Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

I hope the Minister will see fit to encourage His Majesty’s Government to accept all four of my amendments, as I believe they will all improve the Bill and enable the Government better to achieve what they clearly wish to achieve for the benefit of victims—all victims. I beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I apologise that I was not able to be present at Second Reading—the day job had to take precedence. I rise to endorse thoroughly what the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, said in her speech. I wish not to speak to each amendment but to add a bit of heft to what she said. I do not exactly declare this as an interest, but I was a professional linguist before I went into the Church, so language has been important to me right the way through.

We heard in the Minister’s response earlier that victims must get the information they need. They also must get it in a form they are able to read, or hear, and understand. In this country language is often misunderstood or not taken as seriously as it ought to be, or as one might find in some countries in continental Europe, for example, where you live on boundaries and have to operate in a number of languages. Because we are an island nation, this is something we do not necessarily experience.

Having trained as a translator and interpreter—these are very different skills and professions—I understand the problems of inaccuracy and of getting even nuance wrong. We are talking here about victims who are already seriously disadvantaged. That disadvantage, that damage, should not be exacerbated by running the risk of them simply not being able to be understood, or to understand what is being represented to them.

There is something here about professionalism. If noble Lords do not believe that this is important, I hope they watched the funeral of Nelson Mandela, where the deaf interpreter simply went awry—it looked like he was conducting an orchestra, but badly. He said afterwards that he was simply overawed by the experience, but many people doubted that he had the skill to do what he had been signed up and paid to do. It really matters. I found it very entertaining but not very edifying, so I emphasise the need for professionalism in this.

The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, referred to Google Translate, which most linguists go to for a bit of a laugh and to see what it suggests. When I lecture in German at German universities, I often run my texts through it for the entertainment value, but it is rarely accurate. Now we have translation by AI systems—Google Translate is that, really—which can be entertaining too. They can be helpful if you need a bit of a boost, but you would not rely on them for something that was important for life and death.

That is why the national register is so important. My understanding is that this country has a shortage of not only linguists—I could say much more about that—but qualified linguists able to go on the register and do what we are asking them to do. That triggers a different question. We cannot just say that we do not have the qualified people and therefore must make do; we have a bigger challenge to emphasise the importance of language learning, which has many knock-on effects for how we understand people and culture. As I often repeat, the former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, when giving advice to younger Germans asking him about going into politics, wrote: “Don’t even consider it unless you have at least two foreign languages to a competent degree, because you can’t understand yourself and your own culture unless you look through the lens of another. For that you need language, because language goes deep”. Some things cannot be translated; you need a degree of expertise to deal with them.

There is a wider issue, but I will not bang that drum any further now. This is fundamentally a matter of justice. If victims are to be heard and to hear accurately, this ought to be in the Bill.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for bringing forward this amendment. When I spoke at Second Reading, I did not realise that this dimension might arise—clearly it can, and it is important. I address the Committee as one of a small minority here who do not have English as their first language. In fact, I calculated over the Easter Recess that I speak in English less than 10% of the time. This Bill will impact not just England but Wales, where Welsh is an official language. I do not see much evidence in the Bill of any adjustment being made for that purpose.

Fundamentally, the Bill deals with victims. There are perhaps four groups of victims for whom the language dimension is critical. First, there are children; at home in Wales, a large number of children—certainly tens of thousands—have Welsh as their first language. They acquire English as a second language as they get older, but under pressure they will no doubt want to revert to their first language, which is the natural language in which they express themselves. Another group of great importance to me and a number of other noble Lords is disabled people. When put under stress, they need assistance. If there is additional stress from dealing in a language that is not their first, they will need assistance.

That is also true for elderly people. As people get older, they revert to their first language, particularly those who have had strokes. People from Wales have found themselves in residential homes in the south of England; the staff think they are speaking gibberish, but they are reverting to their first language. That group also needs to be brought in. Finally, there is the general group of people who are under stress, whatever their age or background, and need to be helped to express themselves in their first language. This is important in Wales. Reference was made a moment ago to the Children’s Commissioner. We have our own Children’s Commissioner for Wales and our own framework, but I am not sure that the Bill takes that on board. Clearly, provision needs to be made.

The day has now passed when an ad hoc translator would be whistled up for a court case from those who happened to be around—usually a minister or a teacher, who could roughly translate what was being said. I have mentioned before in this House how many people over the centuries—although not in this or the last—were hanged without understanding a word of what was going on in the court that declared them guilty.

European Court of Human Rights

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

As ever, I am happy to take the advice of the noble Baroness and read the evidence very carefully.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with me that global and regional challenges need global and regional solutions, and that individual countries seeking to disapply do not help the situation?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

As I have just said, ideally, international collaboration and joint solutions are far preferable to unilateral action.

Offenders (Day of Release from Detention) Bill

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 21st April 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to rise in the gap to sing from the same hymn sheet and welcome this Bill. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bird, on his inspirational work and commitment to these matters. We need an urgent change in practice for those who leave prison. I know that my friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, who is not able to be here today but leads for the Church of England on prisons, also welcomes this Bill.

Others have already referred to the impact of releasing people from prison on a Friday, particularly in relation to access to services, including housing and healthcare. This affects men and women leaving prison, but for women it can be acutely dangerous, due to particular risks they face. A report published in 2020, Safe Homes for Women Leaving Prison, found that late releases, and releases on a Friday, are known to jeopardise a woman’s chances of securing accommodation. Due to the configuration of the prison estate, women are often imprisoned far from home, leading to isolation and presenting further challenges to securing housing. Risks from perpetrators of domestic abuse are very real for prison leavers, particularly women. A recent Independent Monitoring Board report on HMP Bronzefield found that 65% of women face homelessness on release. I join others in hoping that changing the practice of releasing prison leavers on a Friday will go a long way to helping address this.

Finally, I shall touch on how this fits into the wider picture of resettlement and reintegration into society. We know that links to community and home help prevent reoffending, and we have many examples of good practice within the faith-based sector. The Welcome Directory is an organisation that signposts prison leavers to churches and worshipping communities of other faiths, aiming to “unlock the second prison” of the community. Prison chaplains do valuable work through the gate with external organisations to transition those in prison back into the community. Under the new probation model, the Church of England has been working at a national and regional level with the probation service to link up with faith communities, which do so much good in their localities.

In conclusion, I welcome this Bill and consider that it will make a significant change to the chances of prison leavers resettling well into communities and reducing the chances of recidivism.

Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

Saturday 10th September 2022 Lords Chamber

These characteristics and attributes, which she hoped might identify the British people—good humour, resolve, self-discipline and fellow feeling—are most certainly qualities that can be ascribed to a much-loved and remarkable Queen who promised, as a 21-year-old, to serve her country throughout all her days and who unfailingly kept her word in doing so. Thank God for the Queen and her life of service, and long live the King.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, when training to be a professional linguist, I was trained to drill down to as few words as possible, so forgive my lack of eloquence now. When I think of Her late Majesty the Queen, I drill down to one word: grace. She exercised grace in her responsibilities at every level, and it was rooted in her avowed and admitted need of the grace of God; it was where her discipline of accountability came from.

It is only by sitting here when the Queen was delivering her gracious Speech one year that I realised that we inhabit the constitution here. We do our business, as the judiciary, the Executive and the legislature, in the name of Her Majesty, but she reads the gracious Speech in the name of God as she looks up and sees the barons of the Magna Carta around this Chamber. It is that accountability that must lie at the heart of her legacy, if our words are not to be merely sentimental, nostalgic or empty. I trust that, in the reign of King Charles, this accountability, rooted in his already stated need of the grace of God, will characterise our common life. Long live the King.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

Thinking about the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, I have been struck by several factors. First, like most people alive today, I have only ever known a Queen. When you say, “God save the King”, it seems like something from a historical play, and we will have a great deal of getting used to it. This has become apparent, listening to these tributes, by the number of noble Lords who have made the mistake—I will probably make it myself—of referring to the Queen in the present tense rather than the past. There is a very strong feeling of a permanency that has been removed.

Secondly, the greatest achievement of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s reign is probably soft power. My noble friend Lord Alderdice has already mentioned her tremendous achievement in Ireland by making the settlement work there. I hope it is also worthwhile for me to join those who have commented on the Commonwealth. When an empire becomes a commonwealth, it is a considerable achievement. Empires do not usually come about because a nation has been invited to rule people; there are usually marching feet and weapons involved. The fact that we have transformed the Empire into the Commonwealth, and that it has grown and prospered, is a magnificent achievement. The fact that it was achieved by people who were not involved in that Empire is remarkable. This was all done under the leadership of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. It will probably be regarded as her greatest achievement: the United Kingdom’s soft power, its projection and its cultural values have become things that we will all remember.

There is also the personal touch. As has already been mentioned, the Queen was “the Queen”; there was no other worldwide. The best example of that that I can find is from many years ago. I went through a friend’s record collection and found a BB King album on which he talks about meeting the Queen and giving her advice about what you do when you have too many parties to go to. I feel that the advice could probably have been going the other way. Nevertheless, everybody knew who the Queen was, and His Majesty King Charles III has a great opportunity and burden to carry on that work. I wish him every success.

Prisons: Releasing Women into Safe and Secure Housing

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I absolutely agree with that point. I have said from this Dispatch Box, on a number of areas, that data is absolutely critical. We need to ensure that we are looking at the same thing. I set out the legal definition of homelessness, and we publish statistics on this. I am pleased to say that there has been an improvement in the figures recently. The percentage of prison leavers recorded as either homeless or rough sleeping has fallen from 16% to 12%. We want to make that even better.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, Friday releases from prison, in particular, are hugely problematic. This is particularly the case for geographically dispersed women’s prisons, because women cannot travel home in time to make a housing application with their local authority before the office closes. Are the Government aware of this specific problem, and can they offer any solutions as to what can be done to overcome it?

Hillsborough: Collapse of Trials

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, in cases like this, it is important to distinguish between the institutional response—which in many cases was either lacking or appalling—and the individual response of individual police officers, emergency service workers and others who went out of their way to assist in the most distressing of circumstances.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, what have the Government learned about the process of justice and public confidence in law, when a trial can collapse one day and a defence counsel stands in the street outside the court and maintains unequivocally that this proves that there has not been a cover-up, yet almost the next day the police admit such cover-ups and compensation is duly paid?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, as Prime Minister David Cameron said when he made the apology in the other place, the families

“suffered a double injustice: the injustice of the … events”

themselves,

“the failure of the state to protect”

them

“and the indefensible wait to get to the truth;”

and also the offence of

“the denigration of the deceased.”—[Official Report, Commons, 12/9/12; cols. 285-86.]

When I was at the Bar, it was generally regarded as unwise or sometimes improper to comment publicly about your cases. I certainly commend that approach to anybody who says anything about the acts of the Liverpool fans. The Sun itself had to provide a full apology. It well behoves everybody else to read the Bishop Jones inquiry if they want to find out what the truth actually is.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, especially given the kindness I have already met in this House since being introduced in February. I wish to express my gratitude to all sides of the House for the welcome I have received and particularly to the staff, who have assisted and advised me, sometimes on the same issue more than once. This coming Saturday I will be speaking in Stuttgart before thousands of people along with Kofi Annan and the German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. At least today I can address this House in English.

I find myself in something of a quandary, as one who has lived in many parts of England but ended up in Yorkshire. In fact, coming to Bradford as the bishop in 2011 was something of a return journey. I studied German and French at the University of Bradford in the late 1970s before retraining as a professional Russian linguist at GCHQ in Cheltenham, an experience that shaped me, not least in relation to an understanding of security-related matters such as military intelligence and the ethics of surveillance. Not only did the journey take me from intelligence—though not take intelligence from me, I hope—to theology, but also from a West Yorkshire industrial city that was beginning to decline, not only in wealth and productivity but also in morale and confidence. Radical demographic change also led in those days to substantial social challenge, as facts on the ground outstripped the creative ability to shape the post-industrial future.

When I returned to Bradford in 2011, having served in the Lake District, Leicestershire and south London, latterly as the Bishop of Croydon, I found a very different place. Yet it was evident that the seeds of a determined vision for future development were there in the creative energy of some of the key players in business, the council, faith communities and the social sectors. As well as the real and continuing challenges it faces, Bradford today is a place of growing confidence and well-founded optimism. Why am I talking about Bradford when I am now the Bishop of Leeds? It is for two reasons: first, because the Church of England has done something remarkable in Yorkshire, and secondly, because Bradford will be one of the touchstones of success or failure as regards the Government’s much-vaunted aspirations for a northern powerhouse. I always thought the real northern powerhouse was Liverpool Football Club, but because of what we have seen at the end of this season, I will not mention it.

Four years ago the Church of England, not widely known for its cheerful and adventurous willingness to change itself, began a unique process of reorganisation. The dioceses of Bradford, Ripon and Leeds, and Wakefield, which were all created in the late 19th or early 20th century to enable the church to adapt to changed demographic and industrial realities, faced dissolution and the creation from them of a single new diocese for the region. A three-year process of debate led to a visionary agreement to do just that, and the Diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales came to birth at Easter 2014. I became the diocesan bishop just a year ago this week. The diocese covers a vast rural area of West Yorkshire and parts of North Yorkshire, and the urban conurbations of Bradford, Leeds, Wakefield, Huddersfield, Halifax, Barnsley and everything in between. Now organised into five episcopal areas, we can maximise the potential for serving the region—which has an economy greater than that of Wales—while optimising our attention to the distinctive local realities of local communities. Challenging? Yes. Exciting? Definitely. I am privileged to be leading a diocese that encompasses so many of the lived realities that need to be represented in this House as the details and implications of government policies are debated and scrutinised.

The relevant point here is that the future needs to be shaped by those who have both vision and commitment. The complaint that the world has changed is usually the recourse of those who mourn a version of the past that probably never existed anyway. One of the lessons we have learnt in West Yorkshire through the often painful processes of reorganisation and institutional change is the need to focus on the big picture as well as the detail, never losing sight of the vision that drives us.

This has wider application. In response to the gracious Speech last week, I heard in this House several speakers refer to the need for reform of this House. Yet this occurred in the context of the potential or threat, depending on how you see it, of wider constitutional change. The role of the United Kingdom in Europe cannot be divorced from questions about the possible fragmentation of the United Kingdom itself. My fear is that bits of reactive slicing here and picking there will lead to a frustrating and unworkable sequence of partial reordering that loses sight of any common purpose or overarching vision. In this context, I shall simply observe that calls for a constitutional convention have the obvious virtue of bringing together a wide range of otherwise potentially atomistic concerns that should be considered together, taking cognisance of the fact that they interrelate anyway and will have inevitable consequences that would best be anticipated and debated rather than faced ad hoc and merely reacted to.

On questions of our place in Europe, I shall hope to return in future debates in this House. I lived briefly in both Germany and France, and I co-chair a commission that brings together the protestant church in Germany and the Church of England—the Meissen Commission. I am concerned not only with institutional national engagement with Europe but also with how we develop a new narrative for Europe that captures the imagination of my own children’s generation in a way that the narrative derived from the mid-20th century response to war no longer does. I could say more, illustrated particularly by a debate that I had with Herman Van Rompuy in Brussels a couple of years ago, but I shall leave that to another day.

I said that there was a second reason why I mentioned Bradford—the northern powerhouse. Just under a year ago, I moved from Bradford to Leeds, about 10 miles, and I now live in a different world. Leeds is well connected and thriving in many areas, and key to this development over the past 40 years has been transport. Not only does the motorway system make Leeds quickly accessible from so many parts of the country but its rail links open it up to wide opportunities. Any concept of a northern powerhouse has to concentrate less on north-south links and focus more on building expandable infrastructure from west to east. Talk of the northern powerhouse usually includes reference to Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool, and understandably so, but unless cities such as Bradford are connected—and you cannot currently go by one train across Bradford, because there are two stations and they are not joined up—they will get left behind. The burgeoning of Britain’s youngest city, in terms of the age profile of its population, with its cultural, gastronomic—and I mean curry—tourist and commercial riches must not be wasted by planning that compromises longer-term development by shorter-term limitations.

I spent eight years on the board of an international insurance group, from 2002 to 2010, and learnt a good deal about business, finance, organisational change and the shaping of business to serve not just profit but those whom profit is there to benefit. At the end of all deliberations, be they political, economic, cultural or financial, are the people who make or break our societies. By serving in this House, I hope to have the adventure and humility to learn. I also have a responsibility to represent here the lived experience of people in the communities served by the church in West Yorkshire and the Dales. This includes those of wealth creation, business and enterprise, the rural economy and industry, but it also includes those who, whatever my own thoughts about the rightness or wrongness of particular policies, suffer the consequences of poverty, need and hopelessness. There is a verse in the Old Testament Book of Proverbs that stood as an indictment of much of the Christian church in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. It says:

“Open your mouth for the dumb”—

in other words, give a voice to the experience of those who otherwise are silenced. This is why the Lords spiritual are here, rooted in communities across the whole of our country, networked internationally, informed, often inconveniently and compelled to tell the truth as they see it. I hope to fulfil this vocation with the humility and confidence that it surely demands.

All the work of this House and the established church is done in the glare of media scrutiny, and rightly so. Intelligent and healthy media are vital to a living democracy. As someone very engaged with the media, I remember the caution expressed by a former Bishop of Durham. Once when feeling depressed and misrepresented by the media he had lunch with a rabbi, who told him the story of the bishop and the rabbi sailing on a lake in a park. The rabbi’s skull cap blew off and floated away on the water, and the bishop instantly stood up, got out of the boat and walked on the water to retrieve it. He got back into the boat and handed it back to the rabbi. Next morning’s headline read, “Bishop can’t swim”. We need to keep things in perspective.