---

Democracy: POWER Inquiry

My Lords, it is a singular pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, in his maiden speech. He and I have in common Lincolnshire, the Lincoln diocese—the noble Lord will doubtless remember the late Bishop Kenneth Ritches, who ordained me—and the Farmers Club. In my days as a curate at Boston Stump, following an apprenticeship in Grantham no less, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, was a well known and respected figure, not only in the farming community. His track record in politics and the local community is nothing less than distinguished. It is good to have someone with his experience, which embraces publishing on bulbs, in this House. We look forward to many occasions when he can bring that special Fenland wisdom—as I shall call it, rather than rebelliousness—which I learned to appreciate 30 years ago to our counsels and deliberations. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, has secured an opportunity for this House to spend some considered time to explore the pressing concerns about how our democracy is working and not working in the context of the recently published Power report. Many of its observations and recommendations rang bells with me. It is important to note at the outset that its findings are recognised not only on the basis of their hard research base but in how they comment on many other aspects of our society and not just the political. For differentiated as our society manifestly is, with different aspects and interests chopped up into various parts—home, leisure, work, DIY and sport, with or without religion—we are all part of the same whole. To take one example from my own job, younger members of the General Synod of the Church of England are more likely to be there because of their concerns about particular issues than an older desire to be generally representative. That is not meant to be any criticism; far from it, it is a fact of life and a defining flavour of how people want to express participation in corporate life at this stage of history, and it happens to be different from 30 or 40 years ago. It is not bad, it is just different. But we need to respond to it. I want to make some observations on this, not with any sense of offering easy solutions. The Power commission report needs to be taken very seriously indeed, although, as I shall suggest, there are some over-emphases and some gaps. I turn first to participation. Jargon of all kinds usually has the most innocent of origins, and it is as true of religion as of anything else. The word ““communion”” comes from a Greek word often used in ancient society to describe civic life at its best. In Plato’s dialogue, the Gorgias, Socrates argues that a man—and I am afraid that in those days it only was a man, but we have moved on from there—who pursues neither justice nor temperance and who does not restrain his desires in effect leads the life of a robber. He goes on to say,"““where there is no communion””—" koinonia—"““there can be no friendship””—" philia. For Socrates the individual is a microcosm and the universe is a macrocosm, and that Platonic vision has influenced at its best much of the ideology of western democratic life since, just as it has influenced at its best the Christian Church’s self-understanding—the one body with many members working together. How do we try to hold things together and motivate each other in a society that is ethnically and culturally far more diverse than the ancient Greek city state? The root of the problem is that what works for one section of society manifestly does not work for others. This is an issue that we face in this House with virtually every piece of legislation before us and I know it full well in my own work as I try to care for the very different communities in south-east Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. The Power inquiry report focuses on electoral issues of our democracy—votes—perhaps at the expense of what might be called participative democracy, to echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Gould. For example, there is the enormous number of local consultations that take place either on a one-off basis, or the work of local partnerships that happens all the time. Perhaps we could turn further afield, if we have ears to hear; we are beginning to learn of the rich hidden traditions in Islam of participation in society that are not exact replicas of the modern western secular democracy. That Platonic vision of participation is already going on in many places. The problem is with the gap between our political institutions and processes and the creative ferment on the ground. Here again, I can draw parallels in the way a diocese functions with diocesan and deanery synods and the local parochial church councils very often having very much a will of their own, thank you very much. I am sure that similar parallels could be drawn from other people, if they were here; for example, from a chief constable or a local regional health authority official, were they to speak frankly. Secondly, there is the way in which our processes actually work. We have a saying in the Church that theology is too important to leave to theologians. As a don manqué, I have written a number of sleep-inducing professional theological monographs, but when I am preaching I try to drip-feed the congregation, hoping that my hearers—many of them possibly slightly suspicious of the professional theologian—might be helped to think more deeply about their lives without too much of the jargon and the shorthand getting in the way. I am not saying that I am particularly successful; rotten apples have not yet been thrown at me from the pulpit, although perhaps one or two mental ones have. I wonder how far our political process, based properly on the view that politics is too important to leave to the politicians, might reflect a comparable strategy. My sense is that people do talk politics and do politics, and quite passionately, but not in the same way as the professionals, who may often approach it with the baggage, shorthand and jargon of how things work here in Westminster. Pushing this one stage further, we should look for programmes of action and less at manifestos. The two should be synonymous but in practice they are not. I am not alone in expressing a weariness with over-legislation, to say nothing of the latest crackdown or shake-up or whatever the next thing is going to be that may catch the headlines but seems to deliver very little on the ground—and that is the point. We need fewer rigid plans and more effective partnerships that can help to create less nervous communities that are more at ease with themselves; to quote something from the World Council of Churches, we need a,"““just, sustainable and participatory society””." In that connection, I draw attention to another Rowntree report, issued in March, on Faith as Social Capital, which emphasises how many faith communities,"““contribute . . . by participating in the wider public domain. Faith””," and,"““worship .. can foster qualities . . . for civic engagement. External networking and action are usually undertaken by a relatively small number of people, but their achievements are often substantial””." Finally, I touch on House of Lords reform. Here I hope to fight against the wearied tones that I sensed from the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, because what I am about to say is almost like switching on a recorded message. These Benches have all along repeated our commitment to this matter. To those in favour of an entirely elected Chamber, it may amuse you to note that we on these Benches could be something of a paradoxical model. We are elected after a fashion; we are Members of the House of Lords, not Peers, so we introduce ourselves without Garter King of Arms—but, of course, we are used to bowing so we do not need to watch the dip in his stave at the crucial bit. To secure active working engagement with our communities, we retire! The debate on House of Lords reform has, typically and sadly for our age, polarised between either elected or appointed, without looking very often at the many different ways of electing or many different ways of appointing, when in practice sometimes they might meet in the middle. There is another observation that is bubbling up from the hinterland of the Power inquiry—that we at this end of the corridor are far from being the problem. The democratic deficit, so manifestly identified in the report, is not so much about what Westminster means as how it works and the increasing need for people, whether in this House or another place, to assume nothing about ourselves when speaking with the people whom we are dealing with or working with or representing. I shall slightly tease one of our national newspapers. I need not name it, but it has a Germanic layout now. All through the week of our sit-in, as it almost was, with the other place over the anti-terrorism Bill, we were praised as an unelected Chamber for what we were doing in standing up for democracy—but on the last day, bang came the crescendo. At the end of a leader, it said something like, ““but the House needs to be elected””. I gently point out that there is a slight irony in that account. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, is well known as a communicator and a translator, to bridge the sometimes obdurate Caledonian-English divide. This debate convinces me more and more that both talents, communicating and translating, will be in demand if we are serious about tackling the issues raised in this debate, which are, after all, only symptoms of a changing society. All of this leads me to suggest that the problems and issues before us today are so deep-rooted that they require a royal commission on Parliament and its workings, as well as its increasingly rich potential for working far more effectively than at the moment with what is already going on in our local communities.