Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that very thoughtful reply. I am very sorry to hear about the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson. We all hope we will see her again soon. We will be continuing this debate in a range of other contexts over the next year—on the Representation of the People Bill and in many more discussions about online safety, and so on. We have not agreed how to resolve the problem of public trust, but I think we do all now accept that we have a serious problem of public trust, which will be tested, as the noble Lord, Lord Walney, was suggesting, as we go through the economic disruption of AI and other factors. We well know how, in periods of economic disruption, democracy is challenged, so we will continue to have some real problems. We could perhaps have spent a little more time on the question of local community and the loss of the sense of localness. I thought the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester’s speech was extremely interesting in that respect. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, who suggested that we used to have a concentrated media scene, that we had local media. The first time I fought a parliamentary campaign in Huddersfield, the Huddersfield Daily Examiner was the thing which everyone read to keep in touch with local politics. We have lost a lot of the network of local media, as we have lost the network of nonconformist churches and others which held local communities together. Moving to the virtual online world is part of what has torn our society, to some extent, apart. I would love to have taken further the role of think tanks and foreign Governments. I spent 12 years at Chatham House in the last period of the Cold War. We had delicate relations with the Soviet Union and others, and the Sunday Times attacked us for having a relationship with think tanks in Moscow. Certainly, there are delicate roads one has to tread, and it is very easy to fall off on one side or the other. I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hannan—as always. He is one of the most wonderful pamphleteers I have ever come across. He can make a plausible argument about almost any subject you wish. We have not discussed money enough—not just state money but private money. Among the threats to democracy are extremes of wealth and poverty. What we see going on in the United States at present is how extremes of wealth pouring through American politics are biasing what would otherwise be a free flow. The noble Lord quoted John Stuart Mill, who said that truth always beats falsehood in a free and fair fight. Extremes of money prevent a free and fair fight, so I will end by quoting Francis Bacon to the noble Lord: “Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread”. I would add that money, when put together in piles that are too large, begins to stink. Let us continue this argument. I look forward to the many arguments, on Bills and other things, that we will have over the next year—before I retire from this place—discussing how we maintain the quality of our democracy and do our best to ensure, through education and everything else, that not only do we have good chaps in the elites but, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, suggested, we help to build more good chaps among the public as well.