Casey Report

Debate between Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and Lord Bishop of Winchester

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right about the value of Dame Louise Casey’s report. Anybody who knows Dame Louise at all will know how robust she is, and she has said some very valuable things that the Government will go away and consider. As I indicated in repeating the Statement, the report has taken 18 months to put together. Dame Louise conducted more than 800 meetings and considered more than 200 pieces of written evidence. So it is right that we go away and take lessons from all that. The noble Lord referred to hate crime, which of course was touched upon on Friday in a very valuable debate about core British values initiated by the most reverend Primate, which also has great relevance to Dame Louise’s report. It is certainly true that hate crime is not limited to one particular community. As the noble Lord rightly said, it exists across the board. The only thing I would say is that any hate crime is a crime against all of us. That is the important lesson to take away.

[The Lord Bishop of Winchester]

My Lords, this review is very welcome for its frank and open-eyed survey of the social realities of our country. The Church of England is present and engaged in communities everywhere in the country. The importance of the work of schools, including faith schools, features largely in the review. I welcome the thrust of its approach and recommendations in relation to schools. We believe in British values, along the lines of the rich understanding of values explored in this Chamber last Friday. We will seek to respond to the review’s legitimate challenges to faith leaders.

The review does not attach great value to programmes and initiatives that have been undertaken so far. Does the Minister agree that Near Neighbours and similar programmes involving multifaith communities, which the Government have supported in practical ways, offer at least a starting point for developing more of that social mixing, and mutual understanding and acceptance, that the review tells us is vital?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for his general welcome of the report. He acknowledged the role of last week’s debate on core British and universal values in helping us respond to some of the challenges that exist. Through him, I also thank the Church of England for the part it plays in helping with the Syrian refugee programme and acknowledge the important place that faith schools have to play in relation to education. I visited a faith school last week—a Muslim faith school, as it happened. It was excellent. It had very high standards and was teaching British values. It is not exclusively Muslim, so there are other pupils at the school. It is the Al-Khoei school in west London. So there is a role for that, too. The right reverend Prelate is right about the importance of our existing programmes—both on the English language, which is acknowledged by Dame Louise, and the Near Neighbours programme, which I have seen at close hand and which contributes very effectively to the work of integration.