the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, perhaps I may begin by craving your Lordships' indulgence if I have to leave before the end of the debate. I have an engagement early tomorrow morning in Birmingham which I cannot break. Brevity of speech among your Lordships will secure my attendance to the end. But if we go on at the present rate, I think that I shall have to leave before then. It makes me wonder whether on an...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, I know that I speak for your Lordships' House as a whole in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Shutt of Greetland, both on his 35th wedding anniversary and on his notable and most interesting maiden speech. The noble Lord comes to this House with a wealth of experience in local democracy, in local government and in public service in Yorkshire. He also brings the particular...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, does the Minister agree that if there is insufficient support from public funds for hospices, which do an absolutely marvellous job, pressure is likely to fall back on the general wards of ordinary hospitals where people are, in point of experience, likely to die with less dignity and less support than in hospices?
the Bishop of Birmingham: We have to recognise--
the Bishop of Birmingham: We have to recognise that this is an area in which people of good faith can properly and rightly take a different view. I do not subscribe to the view that the law has nothing to do with morals; the law can have the important function of stating common ground. Nevertheless, I do not believe that an attempt to enforce morals in this area is likely to be a proper or effective use of the...
the Bishop of Birmingham: It is a question of what is likely to be the more effective mode of protection. I do not believe that the criminal law is likely to be sensible or effective in this area.
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, coming from Birmingham--a city that the Minister knows well--I welcome the attention to inequality. Birmingham has suffered terribly from under-resourcing in its health provision, partly through its own fault, because people could never agree on what they wanted. It is not least due to the noble Lord's work before he became a Minister that something is being done about that at last...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, in the Churches we are aware of the brutal character of Saddam Hussein's regime towards his own people. Furthermore, one must remain aware of issues of safety for our pilots. One appreciates the dilemma in which Her Majesty's Government found themselves when faced with escalating attacks last month, which the noble Baroness described to us. Nevertheless, one hopes that the...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, from these Benches we salute a life that was devoted to the service of Christian truth and of humanity. The obituaries have recorded Lord Longford's double conversion--to the Labour Party and to Roman Catholicism. Of far deeper significance was his profound conversion to God and to the Lord Jesus Christ. Our concern today is not with his private life, though one may point to the...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, I shall refrain from the temptation to indulge in a lecture on theology or comparative religion, but I should like to comment on the Government's intention to act against incitement to religious hatred. No healthy religion has anything to fear from scrutiny and honest debate. That is not the problem. The problem arises when attacks on a particular religion are used as a cover for...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, is to be thanked for raising this important issue. There are, indeed, cases of false accusations of child abuse. They are distressing and they can be very damaging to families. We are therefore right to be concerned. Nevertheless, I am bound to say that we would do well to be even more concerned about our failure as a society to respond adequately to the...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, I am sure that we need to look not only abroad, at the rest of the world, but at what is going on within our own country and among our own citizens. In order to prepare myself for this debate, I had quite a long conversation this morning with my adviser in Birmingham for relations with people of other faiths. He has close contacts with the various Muslim groups and organisations in...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I should like to make it clear that I did not wish to suggest in any way that the Muslim communities in this country are homogeneous; they are various. But the fact is that the Pakistani community, particularly of Miripuri origin, is probably the largest and the one with which at the moment we are most concerned.
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, I should like to take the Bill in three bites. The first is what it proposes: revival of the Government's proposals for dealing with religious hatred. The second is what it seeks to abolish: the offence of blasphemy. The third is a variety of provisions relating to disorder in churches and churchyards. First of all, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, said, it is...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, I must begin by declaring my interests in two senses of the word. I am a non-executive director of the University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust. Also, two of my three children work for the National Health Service. Reading large parts of the Bill gives one a rather strange sense of time. Are we in the present or are we in the past? As regards the mandatory establishment of primary...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, in supporting this amendment, I know that I speak for my colleagues on this Bench, notably for my brother the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, who is sitting beside me. I thought that he would be talking today and not me. The arguments I wish to make have already been advanced and I shall not repeat them except to underline two points. First, the precedent for...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, I shall be brief. I have only three comments to make. First, there is a moral good in conducting our business effectively and also humanely. If the recommendations of the Leader's Group will help the House to do its work better, use its Members' time more effectively and help them to get to bed at a reasonable hour, they are to be welcomed. Secondly, I note that the subject is the...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, this is a topic of perennial importance. We must be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, for initiating the debate, although, with the noble and reverend Lord, Lord Habgood, I shall want to dispute some of his assertions both of fact and interpretation. There can be no absolute separation of Church and state. Let us take the example of France, where Church and state were...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, has already reminded us of the statement made by, I believe, the company secretary of the Football Association to the House of Commons committee earlier this week as regards the binding agreement made with Sport England in 1998 that there would be football at Wembley for the next 20 years. The Minister has already quoted one letter that Adam Crozier...
the Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, Solihull and Birmingham are behind the bid together.