John Slinger

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) on securing this important debate. I also put on record my disappointment that there is only one Conservative, the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), present, although I look forward to his views because I respect his opinions. To keep our bodies healthy, we take care of ourselves. We eat the right food, we take exercise and we avoid unnecessary dangers. We maintain our homes and our roads, and our farmers nurture the soil and tend the crops. I will argue that this applies to democracy, too. Democracy is a living process. Without nourishment it will decline in efficacy, and it will decay. The International Day of Democracy is an important reminder to us all, at home and abroad, that democracy is not a given. There is no inexorable, divinely ordained path towards it. It is a precious, fragile, vulnerable thing, and it needs nurturing and protecting by every one of us and by every organisation and institution of our country. On the International Day of Democracy, and because I am an ardent internationalist, I heed the words of the UN Secretary-General, who said that he admires, “the courage of people everywhere who are shaping their societies through dialogue, participation and trust. At a time when democracy and the rule of law are under assault from disinformation, division and shrinking civic space”. Democracy is about respecting the political process. It is about respecting the rules, and acknowledging that it is the rules that protect democracy from the forces that would undermine it from within. At a fundamental level, democracy requires us all to accept that we both should and will resolve our differences through respectful debate, free and fair elections, and peaceful and law-abiding protest if necessary, and never, ever—under any circumstances—through violence. Violence has no place in a democratic system. Let us not kid ourselves, and let us not allow Orwellian doublethink to drag us into a post-truth reality peddled increasingly by the powerful on social media. Britain is not a crime-ridden dystopia teetering on the edge of anarchy, as some would have us believe. In fact, violent crime in London has dropped by 13%. Britain is not a nation that suppresses free speech or free assembly, as Saturday’s march so obviously indicates. We are not a country whose elites prevent new parties from forming to represent the people—just ask the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage). Words are at their most potent when used in political debate, and those who hold positions of influence must be more careful than most in how they wield them.