Democratic Institutions: Threats

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for giving us this opportunity, and I have enjoyed listening to the speeches so far. As has already been said, we have a real crisis of trust in politics and our institutions. I want to talk about why, and what I think we must do about it.

I turn first to disinformation, which I agree is a real problem. Foreign state actors clearly engage in it; social media and AI make the spread of disinformation easier and cheaper than ever before. The Government must reflect this threat in their defence and the security of the United Kingdom. As real and problematic as disinformation is, and indeed is other foreign state activity described by noble Lords today, it is not why we are experiencing such low levels of public trust in Parliament, politicians, traditional media and many of our other institutions. Disinformation is not pulling people away, as I think we might sometimes find easier to believe. If we are to earn people’s trust again, we must understand that what we are doing is pushing them away from us to look for something new, whether that is different sources of information, political parties or places of solace.

When we are talking about public trust, it is important to understand that levels vary between different demographic groups. One of my bugbears with the BBC, when it talks about being the most trusted news provider, is its failure to acknowledge, at least publicly, that, among a certain group, levels of trust in it are very low. I think if it did that, it would find life so much easier. It should be no surprise that the demographic group most distrusting of the political and media classes are people who were leave voters and live in the post-industrial and coastal towns and in rural areas—the people who have consistently voted for and demanded change for at least the last 10 years and whose demands have not yet been met.

Worse than that, they have observed politicians battle among ourselves to stop Brexit and to not reduce immigration, never mind to not stop illegal immigration. These are the same people who have watched as the law-abiding and taxpaying are subject to more taxes, rules and regulations, while lawbreakers get away with whatever they choose to do.

The expectations and demands of these people are legitimate. They deserve to be taken seriously and shown respect. Indeed, what they want would create better conditions for far more people than just them, but they are the people, who we have already heard about, who have lost out most over the last 30 years or so. It is that we ignore or wilfully misunderstand them—sometimes even abuse them for their views and demands of us—that is making them give up on us.

Mainstream political parties and traditional broadcast media—it is the broadcast media and the BBC in particular which have the biggest responsibility in this area—have a choice. We either acknowledge where we have gone wrong or been too slow when it was obvious we needed to change course, or we continue to see the rise of alternatives who are very good at showing that they understand people’s legitimate frustrations, even though it is fair to question whether they can or will deliver the solutions they promise.

My own party does not escape blame. I backed Kemi Badenoch to lead the Conservatives because I believe she has what it takes to meet the challenge that I described. For example, she has admitted where we went wrong on net zero and our failings on immigration and is showing how we have learned from that in the plan she is coming forward with. That is why I think she is making some headway. But I know, even though she is making some headway, that my party still has a lot of work to do.

However, if we all really care about restoring trust in political institutions, the whole political class—by that I mean all parliamentarians, including the Cross-Benchers and the Bishops, because do not think for one moment that they are not as much a part of the problem as everyone else—have to start showing that we know where we have been going wrong and start putting it right. While, of course, we have policy differences, as we should in democratic politics, it is our disregard of and disrespect for what the majority has been voting for that is the common cause of their disrespect and distrust in us.

Time is running out. Our institutions, whether political, media or others, should be the solution to our divided society that represents a real threat to our future and is being exploited by our enemies. But we are losing our moral authority to lead these institutions because we are denying our part in creating the problem that our institutions were previously trusted to be the solution to. Blaming disinformation, or voters for wanting simple solutions to complex problems—by the way, I think that is such a disrespectful thing to ever claim, because I just do not believe that is what people want; what they want from us is a demonstration that we understand the problems that they are facing from their perspective—is displacement activity. If we do not show that we understand how we are the problem and that it is us, not the public, who need to change, we will be powerless to stop our institutions from being demolished, or they will crash.