Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2022-05-12
Topic: Social Welfare
Bhikhu Parekh (Labour, Centre-left): Lady Fox? No? My Lords, I am sorry—there seems to have been some confusion, because there is a speaker before me in the list, but I had not realised that she was not going to turn up Anyone who cares about Britain is bound to be disturbed by the current state of inequality and injustice in our country. Inequality between individuals is too obvious to need spelling out—for example, the vast inequality of incomes between some who earn millions and some who starve—and the figures are too well known for me to retell. The recent case of a woman who travelled by bus all day to avoid having to spend money on heat is too well known and is emblematic of what actually goes on We have inequality not just of individuals but also of regions. As a recent survey by the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out, Britain comes out as the worst of 27 nations that it studied. Even the Prime Minister said that Britain is "one of the most imbalanced societies and lop-sided economies", and, as he said, even well-designed policies will take decades to produce results. We have not even started with any of the policies which will help us to resolve these inequalities The cost of living is rising, and inflation is higher than ever before—it is certainly higher than in the 1960s. This inequality, as it continues to grow, becomes a source of a lot of unease in society. Society then breaks up into different communities, each going its own way. There is arrogance at one end of the social spectrum and anger at the other, and there is instability and a great degree of smouldering unease If these inequalities are going to be tackled, we require systematic, equal opportunities. We have to start in early childhood—which one sees very little mention of in the Queen’s Speech. Inherited disadvantages are perpetuated over generations and congeal into even stronger and deeper disadvantages. The class of birth is also the class of death; as many surveys have shown, social mobility in England has been rather low. When people protest against this growing inequality and the suffering it causes, the Government seek restrictions on what protest is allowed. These restrictions —far more than ever before, in fact—mean that a lot of people get arrested and that our prisons are fuller than ever before, becoming a training ground for future prisoners with more serious crimes As a result of that sort of situation, the legitimacy of our laws and political system is questioned. When that is questioned, there is a culture of cynicism. Our laws and political system are seen as instruments of oppression and repression, not of emancipation or law and order. No politician is trusted. They are exposed for breaking rules that they want ordinary citizens to follow. Public discourse becomes rather coarse and crude as a result. I find it impossible to believe that, when the Prime Minister gets up every morning, the references to him that one would find rather obnoxious—"He’s a liar", "He’s this", "He’s that"—do not destroy his confidence. Hardly any Ministers are referred to in a manner that one would regard as acceptable. I am not interested in what is true and what is not true; I am interested in how an individual is constantly referred to and how they might feel about it The result of all that, where every Minister is denigrated and treated as a cheat, is that the press becomes partisan. This was wonderfully discussed by Professor Brooks in his recent book, The Trust Factor. He points out that trust is the lifeblood of democracy. He says: "We know no system is perfect" We know that no problem has only one answer—we all recognise that—but, as Professor Brooks says, "we expect our leaders to be honest" and dependable. However, when that does not happen and leaders are not honest, straightforward or transparent in their answers, we tend to become nihilistic and suspicious and fall for any story that is going round about any politician. Abusing and dehumanising opponents through simplistic stereotypes and clichés becomes a common way of referring to them This kind of situation, where you justify and suppress inequalities so that you can not only tolerate them but aggravate them, restricts liberty and, through that, results in the destruction of the very political system in which we take pride. This simply cannot go on. The problems of the legitimacy of our system and the inequality within it are urgent. Therefore, the remedy must also be urgent. We do not seem to realise even remotely what is happening to us.