L

Lord Roe of West Wickham (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 16 March 2026

Debate

Social Cohesion Action Plan

Contribution

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for the Statement. I strongly support this action plan. Like my noble friend Lord Harris, I say this in the context of having spent decades on the front line of where cohesion fails. Very few people in this House have had to pick up the bodies at the endpoint of failure, where cohesion has fractured and where enmity has played out on our streets. I have seen that in my career as a soldier and as a firefighter in the most terrible way. I would like to see non-partisan politics in this space because, regardless of which Government have brought this plan forward, we should all support it. We should all support it with the way we use our language because not doing so—with an increasingly divided politics—ends in a most terrible way. How will we measure early the impact and effectiveness of this plan? If we do not, I am afraid that the first we will know of its ineffectiveness is when the most terrible things play out.

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