Red Benches No 2: Highlights from a week in the House of Lords

Debates on boycotts, schools and mental health, the Horizon scandal, right to roam, poverty and more

Welcome to the second edition of Red Benches, my weekly roundup of events in the House of Lords. We might not have quite managed the level of conflict and chaos in “the Other Place”, as we customarily refer to the House of Commons, with the position of Speaker Lindsay Hoyle hanging in the balance this weekend. But we had our moments.

Here’s what I saw as some the highlights. Scroll down to find a list of my activities this week.

Part 1: Around the House

A. Boycotts Bill (or Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters)

This was the Second Reading, so general discussion, of the Bill, and what powerful voices we heard in opposition.

Labour’s Lord Hain nailed it: “another pernicious piece of legislation attacking the freedom to protest against injustice and oppression except when the Government approve.” And provided an important reminder of the leading role of local authorities and universities (with Sheffield at the forefront) in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa.

Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws pointed out: “We know that there can be exceptions in certain circumstances if sanctioned by the Secretary of State, but in no circumstances whatever can Israel be excluded. It gets a free pass; that one nation is wrongly singled out. That is seriously worrying at this time. I think particularly of the allegations of hypocrisy that there will be, and the ways in which this will be so enraging to many in the global South.”

In my contribution, I noted that “The first clause of this Bill is entitled: “Disapproval of foreign state conduct prohibited”. In George Orwell’s Oceania, that would surely be a banned phrase—far too blunt and obvious in its repression —yet this is what the Government want to make law.” Jenny Jones commented that it “threatens to remove the right of councils and councillors to do their best for their residents.”.

Then we got to quite an amazing claim from the government minister, Baroness Noakes, an attempt to rewrite history that got comprehensively debunked, with testimony from several people at the centre of action at the time. (Really worth a watch!)

B. Private Notice Question: Horizon scandal

Similar to urgent notice questions in the Commons, granted on the sole decision of the Lord Speaker, on Monday Labour’s Lord Touhig was granted a PNQ on the subject of the weekend controversy over delays to payments to sub-postmasters wrongly prosecuted by Royal Mail in the Horizon IT scandal.

Lord Offord of Garvel for the government said of the claim that it had tried to delay payments; “I can utterly refute this allegation.”.

Baroness Brinton pointed out that “on 28 January, Kemi Badenoch said on the BBC that the deadline was not a priority and that getting governance sorted out at the Post Office was more important.”

C. Right to Roam

On Wednesday, my fellow Green peer Jenny Jones secured a Topical Oral Question on the “right to roam”, in the context of campaigner s’ focus on “islands” of public access land that can only be reached by trespassing. And actually got a halfway positive answer from the minister: “The Government are aware that in the original mapping of open access land, some areas were identified to which there is no legal route. We are committed to undertaking a review of this position, and legislation to facilitate this review was recently passed into law in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act.” As well as a loud groan from the Tory benches when she commented on the extreme concentration of land ownership on these islands - which shows you which side they are on.

Part 2: My work in the House

A. My debate on mental health and the nature of schools

My biggest role in the House this week was leading a debate that I had secured on “role of schools in caring for the mental health and well-being of pupils, and assisting in their development as community and family members”. Two and a half hours of the House of Lords at its absolute best. Well worth a read, and a real message for the government (and Labour) about the damage being done by the focus on exams (see Labour Baroness Yardley’s speech), the rigid constraints on behaviour and punitive sanctions regimes, and the pressure on parents to force children to school even when it is not in their best interests (very powerful contribution on that from Tory Lord Wei)

I found perhaps surprising agreement with Conservative Lord Vaizey about the essential Victorian structure of our schooling system, and how that needs to change. (Something I wrote about recently.) But less surprising agreement with the virtuoso presentation on the importance of cultural education from the crossbencher Baroness Bull.

But it was Lib Dem Baroness Tyler who presented some extremely shocking statistics: In a recent survey by Young Minds of more than 14,000 young people, only 3% said educational settings were a positive influence on their mental health, while 59% said that school or college had affected them negatively in some way.

And crossbencher, and former clinical academic psychiatrist Baroness Hollins, summed up what schools should be, and are not: “Children need to feel comfortable and safe at school. …. Ignoring well-being does not lead to overall better outcomes.”

And she presented a case study:

Let me tell your Lordships about Sarah. She started to struggle with her mental health when she started secondary school. She was involved in a car accident over the summer holidays and became increasingly anxious about leaving her home. She had already been finding school difficult and started missing days at school. When she did manage to get to school, she was told off by teachers for her poor attendance, which made it more difficult to attend. Nobody asked her why it was so difficult to go to school. Her anxiety got worse, as did her attendance. Then her parents were asked to pay fines because of her poor attendance. She has now been out of school for a year and remains on a waiting list for CAMHS.

B. Dentistry: A debate on NHS dentistry gave me a chance to highlight the work of the wonderfully-named campaign group Toothless in England, but also a serious point about how much regional inequality there is in provision. (I am following up on the group’s concern that its view was misrepresented in the minister’s answer.) You can read the complete Oral Question exchange in Hansard.

C. Corruption: Following a government statement on the death of Russian democracy campaigner and Putin opponent Alexei Navalny in a Siberian penal colony, I asked about further action against the “enablers” - lawyers, bankers, estate agents and others - still keeping going what’s known as the “London laundromat”, the washing of dirty money through London. The full discussion here.

D. Poverty: In April, the minimum wage for under-18s will rise to the much less than livable $8.40, and £8.60 for 18-23-year-olds. I challenged the government about how it could be possible to live on such a wage. You can read the complete Oral Question exchange in Hansard.

Coming up next week, on Monday I have a “fatal motion”, a call to throw out the government’s statutory instrument to regulate Physicians Associates and Anaesthetist Associates, not because as Greens we are opposed to the position, we respect those who’ve studied and work to achieve it, or opposed to regulating their role - a definition of their scope of practice is clearly needed - but because this process (and the much broader change in regulating medical professional for which it is supposed to be a model) is far too important to be done by any process but “primary legislation”, that is a Bill that both Houses can fully debate, amend, in the full light of public scrutiny and discussion. Both the BMA and Doctors Association UK are opposed to the Order, and the government needs to start working cooperatively with the medical profession, rather than adding further conflict. As I explained on Yorkshire Bylines.

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