it on Simon Marks' bag, which we looked at in the Marks & Spencer museum. That was an appropriate size for a pedlar's bag, we thought. There has to be enforcement in bringing that down to size and getting it correct.
One finds references to pedlars even before Chaucer, going back to accounts from Roman times. There have been pedlars taking their wares from town to town and from city to city for as long as there have been records in the country, so it is a status that has existed from time immemorial. There were references to pedlars before 1191. It is not customary practice; it is practice from time immemorial. It was recognised in the 1871 Act; it was not created in the 1871 Act-that is a very important distinction. In other words, it is not clear that the status of the pedlar can be abolished. It seems to me that it is an ancient status in the realm and that there have been very ill thought out and incoherent attempts to limit that freedom of movement, as was manifest in the Bills that came before.
I looked at the BIS consultation document. BIS's legal evidence seemed to suggest a lack of historical awareness about pedlars. It was taking EU directives and applying them in a very flat and straightforward way. I asked BIS how it could account for the fact that Germany has enormous differences in craft status that are still consistent with the EU. Its reply was, "We take a different view of enforcement". BIS is taking a very straightforward, unhistorical view that pedlars will interfere with new services. We have to resist that, refute it and absolutely assert that pedlars have been part of our kingdom and part of the realm for many thousands of years. They play a role in taking things from town to town and in bringing people together in many ways, disrupting stable, corporate markets. We really should defend them. I commend the report and I commend the committee.
]]>What it brings to our attention, and what I wish to share in honouring my noble friend Lord Mitchell for raising this historic amendment and the Government for responding to it, is the terrible condition of the poor. To quote someone who has not always been popular in this House, the Pope, usury is a way in which the rich prey upon the misfortune and troubles of the poor. I want to share with your Lordships that this is urgent; it is happening again and Christmas is coming. Overwhelmingly, it is not the unemployed but the working poor who are taking these loans.
I will raise two issues for future discussion, as we have reached such a fantastic moment of consensus. The first is in relation to credit unions, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham mentioned, and regional banking. The proposal that London Citizens put forward, which I do not think sounds outlandish now, is that 5% of the bailout should be used to endow local, non-usurious lending institutions. The way in which the burdens of the crash have fallen on the poor is indecent, and we have to look at credit arrangements. I acknowledge what the Government have done in freeing up credit unions, but they do not have adequate resources or reach, and the establishment of new, non-usurious lending institutions in the regions of our country is the only way forward.
The other important issue-if I might interrupt the Minister's conversation-is that data show that there is more illegal lending in Britain than in Germany. There is a 20% cap in Germany. I am not going to be put bounced into any position, but it is still the case that if you put any constraints on the power of money, it automatically leads to illegal lending.
The other thing that we need to address is a living wage. When people work, they should be paid enough not to have to go into poverty. We have to build on this and intensify the conversation and the common good between secular and faith institutions. I commend the lead taken on this because the fundamental issue of our time is that the biggest growth area in our economy is debt, and overwhelmingly it falls on poor families. We need to address it as a matter of intensity and urgency.
]]>I pay tribute to the Muslim community in east London, with whom I have worked, and to the East London Mosque for its work on the living wage with the Catholic Church, the nonconformist churches and the Church of England. The tradition of a person is not just as a commodity or unit of administration but is a genuinely moral conception. It is the great paradox of our time that it is only with faith that we can fulfil the dream of citizenship.
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