Conduct of Debate in Public Life

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Harris on organising this debate and on his outstanding introduction to the issues. What made me decide to speak was the fact that I had had a pretty rough time on the doorstep in the local elections running up to 2 May. I have done a lot of this in my life, for getting on for 55 years. I know what the voters are like; some people slam the door in your face and others say, “Oh, you’re all the same. You’re only in it for yourselves”. But I sensed that there was a much more aggressive tone towards politicians in this set of elections than I had ever seen before—and Wigton has such a nice local community.

I think that it is a direct consequence of the 2016 referendum. People feel that they were offered a clear choice: in or out. They just cannot understand why “out” has not happened, given that they voted for it. What the bitterness on the doorstep brought home to me was the great risk involved in going down this road of direct democracy, offering people simple choices when issues are becoming ever more complex as time goes on. Part of the answer to these problems is to restore faith in representative democracy, and I will make four points about how we try to do that.

The first point is one with which I know a lot of colleagues on my side of the House will not agree, but it is a view that I have held for a long time: namely, that if we had electoral reform and a system of proportional representation, it would lead to a wider representation of views in Parliament. I cannot stand Nigel Farage’s views, but he represents a sufficient group of people for his party to be in Parliament. The main political parties have ceased to be effective vehicles for representing a much more fragmented nation. That is true of the Conservative Party, which is bitterly split between nationalist populists and the traditional one-nation and pro-business Conservatives. It is arguably true of the Labour Party as well. So I favour electoral reform, which would bring a wider range of views into Parliament and force on our political system a culture of compromise. That is what the post-war Federal Republic of Germany is so good at. When we see the shouting match of Prime Minister’s Questions, the contrast with the political culture of the Federal Republic could not be greater.

Secondly, we have to foster more political education and debate in society. That should start in schools. I am very keen on Gordon Brown’s ideas for citizens’ assemblies, which have been shown to work in getting people to understand some of the complexities that we face. The way in which the Irish handled their second referendum on the Lisbon treaty in 2009 was a model of how to involve people in a proper debate about the issues that is not extreme and polarising.

Thirdly, we need reform of the media, on which I will make two points. First, social media companies have to accept much greater responsibility for rooting out unacceptable language from their platforms. That should become a legal obligation. Secondly, we had a wonderful Speaker’s Lecture from Tony Hall—the noble Lord, Lord Hall of Birkenhead—as director-general of the BBC, in which he spoke about the BBC’s mission to counter fake news and to put news as its top priority. This will not happen unless we stop trying to use the BBC as a social security policy to help over-75 year-olds with the cost of their licence fee and fund it properly to do the job that it should be doing in promoting objectivity and debate. I shall stand up for the BBC. I know that some of my colleagues and closest friends attack the way in which it behaves, but I do not support that.

Fourthly, we have a responsibility to provide political leadership. I am not satisfied that in the Labour Party, for instance, we have taken the necessary steps to deal with anti-Semites. The leadership has not defended Members of Parliament who have come under vicious attack. This is not good enough and it has to change.

Employee Shareholding and Participation in Corporate Governance

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I think some people will find the reason that I put my name down to speak in this debate amusing. I felt that the reaction to the proposals put forward by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell at the Labour conference on these questions was harsh. I thought that the employers’ association made a great mistake in condemning them. It is unusual for me to agree with Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell but I agreed with them on this question. It requires rigorous thinking, however, about how we go forward and the idea of a Lords committee is a very good one.

Workers co-ops can work in some circumstances but they do not work in all of them. I am in favour of employee shareholding but we have to make sure that employees do not build up such a big stake in one company that all their eggs are in one basket if that company gets into trouble. You have to have means of dealing with that. I do not think that proposals for employee shareholding should get mixed up with proposals to increase tax on the corporate sector, which are in the McDonnell plan. We should look again at the Meidner plan, which the Swedes put forward in the 1970s, and think about why they backed off from that and how it could be improved.

As far as workers on the board go, as someone who learned about industrial relations in the Oxford school I was initially very sceptical. There are inevitable conflicts of interests in business, which is why trade unions exist, so we cannot always assume that we would get a unity of purpose between worker representatives and management. But I changed my mind about that in the 1970s and was a great enthusiast for the Bullock report—indeed, my first job as a special adviser in government was to write briefs for Bill Rodgers, now the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, who was on the Cabinet committee deciding what to do about it.

I make two reflections on that. First, as well as putting workers on the board you have to have a bottom-up involvement of workers at all levels of the company. We could have done more in government to build on the European information and consultation directive to ensure that. Secondly, if there are to be trade unionists on the board—and I support that—they should be elected by the workers in the company, not appointed by general secretaries. That is an important principle. When it comes to international companies, we have to look at the experience of European works councils and see how they can be built on and improved.

This is an enormously important subject. I am very sorry that there are not more government Members present in the Chamber today because we have to build a consensus. Just as Keynes reformed capitalism in the 1930s to help it survive, we have to do the same today—and part of that includes serious examination of proposals for employee shareholding and workers on the boards.