That this House regrets the conduct, and toxicity, of debate in public life; of the divisions in society which result from that; and calls on Her Majesty’s Government to take steps to address such divisions.
My Lords, we all remember where we were when we heard the shocking, shattering news that our parliamentary colleague Jo Cox had been murdered in her constituency. We packed into this Chamber a few days later to pay tribute to her and pledge that politics would be different, less confrontational and more respectful and also, to use her words, focus on the fact that we know we have more in common that unites us than divides us.
Sadly, nearly three years on, little has changed. If anything, our politics is even more divisive and fractured than it was then. Indeed, the number of threats to MPs has rocketed. According to revised figures given yesterday by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, 151 offences against MPs were recorded in 2017, doubling to 342 in 2018, with 152 crimes against MPs and more than 600 incidents already recorded this year. The Local Government Association reports that councillors are also facing similar levels of harassment, threats and intimidation, so much so as to have an impact on people putting themselves forward for election.
I know of MPs who have been advised by the police that, for their own safety, they must not use any form of public transport. Others have had to scrap public surgeries—again, on police advice. Death threats are frequent. Rape threats against women politicians have become commonplace, with those making them now standing for public office. Homes and offices are attacked and constituency staff intimidated, so much so that some MPs are now limiting what they say on certain issues.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission, in its evidence to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said that,
“the tone of modern political discourse permeates through society and normalises abusive and occasionally aggressive language when discussing politics”.
Only six weeks ago, the noble Lord, Lord Evans, who unfortunately is not in his place today, warned that intimidation and abuse of MPs and other people in public life has become worse in the current political climate. He said that it was not just a Brexit-related issue, although that had made things particularly acute. Just before Easter, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, stood down as a Minister of State, saying that there was a need to restore our national unity and to rediscover the common ground that we share as a nation. The reason he is not in his place today is that his solution is to walk from Belfast to Brussels. However one might view whether that is the most productive way of making progress on these issues, there is no question that he is raising and highlighting valid issues. Two weeks ago, a poll commissioned by the Daily Mirror found that 82% of people—that is, more than four in five—feel that our country is divided and 76% think that the country is more divided than ever before. What is worse, 79% of the public have lost faith in British politics.
So why is our politics in this state? This is not simply about Brexit and the legacy of the vote on 23 June 2016, although it is true that the very nature of referendums means that complex issues are turned into a simplistic yes/no division, and that inevitably leads to a polarisation in society when the issues themselves are contentious. Moreover, referendums certainly undermine the principle of a deliberative democracy, where the public elect representatives to Parliament to exercise their judgment as to what is best for society as a whole.
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for initiating and introducing this important debate. But do we not all wish that there was no need to debate such a depressing topic? In the past few years, debate and public discourse have descended into fake news—or lies, as I prefer to call them—and it has become commonplace if you disagree with someone, particularly if they are in public life, to threaten them with abuse. The situation has become toxic. As the noble Lord said, with the advent of social media this behaviour is now far more widespread.
Just today, Danny Baker—a veteran BBC broadcaster, we are told—was, rightly, sacked for portraying the new royal baby as a chimpanzee. He published a photograph on his Twitter page yesterday of a couple with a chimpanzee leaving hospital, and then claimed it was all a big joke and a mistake. This week we heard that police are investigating comments by Carl Benjamin, a UKIP candidate in the European elections, speculating about whether he would rape the Labour MP Jess Phillips. That is just this week—and it is only Thursday. There are many examples of this kind of intolerable behaviour. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, has said that there is an “unprecedented” number of threats against MPs as misogyny, racism and divisive issues such as Brexit fuel online trolls.
It is apparent that the first victims of hate-filled bigots are women and those from minorities. The mainstreaming of extreme views and the politics of hate often mean rage against women, migrants, black people, Muslims, Jews and LGBT people. Racism, Islamophobia and misogyny are multiplied and spread by social media, often with impunity. This reflects in part a political discourse that has become coarser and more vicious.
So how did we get here? I know that many do not like Brexit, which has already been mentioned, but it has surely become a factor in the country becoming more divided and polarised. The advent of Trump and Farage, with their intolerance and sweeping statements about migrants, women and Muslims, blaming “the other” for all society’s ills, is another major factor. They seek to exploit people’s fears about the so-called elites while seeking to take power themselves.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on his Motion and the noble Baroness on her comments. Both speakers made many points with which I strongly agree.
Of course furious debate, passion and rage are nothing new in a democracy. In the Commons, the two sides are two swords’ lengths apart to stop them from striking each other. Over the years there has been protest, militancy and outrage. I understand that during the rage around the Great Reform Bill, at Trinity College, Cambridge—where the noble Lord went, as did my noble kinsman Lord Hunt of Chesterton—the fellows voted unanimously to reject the pro-reform Times from their combination room, disgusted by its violent and unprincipled language and doctrines.
Over the years we have had many more such examples. My early years were surrounded by the race riots; I was chair of the juvenile court at the time of the Brixton riots and was very involved with Scarman. This seemed appalling. I also spent many years as chairman of the juvenile court dealing with football hooligans. There were all sorts of uncontrolled groups, anger and rage, and we have seen that time and again. We have had real aggression from the Militant tendency, and other examples. Many of us have had colleagues murdered by bombs and mortars. My own daughter’s early years saw her always running around the corner so that, if there was a bomb under the car, my husband, the carer or I would be blown up and not her. That was the fear with which we all lived for many years: “Never go out without looking under your car”, and many other examples.
In a way we have to analyse what is new. What is new and different is that with mass education, effectively very low unemployment, opportunities and effectively a good health service—however much we argue about it—many of us thought that values such as enlightenment, civilised debate, balance, reason and consensus would spread and become ever more common. Many of us fear that they are in fact diminishing, and we are perplexed.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley. It is also a great pleasure to take part in a debate initiated so ably by my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey.
I think we all agree that there is a spirit of intolerance and aggression in our public life. Death threats have been made against public figures. Their property has been vandalised. Obnoxious language has been used to refer to what they are doing. Their past lives have been dug up and all sorts of silly things are talked about. They have been mocked, hounded and put in a situation where, inevitably, they make mistakes and once they do they become the subject of further acts of mocking. The result is a vicious cycle, which we have witnessed in the case of Brexit. Mistake after mistake has been made, not only by individuals, but by individuals in the context of the criticism and mocking that has gone on around them.
Why is this happening and what can we do about it? That is what this debate is about. I will concentrate on why, rather than what we can do about it. Obviously social media has played an important part but cannot by itself explain what has happened. Social media simply reflects a certain cultural consciousness, a certain way of thinking. It is the deeper way of thinking that we need to understand. This is what I want briefly to talk about: the way the deeper undercurrents of our public life are manifested on social media and, more importantly, through the offensive language in which our public discourse is conducted. We must remember that language is the cultural capital of a community. It is the repository of its ideas and aspirations. If that language gets corrupted, people’s thinking gets corrupted. It is very important to be a custodian and to recognise the integrity and importance of the language of public discourse.
Why has there been this decline and corruption of the language of public discourse? There are two kinds of politics at work here, which I will talk briefly about. One is the politics of identity and the other is the politics of marginality. I will start with the politics of identity. If somebody were to ask, “What is our biggest problem?” in the aftermath of the financial crisis, in any western society the response would immediately be inequality. A large number of people have found their income frozen and are unable to see any rise. People are suffering as a result of great inequality. These are the issues crying out for attention. Obviously, if you start raising those issues you upset vested interests who would rather not have attention concentrated on them. The result therefore is to bring up a substitute issue and to concentrate attention on that, which is the issue of identity.
3:00 pm
The Lord Bishop of Rochester
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for bringing forward this debate and for his characteristically robust, thoughtful, clear and evidenced introduction. I also thank other noble Lords for their contributions. I look forward to reading in the Official Report what the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, has just said, because there is a lot to reflect on.
Others have spoken from these Benches in recent months on this and related matters, referencing a number of scenarios which have given rise to language and expression that cause hurt and offence and do no credit to our public life. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds will, I understand, speak later in this debate about the power and importance of language in our public discourse. My contribution, which I hope will be brief, is to raise a question about one part of the context in which such harmful, toxic, destructive and even violent expression may come to flourish.
The phrase attributed to Aristotle about nature abhorring a vacuum has many applications. I suggest that one of the reasons for this flourishing of destructive and harmful conduct and debate may be that these things are rushing in to fill a vacuum. The Motion put down by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, asks the Government to address the consequent divisions, which is very difficult indeed. One approach—already suggested—might be an entirely understandable effort to control and restrict through legislation, regulation or other methods. In some instances—not least where lives are at risk—that is absolutely right, proper and necessary. However, my question to myself and to this House is whether part of our response might be to fill that vacuum with something rather more wholesome, so that what is not wholesome is less able to flourish in that space.
Might part of this vacuum be the absence of, or at least the difficulty in articulating, a coherent, inclusive, overarching and compelling national narrative which helps us to understand who and what we are, what our place is in the world and how we might shape our common life for now and for the future in ways that are both visionary and realistic? I am aware of all the dangers and difficulties around that, not least that it can end up as a rather esoteric exercise with lots of nice-sounding words, although words have power. What we do not want is anything overly nostalgic and rose-tinted in relation to some perceived national past or unrealistically utopian about a hopeful future. I am not against holding out and expressing hope—some might say that is what people like me are meant to be about—but if it is to have meaning and reality, hope must, if you will allow me a few words from my world, be like that biblical ladder which connects earth and heaven, both visionary and realistic. It is based in the everyday, but looks beyond it.
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.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Winston, particularly his thoughts about how things used to be in this Chamber. That was in what some would think of as the good old times, when the Whips’ Office would send something round when they wanted you to attend and vote which said, “Your Lordship’s attendance is most earnestly requested”. That is very different from the sort of threats about being there on the night for a three-line Whip, or else. The noble Lord also said that he would like people to speak without notes. I will do my best in my remaining five minutes.
This is the best of times and the worst of times for the debate tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey. Why is it the best of times? It is because he has put a stake in the ground, so we have to do some serious stuff in thinking about turning back the rising tide of vitriol and toxicity that surrounds debate. It is the worst of times because, for the next 14 days, we are going to get all that vitriol and toxicity in the run-up to the elections on 23 May. May we and people in those elections be protected from violent threats and excoriation, and from physical violence and death, which we have seen in the past. I would never have thought 20 years ago that we would be thinking in that kind of way. When it is all over and the results have come out, then it will be the best of times again for us to continue down the road that the noble Lord has set for us today.
It is interesting to reflect, since the elections on the 23rd are about Europe, that very hard words were used in the run-up to the Second World War about Europe and our attitudes to it. There were people accused of being traitors or collaborators. The country and the nation were split very much between 1938 and 1940, but then it really was serious. It was not about changes in trading relationships and the free movement of people, or changes in statutory provisions and the way in which justice is run between different countries in Europe. It was actually about matters of life and death. One of the first things that we need to do is to try to get people to reflect, as I think the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester was saying, about whether matters are serious or not. Our next step should be to try to promote more of a discussion in this country that might reflect a slowing down of the frenetic pace that will be there for the next two weeks. It would try to reclaim the Twittersphere and, following the slow food movement, perhaps there would be a slow debate movement.
3:18 pm
Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome this debate about how government and Parliament can improve public debate on the critical issues affecting public organisations, communities and specialist groups, such as immigration, relations between religious groups, social and economic interests and private organisations working in the public sphere. We need to know what has caused the great deterioration of interrelations involving members of these groups, especially over the past three years, although the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, was quite right in her remarks about many of the big problems occurring 30 or 40 years ago.
It may be because the UK’s controversial national vote, with its huge numbers voting, involved a large proportion of the whole community, on one side and the other, in debate about the European Union. There may be long-term differences between societal and community groups, and the problems are growing to significant levels—for example, leading to disturbances in local areas and involving thousands of people in city centres. Many of these involve tensions between religious groups. At some of these events, political parties and groups have not always played their traditional role of calming social conflict and, in fact, have sometimes stirred it up. Even groups within the Labour Party have exacerbated, rather than calmed, social and religious conflicts, as mentioned by other colleagues.
An equally important role for Parliament and government is to improve understanding about the processes of public debate and involve schoolchildren, students and political societies. We may hear later about this from the noble Baroness. It is also important to hear how the public debate influences public decisions about crime or funding for schools, for example. It is not just abstract debate; it leads to decisions that affect lives.
At the international level, the United Nations Association has been influential in the UK and other countries. My grandfather was secretary of the United Nations Association in the 1930s, so we used to hear a lot about this. The number of young people involved in similar organisations is perhaps less now than in the past. In the 1930s, as we have already heard and may hear more about, millions were involved. Now, we need to think of how we can expand the involvement of pupils and students. We have seen that this year, most recently with the bold invasion into businesses’ and politicians’ debates by the Swedish pupil campaigning here in London and elsewhere. It is interesting that the individual campaigning was working with non-governmental organisations and public media, so we perhaps begin to see a new way in which different communities can influence decisions.
20 of 40 shown
There is no doubt that polarisation can lead to more and more extreme viewpoints being expressed and a focus, increasingly personalised, on those who might take a contradictory view. That was the case during the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014, when there were outbreaks of indyref violence at football matches and elsewhere, and vicious online intimidation. The EU referendum two years later saw a similar pattern of increasingly bitter debate and more and more personalised attacks, and, just a few days before the referendum, the dreadful murder of Jo Cox. Interestingly, the referendum on the alternative vote did not have the same effect, perhaps because so few people had strong views on the subject or even cared either way.
However, the process of polarisation has continued and, indeed, deepened and intensified in the last three years, not just about Brexit but about all sorts of other matters. One has only to think, for example, about the discussion on trans rights and how vitriolic that has become. This is not just a British phenomenon. A few days ago, the President of Germany gave an impassioned speech about the impact of political debates on social media that, he said, so often tend to be toxic.
Is this a consequence of the advent of social media? That, too, is simplistic. I have no doubt that similar concerns were expressed about the advent of the printing press and the scurrilous contributions to political debate permitted by that dangerous invention, which enabled all those views to be more widely disseminated. However, social media has taken it to a new level. Short-form communications necessarily lead to simplification. Competing to be heard requires more extreme and eye-catching formulations. It is a medium that is, above all, automatically delivered into our hands, and the ability to be anonymous absolves the poster of responsibility.
The echo-chamber effect means that we will tend to hear only the views of those with whom we agree and contrary views will be less likely to reach us. This is made worse by the presence of fake news. Research shows that the more eye-catching and the more extreme the lie, the more likely it is to be shared. Clickbait is there to drive business to a site, and people are more likely to click the more dramatic the message.
The algorithms of the internet sites serve up to us more of the same and lead us into further and often harder-line variants. Guillaume Chaslot, a former programmer for YouTube designing its algorithms, has said that the site in practice encourages the most extreme and divisive content because that is what drives the most traffic. According to him, conspiracy theory content was a particularly effective way to increase “watch time”, so the algorithms recommend other conspiracy videos billions of times over.
Then you have the information warfare promoted by some state actors. The premise is simple: the more you doubt, the less you trust. If you can undermine faith in democratic states and their structures, that is a gain for such Governments. If you are Russia, a Ukraine that becomes part of NATO is a threat. So too is a stronger EU. To weaken NATO, to weaken the EU and to undermine the legitimacy of democracy becomes an objective. This is set out in the 2010 military doctrine of the Russian Federation, where the aim is,
“to achieve political objectives without the utilisation of military force”.
by seeking to plant seeds of doubt and distrust, to confuse, distract, polarise and demoralise. But what the Russians, and no doubt other states, do and sponsor does not absolve any of us from a responsibility, first, to be aware of that background and, secondly, to confront and address what is happening.
A lie can be halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on—a comment variously attributed to Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift or even Winston Churchill. Who said it first does not really matter. The central message is clear: lies must be confronted early, quickly and authoritatively. So too must extremism. This applies whether it is on the internet, on conventional media or on the streets. So if we are concerned about the increasing toxicity of our public discourse, we must all take responsibility both for not propagating it and for not normalising it—for not condoning it and for combating it wherever it occurs.
A failure to do so does not bode well for the health of our democracy. Certainly, a weakened centre and an increasingly polarised politics give legitimacy to more extreme views. In the context of extremism becoming violent extremism, violent extremists often have a narrative of victimhood which they use to persuade others to follow them. Such a narrative provides a simple, ready-made alternative to complex problems. It provides a would-be extremist thug, as it were, with an alternative to a life of perceived discrimination and a lack of self-worth—offering them instead an opportunity, by becoming a violent and destructive extremist, to star as the hero in their own favourite movie.
Different ends of the extremist spectrum have a symbiotic relationship with each other. If there is an incidence of violence against one group, that reinforces the group’s narrative of victimhood. It may reinforce its message to more moderate elements who share some of the same outlook. The actions of one incite the other, which then incites the first. This is exacerbated if those in public life—politicians and commentators especially—fail to confront and answer extremist arguments. Indeed, to ignore is to condone. Worse still is to echo and pander to such views.
As Policy Exchange pointed out at the end of last year, language that brands opponents as “traitors”, “Nazis” or “enemies of the people”, or ascribes madness or stupidity to those with alternative views, is hardly helpful. I suspect that, if we were all to search our consciences, we could think of occasions when perhaps we have called those we have disagreed with stupid or even mentally ill. That is something we should all stop because it does not help.
A failure to talk meaningfully about, for example, the impact of immigration on our economy and society is one step away from legitimising the stirring up of hatred against migrants and asylum seekers. Ignoring a problem allows extremists to own it. Demonising one minority leads to the isolation and exclusion of other minorities—a slippery path that has led elsewhere to pogroms and genocide. Let us remember how quickly norms broke down in Kosovo and Rwanda. True political leadership is not about following the basest instincts of those whose support you seek. Instead, it should be about educating, persuading and inspiring. It is about confronting intolerance and calling out the bigots. It is about answering the extremists and contesting their views.
A first step in this country is for our political parties to put their own houses in order. It is shameful that the Labour Party is likely to be the subject of a formal investigation by the EHRC into its institutional racism. It is long overdue for us as a party to end the denial and prevarication so as to eliminate the stench of anti-Semitism emanating from some in senior positions within our ranks. Similarly, the Conservatives must take effective action against those in their ranks who are bigoted against Muslims. Only then can either party claim the moral authority to address the wider problems in society.
The Government’s role must be to combat extremism both by confronting its expression and by addressing the underlying issues that lead to the alienation breeding extremism in the first place. The Government have acknowledged that they have a role—I welcome that—in respect of what is happening on social media. The White Paper on online harms is a useful step in requiring online providers to take some responsibility for what takes place on their platforms. Imposing a duty of care on them will help, but let us not delude ourselves: it is not sufficient. And where is the counterpart for the more traditional media? Should they too not have a duty of care to their readers and viewers? Surely they should have a responsibility not to legitimise or normalise extremism, prejudice or hatred. How can they be incentivised to move away from a sensationalism that mirrors the prejudices of their readers? Where is the strategy to combat fake news, intimidation and misinformation? The Swedish Government have produced a handbook on countering what they call “information influence activities”, which is, in essence, a toolkit for public agencies. Where is the UK equivalent? How are we equipping our citizens and, above all, educating our young people to recognise fake news and reject extremist ideology?
Here, the Government have set up the Commission for Countering Extremism which, despite some interesting pieces of work, is still largely silent. Where is the work on the school curriculum to get children to seek out real facts and real news? What are we doing to equip our young people with critical thinking skills to identify manipulative language and distorted facts, and give them the courage to question everything and everyone? We can no longer simply tut about the toxicity that is now rife in our public debate and discourse. We have to accept that toxicity is corrosive, and not only to the quality of that debate and to the achievement of rational policy; it also undermines the very foundations of our democracy.
This is a responsibility not just for the Government, political parties or media companies but for all of us in public life. It requires an understanding of why so many feel alienated from our current politics, and the addressing of the underlying causes that feed and breed that alienation. Let us not delude ourselves: democracy is a fragile flower. Our institutions may too easily turn out to have foundations based on sand, and the so-called civilised values on which we pride ourselves may turn out to be as transitory as a summer’s day. Ultimately, we all have a responsibility to defend the core values that have shaped our country over the last 75 years. Failure to do so will see the very fabric of our democracy wither and decay. It is a challenge we must not shirk. I beg to move.
When Lord Nolan devised his seven principles, I cannot imagine that he considered that someone selected for an election in this country by a registered political party would publicly behave in the way that we have seen this week. Those principles—selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership—should apply also to those seeking public office, those selected as candidates. I ask the Minister what action will be taken to ensure that those seeking public office cannot threaten violent and criminal behaviour. This should come with immediate disqualification.
Men threaten rape for one reason: to intimidate and silence women. I have had Muslim women tell me that they are frightened when they go out. One woman said to me that she removed her headscarf to protect her children when she goes out with them. We know that attacks on Muslim communities have spiked. What steps are being taken to address this issue? Many of us may have experienced nasty threats; I personally have. I do not react particularly well to threats and never have, but they are nevertheless intimidating and unsettling, particularly when they are to your family. Our politics has changed. So too must our response. We must be firm, and we must not be naive about the effect that this is having on our public life and our democracy.
Last year the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life warned that a wave of intimidation and abuse directed at parliamentary candidates had taken British politics to a “tipping point” and risked driving politicians out of public life in future, following the enormous amount of racist abuse suffered by Diane Abbott. That was last year and the situation has now escalated. How many of us here have spent many years, as I and others have done, encouraging women and underrepresented BAME groups to come forward and seek public office? How can we do that now, when people feel so unsafe that it is preventing people from those underrepresented groups coming forward?
Those who seek to hide behind freedom of speech must understand that free speech is not an unqualified right. If free speech intimidates, threatens or silences others, their rights have been denied altogether. Free speech cannot and is not to tolerate racist, misogynistic threats, and certainly not threats of violence and criminality.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris, touched on the media and I want to touch on that issue too because I feel quite strongly about it. The BBC and other media must take more responsibility and show leadership on this. They frequently provide a public platform for these abusive, toxic views, often in the name of balance or, as they say, “populism”. Last week I heard on the “Today” programme—I could have wept—the leader of UKIP saying that Muslims in this country are seeking to take over and change the legal system because they want sharia law. That was not challenged; it was just left hanging there as if it were a fact.
We must show leadership and commitment to stop tolerating this appalling slide into a society where women and minorities no longer feel safe. We hear talk about “British values” but common ground, decency and kindness are the sorts of values that I think we must fight for, and to promote them we must all work together to combat extremism.
I request to the Minister that the recent speech by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, which he made at the Temple Church on the debate around Brexit, be placed in the Library. In it, without declaring his own position, he describes the way in which the argument is emotional, irrational and not evidence-based. There is no attempt to achieve consensus or reach a middle ground. This is an extraordinary way for a grown-up democracy to resolve issues, and we have to analyse why that is.
Perhaps the most eminent judge in this country of recent times, Lord Bingham, Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice and senior Law Lord, said:
“In a world divided by differences of nationality, race, colour, religion and wealth”,
the rule of law,
“is one of the greatest unifying factors, perhaps the greatest, the nearest we are likely to approach to a universal secular religion”.
In his book The Rule of Law in 2010, he says:
“In a modern democracy where the ultimate decisions rest with the people, it is the more important that they should be fully informed and empowered to choose between conflicting opinions and alternative courses of action. The media, of course, have a crucial role to play … ‘The proper functioning of a modern participatory democracy requires that the media be free, active, professional and inquiring’”.
What has happened? Many of us had thought that the more information the better. When I was Culture Secretary, so long as we had diversity of ownership and plurality of voice we all thought that we were on the forward march. It is of course the development of social media, which had initially felt so exciting and such an opportunity to connect, integrate and communicate with constituents and to be responsive. We have seen how, with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, it has vulgarised society. It is not accountable. In the press you can ultimately have some redress from inaccurate reporting, but these are people without bounds who are not accessible. I am delighted that the Culture Secretary and the Home Secretary are bringing online harms measures for us to consider to give social media operators a duty of care. It will be a lot more complex than people think.
The way the world operates like an echo chamber reinforcing people’s views has been mentioned. The great thing about parliamentary meetings such as those my noble friend Lord Baker and I used to go to on many occasions in Surrey was that people would come to them. You could argue and debate. You knew that in the end most decisions would be 6:4, 7:3, or probably 5.5:4.5. Social media is about assertion and emotion, with no evidence base and no balance. It has become a sort of online game, like a television show. It is almost part of entertainment. It is totally without responsibility.
I echo the points about becoming more siloed. Gillian Tett’s book about the silo effect in modern society is all too true. Politicians do not know academics. This, again, is a sinister feature. I also take to heart David Goodhart’s point about anywhere or somewhere and the emotion around Brexit if you were left behind and had not had the proceeds of globalisation. It is wonderful that 600 million have come out of poverty in China but, if you are in Hull, where I have been chancellor of its university for 11 years, it is not how it feels. You feel out of London, out of the central area, alienated without power and effect.
I agree with those who have said that women are often the butt of this. Women are either deified or vilified. Yesterday Caroline Slocock gave a wonderful address to the Speaker’s Art Fund reception about the way Mrs Thatcher was perceived, and so also Julia Gillard or maybe Hillary Clinton.
What is the answer? It is to follow through the measures to protect politicians and to do everything we can to create a more united society, in exactly the words the Prime Minister used when she came to Downing Street. I am sure she more than anybody hopes that this Schleswig-Holstein question of Brexit will be resolved— although in that case one went mad, one died and one forgot the answer. I hope we can find the answer. I believe that we are a much more united nation than is often argued. We have to cope with social media and resolve this dilemma, but we should be proud of ourselves as a civilised, liberal and enlightened nation.
National identity or nationalism is the battleground, the site on which our differences are played out. National identity is ultimately about who we are, where we belong and what our place in this world is. Ultimately, with those questions Europe becomes extremely important—the Europe that we joined reluctantly and that we have been a part of all these years, yet from which we want to withdraw. People have a strong feeling that the very soul and identity of their country, of who they are, is at stake.
It is in that context that the debate taking place in our country has to be seen. On the one hand, there are people who are the custodians of the national soul, the national identity, and on the other there are those who disagree. They are dismissed as traitors or as people who do not care for the well-being of the country. In other words, it is a process of demonisation. The other is always a demon: “I am right. I bring light, the other person brings darkness. I bring life, he brings death”. I think my noble friend Lord Harris called this kind of demonisation “polarisation”. I would go even further, because it is not just a polar opposite; it is the demonisation of the other. Once you demonise the other, the only way you can live with him is to eliminate him. It is either you or him. You cannot both inhabit a common earth. This is the politics of identity.
The other important issue I want to talk about is the politics of marginality. Our public life is dominated, so the analysis goes, by a metropolitan elite, which is basically liberal, cosmopolitan, has no national sentiments of any kind and is elitist and technocratic. This elite has been governing our country for the past 50-odd years and has got us into this mess. Therefore, this elite has to be fought by the “real people”.
The “real people” is quite an important expression. They are the people whose voice cannot be represented by the elite. They are the people who speak in their own language and whose aspirations are not articulated by the elite. Therefore, a kind of war is postulated at the very heart of our society between the “People” and the “Elite”. The war between the elite and the people can be fought at many different levels in different countries in different ways, but in western democracies it is fought in one way: this war obviously has to be fought to the end, but we, the people, as a majority, should rule in a democracy, and the elite should have no commanding say at all. The argument is that in this war between the people and the elite, the people are the legitimate winners because they are the supreme majority in a democracy. Therefore, once you begin to speak in the name of the people, you say that the people feel alienated and unrepresented and hence that the whole representative framework which brings the elite to power should be dismantled.
Therefore, I suggest that these two kinds of politics—the politics of identity, which brings self-righteousness, and the politics of marginality, which brings anger and passion—are at work in contemporary British culture. Unless we identify how they manifest themselves and learn to cope with them or get rid of them, we will continue to have this problem, again and again.
Could we find some way to shape a national conversation which might have some chance of offering us the unifying and enriching narrative which I suggest we currently lack? This is in large part about identity and connects with some of what the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, has just said on that theme. Identity is complex and difficult for each of us, let alone for nations or, in our case, a nation of nations. I am resident in England, was born in Germany, have Irish and Scots heritage and various other bits and pieces make up who I am. What is the story which helps me to know who I am? It needs to encompass and value all my various identities, and the same needs to be true of our national story. It must therefore be a story which affirms the richness of our diversity, be that historical, religious, ethnic, economic, educational, cultural, geographical or one of many other dimensions. It must be a story that helps us to recognise and express the value we see in one another and can articulate that which is shared in our common life.
Parts of our national being, including, importantly, the constituent nations of our United Kingdom and some of our faith communities, already have coherent and compelling stories that shape their understanding and affirm their identity. My question is more around the narrative that applies to the whole of this United Kingdom, which, as others have indicated, is sadly not as sure of its unity and identity as we might wish. The story needs to enable us to have a proper pride in who we are and what we stand for and give us the language and desire to affirm that positively and confidently, not least in the face of those who would attack it. I do not underestimate the difficulty of this when, as a nation or nations, we are so clearly not of common mind or intention on so many things. However, I fear for our future if we do not make some attempt to do something of this kind. I wonder whether there could be some opportunity for your Lordships’ House, given its peculiar nature—peculiar in the proper sense—to be instrumental in suggesting and shaping such a conversation. Perhaps this debate is part of 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.
I propose to your Lordships that we should all think very hard about trying to get together a group of sensible people, who would be widely recognised as that but also as not being politicians. Broadly speaking, we politicians are thought to be the cause of the problem in the first place. I mean a bunch of people who might be chaired by some acceptable celeb—perhaps someone from the entertainment world who is instantly recognised but perhaps someone from the medical world, from environmental protection or whatever. She or he should be readily recognised not as being a politician in any way but as a free-thinking person who, with a group of other free-thinking people, would say “Enough’s enough, so let’s spend time talking in some place”. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester suggested your Lordships’ Chamber but perhaps it should be in a less partisan place than the Palace of Westminster. The group should talk for a few hours—perhaps half a day—and say, “It’s got to stop, and this is why”. They would need the advice of people who think spiritually such as the humanist associations, who have valuable insights into all this, and those in minority communities, such as the Muslims or the Jews. The Jews rightly feel threatened and afeared, just as they felt in 1939 when those vicious arguments were used.
We would certainly need someone such as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury to be there. Doubtless, the right reverend Prelates from Rochester and Leeds would have some other brother or sister bishop whom they would like to see there on the day. I will probably get into terrible trouble in the confessional, as I have not consulted him, but I would also like to propose and volunteer the services of his eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, firmly rooted as he is in Merseyside and Liverpool. Your Lordships might think, “That isn’t the right cast”; there are people such as the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, who understand about casting and perhaps they would have a better cast of people to do it. However, a bunch of such people on a stage, talking slowly, rationally and reasonably—following the lead we have had from the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey—might well begin to turn the tide. We might just see an ebbing of the tide of the vitriol and toxicity that we have seen so much of in the last decade.
We have also seen conflict within social organisations, including universities and schools, which should be centres for reasoned debate and provide welfare and comfort to affected students. Sometimes, the TV, media and internet have amplified conflicts between social groups and warring parties, particularly those affected by people coming from abroad. That has led to groups in the UK being far from welcoming, but hostile to these incoming groups, as we heard earlier. Government could do more to monitor and assist UK and international social and political groups that are sensitive to adverse debate and criticism. There is a new role for government and the organisations it sponsors for this purpose.
Other organisations have played a different role in improving and calming society. In advanced countries, the debates of industrial, governmental and commercial organisations have steadily improved management methods. Again, I refer to the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, whose father ran the Industrial Society when I was head of the Met Office. We had an extraordinary visit from Garnett in the 1990s, discussing how dealing with complex issues in a business or governmental organisation can be effective. It is noticeable how little conflict there is within many of these large business and governmental organisations, so perhaps we should learn more about them. They have had to deal with difficult organisational problems, and I believe we should think about that.
I am an engineer, a former chief executive and member of the Hazards Forum. Another aspect of this is that staff can be frustrated if there is no internal debate about critical issues and decisions. At present, several hugely important technical debates are ongoing around the world. Examples include the recent situation with Boeing—I worked with Airbus and can see this issue is of great importance—people dealing with the combustible behaviour of tall blocks of flats, and the factory workers of Bangladesh. These critical social issues are being debated.
Given the general experience of Members of Parliament and of committees of both Houses, we should be well placed to investigate different organisations dealing with controversial issues, general and technical, in important debates. I add the caveat that physical, natural and medical scientists and engineers make an important contribution to the role of Parliament, and we should hear more about that.