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Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Response to comments

Phil. Unintended consequences are a problem when legislating. The trouble is you only know about them after the event!

Pre legislative scrutiny and evidence taking have improved matters but you will never eliminate it all together. The cheating example you give is an interesting one but not one I have any knowledge about.

Although I try to be objective in many of the things I do and say I certainly don't claim to succeed in that noble aim! The programme we are thinking of will probably need other Political party's or pressure groups to be involved. I don't think a broadcaster would run it without ensuring a degree of balance.

Is Peter Todd (on ASBO's) the same one I knew as a probation officer so many years ago?  I do think you are in danger of getting this seriously wrong. Many of the examples you give are down to individual courts and not necessarily wrong. I don't think we should lay done strict rules to ensure nationally identical ASBO's as though they were equivalent to prison sentences.

One of the mistakes we have made in the past is to take the initiative away from local magistrates. I also think you underestimate just how much ASBO's have improved life for many people. Although probation officers did much good work in my time (and I'm sure they still do) I do think we underestimated the way a court can act in effect as a 'good' parent. Many of the problems off disorder come from poor parenting and Sure Start cannot fill all the gaps.

Are you really saying you want to get rid of ASBO's? If so what do you say to those people who have to suffer the misery anti social behaviour can bring to their lives? We had a problem in my street with some youngsters throwing bricks through the window of a single mother and walking on car roofs to mention but two events.

There probably was enough evidence to convict but when I went round to the parents and confronted the boys one admitted it. More importantly the anti social behaviour stopped simply on the threat of an ASBO. Would you rather I had insisted on a court case and given two teenagers a Criminal conviction? I am pretty sure they will both grow out of this type of behaviour but I don't see why the neighbourhood should suffer while they do the growing!

There is a danger here that probation officers fall into the trap of telling people in these areas that they must just tolerate the behaviour. That is not good enough.

Response to comments

There seems to be an assumption by Dan and Andrew Baker that I am not a Party politician. I am and I want the Labour Government to succeed. I don't know whether they want that or not but I am not in the business of attacking my own side. Criticism, advice, warnings and angry outbursts from time to time are fine but I am Labour supporter and I am confident that we have done a lot of good for the people we represent as well as the country as a whole.

Others will disagree!

On Sir Christopher Meyer you will note that I said the current spat was not that important. Although I can well understand why other diplomats are appalled because they know it means politicians will not have the same level of confidence in the service.

The point I was making is that Sir Christopher doesn't defend the public in his role with the PCC. See the case of the Evening Standard on the side bar.

I am not sure if Andrew Baker was asking for a full enquiry on the Iraq war. You might like to know that I asked for just such an enquiry in 2003. I think it would have helped and also enable us to have spelt out not only the problem of an ineffectual UN cease fire but also the crucial importance of having a well thought out post conflict plan. That was and remains the main failing - not intervention itself.

Wait for the next Rwanda and all the hand wringing because we don't intervene. Or remember Bosnia when we should have intervened effectively and didn't. That is when many Muslims decided the West would never intervene to save them and some formed the militant groups that now practice jihad. The intervention in Kosovo came too late to prevent these developments.

Monday, November 28, 2005

Sir Christopher Meyer and the PCC

It is amazing how quickly the story about Sir Christopher has disappeared from the media.

Had this been a politician it would still be running as the newspapers looked for a scalp. As he is one of their own he will be protected.

I think he ought to go but mainly because he has used his position to protect the big newspaper groups rather then insist on higher standards for readers. The latest spat is less important then his failure to be an effective voice for the news reading public.

Sunday, November 27, 2005

House of Lords

There is an endearing eccentricity to the Lords at times.

One Peer put it to a Minister that a member of the public could smuggle in a bomb disguised as a pen. "True". Said the Minister "but it would only be a small bomb"! Consider what the media would have done with that if it had been said in the Commons!

Another member of the Lords told me that there was only one truly life sentence in Britain and that was in the House of Lords!

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Hammersmith has a twin!

Hammersmith has a twin in Houston, Texas. Looks a nice place to me!

http://www.our-hammersmith.blogspot.com

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

House of Lords terrorism debate 21.11.05

I have attached my contribution to this debate and the link - which I hope works better then my last attempt - to the rest of the debate.

Lord Soley: My Lords, it may be something of an understatement to describe the previous speech as intriguing, but I shall leave it to the Minister as I do not have an answer to those questions. For many years I have not been alone in struggling with the difficult question of how to confront and defeat terrorism, while at the same time defend our civil liberties and protect the rights of minorities who get caught in the net and become easy recruits for terrorism, wherever it may be. I am not alone in having been through that, and all of us from time to time have adjusted our positions. An important message to give to people outside is that the Bill is not internment, which locked up thousands of people without a release date being set, judicial input, or the police or security services having to record the interviews either by audio or visual means. Exactly the same applies to the Prevention of Terrorism Act as it was in the 1980s and early 1990s. Then, up to 6,000 people a year were being detained for seven days without access even to a solicitor, never mind a judge, and were being held without access to the audio or visual tapes that are now kept by the police. Incidentally, that is where some of the wrongful convictions to which the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, referred came from. Indeed, one of them was of a person known to me in the Guildford case when I was a probation officer. She was held under that provision and released. The fascinating thing about her was that she was held for seven days without access to a solicitor. At the beginning of those seven days, she was denying that she had committed the offence; at the end, she was admitting it. That is not because she was brutally treated; as she would concede and has said since, she was a confused and mixed-up young girl on drugs and was therefore easily caught in that sort of net. 21 Nov 2005 : Column 1427 The other thing that it is important to understand is that we began to get more sophisticated in our handling of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, in particular, but also internment. I was never in my career the chairman of the 1922 Committee, so I cannot be too sure of my facts here, but I suspect that both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, who will speak next and, possibly, the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, knew that the numbers that we were pulling in under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and internment were providing easy recruits for the paramilitaries. At its height, the use of exclusion orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act totalled about 250 people a year excluded from one part of the United Kingdom to another. In my view, later supported by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, in his report on the Prevention of Terrorism Act, that constituted internal exile—something that we had not had since the days of Henry VIII. So we must watch our language: things have changed dramatically for the better. That is why many of us have been able to consider things differently now. I am sad to have to say this, but I say to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that he is very unwise to have adduced the position of the Liberal Party, because throughout the 1980s, when the party wanted to position itself to the Right of the Labour Party politically, it supported both those Acts without any of the safeguards that we now have. Now that, for what I regard as rather daft political reasons, the party wants to position itself to the Left of us, they are opposed to the Bill. That is a classic case of what people expect in this country: the Tory Party to drive on the Right, the Labour Party to drive on the Left and the Liberals again saying that it is entirely an optional matter which side of the road to drive on, it depends on the weather. That is not a very sensible stance. As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for whose comments I shall wait with some interest, said, and in my view thanks to the final few years of the Conservative Government under John Major and to the present Government, Britain now has more protection for defendants than most other countries. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, that the United States is about the worst model that we can follow. At present, the United States tries to catch people outside its jurisdiction and hold them out there. That is unacceptable. Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way? Lord Soley: My Lords, I am not sure whether I get injury time here, but I shall give way nevertheless. Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, it is a very quick point. Does the noble Lord agree that I was talking specifically about dissemination of 21 Nov 2005 : Column 1428 publications and universities? I agree with every word that he said about how the United States treats people outside its country. Lord Soley: My Lords, I understand that, but some of the people whom it is trying to hold outside are people whom it thinks are disseminating information, so the matter is not as clear-cut as it seems. However, I understand and accept the point that the noble Baroness makes. For rather different reasons than have been given by others in this debate, I agree that the issue of glorification is difficult. I think that most of us know the intense feeling about some statements made by some people in one particular mosque in north London. That provokes people massively, to the extent that two mosques in my constituency when I was still a Member of the Commons also complained bitterly about what was being said in that mosque and wanted action taken against it, even before the terrorist attacks. The danger in addressing that is the Government have drawn up this glorification provision, which will not be used very much. As I think that my noble friend Lady Scotland will tell us when she replies, prosecution depends on either the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Attorney-General or both deciding to go ahead. So the chance of a librarian being charged under that is very slight. The danger is that we will not use the provision and people will still feel that things are being said outside that are unacceptable and unforgivable. Another part of me feels that I would rather have those people out in the open where I can see them. I rather suspect that the security services might. As the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, said, they are often just loud mouths, but those who go to listen to them may be a bit more involved, so it can be useful to know them. I also want to address the issue of 28 days briefly but in a wider context because I suspect that we now have the worst of all worlds—again, I shall listen to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, with interest. It is probably true to say that 28 days is not enough if we are to go down that road. In seven days, a person will often have confessed. If they have not confessed in seven to 10 days, they are unlikely to. The reason for a longer period is not so much about questioning as about searching computer databases and, above all, obtaining information from overseas. I end with this final suggestion to the Government. I do not think that we can solve the problem in one fell swoop, we must keep working at it. I think that the time has come to recognise that what we started with control orders in this country and now with the Bill is to take a significant step down the road used in several European countries of holding people while investigating under the investigating magistrate system. In the Bill and with control orders, we put a judge in charge—which is absolutely right—who is then to question people on a weekly basis to ask how the process is going and whether we still need to hold a person. He can hear the person in their own defence. That is not dissimilar to what is done in continental Europe. I do not recommend that we go down the 21 Nov 2005 : Column 1429 French road, where they hold people for up to four years. That is appalling. But there may be a way forward here in the longer term—not in the Bill, I accept—by recognising that we have adopted part of the continental system for this narrow area of terrorism and adapted it to our needs. I am not sure that, in the long run, it would not be better if we tried to reach a balance and recognise that we are doing that and that we do so only for terrorism and no other offence. I do not suggest the importation of continental law into Britain, but the case for doing that for terrorism is very strong. Sadly, we will not be able to leave these debates behind us for some years yet, I suspect, but it is important that we never give up focusing on the difficult balance between the three aspects of civil liberties, the rights of minorities and the need to defeat terrorism. If we get those right, I suggest that we start to consider in a more strategic, long-term way bringing an aspect of continental law into our law in a way that is unique to this country—and we are quite good at that—to get over some of the hurdles that we have all faced in the past. http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld199697/ldhansrd/pdvn/lds05/text/51121-04.htm#51121-04_head2

TV/Radio programme on policy making

Estelle Morris (now in the House of Lords) and I have been talking about a series of programmes about policy making in government. What I had in mind when I put it to her was a programme(s) looking at how and why certain policies came about. 

ASBO's and School league tables would be useful examples. We could show the origin of these policies and  how the various interest groups, the Labour Party and other political party's influenced and changed them while they were going through the legislative process.

We are both aware that issues like this are of considerable interest to the general public even those who are turned off politics. I am not sure if we can make it work for a programme other then Radio Four or similar outlet and I have been asking for advice on this from broadcasters.

Any views on this? Would it be something that would interest you?

Monday, November 21, 2005

Responses. Public Services

I am not clear about future Tory policy on public services and I think we will have to wait and see what the new leader has to say but I can't believe it won't put the emphasis on private provision.

Conservative history suggests that the better off get subsidy to use private services and that squeezes the public sector. It also means less for the lower income groups.

I have responded before to the question of Faith schools. I am not a fan of Faith schools but people like them and want them and I think they are so established that no government is likely to change that policy.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Responses. Civil Aviation

Nick and Sam are right. The purpose of the analogy was to remind people that we assumed the docks were safe while ignoring the new investment being made by competitors. I didn't want to compare and contrast sea traffic with air or rail traffic.

Having said that it is very important that Heathrow is not currently linked into the future high speed rail network and it needs to be. It's another example of how the continental airports are pulling ahead.

People in West London and the Heathrow region will be hit very hard if the airport was to decline and it would be devastating if it was to close. There are 70,000 people employed on the airport and another 100,000 indirectly dependent on it.

Think about it!

Responses. Middle East

Some very interesting contributions here. Clearly some of you were right on the Phosphorous weapons and I understand it might have been a blogger who made the breakthrough on the intelligence. I was wrong when I expressed doubts about the evidence.

I think I said in my original Iraq document (see sidebar) that we were in danger of winning the war but losing the peace and that is tragically true now. John Reid has reaffirmed that the British haven't used these weapons. Although they are not banned in all circumstances that is a little academic and their use gives a big propaganda boost to those who want to keep the insurgency going.

On the Middle East comments generally, I really do think the discussion on this site about who is most to 'blame' shows the sheer frustration about the complexity of the problem and the difficulty of getting a peace process moving.

Why can't we focus on what should happen next rather then what happened in the past? It's like Northern Ireland. Everyone in Northern Ireland knew what had happened 400 years ago. No one knew what to do next which is why some form of external intervention is almost inevitable in these situations.

I think it is more productive to talk about how we, as outsiders, can help the two sides to move out of their entrenched positions. That is one of the reasons I formed the Arab-Jewish Forum because I knew my contribution in the region itself was inevitably going to be very close to zilch.

There are signs of movement and I was pleased that Condoleezza Rice was able to help negotiate movement on the border crossings. It is sometimes sadly true that there is a spate of increased violence before people are ready to move into a negotiating mode. However I am not too optimistic at present.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Heathrow and the London Docks

I have been asked about the closure of the London docks and the analogy with Heathrow. No analogy is exact but this historical link gives an indication of why I am concerned for the future of Heathrow.

In the 1960's the London docks were hitting record trade levels. By 1981 they had closed. The development of other docks had taken their place. Just as the continental airports are developing and taking Heathrow's place. (The following is taken from Portcities web site).

"During the 1920s and 1930s the port handled an increasing amount of goods. That was in spite of the major trade depression of the 1930s. This continued after the Second World War, once the docks had recovered from the damage caused by German bombing.

In the 1960s the amount of goods handled in the Port of London reached record levels.

Beginning of decline

After that time there was a rapid decline due to:

• containerisation of goods

• technological changes adopted by other ports

• a switch in Britain's trade following European Economic Community (EEC) membership.

By 1981 all of the docks had closed. At the same time, much of the industry that had grown up along the Thames also declined, leaving large areas of Docklands derelict."

(From: PORTCITIES web site) http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/ConNarrative.41/The-20thcentury-port.html

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Public Sector Reform

Some time ago I made a speech on the reform of the public sector. As this topic is now back in fashion I thought it might be worth putting it on the sidebar.

See Reforming the Public Sector under 'Papers' in the sidebar.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Responses

Civil Aviation

Heathrow is an unattractive airport because we have failed to modernise it and invest in the way other countries have. That process is now starting with Terminal five and the announcement about the demolition and rebuilding of terminal two.

Closing Heathrow and developing a new hub elsewhere is my nightmare scenario for the Heathrow region. There are 70,000 jobs at Heathrow and around 100,000 dependent on the airport.

Carbon neutral can be done in terms of ground operations. We should be pushing for this in many areas of construction. I have talked to people in the airport operating business and although some are against there is a significant number saying it could and should be done.

Terrorism Bill

There were many reasons so many voted against the government on the terrorism Bill ranging from strong and principled objections to a desire to clobber the PM. Nothing new there then!

I don’t think you can compare this with previous terror legislation. Internment involved holding people without any time limit and no judicial protection, and no check on police questioning techniques.

The old Prevention of Terrorism Act contained a power to prevent individuals from moving elsewhere in the UK (usually between Northern Ireland and Britain) without any judicial intervention. It also involved up to 6000 people being held in one year without access to solicitors for seven days and without video and sound recording of police questioning.

The wrongful convictions came from cases like this, one of whom I had known since my days as a probation officer. As Alex Carlisle (Lord Carlisle – the Liberal Peer) has pointed out the UK’s legislation is still better then many European countries because those countries have not brought in the recording of police questioning and they can hold people for years while they ‘investigate’ the charges.

There is no easy answer to this. I think we may be making a mistake with the ‘glorification’ of terror clause not because it will catch everyone who makes supportive comments about freedom fighters (I don't think it will) but because I would rather have these people out in the open rather then hidden and anonymous.

Responses Middle East

I think I need a regular post on the Middle East.

It is very important to some people who visit this site and also to me but other visitors ask me to cover more general political issues. That will become easier as I use the Lord’s diary more.

I am looking for an opportunity to speak on foreign affairs/ Middle East/UN in the Lord’s and will do so as soon as possible.

The only point I wish to make in relation to the many comments is about the ‘blame game’. If anyone was qualified to apportion blame for the problems in the region then I don’t doubt that depending on your historical starting point, Turkey, France, Israel and UK/US would all get their fare share.

So however would the region itself.

The blame game is an interesting and fully legitimate debate but it is not enough in terms of finding solutions. Most people accept that we need a process in the Palestine/Israel dispute and that both sides are losing at the moment although inevitable the Palestinians are suffering most.

Modernisation is an important factor in the area. It is the inability to modernise politically, industrially and economically that underpins a lot of the problems. Israel could not conceivably resist effective negotiation if the region had stable, free and developed societies.

Condoleezza Rice was spot on when she said the main failing of the West had been to back governments that were seen to be in control rather then ones that might bring the rule of law and free societies.

Oil wealth has worked against the interests of the people in the area because it has given rulers access to vast fortunes which has been a corrupting influence not least because they don’t need to raise taxes from the population which encourages a culture of accountability.

The type of argument taking place on this site is rather different to those that take place amongst many Arabs. I find they don’t ‘do’ the history bit quite so much. They tend to focus on what needs to be done in their countries. One of the reasons I remain optimistic in the long run is because both Islam and the Arab countries are more focussed on the need to change and take control of their own destiny then I think was happening in the past.

One of the most frustrating things about the world we live in is that we know what needs to be done to get peaceful relations within and between countries but we don’t know how to achieve it quickly enough. Countries that have the rule of law and a relatively free and uncorrupted system don’t have the same degree of internal conflict and are better at resolving neighbour disputes.

Sometimes we do nothing in the face of brutality and put our collective heads in the sand as we did with the Rwanda massacres. Sometimes we intervene ineffectively as in Somalia, sometimes we dither as in Bosnia (and that had terrible consequences not just in the killings but because it also convinced many Moslems that the West would never intervene to help them and that is when many of them decided to fight) and sometimes we intervene either clumsily as in Iraq or more successfully in Kosovo and Sierra Leanne

That is why each set of events needs a special response. Whether it is Iran or North Korea or Iraq there is no template which provides a solution. I hope to return to this in the future.

Monday, November 07, 2005

The Lord's Diary. Hammersmith Hospital 3.11.05

As the Home Office has a long term policy to rebuild the old Victorian prisons I started exploring the possibility of using the Wormwood Scrubs site to extend the Hammersmith Hospital which is one of the worlds premier science based teaching hospitals.

The prison is not going to close in the near future but a ten year period is feasible and we would need to plan a future hospital development over a similar time span.

Lord Soley: My Lords, this is a very wide-ranging and important debate, but because of time constraints, and because I have spoken too often this week already, I shall be focused and, I hope, brief as well. I want to pick up on this very important issue of what has happened in China, India and, increasingly, Brazil in relation to a matter about which I have considerable knowledge - Hammersmith Hospital and its links with Imperial College. Last year, I was in communication with the Department of Health and the Home Office because I knew that the long-term plan for Wormwood Scrubs was to phase it out, as the old Victorian prisons are being phased out. I make it absolutely clear that no one is talking of closing Wormwood Scrubs Prison tomorrow, but given that there is often a 10-year timescale for building new scientific hospitals, there is every reason to look at that site, which is right next to Hammersmith Hospital, and to consider developing it as a science-based hospital of world-class standing. I am not saying that Hammersmith Hospital is not already a hospital of world-class standing, because it is. For many years, it has been training very large numbers of Chinese doctors. Significantly, this year those numbers have dropped dramatically, by about 20 per cent. The reason is that China is now training its own doctors. We ought to be proud of the role that we have played in that, a role which we are playing for other countries too. Consequently, however, as big hospitals develop in China, India, Brazil and elsewhere and are matched only by those already existing in the United States, we need to focus on the fact that Europe has no similar science-based hospital of that size. We now have what could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If the Home Office is planning eventually to close Wormwood Scrubs, we should start thinking now about developing that site. I have been in touch with both Imperial College and Hammersmith Hospital and we have been discussing this over the past 12 months. When I was a Member of the House of Commons I also discussed the matter with Ministers there. At some stage in the fairly near future I might want to see the Minister about the proposal. There is great excitement about it because we recognise that one of the big advantages of Hammersmith Hospital is that it is sited in an area of special needs in terms of mixed-income groups and ethnicity. That is a very powerful driving factor which many other hospitals in many of the competing countries that I have mentioned do not share. In other words, if we can create a site for Hammersmith Hospital that is large enough to rival those in north America, China and India, we shall create a science-based hospital in Britain that also dominates the scene in Europe, as there is no comparable hospital in Europe. I put that down as a marker. I would like to see the Minister at some stage. I shall leave it at that, saving the Minister another five minutes of his time. I look forward to discussing the matter in more detail on another occasion.

www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld199697ldhansrd/pdvn/lds05/text/51103-04htm#51103-04_head2

The Lord's Diary. Civil Aviation 1.12.05

The Civil Aviation Bill gave me the opportunity of raising the issue of Heathrow's position as a hub airport.

I also put down a marker for a policy that could make ground operations at airports carbon neutral.

Lord Soley: My Lords, I have an interest to declare as the campaign director of Future Heathrow, which is a coalition of trade unions, airlines, businesses and professional organisations. I also have another interest to declare: I am a long-term resident of west London and for 30 years have lived under the flight paths of Heathrow. Like everyone else, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s when Trident and Concorde were flying, we would have closed the airport the next morning if, and only if, personal interests about noise were put above the prosperity of the area. Most of us who live in west London or, I suspect, near most airports know that they are amazing generators of wealth, prosperity and jobs. Heathrow employs 70,000 people, and probably well over 100,000 indirectly. If it ceases to be a hub airport, we will pay a terrible price in west London and the Heathrow region, but the country will also pay a high price. So we need to get that right. I am not here to speak predominantly about that issue. I am here to speak about the Bill, which I welcome, and to raise a couple of issues in the debate. Obviously, I will not ignore the importance of noise and so forth, because I suffer that and I know what it means, but it is important that people understand the balance. As an MP, people used to write to me and I would write back saying, "Yes, noise is a problem, but there are advantages. Would you kindly tell me how many times you have flown this year?". It is amazing how many people would not reply. That is like people who say, "I am fed up with the traffic jams. I have just got back from driving my kids to school, and it was horrendous". We have to address that. There is a problem about how people perceive their own behaviour in relation to a wider social economic problem. I do not want to turn to the Bill before I address the really big issue of climate change, which several noble Lords have addressed. It is so enormous that we cannot ignore it. In the nightmare scenario of climate change, it will not be a matter of discouraging people from flying or driving. If scientific evidence evolves in the coming years that is so serious as to suggest really drastic action, people will be stopped from flying, driving and doing many of the things that they take for granted in our society. Frankly, in those circumstances, the economic consequences would be so severe that it is difficult to imagine what our society would look like. That is the nightmare scenario and let us not ignore it, because it could become real. The other way of looking at the problem, which we can do at the moment, is to say that the evidence is alarming and we had better start bearing down on carbon emissions generally, which means that we have to address that issue across a very wide field. That is not totally new. Indeed, I rather naively wrote about the issue in my first ever election address as a prospective councillor, which must have been about 1960. It was the only election that I ever lost, so it was very good training. I complained about the dangers of population growth and what that meant for the world. I am sure that one of the reasons that I was rejected was that local residents thought that having me in the town hall trying to impose limits on population growth might have implications for the locality that they had not planned on from their local councillor. I am sure that they were quite right in rejecting my candidature at that stage. How we provide standards of living for large numbers of people without polluting our environment has always been a difficulty. It is not a new problem; it goes back a long way, but is now particularly serious. If we want to bear down on carbon emissions, many of the provisions in the Bill are very good and I welcome them. Charging extra for aircraft that are particularly dirty is important, but we also need to understand that modern airports and aircraft actually reduce emissions as they are developed. I know that that does not answer the question of more people and more aircraft flying, but it does mean that the aircraft industry, which is as aware of this problem as anyone sitting here today, knows that it has to bear down on noise and pollution. It is important that we do not lose sight of the fact that technology and science are part of the answer to that problem. I am not complaining about what is in the Bill, but I have a suggestion for my friend on the government Benches about something else to include in it. A few months ago, a British company, Arup, a developer and designer, won the award to design and build a city for 1 million people in China—the first city designed to be carbon neutral. The Minister should consider a provision to require airports to operate within a carbon neutral basis on the ground. They cannot do that in terms of aircraft emissions, because we do not have an alternative to the propulsion fuels for aircraft, but we do have biodiesel for all vehicles on the ground, the opportunity to tow rather than taxi aircraft and a number of opportunities to design the buildings to be carbon neutral. I know that the Minister takes global warming seriously like the rest of us, but the way to bear down on this problem is to use every department of state and private company to bear down on carbon emissions. Simply pleading with people not to fly or drive will not work. People do not behave like that. Things will only happen in a crisis and heaven forbid that we get into that situation. Something could be included in the Bill—probably in Clause 5—where the Minister could consider a requirement on airport operators to impose an aim of achieving carbon neutrality on the non-aircraft operations of the airfield—or aerodrome, to go back to the days of Biggles, when I am sure pollution was significantly less, unless he was machine-gunning you. The issues are profoundly important on the wider level, but this Bill is a small but significant step in the right direction. As a west London resident who was an MP for the area for 26 years, I am inevitably concerned. I do not want to see areas that depend on major airports go down the tubes. I am particularly worried that Heathrow is in decline relative to major continental airports. It has already been overtaken by Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam and it will be overtaken shortly by Milan, Munich, Rome and Madrid. That process will continue, unless Heathrow gets its third short runway. So I make no apologies for my belief that we must have that third, short runway. That does not mean to say that I want it done in a way that ignores the noise problems or emissions problems or whatever. We do not do it that way. My view is that, actually, at the moment Heathrow is a pretty unpleasant experience as an airport. We could make it infinitely better. One of the things that we need to get better in this country is the way that local authorities work together with airports, to stop seeing airports as problems and to start to see them as possibilities: what they provide in terms of employment, what they provide in terms of prosperity, what they provide in terms of training and education for young people. Heaven knows what would happen to many of the high-tech jobs in my area if Heathrow became a point-to-point airport. We would probably lose about 20,000 jobs. If we had to produce another hub airport somewhere else to replace Heathrow, and Heathrow disappeared entirely, which is not totally impossible, the consequences would be horrific. That is why I have often made the analogy with the London docks. I was one of the people stupid enough to say that the London docks would never close, that no one would want to go to Felixstowe or Rotterdam. They did, they went and 50,000 jobs went with them. East London has only recently recovered. People need to be careful about this issue overall. My argument is a plea to the Minister. Will the Government include in the Bill a provision requiring airports to operate towards a carbon-neutral basis on the ground? There is no reason why we cannot do that. It would send out a strong signal that we are serious about the issue and at the same time recognise that the threat from the continental airports to places like Heathrow is enormous. People do not know it, but you can fly to far more British regional cities from Amsterdam and Paris than you can from London's Heathrow: 21 from Amsterdam; 19 from Paris; and just nine from Heathrow. If you want to scare yourself about this, go home tonight and, when you type into your computer, book yourself a ticket somewhere. Try to book a ticket from Newcastle to Tokyo or from Edinburgh to Beijing—places that have links, like with the Toyota car plant or the medical school. You used to go via Heathrow. Now you go via Amsterdam and Paris. That will go on very dramatically. People who say to me that Heathrow is safe and that Heathrow will always be there are saying exactly what I said about the London docks. It is a dangerous complacency. We need to make sure that local authorities and airports work together to develop airports in as sustainable a manner as possible. If we include a carbon-neutral provision in the Bill, I say to the Minister that many people will remember him as one of the people who took a very important step on the road to sustainability for air travel.

The Bishops Move

I still haven’t worked out the geography of the House of Lords yet.

I walked in and sat on a short row of empty benches the other day only to hear a colleague say “If the Church can appoint you as their first atheist Bishop I don’t see why they should have a problem with Gay priests”.

I moved to another bench!

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Responses

It is so long since I had time to respond to comments that I can't catch up now so just a couple of points.

I do occasionally delete comments. Overtly racist ones get deleted but the main problem is the balance between legitimate criticism and gross personal abuse. If you can't make your point about a person (in the case referred to it was about David Blunket) without resorting to abusive comments then there is something lacking in your life skills. I can't claim that my approach is entirely consistent but if everyone could play the issue rather then the person life would get easier!

I would like to return at some point to the education debate as it is going to shape a lot of young people's destiny for years to come. I think the success or failure of the proposed reforms will depend on the ability to share out pupils across the ability spectrum and that is what we ought to focus on.

It is not impossible to do this but given the ability of wealthier parents to move to the area best served it does mean we have to aim for all schools to be successful.

There were some long past comments on Party Conference which I read with interest but it is too late to respond fully. My memory of Labour Conferences before the changes were that they provided brilliant entertainment for the Tory press but not much opportunity for delegates to be involved.

Dan, I think you underestimate just how much the less articulate delegates and members were squeezed out because they didn't feel able to deliver a speech to hundreds of people in just three minutes. That's why I think the small group approach with Ministers and Party officials present is better at involving members in policy making.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

David Blunket

Although it had become inevitable I was very sad that David Blunket had to resign. There are too few politicians from a background like his and the more you know about his childhood the more impressive his achievements become.

Those from more privileged backgrounds have far fewer hurdles to overcome.

It is an example of how a person's private life can become so entangled with their public life that no one can save them from themselves. Once he had talked to the media about his financial problems and his desire to repay his sons it was no longer possible to say that his family affairs could be kept separate from his public life.

Sad.

First Lord's speech 31.10.05

I made my first speech in the Lords on Monday and I hope I have managed with Jennifer's help to link this entry into the full text of the speech. There is also a link to Hansard. I hope! (It's getting a bit technical for me!)

Lord Soley: My Lords, I very much welcome this opportunity to make my first speech in this House, having served 26 years as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons, and with almost as many years as a political activist doing all the strange things that political activists do in parties, which the rest of the world does not understand.
I have to say that I was a little ambivalent about coming, not because I did not think that I could do a useful job here—I am sure that I can, and I know what I want to do here. It was not because I think this place does not serve a very useful purpose—it serves a very important purpose, and sometimes one that is not well understood. Nor was it because the place is not representative. I say that knowing and insisting that the elected Chamber must and will always be the dominant Chamber. But one thing that struck me about this place some time ago was the way in which the appointments system can change the face of the place and, in some ways, makes it more representative of our nation. In the number of women, ethnic minorities, disabilities and so on, this House is in many ways more representative than the House of Commons. If I had said 10 years ago that, a few years later, we would have the first black woman Leader of the House of Lords, a lot of people would have said

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that I was exaggerating—even though we had a black Member of Parliament in the late 19th century, who was elected. We need to remember such things. It was my ambivalence. I felt that maybe I was a born-again masochist, and simply could not give up politics and the business of government in one form or another. I have a horrible feeling that that may be true.
Because of my 26 years in Parliament, the awful thought suddenly came back to me that in one of my many previous jobs I was a probation officer. During my early training for that job, I was asked by the court to see a guy who had just been released from what was called "seven years' preventive detention". At that time, preventive detention was a sentence of up to seven years, even for really minor offences, as it was in his case. It was used for people who had had many convictions, and if noble Lords think that "three strikes and you're out" is new, forget it—it has always been around; it is just the number of strikes that has changed.
Altogether, this guy had had 26 years in closed institutions of one type or another. He had done his seven years, went straight down the road, picked up a brick, chucked it through the jewellers' window and stood there waiting to be arrested, which he duly was. For his sins, which must have been many and varied, he was sent to see me. I said to him, "You're really just trying to get back inside again, aren't you?" He said, with commendable honesty, "Yeah. Is there any chance?" I thought, "I've done 26 years in the House of Commons. This is worrying".
Somewhere out there, perhaps that man is listening to this debate. I would like to think that he is and that he could say what I said to him. I said that I would write to him when he was back inside again. So perhaps he will write to me and ask all the things that probation officers ask when they write to prisoners, such as: what is the food like; what is the governor like; and do you get banged up for this, that or the other? I would be able to say, "Well, the food here is pretty good, and actually we don't have a governor; we have a very nice chap who sits on a Woolsack. On top of that, we don't get banged up for speaking out of turn".
Indeed, from my relatively short time here, it seems to me that Members of the House of Lords have turned speaking out of turn into an art form, whereas in the Commons it is a highly developed statistical skill. I am sure that the Speaker now has to take a degree in statistics in order to get the calling of Members right. Both systems work, although if you tried to take the place of another person who was getting up to speak during Questions in the Commons, there would be a pretty impressive row, and I do not know how well it would work. In any event, no doubt my ex-client would have sat there thinking, "This poor lad. I always knew he was going off the rails". He would have written to me, I am sure.
The other thing that struck me when I came here—I had not noticed it before, despite the fact that I used to show constituents and others this place as well as the House of Commons—was that two lines, two sword lengths apart, are not drawn on the Floor in this

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Chamber. Those of us who were in the Commons can draw two conclusions from that. One is that noble Lords are far more respectful and decent to each other; the other is that here there is an opportunity to get your jab in first, which is the much more brutalised approach that one finds in the House of Commons.
Those are some of my initial thoughts, and I now want to turn briefly to the subject of the Bill. If I had been asked five or 10 years ago whether we should have identity cards, I would have said no, but I would not have said that with any great principle or strength of feeling because I knew then, as I do now, that many democratic countries around the world have identity cards. So I do not think that this can be turned into a matter of principle.
One thing that made me begin to think again about the need for identity cards was the fact that in the late 1990s the area that I represented—Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush—like a number of areas represented by constituency MPs, had a very large number of ethnic minorities. They came here either as asylum seekers or refugees, or they came for work or other purposes. It is true that sometimes there is problem of abuse by such people. It happens, and we should bear in mind that towards the end of my time in that constituency I would have 400 current cases at any given time, so you do build up a lot of experience. But that was not the only kind of abuse; there was also abuse by employers, and I cannot stress that enough.
I shall return to the subject of how an identity card might work on that basis in a moment but, first, I want to say that I came across employers who knowingly employed people who should not have been here—they had entered the country illegally. On top of that, those employers were paying below the minimum wage and, on top of that, they were taking money off the employees for accommodation and food. That is particularly true in some trades—the restaurant trade among others. They would also charge them tax. One was told, "We will collect your tax for you". I understand the difficulty of saying that an ID card will solve that. We need a system whereby an employer does not have an excuse and cannot say he did not know. Consider some of the cases before the courts at the moment. I do not want to mention the Chinese cockle-pickers' case as that is at present before the courts, but I want to use it to remind Members how desperately serious the situation is. I do not know how we can control the situation without a much better system of identification than we have.
I believe that Clause 18 is profoundly important as it says that one does not have to carry a card at all times. That is something that troubles people outside this House. If one does not have to carry one's card at all times, it will not be as intrusive and will not lead to stop-and-search as some groups fear. Clause 14 is also important as it enables one to know, up to a certain limit, what is on a card. The limits concern not the personal information per se on a card, but certain circumstances in which security forces might want to look at a card. My noble friend Lady Kennedy has said that she will put me right on this later, but remember

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that one has some protection under the European Court of Human Rights legislation because access to a card for certain reasons has to be proportionate.
The ID Bill was bound to come. It is very difficult to argue that modern democracies do not need such legislation. Cards are not counter-intuitive to the democratic form, to the rule of law or to freedom of speech. If they were, that would be a principal reason to oppose them. The Government have to get the detail right and I hope that they will listen to and consider some of the amendments that have been tabled because people must feel confident in the system. Confidence in the system, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, will know, is very important. As the opposition spokesman said, this will be a long debate. I hope that there will be some movement on amendments, but overall the Bill is necessary. It was bound to come about and if we use it well it can protect people from extreme abuse which is something I very much want to do.

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld199697/ldhansrd/pdvn/lds05/text/51031-04.htm#51031-04_head3