Lord Mitchell
Member of the House of Lords · Labour · United Kingdom
“In those days, no one quite understood the long-term dangers of radiation, and protection was rudimentary. For him, it was fatal. In 1998, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, which he knew was terminal. He told me, in his usual blunt way, “I know how this story ends and it is not pretty.”
“My Lords, on 9 October 2000, my parents-in-law, Jack and Ruth Lowy, committed joint suicide. He was dying and she had decided to accompany him on this last journey. Jack was born in Bratislava in what was then Czechoslovakia. The family were Jewish and following the events in Munich in 1938, they fled to Philadelphia.”
“My wife in particular sensed that they would carry out their wishes. After all, they were both intelligent people who had carefully thought this through. There was no one to support Jack and no one on hand to help Ruth in what must have been hell for her.”
“I cannot be certain about my mother-in-law’s motivation to join him, but they both knew that his own suicide at home could well run the risk of her being charged with committing a crime as an accomplice. What I do know is that had this Bill been law, she probably would have chosen life.”
“I always felt that the issue of antisemitism on campus did not emanate solely from the students. It also came from the laissez-faire attitude of the faculty.”
“We kept the brief tight, with no references to the Middle East; we judged that there was nothing we could do or say that could make any difference. Where we could definitely make a difference was through reference to our common UK experiences and our heritage. I think we made progress.”
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“My Lords, it is of course far fetched to refer to unpaid interns as slaves. They are not owned by anyone, they are tied to no master and they do what they do through personal choice—and they can quit whenever they choose. But in one respect unpaid interns have a comparison with modern slavery: they receive no payment for their labours. It is a practice that is immoral and needs to be stopped—and it is our duty to stop it. That is why, just like other noble Lords, I am immensely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, for securing this Second Reading. I wish him godspeed in progressing this Bill through Parliament. I also congratulate him on his magnificent speech. My interests, which I declare, are pretty pertinent to this debate. I speak with some experience. I chair a graduate recruitment company called Instant Impact Ltd.”
“One way would be for NHS records to be anonymised and then licensed rather than sold outright, as is common with much intellectual property. I also believe that the NHS should have equity participation in the profits generated by the application of this information. After all, to use the vernacular of venture capital, it, too, has skin in the game. As today’s debate has shown, there are fundamental questions that need to be answered. I have posed three. First, what protection will we have to stop companies such as Apple storing private data without our express permission? Secondly, will the UK support the French President in his quest for an equalisation tax aimed at big tech? Finally, how can we protect key strategic data, such as digital health, from being acquired without our permission by the likes of Google?”
“However, patients have not consented to their personal data being used in this way. Ms Elizabeth Denham, the Information Commissioner, has said that the Royal Free should have been more transparent and that DeepMind failed to comply with the existing Data Protection Act, but the issue is much graver than not complying with the Act. I do not know this for sure, but if I had to bet on who negotiated the better deal, Google or the Royal Free, I know where my money would be. DeepMind will make a fortune. I put this to the Minister: does he agree that NHS patient data are a massive national asset that should be protected? Does he agree that this mass of patient data should not be sold outright in an uncontrolled form to third parties? I know the NHS is strapped for cash, but there are many better ways of maximising returns.”
“The NHS has been in existence since 1948 and in those 70 years the data of tens of millions of patients have been amassed. They are called longitudinal data, and they are a treasure trove. Such data can be instrumental in developing drugs and advanced medical treatment. Few other countries have aggregated such comprehensive health data. It puts us in pole position. However, in 2016 Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust sold its rights to its data to a company called DeepMind, a subsidiary of—yes, noble Lords have guessed it—Google. The records of 1.6 million people were handed over. In June this year, Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust signed a similar deal with DeepMind. The data are being used to create a healthcare app called Streams, an alert, diagnosis and detection system for acute kidney injury, and who can object to that?”
“Perhaps they do no evil, but neither are they the model citizens they say they are. So full marks to EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager for bringing Apple, Google and Amazon to task, and full marks to President Macron for his efforts to set up an EU-wide equalisation tax to ensure that corporation tax is based on revenue, not creative accounting. I know that this is a DCMS Bill and international taxation is outside the Minister’s brief, but I have heard the Prime Minister criticise these tax dodges by big tech so I ask him or his colleagues in the Treasury: will the Government support the French President in this campaign? I now turn to another area which is giving me great concern, which is digital health and health information in general. One of the great treasures we have in this country concerns our population’s health records.”
“I have long campaigned against the cavalier approach of big tech companies in all aspects of business and personal life. These include Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and, of course, Apple. I was going to make some quip about the west-coast climate and the breezes of the west coast, but I guess with the news of the past two days that is probably not a good thing to be doing. Big tech companies have become mega-libertarians, positioning themselves above Governments and other regulators. They say they are good citizens and abide by the law. They have corporate mantras which say, “Do no evil”, but they stash away hundreds of billions of stateless, untaxed dollars. They promote end-to-end encryption. They are disingenuous when foreign Governments try to influence democratic elections.”
“It does not take much imagination to work out how somebody could get access to a close member of your family and find out where they have been for the past month, without their permission to do it. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who spoke about Apple and its terms and conditions. She said that they were longer than “Hamlet”. I read that the iTunes terms and conditions were longer than “Macbeth”. Well, “Macbeth” or “Hamlet”, whatever it is, it is an awful lot of words. Of course, you have no opportunity to change those terms and conditions. You either agree or disagree. If you disagree, you cannot use the phone. So what choice do you have? I see this as typical big tech behaviour. These companies run the world according to their rules, not ours.”
“If you are a little behind the times and do not have iOS 11, it is called Frequent Locations. You will probably be asked for a password. Then you will see History and a list of locations. Click on any one of them. Your Lordships will be staggered by what is revealed: every single location that you have visited in the past month—when you arrived, when you left, how long you stayed—all this very private and confidential information is starkly displayed. Who gave Apple permission to store this information about me on my iPhone? It is the default setting, but Apple never asked me. It will argue, of course, that it is private information and it has no access to it—maybe. If you think about it, the opportunities for snooping on people very close to you are endless and dangerous. Now the latest iPhone, the iPhone 8, has facial recognition.”
“Today I am going to raise three issues, which I would like the Minister to respond to. They all centre on the dominant and predatory behaviour of the American big tech giants. I will give your Lordships a striking example of such behaviour from one of them: Apple. In an ideal world, I would like every Member here who has an iPhone to take it out and turn it on, but that probably contravenes the Standing Orders of your Lordships’ House. So I will do the next best thing: I will set out five iPhone directions and, in the cool of the evening, when noble Lords have Hansard in front of them, they can replicate what I am now going to demonstrate. Click on Settings, then Privacy, then Location Services. Then scroll all the way down until you see System Services, and then scroll halfway down and click on something called Significant Locations.”
“My Lords, the Data Protection Act was introduced in 1998. In those days, Facebook, Google and Uber did not exist, Amazon was barely four years old, Apple was tottering under the imminent threat of bankruptcy, search engines were rudimentary, as was the internet itself, and it would be another nine years until the iPhone would be launched. It was, indeed, a very different world. While I welcome the Bill, it remains a fact that when it becomes an Act next year it will be 20 years since its predecessor was enacted. Information and digital technology are growing exponentially. No other industry in the history of the world has even come close to this rate of growth. Legislation needs to match and anticipate the speed of these developments. Certainly, we cannot wait until 2037 for the next Data Protection Act.”
“My Lords, I too support these amendments. At each stage of the Bill in your Lordships’ House, I felt terribly frustrated by the Government’s lack of ambition. I said in Committee and on Second Reading that the gigabyte should be king. According to something I read a couple of days ago, in 10 years’ time 50 billion devices will be connected to the internet worldwide. This country will account for some 8% to 10% of that—4 billion or 5 billion devices. We have to have the gigabyte capability in this country to deal with such massive growth. The Government’s response to something so crucial to our nation’s development is meagre, and I hope they and the Minister will reconsider.”
“Its interest is not in the national interest. Will this Government be bold and will they set their sights on promoting a gigabit economy?”
“It is very clear that worldwide the goal is gigabit connectivity. South Korea, China, the Baltics and Scandinavia are all racing to the top to ensure that their societies are right at the forefront, and so must we. If the Prime Minister wants an industrial strategy that results in a global Britain leading the world, then she and her Government have to set high targets for 21st-century Britain, and nowhere more so than in connectivity. What the Government propose is like having a man with a flag walking in front of a car to ensure that it does not exceed 4 miles per hour. That is why I support Amendment 1—it flies the flag for digital Britain. I plead with the Minister: do not settle for a third-rate target lobbied for by BT. It has its own agenda, which is to milk its obsolete copper infrastructure.”
“My Lords, I support all three amendments on the USO. In my view, anything is better than what we have at present and what the Government are aiming for. In particular, I support Amendment 1 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. Theirs is the most ambitious amendment, and ambition is what we desperately need. I do not think that it is pie in the sky; it really is what we have to go for. In my Second Reading speech, I said that gigabits are the future of connectivity—they are the king—and that megabits are simply history. I stick by that. We cannot have pathetically low connection speeds. As we know, sadly, from its past performance, you can set a target for connectivity as low as you like, and the one thing you can be absolutely certain of is that BT will fail to meet it.”
“Why should it be granted this monopolistic licence to print money? Alternative owners will have a real incentive to improve the service. Fixed and mobile connectivity are converging. The route may be different, but they are joining up: data are data. BT is rapidly taking on all the attributes of the overall monopoly supplier: all internet connectivity. If you aggregate its stranglehold in broadband, add its ownership of EE in mobile and then factor in its future 42% ownership of the 5G spectrum, it is overwhelming. We have a massive monopoly in the making. Separating Openreach will certainly clip BT’s wings and improve broadband connectivity.”
“My Lords, I will address Amendment 20. The separation of Openreach from BT is fundamental to the success of Britain being a leader in the digital economy in the 21st century. It is unanswerable that BT has been given a monopoly in fixed broadband connectivity. It displays classic monopoly behaviour: it controls the distribution, sets the prices and dictates the terms to its competitors. It has no incentive to improve the quality of its service—just the minimum. I would not be so vehement on this issue if BT was supplying a brilliant service, or even if it gave us believable market facts. Its broadband coverage is awful and it successfully lobbies to persuade Ministers and others that it is meeting its targets; it is not. It is undeserving of any government support, particularly in its ownership of Openreach.”
“I am sure the Minister will divert my questions, but will he at least concede that BT in its digital activities is displaying monopolistic behaviour—a monopoly acting against the public interest? We are poised for spectacular growth. We are not starting from the beginning. We have done very well in digital. However, our success could slip in the proverbial nanosecond if the gigabit infrastructure is not in place. We cannot allow that to happen.”
“It could have diverted much more funding into digital, but it chose instead to set up BT Sport. Speak to friends about BT’s services. Speak to MPs and hear what they say their constituents and small businesses say. It is awful. BT is holding us by the throat. Its performance is dismal. That has profound consequences for us all. It displays all the attributes of a predatory monopoly. My question to the Minister is: will the Government encourage the Competition and Markets Authority to pursue BT for anti-trust and monopolistic behaviour? Secondly, will the Government and Ofcom force BT to sell Openreach so that it can make its own way without BT holding it back?”
“However, there is one company which on its own is restricting our digital growth and holding us back, and that is BT. The way things are going, BT will soon control a very high percentage of the access to things digital in our country, both broadband and mobile. Broadband provided on its ancient, dilapidated copper cables seems to be its solution to our short-term problems. “Sweat the assets” is its mantra, then delay and obfuscate. In the mobile sector, it has purchased EE. In the 5G spectrum, it will end up with over 40% of this key mobile technology. When you group broadband and mobile together, you see the giant that BT is becoming. To give it a historical slant, it owns the roads and it owns the railway lines. It is demolishing the competition. Its level of investment is low and that is why our connectivity is equally low.”
“It is a rosy position and, as I say, no country in Europe comes close, but we have to stay ahead of a very fast-moving game. That is my plea for today. The usage of internet connectivity is not a gradual process; it is exponential. Billions are being invested in new technologies, which are going to require huge data capabilities. Driverless cars will happen. When Google, Amazon, Apple, BMW and the Japanese car companies are investing tens of billions of pounds in this area, it cannot fail. A grid of driverless cars and lorries will require undreamt of levels of mobile data connectivity. So too will the internet of things, which is just in its infancy but about to become ubiquitous. Without ultrafast connectivity it does not work.”
“Then, throw in the close proximity of Oxford, Cambridge and King’s College, and it can be seen that London is a scientific and intellectual powerhouse. Then, look at where London is also a world leader—music, fashion, media, sport, theatre and, of course, banking, insurance and financial services. These are the ingredients in the cocktail that makes London such a digital leader. This bringing together of science and the financial and creative industries is critical to London’s growth, particularly in the world of smartphone apps. Medicine is a good example. We have the universities, but we also have the Wellcome Foundation and the newly opened Crick Institute. MedCity has been created to commercially exploit the exploding world of digital health.”
“In usage, we are the world’s leader in online shopping, with a spend of £1 billion a week, and 35 million of us log on every day. Dare I say that 5 million of us use online dating agencies, although I point out that that does not include me? Who books travel except online? We are a tech savvy country and this is a huge success story. London has become a digital exemplar to the world. Today, it sits there right at the top, behind Silicon Valley, it is true, but certainly on a par with New York. Nowhere in Europe comes close. Why has it occurred? I would say it is because of convergence. Two of the world’s top 10 universities—Imperial and UCL—are based here. Only one other city, Boston, can match that.”
“This is an industry which continues to experience phenomenal growth, and to many people’s surprise we in the UK have done really well. There are some powerful statistics provided by Tech City. The UK digital tech industry is worth £161 billion, of which London contributes £62 billion. Over a four-year period from 2011 to 2015, the digital industry grew 32% faster than the rest of the economy. UK Digital tech employs 1.56 million people, of which London employs 328,000. Jobs are created nearly three times faster here than in the rest of the economy. In London, one in four new jobs are in tech. There are 58,000 digital tech businesses in the UK. Finally, it is worth remembering that 41% of all digital tech jobs are in non-digital industries; it is not all apps and data management.”
“So, my first question to the Minister is: will the Government make such a commitment to encourage the building of a gigabit infrastructure? After all, that is what South Korea, Japan and Finland are doing. We have to think big. Nearly 50 years ago, I joined what was then called the data processing industry. I have seen an industry grow to become the world leader. If nothing else, it has given me a perspective on this industry and what it is set to offer in the future. Five of the biggest companies by value in the world today barely existed 20 years ago. Indeed, three of them—Google, Amazon and Facebook—did not exist at all. Microsoft has been around a little longer, and Apple, in 1996, was close to bankruptcy—now look at it.”
“If we are going to lead in a world of driverless cars, the internet of things, digital health and a host of other data-dependent technologies that require massive connectivity speeds, we need a digital infrastructure that matches our ambitions. I hear Ministers making proud statements that we will achieve 100% coverage in 10 megabit per second speeds by 2020. Do they realise just how embarrassing this is? I hear them talking about a megabit economy, but in the world around us megabits are becoming obsolete. In tomorrow’s brave new digital world, gigabits will be king. That is one thousand times faster. Without a Government commitment to a gigabit infrastructure, we have not got a prayer of meeting our digital objectives.”
“My Lords, the Digital Economy Bill does very little for the digital economy. Of course, it addresses subsidiary issues that certainly need to be changed, but in its key objective to launch the UK into the next phase of the tech and digital economic revolution, it fails. We are entering a new, post-Brexit era in which we are told we will be taking on the world in the exciting challenges that face us. Digital has to be part of that, but what are we offered? A Bill so limp and so pedestrian, so uncoordinated and so patchy and, as many noble Lords have said, so lacking in ambition that it proves the old adage that it you set the bar low enough, you might even achieve it. The digital world is growing fast, very fast; certainly faster than most politicians understand.”
“Today’s Times reports that the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, recently hosted a reception in your Lordships’ House where Jews were blamed for the Holocaust. Even here, in our own House, such things are happening.”
“Stating that Hitler was a Zionist was like a punch to the stomach for every Jew. Why has Corbyn not had him banned for life? I am Jewish, and last month I resigned from the Labour Party. Today most Jews have given up on Labour. They feel alienated by Corbyn and his coterie. They feel that Labour is a cold house. I am often asked whether I think Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite. In truth I do not know, but he certainly surrounds himself with close colleagues who flirt with anti-Semitism. He certainly stood by and smirked when a Jewish MP, Ruth Smeeth, was being verbally abused by a Momentum thug. Israel is a Jewish state, Jews support Israel, therefore Jews must be the enemy. As a Jew and a supporter of the State of Israel, how could I possibly remain in a party whose leadership is so hostile to both?”
“It is more than an unhappy incident to me; it goes to the very core of my political being. The press has had a field day with the report and made legitimate points on the sequence of events. The noble Baroness joined the Labour Party one day, she commenced writing the report shortly afterwards, she received no payment for two months’ work, she received a peerage, she became the shadow Attorney-General and she sits in the shadow Cabinet. You can call it whatever you like, but to me it feels like a massive stitch-up. The report recommended that those found guilty of anti-Semitism be suspended. I would have thought that those found guilty of any racism should be kicked out of the party for life. Ken Livingstone is a case in point. Not for the first time, Livingstone made a comment that he knew would cause maximum distress to Jews.”
“The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee report into anti-Semitism criticised her when she denounced Birmingham University as being, “something of a Zionist outpost”, which the committee said “smacks of outright racism”. Will the Minister comment on that assertion? That committee turned its attention to the Labour Party, which it said had created, “a ‘safe space’ for those with vile attitudes towards Jewish people”, and that its passivity risked, “lending force to allegations that elements of the Labour movement are institutionally anti-Semitic”. That hard-hitting document contrasts starkly with the anaemic report, also on anti-Semitism but restricted to the Labour Party, written by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. Her description of the anti-Semitism that even she said existed within Labour was that it was an unhappy incident.”
“My Lords, I can think of no one better suited than the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, to lead this debate on anti-Semitism. She has a long history of fighting racial intolerance. The noble Baroness and I were trustees of the Coexistence Trust. Our mission was to help heal the toxic atmosphere that existed on our university campuses between Jewish and Muslim students. We made a great deal of progress. What shocked me at the time was the sheer ignorance of university administrators and faculty about the religious requirements of Jews and Muslims. Will the Minister tell me what progress has been made to educate the educators? I have also been shocked by the pronouncements of the president of the NUS, Malia Bouattia.”
“How much could Israel offer to its neighbours were peace to prevail? Recently, it has developed huge reserves of gas and oil in the eastern Mediterranean; no longer are its energy supplies threatened by boycotts. It is also working closely with its neighbours: with Egypt on energy, agriculture and security; with Jordan on science and gas; and with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states on intelligence and, of course, technology. All my life I have prayed and fought for a two-state solution, but today I am more pessimistic than ever. I am not sure that either side is that interested in preparing to do what it takes to change the impasse. It feels like the tide of history is moving in the wrong direction. Making peace seems less and less likely. It is a sad outcome, but it feels inevitable.”
“Israel was a small country, seemingly unable to defend itself and surrounded by hostile countries baying for its destruction. But, due to Peres’s efforts, they were thwarted. He was instrumental in building Israel into a military powerhouse—a military builder, but also the man who founded the world-renowned Peres Peace Institute. Israel today is not threatened by any nation. It has signed long-lasting peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. Syria—its most hostile enemy—and Iraq are in total chaos, and Iran’s nuclear threat has been neutralised. The only dangers come from Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel is a world leader in agriculture, technology, medicine and science. Using home-grown desalination techniques, it manufactures all its water needs. The days of the threat of drought have gone.”
“On the map, it is just a dot surrounded by a huge Arab land mass. Why then, at such short notice, did so many of the world’s great and good make the long journey to Jerusalem? Surely it was because Peres was such an indefatigable fighter for peace. He never gave up; no matter how often the peace talks with the Palestinians broke down, he picked himself up and kept fighting for what he believed. As President Obama, quoting Peres, said in his eloquent eulogy: “The Jewish people weren’t born to rule another people”. Sadly, Peres never saw peace happen. He was the architect of modern Israel. After the Second World War, the new state gathered into its parched land the traumatised remnants of the Holocaust. It also welcomed those 700,000 Jews forcibly expelled from Arab lands.”
“This morning, I was shocked and aghast to hear Seamus Milne, one of Jeremy Corbyn’s closest acolytes, saying that, instead of Russia, we should be protesting outside the US Embassy. But what should I really expect? Two weeks ago, as everyone knows, Shimon Peres passed away. At his funeral, 70 countries were represented by their political leaders, including President Obama, President Hollande and the President of Germany. From our own country, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was there with two ex-Prime Ministers, Cameron and Blair. But surely the most significant presence was that of Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority. He was fulsomely welcomed as the leader of his people—he knew just how much Peres had worked for peace. Israel has a population of 8 million people.”
“My Lords, speaking from this Bench as a non-affiliated Peer is a new experience for me. I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for securing this debate. Even as we speak, we are witnessing—200 miles from Israel’s northern border—the total destruction of an ancient Arab city. What we see in Aleppo makes what happened in Sarajevo in the 1990s seem like a children’s picnic. The annihilation of Syria is ghastly and what is happening in Yemen could become just as bad. Russia and the Assad regime are guilty of war crimes, and maybe genocide—just for once, I agree with Boris Johnson when he says that we should protest outside the Russian Embassy. Putin has much to answer for.”
“In much of the UK, junior doctors—indeed, even senior doctors—are treated as objects: cogs in the wheel or items on the spreadsheet to be moved here and there at will. There seems to be little realisation that to get the best out of people you have to encourage them, you have to integrate them as part of the team and, most of all, you have to make them feel valued. It is called leadership. Looking at this junior doctor crisis, there seems to be little of that in evidence in our NHS but it is what we really need.”
“At NYU he earns $60,000—exactly the same amount—but in the United States almost all junior doctors carry student loans in the region of a quarter of a million dollars, and repayment starts immediately. Finally, there are the hours. Last month in New York, he worked 80 hours per week, as he has done every month. He works six days every week, including many weeks on night shift. Even on daytime shifts, he leaves home at 5 am and often gets home at 8 pm. The American junior doctors are the ones with really unsocial working hours. They are the ones who struggle to make ends meet and the ones who should be complaining, but there are no picket lines to be seen on First Avenue and 32nd Street. The question is why? Let me hazard a guess.”
“At Nottingham he was lucky to get two hours per week. As for attitude, at NYU he feels a valued member of the team; in the east Midlands he and all his colleagues felt underappreciated. Most NHS medical staff were disgruntled and demotivated. Of his colleagues in Nottingham, a third either left the profession or went to work abroad. Each one had cost the NHS £300,000 to train but, when they left to go elsewhere, no one noticed, no one took responsibility, there was no exit interview and no one cared. Then there is the pay. In his final year in Nottingham, he earned about £40,000. It is true that his basic pay was £23,000 but, with unsocial hours banding, the pay soon mounted.”
“My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend Lord Turnberg for securing this debate. He is not only my noble friend but a personal friend. Few have committed more to the NHS than him. To the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, I can say, “It’s over. You can relax, and you did really well”. I speak as a parent of a junior doctor who qualified at the University of Nottingham and now is a resident doctor at NYU medical centre in New York. It might be interesting if I were to compare and contrast aspects of the two systems as seen through his eyes. The first aspect is the teaching. At NYU each resident receives around 14 hours of high-powered classroom teaching each week. The regime is free food, phones off, high concentration. Lectures are given by specialist consultants. As he puts it, “Every day I lunch with giants”.”
“Under the terms of the NATO agreement, we all have to come to each other’s defence if one is attacked. If there were an attack on Poland, say, do we join them immediately or do we have a debate in the House of Commons to work out how we are going to respond? I do not like this precedent of Parliament deciding these issues. I believe that the Prime Minister is right, and I am sad to say that I believe that my leader is wrong. If I had a vote, I would support the Government.”
“Each time we back away in pursuit of the elusive quiet life, we store up a much worse fate in future. Today, we face a similar dilemma. Doing nothing is an option, but it is a bad option. You cannot sit down with ISIL, have a cup of tea, a cucumber sandwich and a bit of a chat and reach an accommodation. ISIL members are not men of reason looking for a peaceful solution; they are vile terrorists in a quasi-state who will stop at nothing—no depravity is too great. We indeed crave that quiet life, but they will not grant it to us. I look at my party’s leadership and I despair. Since when has Labour become a party of pacifists? Since when do we run away when confronted by danger? I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, talking about the royal prerogative and I asked myself about NATO.”
“Assad carried on as normal. With Putin’s support, he went through the charade of dismantling some of his chemical weapons but continued using those that remained and then graduated to barrel bombing. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians were killed and many more injured. Thus was created the worst European refugee problem since the Second World War. We in this Parliament could have stopped it or slowed it down but we turned our backs—all for the quiet life. The world saw our weakness and indecisiveness. It saw that we were paper tigers—none more than President Putin. He smelled blood in the water. Were we surprised that, just a few months later, Russia invaded Crimea? Putin knew that we would talk big and do nothing. He and others like him had our measure.”
“My Lords, I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House since the year 2000 and there is not much that I regret about being here—but one thing still weighs heavily on me. It is that I did not speak in the Syria debate in September 2013. To me, that debate was a defining moment, just like the one before us today. “Use chemical weapons against your people”, was the clear statement made by the Prime Minister and the President of the United States, “and we will drastically reduce your capability”. Well, Assad did use them, and we blinked. The then leader of my party, having assured the Prime Minister that he had Labour’s full support, abruptly changed his position and the Government were defeated. Seeing his closest ally bottle out, Obama lost his nerve and the moment passed. Assad had won. What were the consequences?”
“In the area in which I am very involved—the tech sector—SEIS is absolutely crucial. I have noticed that surprisingly few young businesspeople, older businesspeople, advisers, accountants and lawyers are aware of some of these schemes. That surprises me and I advise that the commissioner should have the power to influence the knowledge of these schemes and others that might come throughout the business community. I beg to move.”
“Banks, as we know, tend to be unhelpful and for many businesses payday lending is a short-term option. We simply want the commissioner to advise the small business sector of the potential pitfalls of this type of borrowing. I also want to address the area of EIS—the enterprise investment scheme. I state my interest that I am chairman of a small company, Instant Impact Ltd, which started four years ago with two young men based in Starbucks drinking coffee and it has now expanded to £1 million turnover. It is involved in graduate recruitment. We, too, have just introduced an enterprise investment scheme. There is also the seed enterprise investment scheme, introduced by this Government. Both schemes work pretty well. The Labour Government introduced the EIS but SEIS was introduced by the last Government and it works really well.”
“It really was a change for good. I pay tribute to the FCA for getting on top of this abuse and I read on today’s BBC website that Dollar Financial UK has admitted malpractice and will refund £15.5 million to 147,000 customers. So it really is working. This morning I checked on Wonga’s website and saw that the APR on its loans is 1,500%—scandalous, it is true, but dramatically less than the mere 6,000% it had previously been charging. Today’s amendment in my name is designed to give the commissioner the powers to advise small businesses in respect of payday loans and, by implication, all the short-term, high-interest category of loans. Clearly, many small businesses are often desperate for cash to meet unexpected costs. Many of them are sole traders or employ no more than a handful of people.”
“My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 9 in this group. Yet again I return to the subject of payday lending. Over the past three years, noble Lords have secured some pretty impressive legislative reforms. As a result of amendments to previous Bills, the FCA is now in power to regulate the terms and conditions under which payday loans are made. The rate of interest is now regulated but the most significant change is that, under all circumstances, the total repayment of any loan is restricted to double the value of the loan itself. This is a real result, since those charming people in the payday lending industry had been adept in slipping in all sorts of unexpected and sneaky charges. It is interesting that the perils that the payday lending companies themselves and their lobbyists forecast failed to materialise.”
“We feel that the commissioner should have the responsibility for publicising the EIS. With that, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 8.”
“My Lords, I thank the Minister and all those who have taken part in this short debate. On the subject of payday lending, although I have worked very hard on this, never have the words passed my lips that I wanted to abolish or abandon it; it just needed to be regulated. Indeed, were it to disappear, somebody else would step into its place—people we really do not want to know about. It was never our objective to do that. On the EIS and similar schemes, we also received confirmation that the Institute of Directors was supportive of the points we have been making that these need a lot more publicity. We have not really addressed that but the IoD is very keen that more people know about them. When we are here discussing these issues, we automatically assume that the world knows. It does not. It tends to be a long way behind the curve.”