Behaviour Change: Science and Technology Committee Report

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, I pay tribute to the chairman of our committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, for her enthusiasm and for keeping us to the task, which was not easy because it wa s a very broad task. As she did, I also thank Professor Charles Abraham and the secretariat, who served us extremely well. I also declare my own interests as noted in the register and in the report: as a retired consultant psychiatrist and as president of ARTIS Europe, a research and risk analysis company.

One could pick up on many things in the report itself, but I would like to pick up two or three of its broad principal outcomes and apply them to areas that were not referred to in the report. In particular, I will look at the important work of government in foreign and Commonwealth affairs and in the Ministry of Defence. My reason for doing so comes out of the very principles that emerge from the report.

First, there was remarkably little research into how one might affect population behaviour change, as distinct from the behaviour change of individuals. I came to understand this over a number of years. My own background and training was in the understanding of individual psychology and psychopathology and in attempting to bring about behaviour change with individuals, but when I tried to apply some of those understandings to the political field, particularly in conflict resolution, while there were important elements of read-across there are also differences in the way that groups function. One of these was referred to in passing by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, when he said that culture was an important element. Culture is important for the individual but it is essentially a shared phenomenon. I sometimes liken culture in the group to the personality of an individual, but the same rules do not apply in an absolute read-across. Unless we do research that demonstrates an evidential outcome, we simply operate by our own prejudices and rule of thumb. I will come back to that, because we may come to wholly wrong conclusions on that basis.

The second thing that the report pointed out was that it is unlikely that change can be brought about by non-regulatory interventions on their own—that regulation is relevant and important. That is clearly true and cannot be ignored. That takes me to the question of defence and foreign and Commonwealth affairs. Why? One thing that has become manifestly clear, if it was not clear before, is that the capacity of this country and others to create real change in the international community by the use of force is limited, at best, and ever more limited. It is not at all clear that we yet have an international process of law that can enforce itself, despite considerable efforts which I very much hope continue.

The capacity of the most powerful country in the world, the United States of America, to bring about its wishes by the use of hard power has been strikingly unimpressive in a whole series of events. Even if they had been successful, the strategic defence and security review and the more recent announcement of the reduction of our armed services to something like 80,000 full-time persons demonstrates that even if it were possible to make those changes, those possibilities are no longer open to this country because we do not have the capacity to enforce. That means that, however much in principle we would like to include regulation and force, in matters of defence and particularly in diplomacy and foreign and Commonwealth affairs, we are forced to look at non-regulatory methods—nudge, sometimes weaker than nudge, sometimes stronger than nudge but certainly non-regulatory and non-force elements must be brought to the fore.

I found it surprising when I started to look at these matters that the United States of America, which has much the strongest capacity to use force, spends enormous amounts of money—directly through the Department of Defense and through the various establishments of the navy, the air force, the marines and the army—commissioning external research. I remember, when I was training, being struck by the attributions at the bottom of many psychological papers that they were paid for by American defence organisations. However, in this country, where we do not have the capacity to use force, almost no money is spent on commissioning external research by the Ministry of Defence or other organisations. At best, it is modest and, in many cases, it is internal. One thing that we know scientifically is that if we do the research internally and do not share it with the rest of the scientific community, validation is doubtful.

It is critical, particularly in those areas of governance where enforcement is at its weakest, that we undertake research to find out what is the best that we can achieve in that way. Here I come to the non-intuitive outcomes of the limited research that has been done. Let me give a couple of examples.

In the Middle East, there are those who believe that change can be brought about by economic improvements for the population. For example, if we take Palestinians who seem highly unlikely to be able to achieve right of return, if they were given some resource—perhaps even a lot—would that help them to get over their problems? A couple of my colleagues went to do some research on the matter. They interviewed people at all levels of the community on the Palestinian side and the Israeli side and inside and outside the community and asked them some questions. First, if they did not get right of return, would some economic reward pay them for that? Secondly, if they did not get right of return, would lots of economic reward help them? Thirdly, if they did not get right of return, but the Government of Israel said: “We understand the pain that you have gone through as a community because of the decisions that we have taken and felt that we had to take”, what would their response be?

The realpolitik—those from outside such circumstances—would likely say, as they frequently have, that economic development in such a circumstance is bound to be helpful. The results of the research, however, were that when economic betterment was offered as an alternative to right of return, the response was anger; when substantial economic benefit was offered instead of right of return, the anger was much increased; and when no economic benefit was offered but there was a degree of apology and understanding, the response was that that was the basis for a conversation. There are many other examples of research that have demonstrated that the rule-of-thumb, rational approach that we might adopt may not always be correct and may even be counterproductive.

I know that the Minister has a particular interest in defence, development and foreign and Commonwealth affairs. Given the report’s clear indication that research into how we change populations rather than individuals is lacking and should be funded, and that in the areas that I am speaking of, force and regulation are not serious options, are the Government prepared to look more thoughtfully at how the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office might address questions of population and behaviour change?

Anti-Semitism

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Boswell on obtaining this debate and so helping us in this House to keep to the forefront of our minds the scourge of anti-Semitism. It is very important that we do not let it be pushed to the side when there are many other pressures on our time and thoughts.

Growing up, I was, like many others, very aware of the question of anti-Semitism. I learned as a schoolboy about the Holocaust but also read about the Dreyfus case in France and other such events. I came from a community that always felt an instinctive sympathy with Jewish people. Irish Presbyterians, particularly in the north, always felt quite an identification with Jewish people and felt a little bit beleaguered at times, as often they do. Then I started my work in psychoanalysis and very many of my friends were of course from Jewish backgrounds. I became aware of the difficulties of their experiences—indeed the founder of psychoanalysis, Freud himself, wrote about his difficult experiences at the hands of Christians. That was one of the distressing things: the recognition that throughout the millennia, not just the centuries, much anti-Semitism actually came from the Christian community. More recently we have tended to associate it with other communities but we must not forget that historically that is where much of the anti-Semitism has come from. All sorts of rationalisations were given for it but it was just prejudice and bigotry.

What became clear when I talked to my colleagues was the range of views, not about faith so much—of course, that was the case as it is in every faith community—but the attitudes to the state of Israel. There were some who were not actually very supportive of it. Freud himself, when he was asked to give support, refused and said it would be a very troublesome business. He was not supportive of the idea of a state of Israel at all. The vast majority are supportive of the notion of a state of Israel, a place where Jewish people can feel at home and comfortable, safe in their own culture and community. Then there are those within that community who support the state of Israel but have from time to time very serious questions about the particular policies of particular Governments.

My old friend Amartya Sen has pointed out that when the pressure comes on, the important differences between people tend to be squeezed out and we see them all as a single bloc. It seems to me that under the pressure of prejudice and bigotry—or of economic crisis, which is always a bad time for tolerance—there has been a tendency to see all Jewish people as falling into one group. That is unfair and inappropriate and justifies, in the minds of some people at least, a critique against Jewish people as a whole, when it is quite clear there is a very healthy diversity within that community, not only within Israel but within Jewish communities right across the world.

It is extremely important that we do not allow people inside or outside the Israeli community to portray it as inappropriate that Jewish people should have a range of views. It is also extremely important to keep being clear that Jewish people have a range of views on every subject under the sun, not only because those views are often eloquently written about and enrich our culture, understanding and science but because politically it is the best detoxification of the notion that if you do not agree with the current policies of the Israeli Government, that in some way justifies an anti-Semitic attitude. Whatever the Government do, we must continually point out that not agreeing with the current policies of the Israeli Government is not a justification for anti-Semitism and does not go along in any way with the notion of it being justified. It is a very important distinction that we must keep hammering away at, because in times of crisis these differences tend to be squeezed out.

That is one of my anxieties at present. In the past few years, we have seen a rightward shift in the politics of Europe. You can see it in almost every election in almost every country. When you see that shift, you see more intolerance, a lack of pluralism and, almost inevitably, a resurgence in anti-Semitism. I say resurgence because it has always hovered there under the surface. I even noticed that there were nasty phrases and words during the financial crisis—“It’s all about money and the banks and you know who is at the back of that”. Sometimes it was even said, “It’s the Jews, you know”. You got that horrible, sinking feeling that we were experiencing a serious and dreadful rise of anti-Semitism. We must be clear that this is completely unacceptable and I welcome the fact that our Government are coming back, as have previous Governments, to remind us of that problem.

Apart from pointing out that anti-Semitism is wrong in principle and does not recognise the extraordinary richness that the Jewish community in this country has brought to us all, in almost every field of human endeavour—culture, science, medicine, the law, Parliament, and everywhere—I wish to make one other remark on this subject. My wife and I love to get away for as much time as we can down in the south of Burgundy. We love it very much there, and we love the vineyards. Some of you will know that every so often at the end of a row of vines a rose is planted. I was a little puzzled about this in my ignorance, in the early days when I started going down there many years ago. Then I discovered what it was. The rose is much more susceptible to mildew than the vines, so if the mildew starts to appear on the rose the vigneron knows that he must get out and spray the vines. The rose is the canary in the mine, as it were. The Jewish community is the rose in the vineyard because you can be sure that when you see the rise of anti-Semitism, it is merely the first sign of a dreadful prejudice and intolerance in our community. Never forget that the Jews are the rose in our vineyard and that when we see anti-Semitism arising, it will call for all our minorities and damage our country.