Music Festivals: Hate Speech

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I think that that is an eminently sensible suggestion. The BBC is independent of government. My right honourable friend the Culture Secretary has spoken and will continue to speak to the BBC. There needs to be a revision of the guidance and a review of what has happened in this incident, but I think that it is a sensible and obvious suggestion.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I draw the Minister’s attention, and indeed that of the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, to the article by Hugo Rifkind in the Times yesterday. Hugo Rifkind actually spent five days at Glastonbury and, right at the end of the article, he points out that he is a Jew. But he points out that Glastonbury was not a hate fest; it was an amazing broadcasting achievement by a public service broadcaster to cover one of the most successful popular music events in the world. We should not simply be going after the director-general’s head. I remind the Front Bench opposite that one of the most disastrous decisions of the Blair Government was to instigate the loss of Greg Dyke as director-general of the BBC over the dodgy dossier. It is very easy for the pack to go after the director-general, but the important issue here, as has just been said, is how we get the benefit of live broadcasting without the perils of second-rate artists causing trouble to get the headlines.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I say to the noble Lord that Glastonbury is a splendid, multicultural festival, celebrating the best in British and international music, and is a showcase. He will know that the organisers of Glastonbury and Emily Eavis, who is now the main organiser, on behalf of her father who founded the festival, have also issued a statement condemning the comments that were made by the individual and are now being investigated by Avon and Somerset Police. So, we can have a good festival, but we can still have within it an appalling potential act which needs to be investigated. I still think, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Culture still thinks, that it is important that we ask serious questions of the BBC about how it managed that incident when it was clear that it would potentially lead to the type of incident that the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, has raised in the House today.

King’s Speech

Lord McNally Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I give congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, on his maiden speech, and to what is now a very formidable Front Bench, with the noble Lords, Lord Timpson, Lord Hanson and Lord Ponsonby, answering on these issues.

The noble Lord, Lord Timpson, has the great advantage of being appointed by a Prime Minister who himself has a deep knowledge and experience of the working of the criminal justice system, so I am sure that his appointment is not some window-dressing but a commitment from the very top to give priority to prison reform. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, was quite right: any reforming Prisons Minister must have the clear and unequivocal support of No. 10 if he is to make progress. Believe me: there will be other voices whispering in the ear of the Prime Minister about what damage this rampant liberalism is doing in constituency X or constituency Y, so make sure that your lines to No. 10 are good, open and constant.

Along with expressing general good will to the Ministers, I will use my short time to make three short points. First, my noble friend Lady Burt and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, among others, have talked about violence against women. It would be worth the Minister asking his colleague Jess Phillips MP to look at the recommendations of the Corston report. It is nearly 20 years since our colleague Jean Corston suggested that the problems that have led to women offending are more likely to be resolved through casework, support and treatment than by imprisonment. Is it not time to revisit the Corston recommendations and update them as a basis for a concerted programme to reduce the number of women in prison? This could go hand in hand with the promises of action against an upsurge in violence against women.

Secondly, the Minister could look at the success of the Youth Justice Board and its holistic, interdisciplinary approach to youth offending. He could bring in the chair of the YJB, Keith Fraser, and his predecessor, Charlie Taylor, now His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, to see how the best practices of the youth justice services can be developed and expanded.

Thirdly, when the Minister meets the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, he should ask his advice on dealing with those imprisoned for public protection. I was the Minister in the Lords who thought that I had abolished IPP sentences. It still puzzles me that we have not been able to find an equitable formula to deal with those trapped in the system. As has been said many times, it remains a stain on our penal system and breaking this logjam must be a major priority for the Minister.

I wish the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, a long and successful term of office. Prison reform is not a task for an ever-changing whirligig of short-service Prison Ministers. It can be a bed of nails, with an often hostile press pillorying even the most sensible reforms as being soft on crime. He has already experienced hearing the truths he has spoken

“Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools”.


My word of encouragement to him is that the good will he has now has a momentum that he should seize. It will not last for ever, but it will, in this House, be strong in what he is trying to do. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, slightly stole my thunder by quoting Winston Churchill’s memoirs, but it was that great Liberal Home Secretary, Churchill, who said that one can judge a society by how it treats its prisoners. That is still something worth keeping in mind.