Grand Committee
Private Sector Pension Funds
Lord Freeman
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the condition of private sector pension funds.
Lord Freeman (Con)
My Lords, I apologise for my sore throat, which I assure your Lordships will improve with the lubrication of my speech. I declare a historical interest in the subject as the chairman for 20 years—it seemed to go in a flash and has just concluded—of the UK pension fund of a company called Thales, a very large, state-owned French defence and electronics group that is very active in this country.
I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott for stepping in at the last minute for my noble friend Lady Buscombe, who is unavoidably detained. I pay tribute to the contributions of my noble friend Lady Buscombe, particularly over this past year, which has been very busy for her. I hope she will be back at work very quickly. I also thank those noble Lords who are taking the trouble to listen to and participate in this debate, particularly my noble friend Lady Altmann, who probably knows more about pension funds than all of us put together. I understand from her that she intends not only to speak but to maintain her very impressive contribution to your Lordships’ Chamber in the future.
The timing of this debate is fortunate because the Third Reading of the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill—its final stage—is planned for consideration in the Commons on 12 March. This debate is very relevant, perhaps not only to informing what will happen in the other place but, in particular, because it has prompted a number of noble Lords to consider the issue.
My starting point is the Green Paper of February 2017, Security and Sustainability in Defined Benefit Pension Schemes. It seems like yesterday that it was published but it is getting on for just over a year. That has triggered a much wider debate on the whole pensions industry, which has been largely well informed and very timely. About £1.5 trillion is held in defined benefit schemes and the average pension provided is £7,000 per annum. There are about 6,000 defined benefit schemes, with, I estimate, well over 11 million members. As a result of very low interest rates for a great number of years, the liabilities of these schemes have been driven up because of the low rate of return on investments. Inevitably, for defined benefit schemes, the obligations increase automatically. Therefore, there have to be substantial deficit contributions. In January 2017, the aggregate deficit of DB schemes was, I believe, of the order of £200 billion—a staggering sum.
The Pension Protection Fund is there as a modest backstop for default but, as noble Lords can see, it has a very daunting task in protecting those schemes. PricewaterhouseCoopers—I declare an interest as a former partner— have warned recently that the deficit could rise significantly. I understand that the government White Paper is due shortly—this year—to give the Pensions Regulator more power to take over DB schemes at risk. This is a most urgent matter. We await the White Paper and hope that it will steady matters. We hope that the Government can give us, in due course, a better indication of timing, if that is possible and appropriate. We await the White Paper.
I turn to defined contribution schemes—that is, where the pension depends on what is invested by the company sponsors and, of course, the enrolled employees. Royal Mail closed its defined benefits scheme to new members in 2008. Apparently, the Communication Workers Union saw that the old scheme was unsustainable. I understand that Royal Mail awaits secondary legislation to introduce a collective defined contribution scheme where independent trustees decide investment policy. I look forward to a White Paper examining such a proposal, the exact role of the Pensions Regulator and the nature of the closure of future accruals.
Turning to other issues briefly—I do not expect an answer on these from the Minister today—the use of the consumer price index, rather than the retail price index, has been discussed in the industry for better protection for pensioners and pensions. That debate continues, and I hope there will be some conclusions on it. Secondly, I turn to cold calling, which came out of pension freedoms—people’s freedom to release their pension pots. The trustees should shoulder more responsibility in dealing with this. It is one thing to provide the freedom; it is another for sensible decisions to be taken.
Automatic enrolment is excellent. It began in 2012 at 2%—shared equally between the employer and the employee—for defined benefit pension schemes and for employees earning more than £10,000 a year. By 2019, I understand that this will have gone up to 8%: 4% each for the employer and the employee. I welcome this very much.
Another issue is the possible merger of the regulators. The Department for Work and Pensions sponsors the Pensions Regulator, and the Financial Conduct Authority, under the Treasury, controls financial advisers. I wonder whether it would be sensible at some stage—it is not urgent—for those two organisations to be merged together.
Finally, still more regulation is to be enacted. The Financial Guidance and Claims Bill, as your Lordships will know, is in the Commons. I believe that Report and Third Reading will be on 12 March, in just a few days’ time. That will create the pensions financial guidance and advisory body, which combines—as your Lordships will know—the Money Advice Service and the Pensions Advisory Service. I hope it will be open for business soon—certainly this year. If possible, some indication of timing in the Minister’s response would be extremely helpful.
Finally, my future wishes—I think I am allowed those in the remaining minute—include a pensions dashboard so that people can look online at an individual’s pension position and an effective ban on cold calling. I mean effective; I know some members of my own constituency have suffered from cold calling, so I have first-hand experience, although I no longer represent that constituency. Finally, I wish for extra powers for the Pensions Regulator. I look forward very much to my fellow Peers participating in the debate and to the Minister winding up.
Baroness Altmann (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Freeman on securing this debate on an issue that noble Lords probably know I am rather passionate about. I also welcome my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott—it is a pleasure to see her here—and I send my best wishes to my noble friend Lady Buscombe, who is equally doing an excellent job for us.
Pensions in the UK have a specific characteristic. Our system has always been structured as one that offers an exceptionally low state pension. The recent OECD figures showed that the UK state pension, even with the new state pension, was the lowest for average earners in a developed world, with a replacement rate of just 29%. Within our country the system has relied on private pensions to top up what is a rather low state pension. In the EU, by contract, most countries have a much more generous state pension and have relied less on private pensions. So private pensions are crucial to the financial well-being of the UK population in retirement. Indeed, we have had a very successful defined benefits system and we now have the success of auto-enrolment.
Today, I will spend a few minutes, given that it is International Women’s Day, talking about pensions for women. Women have been—and in many ways still are—second-class citizens. There have been a number of studies and there are a number of ways one can express the disadvantages that women face in pensions. For example, Zurich Insurance looked at four years, from 2013 to 2016, and found that men were estimated to receive an annual average pension contribution from their employer of some £3,500 a year, compared with £2,500 a year for women. That suggested that women, on average over their lifetime, would have £47,000 less in employer contributions than an equivalent male. Prudential has published figures that show that, on average, 21% of women are saving nothing for their retirement, compared with just 9% of men. The Centre for Policy Studies looked at women aged 60 to 65, whose pension pots were less than half those of men. So there clearly is an issue.
Women are losing out for many reasons. Obviously there is the gender pay gap. We have made significant progress but typically women earn less than men. They also tend to work in industries with lower employer contributions than men’s, such as the health sector, social work and education, compared with more men in financial services, for example. This is also compounded by career breaks. So women have a triple whammy: smaller salaries, lower contributions and fewer years of working.
The Government are embarking on auto-enrolment to try to ensure that pension coverage is spread much more widely, and this has so far been a tremendous success. However, there are issues that still affect women. Auto-enrolment does not cover the lowest earners, who tend to be women. Even low-earners who are covered unfortunately are losing out in an issue that I feel needs far more attention across the country.
I hope that your Lordships might join us in highlighting this issue and that my noble friend the Minister might look into it on behalf of so many women—and indeed men—who currently earn less than £11,500 and are entitled to basic rate tax relief on their pension contributions of the equivalent to the 25% government bonus, but are being denied it without their knowledge, often because their employer has chosen a scheme that even the employer does not realise has this impact on them. If their pension operates what is called the relief at source administration system, these workers will get the 25% to which they are entitled, but if the pension provider chosen by their employer is administered under a net pay system, they cannot get that money. They have to pay their own pension tax relief. The taxpayer does not pay it, so they are forced to pay 25% more for their pension than they should.
This scandal has been going on for a long time and sadly the Government have failed to address it. I have tabled numerous Written Parliamentary Questions asking what the Government plan to do about it, but I have received no answer. I have asked who would be responsible for the losses that these women are facing, but I have received no answer. It seems that they are falling through the cracks.
At the moment, the answer that I typically receive is that it is not a lot of money, but we are about to quadruple contributions under auto-enrolment by next March, and the amount of money that these women, and low earners in general, are losing will keep rising as the number of people potentially affected keeps rising. The failure to take this issue seriously means an ongoing risk of undermining the success of auto-enrolment if there is a scandal about these people being denied the money and there being nobody to take responsibility for it. I urge the Minister at least to speak to the Treasury and ask whether a system could be put in place whereby at least the scheme could claim the tax relief on behalf of these people. It knows who they are because it knows their earnings.
Having said that, if we can sort out the problems, we want to focus on making auto-enrolment an even greater success than it currently is. I congratulate the Government on the pension freedoms that have been introduced and the new arrangements for pensions that have the potential to make the system even better than it currently is. I urge my noble friend to ensure that we get default guidance embedded in the system so that the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill will automatically direct people to get the free guidance guarantee which the Government rightly have set up specifically for them. I hope that we will get proper measures that will effectively, as my noble friend Lord Freeman said, ban cold-calling and the use of leads obtained from cold-calling. That is critical so that the companies that might try to use those leads face the risk of being put out of business.
Then, of course, I eagerly await, as, no doubt, do all of us in the Room, the White Paper that we are expecting by the summer, I believe—perhaps my noble friend could update us on progress—on the sustainability of defined benefit pension schemes. I hope that we will look seriously at increasing the regulator’s powers, consolidating pension schemes and merging them so that we can cut costs, and perhaps giving trustees more responsibility for assessing the strength of their employer covenant in a professional manner, perhaps bringing in outside expertise to assess the company. Such outside expertise could have warned trustees and the regulator about the problems looming at Carillion. A number of hedge fund analysts spotted them just by looking at the report and accounts, but they were not apparently something of which the trustees were aware.
My wish for the future is that we help the pensions industry live up to its responsibility to promote pensions and to explain to the public why pensions are so brilliant. It is free money. We want the pensions industry to stop continually calling for the Government to bring it more customers and for the Government to make those customers pay it more money. The pensions industry is getting enormous amounts of taxpayers’ money from the tax relief. It needs to start serving its customers, making the product attractive, explaining why somebody wants to buy a pension and making them more user-friendly by getting rid of the jargon. One of my pet hates is the jargon that says that every pension scheme must have something that people who do not want to choose their investments should use. What do they call that? A default fund. What is the last thing that most people would want to do with their money? Default. Yet that is what everybody is supposed to have. Why not call it “experts’ choice”, or “specially designed for you”? Get people engaged with pensions: have apps; gamification; and user-friendly and popular investment options that are environmentally and socially responsible. Those are all opportunities that we can take.
I congratulate my noble friend on the debate. I look forward to listening to the other noble Lords who will be speaking and to my noble friend’s response.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, with the leave of the Committee I will speak in the gap about two specific issues related to private sector pensions, both of which are fairly current and have raised their heads in the last few days. The first relates of course to the GKN/Melrose acquisition battle. I call it a battle because it looks, sounds and feels like one. The issue of those who work for, or have retired from, GKN is a live one. Just two days ago the chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee in the other place wrote to the chief executive at Melrose Industries following the committee’s meeting with them, in which she set out a requirement to inform the committee of Melrose’s plans for applying for clearance from the regulator prior to acquiring the company. That was a result of the company itself having come under scrutiny from the Pensions Regulator, which asked whether it would apply for the voluntary clearance that is all that happens under the current powers of the regulator. The question that arises—given that this is about a principle, not just that specific matter—is, when will the Government be bringing forward the promises they made in their manifesto? To quote the Financial Times, the,
“party pledged to boost the Pension Regulator’s powers so it could veto deals which could harm pension scheme members”.
That is the question that arises in principle about mergers and acquisitions for the future.
The second point is very much about mergers and acquisitions in the Brexit context. Your Lordships may know that the European Union Committee produced a report last month, Brexit: Competition and State Aid. I am a member of the internal market sub-committee. In evidence we heard about the importance of European Commission Regulation 1/2003—that means that it was the first regulation undertaken in 2003—in which the UK is able to co-operate with competition authorities, other member states and the Commission when mergers and acquisitions are being contemplated. The regulation allows co-operation on detecting anticompetitive conduct; sharing confidential information; facilitating cross-border access to evidence; avoiding dual notification of mergers; alignment of national leniency programmes; and mutual recognition of enforcement remedies and court rulings. The committee was further told in evidence that,
“without these information flows, ‘the quality of UK enforcement would very likely deteriorate’, and that information-gathering and monitoring activities would place a significant additional burden on … sector regulators”.
As we know, many acquisitions and mergers do not wholly relate just to companies inside the UK, but also within the European Union. The issue is whether the Government are minded—and how they are minded—to put the free flow of information for regulators very much on the agenda in the negotiations that are taking place, so that whenever there is a potential threat to pension scheme members there is protection and information available in the way that it is now.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, for facilitating this debate about the condition of private sector pension funds. It is good to see the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, in her place; I detect that she is getting some enthusiasm for this role. It is surprising that this important and topical issue has not attracted more engagement; perhaps these are early signs of fatigue induced by Brexit.
In preparing for this debate, it has been assumed that the focus would be largely on the health of DB schemes, notwithstanding that the world of pensions is moving inexorably from DB to DC. Indeed, in evidence to a recent Work and Pensions Select Committee, one of the witnesses, a pensions lawyer, bemoaned the fact that young people coming through her business are likely to be experts in advising when a scheme is to be wound up, closed down or closed to future accrual, but claimed that no one of her generation knows how to set one up. That is possibly an exaggeration but it is perhaps a sign of the times. However, we should not write such schemes off, and I shall come to that in a moment. Before I do, I shall just range over the broader pensions canvas to illustrate its complexity and what is changing beneath our feet; the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, has been involved in much of this.
Many recent pension policy changes, for both state and private pensions, have their origins in the recommendations of the Pensions Commission. These include: increasing the state pension age; simplification and restriction of pensions tax and tax relief; the new state pension; and, of course, auto-enrolment, the latter coming with mandatory employer and employee contributions; and the basic state pension coming with the triple lock. Along the way are further reforms to public sector pensions.
More recently, we have seen the demise of the default retirement age; abolition of the obligation to annuitise; the introduction of so-called pensions freedoms; and, notwithstanding the launch of Pension Wise, the rise in pension scams—but, thankfully, not a secondary annuity market, or not yet. We are on the cusp of a further exercise to embed the recommendations of the 2017 auto-enrolment review as we enter the era of increased employer and employee contributions and, along the way, the pensions dashboard. I very much join and have common cause with the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, on the tax issues that she raises. It has been an anomaly outstanding for far too long and should be fixed.
Many of these changes have fuelled the rise of DC schemes. So, among all these changes, how have private sector DB schemes fared, and what is their future? We have the benefit of the recent Green Paper, referred to by several noble Lords, and insights into the Government’s thinking. There are around 11 million members of DB schemes, more than 50% down on the position 10 years ago. Most schemes are only small; only 4% have more than 10,000 members and these hold over 60% of the assets and around 70% of the members. Around £1.5 trillion is held under management.
From the 2017 Purple Book we learn that the proportion of schemes open to new members has fallen slightly in 2017 to 12%, although the decline since 2012 is slowing. The proportion of schemes closed to both new members and future accrual rose by some 4% in the period to 35%, while 21% of members were in open schemes and 55% in schemes that are closed to new members but open to new accrual. The number of active members has been declining over the past decade, and the total membership comprises 47% who are deferred, 40% who are pensioners and 12% who are active. Although continuing to be volatile on a full buyout basis, the aggregate deficit of such schemes fell to £736 billion and funding levels improved to 68%. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, mentioned, PWC Skyval, which sounds a bit like a Bond movie—I guess I must also declare an interest as a former partner of what was then just PW—points out the limitations of using the buyout basis for much, and prefers a gilts-plus method, which it says is widely used by actuaries. On this basis, it says that aggregate deficits rose by £40 billion to £450 billion at the end of November.
So although there is a clear direction of travel, the sector continues to provide secure retirement income to millions of people. We suggest that this is not the time to write off private sector DB schemes, notwithstanding that, as the Purple Book records, many members of DB schemes are choosing to transfer out for a variety of reasons, including a hitherto buoyant stock market. We should recognise that the switch to DC schemes is likely to accelerate under the 2015 pension freedoms and as schemes continue to de-risk, not only by closing to new accrual but by diversifying investments—moving away from equities towards bonds.
The Green Paper asserts that DWP modelling considers that scheme deficits are likely to shrink for the majority of schemes if promised levels of employer contribution are sustained. Smaller deficits have led to shortened recovery periods; the mean recovery period length is seven and a half years, although the spread is from 12.5 years to those schemes in surplus. We should not overlook that some 1,000 schemes are in surplus.
Some have suggested, particularly given the antics we have seem from some high-profile individuals and their corporate manoeuvring—the noble Lord, Lord German, touched on this—that there is a fundamental problem with the regulatory and legislative framework for DB schemes. The Green Paper concludes that, while not optimal, there are no major structural problems with the framework. It asserts that available evidence does not appear to support the view that DB schemes are generally unaffordable for employers. In this regard, we note the manifesto commitment of the Conservative Party to introduce punitive fines alongside a TPR contribution notice, and to make certain corporate transactions subject to mandatory clearance. That would help the noble Lord, Lord German. I am not sure whether that should be done by the regulator. We would support this approach, but perhaps the Minister will confirm that this is still the Government’s position. Could she put some flesh on the bones of the type of transactions the Government have in mind? Indeed, when will we see the White Paper that will spell this out? I think we were promised it in the spring, although I think spring has sprung.
My noble friend Lady Drake, when giving evidence to a recent Work and Pensions Select Committee, suggested improvements to the regime that included strengthening the duty and requirements on the sponsoring employer to consult and inform trustees, which is important where there is a sponsoring employer who does not want to engage. She further suggested a tougher regime on recovery plans, as well as the need for the regulator to be more proactive and focused on the use of information, albeit recognising that this has resource implications. How do the Government respond to these suggestions and are they satisfied with the level of resources available to the regulator?
The issue of corporate dividends has of course featured in recent cases and the potential conflicts between properly funding the pension scheme and supporting the share price of an enterprise on which executive bonuses may well be based. How do the Government consider the regime can be improved to prevent the deliberate enrichment of shareholders at the expense of the pension scheme? We were told recently by the Minister’s colleague that the regulator does not have the power to stop businesses paying bonuses to executives or dividends to shareholders. Could the Minister say what the alternative mechanisms are that can be used to substitute for the lack of such powers?
We should acknowledge the important role of the Pension Protection Fund in helping to sustain confidence in DB schemes. Given that its payments are met from levies on other DB schemes, it is doubly important that others are not allowed to escape their obligations by dumping schemes into the PPF. This is notwithstanding that the PPF has developed a robust business model that has enabled it to take on major schemes as well as a stream of smaller ones. We are told that 43 schemes entered PPF assessment last year—a declining number—with 130,000 members in receipt of compensation. This has been a major success and important in helping to sustain the DB sector.
In considering whether the existing regulatory arrangement is appropriate, it should be borne in mind that it is a scheme-by-scheme approach and its effectiveness depends on the strength of the employer covenant in each case. As has been said, there are a number of large schemes but also many smaller schemes, often covering older, industrialised, sometimes family-owned, businesses. Smaller schemes may struggle to obtain benefits of scale for their investment strategy and, in terms of governance, to readily attract independent and member-nominated trustees. The possibility of consolidating smaller schemes has been raised, although one can see that this would bring considerable challenges. How might this be helped?
Private DB schemes continue to make a significant contribution to the UK savings market and to help alleviate poverty in retirement. But there is a growing move away from them towards DC arrangements, particularly from the success of auto-enrolment. This changing environment requires alternative approaches to regulation but does not negate the need to strengthen the DB regime. We look forward to the White Paper and follow-up legislation in due course. As others have noted, the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill now wending its way through the Commons should provide some key and necessary safeguards to help members of DC schemes, or of DB schemes switching to the DC market, build better protections. It is right that we proceed on both fronts.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Freeman for tabling this Question for Short Debate on the assessment of the condition of private sector pension funds. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for his comment about my enthusiasm for this subject. I got enthusiastic when I started to take interest in my own pension scheme, so I must declare an interest in that I have a pension. I will also give your Lordships’ best wishes to my noble friend Lady Buscombe.
The nature of retirement has changed dramatically over the past decade. People are living longer and working more flexibly. It is important that government encourages and supports people to save for their retirement, to provide security later in life. As a result of recent reforms, millions of people look forward to a more secure retirement. We are continuing to improve the pension foundation for all pensioners, through a fair and sustainable state pension system. To achieve greater security, choice and dignity, we have introduced the new state pension. We continue to provide benefits such as winter fuel payments and have given those not eligible for the new state pension the opportunity to increase their state pension through a top-up.
We have already taken a number of important steps to strengthen the private pensions landscape: more than 9 million people are now automatically enrolled into an occupational pension scheme, and we have given people aged over 55 greater choice in how to access their private pension pots, which noble Lords have referred to. The new single financial guidance body will provide savers with more information and guidance on their retirement options.
We all know what a great success automatic enrolment has been in reversing the long-term decline in pension saving, and 2018 is a particularly important year, with the beginning of work to take forward and build support for the proposals we set out in our review of automatic enrolment, Maintaining the Momentum, published in December last year. This work highlighted some remarkable progress since 2012 in workplace pensions coverage. The workplace pension participation rate for women is now equal to that of men among eligible employees in the private sector, with around three-quarters of men and women participating in workplace pensions. Total annual contributions into workplace pensions were at a 10-year high of £87 billion in 2016. Automatic enrolment is normalising pension saving.
We will keep this movement going with two planned increases in contribution levels for automatic enrolment, in April this year and April 2019, at which point people who have been automatically enrolled will be saving 8% of their qualifying earnings. As a result, by 2019-20 we expect that an additional £20 billion will go into workplace pensions annually.
The increased number of people saving through automatic enrolment has led to a considerable expansion in the master trust market, from around 200,000 in 2010 to around 9.2 million by January 2018, with the majority of employers choosing to use a master trust pension scheme rather than setting up their own pension scheme. We will ensure that members of master trust schemes are provided with similar protections for their savings to members of other pension schemes through the authorisation and supervision regime set out in the Pension Schemes Act 2017.
Defined benefit pension schemes provide an important source of income in the retirement plans of millions of people. In the private sector alone, nearly 10.5 million members rely on such schemes with around £1.5 trillion of assets under management. They help to fuel the UK economy through investment in UK government bonds, corporate bonds and equities. News of increased deficits combined with a number of recent high-profile cases have led some commentators to declare that there is a fundamental problem with the funding and regulation of these schemes. While it is true that the defined benefit pensions landscape is evolving, as these schemes continue to close and be replaced by other forms of provision, it is not the case that fundamental change to the underlying legislation and regulation is needed. There are indeed new challenges for trustees and employers, but the Government are committed to improving the powers of the Pensions Regulator so that the defined benefit system continues to work in the best interests of those involved; that is, for members and pensioners, for today’s workforce, and for employers.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about the private sector defined benefit scheme and its future. The Government’s position on defined benefit pensions is clear: where employers can, they must continue to meet their responsibilities. The noble Lord, Lord German, asked whether the Government would meet their commitment to boost the Pensions Regulator’s powers. The Government’s manifesto further signalled our commitment to protect private pensions and indicated a number of areas in which they will bring forward, or will consider bringing forward new powers for the Pensions Regulator. In our upcoming defined benefit pension schemes White Paper, to be delivered in the spring—I know that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said that spring has sprung; I am a little behind him on that, but we live in hope—we will explore the Government’s manifesto commitment to take action to prevent and punish those whose deliberate actions put pension schemes at risk. The White Paper will also set out the steps being taken to deliver new measures and build on existing measures to strengthen the regulator’s anti-avoidance framework and information-gathering powers.
There is a well-established legislative framework that provides protection for members. The Pension Protection Fund was set up by the Government to pay compensation to members of defined benefit schemes where the sponsoring employer is insolvent and the scheme’s funding level is not sufficient to secure pensions at least equal to the level of compensation that the Pension Protection Fund would pay. It is also important to note that the Government are acting in a joined-up way to ensure that all parts of the business, legal and governance framework are considered.
I shall now answer some of the questions that noble Lords have raised, and within the timeframe I have, I shall do my best to go through them. The noble Lord, Lord Freeman, talked about the Green Paper. I should say that the Green Paper has considered the powers of the Pensions Regulator and has encouraged a debate on striking the right balance between the needs and aspirations of sponsoring employers and members. As I have said, the Pension Protection Fund operates in the wider economy to ensure that no one in any group is unfairly disadvantaged. I think I have covered the publication of the White Paper. However, I have to say that the pensions dashboard mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, sounds like a good idea. I should be most grateful if the noble Lord could write to help me understand it.
My noble friends Lady Altmann and Lord Freeman both talked about a cold call ban. We are committed to introducing a pensions cold calling ban as swiftly as possible. We tabled an amendment to the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill to enable us to make regulations to implement the ban. If we have not made these regulations by June, we will publish a statement explaining why and outline a timetable for delivering it.
My noble friend Lord Freeman mentioned CPI and RPI. In the Green Paper we discuss schemes that still use RPI and will set out our position in the White Paper.
My noble friend asked about Royal Mail and the CDC scheme. Royal Mail will close its defined benefit pension scheme and open a defined contribution scheme from 1 April this year. It is working hard with the Communication Workers Union to develop a collective defined contribution scheme, which both parties believe will better meet their needs. This is expected to replace the defined contribution scheme when and if the Government make the necessary changes to the legislation. We expect details of Royal Mail’s proposals imminently. Ahead of that, it is too early to say exactly how the Government will respond. It is also not possible to be more specific about the timetable.
My noble friend also asked about the timing for the introduction of the single financial guidance body. After Royal Assent, we will need time to get the body up to speed, so it will not be before the autumn of this year.
I thank my noble friend Lady Altmann for her contribution to this debate. In the Chamber the other day I mentioned that around the House there are giants on certain subjects. That met with an interesting response but I consider her a giant in the pensions field. I am pleased to have her here today and I hope to learn much from her. I shall be very happy to meet her along with officials, who I am sure will set up that meeting.
On the issue relating to women that my noble friend raised, automatic enrolment was designed specifically to help groups who historically have been less likely to save, such as women and low earners. The workplace pension participation rate of women is now equal to that of men among eligible employees, with, as I said, 73% of women now participating. In the words of, I think, the good man General William Booth, “That and better will do”.
My noble friend Lady Altmann asked what independent trustees can bring to the role. A professional independent trustee can help to ensure that the scheme is run professionally and avoids some of the governance and financial risks inherent in a less experienced and less professional approach. My noble friend spoke about the promotion of pensions and “free money”, which we do not hear about too often. The Government agree that pensions are a fantastic product, which is why noble Lords will have seen posters and TV commercials promoting automatic enrolment.
My noble friend also asked what the Government are doing about default guidance. The Government tabled further amendments on this on Monday. These will be debated in the Commons next Monday, when the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill reaches its Report stage.
The final point that I will make in the time allowed is about GKN and Melrose, raised by the noble Lord, Lord German. It would not be appropriate for Ministers to comment on individual cases. They are a matter for the independent regulator, and therefore we cannot discuss the specifics of this case. The regulator operates a statutory clearance procedure to provide greater certainty for those who are considering transactions involving companies with defined benefit schemes. If clearance is not applied for and granted, the regulator may exercise its powers up to six years after a transaction has taken place if it considers that the transaction was aimed at avoiding a debt for the pension scheme.
I have tried to answer as many of your Lordships’ questions as possible. If, on reading Hansard and talking to the officials, I find that I have missed any, I will ensure that all noble Lords are written to. I end by thanking everybody for their preparation for and contributions to this debate on a most important subject.
Inland Waterways
(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord German
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the future of United Kingdom inland waterways.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I start by thanking all noble Lords who have joined us today for this debate. I declare my interests as a member of the Inland Waterways Association and honorary president of the Monmouth, Breconshire and Abergavenny Canals Trust.
There are currently 4,700 miles of navigable waterways across England, Scotland and Wales—plus, of course, the waterways in Northern Ireland—and a further 1,800 miles of unusable waterways, 700 miles of which are proposed for restoration. The ownership and control of these thousands of miles of waterways rests with more than 100 navigation authorities. The largest manager is the Canal and River Trust, which looks after 2,000 miles, followed by the Environment Agency, which manages 650 miles.
Our inland waterway network is a unique and precious national asset, which has the potential to transform places, enrich lives, improve mental and physical health, support communities and promote economic development. More than half of the population live within 10 minutes of a waterway. Because of their historical role as the motorways of the past, waterways pass through not only wondrous countryside but also the heart of our conurbations. Take a few steps from Paddington station or the Birmingham International Convention Centre and you are immediately on the canal and towpaths of a country-wide waterway network. Unlike the grand places that are among the primary assets of the National Trust, which are often tucked away in some glorious piece of countryside, our waterways pass through some of the most deprived communities in our land. My purpose in this short debate is to shine a light on the value of our waterways, to examine the economic potential that they can unlock and to put to the Government a range of issues where government action can make a difference to realising the waterways’ full potential.
I start by concentrating on the economic potential that waterways provide. Analysis and research of this impact are somewhat sketchy, but they suggest that the value of land and property alongside a navigable canal is some 10% greater than comparable land alongside a disused canal; so values rise where working waterways exist. This rise in value is a vital tool for local authorities up and down the country where there are disused canals. The potential for planning gain should be of great interest to local authorities seeking to promote economic development. Planners have long used development potential to fund public goods such as roads, schools and other forms of community infrastructure, so applying some of this development gain to the restoration of the canal would be a wholly appropriate use for the public good.
The question I pose to the Government is: where is the economic planning policy that would drive this enhancement to our communities, and what steps are the Government taking to encourage local authorities to think carefully about the link between economic development and canal restoration? Another consequence of restoring canals is increased tourism spend. I know that my noble friend Lord Lee will expand on this later. My challenge here is to ask the Government what they are doing to encourage this economic potential.
Like other noble Lords, I should like to have a better understanding of the recent decision by Ministers to put on ice the transfer of the Environment Agency’s navigable waterways to the Canal and River Trust. Perhaps the Minister can tell us where these discussions are at the moment. Has the Minister met with the CRT to explore its offer to take over the operation of these waterways? Can the Minister tell us whether the department is looking for an improved offer from the CRT? If that is the case, can the Minister tell us what more the CRT can do to improve the merits of its offer?
There is some speculation that this is related to the large structures on the waterways that are controlled by the Environment Agency. Of course structures of that size also bear a risk of failure or decay. The Government presently stand behind the Environment Agency as the guarantor for dealing with any damage or consequence of an event to those assets. If an asset of that sort were to be passed to the CRT, there would obviously be a need to either crystallise the risk into a form of payment or to back it with some form of guarantee. Can the Minister let us know whether this issue is one that needs to be resolved and, if so, what is the timescale?
The Canal and River Trust can leverage funding in a way that the Environment Agency cannot. As Environment Agency budgets are squeezed, so its ability to maintain structures and the assets that it manages for government becomes equally restricted. Its ability to restore and repair is reduced. These were precisely the reasons why the CRT was established, and why there was always an expectation that the Environment Agency waterways would eventually be included in the transfer to the Canal and River Trust. The CRT has guaranteed government funds through to 2027, which enables it to borrow and lever additional funds and invest in the longer-term future of our waterways. It produces a return which far exceeds that which the old British Waterways could provide. The sad state of canal closures in Scotland demonstrates the value of the trust structure that we now have in England and Wales.
If our waterways are to maximise their full potential, the Government must engage and appreciate their worth. There is some feeling—I have experienced it—that the Government, having passed on much of the work to the Canal and River Trust, have stood back from promoting the worth of our waterways which, after all, is not necessarily an economic issue for government but it is something that government can promote. It would be reassuring if the Minster could tell us the number of visits that he and other Ministers have made in their official capacities to see our waterways in action. It is not just Defra Ministers who need to engage. Waterways provide access to millions of people; they touch many of our most deprived communities; they can address health inequalities; and they reduce physical inactivity, obesity, diabetes and poor mental health. Through adoption by local people, they can help to build strong, resilient communities—more than 200 community groups have now adopted a stretch of waterway and that number is rising by 20% each year. Beyond that, waterways support learning and skills, covering such diverse areas as natural science, engineering, heritage, arts, technology and mathematics. They help to restore natural habitats and protect endangered wildlife species—and so the list goes on.
Waterways play a role that spans so much of the life of our country, be it in education, health, leisure, sport, local government, tourism or the environment. In reality, this spans many government portfolios. What role is the Minister’s department playing in co-ordinating the government overview of the impact of our waterways on life in our country? It is so important for joined-up action in the promotion of the role that waterways can play. Our waterways are our asset on the doorstep. They need to be nurtured, treasured and—most importantly—used to the full, and the Government have a major role to play in providing that support.
Lord Trimble (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord German, on having obtained the debate. I make it clear at the outset that I agree with almost every word that he said, which is a novel experience for me. I also declare an interest: I have been interested in waterways—in fact, I have been on them, mainly in the English Midlands—for the last 20 years. I am on my second narrowboat; as you buy them they get more and more expensive, so I do not think I will go further than that. Like the noble Lord, I congratulate the Canal and River Trust on its successes. I know that there were worries when it was formed as to whether it would be successful, but it has been very successful. Like him, I am disappointed that we have had the hiccup with regard to the Environment Agency’s waterways coming into the CRT, but in the long run that must happen; if it does not, the problems will increase.
The noble Lord also mentioned the way in which the CRT can continue to help with the restoration and recovery of canals, and I want to highlight a couple of important measures on that point. One would of course be to put in place the link that has been talked of for some time between Milton Keynes and Bedford, which would make access to the Environment Agency’s waterways in the east much easier and would considerably extend the opportunity for leisure use there. I give a more immediate welcome to what is proposed with regard to Daventry. The noble Lord mentioned that it is open to local authorities to use the planning system to generate the money that will create a canal. In Daventry we are talking about only something like a mile and a quarter, but it would enable people who currently go past Daventry on the Grand Union to go in and take advantage of the town itself. That is one of the great advantages that we see from the waterways.
We are dealing with waterways in the United Kingdom, which enables me to bring in those in Northern Ireland. The problem is that there are not that many of them, unfortunately. There were a number of canals but none is active at the moment. The railways in Ireland never made any money, nor did the canals; it has to do with the way in which the population is distributed and the absence of large industrial sites outside the Greater Belfast area. We have a problem there. We have the Fermanagh lakes, the Lower Bann and its great lake, which is problematic in some ways. However, I draw attention to two potential developments in Northern Ireland. The first is the Lagan Navigation, which is this year starting a process of restoration to one of its locks. In fact, it is the first lock that you encounter in Belfast, because the Lagan Navigation goes from Belfast to Lough Neagh. We are starting with what will be the most expensive lock to restore, which is a good first step forward. In that connection, I have to mention that my wife is the deputy chairman of the Lagan Navigation Trust, so I am slightly prejudiced.
I also mention the Ulster Canal, which starts and ends in Northern Ireland but, in between, it meanders through large parts of the Republic of Ireland. That enabled us to choose that to develop as a cross-border co-operation project. I was well aware of the extent to which the Government of southern Ireland had taken a strong lead in the restoration of canals, and have succeeded in putting in place the two major canals that go from Dublin to the Shannon, thus extending greatly the area that can be cruised. I knew that officials in Belfast did not have the same enthusiasm and it seemed to me that, if we put together a cross-border body and exposed them to the broader horizon that their southern counterparts had, that might have a positive result.
I do not know whether what I am going to say is absolutely true, because I am dealing with what other people have said to me, but they have told me that there is an annual meeting under the aegis of Waterway Irelands between the people representing north and south. In the course of this annual meeting, the folk from Dublin said, “Here’s our money for beginning the restoration of the Ulster canal”, and the Northern Ireland representatives hummed and hawed and got uncomfortable as they had not got anywhere. They had not got past the idea that was prevalent nearly 40 years ago that there was no significant market for leisure activities based on canals and had not realised that huge leisure opportunities are developing on canals. From the point of view of Northern Ireland tourism, this adds another niche. Tourism in Northern Ireland is always going to be a matter of niche markets, because we do not have sun and the temperatures that people get in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, but this is an important niche to add. I hope that sooner or later the penny will drop and we will some steps being taken on the Ulster Canal. As it links Lough Neagh with Lough Erne, that would give an integrated waterways network in Northern Ireland, which would generate more leisure activities.
Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing this debate. In my short contribution today, I want to focus primarily on the tourism aspects of our inland waterways. I declare an interest as chairman of ALVA—the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions. It has 70 members, all of which receive more than 1 million visitors a year, and a very important member is the Canal and River Trust. It manages 2,000 miles of historic navigable waterways, which is 70% of our national network. When I was Tourism Minister in the later 1980s, inland waterways were regarded very much as a lost tourism opportunity. Many waterways were overgrown, full of debris and unnavigable. The Thames was then regarded as a hugely underdeveloped tourism and national asset. However, even then improvements were starting. In my Pendle constituency, significant work was done in cleaning and upgrading the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.
In recent years, mainly thanks to the work of the Canal and River Trust, formerly British Waterways, huge strides have been made. Many waterway networks within and around our older industrial towns, such as Birmingham and Manchester, have been transformed and restored. The Canal and River Trust licenses and supports 33,000 boats on our waterways, and in a typical two-week period the waterways welcome 2 million walkers and 180,000 fishing visits and facilitate 600,000 joggers, 700,000 cyclists and 150,000 canoeists, rowers and paddle boaters. The trust’s waterways are home to 63 SSSIs and the third-largest collection of listed buildings in the country, including significant individual attractions such as the Anderton boat lift. It is estimated that 2,500 jobs are sustained by inland marinas and boat hire.
Turning from the macro, a couple of years ago we had the privilege to move from south of Manchester to Richmond, Surrey and now live 200 yards from the Thames. This section of the Thames is a major tourism and sporting draw. On the river there are moored boats, canoeing and rowing—it is marvellous to see youngsters participating—as well as small boat building and repair operations, fishing, the very occasional brave swimmer. There are paddle steamers and larger boats taking passengers through the Teddington lock to Kingston and Hampton Court and in some cases to Westminster. There is wonderful birdlife, with a wide variety of ducks, gulls, herons and cormorants. Given the number of herons and cormorants, it is quite clear that the Thames is host to a very substantial fishing stock. I judge that there is a much greater fishing opportunity than people realise.
I fished the Thames locally on three occasions with Warwick Salzer, a Thames fishing guide, in his converted landing craft and caught a number of nine-pound and 10-pound pike. A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity of seeing a seal in action, taking a fish for itself just off the towpath. All this activity brings substantial tourism footfall and spend to Richmond, obviously benefiting the wider economy—cafés, pubs and restaurants. Most tourists walk the riverbank. I describe this as “towpath tourism”, for jogging, walking and cycling, but I have to say that it is not ideal, in many respects, to see walkers and fast cyclists so intertwined—though fortunately, I have seen no serious accidents yet. Of course, Richmond is somewhat special, given its history, with the Turner view, the park, Kew Gardens, Twickenham Stadium; but the river is the number one draw for most visitors. Many other communities up and down the country benefit from tourists and visitors engaging in water pursuits or just walking the towpaths.
I want to ask the Minister about pollution and prosecutions. In a Written Answer to Question 515 on 21 June last year in the other place, the Minister— Dr Thérèse Coffey—gave details of successful prosecutions in England, with Wales having been devolved over the past 10 years. In each year, between 2007 and 2010, there were over 100 successful pollution prosecutions. However, since 2011, that number has fallen steadily. In 2015, there were only 22, and last year, only 14 in the first half of the year. Of course, since 2011, enforcement undertaking offers have been available, which are legally binding voluntary agreements containing proposals for the restoration of any environmental harm. They have been available as an alternative to formal prosecution. Does the Minister think that the fall in prosecutions is perhaps because of the aforementioned alternative? Does he have any numbers on agreed enforcement undertakings? My concern is that, perhaps because of manpower reductions or cost-cutting, the Environment Agency is not able to police our rivers and inland waterways and investigate reports of pollution incidents as speedily and thoroughly as would be ideal. Obviously, I totally understand if the Minister would prefer to write to me on that specific point.
In conclusion, I hope and expect that our inland waterways will be steadily improved and expanded further in future for the benefit of residents, communities, tourists and—of course—future generations.
Baroness Redfern (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the debate of the noble Lord, Lord German, UK inland waterways and the opportunity to take part. I have nothing to declare: I am not an associate and I do not own a longboat, unlike my noble friend, but I enjoy walking along our many waterways with my two friends, Daisy and Ted, who are my dogs. I enjoy them and they enjoy it, too.
Bringing our waterways into the big society puts decision-making into the hands of the thousands of people who love the waterways—like me—and have the pleasure of living near them. Therefore I welcome the Government’s commitment to invest and support local communities and volunteers helping to shape the future of our much-loved waterways.
Importantly, the main and overriding issue is that of safeguarding the safety and structural integrity of water infrastructure and the safety of users and neighbours. One of the main issues must be improving water quality and managing flood risks, as well as enhancing and supporting our heritage while respecting the character of our landscape, creating ample space to develop leisure and commercial activities—as previous speakers have alluded to. Of course, there are many challenges but I always think that challenges bring new ideas.
Waterways are our history; demonstrating their individuality and uniqueness is important. We may not be Holland, with many miles of waterways, but our network of 200 year-old canals and rivers is valued and therefore must be preserved. Our landscape, too, is very precious, so both have to be supported for long-term sustainability, highlighting the opportunity to welcome our visitor economy.
An important issue to raise today is our waterways’ connection to our health and well-being. They are integral in encouraging and supporting physical and healthy outdoor activity. They are an opportunity for someone who may feel isolated and lonely; they can be a lever to begin volunteering, resulting in creating long and lasting friendships, particularly as we are all living longer and healthier lives.
It is also the time to value the environment. Almost 50% of the population live within five miles of a waterway and nearly 1 million people live within a 100-metre catchment. Attention must be drawn to improving physical access to canals and to introducing creative signage, with up-to-date public information to keep awareness and interest for people. As I have stressed, securing the long-term future of our managed waterways is a given, as well as resolving the best outcome for the public purse. Lots of work is also needed to rid our canals of the scourge of the many types of microplastics entering the environment via sewage and sewage sludge.
From soft landscape to commercial opportunities, there are huge opportunities for businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises which want to relocate and stimulate a community, bringing work and jobs. It is particularly important to our rural areas which are situated in an idyllic setting.
Finally, it is important just to be able to enjoy the ambience as well as valuing our natural environment; to discover the pleasure of just being there beside our canals, for everyone who wishes to preserve our heritage. They, too, want to make a better place for our future generations.
Once again I thank the noble Lord for tabling this debate and look forward to the Minister’s response in encouraging the improvement of our canals and waterways. I hope there is support, so that canals and waterways will have a future.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for bringing us here today. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, that one of the best scenes I have seen in my life was on the shore of the lake by Enniskillen, where the hotel is. When we opened the curtains in the morning and looked down to the water, at the cattle with their feet in the water, it was absolutely magnificent. If those sorts of things are not exploited, somebody needs to do something about it, because they are eminently saleable.
My history goes back a long way, I am afraid. I was present at Reading Town Hall at the initial meeting of those who were determined to stop the Government abandoning the Kennet and Avon Canal, and at the start of the restoration of that canal, alongside which I lived for a long time, at Bradford on Avon. My history is on the railways. I want to bring to the Minister’s attention the huge input that is now achieved on the railways from the community rail partnerships, of which there are a very large number. Those people do a variety of things in terms of looking after buildings, gardens and making sure the station is pleasant. Much of that encouragement has come from the train operating companies and Network Rail putting seedcorn down to encourage people, giving them training where necessary, and tools and accommodation that they can use. Thousands of people are fascinated by railways; I think they are even more fascinated by canals.
What I really want to draw attention to is the fact that, although there are a lot of willing, and increasingly skilled, volunteers—I believe that a lock at Stroud in Gloucestershire has been restored almost entirely with volunteer labour—that must never be seen as a means of government washing its hands. If volunteers ever got the idea that the efforts they put in meant that the Government would withdraw their support, that would be almost pernicious. Whatever problems there might be with funding—and there will always be such problems—supporting those volunteers is vital to the Canal and River Trust and to the railways. Volunteering and the allegiance that people feel to their railway lines and canals is a strange thing. It is not something that I think motorways suffer from at all—people want to get away from those.
I wanted to speak in this debate to say to the Minister, “Look at what the community rail partnerships are achieving and make sure you give at least equivalent support to the volunteers”. There are many ways that can be done—through training and dealing with buildings and gardens, and even just picking up rubbish, which is very important in many of these places. I shall be very interested to hear what the Minister has to say when he replies.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord German, for tabling this debate and to all noble Lords for reminding us of the joys of participating in the nearly 5,000 navigable miles of inland waterways. We in the UK are very privileged to have access to such an abundant network of canals, rivers and lakes, with all the opportunities they bring for leisure and work. As noble Lords have said, they provide enormous opportunities for recreation, whether fishing, cycling, walking or simply messing around in boats. They also continue to provide inexpensive and environmentally beneficial opportunities for moving freight around the country—something I am sure we could exploit more than we do at the moment. They even provide affordable alternative living space. At least one of my noble colleagues resides on his canal boat in London when the House is sitting—even during the bad weather, he told me, although he also told me that the increased mooring charge is finally pricing even him out of that lifestyle.
Boat ownership is now more prevalent than it was at the height of the Industrial Revolution, and we have heard a little about the joys that it brings. Canals also provide significant wider environmental benefits. There are benefits to wildlife from restored waterways, including improved biodiversity in flora, fauna and habitat, and they play their part in reducing CO2 emissions and improving drainage and flood alleviation. As a number of noble Lords have said, the restoration projects that have taken place have provided enormous community benefits and opportunities for volunteering, as well as improved health and well-being, which goes along with that.
Therefore, it is important that we do everything we can to maintain the quality of the water and the surrounding pathways to ensure that the highest environmental standards are maintained. I pay tribute to the work of the Canal and River Trust and the Environment Agency for their hard work in protecting these valuable natural assets. However, clearly more needs to be done, as we have heard today.
We still face huge challenges from water pollution—a matter raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lee. The Environment Agency recently said that England’s water companies are still responsible for an alarming number of pollution incidents each year—at least one a week. As its chair, Emma Howard Boyd, pointed out:
“This pollution can lead to the death of wildlife, major environmental damage and, in the worst cases, puts the public at risk”.
Last year, Thames Water received a record £20.3 million fine after it admitted dumping 1.4 billion litres of raw sewage into the Thames between 2012 and 2014, leaving people and animals ill and killing thousands of fish. Although the fine was the biggest in the Environment Agency’s history, it represented just 10 days’ operating profits for the company. Therefore, we need to ensure in the future that fines are proportionate and that they truly act as a deterrent. So I ask the Minister: what further action is proposed to ensure that water companies take their environmental responsibilities seriously? Meanwhile, I was pleased to read that Michael Gove has also laid into the water companies and has threatened to give Ofwat greater control over what he described as their “opaque” finances. I also have to say that I visited the Thames tideway super-sewer project a few months ago and was pleased to see that the company was finally taking positive action to clean up the Thames.
Although we think of canal boats as being environmentally friendly, we cannot avoid the fact that they contribute to the air pollution caused by nitrogen oxides. Particularly in residential areas, they are responsible for the pollution caused by wood-burning and solid wood stoves, and boat engines used for propulsion and electrical generation. Of course, canal boats typically have diesel engines. So there is a need to accelerate the search for alternative fuels and energy storage, including the wider use of solar panels and hydrogen- and battery-powered engines.
Farmers owning adjoining farmland also need to play their part in cutting back on river and canal pollution. Although there is much greater awareness and education of landowners these days, more than half of our rivers have been found to have unacceptable levels of phosphorus caused by sewage effluent and contaminated run-off from farmland. Can the Minister update us on the steps being taken to ensure that farmers are compliant with environmental standards? How many prosecutions have there been of farmers who wilfully ignore their responsibilities?
Canals and rivers also play their part in harbouring non-native invasive plants and animals. We know, for example, of the destructive impact of non-native crayfish, but people are also guilty of disposing of plants intended for garden ponds and aquariums in our rivers and waterways without realising the harm they can cause. Can the Minister remind us what steps are being taken to educate the public about the threat these pose, and also to educate volunteers, who do so much to clean up our waterways, about what they should look out for in terms of non-native invasive plants and animals, and what action they should be taking?
We have debated the negative impact of plastic on our rivers and waterways several times recently. All too often single-use plastics are dumped or washed into rivers and flow out to sea, creating huge marine pollution as well as unsightly shorelines and beaches. As we know, nearly half of all single-use plastic bottles are currently not recycled. Instead, they are discarded or put into regular bins, and end up in landfill. Once there, as we all now know, they take hundreds of years to break down. We urgently need to cut back on their use by implementing a bottle-deposit scheme, as well as improving recycling rates. Perhaps the Minister could remind us of the outcome of the recent consultation on this issue and tell us what action the Government now propose to take on single-use plastics.
Finally, I am aware that many of these issues are addressed in the 25-year environment plan. When the plan was published, we expressed concern at the lack of urgency and the need for more measurable targets. There was intended to be follow-up on this issue. Can the Minister update us on the progress of that action?
I am conscious that my contribution has focused on some of the challenges facing our waterways, rather than celebrating them. They are a much-loved part of British life and my concern is only that that should continue to be the case.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord German, on securing this debate, particularly given his contribution as president of the Monmouthshire, Brecon and Abergavenny Canals Trust. Protecting those very important canals is a great achievement. I have listened with great interest to noble Lords, given their considerable interest in and experience and knowledge of our inland navigation system.
As your Lordships will know, the first canal system dates from Roman Britain and was used largely for irrigation or to link our rivers. Many of our canals were built at the height of the Industrial Revolution, which demanded an economic and reliable way to transport goods and commodities in large quantities. I am always struck when one travels up the M1 that one can see the motorway, the railway and the canal and note how beautiful the canal is. However, I had better not go down that line too much.
That highlights how our canals and rivers have played a significant part in our country. Of course we treasure the tangible connections with the past, and probably even more equally, if that is possible, we realise the benefits of the waterways not only for today but for the future. They encapsulate a history of growth and then decline, and from the 1970s onwards a story of regeneration and increasing commercial and recreational use. I am thinking of some of our urban centres. My wife is a sculptor and the foundry she uses is in Limehouse. If one visits Limehouse today, or indeed Birmingham and Leeds, we can see that in many of the towns and cities that were the hub of the Industrial Revolution, the canals and rivers are the open door because of their development potential, as the noble Lord, Lord German, highlighted. Moreover, when we think of heritage it is obvious to move on to tourism, as the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, emphasised in his remarks.
A great many listed buildings line our canals and rivers: scheduled ancient monuments, heritage structures ranging from small iconic milestones as well as working structures such as lock gates and swing bridges. We can marvel at the Caledonian Canal cutting through the Great Glen or the 29-lock Caen Hill flight on the Kennet and Avon Canal. I recall in a previous life the valiant work of the late Admiral Sir William O’Brien with the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust. We also have the architectural splendour of the grade 1 listed Pontcysyllte Aqueduct carrying the Llangollen Canal over the River Dee. That structure alone is a UNESCO world heritage site which attracts 300,000 visitors a year.
Apart from their traditional role as a system of travel and transport, our inland waterways serve the many purposes to which noble Lords have referred. The noble Lord, Lord German, talked about regeneration and growth, as well as the contribution they make to water supply and transfer, drainage and flood management, and as a means of commercial transport, a point highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. From the fishing point of view, the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, raised the importance of angling and how the angler often is the person to notice when there is pollution in the water and thus is part of the early warning system.
We said in our manifesto and in our 25-year environment plan that we want to be the first generation to leave the environment in a better state than the one we inherited. We want everyone to be able to enjoy ready access to our blue spaces—that is, the towpaths of our canals and our riversides which provide great benefit. I was struck by the words of my noble friend Lady Redfern when she spoke of the sheer pleasure derived by the large number of people who live close to our waterways. We could describe that as the green and blue prescriptions that the waterways provide.
The significance of the formation of the Canal and River Trust is that it was the first major transfer of a public body into the charitable sector and it has acted as a flagship. As has been said, the trust has ownership of more than 2,000 miles of waterway. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, will not mind me emphasising this, but providing the trust with £800 million under a legally binding 15-year grant agreement in what I would call stretched times is an indication of the appreciation of what the trust is doing now and can do in the future, which is a very strong endorsement. The funding has given the trust financial certainty so that it can plan for the long term as well as achieve value for money and attract funding from other investment and commercial income such as boat licensing—I heard what the noble Baroness said about that—and donations.
I will highlight the words of my noble friend Lady Redfern and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. One key objective in creating the trust was to increase the involvement of local people in the waterways. I would recommend to noble Lords the Library pack, which set out the annual report of the trust. I was impressed that, in 2016-17, the trust harnessed 540,000 volunteer hours. I so agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said about invasives—I spent a really enjoyable day pulling Himalayan balsam with volunteers in the river catchments of the New Forest National Park. Not only are the volunteers doing great environmental work but, when I said, “Thank you very much”, they said, “Don’t you realise how much pleasure we derive from doing this work?” It is bearing fruit, because there is less Himalayan balsam in these upper reaches causing damage.
The noble Baroness also mentioned raising awareness, which is why our Check, Clean, Dry campaign is so important, with its message not to bring back anything with your sponge bag. I will be having a meeting on floating pennywort, which is also causing great problems to watercourses because, at some point, a member of the public took it from their pond and put it in the watercourse. We need to raise awareness of that. The trust has also increased community involvement—which was also raised by noble Lords—including in arts and education projects. Last year, 43,586 children took part in its waterways education programme.
The Environment Agency is the second-largest navigation authority in the country, with the majority of the length of its waterways accounted for in the Fens and Anglian waterways, the River Thames and the River Wye. The agency manages more than 3,000 assets for the benefit of more than 26,000 boat users and the wider public. These waterways also provide a significant contribution to the UK economy and are an intrinsic part of the urban and rural landscapes through which they pass. The Government are providing funding of £13 million to the Environment Agency to support the maintenance of its navigation assets from 2016-17 to 2019-20. Additional income is raised from boat licensing charges and commercial income.
I turn to the Broads Authority, because I have responsibility for national parks and the Broads Authority is in that family. They are wonderful waterways; I spent a wonderful day on them in my ministerial capacity and a number of other days in other capacities. The authority undertakes a vital role in looking after the 120 miles of navigable waterways in Norfolk and Suffolk. This beautiful waterscape alone attracts 8 million people a year, bringing in around £550 million to the UK tourism economy. I raise that, because I think it is a small example of what the waterways bring in terms of tourism, and indeed what tourism brings to our national economy and to our reputation.
All of the many other navigation authorities take very seriously their stewardship role. Both Natural Resources Wales and the trust are responsible for a number of the waterways in Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland manage their respective inland waterways. I was particularly interested in what my noble friend Lord Trimble said about Waterways Ireland, which is one of the six north-south implementation bodies established under the British-Irish agreement in 1999. The funding currently reflects the current distribution of waterways in each jurisdiction—the Northern Ireland Assembly accounts for 15% and the Irish Parliament for 85%—but capital development programmes are funded separately by the jurisdiction where the works are carried out. My noble friend highlighted the collaboration and co-operation in the restoration of the waterways that serve both parts of that island, which is a key example of a force for good.
I pay tribute to the Inland Waterways Association, its 16,000 members and the many volunteers who—as I have said—work tirelessly in helping to safeguard and enhance our waterways. It is a very strong partnership.
The noble Lord, Lord German, and my noble friend Lord Trimble raised the issue of the transfer of Environment Agency navigations to the trust. The Inland Waterways Association and many in the boating community have welcomed this, and we are working on it. My honourable friend Thérèse Coffey has met the trust, and they are working on this; she has instructed officials in Defra and the Environment Agency to work with the trust on a revised proposal which fully accounts for which assets could be transferred and the timings for that. If I have any further details, given the hour and time, I shall write to the noble Lord.
I shall also have to write to the noble Baroness about some of the examples of pollution. I have a lot more to say on pollution, which is a scourge. It is something that we need to deal with, whether it emanates from farming or boats—wherever it emanates from—because we need to bring down pollution rates and improve water quality. That is a key part of the 25-year environment plan.
I am sorry, but I have been at the equine forum this morning, so I shall say that this has been a very brisk gallop through a very important subject. I conclude by saying that my honourable friend spent a very interesting visit to the Birmingham canals, and I have over my time visited many canals. The trusts are right to celebrate this year the 50th anniversary of the Transport Act 1968. I wish them, and all those who have the responsibility for navigation and inland waterways, all success, because the future is very much one where, whether it is an enhancement of quality of our green or our blue environment, the waterways have a key role to play in the fulfilment of a better life for the people of this nation. So I am most grateful to the noble Lord for this opportunity.
Buses
(6 years, 8 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bradshaw
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they propose to take to reverse the decline in the use of buses in England outside London.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
My Lords, I think this is the third debate in Grand Committee about bus services. One was tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and one by my noble friend Lady Randerson. Having read the debates, I thought that the conclusions really meant almost nothing at all; the words went into the air but the actions did not follow.
Much time is spent by politicians discussing the bus industry. Unfortunately, most of them talk about ownership. This has little to do with the major issue that confronts the bus operators: congestion. The use of buses in England outside London has been on a downward trend for about nine or 10 years. Congestion affects private and public sector operators regardless of ownership. I often travel on buses in Reading, which are run by a municipal company, and in Oxford, where the companies are privately owned. In both cities there are fairly effective partnership arrangements, modern vehicles and enterprising ticketing systems, which are improving. Nevertheless, they are suffering declining levels of patronage caused by congestion, which is felt throughout Great Britain. This subject will form the core of my remarks. I hope that the Minister, in her reply, can give some positive answers.
First, I draw attention to the fact that the bus industry has suffered a significant decline in financial support relative to the car. Fuel duty for road transport has been frozen since 2011. The bus service operator’s grant, which the bus industry has traditionally enjoyed, has been reduced by about 20%; that means that, relative to the car, its costs associated with fuel have increased. Wages in the bus industry have to be competitive to attract and keep drivers, because bus driving is not a very nice job, and have risen well in advance of general wage levels, particularly in the cities.
Another fiscal measure that needs close examining is the availability of concessionary travel to young people. These people have a high propensity to travel and will make more and more journeys if they can afford it. Making young persons’ railcards available on trams and buses—as well as trains—would stimulate travel, and serious consideration should be given to this measure. It might not be very expensive because of the high propensity to travel. It would also be a disincentive to car ownership. It really is time we stopped talking about this and moved on to some action.
However, bus operators must shoulder high fixed costs. They have to provide vehicles of higher and higher standards because the engines’ emissions have to keep improving; they pay wages that rise faster than average; and they must operate to high standards of reliability and punctuality to retain or increase market share—and indeed to continue to enjoy the privilege of a licence to operate.
The efforts of operators to maintain standards of punctuality are frustrated by increasing traffic congestion. It has been shown that efforts by the bus industry to maintain punctuality by increasing the number of buses operating on a route increases operators’ costs by an average of some 8%. However, it provides no additional revenue, and if costs are passed on through higher fares, passenger numbers decline further and we are in a vicious circle. One is forced into a situation where government, either nationally or locally, must take action if effective remedies are to be found for the problems of bus punctuality. Almost any initiative the companies can make without tackling the problems associated with congestion is likely to fail.
That brings us to the fundamental question of why so much is done in cities to encourage car use and so little to facilitate bus operation. Is it because of the intense pressure from the motoring lobby or the cowardice of politicians nationally or locally—local authorities vie with each another to attract cars to their shops with offers of highly subsidised parking, often ignoring the land values attaching to city-centre car parks—or is it because of an unwillingness to get tough with obstructive parking? When all these advantages are weighed in any objective assessment, what advantage does the bus have and who speaks for the bus user? In this situation, should not government, local or national, try to redress the balance effectively?
What ambitions are available apart from effective road markings and effective enforcement? Obviously, the simplest is the introduction of road user pricing. This can be made fiscally neutral by adjustments to vehicle excise duty but it would mean that those who chose to drive on the busiest roads at the busiest times would pay more and those in the country would pay less or, more likely, nothing at all. This use of the pricing mechanism is the way that markets work in almost every other field, and I believe it is the policy of the Government. Pricing would be time-related so that small charges would be made between the peaks and none at all at night. The whole process could be conducted automatically, so there would be no need for vehicles to stop. The technology is essentially the same for policing low-emission areas and can be expected to operate reliably.
The Traffic Management Act 2004, brought into force by the then Labour Government, provided for some measures to deal with congestion, including decriminalisation of certain offences such as abuse of parking regulations. These may be enforced by local authorities, which are enabled to retain the proceeds from penalty notices to defray the costs of enforcement. Most local authorities elected to apply to take up these powers, although some still have not. In fact, the area in which I live in South Oxfordshire has not done so and has tried to rely on police enforcement, which does not exist. The police have far greater priorities—we have only to look at what has gone on in Salisbury.
The result is that dangerous and illegal parking is rife in the area, which has undesirable consequences in terms of congestion. It also brings the law into disrepute. Because people see offences routinely not being prosecuted, they push further and further and ignore other regulations. However, local authorities which have adopted these decriminalised powers wish to go further to eliminate some other offences which aggravate congestion, such as illegal right turns and the abuse of yellow box junctions. Powers for Her Majesty’s Government exist within Schedule 6 to the Act but have not been brought into effect outside London, despite huge pressure from the Local Government Association. I urge the Minister to agree to do this right away and to impress on those local authorities that have not adopted the decriminalised powers to do so quickly.
Access to the highway for roadworks, mostly by the utilities, causes delay. Under the same Act, we were supposed to see “highway management”, which would see some control exercised over the utilities by the introduction of things such as lane rental. What has become of this, and why does the Minister think that the co-ordination of roadworks, which was promised at the time, does not work? Highway maintenance causes delays for which the supposed remedy of lane rental has not been an effective response, while the unresolved problem of potholes goes from bad to worse. It is no good berating the bus companies about punctuality, as Transport Focus does, unless the root causes are tackled by the Government. Buses, unlike the railways, have no control over the highways on which they operate. That control belongs to government, both local and national, as does the enforcement of their operation.
Partnerships work well in some areas such as Brighton, but even there some 13 buses have been added since 2012 to the fleet of 200—
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
I am sorry, but the noble Lord’s time to speak is up.
Lord Bradshaw
I am sorry, but I have almost finished. Those buses have been added because of the effects of congestion. In Oxford, in 1996 the journey from Abingdon to the city centre took 70 minutes but now takes 96. Within the city, a trip to Kidlington which in 1986 took 60 minutes now takes 80. I have many other examples from elsewhere around the country. The single issue I want to hear more about from the Minister is what the Government propose to do about congestion.
The Earl of Arran (Con)
My Lords, some of your Lordships will remember the cuts made in the 1960s to train services following recommendations made in the Beeching report. The effects of that still haunt many rural areas, particularly in the south-west peninsula and in my own county of Devon. Regrettably, there is evidence that we are suffering a similar decline in our rural bus services. This has accelerated rapidly since the Cameron Government slashed grants to operators and funding for councils. The situation we face is that UK bus coverage has now hit a 28-year low, down to levels of service last seen in the 1980s. In the past 10 years alone, we have seen the loss of 134 million miles of coverage. Further evidence of the speed of decline is stark. In 2016, some 248 services in England were reduced or altered, with 124 being withdrawn. The worst affected that year was my county of Devon, where 58 services were affected.
In 2017, cuts to local authority funding support for the south-west were 10%. In that year, for example, Dorset County Council slashed £1.85 million from its subsidy scheme, cutting the number of bus services it assisted from 35 to a mere seven. In 2018, the decline looks likely to continue. We have just heard that Northamptonshire County Council has voted to remove its entire bus subsidy. Local authorities have historically been at the forefront of subsidising unprofitable routes, but this proud and worthy record now seems destined to quietly slip away. It will leave gaps in whole swathes of our rural areas covered either by commercial operators, which are becoming more risk-averse and therefore investing only in profitable routes, or by community and charitable groups.
The only area where services have increased is London, which now accounts for 25% of all the bus miles travelled in England, and where you can see bus after bus with scarcely anyone in them. It would be easy to blame this situation on a lack of demand and an increasing rise in car use. In Devon, the third biggest county in England, with a population of around 750,000, around 150,000 people—19% of the county’s population—are without the use of a private vehicle. Also, many of those with cars are struggling because of the lack of service facilities outside urban centres. The decline in rural garages has been dramatic. Since 2000, some 4,000 out of a total of 7,000 independent operators have closed down.
The further isolation of our rural communities is something that this Committee should deplore, but why? In addition to social mobility, many people are now struggling to reach the basic services most of us take for granted, including shops, education and health. It is estimated that 400,000 people are in work or in a better job because of the availability of a bus service. Fifty per cent of students are frequent bus users for access to education and training. Our economists calculate that bus commuters generate £64 billion of economic benefit per year, with bus users making shopping and leisure trips worth £27.2 billion per year.
So how are the Government going to address these issues? Although the Bus Services Act 2017 was designed to get local authorities and bus companies working in partnership to improve services, clearly it did not take into account continuing cuts to local authority budgets. The Transport Secretary has suggested a change to demand-led services, Uber style. I remind him of the enormous value of our community and charitable organisations. In Devon, for example, rural community transport charities provide a ring-and-ride service on a wheelchair-enabled minibus for shopping, a volunteer car service for people requiring transport to important appointments at hospital and so on, and a community minibus hire service. Similar services are being provided in other cut-off communities in Wales and north-west England.
What can be done? I shall make a few suggestions. First, more noise is needed to prevent a Beeching-style repeat. Secondly, assuming that local authority budgets will be slashed further, local authority budgets should be ring-fenced or top-sliced for the continued provision of rural services. Thirdly, there should be a review of the method of funding, revenue support being more helpful than capital. Fourthly, there should be an urgent review of the effects on rural bus services of the English national concessionary scheme, which provides free travel for those aged over 65. Fifthly, we should consider making rural bus services a statutory provision, as with education and health, rather than optional. Sixthly, we should establish a national connectivity fund. Seventhly and finally, we need a total transport scheme which can use the power of the digital world to provide integrated networks.
The Transport Secretary needs to get to grips with this as there is much anxiety and aggravation out there. Mr Reg Varney from the TV series “On the Buses” will surely be after the Transport Secretary unless something happens.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)
I thank my noble friend Lord Bradshaw for tabling today’s debate and for being so effective in keeping the woes of the bus industry on the agenda because buses tend to get overtaken by railways.
Like the noble Earl, I shall use my time to speak about rural bus services in England, where there is a particularly intractable set of problems. Last year, when the Bus Services Bill was going through this House, rural issues were raised quite a number of times. The Minister, to his credit, was forced to admit that not enough attention had been paid to the potential benefits that could come from the Bus Services Act if it was implemented in the right way. I know we are not so far on, but it would be very interesting to hear from the Minister what work is going on in the department to make sure that rural areas are not forgotten. During the passage of the Bill, we talked about the way in which the commissioning process could use the Public Services (Social Value) Act criteria to level the playing field with social and community providers of transport. That was something the Minister was quite responsive to, so I would like to hear a little more about that.
I shall make two points which at one level are rather obvious, but which are not always well understood. First, there are different sorts of rural areas. The village I live in in Suffolk is tiny. There are about 200 people in the parish, and it has never had a regular bus service. People stay there only if they have access to a car, and community transport plays an important part for a very small number of people with particular needs. A mile away is a village 10 times the size, which is a completely different kettle of fish. It has always had a very good bus service. People moved there knowing that they had access to the nearby market town and then onwards to Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds. The service has undergone successive contractions and it is now getting harder and harder for people to use the bus to get into work, or to hospitals and other places. These are both rural communities but they have very different expectations and needs.
The second point is that it is convenient to think about rural and urban areas separately, but of course they are inextricably linked. The overall health of the bus industry, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Bradshaw, is very bad, and if it is bad overall, it is dire in rural areas. We have to understand that they are linked. Also, there is the congestion problem: given that most rural journeys might originate in a rural area but are going to an urban area, they are also impacted.
The CPRE has recorded that supported mileage by local authorities has fallen by 24%. It is using the term, “the Beeching of the buses”. Many of them are in rural areas. It is quite illuminating that the Campaign for Better Transport worked out that the total of those lost grants is £225 million in England. That is a lot of money for local authorities, but in government terms, it is the cost of a single bypass. It represents 17% of bus journeys but the ones that are the most socially necessary for some groups.
In 2016, this House published a report on the way in which the Equality Act is being delivered. There was a particular strand of evidence from users about the way in which local authorities fail to do proper impact assessments when they are making decisions about bus provision. As a consequence, a number of groups now face very real problems, which are bad enough if you are in an urban area—in a rural area, it is hopeless. Many older people are unable to drive and depend on public transport. Reimbursement of the bus pass is not keeping up with the costs and, in any case, in many places there are no services on which to use a concessionary pass. In some areas, including my own, a switch to community transport schemes is all very well, but the local authority has used the licensing regime of the buses used to deny passengers the use of their concessionary fares pass.
We know that younger people are taking fewer journeys. In an urban area, that is probably quite a good thing, but in rural areas the only practical way for younger people to look for work or attend higher education—or even have some sort of social life—is running a car. I was talking to providers running the Government’s flagship National Citizen Service; they told me that rural transport is a real barrier to participation for many young people and—because the NCS is provided on a county basis—there was a ridiculous situation where students on the Cambridgeshire border were expected to get to Ipswich, which was just impossible by public transport, but could not go to Cambridge, where there is a bus. The delivery of some of these other services really needs looking at.
For jobseekers without access to a car, just getting to job centres is a real problem. There is the iniquity of people being sanctioned when the system lets them down. Then, of course, there are people on low incomes, who are very dependent on buses. In rural areas, because there are no buses, it is more likely that people who really cannot afford to do so are having to run one or even two cars just to get to work and so on. The irony of all this is that collectively we are actually spending quite a lot of money on buses. Between the bus operators grant, concessionary fares, home-to- school transport, the voluntary sector and health and social providers, there is a lot—but it has never been joined up.
I know that the Government have created some pilots under the Total Transport scheme, covering 37 local authority areas. It would be really useful to know a bit about the outcome of the pilots and what lessons were learned. On a linked point, the Campaign for Better Transport and the Passenger Transport Group are keen to see a connectivity fund, which would bring together this expenditure. I look forward to the Minister’s answer and I hope that she understands the very real concerns that are being expressed today about the overall state of the bus industry, particularly in rural areas.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for bringing this important question before us today. The topic is close to my heart: I have spent much of my life and ministry working in rural areas. I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Given that I, too, am going to talk about particular challenges to do with rural bus services, which the noble Earl, Lord Arran, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, have spoken about, I also declare my interest as president of the Rural Coalition.
As a former Bishop of Shrewsbury and the current Bishop of St Albans, when I was looking at the statistics I was deeply alarmed to discover that Bedfordshire, in my diocese, and Shropshire, in my previous patch, have seen the second and third-greatest reductions in bus services in terms of miles lost in the country in the past four years, beaten only by Bracknell Forest. Even worse is the decrease in the quantity of subsidised bus miles in those two areas, which has decreased by 77% and 81% respectively. This has a huge impact on a whole variety of groups, particularly vulnerable people in our rural areas. I hope that Her Majesty’s Government will not ignore it. Indeed, as we are wanting, longing, hoping and working for a flourishing, thriving rural community and countryside, this is a really vital aspect.
Age UK’s 2010 Loneliness and Isolation Evidence Review found strong evidence that physical isolation is still the single factor most closely associated with feelings of loneliness. Lack of a good rural bus service has an impact on a large number of groups: those who are too elderly or too young to drive, who cannot drive due to a disability or who simply cannot afford to drive at all. In those cases rural transport, particularly buses, is a vital lifeline, as well as providing important social interaction. A lack of transport is a barrier to community and to flourishing in the countryside.
As more and more services become available online and local services close or amalgamate, those without good internet connectivity or digital skills must travel even further to get the help they need. That is one of the reasons why I have been particularly passionate in talking and working with the whole issue of rural connectivity: it is fundamental if we are going to see our rural areas continue to thrive. Not everyone can use online banking. A trip to the hospital for a regular appointment can be a huge endeavour if you live in a rural area—less than one-fifth of those in rural areas have access to a hospital within a reasonable time by public transport or walking. That is not to mention the problems people can have enrolling for universal credit when they do not have a computer at home and the nearest job centre is miles away, as we have already heard, or the challenge of looking for work when people cannot drive to interviews or have young children at home to look after.
I am sure it will not surprise noble Lords that surveys show that people in rural areas express significant levels of dissatisfaction when it comes to issues of public transport. According to an analysis produced by the Department for Transport this year, more than 70% of people living in London are satisfied with their bus service compared to only 24% of those in the most rural areas.
The 2012 decision to cut the bus service operators grant, which central government gives to local authorities to subsidise socially necessary bus services, continues to bite, and has bitten especially hard in more rural parts of my diocese. Community groups, charities and church groups do extraordinary work to serve their communities by providing transport. Last week I was visiting a parish where all sorts of people use cars and minibuses to collect a whole lot of young people together for a youth group. A few weeks ago I was at a church where people were describing their weekly lunch for the elderly; they manage to ensure that everybody gets their lift in. This is, of course, informal and voluntary; it is not the same as a consistent bus service so people are able to get to places when they need to. In 2014, the Transport Select Committee of the other place concluded that:
“Central Government and local authorities are being unrealistic if they expect voluntary community transport projects to compensate for decreased bus services. Although community transport has an important role to play, in practice it does not serve all sections of the community and therefore cannot substitute for bus services”.
Young people in rural areas in particular suffer when they do not have access to consistent, timely, affordable bus services. I would therefore like to know from the Minister what Her Majesty’s Government are doing to make rural bus services a priority. What assessment have they made of the appropriateness of current access to services, and what analysis has been made of the impact of cuts, both centrally and to local government funding, on service provision? What are the Government doing to ensure that the worst off, particularly the young, have reasonable access to bus services? Will the cross-governmental strategy on loneliness be doing any work on rural transport?
As I travel around, I hear this issue raised time and again and I cannot overstate its importance. Bus services are a lifeline for rural communities and are becoming increasingly important in a digital age. I hope that today’s debate will spur Her Majesty’s Government, and indeed all of us, on in this important area.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, 5% of all journeys are made by bus and buses are the most popular form of public transport. It is interesting that you do not meet many bus enthusiasts; you meet lots of train enthusiasts, but trains are in fact far less important to the day-to-day life of our nation. Some 4.5 billion journeys a year are made by bus but, as the noble Earl, Lord Arran, stated, the bus network is now back at 1980s levels and has shrunk by 8% in the past decade—or by 134 million miles—with 2,000 services affected. North-west England and Wales have been hardest hit, with a 40% reduction in rural areas in the past decade. Yet, ironically, in England at least, the number of passengers has increased slightly. It is just that there is no bus for them to go on and nowhere for them to go. The demand is clearly there. The analogy with the Beeching era and the cuts to trains in the 1960s is a very good one.
The cause of all this needs to be examined. The key issue is certainly local government finance. Local authorities face financial constraints and they have cut discretionary subsidised bus services. Councils have a statutory duty to fund concessionary travel by pensioners and disabled people. This is very popular with the public, but councils estimate that there is a shortfall of at least £200 million for the funding of concessionary fares. This has meant that they have diverted money to make up this shortfall, taking it from previously subsidised routes, concessionary fare schemes—which, in many cases, they had set up themselves, very often for young people—and community transport.
Although I am hopeful that the Bus Services Act will encourage better working between operators and councils, I believe that the Act missed opportunities. There were things that could have been done that were not done. For example, it could have been made easier for councils without elected mayors to establish franchising and there could have been stronger incentives or requirements for environmental improvements. I am very pleased that the Government are giving nearly £40 million to retrofit buses, which is going to 20 local authorities as part of the clean bus technology fund. That is great, but in some areas there are no buses to retrofit, and £40 million is certainly not going to solve the emissions problem. The Government could have created the bus passengers of tomorrow with mandatory concessionary fare schemes for young people, who need buses to get to jobs and education and for their social lives.
The Minister has heard time and again this afternoon concern for rural areas. I am aware that there was a phone-in programme recently where a man from Devon rang to say that in his village there were only three buses a week. He explained that if he wanted to go to the doctor, which was in the nearest town, he had to stay overnight because by the time he had had his appointment, the bus had returned home for the day. That is really dysfunctional and it makes it almost impossible to live in some rural areas without a car. A colleague of mine in the Welsh Assembly talked about seeing hitch-hiking pensioners in her rural constituency. I am worried enough about the concept of hitch-hiking pensioners; the idea that teenagers might be tempted to hitch-hike worries me even more.
The irony of all this is that one of the reasons why buses are struggling in urban areas is increasing traffic congestion, which leads to unpredictable journey times, and yet congestion is one of the main reasons why we need more buses to encourage people out of their cars on to more environmentally friendly forms of transport. A further irony is that another threat to our bus services is the fact that some councils, in attempting to set up ultra-low emission zones, are targeting buses—diesel buses—first. That is totally topsy-turvy. I realise that a diesel bus is polluting but you can get dozens of car owners on a diesel bus and save dozens of car journeys and therefore prevent those emissions. The establishment of ultra-low emission zones must be done in a balanced and sensible manner.
I end by asking the Minister: can she assure us that the Government will put more resources into supporting low and zero-emission initiatives for buses? Will the Government work with local authorities to ensure that buses are not primary targets in the establishment of ultra-low emission zones? Can she give us even a glimmer of hope that the Government are prepared to evaluate the potential benefits of youth concessionary fares? I emphasise that this is an issue of intergenerational justice. Older people such as me can have a bus pass but in many areas young people are not able to get that bus pass for themselves. Finally, will the Government review the grants to local authorities and the refunds for concessionary fares with a view to reforming them to create a better and fairer system for local authorities’ financial support for bus services?
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for tabling this Question for Short Debate. It is very good to be able to discuss this important issue. I also draw the attention of the Grand Committee to my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. As we have heard, buses are an important lifeline for people, and the decline in bus use outside London is a serious problem that is affecting the viability of communities, particularly rural communities and those areas in our towns and cities less well served by other modes of transport, as they strive to be sustainable.
The noble Earl, Lord Arran, referred to the cuts in funding to bus schemes by local authorities and the effect that this has had on rural communities. I agree with him. I also agree with his comments about the need for effective bus services to enable people to get to work. Rural areas will suffer further decline if working people cannot live there and get to work—a point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans.
The noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, also spoke about rural areas and the dire problems experienced there with the decline in bus services. The risk of course is that they become places where people in cities have second or weekend homes, and that further exacerbates the problem until an area becomes unsustainable and dies. The right reverend Prelate spoke about the need for thriving communities, and I agreed with his comments about loneliness. Bus use and the provision of bus services have to be part of integrated services to make communities viable. Their decline is doing huge damage. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, spoke about car use and car parking. Work is going on to deter this but, as he said, it is not matched by a good bus service being in place to encourage people to get out of their cars and on to buses.
As we have heard, about half the bus journeys in England are made outside London, and, since bus deregulation in 1986, these are largely delivered by private operators. The Bus Services Bill was passed into law in 2017 and generally it is a good piece of legislation. It certainly seeks to help reduce the decline in bus use outside London. It has been on the statute book for only a year, which is probably too short a period to see whether it is having the desired effect.
However, generally there has been a downward trend in bus use over a number of years in both metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas. Bus deregulation may have played a part in that, as operators have sought to work on the more profitable routes without the constraint of the routes, timetables and fares being set for them, as has been the case in London for many years. I agreed with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, made about congestion. That has been a real issue affecting bus use in recent years.
Of course, the decline in bus use could be attributed to other forms of public transport coming on stream in addition to the railways. I have certainly noticed light rail and modern tram services in some of our major conurbations, such as Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and Nottingham. There may also be other issues affecting bus use. We have heard about the reductions in spending as local authorities have had to take account of their resources, and that has had a knock-on effect on the money spent on buses.
Car use is still high in rural areas and, as services have declined, the reliance on car journeys has increased even more. One bus in and one bus out a day from a town to nearby villages five days a week does not deliver the required level of service. You then get a self-fulfilling prophecy of decline, which has a huge impact on communities.
There are also issues with bus fares, operator revenues and government grant schemes, which, again, have had an effect on bus numbers and need to be taken account of. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, made a point about the effect of bus punctuality. We in London are very lucky with the number of buses that we have but in fact London has the worst punctuality rate in the whole of England. There is always another bus coming along, so no one knows whether it is late or not.
Earlier, I mentioned the Bus Services Act 2017. As I said, this was an attempt if not to increase bus use then certainly to halt its decline, and I wish that legislation every success. Work being done to make buses more user-friendly is to be welcomed. I was particularly pleased to hear that audio-visual services on buses outside London are to be improved. That should help to make disabled people more confident about getting on buses. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, can update us on that when she responds to the debate.
We have had various partnership schemes between bus operators and local authorities for many years. These have not stopped the decline in bus use but they may have slowed it. The enhanced partnership schemes introduced by the Bus Services Act are a further extension of that. If the noble Baroness can say what has happened since the Act was brought forward, that would be helpful, although I appreciate that it has been in force for only a year. I am aware that there is a procedure to go through, including consultation and the issuing of notices, but anything that she can say will be helpful and I look forward to hearing from her.
One thing introduced in the Act, of course, was bus franchising, which was very welcome. But one thing that I was unhappy about was the obsession of the Government with metro mayors. You got these powers by default rather than having to apply to the Secretary of State only if you had a metro mayor. That is a regrettable decision and not very localist. I am aware that Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester, Steve Rotheram in Liverpool and Tim Bowles in the West of England have all pledged to use the powers. I am not sure how far they have got yet in establishing a scheme, but I was surprised that Andy Street, the Conservative metro mayor for the West Midlands, had not made any pledges at all. I actually know the West Midlands really well. I lived there for many years, and that certainly is one area that could do with a system where a bus franchise could have its timetable, fares and routes regulated much more by the metro mayor. I hope that he changes his mind. If the Minister has any more information, I would be pleased to hear it.
We have heard about open days, which would be useful to make things more helpful for bus users. I was particularly interested to read the briefing from Age UK about the problems older people have in getting to, for example, hospital appointments. As I said, having one bus in and one bus out a day really is not helpful to get you to hospital appointments. The quality of the buses, uncomfortable journeys and inconvenient times are all issues. Of course, what happens then is that people either have to have very difficult journeys or they revert to cars or taxis, which cost more money. I think that is a shame. Perhaps the Minister could say something about what we can do to ensure that there is better non-emergency transport for patients, either through better bus services or through other schemes. That, again, is one of the regrets we had in the Bus Services Act. I won an amendment here to delete that ridiculous clause about no more municipal bus companies, but then it was reversed. We never intended to have a stampede of bus companies, but it was a shame that councils could not now do something in little local areas to deal with the problems there.
I think my time is up, so I will cut my remarks there. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Sugg) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions today. I thank in particular the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for securing this debate and allowing us to talk about buses and the hugely important role that they play in our transport system.
Buses connect our communities to the workplace and to vital public services such as healthcare and education. For many, particularly those in rural areas—which I think all noble Lords spoke about today—the bus is an absolute lifeline, as over half of those who rely on buses outside London do not have access to a car. They play a vital role in our economy, with some 4.5 billion journeys a year, and remain the most popular form of public transport, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, highlighted.
Under-21s make up a third of bus passengers, and the use of buses by older people is increasing as a result of the national concessionary pass. As all noble Lords have highlighted today, the picture of bus usage across the country is mixed. While bus patronage has increased in some areas, other areas have seen a significant decline in passenger numbers.
The benefits of a reliable and innovative bus service are clear: greater productivity, and communities that are connected rather than apart. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that heavy traffic makes buses less reliable, less prompt, more costly to run and more polluting—and obviously less attractive to use because of that. They operate along fixed routes and cannot use any alternatives. It is not really a good advertisement to use buses when you see one stuck in traffic.
What is the answer? The best answer is encouraging more people to use buses. It is still the best form of regular high-capacity transport that we have. Unlike rail, a bus can go virtually anywhere, and a bus service can be set up very quickly and at a fraction of the cost of rail. But buses need help to achieve this. One solution is to improve traffic in the key corridors used by buses, and one of the most effective ways is to give them priority over traffic. The sight of a bus cruising past lines of stationary cars or getting ahead of the queue at a junction is a much better advertisement and certainly sends a clear message to motorists. Priority measures offer good value for money, and we are funding many bus projects up and down the country through the Local Growth Fund. There are rapid transit schemes in Slough, Reading and Swindon and bus priority corridors in Manchester and Birmingham, which are genuinely innovative projects that are making a big difference in some of our busiest towns and cities. Busways, which provide dedicated corridors only to buses, such as in Cambridge and Luton, are also extremely effective and have the ridership to prove it.
The Government introduced the Bus Services Act 2017 to help local authorities and bus companies work together to make bus travel more attractive. Together they can identify congestion hotspots that disrupt bus journeys and, through partnership commitments, do something about them. Bus operators have to up their game by making using the bus an easier option. We discussed the secondary legislation relating to the Bus Services Act 2017 earlier this week. The Act contains a range of options to improve local bus services in England. In addition to franchising, there are new and improved options to allow local transport authorities to enter into partnership with their local bus operators to improve services for passengers.
Local authorities can provide bus priority measures or do other things to make buses more attractive. As the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, touched on, this can include reducing car-parking provision, increasing its cost or better enforcing existing parking restrictions, introducing park-and-ride schemes, altering traffic light phasing and establishing bus lanes. There are lots of tools. The Act also allows local bus operators to improve their services by introducing multi-operator smart ticketing, using more environmentally friendly vehicles and providing comprehensive timetable and fares information. The partnership can also co-ordinate bus timetables and ticketing with other modes, such as rail services, to provide a seamless journey.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, mentioned the bus open data powers in the Act, which will go further than the partnership provisions to require all bus operators in England to open up real-time route, timetable, fare and ticket information to passengers by 2020. Since the Bus Services Act came into force last year, around 30 local authorities up and down the country have expressed an interest and we are working with them to roll out the scheme.
On the bus services operators grant—BSOG—which many noble Lords mentioned, commercial bus operators receive 43% of their income from the public purse. Each year the department provides £250 million in direct revenue support for bus services in England via the BSOG. Of that, more than £40 million is paid directly to councils outside London to support buses that are not commercially viable but which they consider socially necessary. The rest goes to commercial bus operators. Without this support, fares would increase and marginal services would disappear. The BSOG is currently paid on the basis of fuel used, but we are looking at ways of reforming it to make it even more effective in supporting bus services.
On local authority funding, I fully appreciate that local authorities are making very difficult choices as a result of ongoing financial pressures. The right reverend Prelate and others were correct to point out that BSOG funding was reduced in the 2010 spending review. A decision was made to reduce it by 20% to reflect the economic climate of the time. Since 2012 the Government have continued to maintain the BSOG at current levels and we are very aware of the importance of bus services to local communities. In recognition of this, we were able to protect BSOG funding as part of the 2015 spending review. We are looking at reforming the way the BSOG is paid to make it more effective in supporting bus services.
Noble Lords mentioned the advantages of more young people using buses, and I entirely agree. The level of fares is a complex area. There is no statutory obligation to provide discounted travel to young people, and I am afraid there are no plans to introduce it. Many commercial and publicly funded reductions are available. We are working to deliver significantly discounted bus travel for apprentices to ensure that no young person is deterred from taking up an apprenticeship by travel costs. I listened with interest to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, about the National Citizen Service, which is an excellent programme. I will take that away and have a look at it.
The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, spoke about road user charging for vehicles as a solution to congestion. While I listened with interest, there are technical costs and privacy challenges and, not least, the importance of public acceptance of it, so I am afraid the Government have no plans to introduce such a road-pricing scheme. I am afraid there is more disappointment for the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, as the majority of English local authorities have taken on civil parking enforcement powers, but obviously not in the area in which the noble Lord lives. We think that CPE represents the most effective way for local authorities to manage and enforce parking. While we continue to support the rollout of CPE, we think it is up to each local authority to consider the financial and operational implications of taking on parking enforcement duties. For that reason, we let local authorities freely choose whether to apply for these powers, and have no plans to force the remaining non-CPE authorities to adopt them. But as I said, if they wish to do so, we will work with them. I am afraid I must also disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, on the extension of civil enforcement powers to moving traffic offences, such as the yellow box. We have no plans to extend them. It is important to recognise that congestion has a wide range of causes. Obviously, there is that enforcement in London and Wales. Although we still have congestion here, we think there are better ways to address it and we are working on those.
The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, the noble Earl, Lord Arran, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans all raised the important issue of rural areas. The noble Baroness is quite correct that different areas have very different needs and expectations. Of course, extra pressures are placed on local authorities to provide services in more isolated areas. The Minister for Local Government is intending to increase support for the most sparsely populated rural areas by more than quadrupling the rural services delivery grant from £15.5 million to £65 million by 2019-20.
The right reverend Prelate also made the important point that bus services are relied on by many different groups in rural areas. It is important that the lack of provision does not further exacerbate any issues of loneliness. I will certainly go and see whether we can address the issue of transport.
Baroness Randerson
Since this is International Women’s Day, we ought to note in this debate that bus passengers are much more likely to be women than men. There is an issue here not just of intergenerational fairness but of gender equality.
Baroness Sugg
I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. I was thinking about whether I could say something about women, given that it is International Women’s Day. I was not aware of that fact, so I thank her.
Providing transport solutions across wider geographical areas requires the effective use of all available options, whether it be traditional fixed-route bus services, community buses, dial-a-ride—as the noble Earl mentioned—or other services, such as social care or non-emergency patient transport. At present, the Government provide over £2 billion each year in funding for those services. That is spent by different bodies which are often providing transport for the same people at different times; for example, someone using non-emergency patient transport to get to a routine hospital appointment one day can be using a local dial-a-ride service to go shopping or visit friends the next day.
The funds do need to be spent in a more joined-up way. The noble Earl raised the issue of Total Transport. Two years ago, we launched our Total Transport pilot schemes across England to explore how councils, the NHS and other agencies can work together. The results of those pilot projects are still being analysed, but it is already clear that there is considerable further scope for public sector-funded transport to work together, whether it is provided by local authorities, community groups or the NHS. We will be publishing those results shortly.
The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, asked about lane-rental schemes. The Government have trialled lane-rental schemes, encouraging utilities to work together at weekends and in the evenings. There is good news: that has proved successful. We are now encouraging local authorities to set up schemes in other areas across England. We laid a statutory instrument last week with guidance for local authorities and I look forward to the impact that may have on congestion.
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, asked about the environment. She is quite right that buses emit fewer air pollutants than the equivalent number of car journeys taken by road, but on urban routes, where the majority of buses operate, with the stop-start conditions, the slower speeds and the traffic, as we have discussed, there are obviously issues. That is why we are trying to clean up the bus fleet. As the noble Baroness recognised, we invest in green buses. There is more that we can do: we will shortly be publishing our strategy towards zero-emission vehicles. Emissions have not yet been calculated on a per-head basis, partly because that would impact on decisions on bus purchasing, and we want to encourage the purchase of clean buses. But we are looking at further developing our transport energy model, possibly including emissions per head.
There is no single solution that will work everywhere, but the Government have a commitment to local transport, and the powers in the Bus Services Act will help reverse the decline in bus use and drive up patronage. However, central government can go only so far to encourage bus use. Buses are not provided by the state: outside London, some 80% are provided by commercial bus operators. Most of the roads that buses use are the responsibility of local authorities. Much is in the hands of local politicians, local authorities and the bus operators themselves. We all need to work together to make sure that buses can provide an effective way of tackling congestion.
Again, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions today and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for introducing this debate. Buses are a key part of our transport system and perhaps we do not discuss them enough in your Lordships’ House. As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, often our emphasis is on rail. However, with the SI this week, the debate today and the Question on rural buses from the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, I am pleased that we have been given the opportunity to do so. Very appropriately, after waiting so long for a debate on buses, we have now had three come along at once. I hope that I have been able to demonstrate that the Government are committed to maintaining and improving local and public transport in all areas, whether in the largest cities or the most rural villages.
Gypsy, Traveller and Roma Communities
Baroness Whitaker
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to address health issues in the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, I first want to give Her Majesty’s Government credit for commissioning the Traveller Movement to produce the report, Impact of Insecure Accommodation and the Living Environment on Gypsies’ and Travellers’ Health by Professor Margaret Greenfields and Mr Matthew Brindley. On International Women’s Day, it would be right to say that the report makes clear that it is the women who are most likely to report poor health, including mental health. My questions for the Minister are, now that it has been published for more than a year, what has been done to implement the recommendations, and how is progress being monitored?
The main findings were that the physical conditions of their environment were a key element of social determinants of health and thus had a measurable effect on the physical and mental health outcomes for Gypsies and Travellers. Sixty-six per cent of the sample reported bad, very bad or poor health, mental as well as physical, with those with the worst self-reported health living on unauthorised roadside sites, followed by those living on poor quality local authority sites. Thirty-nine per cent of the sample reported anxiety or depression, and the majority of those lived in conditions where they felt insecure because of planning status, threat of eviction or poor site conditions or had reluctantly accepted to live in bricks and mortar because there was no pitch available on a Traveller site. It is also notable that the majority of respondents rated their health as bad or very bad by their mid to late 30s and by their 40s a steep decline had begun.
Asthma and repeated chest infections, particularly among children, were noted in about half the interviews, but it was difficult for many at insecure sites to be registered with a GP. Chronic conditions, such as diabetes or kidney problems, were therefore inadequately treated and exacerbated. This was in contrast to those on secure sites, who were all able to access a local GP. Gypsies and Travellers who lived on private sites with planning permission felt that they had the best health. The experiences of racial harassment recounted to the interviewer are particularly heart-breaking, especially when the Gypsies and Travellers concerned had deep-rooted family connections to the area and had lived there for many generations.
The more secure a site, the fewer incidents there have been. It is not as if many Gypsies and Travellers did not engage in their local neighbourhoods when they did have stability through schools, councils and service providers. Respondents at two-thirds of the sites gave chapter and verse about this. Since they did much more caring for immediate household members or the wider family than the general population do, I think they did indeed have something valuable to contribute.
It is pretty well evidenced that improving the environmental health factors of existing sites and providing stability of tenure would improve health outcomes considerably. This would, of course, be cost effective in terms of reduced spend on ill-health and disability, as well as having a positive effect on children’s education, and it would deliver a measure of justice to those so heavily and unfairly penalised by the shortage of authorised sites.
Under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, commissioners of healthcare services have a duty to reduce health inequalities in access to services and outcomes. This, combined with the equality duty under the Equality Act 2010, should oblige local authorities responsible for accommodation to work with healthcare commissioners and health and well-being boards to sort out a fairer deal for Gypsies and Travellers. Will the Minister tell the committee how many local authorities have taken this role on board?
As local authorities have in the past been so slow to assume their responsibility for fair standards for their Gypsy and Traveller citizens, the report says, the duty once placed on local authorities to provide sites where a need has been identified should be reinstated. If the Welsh Government can do it—with a consequent drop in expensive disruption and protests—why cannot we?
At the very least, more robust data should be gathered by the MHCLG on the provision of new pitches on Gypsy and Traveller sites explicitly linked to health outcomes for people on insecure sites, monitored under Health and Social Care Act 2012 duties. Such monitoring should include the impact of the August 2015 Planning Policy for Traveller Sites’ change of definition, which can so damage the capacity of Gypsies and Travellers to obtain reasonable planning permission.
Non-governmental organisations, such as Friends, Families and Travellers, of which I have the honour to be president, also ask for the data to be disaggregated for Gypsies, Roma and Travellers. The amalgamation of data has skewed statistics for the different communities, who have different characteristics. There is no systematic monitoring because they are not yet included in the NHS data dictionary, so how can health outcomes be understood and resources properly targeted? Friends, Families and Travellers has asked Jeremy Hunt to include accommodation status in NHS data collection, so as to present a clearer picture of how homelessness impacts on health. Will the Minister tell me what is happening about this?
Time prevents me listing all the sensible recommendations of this report, but your Lordships’ Committee and the Gypsy and Traveller communities themselves are owed a progress report by the Government on what they are doing about them. I remind your Lordships that the inequalities of health among Gypsies and Travellers result in significantly decreased life expectancy—up to 12 years less for women and 10 years less for men—a miscarriage rate of 29% as opposed to 16% for the mainstream population, the highest maternal mortality rate of any single group and 17.6% of them having experienced the death of a child as opposed to 0.9% of their low-income peers, quite apart from increased chronic illness, a marked increase in incidence of mental ill-health and a lack of support in bereavement and suicide.
These are dark days for our cherished diversity. Gypsies and Travellers have never shared much in our much-vaunted tolerance, but now that the alarming increase in the racial harassment they experience is so clearly documented, what are Her Majesty’s Government doing to show that all our citizens are of equal worth?
The Lord Bishop of Derby
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for securing the debate and for her passion and leadership on this very important issue. I will make a contribution about Roma people, of whom there is a significant community in the city of Derby, where I am privileged to serve. I chair the Multi-Faith Centre, which brings together different faiths and cultures, and we have a particular project working with Roma people in the city. I will draw on that experience to highlight this element of the Question and to point to some things that we might want to consider more deeply.
My colleague the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury has published a book, Reimagining Britain. One of the tables in it shows that Roma people and other groups are a barometer of many of our problems as a civilised society. That is what I want to explore. Your Lordships will know that Roma people are a migrant, unsettled people. They are reputed to have come from northern India more than 1,000 years ago and migrated into the Balkans and parts of Europe. What has been highlighted in our experience of trying to work creatively with Roma people in Derby is that while we have developed a way of handling society and health issues through what I would call settled systems, it is difficult for people who do not have a settled lifestyle to fit into such systems. Rather than thinking that they are old-fashioned people who need to settle down and fit into our settled systems, I think that they bring with them an important challenge that the Minister might like to comment on. My wife lives with me on the edge of Derby and works in London; she is a mobile, modern person. It is very difficult for her to make an appointment with the doctor, for instance, because the system is settled but she has a flexible lifestyle. Many of the Roma people are testing our systems, so we need to be creative. We need to be pushed towards greater flexibility in dealing with these people, not simply making them conform to things that might be too tight for them.
In my experience and that of my colleagues, the scale of deprivation among Roma people is enormously high. Literacy rates are low. There is a history of discrimination, so there is a mentality of not being confident about fitting in. There are high levels of unemployment and smoking. There are low rates of child immunisation and high infant mortality. In 2014 the European Commission said that poor health among Roma people is closely linked to social, economic and environmental factors. People such as the Roma are a barometer of the health of our society, and that is why it is worth taking them seriously and learning from them.
They come with difficult cultural norms. As a long-oppressed people with no real sense of home, there is fatalism and a tendency to live in the moment. We run a youth club for young people because they tend to congregate in open spaces, which is their lifestyle, and it is sometimes difficult to hire somewhere for those young people to meet. There is such an explosion of energy and engagement in the moment and we have somehow to see how that can be a part of our civilisation, something that can be seen to be creative rather than anti-social and not fitting in with our norms.
At our multi-faith centre we run the Roma Community Care project in partnership with Derby City Council. The Minister might like to reflect on how we can encourage local authorities to partner with voluntary energy to reach out and be alongside people to help with integration and to offer health services. We try to use Roma people. We train them within the project and try to develop self-help and development skills. Some things need to be done to put some flesh on engaging creatively with people who bring unsettlement into our settled system. First, as I have said, we need voluntary energy and local authority funding to bring schemes together. Secondly, we need mediators and champions, people who will engage with these communities and raise up people who can come back and engage with us. We need to make home visits, not just to meet people in our territories—our surgeries, our hospitals and in A&E departments—because in Roma culture, people will talk about their health only within the privacy of their own home. They are nervous about talking in what they think of as a more public place. We need to train and equip people from the Roma community as workers and volunteers, and we need outreach programmes.
One of the most interesting things we have learned is that in a culture with low rates of literacy, it is no good producing leaflets to help people access healthcare. Roma people communicate through conversation. Quite honestly, in a civilised society, is it not better to communicate through talking rather than by leaflet? That is why we need advocates—people to make the connection. There is an interesting challenge. Do our systems have enough space for conversation? You have to fill in a form online or ring up to make an impersonal appointment with some sort of machine. Roma people present a challenge that is not just a problem to be overcome but should make us think about our systems slightly more creatively. We have to encourage our professional services to engage with people such as the Roma more on their own terms, with proper cultural awareness.
Finally, the Roma are a very vulnerable people and we have high levels of trafficking in our city of Derby. We have had cases of child trafficking, sexual exploitation and forced labour where there have been prosecutions and Roma people are victims, because they are so vulnerable.
I hope we can look at our systems of housing and health—of connecting with these communities—to see how we can reach out to meet them. We should not just expect them to conform, but should look for a cultural engagement where we give a bit to bring people in and reach out, and they have to learn to give a bit to participate in what we are offering for a healthy society with healthy Roma people within it.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I very much thank my noble friend Lady Whitaker for giving us the opportunity of this debate. I have to mention this: I always enjoy listening to the right reverend Prelate because he always speaks with the authority of engagement. He is not just telling people what they should do or theorising about it; he is actually involved in doing it, which is very challenging.
I put the record that I deeply appreciate the information I received from the Traveller Movement, which produced a very helpful briefing for the debate. I should also like to put on the record my appreciation of our Library. I always like it there. It does first-class work in making available helpful information on the issues before us. I just wish that more of us in the House would look at what it produces and value it, because it is of a very high standard.
It is a difficult time for a whole host of reasons. The shortage of money and the reduction of money for local authorities, when they are on the front line, is a real worry—yet another. My time in the Council of Europe—just short of 10 years, which I enjoyed tremendously—offered another illustration, on the issue of Gypsies and Roma, of how, to work satisfactorily, we had to look at it strategically as well. Therefore, there is a great need to work closely with our friends in Europe. Whatever happens as a result of all our late nights here on the legislation to prepare for leaving Europe, we will need to go on working closely with our friends and colleagues in Europe. We need to understand each other; of course, in some countries in Europe there are still situations that lead to more Roma and Gypsies coming to our country. In a way, that is a credit to this country.
My other point is that I am sure that we have—the right reverend Prelate already talked about this—an immense amount of work to do with our community in terms of understanding. Some schools are doing very imaginative work, but much more needs to be done. It should not just depend on an inspired teacher who happens to be interested in the subject and is therefore doing something about it. It should be integrated because this is part of our community; it should understand what being part of that community is. I never hesitate to make what could be said to be a rather idealistic point; I am glad it is said to be so. One of the things we must get right in British society is learning to celebrate and enjoy diversity. There are always situations and pressures from the unfamiliar by which people can feel threatened, but that is essentially because people are not well informed. Therefore, there is a terrific job to be done.
As the right reverend Prelate said so wisely, we need—he said “champions”; I would say emissaries—people who go out and help the Roma and Gypsies. The challenges for the Gypsy community are huge, but the challenges for the Roma are terrific. We must help them to better understand the society they are living in and to find their way about in it. We must help them to integrate, to the extent that they are in dialogue with the society of which they are a part, and help that society to understand. I would be lying in this Committee if I did not say that I sometimes feel quite distressed when I am going through a beautiful part of the country, or a very attractive country town, and suddenly see a mess. It is not nice and people can react in a host of ways. I do not believe that if we really had the right kind of communication we could not tackle that issue together with the Roma and Gypsies: we would help them to understand how other people see their lifestyle and what it is doing to them.
This debate is supposed to concentrate on health, and health issues are huge. Life expectancy is 10% below that of the general population; that is, 10 to 12 years less than the general population. Infant mortality is still deeply worrying, as is the high maternal mortality rate. There is low child immunisation. There are issues around levels of mental health problems, substance misuse and diabetes. There are very disturbing statistics on all these conditions on which we need to concentrate. If we are talking about what can be done and what the Government should be doing, my noble friend has asked very specific questions and I support her in saying that I hope we get specific answers to those questions. Information sharing is tremendously important, not just between the long-established settled community and Gypsies and so on, but between different parts of the settled community, which often react in isolation from each other. There needs to be much more integration.
We also need community engagement and to find ways to make mainstream services relevant and accessible. I liked what the right reverend Prelate said about his wife. Most of us have the same kind of experience with our GP at home, wherever we live, and our lifestyle here. Poor living conditions need to be addressed. I am very glad that my noble friend has given us the opportunity to concentrate on this issue for a few minutes, but we are good at talking about the issue; it is when things are actually happening that we should worry. At the moment, if viewed as history, or looked at from another planet, we do not have a very good story to tell about these underprivileged people and the kind of challenges they are enduring. We need to wake up and do something about it.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for securing this important debate and setting out the issues so clearly. We all take healthcare for ourselves, our families and our children extremely seriously and want it to be available when we need it. This right has to be extended to the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.
When elected to Somerset County Council, I was persuaded in 1995 by a colleague to chair a small working group looking into the needs of Gypsies, Roma and Travellers in the county. There was widespread support for the deliberations of this working group, including from the Traveller Education Service, social services and the various district and parish councils. We talked to many Gypsies and Travellers and found that it was all but impossible for them to access healthcare, due mainly to the need for a permanent address in order to register with a GP, as the noble Baroness said. There was also some suspiciousness on their part about having contact with officialdom and filling in forms. The county council at that time had a strong Gypsy and Traveller department, which looked after the six sites for Gypsies in the county’s ownership. Gypsies and Travellers arriving in the county from outside and camping in unregulated sites were provided with water bowsers and visited to ensure that their needs were met, especially if there were children present. We take the provision of water as a given, but many have recently realised just how difficult it is to live if their water supply is cut off.
Although the report of the working group was welcomed by some, this was not the case for everyone. I had the extremely unpleasant experience of attending a public meeting in part of the county where one vociferous gentleman stood up and said that the only thing to do with Gypsies was to stand them up against a wall and shoot them. Mercifully, his extreme and irrational hatred was not replicated by others in the room.
I wind the clock forward 13 years to 2008-09 when, as a member of the local district council, I took part in a piece of work run by the Centre for Public Scrutiny. A group of councils looked at health services available to communities on the margins. Two councils, of which mine was one, looked at the provision for Gypsies and Travellers, while two others looked at provision for sex workers and two others looked at provision for ethnic communities.
During our work in south Somerset, we visited two Gypsy sites. We talked to the teenagers, young women and mothers on the site. We found they had good access to maternity services, and midwives visited the site to do antenatal checks. They were all pleased with the level of support they got. As they lived on a permanent site, the young mothers and more mature women were registered with local GP practices and got good support, not only for themselves but for their children, although this did not seem to extend to dental care.
There was, however, little health support for Travellers who were often camping in woodland sites and on the corner of farmland, usually with the support of the local landowner or farmer. These were not permanent arrangements and, therefore, access to health care was very limited. Their children were unlikely to receive the usual inoculations that we take for granted for our children. Although Gypsies and Travellers need to access healthcare, they rarely, if ever, wish to access social services. It is part of their culture that they look after their own elderly relatives, while we in the settled community tend to call up services to help us with our infirm and elderly relatives.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission, in its report in March 2016, found that Gypsies and Travellers, compared with the general population, were more likely to suffer bad health, as has already been referred to. This includes lower life expectancy, high infant and maternal mortality rates, low child immunisation levels, chronic cough or bronchitis—even after smoking is taken into account—asthma, chest pains and diabetes. They also have higher rates of smoking. This is exacerbated by the fact that many Gypsies and Travellers remain, as I have indicated, unregistered with GPs.
Although variability in general health among different ethnic groups can sometimes be explained by an older age profile, this is not the case for Gypsies and Irish Travellers, of whom only 6% were aged 65 or above in 2011, and who had a low median age of 26. Improved life expectancy for Gypsy and Traveller communities appears to be associated with the availability of established site provision and access to medical care. Having a pitch on a permanent site is vital to accessing healthcare, to which every speaker has referred.
A recent report from the Department of Health noted that accommodation insecurity, the conditions of Gypsies’ and Travellers’ living environment, low community participation and discrimination all play key roles in exacerbating these poor health outcomes. It is suggested that these factors also hold the key to effectively addressing and improving health and well-being. The report calls for long-term, joined-up working at both local and national levels to address the wider social issues of Gypsies’ and Travellers’ ill health. Similarly, emerging evidence shows that the health inequalities of Roma people are close to those among Gypsies and Travellers. These include a high prevalence of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, premature heart attacks, obesity, asthma and mental health issues.
Poor familiarity with healthcare provisions and language barriers may make it difficult for this group of marginalised people to access services. Their culture may prevent some Roma people using support services for mental health issues, sexual health and drug and alcohol misuse. However, it is known that Gypsies and Irish Travellers have low rates of GP registration. While somewhat out of date, in 2004 16% were not registered, compared with 1% of comparators.
I have been looking at and involved in this subject for more than 20 years. We do not as a society appear to have moved forward in ensuring that this marginalised part of our nation has equal access to health care. What will the Minister do to allow these people to have access to the healthcare services the rest of us take for granted?
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend on securing this important debate. I pay tribute to her strong advocacy and campaigning work with the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities over the years, most recently as the president of the Friends, Families and Travellers organisation, which plays such a key role in the network of community organisations fighting hard against injustice, discrimination and poor health outcomes suffered by Gypsy and Traveller communities across the UK.
It is timely, one year on from its publication, to seek a clear and unequivocal response from the Government to the key recommendations and call for urgent long-term and joined-up working contained in the excellent work undertaken by Professor Greenfields and Matthew Brindley on the health impact of insecure accommodation and poor environmental conditions, so ably summarised by noble friend in her speech. As the foreword to that document states:
“This report makes it clear that the conditions in which members of this group are born, grow, live, work and age contribute significantly to their poor physical and mental health outcomes … Tackling these wider determinants is crucial to breaking this cycle of deprivation and health inequalities”.
Noble Lords have today painted a bleak picture of this cycle of deprivation and poor health. Gypsies and Travellers have poor access to healthcare generally, with difficulty in registering with GPs and poor access to services as a result, including health screening, home visits, dental services and access to secondary health care. We have heard about the life expectancy of over 10% less than the general population, with other health issues such as high infant mortality rates, high maternal mortality rates, low child immunisation take-up, mental health issues, substance misuse and diabetes, which are all prevalent in the Gypsy and Traveller communities.
The Care Quality Commission report in 2016 on end-of-life care came to the stark conclusion that, overall, health commissioners and services in most areas have done little to reach out to the Gypsy and Traveller community. Can the Minister tell the Committee what the Government are doing to address this? Should not each clinical commissioning group have a lead or champion, as we have heard, for all the four groups vulnerable to poor health that were identified by the National Inclusion Health Board, which includes this key group we are discussing today?
As the debate has clearly demonstrated, there is much for all of us to learn and understand about the history, values, traditions, culture and vibrancy of the Gypsy and Traveller community—for example, its strong family networks and relationships and their carer responsibilities and commitments. The Greenfields study showed that 42% of respondents were carers involved in helping to care for immediate household members or wider family onsite or in the immediate vicinity. That is significantly above the rate found in mainstream populations and, as the study underlines,
“reflects cultural values common to Gypsies and Travellers and significant cost-savings to local authority and health services who would otherwise need to engage with delivering care to vulnerable individuals”.
Like the wider communities, many of the adults and disabled being cared for within Gypsy communities will have comorbidities, particularly relating to high levels of respiratory disease and diabetes, as we have heard, resulting from poor care and accommodation, all of which make life more challenging and difficult for the carer and the cared-for. On International Women’s Day, as has been said, it is right that we underline the key role of carers, the majority of whom are women, as well as the importance of the role that women play in the communities that we are talking about.
Like other noble Lords, I am very grateful for the expert and comprehensive briefings that we have received from the Traveller movement and the FFT and for the thorough House of Lords Library research brief. They not only set out the problems and the challenges that individuals and communities face but address the myths and assumptions that lead to the health inequalities and widespread discrimination that we are discussing today. Most prominent among such misunderstandings is Gypsies’ and Travellers’ long-established roots in their local communities—yet they are so often wrongly labelled by the local community as newcomers.
I look forward to the Minister’s response on the issue of local authorities’ duty of care to Traveller communities and the Greenfields report’s call for the reinstatement of their responsibilities to provide Traveller sites where a need has been identified, an issue raised by my noble friend Lady Whitaker. Does the Minister agree that that would address one of the root causes of unauthorised sites and encampments, which not only have an adverse and negative impact on the health and well-being of Traveller communities but stoke up local community resentment and misunderstanding and deepen community risks? The Government are not usually very fond of giving praise to the Welsh Government on health and related issues, but the application of such a duty in Wales has had very positive effects, as speakers in the debate have pointed out. Indeed, the Welsh Government’s updated 2016 delivery plan for the Gypsy and Roma community, Travelling to a Better Future, is an excellent strategic and cross-service approach to raising awareness and providing the joined-up services across health and social care and accommodation that are being called for today.
I referred earlier to the CQC report on end-of-life care support, A Different Ending. I am currently undertaking a fellowship with the Industry and Parliament Trust on the hospice and end-of-life care movement, so I was particularly concerned at the CQC findings on the huge barriers to good end-of-life care faced by Gypsy and Traveller communities. The cultural misunderstandings that we have heard about throughout this debate are often at the heart of the poor care that they experience, such as the failure by hospital services and staff to recognise the importance of extended family being able to visit a dying person while they are still alive, and as a family or a group in large numbers, not just filing in one at a time in accordance with hospital single-visitor rules. There are also negative experiences around parking caravans in hospital car parks while visiting for long periods, often met with aggression and threats to call the police, and the failure to recognise the need for the quick release and burial of the body in Traveller culture.
Case studies under Professor Greenfields’ research work on the bereavement experience of the Gypsy and Traveller communities highlight the appalling lack of appropriate psychological follow-up care provided to families, particularly in relation to post-natal bereavement or stillbirth or following on from the suicides of close relatives. By contrast, good end-of-life care experiences cited by the CQC included both hospital and hospice support for the person being able to die at home in their trailer and the welcoming of the whole family into one room on hospital or hospice facility sites. The CQC cites a project in Suffolk where hospices and Gypsy and Traveller communities work together to raise awareness of Gypsy and Traveller culture. There is much to learn here. What plans do the Government have to help to raise awareness among health and community services of the end-of-life care needs of Gypsy and Traveller communities?
No debate on the health and well-being of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities can pass without reference to Rodney Bickerstaffe, the former UNISON general secretary who sadly died last year. He was president of the Labour campaign for Travellers’ rights in the 1980s and 1990s, spearheading the adoption of some key policy initiatives that were subsequently taken forward by the Labour Government in office. The most important of these was supporting the drive for more Travellers’ sites through the inclusion of Gypsy and Traveller accommodation assessment needs in regional spatial strategies, sadly later abandoned by the coalition Government. As a former employee of UNISON, I can testify to Rodney’s heartfelt and indefatigable campaigning and commitment to working to improve the lives and health of the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities, which he carried on through into his presidency of the National Pensioners Convention after his retirement from UNISON.
This has been an excellent debate on a crucial issue that needs urgent attention, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for initiating it. It is exactly the sort of debate that we should have in this House, and I have certainly learned a lot along the journey of my briefings.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, mentioned, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities are among the most disadvantaged in British society. They experience some of the poorest health in the UK, with life expectancy up to 10 to 12 years less than the general population. Some 39% of Gypsies and Travellers have long-term illnesses, compared with 29% in a comparison group. At the same time, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, said, they tend to be younger than the average population.
The situation is exacerbated by so many Gypsies, Roma and Travellers not being registered with GPs, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby and other noble Lords mentioned. Poor familiarity with healthcare provisions and often language barriers may make it difficult for people to access health services. Other factors that have an influence are accommodation insecurity, the living environment, low community participation and discrimination.
So what have the Government done about it? All noble Lords talked about healthcare, and the poor health outcomes faced by Gypsies, Roma and Travellers are in many ways entrenched and difficult to resolve, but the Government have supported a number of focused developments to improve the system. The Inclusion Health programme published a number of resources from 2013 to 2016 on key issues affecting this group of people. These included guidance for services on planning and commissioning inclusive services and a report on the impact of insecure accommodation and the living environment on Gypsies’ and Travellers’ health. This was published in January 2016 and made a series of recommendations to government.
While there is still much to do, good progress has been made in the last two years in meeting some of these recommendations—for example, improved joined-up working between central government departments and between local authorities, police forces and Police and Crime Commissioners. Among other points, the National Inclusion Health Board emphasised the importance of identifying the health needs of these vulnerable communities, particularly through local joint strategic needs assessments, which could be met by the local authorities or by clinical commissioning groups; providing leadership at local level, including through joining up health and local authority interests, where public health has a pivotal role; and commissioning for inclusion, including by strengthening local arrangements and protocols to ensure services are accessible and welcoming.
Many noble Lords have mentioned good practices in that area. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned a particularly interesting project going on in Suffolk and the right reverend Prelate mentioned what was going on in his area as well. There is another very good area practice taking place at the moment, in the Market Harborough medical practice in Leicestershire. Through local NHS funding arrangements and GP contract levers, it has delivered an enhanced care model for Gypsy/Traveller communities. This met the needs of people on two large Traveller sites close to the A6 motorway. The focal point, after registration of patients, was a nurse-led minor illness clinic. The medical centre takes a more relaxed position on appointments with Travellers; if they turn up without an appointment, rather than forcing them to make an appointment, staff will see them at the end of the clinic—an arrangement that works well and suits both parties, according to staff. Gypsy/Traveller engagement was costed into the design and delivery of services at this practice, which in turn built confidence with the GRT community through a named trusted professional. As the right reverend Prelate said, that is so important. They felt safe talking to a particular person, and, equally, that person was able to visit them in their communities.
The National Inclusion Health Board has produced practical advice for the professionals responsible for service design and provision. This is to support efforts to facilitate the social inclusion of these groups, notably around the lack of data, and to support local health staff to take account of the often complex needs of vulnerable groups when they are commissioning services.
The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, talked about registration difficulties experienced by Travellers. An Inclusion Health training guide was published in 2016. In November 2015, NHS England produced guidance for general practices to clarify the rights of patients and the responsibilities of providers in registering with a GP practice, and to facilitate better understanding about the process of registering with a GP. This guidance has now been complemented by the publication of a leaflet for members of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities on how to register with a GP. I know that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby said that it was not always the answer to hand out leaflets but in this case the leaflet was co-produced in March 2017 by the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities for them to hand out within their own communities.
On accommodation and planning, the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, talked about the problems with roadside sites, as did the noble Baronesses, Lady Wheeler and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd. The Government are committed to reducing the number of unauthorised sites by ensuring that local planning authorities plan and make provision for affordable, good-quality accommodation for Travellers, while recognising their distinct cultural lifestyle. Local authorities are best placed to make decisions about the number and location of such sites locally, having had due regard to national policy and local circumstances. However, a proposal has been made to implement more widely the negotiated stopping policy which is currently operational in Leeds and seems to be working very well. This allows unauthorised encampments that do not cause trouble to stay for a fixed period of time. The authority works with the unauthorised encampments and the local settled community to set out ground rules on noise, fly-tipping or on issues that some people in rural communities have experienced with unsettled communities such as problems with their dogs. The encampment is tolerated for a short period of time. This policy has also been found to increase community cohesion. Leeds has estimated that it has saved it £240,000 a year.
We expect that local authorities should identify a five-year—ideally a 15-year—supply of deliverable and developable sites for Travellers against locally set targets. This should be annually updated. As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government said in a speech earlier this week, for the first time all local authorities will be expected to assess housing need using the same methodology, which will be a big improvement on the current situation.
Many noble Lords talked about educational problems. We have invested £137 million in the Education Endowment Foundation to identify what works to raise disadvantaged pupils’ attainment and to communicate this to schools. Between 2012 and 2014 the Department for Education funded two local authorities to trial a virtual head teacher for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils, with responsibility for supporting schools to promote better pupil outcomes. The effective practice identified was disseminated to every local authority in 2017. In 2017, the Department for Education held a conference for local authority Gypsy, Roma and Traveller leads to identify and disseminate best practice in this area. The Department for Education has produced good practice case studies for schools working with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils, and Ofsted has released a report specifically on the education of Roma pupils, which has recommendations for schools and local authorities.
What are the Government doing now? The noble Baronesses, Lady Wheeler and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and other noble Lords mentioned joined-up thinking. The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government maintains close contact with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller stakeholder groups, while the Department for Education has established a Gypsy, Roma, Traveller stakeholder group. The DHSC, the Department for Education and the MHCLG—I hate acronyms—held a trilateral ministerial meeting to discuss Gypsy, Roma and Traveller issues in November 2017, and we plan to continue holding regular cross-government meetings.
The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, asked about the NHS data dictionary and how we will cope with it. We are scoping out with NHS England and NHS Digital the development of a unified information standard. This would mean that, if it were possible for the NHS data dictionary to identify Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities as separate groups for the first time, the dictionary would set out standards for data collection in the NHS. If that standard was implemented, we would fully understand the extent of the inequalities experienced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities by making it easier to determine their health outcomes and uptake of health services. It is in the scoping process; until that is done, it has not been decided how we will view the housing status of this group. We also have the added possibility of taking it from the 2011 census, which we obviously have at the moment, or waiting for the 2021 census to get a proper update of what is going on.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, working with the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education, is funding up to six community-led pilot groups. These projects will improve educational attainment, health, and social integration for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities and will be delivered in 2018-19. These projects will be reported quarterly and there will be a full report at the end of the year. The Department of Health and Social Care has commissioned research to investigate which approaches to community engagement are most likely to be effective at enhancing trust between Gypsy/Travellers and mainstream health services. This project is due to report back in 2018.
I again thank the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for bringing forward the debate and all noble Lords for taking part. We all need to work with this community to enable it to have good healthcare, good education—particularly as far as girls and women are concerned—and the availability to keep their culture, which they should be able to celebrate and which has been honed over several centuries. As always, I will write to any noble Lords whose questions I have failed to answer and, as always, I seem to have run out of time. I thank noble Lords again for having taken part.
Antimicrobial Resistance
(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Greengross
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the risks of antimicrobial resistance.
Baroness Greengross (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as the CEO of the International Longevity Centre-UK, which has done quite a lot of work on the issues that we are discussing. Antimicrobial resistance poses an unprecedented threat to human health. As bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, even minor infections have the potential to become serious and indeed fatal. The rise of drug-resistant infections is estimated to account for around 700,000 deaths per year worldwide, with 50,000 of those deaths occurring within Europe and the United States.
I am sure that noble Lords will be familiar with the review of the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, on antimicrobial resistance, published in 2016, which projected that by 2050 global mortalities due to this could reach 10 million a year and cost the global economy £66 trillion in lost productivity. The Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, has also shared her concerns that the recent era of material mortality improvement will give way to many years of material mortality worsening if drug-resistant infections continue to develop at current rates. Willis Towers Watson’s head of mortality and longevity has calculated that a “plausible” worst-case scenario for the development of antimicrobial resistance will,
“largely zeroise or even negate”,
the longevity improvements made since the mid-20th century.
Fortunately, there have been some developments in the global effort to reduce the spread of AMR. The Access to Medicine Foundation’s 2018 Antimicrobial Resistance Benchmark report found that nine life sciences companies are active in antimicrobial resistance surveillance programmes covering 147 countries between them. There are also currently 28 antibiotics for high-priority pathogens in late-stage development. However, in other areas there is cause for concern as progress seems to have stalled.
A freedom of information request issued to Public Health England in 2017 found that prescriptions of colistin, the last line of defence in antibiotic treatment, rose by 40% between 2014 and 2015, from 346,000 doses to 485,000. Antimicrobial resistance was common in the more than 1 million urinary tract infections caused by bacteria identified in NHS laboratories in 2016. Some progress was observed in reducing rates of prescribing in secondary care in 2015, but there has not been a sustained reduction in total antibiotic prescribing in this care setting. While antibiotic prescribing reduced by 5% overall between 2012 and 2016, when measured as defined daily doses per 1,000 inhabitants per day, significant regional variation in antibiotic use continues to occur.
Unfortunately, there is also significant regional variation in the uptake of a crucial means of preventing the spread of antimicrobial resistance—I am talking about vaccination. The review by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, noted that vaccine programmes can reduce antibiotic consumption by preventing secondary infections and that, in addition, they often save society more than 10 times their original cost by protecting against vaccine-preventable diseases.
A study conducted jointly by the Department of Health and Social Care, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the South African directorate of health estimated that universal coverage with pneumococcal conjugate vaccine could avert up to 11.4 million days of antibiotic therapy annually worldwide in children younger than five years of age. A separate study published in the Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases and Practice found that the introduction of a universal influenza immunisation programme for everyone aged six months and over in Ontario in the year 2000 resulted in a 64% decrease in influenza-associated respiratory disease antibiotic prescriptions relative to other regions.
However, despite the demonstrable impact of vaccination on antibiotic prescription, there is significant regional variation in immunisation uptake rates. Uptake targets set by the Department of Health and Social Care are sadly being missed. Between September and December 2017 flu vaccine uptake among GP patients aged 65 and over varied from a high of 74% in Greater Manchester to only 64.9% in London. Between September 2016 and August 2017 shingles vaccine coverage in the routine cohort—those aged 70—declined 13.5% since the start of the programme to 48.3%. I can speak personally about that vaccine. With shingles about to descend into my eye, it was so quick in getting rid of it. It was extraordinary and I am very wedded to this.
The coverage rate for the infant pneumococcal vaccination programme is now sadly below the 95% national target adopted by the Department of Health and Social Care. Given that the coverage level in the UK is already falling, it is worrying that the Government might deprioritise pneumococcal immunisation following a recent proposal to remove a dose of the vaccine from the infant pneumococcal immunisation programme. This advice has recently been consulted on, so it is to be hoped that in the interests of public health, the Government will consider the views of stakeholders closely, including the potential impact of a reduced schedule on antimicrobial resistance before making any policy decisions. The Government could also consider how they can ensure that the NHS benefits from future vaccines targeted at preventing hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA and C. difficile, which are of particular relevance to AMR. The Government should consider how tackling AMR can be incorporated into decision-making processes about the introduction of vaccination programmes.
Finally, given that the Civil Contingencies Secretariat 2017 national risk register categorises antimicrobial resistance and climate change as long-term trends that pose severe risks to the UK, I would urge that each of us should approach the problem of antimicrobial resistance with the same urgency and vigour as the threat posed by climate change.
Lord Colwyn (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate on the risks of antimicrobial resistance, or AMR. Although it is last on the list of the short debates this afternoon, this debate follows quite nicely on from the debate we had on 22 November last year when we discussed the same sort of problems. The standard of wound care was the main subject then.
The global threat of AMR, in both human and economic cost, has been well documented. I will not repeat the statistics of the grave consequences that are predicted if we do not act. I shall have to read what the noble Baroness said. It sounded terribly complex, but I will catch up with it tomorrow.
As noble Lords will know from past debates, I have been a champion of research and development to create new treatments so that we can get ahead of the superbugs. I have been greatly impressed by the work of Matoke Holdings. This small British biotech firm has pioneered reactive oxygen technology, a novel antimicrobial, initially as a treatment for serious infected wounds. This could be ground-breaking in tackling antimicrobial resistance. I do not have any financial interest to declare, but I have an interest in that my younger brother recently lost a leg from MRSA and the remaining leg was successfully treated with reactive oxygen technology. Professor Davies has warned in the past of apocalyptic consequences if antibiotics stop working. Overuse of antibiotics is speeding up the rate at which bacteria evolve, making common infections much more difficult to treat. With a lack of significant investment in antimicrobial R&D from big pharma companies, it falls to small and medium-sized enterprises, such as Matoke, to put in the leg work to develop new products to meet the global AMR challenge. However, for SMEs in particular, the cost and timescale of the R&D process is a significant challenge.
I was pleased to see in the Government’s response to the Accelerated Access Review at the end of last year the announcement of a new accelerated access pathway to support R&D for the most innovative products. The pathway will designate around five breakthrough products a year, which will receive bespoke support from government to take new innovations from lab bench to bedside. Given that there have been no new antibiotics in the past 30 years, the pathway is an excellent opportunity to speed up the development of new antimicrobials and to get ahead of the AMR threat. Will the Minister confirm whether the pathway will prioritise novel antimicrobials when allocating breakthrough product status? Will the Minister join me in meeting Matoke to get a first-hand account of the challenges faced by SMEs on the front line of the struggle against AMR?
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, for securing this extremely important and timely debate. I begin by declaring an interest as vice-chair of the APPG on Global Tuberculosis, and I refer noble Lords to my interests as set out in the register and my work with the Global TB Caucus. I will, perhaps not surprisingly, concentrate my remarks this afternoon on tuberculosis and multidrug-resistant TB.
The review on AMR by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, estimated that one-third of all AMR-associated deaths are currently caused by drug-resistant TB. In 2016, an estimated 600,000 people developed drug-resistant TB. While rates are going down gradually, drug-resistant TB rates continue to rise in some parts of the world. This situation is particularly true in Europe, which has seen the fastest growing rates of multidrug-resistant TB of any world region. Although it has the lowest TB incidence, it has the highest rates of MDR TB. Of the almost 300,000 cases of TB in Europe last year, more than 120,000 were drug-resistant. I should say at this point that this is the European region as defined by the World Health Organization, which includes the central Asian countries of the former Soviet Union. In other words, well over one-third of all TB cases in Europe last year were drug-resistant.
Of the 30 countries identified as having the highest rates of drug-resistant TB, nine are in the European region and the countries of the former Soviet Union. The reasons for the particularly high levels of TB and MDR TB in the countries of the former Soviet Union are complex: steep economic decline and the sharp rise in poverty in the 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed; the disintegration of the Soviet healthcare system; an HIV epidemic; very high prison populations and dilapidated prison facilities; and the excessive hospitalisation of patients who are no longer infectious as they have been taking their medication. In addition, since independence, many of these countries have seen significant deregulation of pharmaceutical provision and the ready availability of antibiotics to buy in privatised kiosks, often without a doctor’s prescription, throughout the cities of the former Soviet Union. In some countries, there are also difficulties in securing newer drugs available to treat MDR TB, from which patients could greatly benefit.
With the Global TB Caucus I have been visiting many of these countries over the past 18 months to try to raise awareness of multidrug-resistant TB and its causes among parliamentarians in the countries of the former Soviet Union, to encourage them to set up parliamentary groups like APPGs in their own Parliaments and to work with civil society organisations and their health ministries to take action against drug-resistant forms of TB. Clearly, the APPG in this department has very similar aims.
The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, in his review of AMR, recommended as a first intervention that there should be a global public awareness campaign. Will the Minister say how successful he thinks this public awareness campaign has been up until now, and what further measures the Government intend to take to achieve this goal? Drug-resistant strains of TB are more expensive to treat because of the cost of medicines, the length of treatment and the amount of additional support required by each patient to manage side effects. I have spoken to many patients with drug-resistant TB in Ukraine and central Asian countries, as well as here in the UK, and they have told me of the difficulties of swallowing up to 20 pills a day, along with painful injections and the side effects to their mental and physical health of having to cope with such a harsh regimen, often for a period of 18 months or more. Considerable support networks are required to ensure that patients continue with their treatment and, clearly, not continuing with the treatment adds to the risk of developing a form of TB which is even more drug-resistant.
There have been relatively few advances in finding new treatments which work more effectively and more quickly against drug-resistant TB, which leads me to my second question to the Minister. What measures do the Government intend to take to incentivise the production of new and more effective antibiotics for TB, and multidrug-resistant TB in particular? The Global TB Caucus estimates that $1 trillion will be lost to the global economy between 2015 and 2030 if no major steps are taken. Increases in rates of MDR TB can put a massive strain on healthcare systems and national economies. KPMG predicts that Europe could be due to lose nearly 0.02% of its economy between 2015 and 2050 due to MDR TB alone should urgent action not be taken.
In autumn this year the United Nations will hold a high-level meeting on TB. This represents a significant opportunity to adopt a concerted international effort to tackle multidrug-resistant TB. Will the Minister say what preparations the Government are currently making to prepare for this high-level meeting?
I will end with a quote from the review by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill:
“The burden of TB is too great, and the need for new treatments too urgent, for it not to be a central consideration in the role and objectives of a global intervention to support antibiotic development”.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Greengross for securing this short debate. It may be short but it is of tremendous importance globally. AMR is widely recognised as the biggest threat we face.
Many years ago I was the first person in your Lordships’ House to have a debate on MRSA, after the late Lord Gerry Fitt’s wife died from MRSA in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. After that, along with a group from the Science and Technology Select Committee, I went to America to look at the problems around antimicrobials and infection. One of our recommendations was that there should be quick tests for infections so that the correct antibiotic can be prescribed. This is now happening in some places, and that is good news.
The famous physician, Sir William Osler, who is sometimes described as the father of modern medicine, said in 1892 that there are three phases to treatment: diagnosis, diagnosis and diagnosis. In modern times, diagnostics are vital to guiding clinical decision-making, determining whether a patient should be treated with antibiotics, and if so, which ones will be effective.
Sepsis is a bigger killer in the UK than bowel, breast and prostate cancer combined. With the increasing challenges of antimicrobial resistance, it is more important than ever for hospitals to diagnose accurately and rapidly so that patients with sepsis can be treated. The lack of consistency across UK hospitals in their diagnosis of sepsis has been highlighted. Research has found that 56% of hospitals are using only one set of blood cultures where sepsis is suspected rather than the recommended two sets. This leads to much less chance of the successful identification of the bacterium involved.
World Tuberculosis Day is approaching, so I thought it appropriate to remind your Lordships that TB remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease, with 10.4 million people infected and 1.7 million dying from the disease in 2016. In his review on AMR, the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, estimated that around a third of all AMR-associated deaths are caused by drug-resistant TB. The UK itself struggles with TB and has been known as the drug-resistant capital of northern Europe. I join with the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, in her remarks on this very important subject.
Until recently, doctors relied on the microscope to identify TB and it took months of growing cultures in laboratories to determine if the strain of TB was drug resistant. However, things have changed for the better with the production of the GeneXpert TB testing machine, which can analyse DNA. The test can identify whether someone has TB and can detect whether there is resistance to one of the main TB drugs, rifampicin. The UK Government have been central to advancing this technology by making a significant investment in it through the Ross Fund. Scientists and policymakers are working to improve this diagnostic tool and ensure that it is used as widely as possible.
The availability of a rapid diagnostic test is vital to fighting AMR and will ensure that those who need antibiotic treatment urgently receive it. It will also ensure that antibiotic drugs are not misused or prescribed inappropriately, thus driving further drug resistance. This is also important to animal health and farming. Exciting research in this field is going on around the world and certain new technologies are now able to determine antimicrobial resistance in as little as 30 minutes. We must invest to drive forward the research and development that will protect patients and the public.
Concern has been expressed about outbreaks of multiresistant hospital bacteria among newborns in hospitals, including in neonatal intensive care and special care baby units. Controlling MRSA has been improved due to hard work, but in high dependency care units where patients are more vulnerable to drug-resistant infections, the risks are great. Is anything being done to systematically collect the data, identify improvements that can be made and fund the emerging diagnostic and monitoring technologies that enable a rapid infection control response?
Another problem that needs addressing is the epidemic of Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhoea in hospital patients, largely attributable to antibiotic overuse. Good work is being done, but it is translation into practice that seems all too slow.
Finally, does the Minister agree that the European Vaccine Action Plan is of great importance? With more and more infections becoming immune to antibiotics, it is vital to prevent conditions such as gonorrhoea, which is resistant to antibiotics and needs a vaccine, as do norovirus, Clostridium difficile, HIV and many others, and a better vaccine is needed for TB. That would make the world a safer place for everyone.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, for introducing this debate on such an important matter.
The seriousness of this issue was stated starkly by the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, who said that if we do not act, it is possible that we will return to 40% of the population dying prematurely from infections that we cannot treat. The sad fact is that overuse and misuse of antibiotics and other antimicrobials in humans, animals, including farmed fish, and crops have been major contributors to an acceleration in the emergence of drug-resistant strains of bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi. The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, referred very powerfully to the role that better diagnostics can play in enabling us to use antimicrobials with circumspection. I concur with her completely.
When the review on AMR, led by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, was published in May 2016, it generated a much-needed urgent focus on the issue, leading to a commitment to act by world leaders at the high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly on AMR in September 2016. Countries reaffirmed their commitment to develop national action plans on AMR, building on the blueprint developed in 2015 by the World Health Organization, the FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health.
The fact is that common and life-threatening infections such as pneumonia and gonorrhoea, and post-operative infections, as well as HIV, TB and malaria, are increasingly becoming untreatable. Very worrying is the fact that cases of completely untreatable gonorrhoea have been recorded in the last year in developed countries.
I shall concentrate the rest of my remarks on international development, which is the brief on which I speak for my party, the Liberal Democrats. TB is a disease that kills 1.8 million people a year. My noble friend Lady Suttie has already spoken passionately about the rise of multidrug-resistant TB globally. Last August I was in Liberia and, courtesy of RESULTS UK, I visited a clinic where patients with multidrug-resistant TB were being treated. As my noble friend Lady Suttie said, the treatment is complex, very costly and toxic. It can last from six to 30 months and can consist of more than 14,000 pills and daily injections for six months. What was clear to me was that the patients I met were the lucky ones and that many more in the community potentially carried MDR-TB because the resources to carry out comprehensive tracing were just not there.
What is urgently needed is a vaccine for TB. Prevention would obviate the need for treatment with antibiotics and give us a chance to eradicate the disease. However, the development of vaccines is a lengthy process, so recent progress is at risk unless vital investment is provided with a long-term commitment to give developers—in particular, product development partnerships—the confidence to plan for the future with certainty. I fully echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, on that. The UN high-level meeting on TB this September offers a rare chance to turn the tide against TB and I hope the Government will take the opportunity to drive the vaccine agenda forward.
Malaria is another long-time scourge of the developing world and now the problem is compounded by the discovery of drug-resistant mosquitoes in Myanmar, Thailand, Lao PDR, Vietnam and Cambodia. I draw the Minister’s attention to the extremely dangerous situation that exists in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, as identified by the Malaria Consortium—I declare that I am a trustee of that organisation. The monsoon rains are due next month and these, coupled with the combination of poor sanitation and emergency, substandard housing, will provide perfect breeding conditions for malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. The danger to the refugees is obvious, but what also needs to be considered in the mix is that the refugees have come from Myanmar, where malaria resistant to artemisinin-based antimalarials has been detected, including in the nearby Sagaing region. The native population of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to malaria because the people have not been exposed to the disease recently. We can see the dangers inherent in that situation. We cannot risk the further spread of drug-resistant malaria and I ask the Minister to relay these concerns as a matter of urgency to the appropriate personnel. DfID is well placed to take action as a world leader in the fight against malaria and is already in place, combating diphtheria and cholera in the camps.
Prevention is always better and cheaper than cure. In its March 2016 report on limiting the spread of drug resistance, the AMR Review Board estimated that improved water and sanitation in middle-income countries could reduce the volume of antibiotics used to treat diarrhoea by at least 60%. We need to apply common sense and ensure that good housekeeping takes precedence over popping a pill. The availability of antimicrobials is shifting action away from prevention and the good practice of investing in basic sanitation infrastructure.
Previous speakers have spoken about market failures. We see that investment in developing new antibiotics has gone into reverse. We need new ways of stimulating innovation and to do that we must find a way to delink the cost of research and development from the price and volume of sales. How will the Government ensure that new antibiotics and other innovations are affordable to the NHS and health systems around the world? In the same vein, will the Minister comment on the progress of the UK and China Global AMR Research Innovation Fund?
To conclude, considering that we are in a global space where it is easy to spread AMR infections through trade and travel, and that resistance has been observed in terrestrial and aquatic environments, where wind and currents take them out of our control, we begin to see the scale of the problem we face. The fact is that we know what we have to do. Political will and leadership is what is needed now.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to wind up for the Opposition and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, for an excellent contribution, which other noble Lords added to. I want to raise two issues. One is about the use of antibiotics in animals and the other is about incentives for developing new drugs and vaccines. First, I refer to the wide-ranging speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, in which she referred to immunisation uptake, which is a very worrying issue for health in this country, let alone in other countries. I have seen various reports that there is ever more misinformation out there undermining people’s confidence in vaccines. We saw with the MMR issue the problems arising when this gains ground. Is the Department of Health and Social Care exercised about this and is it developing a strategy?
On the use of antibiotics in animals, I know that the Government made a progress report in 2016, commented on this and particularly referred to compliance with Red Tractor assurance scheme standards and to the work of the task force Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture Alliance. My noble friend Lord Grantchester, to whom I have referred on this, has made the point to me that, alongside this and influenced by various suppliers, farm assurance schemes are having a positive impact in reducing the use of antibiotics in animals. Will the Minister comment on this and give a progress report in that area?
On how better incentives can be used to promote investment in new drugs and vaccines, the report by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, was very clear that the current pipeline of new antibiotics shows that there is a mismatch between the drugs that the world needs and the number and quality of new antibiotics that are being researched. He recommended,
“a global system of market entry rewards for antibiotics and alternative therapies”.
He suggested that the challenge really is,
“to ‘de-link’ the profitability of an antibiotic from volumes sold, reducing uncertainty and enabling reward without encouraging poor stewardship”.
This arises from the fact that it is very difficult in the current model for the industry to see how it can get any return on the development of new antibiotics, and because of that, we have this very big problem.
I know that the Government have acknowledged the principle of de-linking, particularly in their endorsement of the 26th UN declaration on AMR but, just to reflect on the problem, STOPAIDS, which is a UK network of agencies which have developed a global response to HIV and AIDS, set out the de-linking issue, stating that the incentive to innovate is still tied to the price that pharma companies can charge for the products they create and therefore there is still a risk of continuing this problem of high price. The ABPI, the trade association for the pharma industry, is continuing to work with the noble Lord’s department on this to explore reimbursement and evaluation models, which could perhaps be piloted in the UK, but I wonder whether the noble Minister can say a little bit more about whether progress is being made.
I refer noble Lords to a recent—2018—report by the Access to Medicine Foundation, which is an international NGO based in the Netherlands. Very recently it produced an anti-microbial resistance benchmark. The report states that despite some progress being made by some companies, there are still too few in the pipeline and we need to strengthen that pipeline. I wonder whether there are other actions that now need to be taken to provide the right incentives.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)
My Lords, I first thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and congratulate her on securing this debate on an incredibly important topic, which definitely performs above the graveyard slot it has been given on a Thursday afternoon. It has been a very useful and informative debate, and a good opportunity for us all to reflect on an important—indeed, vital—area of medicine and health, not least because it highlights the potential risks we face as humankind in dealing with this issue, but also to set out some of the things that are being done to deal with it. It is also worth our taking the opportunity to thank my noble friend Lord O’Neill, who is not here. In so many ways, the work that he has done has set the tone for the work that we are all doing together now. I will not rehearse the risks that have been set out very clearly by others, but I think a word the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, used was “unprecedented”, which is the scale of what we face if we do not get this right.
I thought it would be useful to rehearse a little of the action that the Government have been taking over the last few years—if nothing else, to emphasise the seriousness with which we take the issue. Noble Lords will know that the Chief Medical Officer used her annual report in 2013 to highlight the risk of antimicrobial resistance. Later that year, a five-year antimicrobial resistance strategy across human and animal health was published. Following that, my noble friend Lord O’Neill was asked to forward a globally facing independent review, which was published in 2016. That report produced the truly alarming figure we have heard of 10 million extra deaths a year, with a potential economic impact of $100 trillion. A very powerful point was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, namely that up to one-third of those statistics is driven by drug-resistant TB. I did not realise that until she said so. It is truly alarming, hence the focus on TB in this debate. AMR was also added to the national security risk assessment in 2015 as a tier 1 risk for our country: that is how important it is.
As for what the UK’s strategy includes, we have an acronym of the three Ps: prevent infection occurring in the first place; protect the antibiotics we have through good antimicrobial stewardship; and promote the development of new drugs, which, as noble Lords have said, is incredibly important.
On prevention, the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, mentioned urinary tract infections. They are a huge driver of both the use of antibiotics and the development of antimicrobial resistance. There are very interesting, and very simple, things going on such as the good use of catheters, which can have a profound effect both on infection occurring in the first place and the knock-on impact on the benefit of the antibiotics that we still have now. All this work is underpinned by our world-leading R&D base in this country.
The Government’s response to the review by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, set out new ambitions, including halving healthcare-associated gram-negative bloodstream infections and inappropriate antibiotic prescribing by 2021. We welcomed the emphasis in the review on the use of diagnostic tests, which was brought to the fore by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, in her speech.
I do not know whether noble Lords had a chance to see it, but only last week Public Health England published details of the modelling work it has done to look at inappropriate prescribing. The work found that, using a conservative approach, around 20% of current antibiotic prescribing is inappropriate, and therefore the ambition should be to reduce that by 10% from a 2016 baseline. Between 2012 and 2016, we had already reduced our use of antibiotics by 5%. Clearly, though, to some extent that was the low-hanging fruit, and now we need to take on the more difficult areas. In doing so—I think back to debates we have had about wound care and sepsis—we must never forget that these drugs are vital. Although we want to reduce inappropriate prescriptions, we also have to make sure that people who need them are not being restricted access to them. It is not just about gram-negative bloodstream infections but other health-acquired infections. I was sorry to hear the story of my noble friend Lord Colwyn’s brother. That shows the horrible impact that can happen.
I have talked mainly about humans but, as other noble Lords have pointed out, we also need to set an ambition to reduce antibiotic use in livestock and fish farmed for food. The good news is that we have met our ambition two years early: sales of antibiotics for use in food-producing animals dropped by 27%. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that is good progress. Perhaps it is an answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, about whether awareness campaigns work: it is evidence that they do. New sector-specific targets were published in October 2017 and we will be reporting against them in the months to come.
As all noble Lords pointed out, AMR is ultimately a global issue. This Government helped to secure the UN declaration on AMR in September 2016. We are committed to working not just with the global health community but with the finance community to create a system that rewards companies that develop new, successful antibiotics and, critically, make them available to all who need them.
Noble Lords will, I hope, know that the UK has been a leading advocate at the G20 for the piloting and rollout of global solutions that incentivise new antibiotic development. We continue to promote the need for global action. Noble Lords will also be aware that our Chief Medical Officer is a driving force in these efforts; she really is a wonderful and zealous advocate of this agenda. They will also know that she is totally unbending in her desire to keep this at the top of the global agenda.
AMR is embedded in all relevant strategies, particularly the sustainable development goals agenda. I also want to point out that the UK has helped to create the Fleming Fund, which is a £265 million commitment over five years, as a development project dedicated to AMR globally. It focuses on increasing capacity and capability for diagnosis and surveillance of AMR in low and middle-income countries. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, made a very important point that the people who are most likely to suffer from the consequences of AMR, although spread across the world, are focused on those communities that are likely to be the poorest.
Noble Lords have asked about that incentivisation and pulling through the new drugs. There is the £50 million Global AMR Innovation Fund, which looks to develop neglected areas. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, asked about China; a new partnership is soon to be launched on that although I do not have details now. When I do, I will certainly write to her. In the UK, we are channelling investment through the National Institute for Health Research, Research Councils, Innovate UK and so on to attract high-quality research proposals. As the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, said, there is some cause for cautious optimism on drug development in this area. Not only do we need to get the drugs developed but we need to find ways to pull them through. My noble friend Lord Colwyn talked about the accelerated access pathway; that could be one route by which these drugs come through.
I want to spend a little time talking about vaccination, because it has been mentioned by all noble Lords. I absolutely agree that it is an important part of reducing the need for antimicrobials and a key weapon in slowing down antimicrobial resistance. We have a world-class vaccination service that reduces the overall burden of disease in this country. Uptake is among the best in the world: about 90% of the population get childhood vaccines, for example. However, it is fair to say that we need to do better, not only in making sure—in this era of fake news—that rumours and false information about the dangers from vaccines are firmly rebutted, but in using every opportunity and channel we have to promote the uptake of vaccines in families and other groups. That is something that the health family, as we sometimes describe it, is working on, to better understand local variation; there is huge variation from area to area, as pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross.
It is worth saying that, from an R&D perspective, we have a great strength in this country in the development of vaccines. It was a major focus of the life sciences industrial strategy. Research Councils have just invested just over £9 million in five new vaccine networks, and the Government have invested £100 million in focusing on vaccines of epidemic potential. A lot is being done but, as noble Lords have pointed out, the task is growing because antimicrobial resistance is growing.
Specifically on pneumococcal immunisation, our expert group—the Joint Committee on Immunisation and Vaccination, as noble Lords will know—has been consulting on its advice on the number of doses. It would not be appropriate for me to pre-empt that decision at this stage. My honourable friend in the other place, the Minister for Public Health and Primary Care, will, of course, give its advice due consideration, but I will pass on the concerns that have been expressed in this debate about that, so that they understand—as we do—that there is deep concern about any dilution of our vaccination programme.
I want to quickly deal with the issues I have not dealt with. My noble friend Lord Colwyn asked whether the AAP will focus on antimicrobials. It will suggest a new suite of products in April. I have tried to leave the expert group to it; it will come to us, but that is certainly a route forward, and I would be happy to meet with the company that he mentioned to talk about its work.
The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, asked about the UN high-level meeting, which marks an important moment to secure a political commitment to TB control. She will be pleased to know that the Government are engaging closely with the WHO and taking a lead on that. There is some benefit coming from raising awareness, but clearly there is more to do to ensure that the UK is fully engaged. On the development of new anti-TB drugs, DfID is contributing to the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, which I hope is to some extent a reassurance that we are playing our part.
I should congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, who is a woman of many firsts. She led the first debate on the issue of MRSA in the House. We have made some really good progress on controlling MRSA and C.diff in hospitals but, of course, that is the only part of controlling infection. We are making some progress and better diagnostic techniques now exist. She also asked about the diagnosis of TB. I made a fascinating visit to a Find & Treat service in Camden which was doing on-street work. Unfortunately, it is one of only a few services of this kind, and we certainly need to do more of that sort of work.
Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, asked about the Rohingya community. I am not familiar with those issues, but I shall certainly take her concerns to DfID and I understand the seriousness of them.
The final and very major point to make is to ask how we break the link between price and the cost of drug development, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. The truth is that this is not an issue that faces drug development in this area alone; it concerns drug development in every area, as drugs and medicine become more stratified. The answer lies in partnership but, to be honest, we do not yet have the model for doing that. However, we are developing it, and we have a good relationship with industry to help us to do that.
In conclusion, once again I thank the noble Baroness for initiating this fantastic debate and all noble Lords for their contributions. I think that we are making good progress, but there is a long way to go. The lodestar here is Sweden, which has succeeded in reducing antibiotic use by 40%, although it has taken the country 20 years to do that. We are a few years down the track in the process, and I hope that we can learn from Sweden and others to accelerate our progress. I finish by wishing to make sure that noble Lords understand that keeping antibiotics working lies at the heart of the Government’s strategy, and our job is to keep the issue at the forefront of everyone’s mind.
House of Lords
Domestic Violence: Women
(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Bertin
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what support they are giving to women who are victims of domestic violence.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, we have already committed increased funding of £100 million to support victims of violence against women and girls, and today have launched a wide-ranging consultation working towards a domestic abuse Bill which seeks views on a suite of proposals to do more still to support victims and target perpetrators of these terrible crimes.
Baroness Bertin (Con)
I thank my noble friend the Minister for her Answer. While we need to change the narrative on domestic abuse from “Why didn’t she leave?” to “Why didn’t he stop?”, all women fleeing abuse must have a safe place to run to. However, there have been many deeply worrying reports and accusations that the number of spaces for women in refuges is being reduced. Can my noble friend reassure the House that this is not the case? Can she also acknowledge how crucial it is to take early and preventive action, particularly when it comes to supporting the thousands of children who witness abuse on a daily basis?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank my noble friend for her question. I can reassure her that the provision of bed spaces has increased by 10% since 2010. We want to be very clear that the current level of refuge provision will not reduce—she may have heard my right honourable friend the Home Secretary state that this morning. We have heard the need for sustainable funding for refuges, which is why we are reviewing the way in which refuges and supported housing are delivered. We have asked all the charities and organisations working on the front line to feed in their expertise and come forward with their ideas on how best to deliver this on the ground. The process is ongoing. We have been clear that no options are off the table as we work with them to ensure that women requiring support in their time of need are not let down.
My noble friend was absolutely right when she talked about early intervention to prevent domestic abuse, which is why the domestic abuse consultation is coming about. Children, as she mentioned, are at the forefront of this work. Today, we have announced £8 million of funding to support—
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Today, we have announced £8 million of funding to support children who witness domestic abuse and to help with their recovery. I am sorry if I have taken too long, but this is an important subject.
Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)
My Lords, a major difficulty in some of these appalling cases, in which I have been involved judicially, is that there are no witnesses other than the participants. That is one of the problems of proving the cases. Do I presume that the same standard of proof will prevail nevertheless?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble and learned Lord is absolutely right that, quite often, there are no witnesses other than the participants who mete out such abuse on women; quite often, there are no physical signs of abuse where it involves coercive control and, as the Home Secretary mentioned this morning, economic control of women. That is why we are strengthening the law and why we have gone out to consultation: so that such things may be pursued. It is also why the domestic violence protection order is being introduced.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, from what the Minister has already said it is clear that she fully understands and accepts that domestic violence is a real threat to the well-being and proper development of children. In this consultation, can further consideration be given, in cases where police are called to a home because of an instance of domestic violence and children are present, to requiring that the police automatically contact the safeguarding unit of the local authority to ensure that that the children’s needs are considered as well as those of the adults involved?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Lord for that question; he has extensive experience of this area. We have allocated additional funding to the College of Policing to improve training for some of those first-line responders, who in the past may not have been aware of children’s needs, Children who suffer even one incident in which they witness domestic abuse can sometimes be affected for their entire lives.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, in welcoming the Government’s latest initiative on controlling and coercive behaviour, I would highlight the study by the charity Refuge, which found that one in four 16 to 21 year-olds—young people—thought it perfectly normal that coercive and controlling behaviour took place. It is growing, and we know that it is a precursor to physical violence in the end. Will the Minister say a bit more about what is being done to educate young people, and indeed the public—women in general—that coercive, controlling and psychological abuse is not acceptable and that they can seek help?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising that point. Coercive and controlling behaviour may not even be seen as that by the victim—I think that is the point the noble Baroness is making. We can do much through PSHE and educating girls in self-respect. Education in the use of social media and the internet is crucial in this area. The statistics cited by the noble Baroness do not surprise me, and we have much to do to educate our young women.
Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)
Will the Minister consider making severe facial trauma a notifiable condition? These men smash up their wives and then take them to a hospital to be treated. The next time they take them to a different hospital, and the third time yet another hospital. If it were a notifiable condition all this would add up and prosecutions might well take place.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I will certainly take back my noble friend’s suggestion. He touches on a very important point: not only might these women be taken to different hospitals each time, but the woman might feel too frightened to report what she has gone through. The whole purpose of some of the Government’s initiatives is that women should no longer feel frightened to come forward and get the support they need through these terrible traumas.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, am I right in thinking that in February 2017 Theresa May announced a domestic violence and abuse Act? We have seen no moves towards that Act, as far as I know. A consultation was promised; more consultation is now being promised. What does this consultation consist of? Do we need more consultation, or should we just get on with it?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I can assure the noble Baroness that the VAWG commitments that Theresa May made, both as Prime Minister and previously as Home Secretary, are still firm. It is not an either/or in terms of the commitments that the measures in the Bill will cover. They will enshrine a definition of domestic abuse; they will introduce a new domestic abuse commissioner and a domestic abuse protection order that I talked about earlier; and they will include proposals for ensuring that the sentencing in domestic abuse-related offences duly recognises the devastating impact that these offences have on children, as I explained to the noble Lord earlier. Moreover—the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, will be interested to hear this—we will introduce measures to adopt extra-territorial jurisdiction over remaining sexual offences so that we can advance towards ratification of the Istanbul convention.
Brexit: Employment Protection for Women
(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Gale
To ask Her Majesty's Government how they will ensure that employment protections for women currently provided by European Union law will be maintained when the United Kingdom leaves the European Union.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Henley) (Con)
My Lords, in her Lancaster House speech, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister made a clear commitment that all workers’ rights will be protected in negotiating Britain’s exit from the European Union. We will not roll back on employment protection for women.
Baroness Gale (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and for his reassurance, but is he aware of research carried out by the Equality and Human Rights Commission that documented the extent of pregnancy and maternity discrimination in the UK? It found that 50% of mothers of young babies indicated that maternity had impacted negatively on their opportunities, status and job security. What will the Government do to ensure that current employment law, which includes lots of EU law, is enforced and that women are protected from maternity discrimination in the workplace? This is of grave concern to many women who have suffered this discrimination. We have laws in place, but we have to make sure that they are carried out.
Lord Henley
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for referring to that research, which of course I am aware of. We are also aware of the EU minimum standards and of where we are at the moment. As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister made clear, we will continue to meet those standards, but we will also be quite clear that we are ahead of European Union standards on a whole host of different areas, whether that is paternity leave or shared parental leave. We are doing our bit and will continue to do so; it is a matter for the UK Government to then decide in future.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that, when we have left the European Union, we will be able to enhance women’s rights in the workforce and not have to seek the agreement of 27 other member states and the Commission to do so? If the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, wishes to see improvements, it will be this Parliament that decides, and that is why we are leaving the European Union.
Lord Henley
My noble friend makes a very good point. There was an intervention in the debate on Monday from the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, when she asked exactly this point about why we could not meet European standards and so on. She ended up by citing me and saying that I had replied,
“that the Government would take note of what the EU does in the future but that the whole point of Brexit was that we could make our own decisions”.
She went on to say:
“That is exactly what many of us are extremely concerned about”.—[Official Report, 5/3/18; col. 949.]
But as my noble friend has made clear, it is a matter for the United Kingdom Government and for the United Kingdom Parliament to decide these matters in the future.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, we have listened with varying degrees of patience to the Government’s assurances that they have no intention of diminishing the rights of women post Brexit. I understand what the Minister says with regard to our current level of provision. Nevertheless, the Government have built a get-out-of-jail—through the back door and without primary legislation—Henry VIII card into the EU (Withdrawal) Bill. Will the Minister guarantee that such power, should it ever pass in your Lordships’ House, will never be used to diminish the hard-won rights of women either in EU legislation or elsewhere?
Lord Henley
Surely the noble Baroness accepts my right honourable friend’s statement that we will continue to maintain rights. Thereafter, it will be a matter for the United Kingdom, and for the United Kingdom alone, to decide on these matters. That is what we are going to do. Surely, the noble Baroness accepts that that is far better than these matters being decided elsewhere.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, is it not the case that we follow European directives regularly—for example, on pregnant workers’ issues. Will we continue to examine directives and fall in with them, or will we not?
Lord Henley
My Lords, obviously we will take note of all EU directives and look at them, but again would not the noble Baroness far prefer it that this Government and this Parliament decided these matters for themselves?
Lord Cormack (Con)
Will my noble friend agree that the very last thing we should refer to Henry VIII clauses is women’s rights?
Lord Henley
My noble friend makes a very good point about women’s rights: two of his wives lost their heads. I will think about that.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
Will the Minister tell the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that we can go beyond EU standards now as far as women’s rights are concerned, while we are still a member of the European Union. This Parliament remains sovereign, which is why we are not instructed by an advisory referendum.
Lord Henley
I do not think that the noble Lord listened to my noble friend Lord Forsyth as he should have done. My noble friend Lord Forsyth made exactly that point. This Parliament is sovereign, and we are ahead of what happens in Europe on many things. Can the noble Lord look very carefully at what my noble friend said?
Undersea Cables
(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve the security of undersea cables linking the United Kingdom with the United States and other countries.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)
My Lords, submarine fibre optic cables play an essential role in the ecosystem of a successful internet-based economy. That is why, as part of our programme to protect the UK’s communication infrastructure, the DCMS is working closely with industry to improve the security and resilience of the UK’s submarine cable network. This includes assessing the physical, personnel, and cyber risk to subsea cables, and offering recommendations to cable operators to mitigate them.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for that Answer. I think his department has got some way to go, though. He may recall that, about a month ago, a journalist from the Sunday Times walked into a farmhouse in Cornwall through an open door and photographed all the connections to one of the main submarine cables. Last summer, a ship dropped its anchor on a cable between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland and cut the cable, and nobody has bothered to prosecute it. Will he explain whether the Government really are taking seriously the issue of security on these cables, and what will they do ensure that the two instances I have just exemplified will not happen again?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
The noble Lord raises an important point. As far at the Sunday Times report is concerned, I can say that the reporter was unable to access any secure section of the facility. The essential point about this is that there is resilience in the system. There are 11 landing sites, for example, for transatlantic cables, in different places. Because of the resilience of the system, when one particular cable is broken the system continues. As far as prosecution is concerned, most of the breaks in the cables—and there are a considerable number each year; about 30 to 40 each year—are as the result of accidents. That is why it is not normally necessary to prosecute. However, these are civil actions because the cables belong to individual companies. It is up to them to seek damages.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, the DCMS is a wondrous part of our governing system; within it, so many amazing things come together for consideration. I had not realised until looking at this Question that 97% of global communications come via cables, when I had fondly imagined that satellites took up a lot more than that. But my question is to ask why a Question that relates to security is being handled by the DCMS at all. I have come to enjoy the company of the Minister and to admire his competence across such a wide range of fields of interest, but perhaps he can reassure the House that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will indeed be in the closest possible relationship to the Department of Defense to reassure us on the questions of security as maintained in this Question.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I am speechless. The reason why DCMS is answering this Question is that we are responsible for co-ordinating the resilience of the telecoms sector in the UK. Telecoms is one of the UK’s 13 critical sectors and we are in close touch with other departments, particularly the Home Office, which is responsible for GCHQ, and the Ministry of Defence. I am not the only Minister who has answered on this; in December my noble friend Lord Howe answered a similar Question.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, is it also not worth remembering that we are building up a substantial system of undersea electricity cables as well—interconnectors with other countries, up to about 15 gigawatts, which are a major part of our daily supply of power? This issue therefore becomes doubly or trebly important when it comes to the security of that kind of undersea cable as well.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
There are many things on the seabed, not only electricity and fibre-optic cables but pipelines as well. The National Security Council looks at all these threats to our infrastructure, and we advise all the parts of the infrastructure estate regularly and keep an eye on all of it.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, the Minister was right in saying that there is resilience in the system, and he pointed out that the system is owned by a disparate group of business people. In the event that there is a successful attack on some elements of the transatlantic bandwidth, what plans are now being put in place to deliver that bandwidth to the most important traffic that has to happen? In other words, it is all very well having resilience, but if that resilience is not available for the most important transactions then it is no good. What plans are being put in place to ensure that that response would be available?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
That is a good point. It is not just transatlantic cables that are important here; the Policy Exchange report gives examples of other areas in the world where cables have broken. I am not going to say exactly what the mitigation measures are but that is what the national risk assessment is for, and the National Security Council looks at that.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that we first became very concerned about our cables in the 1970s; indeed, we built HMS “Challenger” at great cost to work on these cables and look at where there had been attacks and what had been done. We got rid of her when the Cold War stopped. The Russians have now started investing very heavily in nuclear submarines that can go deep and carry out attacks on these cables. At the end of the Cold War we had probably the best antisubmarine warfare and undersea warfare capability in the world, but that has slowly been eroded. What are we planning to do to look at the cables that are in deep water? The Type 26 programme is late and slow, with only a small number of ships coming, while the MPAs are still not with us. What are we doing to have ships and platforms that will enable us to go and check these lines, repair them and do the necessary work?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
As far as repairing them is concerned, the individual companies are responsible for that. The noble Lord asked roughly the same question in December last year, and my noble friend said that, although he could not go into details about the UK’s antisubmarine capability, any threat to the UK infrastructure is taken extremely seriously. Nowadays it is not just submarines, of course; any so-called civilian vessel that can have drones on board can do the same. The main defence is resilience and lots of different cables, because there are just over half a million miles of cable to monitor in the world.
Russia: Threats to Individuals in the UK
(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Faulks
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of Russian threats to individuals residing in the United Kingdom, following the suspected poisoning of Sergei Skripal.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I hope the House will understand that I am reluctant to be drawn on specific threats to specific individuals, but I assure noble Lords that the Government take very seriously their responsibility to protect the UK, UK interests and citizens and those living in the UK. A Statement on the events in Salisbury will be delivered this morning in the other place by the Home Secretary and repeated in this House this afternoon.
Lord Faulks (Con)
My Lords, the Minister will remember—because she took the Criminal Finances Bill through this House—the concern expressed around the House about the torrent of dirty money from Russia into this country. Beyond that, BuzzFeed estimates that there have been up to 14 suspected murders involving Russia. Now we have the incident of Sergei Skripal. These represent outrageous violations by Russia of the rule of law. Can the Minister tell the House what she thinks is the appropriate diplomatic response?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, my noble friend is slightly straying into Foreign Office territory in relation to the diplomatic response. He is also jumping several stages ahead, because this is an ongoing investigation to which conclusions have not yet been reached. My noble friend is absolutely right to raise the issue of the torrent of dirty money: he was very vocal on this during the Criminal Finances Bill, and that Bill—now an Act—was meant precisely to ensure that criminal assets could not be hidden in, for example, dwellings or property in this country.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, I will stick to something for which the Home Office is responsible, so that the Minister cannot shift it elsewhere. Have the Home Office, the Home Secretary and the Ministers yet replied to the letter that they received from the Home Affairs Select Committee in the other place, relating to the BuzzFeed reports about the 14 suspicious—or not so suspicious—deaths, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
In relation to BuzzFeed’s stories—that is precisely what they are, media stories—I cannot answer the noble Lord; I do not know the answer to that question, but I will find out and let him know. If people have concerns around the BuzzFeed story, they should put those concerns to the police, because they are dealing with this.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, in the last few years, a number of Conservative Ministers have insisted that the greatest threats to British sovereignty came from Brussels, Paris and Berlin. In the light of the consistent Russian incursions into British sovereignty, does the Minister not agree that Russia provides a much greater threat to Britain’s sovereignty, and that it might make sense to co-operate rather more closely over the long period with Brussels, Paris and Berlin in order to combat that?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I repeat my assertion that this Question is about the death of two individuals. No conclusions have been reached by the police as yet. Clearly we are treating it very seriously indeed, but I cannot comment in the early stages of this investigation.
Lord Robathan (Con)
Should it be the case that the hands of the Russian state are all over this attack, can my noble friend assure me and the House—and indeed the nation—that Her Majesty’s Government will ramp up sanctions and other measures against Russia?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Again, we need to establish the facts of this case. The police have not reached any conclusions; there is an ongoing investigation and clearly any actions against this country by other states will be dealt with in the strongest possible terms.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend referred to the death of two people. Was that a slip of the tongue or have these unfortunate individuals now died?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
As far as I know, the individuals have not died. The policeman in question is showing evidence of slight improvement this morning.
Lord Ricketts (CB)
My Lords, I am sure that everyone in the House would condemn this outrageous and cowardly attack. While I recognise that the Minister cannot speak about the diplomatic measures that might follow if the evidence leads conclusively back to Moscow, does she agree that, in terms of deterring future attacks, one of the most powerful actions would be to show that there can be no impunity from this kind of attack, and that, therefore, bringing the individuals responsible for this to justice would send a very powerful signal?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I repeat that anybody who carries out an attack on a citizen of this country in such a way will be dealt with severely.
Viscount Waverley (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that there might be merit in having a relationship with Moscow rather than the current sub-zero arrangements, whereby no agencies have any communication that constitutes a relationship?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Again, I cannot speak for the Foreign Office on what relations are currently like, but I can certainly take the noble Lord’s point away.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, are we engaging in any dialogue with Putin to point out that the things going on, such as threats to undersea cables, new nuclear weapons and missiles that can strike accurately all parts of our nation, and hunting down and trying to find our ballistic missile submarines, are not the actions of a modern state in this globalised world, and that this behaviour is just not appropriate?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord will know that I speak for the Home Office and not the Foreign Office.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I can take all the comments away but at this point in the investigation I cannot comment on some of the things the noble Lord talks about.
Business of the House
(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
That Standing Order 40(1) (Arrangement of the Order Paper) be dispensed with on Wednesday 14 March, Wednesday 21 March and Wednesday 28 March to enable the Committee stage of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill to continue before oral questions on those days.
Children and Young People: Mental Health Services
(6 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O'Shaughnessy) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat as a Statement the Answer to an Urgent Question given by my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health, Steve Brine, in the other place. The Statement is as follows:
“This morning the Care Quality Commission published its report Are We Listening? Review of Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services. This is the second piece of work commissioned by the Prime Minister in January 2017 to look at this area of services. Findings include: examples of good or innovative practice, and dedicated people working in every part of the system; a number of areas with strong practice, ensuring that patients and families are involved in planning care; and concerns around join-up between children’s services.
The Government have already committed to making available an additional £1.4 billion to improve children and young people’s mental health services, to deliver on the commitments in Future in Mind and NHS England’s Five Year Forward View for Mental Health. The CQC welcomes this progress in its report.
Spend is reaching the front line. Last year we saw a 20% increase on clinical commissioning group spend for children and young people’s mental health, rising from £516 million in 2015-16 to £619 million in 2016-17. By 2021, we have committed to ensuring that 70,000 more children and young people each year will have access to high-quality NHS mental health care when they need it. But we know there is still much to do. As Claire Murdoch, the national mental health director for NHS England, said in response to this report, CAMHS services,
“are now improving, but from a starting point of historic under-funding and legacy under-staffing, relative to rapidly growing need”.
In December, the Department of Health and social care, jointly with the Department for Education, published our Green Paper Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision. This Green Paper already responds to a number of the problems raised by the CQC in its report, and sets out a range of proposals to strengthen the way schools and specialist NHS mental health services work together, and to reduce the amount of time that children and young people have to wait to access specialist help. These proposals are backed by an additional £300 million-worth of funding. We have carried out extensive face-to-face consultation on the Green Paper proposals and have received a very high volume of responses to our online consultation. We will respond to the CQC review, alongside the Green Paper consultation, in the summer.
The report also calls for the Secretary of State to use the inter-ministerial group on mental health to guarantee greater collaboration across government departments in prioritising mental health. This recommendation is already in hand. The inter-ministerial group has already contributed to the development of the Green Paper and will continue to provide leadership on the issues that this report raises.
The report also recommends that everyone who works, volunteers or cares for children and young people is trained in mental health awareness. We are already rolling out mental health first-aid training to every secondary school and have committed to rolling out mental health awareness training to all primary schools by 2022. We are also set to launch a campaign to raise awareness among 1 million people around mental health and are a major funder of the Time to Change campaign, which has shifted public attitudes on mental health.
This Government remain committed to making mental health everyone’s business and building good mental health for all our children and young people”.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that response and Statement. What emerges from the Care Quality Commission’s review of children and young people’s mental health is the glaring finding, to which he has not referred, that children are suffering because of high eligibility thresholds. We know that 50% of mental health problems develop before the age of 14, and 75% develop before the age of 18. Does the Minister recognise that imposing high eligibility thresholds means that children and young people are treated only when their condition becomes very serious? Will he look into the referral criteria as a matter of urgency so that children and young people are getting proper treatment at the right time, thereby preventing a crisis that brings greater suffering for those children and their families, and greater expense for the health service?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
I thank the noble Baroness for those questions. On the issue of high eligibility thresholds, we are grappling with a need to expand the amount of mental health services that can be provided. Currently, about one in four children with a diagnosable mental health condition accesses NHS services. That is clearly not enough and the intention is to get that figure to one in three by 2021. Again, that is not enough but it would be progress. There is a need to move along the path, dealing first with those in the most acute trouble and then rolling out to those with less acute conditions. I agree with the noble Baroness’s point and recognise the issue. However, this cannot achieved overnight, not least because a huge number of new staff are needed to be trained in order to deliver that. We are looking at the issue of referral criteria. I should also point out to her that we have made big steps forward on waiting times and new standards for early intervention in psychosis and eating disorders. We are piloting a waiting time for access to specialist help and hope that that will start to move things along in terms of more children being seen more quickly, which is what we all want.
Baroness D’Souza (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that more work needs to be done on finding out what the early warning indicators of mental health breakdown in young children are?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
I absolutely agree. This is why the changes that we are making to mental health awareness training in primary schools is critical. Most primary schools, through nurseries, take children from four—and even two or three—years old to make sure that staff can spot the signs in school and signpost to specialist services, where required.
Baroness Jolly (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s Answer to the Question. I am sure that he will agree that mental health support teams will be critical in making all this work. However, CAMHS teams had huge problems in getting the workforce—and in getting it up to speed. What measures are being put in place to guarantee the resilience of these new teams?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
I agree that that is a challenge. There is a plan to create 21,000 new medical and allied posts by 2021, which would be the biggest expansion in mental health services that has ever taken place—certainly in this country but even in Europe. How we are going to achieve that is set out in the draft workforce strategy that Health Education England has published. A big part of that is the creation of mental health support teams in schools. That will take time—we need to be realistic—but it is an ambitious goal and we know that that support is wanted and needed.
Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)
My Lords, I am interested on two fronts. Motability over the next three years will be getting a quarter of a million people coming into the scheme and a large number of them will be children. This will put a major strain on the service they require. I am interested also on a personal front. I have a marvellous young grandson who is on the upper end of autism, so I take a deep interest in both. I thank the Minister for what he has read out from the other place but I disagree. I am afraid that we are lacking hugely in this country. Basically, we are short of educational psychologists. I am no expert but, as any doctor will tell you, the earlier you can identify mental health problems—at three, four or five—gives an opportunity of treating them generally. The Green Paper is interesting but could the Minister do some more work on the ground to find out whether what he is being told is actually happening in practice in local authorities?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I thank my noble friend for that. I think it is a fair challenge. I hope he will be reassured that of the 21,000 more mental health professionals we intend to recruit, 1,700 are therapists—including psychotherapists, educational therapists and others.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, 17 % of children excluded from school in England have learning difficulties. Will the review the Government are talking about take account of that and see whether we should be doing more, because it could well be a cause of children’s mental ill health?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
These are interconnected but separate issues. Anyone can suffer from mental health problems, including a high propensity of children with learning difficulties. A separate line of work led solely by the DfE is providing specific educational support for children with learning difficulties. The point of having specialist staff in all primary and secondary schools is to spot any child, whatever their vulnerability, and signpost them to services.
Baroness Hollins (CB)
My Lords, have the Government done any analysis of the numbers? My daughter is a child psychiatrist working particularly with younger children. She points out to me that there is little attention given to the needs of nought to two year-olds and their mental health in the Green Paper. We know that interventions are important in those early years. For the prevention of adverse childhood experiences and interventions after adverse childhood experiences, does the noble Lord consider it wise to ring-fence funds to support prevention and early intervention at that stage?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
The noble Baroness makes an excellent point about the importance of that age group. I will write to her giving the specifics of the support available to children and families with children of that age. A significant amount of funding is going into specialist perinatal and mental health services for mothers, which is a big part of the picture, but not the whole. Health visitors are being trained in mental health support. I will write to the noble Baroness with more details but I am sure there is more to be done.
Baroness Wyld (Con)
My Lords, have the Government made any analysis of the number of children living with parents who are suffering with mental illnesses more widely? Given the good projects that I have seen in primary schools, it is clear that this issue affects the whole family. It is not the child or the parents sitting in isolation but a family issue. I welcome the Green Paper but can we ensure that families know that it is for them to come forward, that they are in a safe space free of stigma, and that it is not just a child sitting in a box in a policy team?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
My noble friend is right. Some of the schemes that are already active in schools—I am sure she knows about and will have seen schemes such as Place2Be—not only provide support for children but invite families in to provide family therapy where it is required. It is rare that these issues are isolated; they often affect, in one way or another, all members of the family. That is what we are trying to do and deliver through the schools.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I too welcome the Green Paper. Last November I conducted a seminar in Portcullis House of European parliamentarians, children, NGOs and academics. The most important thing there was the voice of the young people. Their concerns have been expressed already—joined-up thinking, early intervention and well-trained professionals. Does the Minister agree that these are important? Does he further agree that the voice of the child in all this is absolutely paramount?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
I know that the noble Baroness speaks with deep experience and passion on this subject and I completely agree; it is about making sure that those children’s voices are heard. We recognise that the picture of fragmentation described in the CQC report is not good enough and that is one of things we are trying to fix. It is a historic issue and it cannot be done overnight but we are working on it.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the awareness is very important. Will the Minister ensure that mental health awareness is part of teacher training and part of the qualification of special needs co-ordinators? I have to correct him: psychotherapists are not the same as school psychologists and there has been quite a substantial reduction in the number of school psychologists who are available and able to identify mental health problems.
Lord O’Shaughnessy
I will take the issue about the specifics of teacher training to colleagues in the DfE. I was talking about therapists in the broadest sense of the word: I think there is a recognition that we need more therapists of all kinds in all settings as we expand these services for young people.
Finance (No. 2) Bill
Thursday 8th March 2018
(6 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, the Bill before the House today is a mere 187 pages long, which compares favourably to the more than 600 pages of the previous Finance Bill. In part, this reflects the Government’s move to a single, annual fiscal event but it also represents the fact that in December the Government published a document setting out how future Finance Bills will interact with the new tax policy-making timetable. The new cycle carves out more time for consultations and commits the Government to publishing as much of the Bill as possible in draft. Even so, in this Bill some 111 of the 187 pages were published in draft form last September. The Economic Affairs Finance Bill Sub-Committee takes an understandably close interest in the process by which tax legislation is developed. I hope that it will find very much to welcome in this new approach.
Before I turn to the important tax changes enacted in the Bill, I shall set out the broader economic and fiscal context in which we find ourselves and which this Government have helped to create. The UK economy has now grown for 20 consecutive quarters: that is five years of continuous growth. Manufacturing grew by 1.3% in the fourth quarter of last year and has grown for the longest consecutive period in 30 years, with high-tech sectors such as cars and aerospace growing particularly strongly since 2010. Total exports of goods and services grew by 5% in 2017, up on the previous year, and manufacturers remain optimistic as surveys show high export orders. Employment has continued to rise—by 3 million since 2010. Crucially, these figures do not reflect prosperity just in London and the south-east: since 2010 all nations and regions of the United Kingdom, up and down and across the country, have experienced higher employment and lower unemployment.
At the autumn Budget, the Chancellor reported that the deficit has been reduced from 9.9% of GDP in 2009-10 to 2.3% of GDP in 2016-17. Borrowing is set to fall even further in the coming years, reaching 1.1% of GDP in 2022-23, the lowest level since 2001-02. The plan to get back to living within our means is on track. The Government’s fiscal rules take a balanced approach and the OBR forecasts that the Government are going to hit our fiscal targets. Our debt will start falling from next year. The Budget stayed true to our commitment to fiscal responsibility to improve the health of our public finances. However, at 86.5% of GDP, we recognise that public debt is still far too high. Although productivity growth has shown signs of improvement lately, we want to foster the environment to allow it to accelerate. The tax policies in this Finance Bill support that strategy.
The Bill is an important lever in this Government’s legislative programme. A focus on helping young people get on to the property ladder, improving productivity and business investment and continuing our robust efforts to prevent tax avoidance and evasion is at its heart.
Home ownership is a near universal aspiration. However, it is a dream that is increasingly difficult to realise for many of our young people. Affordability is the underlying problem. Consequently, at the Budget, the Chancellor announced a housing package designed to boost supply to put the housing market on a more equitable footing in the longer term. On Monday, the Prime Minister reiterated her commitment to meeting the housing challenge and announced an overhaul of the planning system to deliver more homes in the right places.
However, the Government also want to act in the short term. That is why the Finance Bill permanently scraps stamp duty for first-time buyers purchasing properties worth up to £300,000. On average, first-time property buyers will save nearly £1,700. This means that 80% of first-time buyers will not pay stamp duty at all, and 95% of all first-time buyers who pay stamp duty will benefit from the changes. Over the next five years, this relief will help over 1 million first-time buyers.
Last year, productivity grew by 0.7%, as measured by output per hour. At the autumn Budget, following weaker than expected growth, the OBR downgraded its estimates for the trend of productivity growth to 1.2% per year. Productivity is the best way to sustainably raise and maintain higher living standards and grow GDP. Since 2010, the Government have introduced a set of reforms intended to bolster the dynamism required from our modern and international economy. This includes unlocking over £0.5 trillion in capital investment—funding the biggest rail modernisation programme since Victorian times and major infrastructure projects such as Crossrail and the Merseyside Bridge, supporting businesses by cutting corporation tax to 17% in 2020, increasing access to finance through the British Business Bank, and improving skills through investment in apprenticeships and the introduction of T-levels.
However, we must go further. The Finance Bill does precisely that, encouraging additional business investment by supporting the UK’s dynamic, risk-taking businesses. The Government are a committed partner of the business community. We are, and will continue to be, a world-leading place to start a business. However, due to the lack of finance, some of the UK’s potentially most innovative new businesses are struggling to scale up. That is why we conducted the patient capital review, which reported on these barriers to growth. It concluded that knowledge-intensive companies, which are particularly R&D intensive, often require considerable upfront capital. In response, the Government set out a £20 billion investment and tax incentive action plan. As part of the plan, the Finance Bill works to make more investment available to higher-risk, innovative businesses by doubling the annual limit on how much investment these knowledge-intensive companies can receive through the enterprise investment scheme and venture capital trusts scheme to £10 million, and doubling the limit on how much investors can invest through the EIS to £2 million, providing that anything above £1 million is invested in knowledge-intensive companies.
Within a decade, these changes will produce £7 billion of new and redirected investment into growing companies. On top of this, the Government are stimulating productivity growth by increasing funding in research and development. At the Budget, we extended the National Productivity Investment Fund to £31 billion, and increased the R&D investment element of that by a further £2.3 billion. To complement these and other efforts, the Bill will also increase the rate of the R&D expenditure credit from 11% to 12%.
To achieve a balance in the tax system, the Bill narrows the scope of the bank levy, so that, from 2021, UK and foreign head-quartered banks will only be taxed on their UK operations. Crucially, this provision works in conjunction with the broader package of reforms to bank-specific taxes announced between 2015 and 2016, which includes an 8% surcharge on bank profits over £25 million. The package is forecast to raise an additional £4.6 billion from banks over the current forecast period.
Finally, the Bill continues and strengthens the Government’s work clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion. Since 2010, the Government have introduced more than 100 avoidance and evasion measures. We have secured and protected over £175 billon of extra tax revenue that would otherwise have gone unpaid. As a consequence, the UK’s tax gap stands at just 6%—one of the lowest in the world.
At the Budget, the Chancellor announced a further package of measures expected to raise £4.8 billion by 2022-23. The measures in this Bill constitute part of that Budget package and include provisions to make online marketplaces more responsible for the unpaid VAT of their sellers, close loopholes to ensure individuals with offshore trusts cannot avoid paying UK tax on payments or benefits taken from that trust, extend disguised remuneration rules to include close companies, and clamp down on waste crime by bringing illegal waste sites into scope of the landfill tax. These measures and others like them demonstrate the Government’s enduring commitment to ensuring that taxes are paid.
Although relatively short, this Bill is significant in both ambition and substance. It supports young people buying their first homes, drives productivity by encouraging business investment and ensures tax is paid where it should be—all of this without stifling competition, encumbering the market or hindering growth. This is a Government committed to prosperity and committed to the future. I commend the Bill to the House and beg to move.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, I suspect that nearly everybody sitting in this House will struggle to recognise the extraordinarily rosy picture of the economy that the Minister just described. Just about every single one of the markets to which we export and to which our economy is usually tied are absolutely going gangbusters, with extraordinary levels of growth. Normally, even by doing nothing, we would be pulled forward into high growth numbers by that alone. Instead, we are struggling at around 1.7% to 1.8% growth, and if the Government are not worried by and anxious about that, then frankly I wonder where the captain has gone—he is certainly not on the deck.
Investment numbers in this country have fallen off a cliff. Obviously a large part of that is driven by Brexit uncertainty. We get the occasional investment that hits the headlines, but overall the numbers are down very significantly, and if the Government are not worried about that, I am even more concerned.
The OBR has readjusted its trend forecast for productivity down to 1.2%. That is extraordinarily bad news and reflects a set of very fundamental problems, which this finance Bill does not begin to tackle. I accept that it is an extremely deep-seated problem, but if the Government do not recognise the consequences of that for our economy at large, again I am very concerned. If the Minister thinks of this in terms of ordinary people and talks to them about the squeeze on their wages, which have remained stagnant as they see prices consistently increasingly, he will begin to understand that this is not an economy firing on all cylinders and racing ahead. In fact, it is almost inexplicably behind where anyone would have expected it to be in general global circumstances.
Obviously, a good part of this is about the ticking time bomb of potential Brexit. I also fully understand that, because of that, the Chancellor did not use this finance Bill to take major steps forward: it is not a visionary finance Bill but very much a tinkering at the edges finance Bill, because he knows he is sitting with an unexploded bomb and has absolutely no idea of when it might go off, how it might go off and which part of the economy it might hit first or second, and is therefore trying to give himself as much flexibility as possible to react spontaneously as all of those things begin to hit. I suspect that we will have much more extensive discussion of this next week in the debate on the Spring Statement, when we will also have some new figures from the OBR to underpin that discussion.
I will address just two things today, both very briefly. One is the absolutely core issue of funding for the NHS. The Minister will remember that, prior to last November’s Budget, the NHS basically came forward and said that it needed an additional £6 billion a year just to be able to sustain the system—£4 billion for the NHS and £2 billion for social services. Whichever way you add it up, the Government came forward with only £2 billion out of that needed £6 billion.
An amendment to this finance Bill proposed by my right honourable friend Sir Vince Cable asked the Government to task the OBR with looking at a hypothecated, dedicated tax to support the NHS—particularly around the issue of 1p in the pound on income tax that we, as a party, have proposed—to see what the yield would be. There is also a much more fundamental issue. We are running into a long-term crisis and this bullet cannot be dodged unless the Government are willing to take action. Will the Minister take on board and pursue this absolutely vital issue?
The second area is tax evasion. Yes, the Government have made some improvements and I am always pleased to hear that. But frankly, until the coach and horses of an absence of public registers of beneficial interests in our overseas territories is taken care of, we are allowing an avenue that constantly provides the transit route to money laundering in this country and therefore to tax evasion and all the other kinds of evils that go along with it. They are moving to central registers, but those are not going to be public. I hope that the Government will one day realise that they must bite the bullet on this issue, rather than looking the other way. I understand that they feel that there are constitutional problems in dealing with the overseas territories, but the consequence of that is that all the other measures are basically piffling by comparison.
This was a tinkering at the edges Budget. I know that the Government talked about significant changes to housing, but they are going to be very much at the margin and the edges. We know from previous stamp duty holidays that they do not change the pattern of buying in any way whatever. They may be popular but they do not change either supply or demand. In none of their programmes are the Government tackling the fundamental issue of the lack of affordable housing. If they do not allow local authorities to go ahead—whether alone or in partnership—and build the new, needed, affordable houses where they are required, we will not begin to see an end to this particular set of problems.
I look forward to the Spring Statement next week to see whether it makes some radical change that enables us to move forward significantly. This is a small Bill, making small, fringe changes in a set of circumstances where new vision and radical action are required.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, Lloyd George should be living at this hour. Here we have a Finance Bill introduced by the Minister where the only contributors are the Opposition Front Bench spokesmen. This is an indication of how limited the House’s role is in relation to Finance Bills, and justifiably so. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, pointed out, we will have the opportunity to have a serious debate about the economy next week, when I anticipate there will be greater participation from all parts of the House.
The Minister put an extraordinarily optimistic gloss on the state of the economy at the present time, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, also pointed out. In circumstances where so many countries are showing real and rapid growth and the world economy is benefiting from that, this Government are still watching their levels of economic growth bounce along at the bottom of the OECD countries. What this low level of economic growth indicates is that there are limited resources for the wider society and also for the Government to meet their obligations.
In the other place, Ministers were so concerned about the possibility of penetrating opposition amendments to this Bill that they introduced a procedural Motion restricting opportunities for critical amendments—a procedure which we have normally only seen either in the exciting times immediately before a general election when the decks are cleared or when warfare is approaching. What is the crisis on this limited and pathetic little Bill that causes Ministers to run for cover under a procedural Motion? The only crisis is the obvious one that this Government lack confidence in handling the other place.
The Government’s lack of confidence, of course, derives from their exiguous majority, which is dependent on another small party. That underpins so many of the Government’s actions. It certainly underpins their whole approach to Brexit, and that is why we fear that the negotiations will not produce the effective Brexit that we all want. The Government are in hock partly to the fact that they do not have a majority in the House of Commons and partly to the fact that a determined section on the right wing of the party do not really care about the terms of Brexit—in fact, they seem to exalt in the possibility of our having the hardest of hard Brexits, and the economy is meant to cope with that. We shall see.
Let me be absolutely clear about this Bill: it does not in any way, shape or form measure up to the significant needs of the economy or do anything to repair the damage done to the economy by the actions of previous Conservative-led Governments. As we all know, their record on economic growth is poor and their record on productivity is almost negligible. I have seen the noble Lord join the considerable list of Treasury Ministers since 2010 who have taken up their post expressing considerable optimism about the role that they can play in this regard. Yet even the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, who we all know has vast experience of productivity issues, was still trapped by the fact that productivity under this Government is showing no significant improvement at all. What the Minister referred to as an encouraging development is just a marginal movement which we can scarcely credit.
We also recognise, of course, that the Minister slides very carefully past the targets which the preceding Chancellor used to have for clearing the deficit in 2015. That has long since been buried as a potential successful objective, and we are now in a miasma of somewhat changed definitions of the deficit we are tackling. We all know that the Government, because of their limited progress on the economy, are struggling to meet targets on reducing the deficit.
The Bill’s failure to address any real issues relating to the economy and society means that crucial issues remain completely unaddressed. How can the Minister talk optimistically about a society in which the average basic pay is below the level it was in 2010? That means there has been no pay rise for large numbers of working people since 2010, and yet the Government have the arrogance to suggest that things are showing considerable improvement. It is quite clear that we have had decades of lost earnings growth. We have not had an issue with regard to wages for 200 years that matches the record of this Government in that respect over the last few years.
That is how serious the situation is, but you would not have detected that from the Minister’s gloss on what this Bill is meant to represent. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, mentioned earlier, no attempt has been made to address—what everybody recognises in our society—the crisis facing the National Health Service. Look at the limited amount that the Government set free for the health service when informed opinion was quite clear just what was necessary. The Government did not meet even half that.
Related to the National Health Service is the great problem of social care for the elderly. We all recognise that the changing demographic of our society is putting greater weight on the health service and on care for the elderly. Yet the Government seem quite incapable of addressing these issues. What greatly upset my colleagues in the other place was that, when a clause was tabled there for the Bill to contain an equality impact assessment, because the Government need to carry out a thorough analysis of the nature of the challenges faced by so many people in our society, the Government made sure that that was not passed. Therefore, an essential building block for the analysis of the problems in our society was not even contained in this Bill. At least if that assessment of the nature of the problem had been there, it would have been something to save the Minister’s face in introducing such a forlorn exercise. But it was turned down and rejected in the other place.
When it comes to productivity, I recognise certain aspects of where the Government are making some progress. We recognise the value of developing apprenticeships, although it is quite clear that we have got to be very encouraging towards that development. It is still the case that the vast majority of young people in education who are aspiring and have good results think overwhelmingly of university and in academic terms rather than of the needs of our economy for skilled manpower.
Alongside that, the Government have produced a devastating onslaught on the further education colleges that provide training. In addition, opportunities for part-time education have fallen almost completely by the wayside. One thinks back to the days when institutions such as the Open University were at their prime. Part-time education is now unsupported by public resources and, consequently, the opportunities have declined. A vigorous economy would keep open opportunities for people as they mature, irrespective of their achievements at any one level. People can change both in their aspirations and their abilities, and it is important to have systems that are open and flexible. With regard to education, I am afraid the Government have done exactly the opposite.
We may not have had the full equality impact assessment, but we all know the nature of our society. Even the Government are beginning to recognise that women come out of this Finance Bill more poorly than men. It is part of the pattern of our society. We have had a great deal of publicity about the issues of discrimination against women by the BBC, and we all recognise the challenge with institutions like that, but the whole question of equality for women needs to be addressed at a much more basic level. On this International Women’s Day, it is only right that we should have a debate—as will take place after this one—on the issues confronting women. It is important that the Government recognise that so much needs to be done to change the levels of discrimination that are plain at the present time.
It is not just about women: young people also feel heavily discriminated against. You cannot talk to those between the ages of 18 and 25 without recognising that the possibilities for them in our society are, in so many respects, inferior to those which their parents faced. If ever there was one clear objective that the vast majority of parents have always had, it is to try to make sure that their children have greater opportunities than they had—to improve society and the economy in such a way that their children’s opportunities are greater. We are now facing a situation where exactly the opposite is occurring. That is why this Bill should have paid some attention to tackling that crisis.
I welcome the fact that on Thursday next week we will have an opportunity to debate the economy and our society, and I am sure there will be a large number of participants. This miserable little Bill scarcely gives us any opportunity for that, but what it did do was crush opportunities that could have been taken under a more confident Government with clear objectives in pursuing their policies in the country. This Bill does not look like that to the average citizen or to the vast majority of our people. That is why the Government need to address themselves more satisfactorily to the economic situation than they do in this rather miserable little Bill.
Lord Bates
My Lords, I may have overshot the mark in my opening speech by being a little optimistic. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, on having well and truly rebalanced that perception. There are two potential reasons why there was not a long list of speakers for the debate. One could be a lack of interest, but the other reason could be that there is broad support across the House for the measures in the Bill before us —the House itself can judge whether or not that is true.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, could it be perhaps that noble Lords wish to speak in the next debate, which they see as more important?
Lord Bates
That is one possible explanation, but your Lordships have always been assiduous in their attention to matters such as the Finance (No. 2) Bill before us.
Let me try to address some of the points that were raised. The first point was on the argument about growth. We were the joint fastest-growing major economy just as recently as 2016. Of course, there has been a level of uncertainty as a result of the British people’s decision to exit the European Union; that is understandable and most people would recognise it. However, I do not see 1.7% as being a miserable or pathetic rate of growth, or that other OECD competitors with rates of 1.9%, 2% and 2.9% are experiencing extraordinary rates of growth. We entered into this cycle of growth out of the recession of 2008-09, much earlier than others. Therefore, we are at a different stage of growth. But to be able to say that we have grown for 20 consecutive quarters—five years of growth—and that manufacturing has grown for eight consecutive months, which is the longest continuous streak for 30 years, is surely reason for a degree of optimism.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, asked about NHS funding. The Budget provided an extra £6.3 billion of new funding for the NHS, and we are committed to increasing the NHS budget by a minimum of £8 billon in real terms over the next five years. This is a significant first step towards that. The NHS is seeing over 2.9 million more A&E patients every year compared to 2010 and treating 57,000 more people every year for cancer, giving the UK its highest ever cancer survival rate. The noble Baroness asked whether we would have a hypothecated tax for health. Of course, we have such a tax in the sense that 20% of NIC receipts go directly towards the National Health Service.
On the point about housing provisions not bringing about changes, if the measure on stamp duty were taken alone, that might well be true, but it will help a million first-time buyers. Surely that has to be welcomed. In the wider context, the fact that employment is at almost record levels, with 3 million more people earning a salary than in 2010, must also be helpful for the housing market, because it means they have a salary with which potentially to buy. But that is not enough, and it is why we said that stamp duty was one element of that. Another element was to go towards our aspiration of building 300,000 new homes each year.
Let me turn to investment—I think the noble Baroness said that business investment had “fallen off a cliff”. Again, that might be overstating it a little. Business investment contracted by 2.6% in the year to the EU referendum, but grew by 2.5% in the year since. The OBR forecast is for business investment to grow by 2.5% in 2017 and 2.3% in 2018-19, which is a different approach. A key element of that was extra funding of £31 million for the productivity investment fund. That will make a significant contribution, as will businesses investing in themselves, which is the most successful form of business investment. The corporation tax rate has fallen from 28% to 19%, which means that small, medium-sized and large businesses have more money to invest in their own businesses and their own futures.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred to the equality briefing. It was under this Government that we became one the first countries to introduce gender pay gap reporting. The gender pay gap for full-time employees is at a record low. Building on this, the Budget announced steps to boost female enterprise and innovative trials to support women returning to work. The number of women in work is at a record high of 15 million, an increase of 1.4 million since 2010, of which 80% were full-time. The gender pay gap for full-time employees is at a record low of 9.1%.
There are reasons to recognise that we need to be prepared to strengthen the economy to make more it competitive internationally so that we make a success of Brexit for Britain. The people who do that will be the workers and businesses of this country. This Bill strengthens measures to help them by reducing their taxes, increasing incentives to invest—especially in knowledge-intensive industries—and helping young people to achieve their aspiration of getting on to the housing ladder. These are all reasons why I am happy to commend this Bill to the House.
Incident in Salisbury
(6 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I shall now repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary in another place. The Statement is as follows:
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on the incident in Salisbury that has been unfolding over the last four days. First, I would like to pay testament to the continued professionalism, dedication and courage of the emergency services. They have handled this incident with their customary attentiveness, alacrity and sense of public duty. We rely on their response to keep us safe. In doing so, first responders put themselves in dangerous situations on a day-to-day basis. This incident has underlined that fact, which I will sadly return to later.
I will now update the House as far as is possible based on the current facts of the case. At approximately 4.15 on Sunday afternoon, Wiltshire Police received a call from a member of the public who was concerned for the welfare of two people in a park in Salisbury. Emergency services were called and the two were admitted to the A&E department of Salisbury District Hospital. They were a man in his 60s and a woman in her 30s with no visible signs of injury. They are understood to be Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Both remain unconscious and in a critical condition.
I regret to inform the House that a police officer has also fallen seriously ill. The officer was one of the first responders on Sunday, acting selflessly to help others. Officers from Wiltshire Police are providing support to the officer’s family and colleagues.
Our thoughts are with all three victims, their families and friends at what for them will be an incredibly difficult time.
Wiltshire Police began an investigation on Sunday to determine how the individuals fell ill and whether a crime had been committed. They declared a major incident on Monday. On Tuesday, the Metropolitan Police decided that, given the unusual circumstances, responsibility for the investigation should transfer to the counterterrorism police network. Samples from the victims have been tested by experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, who are world-renowned experts in this field.
As Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley announced yesterday, that forensic analysis has revealed the presence of a nerve agent, and the incident is therefore being treated as attempted murder. I can confirm that it is highly likely that the police officer has been exposed to the same nerve agent.
We remain in the midst of a fast-paced criminal investigation, and I will not comment further on the nature of the nerve agent. We must give the police the space they need to conduct a thorough investigation. All Members will recognise that an investigation such as this will be complex and could take some time.
Public safety continues to be the number one priority for the Government. Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer, stated yesterday that, based on the evidence we have, there is a low risk to public health. The UK has a world-leading emergency response. It is regularly tested and exercised to ensure we can deliver an effective response to a wide range of chemical, biological and radiological incidents. The three emergency services are well supplied with state-of-the-art equipment to respond to such threats.
The front-line response is supported by world-class scientific research and advice. This ensures that decision-making on the ground, by all agencies involved, is firmly based on the available evidence. This will also support the decontamination activity needed to return the location to normality. The police are working closely with Public Health England, Defra and Dstl. They have cordoned all known sites in Salisbury that were visited by the two initial victims before they became unwell and are taking the necessary measures to protect public safety.
I want to turn to the speculation, of which there has been much, around who was responsible for this most outrageous crime. The use of a nerve agent on UK soil is a brazen and reckless act. This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way. People are right to want to know who to hold to account but, if we are to be rigorous in this investigation, we must avoid speculation and allow the police to carry out their investigation. As the Assistant Commissioner said yesterday, the investigation now involves hundreds of officers following every possible lead to find those responsible. Some of the leads have come from members of the public. I thank the people of Salisbury for their help and for the calm they have shown over the last four days. I encourage anyone who visited Salisbury town centre and surrounding areas on Sunday afternoon, and who has not yet spoken to the police, to get in touch.
We are committed to doing all we can to bring the perpetrators to justice, whoever they are and wherever they may be. The investigation is moving at pace and this Government will act without hesitation as the facts become clearer. As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary made clear on Tuesday, we will respond in a robust and appropriate manner once we ascertain who was responsible.
I would like to close where I began—by expressing my sincere thanks to the emergency services and hospital staff for their tireless efforts over the last four days. They have acted with utter professionalism to minimise the risk to the wider public and care for victims of this attack, for which I know we are all grateful. Our thoughts will be with the victims in the coming days. Finally, I thank Members for their understanding that there will clearly be limits on what we can say as the investigation continues. As and when information can be made public, it will be. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, for repeating the Statement given by the Home Secretary in the other place earlier today. I join with the noble Baroness in paying tribute to the continued professionalism, dedication and courage of our emergency services. They handled the incident with their usual dedication and, as she said, with their sense of public duty, putting themselves at risk to protect the public.
The two individuals, who we now believe to be Sergei and Yulia Skripal, are, as we have heard, in a critical but stable condition. The police officer who was also taken seriously ill in the line of duty is conscious and talking, and we all know that the staff of the NHS treating the three individuals will do everything possible to help them. We hope they all make a recovery and our thoughts and prayers are with all their families and friends at this terrible time.
The investigation is, as we have heard, under the control of the Metropolitan Police counterterrorism policing network. The safety of the public must be the number one priority for the Government. We fully support them, the police and the other agencies in what they are doing to keep us all safe. This crime is an outrageous act committed on British soil and we all condemn it. I entirely accept that we must always avoid unhelpful speculation, and that a thorough investigation is the only way to get to the truth and bring the perpetrators to justice. If the Minister could comment on and confirm the determination of the Government to do just that, we on this side of the House will fully support them in that aim.
I again express my thanks to all the dedicated professionals in the police and other emergency services, and the staff in the hospital taking care of the three victims. Time and time again, our emergency service workers go beyond the call of duty to help others and this is another example of the great debt we owe them. I am sure the Minister will keep the House further informed, if she can, in this fast-moving investigation.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and pay tribute to the emergency services, an issue I shall want to return to shortly. We are also concerned for the police officer and the other victims, their families and friends.
I appreciate that the investigation is ongoing, but can the Minister confirm that one of the victims was a Russian citizen who was a British spy or double agent, and that President Putin has in effect made death threats against such individuals? The Government should be telling Parliament as much as they can about such incidents, not as little as they can get away with while hiding behind the fact that there is an ongoing investigation.
The Statement talks about well-rehearsed CBRN procedures, but these are deployed when it is a known CBRN threat. What reassurance can the Minister give that such procedures will be reviewed so that first responders are not put in danger, as the police officer who first attended this incident has clearly been put in danger? The Statement talks about protecting British citizens, but what risk assessments are carried out on Russian citizens living in the UK, particularly those who may have risked their lives to assist the UK in the past?
We on these Benches have repeatedly expressed concern about reductions in Border Force, with reliance placed on electronic gates and remote ports and small airfields not having sufficient protection—a situation that is likely to be made worse if we continue to Brexit.
I understand that hostile foreign powers might produce very convincing fraudulent documents to get their assassins into the UK, but can the Minister speculate how on earth a highly toxic nerve agent was smuggled into the country, assuming it was not stolen from a government facility in this country? Is the Minister satisfied that Border Force is properly funded and that our borders are secure?
I pay tribute to the emergency services but I also pay tribute to the security and intelligence services. In the interactions that I have had with those services, I am confident that we have among the best security and intelligence services in the world. Clearly, however, in an arms race with hostile foreign powers, we need to ensure that those services are properly funded.
I pay particular tribute to the police service—as in this case, they are often the first to arrive at the scene of incidents, never knowing what dangers they face. I wish the officer in this case a speedy recovery. The Government have continued to say that we need fewer police officers because crime is falling, but this incident is just one example of the police being the service of last resort. They have to deal with people in distress and, as we saw last week, respond to people trapped in the appalling weather—nothing to do with crime. These brave police officers never know the sorts of dangers that they are facing and can end up, as this officer has, seriously ill in hospital. Sometimes they give up their lives in order to protect us, as Keith Palmer did nearly a year ago in this place. Yet the Government appear in the eyes of operational police officers to be treating the police service with contempt—freezing their salaries, cutting their pensions and reducing police budgets in real terms. Will the Minister tell the House when the Government are going to reverse their anti-police agenda?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
First, I echo the words of the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Paddick, in praising our emergency services in the highest possible terms for what they risked to help these two individuals, which of course led to one of the policemen being taken ill. He is still in hospital. It brings into play the question of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, about the danger to our emergency services and whether all risk assessments are done to mitigate such injury to the police.
Certainly I can say that in the CBRN area these procedures are constantly reviewed and people are trained to the highest possible level—but in an emergency like this we can all appreciate that sometimes people’s lives will be at risk. People are put in danger, and that is why we have the highest regard for the police. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, talked about police budgets. The police told us last year the number of additional police officers needed to do their job. We feel that in the budget they can attain this year they will have those police numbers—and more—to do the job that they do. That does not detract from the fact that the injury to this police officer, and indeed the death of PC Palmer some months ago, bring into sharp focus the dangers that police put themselves into.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, asked me to reiterate the Government’s determination to bring the perpetrators to justice. I said that in my Answer to the Question earlier and I repeat it now: we are absolutely determined to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, asked whether I could confirm that one of the individuals was a Russian spy. I am not in a position to comment further on the victims, other than in the Statement where I confirmed their names.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, also asked about borders, how the substance came into the country and how sure we are of effective border control. I am not prepared to comment on an ongoing operation; I know that the House got slightly exasperated with me earlier, but I cannot. We adopt a rigorous approach to border security, and agencies work together at the border to manage a range of threats, including those posed by terrorism and serious and organised crime. This includes carrying out 100% immigration and security checks at the primary control point, advanced checks where available and intelligence-led targeting at ports. Border Force has at its disposal a range of capabilities to detect, target and identify substances and materials that could cause harm.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)
My Lords, Porton is a very famous laboratory and works very closely with the US and other countries. Could the Minister assure us that there are already comparisons and supportive investigations of that sort?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I apologise; did the noble Lord say “Porton”, as in Porton Down?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Obviously Porton Down is very close to where the incident took place. We co-operate in various areas but I do not know whether we are co-operating with the US on this particular issue. I can find out for the noble Lord.
Lord Faulks (Con)
My Lords, I think the House will understand why the Minister has to be very circumspect when answering questions about the ongoing investigation, and will appreciate that she has told the House that it is a matter of the utmost priority that the perpetrators will be sought out and justice will be served. However, the incident involving the death of Litvinenko does not provide a happy precedent in terms of the time that elapsed between his poisoning and a High Court judge finally concluding that it was the result of deliberate Russian activity. Could the Minister reassure us that, quite apart from the criminal investigation, the Home Office will take responsibility to ensure that all matters surrounding the very serious injuries—we hope that they are just injuries—to these two will be investigated, and that all the lessons from Litvinenko and other questionable incidents will be learned so as to reduce the possibility of recurrence?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I can confirm to my noble friend that all matters surrounding this will be investigated thoroughly. I cannot stress that enough, actually. On the question of Litvinenko and lessons learned, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko was a blatant and unacceptable breach of the most fundamental tenets of international law and civilised behaviour. At the time, the Government responded robustly and, following the publication of the report, we made representations in the strongest possible terms to the Russian Government and put in place asset freezes against the main suspects. For my noble friend’s information, we have demanded and continue to demand that the Russian Government account for the role of the FSB in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.
Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)
My Lords, while appreciating that the circumstances are very similar to—indeed, a carbon copy of—what occurred in the case of Litvinenko, does the Minister agree that, if that be the case, it is not just an attack on a person, but an attack on the sovereignty of this land?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
As I have said on quite a few occasions this morning, that is jumping the gun as to the conclusion of the police, and I will not do that, as this is an ongoing investigation. I hope the noble Lord will understand that I cannot answer his question fully.
Baroness Browning (Con)
Will my noble friend, in due course, when more information is available to her, consider the risk of such substances, not so much coming in with a spy through a small port or airport, but coming in on a wide-bodied jet into a major UK airport under diplomatic immunity? If that proves to be a possible route, will she take a very firm look, however inconvenient it might be in terms of reciprocity with other countries, at what might come in through our major airports in that way?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I understand my noble friend’s question and completely appreciate what such an event might lead to, should toxic or noxious substances come in through our major airports. The security and detection arrangements at our airports are stronger than ever before, so I hope she is comforted by that. We assess risk at the border all the time. In fact, my noble friend points to the changing risks at the border—risks that perhaps were not there years ago now are, in terms of the various ways in which people can bring things into this country.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, returning to the Litvinenko case, many Members of your Lordships’ House, including me, were involved in the updating of the public health laws that we had in this country, some of which dated back to the previous century. Will the Minister, along with her colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care, report to the House in due course whether those legislative changes were sufficient to deal with what seems at this stage to be a somewhat similar incident?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Certainly, Public Health England worked in conjunction with the police in the immediate aftermath of this event. It is clearly involved in the ongoing recovery of the individuals concerned. I will take that point back and provide an answer for the noble Baroness if I can.
Lord Trimble (Con)
My Lords, there appears to be a difference between the Litvinenko case and this case in that, in the former case, a substance was used that left a very clear track and it was very easy to follow through on it. In the current case, however, it appears from what has been said that the nerve agent that was used does not appear to have left a trail, or if it has done, there has been no comment about it so far. It might be that lessons were learned by the perpetrator in the current case from the Litvinenko case. I hope that we will also learn—or have learned—the lessons from our handling of the Litvinenko case, where the initial response, lasting for quite some time, was quite inadequate. Commentators have said that it very clearly left the perpetrators with the feeling that we were a soft touch. Therefore, we will have to be even more robust in our response this time than might have been the case if we had not had that not-so-good example before us.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I know that I am going to disappoint my noble friend when I say that the cause of the two individuals’ illness is currently subject to investigation. It is not appropriate at this time to comment or to link it to other cases, but what I can say to my noble friend, in concurring with him, is that there are always lessons to be learned on how we respond to emergency situations and situations of this nature.
Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)
My Lords, when it comes to state-sponsored murder, Russia certainly has form. It was not that long ago that Bill Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was killed mysteriously in jail because he had been defending Browder against the Russian Government. As a result of that, Browder had Magnitsky’s law brought on to the American statute book, stopping known enemies bringing their money and themselves into that country. Other countries have followed. This country has not implemented Magnitsky’s law in full. I wonder whether at this stage, given the impunity with which the Russians seem to treat us—not just our referendum but those living here—my noble friend might be inclined to revisit that today.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, we are absolutely committed to promoting and strengthening universal human rights. We talked about this case at length during the passage of the Criminal Finances Act and in debates on the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill. We want to hold to account states that are responsible for the worst violations. We already have a range of powers similar to those in the US Magnitsky Act which we regularly deploy to protect national security and our financial system.
International Women’s Day: Progress on Global Gender Equality
(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
That this House takes note of International Women’s Day and the steps being taken to press for progress on gender equality globally.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I hope your Lordships will bear with me one second as I move to my next job, which is a much nicer one.
What a privilege it is to open the International Women’s Day debate. On this important occasion, we come together to recognise and celebrate the achievements of women and girls across the world. This year, International Women’s Day is particularly significant for all of us in this country and in this Parliament. In 2018, we celebrate the centenary of the first British women getting the vote. There is much to celebrate: 100 years on, women are represented at every level of public life; almost a third of all government posts are filled by women; in my own department, the Home Office, over half the Ministers are women, including the Home Secretary; and of course, we have our second ever female Prime Minister.
Just last year, Cressida Dick was appointed the first woman Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, became the first woman President of the Supreme Court. To add to this, Sarah Clarke was chosen to be the first female Black Rod in 650 years and Dany Cotton became the first female commissioner of the London fire brigade. We also saw Jodie Whittaker regenerate to become the first female Doctor Who; are we soon to see the first female James Bond? But although this is a day to celebrate the achievements of women, we must also recognise the challenges and prejudice which women and girls face, both at home and across the world. In the spirit of this year’s International Women’s Day theme we must continue to “press for progress” to accelerate gender equality. We must not be complacent and believe that this struggle has been consigned to the past.
Just as the Suffragettes, Suffragists and their supporters stood side by side in solidarity to fight for the right for women to cast their ballot 100 years ago, we have witnessed in the past year a global movement of women once again coming together to call out injustice. Women from all walks of life have issued a rallying cry, calling time on sexual harassment, violence against women, unequal pay and discrimination. We must capitalise on the momentum of campaigns such as the #MeToo movement to accelerate the drive towards equality for all.
The Government have been making great strides to build on the work of countless Members on all sides of both Houses. The UK has a proud history of playing a central role in securing change for women and girls. We are well respected internationally for our world-leading policy and legislation on equalities. However, outside the UK many women and girls still do not have the opportunities and choices they deserve, whether due to cultural expectations, poverty, conflict, or a combination of all three.
We know that there is a crucial role for us to play to end injustice both at home and abroad, and this country already does great work internationally to ensure gender equality reaches all corners of the globe. The UK was instrumental in securing agreement for dedicated targets on gender equality and women’s empowerment within the sustainable development goals. Right now, as I speak, UK Aid is having a significant impact on the lives of millions of women and girls across the globe. To name but a few examples, UK Aid has supported over 6,000 communities across 16 countries to make public commitments to end female genital mutilation, representing 18 million people. UK Aid has also enabled 8.5 million women to access modern methods of family planning over five years.
Yesterday, the Department for International Development launched its new Strategic Vision for Gender Equality. This sets out the UK’s global leadership in securing, with our partners, the rights of all girls and women around the world, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected states and in humanitarian and protracted crises. These are all great achievements but there is still more to be done to achieve gender equality and improve the lives of women and girls around the world.
Globally, one in three women are beaten or sexually abused in their lifetime. We hear so many statistics in this Chamber every day, we risk becoming desensitised to the horrific facts; we must do everything in our power to ensure we do not. Imagine looking at a class of young girls, knowing that one-third of them will face physical or sexual violence over the course of their lives. That cannot go on. Protecting women and girls from violence and supporting victims is an absolute priority, whether they suffer violence in their communities, in relationships or online.
The UK is leading the way internationally but we know there is more to do. That is why we have today announced that we are consulting on our programme of work to tackle domestic abuse. This consultation will shape the response to domestic abuse at every stage, from prevention through to rehabilitation, and reinforces the Government’s aim to make domestic abuse everybody’s business. By consulting, we aim to harness the knowledge and expertise of victims and survivors, charities, specialist organisations and experts, and professionals across policing, criminal justice, health, welfare, education and local authorities—those who deal with these issues every day.
Part of what we are consulting on is a domestic abuse Bill that aims to better protect and support victims, recognise the lifelong impact domestic abuse has on children and make sure that agencies effectively respond to domestic abuse. The Bill will create a domestic abuse commissioner in law to stand up for victims and survivors and hold the system to account. It will also create a new domestic abuse protection order regime to create a clearer pathway of protection for victims; and it will make sure that if abusive behaviour involves a child, the court can hand down a sentence that reflects the devastating lifelong impact that abuse has. The Government have also announced today how additional funding for domestic abuse will be spent. This includes £8 million to support children who witness domestic abuse, £2 million to improve the health response to domestic abuse and £2 million to support female offenders, who are often victims of domestic abuse.
Internationally, we are generating world-leading evidence on what works to prevent violence before it starts through our £25 million What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls programme. We are also contributing £8 million to the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women. In 2015 alone the fund reached over 1 million people.
Another threat facing many women around the world is unsafe pregnancy. Every two minutes a woman dies in pregnancy or childbirth—that is five women during the time I have been speaking. The majority of these deaths are preventable. What is more, hundreds of millions of women in developing countries do not have access to modern contraception. In the summer of 2017, this Government hosted a family planning summit to accelerate global progress and reinforce the UK’s global commitments to give 120 million more women and girls access to contraception. Our ambition is that all women around the world can access quality care, and we will continue to provide bold and brave leadership by developing important strategic relationships and international summits, and generating world-class evidence and research.
To make progress on these important issues, we need to continue the fight for women’s voices to be heard. Equal political representation ensures that parliaments globally represent the needs and issues of their citizens. We support women’s political representation around the world through a number of programmes. For example, in Pakistan, our support to the 2013 election helped many more women to register as voters, with many going on to vote for the first time ever. It also brought national attention to the 8 million women missing from the electoral roll.
Education is crucial if we want to ensure that women and girls are engaged and active in political and public life. In this country, girls tend to perform well at school. In fact, they regularly outperform their male counterparts. However, around the world, 65 million girls aged between five and 15 are not in school—the equivalent of almost the entire UK population. Education is a critical tool to tackle injustice and build a more equal society. It provides girls with the space to develop their own thoughts and opinions, and most importantly their voices. This Government have championed girls’ education across the world. The Foreign Secretary has made girls’ education a foreign policy priority and appointed a special envoy on gender equality to lead this work. Moreover, our country programmes between 2015 and 2017 supported at least 3.3 million girls around the world to get a good education.
Education is important but we know it is not enough in itself to ensure gender equality in the workplace. For women to have equal opportunities to men at work, employers need to take action, and we all need to challenge harmful social norms that can hold women back. We want the UK to lead the way for gender equality in the workplace. Research has shown that companies with more diverse workforces perform better than their counterparts. The employment rate for women is at a joint record high of 70.8%, and we need to build on this to make the most of women’s skills, talents and potential. To tackle the gender pay gap we have introduced world-leading regulations requiring organisations with 250 or more employees to report their gap. These regulations will not only drive employers to calculate and report their gender pay gaps but shine a light on the factors driving the gaps, thereby encouraging and enabling employers to take action to close them.
Working with our international friends is essential in making progress. Over the past year we agreed a roadmap for gender equality with the other G7 countries. We have taken extra steps to strengthen our collaboration with Canada, following the Prime Minister’s visit in Ottawa last September. The Government Equalities Office signed a memorandum of understanding with the All-China Women’s Federation. Next month, women’s empowerment and girls’ education will be among the key issues to be discussed at the Commonwealth summit in London.
I conclude by thanking everyone who will speak in this debate and I look forward to hearing some of the contributions.
Baroness Gale (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this debate before us and for her opening remarks, which show that we have made progress in many fields but still have a way to go yet. We all look forward to the day when a woman who gets a top job does not make headlines because that has become the norm.
The theme for International Women’s Day is “Press for Progress”. Making progress on what has so far been achieved for women is something we should all be looking to accelerate in all walks of life. Be it women in politics, in the workplace or at home, or young girls at school, or young women in further education, we need to press for more and faster progress.
When one look at young women and girls starting out in life, what can they expect? The Women and Equalities Select Committee carried out an inquiry into sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools, and published its report in September 2016. It showed that 29% of 16 to 18 year-old girls say they have experienced unwanted sexual touching at school; and that in 2014—I am sure that nothing has changed since—59% of girls and young women aged between 13 and 21 said that they had faced some form of sexual harassment at school or college in the past year. Young people told the committee that sexual harassment has become a normal part of school life—it is sad that sexual harassment at school has become normal. Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism Project has described sexual harassment and sexual violence in school as:
“A widespread, regular and common problem… something that the majority of girls are experiencing”.
The committee’s report found inconsistency in how schools deal with sexual harassment and violence, and a lack of guidance and support for teachers.
The UK Feminista and the National Education Union published a report in 2017 on sexism in school. It reported that sexism in school is endemic but not inevitable. Consistent and ongoing action is required from schools, government and education bodies to tackle it. Its findings and conclusions were similar to the Women and Equalities Select Committee’s report. These two reports show us that there are many problems in schools. What action are the Government taking on the recommendations of the Women and Equalities Select Committee? They responded positively and, hopefully, they have actioned the measures suggested in their response.
One recommendation was the setting up of an advisory group to look at how the issues and recommendations can be best reflected within the existing DfE guidance for schools, including KCSIE—Keeping Children Safe in Education—and behavioural and bullying guidance. Can the Minister say what progress has been made and whether the advisory group is working? A change of culture in our schools is required, and this can be achieved provided the resources are put into it. Only then will the next generation of girls be able to attend school without fear of sexual harassment in a place that should be one of safety.
On educational achievements, as the Minister said, girls are outperforming boys at school, but they are not going on to be higher earners than men or to be equally represented in leadership positions. There are a number of reasons for this, but school and the education system have their part to play. Young women experience gender norms and stereotypes which prevent them from reaching their full potential. Only one in three girls who take maths and science at GCSE level go on to take a STEM subject at A-level or its equivalent, compared to eight out of 10 boys. The Education Policy Institute has found that there is a large gender gap in entries to arts subjects, with girls far more likely to enter them than boys. This has been the case throughout the last decade and it is widening.
There are more women than men starting apprenticeships. However, men are dominating the apprenticeships with higher earning potential. We are seeing the way in which gender stereotypes move from school subjects, to apprenticeships, to the workplace, and that male-dominated work is valued more highly. According to the House of Commons Library figures, in 2016-17 some 54% of apprenticeship starts were by women and 46% by men. The number of women starting apprenticeships in England has been higher than men every year since 2010-11, but men continue to dominate apprenticeships with the best earning potential. In 2014-15, nearly 17,000 men started engineering apprenticeships while only 600 girls did. That is not good, and more needs to be done to ensure we make better progress. What action are the Government taking to encourage more women to take up jobs such as engineering?
We are marking the centenary of women getting the vote and being allowed to stand for Parliament—we had a good debate on this on 5 February—but we all know that progress is slow for women who want to get into politics. Since 1918, 489 women have been elected to the House of Commons, but would it not be wonderful if it was the reverse and 4,801 women had been elected and only 489 men? I imagine there would have been quite a row about that. However, this is where we are. Out of those 489 women, only 45 have been Cabinet Ministers and there have been two women Prime Ministers.
According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union global ranking table for women parliamentarians, the UK is 39th on the list. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2017 findings tell us that gender parity is more than 200 years away. That means it will happen neither within the lifetime of everyone living on the planet today nor for several generations to come. For women, that is very slow progress and we need to do much better going forward.
Progress in this field will not happen unless there is action similar to that which the Labour Party has taken by having all-women shortlists since 1997. This process has been used in all types of elections, not only to the Commons, and it works. I know other parties are taking action within their own ranks, but if we could all make similar progress, we would be well on our way to achieving the aims of the United Nations campaign “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality”.
More than 130 countries have adopted some type of legal electoral quotas to deal with the underrepresentation of women in political life. Perhaps we could look at this in the UK and have a serious discussion about it. Otherwise, it will take 200 years to get there. Gender parity will not just happen; action has to be taken. We owe it to future generations of young women who want to go into politics and make their contribution in public service.
In February 2017, the Prime Minister announced that the Government were working towards a domestic violence and abuse Act, to which the Minister referred earlier. Last month, she confirmed that there would be a further wait for legislation. I am pleased to see that the consultation has been launched today. This is welcome because we have been waiting a while for it. However, there is concern that the scope of the Bill will be too narrow and focus solely on domestic violence and the criminal justice system, missing out vital wider issues such as sustainable funding for refuges. Will the Minister give a commitment to ensure that that this new Bill will address the full range of issues affecting victims of domestic violence?
On average, every week two women are killed by their partner or former partner. We all know this statistic and we all quote it. As the Minister said, we have perhaps become too familiar with it and need to consider how horrific that statistic is. But with austerity and cuts to funding of women refuges, many women have no safe place to go and there are stories that many of those who seek refuge are turned away as there is no place for them where once there was. This is an essential service for the protection of women and girls who are caught up in domestic violence, and more action and funding is required in order to see this happen. I hope that the consultation will allow different organisations to feed in, which is its purpose, and hopefully many good things will come out of it. I hope the new domestic violence and abuse Act will address these problems and make life perhaps a little better for women who suffer from domestic violence and abuse.
We will need to continue to “Press for Progress” for some time yet, but if the will and determination are there it will happen—I have no doubt about that. I look forward to the contributions of noble Lords and to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for introducing this debate in this key year when we mark 100 years since women first secured the vote in the United Kingdom. We sorely miss Lady Turner as we debate the issue today. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, will have access to a very large file—if she does not have it in front of her—from the wonderful but overstretched Government Equalities Office so that she can best cover the wide range of areas that we will no doubt raise. I know that because I was, during the coalition, in the fortunate position of being where she is, responding to this debate. When I look back to those days, it is stunning to see what has changed since then.
Who would have thought then that we would face the prospect of leaving the European Union, which has brought such benefits for women into UK law, and that we apparently plan to leave even though the Government’s own analyses show that it is the poorest in our society—and women are poorer than men—who will be disproportionately affected by Brexit? Who would have thought that we would have Donald Trump in the White House, despite all the abuse he has meted out to women, and currying favour with the right wing over the rights of women? Who would have thought that he would defeat Hillary Clinton, who made the phrase “women’s rights are human rights” her own, and who made sure that women in Afghanistan, for example, were not pushed aside for so-called cultural reasons in a country where perhaps all that has emerged from allied engagement is an improvement in women’s rights?
On the other side of things, who would have thought that Harvey Weinstein and others would have been brought low, and that the world would listen when women shouted #MeToo and Time’s Up? Who would have thought that Oxfam would be on the ropes over the sexual exploitation of women in countries where they are most vulnerable? Wherever there are inequalities of power and in the relations between men and women—in other words, globally—such exploitation has long been a fact of life. We knew that in many developing countries girls were not safe even in school, because their teachers demanded sexual favours. We knew that peacekeepers could not be trusted not to abuse the female population whom they were supposed to protect. So I guess it should not have come as a surprise that in aid there could be abuse, even by those who should fully have understood their responsibility.
It is clearly the case, as the Minister outlined, that we have indeed secured greater equality in the West and in Britain. That we are all here, in this House, playing the parts that we do, is testimony to that. But women in Britain, as we have just heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, are still far from equal in terms of pay, responsibility for domestic work, and caring for children and older relatives. I was shocked today to read that women are five times more likely to be donors of kidneys to their husbands than the other way around. How about that for what is expected of you, and gender inequality?
Nor are we on the boards of companies in the numbers that we should be, or governors of central banks. I heard last night that only 6% of central bank governors worldwide are women. I met one last night, courtesy of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, who was in his place just now, at OMFIF. She is the governor of the central bank of Serbia—but even she emphasised that she must also play a full part at home with her family; cleaning, cooking and, as she put it, having a smile on her face when her husband and children come home. This is the governor of a central bank.
We know that if equality is far from achieved here in Britain, it is miles away from being achieved worldwide. We see a sharp reminder of how things are elsewhere with the debate over the visit of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, though I welcome the shifts being made in his country and applaud the women who have helped this along. I recall visiting the country a few years back and seeing for myself the inequalities there: women boxed away in a small part of the university while the men ranged through the rest, including the library, which was barred to women. In my hotel, in a break between meetings, I decided to take advantage of the swimming pool. As I headed in, I was told “You can’t swim. This isn’t the women’s hour”. Disappointed, I asked when the women’s hour was. “There isn’t one”, came the reply.
It is because, worldwide, we see inequality that I am such a supporter of quotas and positive action in parliaments, including ours. I have seen how much was achieved in Pakistan, for example, by those elected to the women’s places. In the last Parliament there, 70% of the legislation was taken through by women, who made up less than 30% of the parliament, working across and deep into their own parties. Their focus was on improving the lot of women: for example, by criminalising acid attacks. It is also why, in terms of development, it is right to put the overwhelming emphasis on women and girls and to invest in girls’ education. The longer a girl is in school, the fewer children she has and the better she is able to be independent and provide for and educate her family. She, her family, her community and her country all benefit. It is also why emphasising family planning is vital, so that all women who wish to access family planning can do so.
We should not ignore the challenge of abortion. I welcome the report on abortion by the All-Party Group on Population and Development and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, in that regard. The report recognises that abortions will occur, and that so often deaths result where they are not legal and medically assisted. It estimates that the proportion of maternal mortality in developing countries resulting from unsafe abortion ranges as high as 18%. Maternal morbidity from the consequences of unsafe abortion is also common. The report points out, rightly, that young women, poor women and women in conflict situations are particularly vulnerable. I am proud of the fact that in coalition we put into law our commitment to 0.7% of GNI for aid, with a particular focus on women and girls. I am proud of the fact that DfID has not shied away from areas such as family planning and abortion over recent years—unlike Trump’s America. Long may that continue.
I also pay tribute here to the focus DfID has had on women with disabilities—something pioneered by my noble friend Lord Bruce when he was chair of the International Development Select Committee and my noble friend Lady Featherstone as a DfID Minister. Sightsavers points out that women with disabilities are among the most marginalised in the world. Many are likely to experience the double discrimination of gender and disability. Men with a disability are almost twice as likely to be employed as their female counterparts. Women and girls with disabilities suffer particularly high rates of gender-based violence, sexual abuse, neglect and exploitation.
So although we recognise what has been achieved globally for women, there is indeed still much to do, which is why this annual debate is important. Yes, we should not recall this on only one day a year, but this is a time, at the very least, to take stock of where we are and where we seem to be going. In some regards we appear to be moving forward, but in others the forces of reaction seem to be taking us in the opposite direction.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, in this centenary year, when we celebrate the fact that some women in the UK got the right to vote in 1918, I would like to widen the lens to consider briefly the international scene as it is now—the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, has referred to part of that already—and then I shall focus on one country in particular, Albania. This is not just because I visited it last month in the February Recess as a member of the UK’s IPU group, but because Albania provides an example of the challenges that must be overcome when seeking to achieve gender equality and the progress that can be made by determined efforts both within country and with the assistance of the UK and with UN Women.
The report published this month by the IPU Secretary-General shows that,
“progress made in women’s political involvement is slowing. With the exception of some countries that have made a headway because of political will, this has been, overall, a disappointing year”.
It is vital that women are part of decision-making institutions such as Parliament. It is fundamental, not just for gender equality but for democracy and the legitimacy of the process.
Last year we saw some positive developments in women’s participation in elections worldwide. A record number of women contested elections and more seats were won by women than in previous years, but this was largely due to measures such as electoral quotas for women. Whatever our views on gender quota systems, we cannot ignore the impact that they have. In the 20 countries where quotas were used, women won over 30% of the seats, while in the 16 countries where they were not used, they only won 17%. The trailblazers in the Americas were Argentina, Chile and Ecuador—all countries that have developed progressive legislation to promote women’s political leadership.
Elections across the Asia-Pacific region generally reflected the fact that gender norms continue to work against women’s entry into politics as societies lay stronger emphasis on women’s role in the unpaid, domestic sphere. New Zealand was the standout success where they elected the highest ever proportion of women MPs at 39% and Jacinda Ardern as their Prime Minister. Her pregnancy has given rise to a national debate on women’s ability to balance political leadership and motherhood.
Europe was the region making the greatest gains in the number of women MPs. The most prominent increase was in France, where President Macron’s party fielded gender-balanced lists.
Let me turn to Albania. Historically, it has had low numbers of women in elected office but it made significant progress last year. The proportion of women elected jumped from 18% to 28%. Why was this? It was because they benefited from a gender quota and from public fora organised by UN Women which enabled them to raise awareness of the importance of women playing a role in public life.
Our UK parliamentarians’ visit to Albania was timely. There is a significant focus on the western Balkans this year by the UK and the EU. We will host the EU western Balkans summit in London in May and I believe we hold our own summit on the western Balkans later in the summer. As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said in Munich last month:
“We have a long-standing and enduring commitment to the security, stability and prosperity of the region and this will never change”.
We are working with Governments from all six western Balkan countries to improve the rule of law, promote economic governance and attack the difficult issue of corruption across the region.
Albania is a middle-income democracy—a member of NATO, an EU candidate member state and a member of the Human Rights Council. It is a country that has emerged from the isolation of the Enver Hoxha years and is seeking a pathway to a secure Euro-Atlantic future. Our delegation was given a very warm welcome. I would like to put on record my thanks to the President, Prime Minister, Mayor of Tirana and all the MPs who gave so much of their time to have discussions with us. It was a pleasure to meet the All-Party Alliance of Women MPs to discuss the steps being taken to press for progress on gender equality.
In 2008, Albania passed a law on gender equality which, among other measures, established a minimum 30% quota for women and stipulated that one of the first three names on the political parties’ candidates list must be that of a female candidate. But it is not just a matter of numbers. It is vital that those who are elected are able to take up their places in safety and play their full part in politics.
The women MPs whom we met believed that the application of the gender quota has opened up many more opportunities for women and had some effect on countering prejudicial political attitudes generally. They believed that people are more convinced that women politicians are more stable, more responsible and more professional.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
Hear, hear, indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton says. I agree, and I am sure noble Lords would agree too.
In recent years, the Government of Albania have embarked on reforms to improve legal policy and institutional gender equality mechanisms—we use a rather convoluted vocabulary in these circumstances. The new national strategy has provided a strong gender equality vision in Albania. However, as will sound familiar, the financial and human resources to ensure proper implementation are currently insufficient.
Domestic violence prevention, protection, prosecution and referral mechanisms are weak. But they are a Government priority and they are improving for the first time. UN Women makes the point that women in Albania continue to face daunting challenges. Violence against women is common, with almost 60% of Albanian women aged 15 to 49 having experienced domestic violence. Forced and early marriage is still a problem in some, mainly rural, areas of the country. There is much more to do, but it is important to recognise that real progress has been made and for the UK to be a firm and constant ally in that progress.
The formidably able members of the Alliance of Women MPs are ready to meet these challenges, and I wish them well. Next week, when I am in New York at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, I will attend the Albania side event on the participation of women in politics in the western Balkans and hope to learn more.
After half a century of my life working to achieve gender equality, one big hope remains. I hope that one day we will no longer even have to try to defend the principle that equality for one half of the human race with the other half is, quite simply, right in itself. I always am the eternal optimist.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this debate in such an important year—the 100th anniversary of women gaining the vote. As we have heard, we have a proud record in this country of promoting women’s rights globally.
Today, I want to focus on the progress of women in the UK. As we promote women’s rights globally, we need to do more to get our own house in order. On International Women’s Day, it is welcome that women from minority backgrounds are becoming more visible. As the only woman of Turkish Cypriot heritage in this House, I would like to see more women from black and minority-ethnic backgrounds represented in public life and in all walks of life.
When I was elected in the early 1990s in Hackney, London, I was the first woman from my background to be elected as a councillor and it caused quite a stir. Only a few women councillors had similar experience to mine. I met with some opposition, mainly from the men from my community when I was out canvassing. They asked me who was going to look after my children and cook my husband’s dinner.
That quickly changed as more women from my community and heritage started to become involved in public life. I am pleased to say that women from Turkish Kurdish, Turkish Cypriot and other communities are much better represented in public life today. It is perfectly normal now. I was used to being the “only” or the “first” and I gradually found that very annoying, but I am pleased that that has changed.
My mother came to the UK with very little education. She went to school until the age of only about 12—the first girl in the family to do so. She was unable to speak, read or write English. She struggled when she came here and married very young. But she was a very smart woman, mainly self-taught as many early immigrant women were, and she went on to run a successful small business. I am proud that I come from a line of strong women who are self-starters and who, like many women here as well, just get on with it.
There are more than 2 million black and minority- ethnic women in this country. They are not properly reflected, sadly, in public life across the country, and certainly not in Parliament or local councils. But today when I look around Parliament, I am heartened to see that there have been great improvements. Many will speak from their own life experiences and on behalf of minorities who may otherwise feel silenced. This is why we need greater plurality in public life.
Despite this progress, our work has only just begun. The life chances of black and minority-ethnic groups, especially women of Muslim heritage, still lag far behind the life chances of the rest of the population. Black and minority-ethnic groups tend to have poorer health and shorter life expectancy and face discrimination at work and in their day-to-day lives.
The most recent review by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, about 18 months ago, found that black people in Britain are more than twice as likely to be murdered as white people and three times as likely to be prosecuted and sentenced, and that the life chances of young ethnic-minority people in the UK have collapsed in the last five years and are at their worst level for generations. The review examined education, employment, housing, pay, health and criminal justice and found what it described as an “alarming picture” of rampant race-based inequality entrenched within Britain. Its depressing conclusion was that these figures underline,
“just how entrenched and far-reaching race inequality remains”.
The commission’s chairman concluded:
“We must redouble our efforts to tackle race inequality urgently or risk the divisions in our society growing and racial tensions increasing. If you are black or an ethnic minority in modern Britain, it can often still feel like you’re living in a different world, never mind being part of a one nation society”.
I will just share a few more statistics that need to be highlighted. In work, women from a Pakistani background see the biggest gender pay gap, earning 26% less than their colleagues. A black and minority-ethnic person with a degree is twice as likely to be unemployed. Around 40% of ethnic minorities live in low-income households—twice the rate of the white population. We know, as has been highlighted many times, that race hate crimes against Muslim women have, sadly, increased significantly post the EU referendum. All in all, if you are born into a non-white home in 21st-century Britain, you can expect to earn less, face discrimination and die earlier.
Of course, by way of balance, there are growing exceptions and there have been improvements, but it is not moving or changing fast enough. The time for talking is over and the situation has to be tackled. I do not want to wait another 30 years—although I am sure I will not be here in 30 years’ time—for the balance to be redressed. I call on the House and the Government to make International Women’s Day the day we start to do something about inequalities for women from a BME background.
On Tuesday, I attended an event organised by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, which, in a celebration of International Women’s Day, brought together a growing number of leading Muslim women, among them MPs, lawyers, journalists, professionals and even the winner of “Masterchef” 2017—Saliha Ahmed, a wonderful woman—to showcase how things are slowly changing. Women from less privileged backgrounds are now pushing or kicking open doors that remained firmly shut unless you came from the right background or had the necessary networks. The key message was for young women to ask and to not be afraid to find out how to get involved in public life or the profession they would like to join. They should not be pushed back or be afraid.
This is why role models really matter. Representation is the key to changing this situation. Ethnic minorities make up 12% of the workforce, yet just 6% are in senior positions. We are faced with what I call a concrete ceiling. Ethnic-minority women, who already have to break the glass ceiling, have to go one step further to break the other ceiling as well if they want to get the job they deserve. In a way, we are talking about a double whammy, because women from ethnic- minority backgrounds are more likely to be from a working-class background.
Many of us welcomed the words of the Prime Minister, who raised the issue of the poor life chances of black people in Britain on the steps of 10 Downing Street when she became Prime Minister. The Government, led by the Prime Minister, must urgently raise expectations. This is an issue for schools and colleges as well, which need to raise the expectations of girls, particularly those from poorer and ethnic- minority backgrounds. We know that really matters: role models, expectations and mentoring really make a difference. We must redouble efforts to build a fair society. A fairer and more equal society is a happier society.
Globally, women are speaking out and pushing for their rights. Today I call on the Government and all like-minded women in public life to take action and work with civil society to create a more level playing field for all women here in the UK, no matter what their ethnicity. Let us press for progress.
Baroness Flather (CB)
My Lords, I was here for the Finance (No.2) Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, was saying how few people had taken part in the Second Reading, so one noble Lord who was still there said, “Well, it’s because the next debate is so important. But if this debate is so important, why are so few men taking part? Nothing will change in the world unless the men commit themselves also to improving women’s lot. It cannot be done by women alone and I am sure that all the women here know that perfectly well. Until half the people speaking in this debate are men, I will feel quite disappointed. I had been hoping for this all along. I have been in your Lordships’ House since 1990 and it has not happened yet. It is amazing to think that we can do this alone.
Men have really been in the lead since time immemorial: men have been this, men have been that, while women have not. We used to think the cavemen were ahead of the women, but now they have found that cavewomen were very strong indeed. Maybe that will give us an important point to work towards. As has already been said, this whole concept of women today is global and not just British. I thank the Minister as well that it is global. There are so many different and unbelievable things happening in our world that sitting in this Chamber, we cannot really get our heads around it, but we ought to try if we can.
First, I want to remind ourselves of what is happening to some of the women in this country. We already know that a sharia marriage is not recognised by British law. What does that mean for a woman who has a sharia marriage? She has no rights whatever. Is that the right thing? She cannot ask for anything from her husband. He can put her out on the street and that is it. He can sometimes even put the children out on the street. When people say to him, “Why don’t you look after your family?”, he will say, “The Government will look after them”. There are two negative points to this: first, the woman has no rights and, secondly, the Government have to pay to look after that woman and have no claims against the husband. The sooner this is looked at and changed, the better. It is quite wrong for people to come to live in this country and to follow rules which are completely the opposite of what we believe in. It is not right and will never become right. We have to look at these things and say they are not acceptable.
It is nothing to do with religion: sharia is not a religious law, but a law which has been created by the priests—the maulvis. It changes from country to country, and sometimes it changes from one group of three presiding priests to the next three presiding priests.
So please make an effort to get this put right. It is appalling. The statistics tell us that more than 60% of women under 40 could be in unregistered sharia marriages. The families do not like registration. Why should they? Is it not much better for them if they do not have to do anything for their wives? This bothers and upsets me. A sharia review said clearly that these marriages should be registered. What has been done as a result of the Casey report? We know these things are not right, but we just go on doing them. We should know much better.
In many countries there are laws to protect women—in India, for example, there are a lot. If you were to ask a lawyer, they would tell you, “Oh, we have this, we have that”. Ask them how much is enforced. Nothing is enforced, or what is enforced is a minute fraction. It is no use having a law that is not enforced. It is far better to have fewer laws that are enforced. There are a lot of lawyers here today, so I am sure they will agree with me.
In Africa and India put together there are 1 billion women, and they do more work than the men in these areas—it is said that women do more than three-quarters of the work. When I was in Jamaica I saw the women doing far more work than the men. I begged them to have a one-day strike and to do nothing except look after the very sick and the children.
Women have worked very hard in every age and at every stage. They did not have, for example, the support of religion. You might say that religion could have supported women. Some people, such as the Sikhs, say, “Oh, but we believe in equality”. Yes, their religion believes in equality, but it does not exist in fact. So we have also had the burden of religion saying to women, “your place is here”—Kirche, Küche, Kinder—“not in public life”.
I felt quite close to the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, when she said that she did not like being called “the first and the only one”. All my life I have been called “the first and the only one” because that is how my life started. When I came to this House in 1990, I was “the only one”. There were very few women here then as well. I was “the first” to be the Mayor of Windsor. Things have been happening but I think we need to be in these positions because it encourages others to realise that if this woman can do it, they can do it as well. Always be proud of what you have done and what you are able to show other people that you can do.
I would like to talk about women’s attitudes towards other women. It is improving, but it has been quite bad. Women have not been willing to support other women. We have to learn to support each other all the time in everything. I hope this will happen in due course because younger women are much more aware of it.
Lastly, how do we change the attitude of mothers towards their sons and daughters? We have done a lot of work in this country and attitudes have changed, but there is a whole, vast world still where the son is the prince—not the daughter.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Flather. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, led us through some rather incredible “who would have thought it?” moments. It is also rather incredible that today we have a female monarch, Prime Minister, Home Secretary, Leader of both Houses of Parliament, Scottish First Minister, head of the fire service and head of the Metropolitan Police. Despite all these great achievements, it feels very fragile, as though it could disappear in a minute.
It is eight years since I made my maiden speech in this same International Women’s Day debate and it is therefore always, for me, a moment of reflection. What have I achieved over the past year? What have I done for women over the past year? What more can I do next year? I am not going to dwell on the general election and the effect it had on women in my own party, and how well the Labour Party did, because I covered that ground pretty comprehensibly in the debate on the centenary of the Representation of the People Act last month. It is quite possible that no one would notice if I repeated myself, but I shall resist the temptation.
Let me start on the global stage and set the scene by looking at overpopulation—by which I mean the growth of restless and surplus labour. This is a massive problem, although it is by no means universal. Things are going the other way in Japan, which has the highest living standards in the world, and in much of the West. This gives us a clue about the solution. If we look at the countries where population is growing fastest, where unemployment is highest and where tensions are greatest, without exception we find a common factor: female illiteracy. The correlation is astonishing. Look at the high birth rate in countries of sub-Saharan Africa and you will find female illiteracy running at 50%, 60% or sometimes even 70% plus. Among adult women in Pakistan it is 66%; it is 33% even in India. Small wonder that India’s population is set to overtake that of China, where female illiteracy has been all but eliminated.
It really is that simple. It is not just a moral outrage; it is directly contrary to the interests of world peace, prosperity of country and community, health and happiness that such a huge proportion of our population—so many women and girls—should be unable to participate, alongside their brothers, in the economic life of their country. Female education is the tool that helps tackle so many challenges in the developing world. Societies where women can read, write and do maths as efficiently as their male counterparts will be healthier, happier and more prosperous. They will be in stabler populations and smaller families and, therefore, there will be fewer alienated and maladjusted young men whose egos require them to think of women as childbearing chattels.
This ambition and focus on women and girls is at the heart of the UK’s overseas policy—a policy shared by both Penny Mordaunt at DfID and by the Foreign Office—and will be at the heart of the Commonwealth summit in April. It is not just a campaign for fairness and freedom, but its essential contraceptive impact will help to fix so many other problems—not just overpopulation and poverty but the threat of war, disorder, terrorism, climate change and the loss of habitat and species. Mankind is conquering so many of today’s challenges—from famine to disease—but, if we are to solve the problems of today, mankind needs to prioritise the education of girls and easy access to contraception so that they can have control over their own bodies. Twelve years of full-time education is not the only answer to the world’s problems, but it is a jolly good start.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, mentioned, the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that equality in the job market would yield an extra £20 trillion to global GDP by 2025. I have no feel for what £20 trillion looks like, but it is a heck of a lot of money and a life-changing, even world-changing opportunity.
Along with thousands of men and women, I attended the International Women’s Day march on Sunday, organised by Care International on the theme of #March4Women from here, just outside this building, up to Trafalgar Square. We listened to inspirational speeches. Marchers from all backgrounds, all political parties and none supported all kinds of causes. Many were marching because of their anger at injustice, at girls being denied an education, angry that half the women in the world have experienced physical or sexual violence. I pay tribute to the Prime Minister for today inviting many victims of domestic violence and charities which support these women into Number 10 for a reception to celebrate International Women’s Day. Many on the march were angry that 12 year-olds are even today being forced to marry, and that those young teenagers are becoming mothers before they are ready and often die in the process. Still today in 18 countries women need permission from a man to have a job. Around the world millions of girls, and here in the UK 24,000 girls, are at risk from FGM. It was a privilege for me to walk during that march with the inspirational and brave anti-FGM campaigner Nimco Ali, a woman who has spoken out about her own experience and is determined to do what she can to prevent others suffering as she did. Many on that march were concerned that the World Economic Forum report found that the gender pay gap internationally is widening for the first time in decades. All were frustrated at the wasted talent and potential.
I applaud Penny Mordaunt and DfID for continuing to place women and girls at the heart of their efforts, particularly those to bring an end to conflict and bring peace, which includes everyone. I welcome her announcement yesterday of a £10 million fund in the name of Jo Cox, which will focus on Jo’s social, economic and political empowerment work continued by the Jo Cox memorial fund.
I had half hoped to be able to talk about the #MeToo movement today, but that is for another day because, for today at least, Time’s Up.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, whose record on women’s issues and equality is quite outstanding. I congratulate the Minister on initiating the debate.
The campaign for equal rights, as has been said, is not new, but it is always stimulating to participate in a debate of this kind involving women and men. One of the most exhilarating International Women’s Days that I experienced was when I attended a women’s conference in New York with Gloria Steinem as the guest speaker, but that was 35 years ago.
I am afraid that I can go back even further. Forty-four years ago, my former trade union, NALGO, decided to investigate and report on the promotion of equal rights for women, and I was lucky enough to be a member of the group. The report analysed inequality and discrimination in the workplace, the weaknesses of the anti-discrimination legislation and job segregation. It called for a full nursery and childcare facility and flexible working patterns for women. The NALGO history recorded that the report was,
“a devastating appraisal of the situation of women at work, in society and within NALGO”.
I mention this because we have known for a very long time the causes of inequality for women and the solutions. I do not want another report analysing the problems. We need a recognition by Government that they must lead, facilitate, and open their purse where necessary, if we are to move forward.
I commend the Government for going ahead with the requirement for companies and the public sector to analyse and publish statistics on the gender pay gap. It will be interesting to see the concrete figures when they are published shortly. Much publicity has been given to the gender pay gap as a result of the gyrations of the BBC. The downside of this negative coverage is that it has probably frightened a lot of well-meaning employers, who will go into their collective shell rather than making plans. The April deadline for companies with 250 employees or more to publish their gender pay gap data is fast approaching. Last month, only 550 companies out of 9,000 had published their figures. The average gender pay gap is 11%, and is worse in construction and financial services in particular.
I accept that the first round of calculations will be the hardest for companies, but after that it will be much easier and there is plenty of advice around. It is essential for companies to plan now and state how any gap will be rectified over time. An example given in People Management was of easyJet, with a 52% mean gender pay gap but only 6% women pilots. EasyJet has publicly committed to a target of 20% of new-entry pilots being women by 2020. Companies should be praised for taking these steps.
Once employers understand the difference between a gender pay gap and an equal pay issue it will be easier to communicate with their employees. Instead of regarding the exercise as a burden on business, it could be a great opportunity to become a real equal opportunities employer, attracting the best available talent and minimising talent wastage, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, said. The CIPD, of which I am a fellow, is holding a gender pay gap conference today, so help is out there.
Local government has often been more progressive than central government on this issue. My thanks go to the Local Government Association for pointing out that next year will be the 150th anniversary of single women ratepayers having the right to vote in local government elections and of the Municipal Franchise Act 1869, an anniversary which should be celebrated. The LGA is continuing its “Be a councillor” campaign on a cross-party basis to encourage more women to stand for election as councillors.
The Greater London Authority has been working with Gingerbread to assist single parents who are locked out of work because of the cost of childcare. They struggle with up-front costs, such as deposits to secure a nursery place, which must be paid before the first pay cheque comes in. This will be even more critical when universal credit is rolled out. It will be paid in arrears and costs prior to employment will not be readily available. Gingerbread has an “up front” policy, whereby local government or employers could pay parents’ deposits directly to enable them to accept a job or increase working hours before the money starts coming in. It is to be hoped that this commendable co-operation will spread to other parts of local government. However, it is a poor substitute for the targeted support which existed in the 2000s.
Local government could do so much more if it were given adequate financial support. The benefit cap has affected single parents, mainly women, who make up three-quarters of capped households. Those who find it hardest to move into work will have preschool children. Single parents still face a disproportionate risk of poverty and figures are returning to the levels not seen for two decades. Compared with the system in 2013-14, lone parent families will be £2,380 a year worse off. Single parents are more likely than the average employee to be trapped in low-paid work. Lifting the two-child cap would keep 200,000 children out of poverty, according to the Child Poverty Action Group. Removing the benefit cap could keep up to 100,000 children from poverty.
Government policy in this area has a detrimental impact on women and their opportunities. I hope the Government will look again at the issue of paying universal credit to women in couples, or at least allow an agreed split in income. The Government have argued up to now that this represents “interference” and would undermine the responsibility of couples in managing their affairs. However, one could equally argue, as the Women’s Budget Group does, that making couples choose one partner to receive the payment also represents “interference”. The Government’s aim to encourage committed couples is commendable, but their current policy could act as a disincentive to single people moving in with a new partner.
Cuts in public services have a disproportionate effect on women. The Women’s Budget Group reported that women have borne 86% of the impact of austerity through lost services and changes to the tax and benefit system. In conclusion, on this International Women’s Day, will the Minister say whether the Government are considering a review of the cuts in benefits which affect women so badly, and whether local government will have the resources that it so desperately needs?
Baroness Browning (Con)
My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness and I pay tribute to the work that she has done over her lifetime, from which many people have benefited.
Are men from Mars and women from Venus? I pose it as a question that I will leave hanging in the air because, perhaps as this debate progresses, we can take a decision on it. There are differences. I am not somebody who believes that there are no differences that need to be recognised. The question is how we harmonise the differences that need to be harmonised in order to bring about equality.
Back in the 1980s when I did a proper job, I trained people in business. I recall very much then, particularly in the manufacturing sector, how the change in corporate culture, particularly in management style, was starting to come in, mainly because of things such as the Japanese just-in-time system. I can recall then having long discussions—I looked this up at the weekend—about a chap called Hofstede. We used to talk about whether the cultures in certain countries were masculine or feminine. Hofstede wrote a paper that said a masculine culture was a society that emphasised assertiveness and the acquisition of money and material things, whereas femininity was a cultural dimension describing societies that emphasised relationships, concern for others and the overall quality of life.
At that time—many decades ago—he found that Japan had a masculine quality and the Nordic countries and the Netherlands were the most feminine. I was quite interested to see on the front page of the briefing prepared for this debate by the House of Lords Library that it states:
“Gender disparities continue to exist globally, including in the UK”—
which is something we would all agree with.
“A World Economic Forum analysis of the global gender gap, taking into account economic participation, education, health and political participation, found that weighted by population, the average progress on closing the global gender gap stood at 68 percent in 2017. The UK had a gender gap of 33 percent, and was ranked 15th out of 144 countries for overall gender parity. The top three countries were Iceland, Norway and Finland”—
the very Nordic countries which, all those decades ago, had already identified a culture where the things that were important were to the fore. We are talking here about hard-edged management tools and management approaches of societies that emphasise relationships, concern for others and overall quality of life.
In order to bring about this equality, there needs to be leadership on a global level and on a national level. It is needed in our institutions and in our corporate sector, and it is also—this has been touched on once already today—needed in the home. Mothers particularly can have a huge influence on their sons. You might have thought I was going to say “on their daughters”. Mothers can influence the way in which their sons develop. Many of the issues are not just things that worry us but are effectively criminality, not just nationally but around the globe. If they are to be addressed, the culture has to be changed at all levels.
Again, going back many years—I promise I will not keep harping on about the past, but at my age people tend to—when I was a Minister back in the 1990s I also had the privilege of being the government co-chairman of the Women’s National Commission. It was a very fine body of women. Many people around this Chamber were involved with the WNC. I was very sorry that it was a Conservative Government who decided to dispense with it. I think it did very good work. It was exactly the right group of people to bring women together and to make their views known directly to government.
I attended the 1995 UN conference on women in Beijing. I can see others in the Chamber who were there and who were involved. From that came the platform for action that resulted in a decision to make mainstream throughout government departments legislation and policy being looked at through the prism of how it affects women.
I want to add at this point—it has already been mentioned, I think by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover—something about Sightsavers. Sightsavers is incredibly concerned about the United Nations. Of course it has to be a global leader. If the UN is not the global leader, then which organisation is? However, in terms of the women with disabilities, which Sightsavers has flagged up, it says:
“Our attention is focused on the United Nations where, of the ten United Nations treaty bodies, women are currently underrepresented on seven”,
And, even worse, there is only one woman member on the committee that looks at the rights of persons with disabilities. This is quite disgraceful, and that one person will retire in July. I urge my noble friend on the Front Bench to say that the Government will make representations on that to the United Nations through ministerial communications and through our representatives in the UN.
As has been mentioned, very often there is more than just one discriminatory area—disability is one; we all know what the others are: sex, religion, colour, race and, I would add, class. I want to complete what I am saying today—because it is, I hope, a day of celebration—by saying thank you, particularly to those women who trod the path or sat on the green Benches before those of us who have had the privilege of serving down in another place. When you read what they went through, not just to get there but when they were actually there, it is quite astonishing. I include all of them in that. It is quite interesting that, although we often mention Margaret Thatcher in terms of being the first woman Prime Minister, it was not just because she was a woman that she had to fight. She fought criticism of the class she came from, from men who thought they were far superior to her, because she was a grocer’s daughter. So very often class prejudice—and it goes both ways—adds to what often is a double or sometimes a triple burden.
I would like to finish—it sounds like the Oscars, I know, but I will never get an Oscar—by saying thank you to my mother, my long-deceased mother, I have to say. She was a working mother of three children. I grew up in a household where it never occurred to me that it was not the norm for married women with families to work. She was just a great role model for me. Thank you to all of the people who have spoken in this debate, many of whom should be getting an Oscar for the work they have done for women.
Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am delighted because a lot of what I had planned to say—and it was not very much because I had a very late night last night, which I will tell you about later—has been said already by many Peers. That is thanks to the efforts of Andrew Mitchell, the Secretary of State for International Development years ago and his successors in a Conservative Government. I do not often say nice things about Conservative Governments, I know, but at this time I say that they have done a terrific job, if only to make sure that a majority of people who have spoken in this debate so far have mentioned my favourite subject, which is women’s reproductive health, family planning and safe abortion. That is what I plan to talk about now, and to use my favourite phrase, you cannot promote the empowerment of women—the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, has already alluded to this—unless you give them power over their own bodies first. It is pointless talking about it unless you do that.
Women in the West, and particularly in this country, have had it pretty good from this point of view for a long time now, and I think that sometimes we take family planning for granted. We know that, on the whole, we can control the number of children we have. Even I controlled the number of children I had, because these provisions have been there for our generation of women. We do not realise that in many other parts of the world this just does not apply. Often, once a girl starts menstruating, she is married off very early and, from then on, is either pregnant or breastfeeding—or dead, frankly—as she goes on and on producing more and more children. It is a pretty dreadful life. There is no hope of gender equality there and no talk of empowerment.
The most crucial intervention is family planning and safe abortion. Many countries have already achieved this. The Asian Tiger countries are often held up as an example—and they have done it without coercion, I would add. More recently, Indonesia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Bangladesh have all brought down their fertility rate—meaning their family size—freeing women to do other things. Because of our Government pushing this agenda, more and more women have access to family planning, and I say thank you again to the Government and to the Department for International Development. Maternal mortality has been reduced by 44% since 1990, and although the world population is rising, it is doing so at a slower rate, which is good news. The intervention of non-coercive family planning is about the availability of supplies, and our Government are making sure, as far as is possible, that we spread supplies as widely as possible.
As was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, education is terribly important. Girls have to be educated, but they cannot be educated if they are childbearing. If they are constantly expected to have more and more babies, they will be unable to access education at anything more than a rudimentary level. The World Bank has demonstrated that when women are educated, and when they have fewer children because they have access to family planning, the economy of their country improves and the lot of all the people living there is improved. It is a win-win situation for everybody if that happens.
The reason I had a late night last night is that my All-Party Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health launched a paper. I have a copy with me here and noble Lords will all get one in the next week—I am sorry to advertise it but it is very important. The Who Decides? report is about safe abortion in the developing world. It also mentions this country, which I know is quite a contentious issue.
We need legal, safe abortion in all countries and we need improvements here in the UK. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, who was here earlier, piloted the Bill through Parliament in 1967. It was a tremendous thing for the women of this country but it now needs updating. Women still need the permission of two doctors; often they have to have two different appointments, and it can take ages to get an appointment in the first place. They need better access.
Worldwide, the abortion rate is the same whether abortion is legal or illegal in a particular country—abortions still go on. Women who cannot access safe abortion will take matters into their own hands, and many die as a consequence. In fact, 68,000 women die every year from unsafe abortion in the rest of the world. So people who oppose safe abortion provision are promoting death—the death of young women and the death of mothers of young families.
Finally, I want all noble Lords, and in particular the Government, to look at the report. I hope the Minister will reply to me in her closing comments. It is terribly important that we look at provision worldwide. Medical abortion now is so much easier: two pills can be taken in the first 12 weeks to produce a much easier form of abortion through a very early miscarriage, and no surgical intervention is required. We must promote this method worldwide. We must make sure that it is available online and without the intervention of doctors. Women do not need doctors all the time to control our bodies; we can do it ourselves if we are given the means to do so. In this country, that applies also. We should not have to get the permission of two doctors to end an early pregnancy that we unsuccessfully tried to avoid. Women must have that choice: whatever you personally feel about it, an individual woman must have that choice. We must rethink the Abortion Act 1967 and decriminalise abortion because, for goodness’ sake, it is still part of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. It is a criminal offence to have an abortion in this country without two doctors allowing you to do so. Will the Minister please say something about that and promise that women worldwide will get a better, easier deal with the advent of medical abortion, and likewise women in this country?
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, and I much admire her wonderful work on promoting family planning, reproductive health and safe abortion.
Today we celebrate International Women’s Day, and this year it is particularly special. A few weeks ago we debated the role of women in public life and the progress made in increasing their representation in Parliament, 100 years after women—some women—were granted the vote. It was an occasion to look back and see how far we have come. I welcome today’s debate, so ably introduced by my noble friend Lady Williams, which gives us an opportunity to look forward.
There is still no country in the world where women are equal to men in political, economic and social terms. We are indeed lucky to live in a country with a Government dedicated to gender equality and who put women’s rights at the heart of international development. I congratulate DfID and the Secretary of State on their Strategic Vision for Gender Equality: A Call to Action, which was announced yesterday. This recognises the need for all of us to take action to make gender equality become a reality. We have come a long way but, as others have already mentioned, there is still a long way to go both in the UK and globally.
I take this opportunity to declare an interest, due to my involvement with GAPS and other NGOs as listed on the register. The UK has a global reputation as a leader on gender equality, but yesterday nominations closed for places on CEDAW—the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Why have we never put forward a candidate? CEDAW consists of 23 experts from around the world. Every country that signs up to CEDAW is obliged to submit reports, and the committee, having considered these, addresses its concerns and recommendations to the state party as concluding observations. What kind of message does it give to other countries that the UK continues to ignore this very important global committee?
Goal 5 of the sustainable development goals adopted by the UN in 2015 seeks to,
“achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”,
and includes nine targets. Ensuring the inclusion of that goal was a big achievement. However, it is only in the years to come that we will see how effective it has been. Too often, countries sign up to international conventions but then not enough is done to implement them. After all, all countries that are members of the UN have to sign up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, yet 70 years later we are still pushing for gender equality.
I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s focus on girls’ education, because it is hard to take part in today’s world without any. Still, an estimated 131 million girls worldwide remain out of school.
The statistics are stark. About a quarter of girls today between the ages of 15 and 24 have never completed primary school and two-thirds of the world’s illiterate people are women. As we have heard, poverty drives some parents to deny their daughters education as they need them to work. In some countries, parents pull their daughters out of school when they reach puberty because they are worried that they will be raped and, if pregnant, they are then unmarriageable. In poor countries, people cannot afford to have an unmarriageable girl.
I mentioned rape, but violence against women is still an epidemic across the world, with one in three women experiencing it in their lifetime. Despite all the work and publicity, even here in the UK two women are killed a week. Nothing can be more frightening for a child than seeing their mother being beaten up. This will have a profound effect on them for the rest of their lives and on the whole community.
Conflict causes rates of domestic violence to rocket. In countries such as Afghanistan, it is estimated that 87% of women suffer from domestic violence. At a symposium in Kabul last summer, I heard a psychologist talk about the fact that, because of high levels of violence in the family, it will be hard to achieve a peaceful society there.
The Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, launched in 2012 by William Hague—now the noble Lord, Lord Hague of Richmond—brought this issue to global attention. As noble Lords are aware, I was a member of the Select Committee on this issue, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, and sit on the steering board of the initiative. The initiative was always going to be a marathon and not a sprint, as the situation was of such magnitude that it needed sustained effort. So I press the Minister to ensure that the UK does not lose focus on this important issue. Will the UK lead another global summit in 2019 to assess progress?
One has only to look at the conflicts raging today and the high levels of sexual violence committed by Daesh against the Yazidis to see how relevant the initiative is. Ending impunity is key to this. Were any Daesh men held for these war crimes when Mosul and Raqqa fell? What has the UK done and spoken out about in relation to this?
Since the adoption of the women, peace and security agenda in 2000, only 27% of peace agreements have referenced women. Between 1992 and 2011, women made up only 9% of negotiators in peace processes and 4% of signatories, and between 2008 and 2012 this fell to 3%. Yet we know that where women are included in peace processes there is a 20% increase in the probability of an agreement lasting at least two years and a 35% increase in the probability of an agreement lasting at least 15 years.
The UK holds the pen at the UN on women, peace and security, and we launched our latest national action plan in January. However, 18 years after the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, why are Syrian women not allowed at the peace table? We should not have to justify why women should be included in peace processes; we should ask men to justify why they are excluded.
In the aftermath of the Kabul process for peace and security co-operation last week, we must not forget the Afghan women who have put their lives at risk to take part in public life. It is imperative that their rights are not traded away to bring the Taliban around the table. How can we in the UK exert global influence to make sure that more countries adhere to what they have signed up to?
Next week, like my noble friend Lady Anelay, I and many other women from around the world head to the UN for the Commission on the Status of Women. The theme will be rural women, with the review theme looking at women in the media and information and communications technologies. What would we like the effect of this meeting to be? The CSW is the second-largest meeting of the year at the UN, yet almost nothing is heard about it in the media. Around 5,000 women from around the world attend, and we should send out a strong message about some of the terrible suffering endured by women right now, today: the Rohingya women; the women in Yemen and South Sudan; the women and their families being bombed in eastern Ghouta, to name but a few. While CSW is enormously welcomed as a meeting, I hope that the UK will work with others to improve its impact to resound across the world.
I enormously welcome this debate, because we still have much work to do. I look forward to helping our Government to further the cause of gender equality both here at home and around the world.
Lord Pendry (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to be the first male so far to take part in this debate. I intend to address my remarks to a relatively up-to-date example of the challenges that lie ahead in the important area of gender equality in sport.
In the past I have initiated debates in this House and the other place on the role of women in the world of sport, and it would be churlish to pretend that no progress has been made on the emancipation of women in sport, in particular during the past two decades. But, clearly, not enough has been done—there have been some strides, but not gigantic ones.
Before I list some of them, I should say that I was struck by a statement made by Nelson Mandela some time ago:
“Sport has the power to change the world”.
Of course, in the case of apartheid, it did just that—certainly in South Africa.
One reason for that change was explained to me by the former president of the republic, FW de Klerk, when I was on a visit to South Africa with a parliamentary rugby team tour. I had a meeting with him and asked him why, given his attitude over the years to apartheid, he had changed his mind. His answer was simple. He said, “We could cope with economic and trade boycotts imposed on us, but, as a sports-loving nation, we could no longer go on being isolated in the world of sport, in particular from the United Kingdom but also from other nations”.
I raise that because it was a mountain to climb, and it was overcome with determination and vigour not only by sports men and women here and elsewhere but by many others. It shows what can be done by women engaged in sport who are attempting to overcome the obstacles of gender disparity standing in their way.
As I have said, some important progress has been made. Who would have thought that, over the past two decades or so, we would have had three women Ministers for Sport? Although the path for them has not been universally smooth, it was certainly a move in the right direction. The first was Labour’s Kate Hoey. Her tenure was cut too short; she was shoved out before she could fulfil her ambitions. Then came the Tories’ Helen Grant, but she was hardly the right person and did not strike quite the right note. She was dismissed within a short period, notably because she once blurted out that women who played sport did not have to feel unfeminine, and that there were wonderful sports that one could do at a very high level where those participating looked absolutely radiant and very feminine, such as ballet, gymnastics, cheerleading and even roller-skating. To be fair, she was probably in the wrong job.
Thankfully, she was replaced by the current Minister for Sport, Tracey Crouch, a former sportswoman who is doing a first-class job in her post. I had reason to sing her praises in earlier debates in this House. She is a credit to sport and to her gender, and I hope that she will remain in her post at least until the next general election. Of course, here in this House we are privileged to have the greatest Olympian of them all, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, who, though not a Minister, is an inspirational athlete and a role model to many.
Sport, of course, is not just about medals. Most sport takes place at grass-roots level, away from the glitter of gold and silver. Unfortunately, men are more likely to be active than women, according to Women in Sport: only 29% of women take part in sporting activities, compared to 41% of men. Women need to feel that sport is a place for them, and Sport England’s “This Girl Can” campaign has made a great mark already in tackling notions of fear and judgment in sport. Already, 2.9 million women have taken part in the campaign.
Women’s participation in physical activity is especially important for women in low-income groups, who are most likely to be inactive. This experience will probably cross into other areas of their lives, affecting not only their physical health but their mental health. These issues are not new; they have been discussed by women’s sports bodies over the years—as far back as 1994, when, as shadow Minister for Sport, I was fortunate to be invited to the very first international conference for women in sport, which took place in Brighton with 280 delegates from 82 countries and many sports Ministers from other countries. Many British delegates were bemused and ashamed that no British Minister was present.
On my return to Parliament I asked the Minister, Ian Sproat, whether he was aware that he had missed this unique and important conference, which had taken place in this country, and whether he would at least adopt—as had the Opposition—and endorse the declaration that there was to be an increase in women’s involvement in sport at all levels. The reply of the Minister, Mr Sproat, was:
“If more women wish to involve themselves in sport I shall be very glad for them to do so, but it is up to them. I read the declaration: it was political correctness in excelsis”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/5/94; col. 8]
At the time that view was typical, unfortunately, of some Tory Sports Ministers. However, I always exempted the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, who was a Sports Minister around that time. Thankfully, that attitude has changed, however slowly, and there are increasing signs that we are moving in the right direction.
One important factor in female participation is success in sporting events—some quite recent, such as the Winter Olympics in South Korea or the indoor championships in Birmingham.
My time is up so I will not go on, but I would like to repeat how proud I am to be the first male in this debate. I know that there are others in this debate and I look forward—as I am sure the whole House does—to hearing them.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Pendry. As this past week we have been remembering the wonders of Sir Roger Bannister, who ran the first sub-four-minute mile, I can reveal that I have recently taken up running and I may set the record for the slowest mile. As the noble Lord said, however, even this girl can.
We are having this debate at a significant time, the run-up to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which is very important to some of us. That is because 40 out of 53 Commonwealth states criminalise homosexuality. They account for more than half of the world’s nations where same-sex relations are illegal. Seven Commonwealth nations impose life imprisonment. Some have the death penalty for relationships between men. Hate crimes against LGBT people are most widespread in most Commonwealth countries. The vast majority of LGBT people who live there have no legal protection or rights whatsoever.
This Commonwealth Heads of Government summit, happening as it is in London, is an opportunity for those of us living in this country who, over the past 50 years—a milestone we marked last year—have experienced enormous economic, social and political change and advances, to share with others around the world the secrets of how we have advanced as a nation. Will the Minister consider the work of the All-Party Group on Global LGBT Rights, which is working with an organisation called Open for Business, a collection of top global businesses that have come together and are putting together the economic case against discrimination? We are building a lot of data from well-established resources, such as the World Bank, from which we can show that countries where there is a good attitude towards LGBTI inclusion have better economic performance, are more competitive, have greater levels of entrepreneurship and foreign direct investment, and fare better in global markets. They are also the sorts of countries with less of a brain-drain. That applies to both men and women.
Lesbians are often deemed to be at less risk in these countries because they are often less visible, but in fact they are probably more vulnerable in many ways because they usually have a less economically stable existence. I commend to the noble Baroness the work of a very small charity, Micro Rainbow International, which gives business support and start-up funding to LGBT people so that they can set up businesses. The charity provides a good example of how they are able to help, concerning two women who were harassed and badly treated in their community because they were seen as outsiders. They were given money to start a small bakery and are now respected employers in their community. That is but one example of an approach that could be further adopted. I hope that Ministers attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit will make not only the moral case but also the financial and business case to other leaders in the Commonwealth, because their countries need economic development just as much as ours.
My second point is that I really liked the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, who opened this debate so eloquently and fully. She is very different from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, who answers my Written Questions. I am very sorry that she is not in her place to hear me say so. She will know that over the past year and a half I have submitted endless questions to her department, principally about the detention of LGBTI asylum seekers. I have still not received a satisfactory answer on why we are busy locking people up in detention at a cost of £36,000 per year when they are no flight risk whatever.
I will, however, give the Minister due credit for the fact that her department, after 18 months, finally got round to releasing some statistics just before Christmas. These show, quite horrifyingly, that two-thirds of people who apply for asylum on the basis of being LGB—not T: we have excluded trans people—fail. Consequently we are sending people back to countries such as Nigeria, Uganda and Sri Lanka where they will face very serious peril: in some cases they will inevitably be sent to prison for an extended period. I asked the noble Baroness a few months ago what efforts were being made by those supervising such deportations to ensure that people would not be imperilled when they go back. Even by the standards of the Home Office, I got a pretty ropey Answer. It seems that we are busy saying that this matter is the responsibility of the country to which people are returned. I do not think that is good enough when people are put in jeopardy as a result.
The noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, Justine Greening and Mrs May all deserve a lot of congratulations on having the courage to say that they will go ahead with the consultation on the reform of the Gender Recognition Act. That Act is currently not fit for purpose. People who need to rely on it are forced to go through truly humiliating and demeaning experiences to have legal recognition of their identity. Since the Government made that announcement, there has been an absolutely relentless campaign against it, waged primarily by transphobic feminists such as Sarah Ditum and Julie Bindel and Murdoch journalists such as Janice Turner and Andrew Gilligan—along with, I might add, some absolutely woeful journalism on the part of the BBC.
I say to the Government that I would not blame them for being somewhat taken aback by the ferocity of that campaign, but I sincerely hope that they will stand firm—and do so in the knowledge that if they go ahead, as I really believe they should, they will have widespread support from these Benches. I believe the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, might agree that there would be support from the Official Opposition’s Benches, too. We know that, at heart, this work is very necessary to bring about equality for a bunch of people who have a really tough time in our country, and to whom we owe it to bring about legal equality.
In the one minute left to me, I want to very much welcome the publication of the report by the group of the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, which I was part of. Autonomy over your body is the absolute bedrock of your existence as a human being but for us women, of all different types and backgrounds, now more than ever—in the face of some of the terrible stuff coming out of the United States—we must stand together. We must understand each other’s differences and bind together on those basic things that are of immense importance to us all and to the girls of the future.
Baroness Manzoor (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, who I know does a tremendous amount of work in the LGBT community. I thank the Government for making the time available for today’s debate, which demonstrates the importance they place on improving women’s lives in the UK and around the world.
History is littered with examples where those who have power do not want to share that power or have used it to disadvantage or exclude others. We have only to look back 100 years to the suffragettes to see the monumental struggles they went through to get the vote for women. Those struggles mean that women in the UK are now entitled to vote, have an education, work and have personal financial security. They can choose if, who and when to marry, and are liberated by access to family planning and health services. This is all underpinned by important equality legislation. I welcome these and many other improvements to women’s lives, and celebrate the huge progress made.
However, there remain ingrained negative cultural attitudes towards women, and disproportionately more to black and ethnic minority women. I have recently been asked to be a panel member for a documentary film directed by Nancy Buirski, “The Rape of Recy Taylor”. Recy Taylor was a 24 year-old black mother who was kidnapped at gunpoint as she walked home from church. She was blindfolded and gang-raped by six white boys in 1944, in Alabama. Few women, particularly black women, spoke of such attacks for fear of their lives and the lives of their loved ones but Recy Taylor courageously identified her rapists.
The law failed Recy Taylor and white media outlets ignored her story. Sexual violence against women of colour in the 1940s went largely unpunished. As the director of the film says:
“Back then, people recognized rape was a crime. Certainly it was in terms of law, but it wasn’t treated that way in terms of the culture. Men were taking advantage of women with impunity, and it was a legacy handed down from slavery, where white men owned their women slaves and their bodies”.
The issue of those who have power and those who do not is important. It is about not just legal rights but responsibilities, cultural norms and the social acceptance of attitudes. In Recy Taylor’s case, it took a powerful group of people to draw attention to those who had no power before people began to take action and the civil rights movement began.
Today, we have seen a wave of sexual assault claims against men in positions of power and gangs of men working together to sexually groom and abuse young, vulnerable girls in places such as Rotherham, Rochdale and Oxford. As a former trustee of the NSPCC, I know of the devastating impact these predatory behaviours can have on individuals and their families. So, culturally, has our society really moved on when sexual harassment and abuse claims are so prevalent? The answer has to be yes, because we have stronger safeguarding mechanisms in place today and more people are encouraged to speak out—and do so courageously. To that end, campaigns such as #MeToo and #TimesUp are significant.
But many girls and women around the world cannot speak out; like Recy Taylor, they are given no voice. They have no education, no money and little or no say in what happens in their lives or their futures. Around the world we still have child marriages, the rape of young girls, and girls and women enslaved in prostitution and in enforced labour. Child marriage remains a huge issue for many in countries such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India and Afghanistan. Despite the welcome progress that has been made, as stated by UNICEF earlier this week, one in five children is married before the age of 16. Girls from the poorest families are the most disadvantaged and are likely to be married much earlier than their wealthier counterparts.
As part of the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, the UK provided technical input into the development of the Afghan national action plan to eliminate early child marriage. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could give an update on that plan and any further work undertaken to eliminate child marriage there. It would also be helpful to understand how the Home Office and DfID are working together to eliminate child marriages in Pakistan for girls under the age of 16. That is because the Girl Summit charter in 2015 on ending FGM and child, early and forced marriage included the signatories of some Asian countries—Bangladesh and Nepal—but not those of Pakistan or Afghanistan, even though some individuals and NGOs from Afghanistan and Pakistan did sign the charter. However, it is very regrettable that some NGOs working with disadvantaged women have now been given three months’ notice to leave Pakistan. How are the Government monitoring this situation, and monitoring and progressing the support given through their aid in Pakistan, so that the work relating to enhancing women’s rights and lives is not further eroded?
Despite the Prime Minister making combating modern slavery one of the UK’s top foreign policy priorities, increasing numbers of girls and women are attracted by false promises of marriage and being trafficked into the UK and Europe for the sex trade and into forced labour. More needs to be done to stop this terrible crime, aided by more prosecutions and convictions of the smugglers. Tackling modern slavery is an enormous challenge but it also provides an opportunity for the international community and the UN system to show how it can come together to provide a co-ordinated and coherent response. I would like reassurance from the Minister on how this is being achieved from a UK perspective.
A UN report says that deep-seated attitudes of men towards women contribute to this problem. Are these deep-seated attitudes towards women to blame for the world's inertia when, despite significant modern technology, 300 girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria in 2014, and a further 110 girls from their classrooms only a few weeks back?
While the relationship between insecurity and poverty is obvious, our Government and the UN must seek to tackle instability and terrorism. Girls should not be at risk simply because they want an education. Like the Pakistani economy, the Nigerian economy will not flourish under the instability caused by terrorism and the poor education of girls.
I am pleased that in January the Government published their fourth UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, announcing that championing girls’ education to promote global stability will be at the heart of UK foreign development. I welcome this, but I stress that there are two top planned spending programmes in Pakistan from DfID to the tune of £75.4 million and a further £43.9 million. How is this money being spent, bearing in mind the levels of corruption in Pakistan and the fact that certain NGOs are being asked to leave?
We are richer when we give our girls and women the opportunities to flourish; through our contribution to international aid we are keeping women around the world safer, healthier and better educated. As the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, said, we need to tackle attitudes and there needs to be much greater leadership if we really are going to make this work for girls and women. To that end, I urge every woman and man to do much more.
Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome this debate marking International Women’s Day, and thank the Minister for initiating it. I celebrate, as other noble Lords do, the centenary of women’s suffrage this year. Celebration, however, must not mask the plight of too many women internationally and here in the UK.
To this end, I wish to raise the situation of detained women in Yarl’s Wood, some of whom are currently on hunger strike. Although campaigners have welcomed improvement in conditions at Yarl’s Wood since the implementation of the adults at risk policy, which should mean that survivors of sexual and gender-based violence would not normally be detained and that the routine detention of pregnant women would be ended, there are still concerns for detained women.
Today sees a lobby of Parliament by refugee and migrant women under the banner of All Women Count, which calls for safety, dignity and liberty for all women regardless of status in the UK. The Government currently lock up 1,600 asylum-seeking women every year. Critics of the use of detention say it is unfair to deprive a person of their liberty for administrative convenience; that detention is costly, ineffective and harmful; and that there are better alternatives.
Of particular concern, highlighted by noble Lords last week, is that indefinite detention is harmful to detainees’ mental health and well-being. Safeguards to protect detainees and prevent inappropriate cases from being detained are insufficient and ineffective. As my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett said,
“the point about indefinite detention is not that the person is never released; it is that they do not know when they will be released … this has a devastating impact on mental health”.—[Official Report, 27/2/18; col. 587.]
All these concerns are still being played out at Yarl’s Wood, according to the campaign group Women for Refugee Women, to which I owe my thanks for this briefing. Last year, this group conducted interviews with 26 women who have claimed asylum and been detained since the adults at risk policy came into force and, alarmingly, found that survivors of sexual and gender-based violence are still routinely detained. Many had experience of domestic violence, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and forced prostitution and trafficking. Many had been detained for long periods even when their mental and physical health had deteriorated. Women reported feeling suicidal, and two had attempted suicide while in detention.
I recognise that the Government argue that the purpose of detention is to enable swift removal, but there are too many examples of women incarcerated for long periods. Home Office statistics show that, in 2017, 43% of asylum-seeking women leaving detention had been detained for 29 days or more. Although the number of pregnant women detained has fallen since the 72-hour time limit came into force, it is still the case that the majority of pregnant women are subsequently released to continue with their claims, so their detention serves no purpose. Fewer than 20% of pregnant women who are detained are removed from the UK.
Women for Refugee Women has raised a number of concerns about how the new approach is actually working, despite the good intentions following the Shaw review. There is no screening process that actively identifies whether someone is vulnerable or at risk before they are detained, so survivors of sexual and gender-based violence are going into detention before any attempt has been made to find out about their previous experiences. Survivors of sexual and gender-based violence are not believed when they disclose their previous experiences and find it difficult to obtain supporting evidence that the Home Office will accept. Women are not automatically informed about rule 35 reports—medical reports prepared by doctors working in detention centres—which the Home Office will accept as evidence. Even then, women with this legitimate evidence have remained in detention.
Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons report on Yarl’s Wood, published in November 2017, noted “significant improvements” since its last inspection in 2015, but raised concerns about rule 35:
“There were unacceptable delays in the Rule 35 process. The quality of reports was generally poor. They were vague, lacked detail and did not adequately address symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. In some cases the Home Office refused without explanation to accept rape as torture. Detention had been maintained in most cases that we looked at without addressing the exceptional circumstances for doing so. In several cases, detention was maintained despite the acceptance of professional evidence of torture”.
Will the Minister assure the House that the inspector’s recommendation is being implemented? That is:
“Rule 35 assessments should be completed within 24 hours. Reports should provide clear, objective and detailed professional assessments, including on evidence of PTSD. Responses should be prompt. Where professional evidence of torture is accepted, the exceptional reasons leading to the decision to maintain detention should be provided in detail. Rape should be considered a form of torture for the purposes of Rule 35”.
HMIP noted that just a third of all rule 35 reports submitted by doctors working in Yarl’s Wood in the six months prior to its last inspection had resulted in the woman concerned being released. Overall, it found that vulnerable women were still being detained,
“despite professional evidence of torture, rape and trafficking, and in greater numbers than we have seen at previous inspections”.
As a result, it concluded that,
“the effectiveness of the adults at risk policy, which is intended to reduce the detention of vulnerable people, was questionable”.
It is surely wrong that those whose mental and physical health are clearly deteriorating while in detention should remain without hope. Home Office statistics show that, in 2017, 85% of asylum-seeking women released from detention were released back into the community to continue with their asylum claim. So their detention appeared to serve no purpose.
Campaigners are calling for a proactive screening process to ensure survivors of sexual and gender-based violence are identified before detention. There should be an absolute exclusion on the detention of pregnant women. There should be a 28-day time limit on immigration detention. Community-based alternatives for immigration detention, focused on support and engagement, are more effective and less expensive than detention.
Good practice has been demonstrated by the family returns process, implemented in 2011, following the welcome pledge to end the detention of children, which has reduced by 96%. The Government should do more to move away from the detention model and into community-based alternatives. Perhaps the new review by Stephen Shaw to assess progress against the key recommendations for action in his previous report, Review into the Welfare in Detention of Vulnerable Persons, will encourage the Government to be braver.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a real privilege to follow the noble Baroness, and I salute her for her dedication to asylum seekers and women who are detained. It is an honour to take part in these yearly events, these annual discussions and debates; it is very uplifting. I speak today in recognition of the centuries of our common struggles freely to participate in the workplace and public life, not because of nostalgia but because we are still plagued by the inequality spoken of so eloquently by so many noble sisters—sorry, noble Baronesses—across the House.
We have achieved some progress in women’s representation in the public arena, but the obstacles that women continue to face in all societies are also faced by Muslim women in Britain. This is exactly what I want to talk about today, as well as speaking about women in Britain. That is not my usual thing—I like to talk about women everywhere—but I thought it would be good to do so, given that we are celebrating this amazing century.
In this decade, Muslim women have become a symbol of many ills of our society, and I have spoken about this many times in this House. Many counterterrorism policies look specifically to women’s role in preventing radicalisation. Sadly, this is an oversimplification, if not a deliberate confusion, of Islamic traditions with the constraint of patriarchal, societal proscriptions and practice. It should therefore not be specifically odd that Muslim women also experience discrimination within their families.
What is of significance is that many women are frustrated too often by having to negotiate choices between emancipation within the home and the workplace and the challenges that they face from Islamophobia. Thousands of women, whose voices are not heard often enough, are frustrated about how Muslim women feel ill-perceived, defined and judged not by their contribution, their presence or their intellect but by their clothing, culture and faith. This generalisation reinforces divisions. It is dangerous and simply wrong, and keeps Muslim women in particular out of power and office.
To address these inequalities as lawmakers, we have to demonstrate that we are prepared to be bold, lead by example and address the issue of discrimination prevailing in society that is the pervasive obstacle to the progress of women and, particularly, to Muslim women’s leadership. So it pleases me no end to speak of my passion for the campaign “Change the Script” by the National Commission on Muslim Women—I refer to my interests in the register.
The campaign sets out opportunities for Muslim women to write their own narrative, which is often marred by misconceptions and reduced to debates about so-called religious oppression and unforgiving and biased statistics about terrorism and Muslim women’s veils. Over the past couple of years, endless conversations have taken place, both in this House and across different parts of the country, with the commissioners, with women and with women-led groups on how to redress the current and mainstream discourse about Muslim women. We have been doing it rather quietly, but it is good work and we will let it speak for itself.
Dismal statistics on employment, education and attitudes to citizenship that are published in various reports do not tend to reflect the entire truth. British Muslims contribute £31 billion to the economy, and countless thousands of talented Muslim women in every profession contribute to make today’s vibrant multicultural, multifaith Britain but remain unheard in the public space. Hence the “Change the Script” campaign, which has just begun, celebrates the incredible achievements of British Muslim women and their contributions to this society over decades that have silently shaped Britain.
The campaign aims to reflect the experiences and strengths of Muslim women, as well as the challenges that they face, by documenting and highlighting their presence in every part of society, every profession and every community and by sharing their stories through the social media campaign #WriteYourScript, a website and an exhibition, alongside publications and forums held across various cities. We have been speaking to women up and down the country, who want their voices, stories and opinions amplified in a positive way.
From community activists, artists, entrepreneurs and stay-at-home mothers to doctors, teachers, lawyers and scientists, thousands of exceptional Muslim women have made a difference to the society that we live in. Take, for example: Humera Khan and Khalida Khan, who set up the pioneering women’s project An-Nisa 35 years ago; Shahien Taj from the Henna Foundation in Cardiff; Polly Islam, who has worked on mental health in Bangladesh, Luton and Rohingya camps in various places; neuroscientist and Ealing councillor Dr Aysha Raza, who is making waves in the male-dominated STEM field; or the artist Siddiqa Juma, who has just won the Leonardo da Vinci Universal Artist Award and has put Islamic art on a mainstream platform. Just this morning, I visited the outstanding work of the Limehouse Project, led by Farida Yesmin. The list is incredible, and seemingly endless, and I would be honoured to talk about every single amazing woman who is defying the stereotypes of Muslims, but sadly time is not on our side.
We all know that achieving social change is a mountain to climb and overcome, and I hope the Minister will assist in generating awareness of these gifted women. We are determined to go beyond public profiles and listing their testimonies; we are documenting them with a publication celebrating their presence, and we are hoping to mount a wall of 100 Muslim women, celebrating the centenary of women’s suffrage as they perceive their world—a small legacy, a gift to our mothers, daughters and granddaughters. Our goal is to ensure that the work is shared with schools and higher education institutions, allowing steps to be taken to address pressing matters in relation to employment and education and increasing the number of mentors for young women.
We wish to see more Muslim women portrayed positively in the public sphere, and on this auspicious and important day for women, 8 March 2018, there is no better way to raise their voices in any campaign that the Government are leading. There have been 100 years of resistance as we celebrate women’s right to vote in Britain. As a first in the Labour movement in this House, I share the pride in achieving 2,008 women MPs—I am sorry, that should be 208; that was wishful thinking, a Freudian slip and all that—of whom six have been Muslim women. However, on every national and international platform men continue to assert and define our rights. Surely time is up for them.
#MeToo grew up among strong women. My amazingly courageous mother, who came here all by herself with five children 46 years ago and raised us, did so among men—both my grandfathers—who honoured women in their families, whether they chose careers or simply stayed at home, regardless of the cultural taboos of their generation. I look forward to the day when we can celebrate equality and justice for all women regardless of their status, race or religion, wherever they are in the UK.
Lord Suri (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to speak on this topic. I thank my colleagues for securing the time for this debate. I am proud to support a Government who have taken unprecedented steps to secure gender equality, both in this country and abroad. Before I consider how foreign policy and aid policy can be used to best help women, I will touch on the recent celebration of the suffragettes. These were touching and sobering commemorations, and I am heartened at every new election when the number of women in the other place goes up. Much more work is needed to get this to the 50% that it ought to be, but I have confidence that the Prime Minister will pay attention to this. After all, she can claim a great deal of credit for setting up the body that has helped propel dozens of Conservative women into Parliament.
The Opposition recently hired as an adviser an activist who had a history of making disparaging remarks about various groups. I will not dwell on all of it, but I think there is one point that deserves refuting. She said on Twitter that the suffragettes were,
“white supremacists who were fighting for white women’s rights”.
This is simply wrong. One of my personal heroes is Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, the daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh. She was a leading voice in the women’s tax resistance movement, which encouraged women to withhold tax until they were granted suffrage. The King at that time was known to remark, “Have we no hold on her?” She was no white supremacist. She was a principled woman, and I am glad that the Prime Minister referred to her at the Vote 100 commemorations a couple of weeks back.
Our aid budget is one of our most powerful international levers of influence. We are valued and respected for sticking to the spending guidelines, even in a time of austerity. I recently spoke on the importance of educating women in less developed states, especially in nursing. It has been shown time and time again that the single most effective policy to combat poverty, close gender pay gaps and boost economic growth is the education of women. If I could have my way, the aid budget would be focused on disaster mitigation and the education of women almost exclusively. However, in other projects there are a number of options to ensure that gender equality is consistently promoted.
Given the recent allegations that have affected the industry, it may be worth showing that British charities can be trusted to do the right thing in the workplace, which would also head off allegations of hypocrisy. What steps are the Government taking to make sure that the NGOs they work with have proper harassment protocols in place for when allegations are brought to them? Additionally, Ministers could urge the NGOs that they work with to ensure that their local hires are gender-balanced and that they train women when they cannot find women with the right skills profile. Of course, this may seem like an extra burden to put on NGOs, but now more than ever they need to show their commitment to gender equality.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, for giving us the opportunity for this debate today. I express my gratitude to her, to women in general and to some particular women too. I start, rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, with an expression of gratitude to my mother. Had she been alive, she would have been 113 this week. She bore three sons within three years, went 12 years more and then, without any planning, I turned up in the middle of the war. My father was away; she had three young teenage boys and she was working as a weaver. We had very little money and a very poor background; we were born into a society where there was very limited public education at the time. There was no health service: it was six years before the National Health Service came into being. There were many slums around us, and generally life was quite different to what we have come to experience latterly.
I was born into a world where we worried about the quality of our leadership. It was a world that was led by men: Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. The Chinese were preparing for a revolution led by men. We were all at war fighting each other. With male domination, what do men do best? They cannot resist fighting each other for power. There were few women around in political leadership anywhere in the world. There were a few in the Commons and none in the Lords: there were no life peerages then, only hereditaries, who were all male. I have been here for 20 years, and I look back and see the changes that have taken place not only in my lifetime, but in the 20 years since I have been in the Lords. There have been dramatic changes, particularly in the advancement of women and their opportunities here. I have served solely as a Back-Bencher, but I have served primarily under women leaders on both sides of the House. It is a remarkable tribute to the progress that we have made.
We have some great individual women here. On our side, we have already mentioned the late departed Muriel Turner, who used to sit where my noble friend Lady Donaghy is now. She was always there. Noble Lords will all recall with great affection two others who are missing today: my noble friend Lady Farrington of Ribbleton, who is unwell, and my noble friend Lady Gould, who, without any doubt, would have been speaking today. She did so much in the Labour Party for women and has done so much in this House since she came in. I am sure we would all like to send our regards to them and best wishes for their recovery from ill health.
My background is in the trade union movement which, again, is very much a male domain. I was the general secretary in a civil service trade union, which had 60% women members and only 40% men, but it was primarily run by men: the leadership, the executive council and all the important positions were, in the main, held by men. In trying to effect changes, we consulted the noble Baroness, Lady Fritchie, a Cross-Bencher who is not in her place today. She played a very important role in public appointments, trying to get gender balance in this country. She helped our union to try to get changes that would advance the interests of women. We did it mainly by a quota system. That was not particularly popular in certain quarters, and it is still not particularly popular in some areas where people say, “No, we will do it solely on the basis of our talent; we do not want any places reserved”. The situation was reflected in the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, who told us how quotas have been working in Albania and how they were the only way women there could advance. I believe the problem is the class system. In particular, quotas are strongly opposed by middle-class women, but the working-class sees them as an opportunity, so they should not be ruled out. Our use in the Labour Party of women-only appointment lists is a form of quota system that has produced wonderful results; it should be looked at by other parties. There are parties that have not yet been able to produce a female leader. I hope it will not be long before we have a female leader of the Labour Party. We should look at our structures to ensure that women can continue to rise to the highest places in our organisation.
In business, again, big changes are needed; some changes have been effected. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Abersoch, who has worked very hard by using the second system that is available and open to us: targets. He has gone for a 25% target for women on the boards of FTSE companies, and a good deal of progress has been made there. So we have quotas and targets.
I also like the concept of mentoring, which was mentioned earlier. I am speaking today primarily because I now have, through the good offices of the Royal College of Psychiatry, a woman doctor working with me. She has spent the last six months with me, working on mental health. She has taken me into new areas that I needed to explore that are good for me and my development, and she has taken me back to some of the issues I looked at when I worked on equality with women. She said, “You should speak in this debate this coming Thursday and persuade some of your male colleagues to speak as well”. As the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, said earlier, women will not achieve these changes alone; they need to get men on board with them, to persuade men of a sympathetic mind to stand up with them, and then you will find that you have a majority. Through a majority, we can effect the changes we need.
We still need changes in the NHS: 77% of its employees are women, but the majority of senior leadership posts fall to men. We look at the BBC—we all know what is happening there. Women are a major factor in the BBC, but are not holding as many of the posts as they should. The Armed Forces are the next area in the eyes of the British public. We listened to debates recently about whether the Armed Forces should permit part-time working. God Almighty! We are still debating issues like that—we need to change it.
I will also mention the Queen, who is outstanding. Think of the three monarchs of this country who you believe have made the greatest contribution. To my mind, it is the two Elizabeths and Victoria. When I think about the males, I recall all of them for the worst of reasons. Therefore, there is an argument to be made about the way in which the hereditary system can also produce important changes.
There is still a lot of work to be done. Primarily, we see changes taking place that we are not keeping abreast of. New international companies and communications organisations are being run primarily by men who are not accountable; women are just not on the scene. We had a change at the United Nations, but why did we not have a woman in charge of the United Nations for the first time ever? This is the kind of issue on which women—all of us—should press for change to increase the movement towards greater equality.
The areas in which women have the greatest influence on our lives at the moment are culture and religion. It is difficult to talk about these subjects here, but they have a massive influence on everyone’s lives, particularly with regard to women and equality. We look at where the religions started and who led them; who sustained them, in the main? Take the Church of England and the battle it has had over women bishops. But in many respects, it is women who keep the Church of England going and who do the hard work. That applies in so many other religions. We need changes within the religions and opportunities for greater equality, one way or another. We all need to work together for that—men and women together. Alone we will do nothing, but together we can achieve much.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I am another of the minority that is welcomed into this gathering. We talk about female leadership; I cannot help but reminisce that when I first got here, a huge chunk of that leadership was provided by one Baroness Seear. I did not mention her the last time we had the debate on women’s suffrage. There is a military saying: “Anybody who takes the first step and says, ‘Follow me’ is a more efficient leader than anybody who shouts, ‘Forward!’, no matter how loudly”. Baroness Seear not only took the first step but shouted “Follow me!” in a very commanding tone. That is more of an aside.
I was going to talk about women’s sport but I was beaten to it by the noble Lord, Lord Pendry. We all know that things are getting better there, but there is that old problem that there is still much more to do. Sport tends to think of its traditions, and the question is how you break out of those or adapt them to allow this new group in. The new group constitutes the slight majority of the population. We are addressing most of the institutions and structures, and we have an excellent example of how successful this approach can be if you give women in sport their moment in the sun: the winter Olympics.
The great success stories and great failures were female; they provided the drama. Elise Christie—a great champion who has not quite delivered at the highest level—crashed out three times. A defending champion came back, defying the odds and reasserting herself. There was the “nearly!” struggle of the curling. That provides the drama and the approach. Many people—at least one or two noble Lords in this Chamber—will say, “But does sport matter?” If you can think of a better way of expressing soft power and bringing nations together, I will be happy to listen. Is there something else that has such a mass appeal, bringing people together? I cannot think of anything. It is able to cut across, using an understandable language of activity and unity, and admiration for what somebody else does. Sport probably takes that all on. To come back to the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, I remember that trip to South Africa. The noble Lord may remember that it was a Parliamentary Rugby World Cup. I was playing, and the noble Lord was looking very elegant in a blazer. By the way, if anybody is interested, we are still turning out. I still have my jersey; I would like to say that it fits, but let us just say that I can still get into it.
If you look at the Olympics for examples of how women’s sport has taken off, you will find the perfect example in hockey. The women’s hockey gold medal has done more to lift that sport than just about anything else I can think of. Women’s football has done very well too. I was kept up very late watching England in a tournament the name of which I forget, taking on the world’s best in the USA. I was probably something of a jinx, because I decided that I could not stay up to watch the second half—and they lost. Then again, I support Scotland, so who cares? They have taken great steps. Rugby union has expanded its base and has made sure that it reaches out to schools. Those are traditionally male sports, which are moving on, but hockey has done it. It is true that for hockey, it is easier. I was chatting to somebody who said that one of the great problems in female sport is that the changing facilities seem to be too primitive for women. I do not see that at all in hockey; mind you, we built our clubs for women as well. An old rugby union player takes a bow on that one.
The fact is that you have to bring them in, but once you have done it, and if they are successful or at least competitive, you will build up the whole sport. The whole of hockey has expanded thanks to the shot in the arm that was provided by women. Everybody knows that sport is a social good, a medical good and an economic good. What’s not to like? If the women can do that, we must encourage them. All the sports I have spoken to are taking action in this area—for example, the government initiative whereby 30% of the board has to be female. However, the real challenges are coming not in recruitment but in establishing the underlying structures.
The difficult area is coaching—making sure that we get better female coaching, with more depth. You have really succeeded when, in football, there is no discussion about why you have not got a male coach. I was at a breakfast meeting here at which the FA basically said, “We wanted a coach who was good enough, and as we couldn’t get a woman coach we took a male coach, because of the need for quality at elite-level sport”. That is pretty unanswerable, unfortunately.
Unless you work on this and government encourages this, you will not get past the issue of who takes on the leadership role. Who is the person that will take this on? There is virtually no reason why females cannot take over in male sport. What attitude surveys have been done here? I have been coached by women in my time, such as the incredible and formidable Margot Wells, when I was in the second team at London Scottish. She was a person you did not mess with. I remember cowering in a corner when she shouted at a large group of men for not eating enough for her training programme—an experience that most people in this Chamber will not have been through.
Women have the capacity to get through if they are given the chance, knowledge and drive. What are the Government doing to encourage these sports to make sure that their coaching and development programmes reflect this? I know that work is going on and it is being looked at internally but what are we doing to help? If we do not do this, the hierarchical structure at the business end of a sport will dominate for a much longer period. How are we going to provide encouragement and make sure that the leadership—the person who makes the decisions and picks the team—is female, not only in female sport but male sport, and often enough to make a difference? Once that has been done, we will be close to achieving full equality.
Baroness Wyld (Con)
My Lords, I have three young daughters aged seven, five and two. When I made my maiden speech last year, my seven year-old, Anna, wished me luck and asked whether the men Lords were allowed to make speeches as well, or whether they just had to sit there. Imagine my delight when I came in today to see that I was nearly at the end of the list but surrounded by male noble Lords. It has been a joy to hear their speeches and all the other brilliant speeches by noble Baronesses. My then four year-old asked whether men were allowed to be Prime Minister and I assured her that we have had a few.
There is indeed much to celebrate about the world today. Yet I find myself sad that as my daughters’ innocence slips away, so too will the notion that women are equally represented in Parliament and wider public life. But there is an even harder story to tell them, one of violence and abuse faced by women and girls around the world, as we have heard. In many ways this is a world I want instinctively to shield my girls from. However, the main point I want to make is that around the world we need to start conversations about equality sooner rather than later, if the upcoming generation will have the chance of telling a better story.
Of course, political regimes and legal frameworks drive ultimate outcomes but these are themselves often borne of deeply engrained cultural behaviours and beliefs about gender and the relationships between men and women, who of course start off as girls and boys. My eldest daughter, the seven year-old, knows now that Malala was shot by the Taliban on the school bus. The look of sheer bewilderment on the face of a seven year-old, who takes going to school completely and utterly for granted—although she moaned about it as usual this morning—throws into sharp focus all over again the scale of the violence and injustice faced by Malala and millions like her. We rightly celebrate the courage of women who have demanded and driven a change in attitudes but we must continue to be appalled that they have been forced to find this courage within themselves because of what they faced simply as a result of being born female.
We often talk about gender equality as though it is a women’s issue, when what we need to talk about is the way in which girls and boys, men and women, live alongside each other in understanding and mutual support. I pay tribute to young men around the world who are challenging accepted norms and power structures, including those involved in Plan International’s Champions for Change project, which trains young men to become peer supporters, often using social media to converse with their peers and tackle entrenched attitudes about the role of girls and women. I shall quote Luciano, who is 19 and part of Plan International Brazil’s Goals for Peace project:
“If we want to prevent women from suffering violence, children need to start learning why violence must not be tolerated from a young age”.
He explained:
“I’ve also witnessed violence in my house. My dad has violent traits, which he picked up from his father—it’s cultural. I’ve decided that when I have children, my approach will be completely different”.
This caught my eye because I know that the Government are looking at the role of technology in delivering aid, and I encourage a similar focus on the role of social media and technology in attitudinal change.
While in the UK we can rightly be proud of our record in driving progress on gender equality at home and abroad, we have no room for complacency. We see ourselves as a forward-thinking nation, yet we enable a culture in which young people can readily access images of violent, hard-core pornography and abuse. This goes beyond internet safeguarding. Again it is about challenging attitudes before it is too late. I strongly support the Government’s focus on relationships through PSHE in schools but respectful attitudes cannot sit in a silo. There is an onus on everyone in public life and in the public eye to speak up and tell our young people—boys and girls, men and women—that some of the images they are seeing of women online are not what women’s bodies generally look like, and that much of what they can be exposed to online is not sex but abuse.
As to women in public life in the UK, during my time in Downing Street I worked with my now noble friends Lord Maude of Horsham and Lady Finn, at that time in the Cabinet Office, and a range of officials and advisers who did crucial work on the Government’s diversity plan. It was a privilege to play a role in helping to increase the representation of women on public bodies and to hear their personal stories at the outreach events that we organised. I am pleased to see that the number of women on public bodies has continued to increase, and urge the Government to ensure that momentum is maintained.
I also want us to learn from the problem we had to solve—the fact that many women told us that they were lacking in confidence, perhaps after time out bringing up children, or that they did not feel ready to take on senior roles despite ample experience. How did these highly intelligent women with a wealth of experience come to hold these beliefs about themselves? With this in mind, I was shocked by a study from the University of Illinois showing that, by the age of six, girls are more likely to attribute intelligence to men than women. If girls think this by the time they are six, why are we realising that there is an issue only by the time they are 26, 36, 46 or older? Happily it is now in vogue to tell little boys and girls all about historic female role models and storybooks are thankfully moving away from the “rescued by a handsome prince” narrative.
This is all well and good until I reflect on the throwaway comments I regularly hear from men and women alike. When I tell them about my children, they say, “You will have your hands full when they are teenagers because girls are so bitchy”. My husband is told, with apparent genuine sympathy, that our house will be a mass of hormones and angst with three teenage girls and a menopausal woman—this is in the future—and I have probably been guilty of saying something like that myself because, let us face it, it is ingrained in all of us. I have to keep saying to myself that nothing is inevitable. I do not believe girls are instinctively bitchy. We are supposed to be the role models so let us recognise that we need to challenge every throwaway assumption, otherwise the most powerful public campaigning messages are hollow.
We can support and learn from those inspiring young women and men who have faced depression and abuse but have become all the more determined to challenge assumptions and face down stigma. Let us celebrate today and share their optimism but, above all, let us make sure it is absolutely justified.
Lord Loomba (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, for initiating this debate. “Press for Progress” is a noble cause to drive gender equality forward and utilise the momentum of mass media coverage to push for change globally, in all countries, at all levels and within all spheres of life.
Today’s debate on International Women’s Day is particularly important as over the years we have been talking about gender inequality, the pay gap, domestic violence, human trafficking, modern-day slavery and sexual abuse against women and girls in areas of conflict by the powerful against the powerless. These are all uncivilised and barbaric practices that we are grappling with even in the 21st century. I am sure that your Lordships’ House is as shocked as I am to observe that these atrocities occur so regularly, even after all our best efforts to contain them.
A report published by the United Nations last year stated that,
“gender inequality persists worldwide, depriving women and girls of their basic rights and opportunities”.
One of the key areas that a lack of progress affects is the SDGs that our Government are firmly committed to delivering, both at home and around the world. To ensure that we deliver on the SDGs, there is a need for more than just DfID covering these points: there needs to be some coming together between the various organs of government to facilitate a cohesive process that keeps the commitment on track both at home and abroad.
The Independent Commission on Aid Impact monitors DfID’s work and highlights areas of concern or where aims are not met. However, surely for something as important as the SDGs, which affect both home and abroad, there should be some form of consolidated approach from all departments in government. This is particularly so for goal 5, which aims to,
“achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”.
It has nine target areas. One area of huge concern which affects many women, girls and widows—I declare an interest as founder and chairman of the Loomba Foundation—is violence against women and girls, including widows. The target is to,
“eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation”.
The conclusion of the MDGs and the launch of the SDGs speaks volumes of the progress the world has made in the mission to eradicate poverty and the work that has yet to be done. Though the fight continues to educate and empower women and girls, the issue of widowhood remains underrepresented and unaddressed. Millions of widows suffer social marginalisation, higher susceptibility to disease, the loss of their livelihood or their children and the threat of death, to name a few of the experiences that women and girls across the world must endure as a result of a tragic event over which they have no control—the death of their husbands. Sadly, widows are victims of double discrimination: they are women and they are widows.
These grave injustices are most prominent in the developing world, thus becoming a critical absence in the development agenda. These women and girls have been excluded not only from their own families and societies but from the agendas of development experts and practitioners across the world who devote their careers to ensuring that no one is left behind. Many of these women and their dependants live a vicious cycle of poverty. They are unseen and most certainly left behind. We have made great strides in alleviating poverty since the inception of the MDGs but not so much with stopping some of the terrible things that happen to women, either in conflict or often in the security of their own home. There needs to be a step change in attitudes; we need to do more at an earlier stage. While we are focusing on the education of girls, 64 million of whom, it is well documented, are not in education globally, perhaps we should turn some of our attention to educating boys and ensuring that the message gets to them at an early age about what is and is not acceptable behaviour. It is really and truly only by bringing the other half of the population on board that we will make real progress.
The UN, in collaboration with the EU, has initiated the Spotlight Initiative, which aims to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls, shining a light on these issues in order to make change happen; is this something that DfID is also involved in? To press for progress is a huge challenge, considering how slow progress has actually been. Last month, to commemorate 100 years since the first Act of Parliament to allow certain women the vote, many Peers in this House, myself included, lamented the slow progress we are making to ensure that women’s voices are sufficiently heard at the highest level. As we noted in that debate, women still have not gained equality in this House and the other place. With the recent revelations about pay inequality at the BBC it would appear that we are only paying lip service to real gender equality. If we are to truly make progress, we need to set an example—if we cannot do it ourselves, how can we ask others to do it? We really must get our own house in order first and ensure that there is gender equality here to improve matters for women and for their complete participation in the democratic process. Alongside this, we must bring in better education for boys, so that they fully understand and take on board the message, to allow real change and make real progress.
Finally, I ask the Minister what steps the Government will take to stop paying lip service and do deeds, to press for progress for gender equality here and abroad.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, I too pay tribute to the Minister for initiating the debate and giving us a very good introduction. I am part of the quota of men, by the way, and pleased to be so: I expected it to be a bit larger, I must admit. I have to confess that in this historic year I learned only recently the nuanced difference between the suffragist and the suffragette movements—a gap in my political education. I am not sure where I would have stood. I was reflecting on that. When they took the decision—I do not know if it was in a smoke-filled room—that somebody was going to slash the picture in the National Gallery, I might have asked for an amendment: could they not just stick “Votes For Women” over it instead? Whether they would have liked that, I do not know.
We have had a fascinating debate with a welter of statistics. I have learned a lot and been educated, which is always a good thing. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Gale for reminding us that it is National Apprenticeship Week and giving us the statistics on apprentices, a subject that noble Lords will know I am quite interested in. It is true, as she said, that there are more women apprentices, but if you look where they are, they are in care, in hospitality, hairdressing, nursing, et cetera. When you look at the more highly paid side, it is obvious that we need more encouragement. There are successful women in IT and engineering and we need those young women to be able to go into every school and demonstrate as role models to their peers. I would welcome a comment from the Minister: can she give an assurance that the Government will insist that all secondary schools allow apprentices and employers to come in and talk to their sixth form, their 16 and 17 year-olds, and maybe even earlier, about the value of apprentices as another career path and not simply as an alternative to an academic one?
We certainly have not achieved equality in the realm of pay, or even responsibility. I was reflecting on the time when I was general secretary of my union. It was my good luck to have married someone who said to me: “Part of the contract is that I want two children and I’ll let you know when I want to go back to work”. That was probably over 30 years ago. She was doing something exceedingly valuable in bringing up the family, but it gave me the luxury of not having that responsibility.
I reflected on my deputy general secretary, my noble friend Lady Drake, who unfortunately is not in the Chamber today. She had to carry out that job and worry about looking after three young children. Possibly, if she had not had that responsibility, she would have been the general secretary of the union. We know that the uptake of paternity leave is still woefully small, so most of the responsibility for childcare is falling on women. They get a tough deal because so many more of them have to go out to work as well in today’s society.
The noble Baroness, Lady Flather, is in her seat. I am glad she brought up the subject of sharia law. I absolutely agree with her. I cannot help reflecting on the fact that we had a previous most reverend Primate who recommended it. Today’s most reverend Primate fortunately has gone away from that position. I agree with the noble Baroness that it discriminates against women and should have no part in our society, where there are enough challenges to face.
We face a challenge in ensuring that women get a fair deal. We have made it clear where we stand on female genital mutilation. The late Ruth Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, was a tireless campaigner on that issue.
I pay tribute to the Government on the areas of equal pay and modern slavery. On pay, I cannot help but reflect on the difference between my son and daughter. My daughter is a trainee advanced medical practitioner—somewhere between a nurse and a doctor, I am not quite sure of the status. She has already done a four-year degree to become a paramedic and is now doing an MSc. She is on half the pay of her brother, who has a nice number in IT. He works hard, but is that really equal pay for work of equal value?
If I look at the four years of training and pay of a nurse and the pay of train drivers, I do not see a four-year training course there. I do not cast any aspersions on the talent or ability of train drivers, but we still have a long way to go in our society in rewarding women for the value of the work that they do.
I will focus briefly on some women whom I have met recently who made a huge impression on me. As part of the Industry and Parliament Trust fellowship programme on manufacturing, I came across a company called Fashion Enter. It is a social enterprise led by Jenny Holloway who has invested a huge amount of her own money in it. She has created a company that actually manages to manufacture clothing in Haringey. She has a phenomenal training scheme which draws in people from a very local and diverse community and teaches them how to cut patterns, sew and make garments. It is a fascinating enterprise. She is not a CEO who pays herself large sums of money, far from it. She has invested her “skin in the game”, to use the title of a recent book, and I pay tribute to her.
As I was going round the factory, I met a young Muslim woman wearing a hijab and I asked her what she did. She said: “I work in Savile Row, I am a tailor”. I have been to Savile Row and I do not think I have encountered many women there. I have certainly never encountered a Muslim woman. I asked her what her speciality was and she said that she made coats. I thought about how that situation has changed. I am sure that 10 years ago we would have seen hardly any women and certainly not a young Muslim woman. It is a tribute to Jenny Holloway that she has created an environment where people like that are able to prosper. I also recently met a Traveller woman who, at the age of 11, taught her mother to read—I apologise for having been absent from the Chamber, because I went to a Gypsy, Romany and Traveller event. The woman is now the director of learning and skills in Derby.
There are some great achievements out there and I end on this one. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld. I was fascinated by her contribution about her children et cetera—we have all faced that challenge, in different ways, as to whether the things that you say tend to encourage the wrong attitude. She happened to mention Malala Yousafzai, for which I am grateful. What an astonishing young women she is. A few years ago, I suggested to the House that she should address Parliament, but I have to say the response was not very good. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, who had the unenviable task of telling me that it could not be done because it would interrupt her education—if I have the wrong person and it was not the noble Baroness, I apologise, but somebody from the Government Benches said to me that it could not be done because it would interrupt her education. I groaned. Here we have this phenomenal role model, one of the most courageous young women you could ever wish to meet.
If you want to influence young women in this country, especially young Muslim women, that there is a really wonderful alternative to going to join ISIS, what a role model she is. Is it not ironic that, in 2017, the youngest-ever Nobel Prize winner—a Nobel Peace Prize winner—addressed the Canadian Parliament, but we have not found the wisdom, generosity or understanding to give her that honour? If I have one plea to the Minister who is replying, it is that she could take that issue away and perhaps give a more considered and sympathetic response, which I think would make a real contribution to young women in this country.
Baroness Hooper (Con)
My Lords, we have much to celebrate today, as well as the opportunity to point out that there is more to be done in this country and indeed globally. It was good to hear from my noble friend Lady Williams at the outset about the Government’s programme. Looking for a moment at the past, I will say that the United Kingdom can be proud of the fact that we set up the Equal Opportunities Commission in 1975, which achieved a great deal under the inspired chairmanship—or should I say chairwomanship ?—of Lady Lockwood, whose deputy was the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote. Not only did this spur on the process of improving the status of women in this country, it served as a blueprint for other countries.
Today’s debate has been compelling and informative and has proved that these issues can bring political parties to work together for the greater good. It reminds me that my late sister Angela, who was then the chief woman executive at Conservative Central Office, had regular contact with her opposite number at Transport House—none other than the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton. That was during the 1970s and 1980s, and look how things have moved on since then. I also record my thanks to the Library and all the outside organisations that have sent in really useful briefings on what is happening and what ought to happen in this country, putting forward ideas, for example, to encourage young women and to bring more women into public life.
Local government is an important starting point for many women embarking on a political career. Indeed, looking around your Lordships’ House, one can see that this is obviously a successful route. Although we still form only 26%, I believe, of the total membership of the House of Lords, anyone following our debates or looking at the Front Benches would be surprised, since women Members are so active and contribute so much. We have only to think of my noble friend Lady Trumpington or indeed the first woman Leader of your Lordships’ House, Baroness Young, not to mention my noble friend Lady Williams, to see shining examples of women who have moved from local government to the Front Bench.
I intend to focus mostly on the international aspects of this debate, and will start by continuing with the theme of local government. In developing countries it is certainly a way to encourage women to commit to their local communities and work close to their homes in a way that impacts on their daily lives. Only yesterday I learned that, in Ethiopia, already more than 50% of elected local councillors are women. This has led to some 38% representation in the regional government. Although the federal parliament has a much lower representation, things are clearly moving in the right direction.
Similarly, in Saudi Arabia—much in the news because of the Crown Prince’s visit—the first breakthrough for women came two years ago when women were permitted both to vote in local elections and to stand as candidates. These examples illustrate success and I believe that the United Kingdom should support activities and education in this area through its development aid programme to enable us to fulfil our commitment to the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, and in particular the nine targets of goal 5.
I also draw attention to the valuable work of the IPU—the Inter-Parliamentary Union—and of the CPA—the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association—in this area. Both organisations currently have women chairmen. Gabriela Cuevas, a Mexican senator, now leads the IPU and, only last week, at the pre-CHOGM parliamentary forum, held here in London, the CPA chairman, the Honourable Emilia Lifaka, the Deputy Speaker of the Cameroon Parliament, presided over sessions. Both organisations have ad hoc committees concerned with women’s roles in public life and women’s issues generally. As a member of the executive committee of the British group of the IPU, in a few weeks’ time I shall be at the IPU meetings in Geneva, where we will be considering ways in which the IPU can work to achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals in this respect. I shall be able to quote suggestions from today’s debate in my contribution to those discussions—a rather useful form of recycling.
I turn now to Latin America. I am delighted to say—this has been referred to—that women’s parliamentary representation in the Americas has risen to 28.4% overall. The trailblazers were Argentina, with an increase to some 38%, Chile with 22.6% and Ecuador with 38%. It is interesting and important to note that these are countries that devised progressive legislation to promote women’s political leadership, resulting in increased female representation. We have also seen women presidents elected and re-elected in Chile, Argentina and Central America. Between 2013 and 2015, the region boasted the largest number of female heads of state in the world. However, by the end of 2017, there were none. This bears out what my noble friend Lady Jenkin said earlier: namely, that in spite of success the situation still feels very fragile.
We can still say that, in London, we have one of the largest groups of women ambassadors from the region—currently from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru. But the fact remains that there are still many women throughout Latin America, particularly from indigenous groups, who suffer from many of the injustices that have been outlined today—particularly well by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. Health has been emphasised, and I would add land ownership rights to the list, as a means of improving the economic security of women. This is particularly relevant to rural communities.
This leads to my final point. As an example of what can be achieved, I would like to describe a micro-finance project with which I have been involved. It started in Bolivia and has since spread throughout Latin America, with great success. It is called Pro Mujer—for women. Not only do we have a 98% success rate in the repayment of the small loans made to women, who are in many cases a single parent head of household, we have developed the project to offer health checks at the same time as the loan is being processed. This enjoys a high acceptance rate and is a relatively simple way of meeting a huge need.
The world is changing so rapidly that it is easy to see change continuing at an ever-increasing pace—and let us hope so. The important thing in my view is not so much equality but equal opportunity—and, if necessary, equal opportunity to be unequal.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, this has been an absolutely fascinating afternoon. With so many wide-ranging and varied speeches, it is almost impossible to summarise them and I wish the Minister well in doing so. We have had speeches from “men Lords” as well as “women Lords”, according to the daughter of the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld. The noble Baroness talked about how we bring up our daughters and our sons. Several noble Lords mentioned that hugely important point and it is incumbent on all of us to be aware of it.
I apologise to any noble Lord whose speech I do not mention but I have enjoyed every single contribution this afternoon. They have all taught me something that I did not know before. We have had contributions from my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece and the noble Baronesses, Lady Uddin and Lady Flather, who talked about the challenges facing BAME women. My noble friend Lady Barker talked about the challenges facing LGBT women. Young women and gender stereotypes, particularly as they affect young women taking up apprenticeships, were covered in great depth by the noble Baroness, Lady Gale. Several noble Lords mentioned sexual harassment and the fight back—the #MeToo movement—notably my noble friend Lady Northover.
Health and education have rightly featured strongly in the debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, talked about decriminalising abortion by updating the Abortion Act 1967 and the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, said that education was the key to health, happiness and wealth. The noble Baroness, Lady Healy, talked about the plight of detainees in Yarl’s Wood, and good for her in speaking up for some of the most disadvantaged people in the worst position in British society today.
There have been a lot of personal tributes to mothers, including from the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. I pay tribute to my mother, who encouraged me to believe that I could be anything that I wanted to be. However, I do not think she ever thought that I would end up in this place. She is still pinching herself.
The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, spoke warmly of the contribution of the trade union movement in this area. I pay tribute to the long service that she has given to that movement and to this place. I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, in that respect. The noble Lord, Lord Loomba, talked about the work of his charity in helping widows and tackling violence against women and girls. Many noble Lords have spoken about that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, talked about the work of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the CPA. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, who asked why the Government have not sent a nominee to the CEDAW meeting.
We have heard a lot about women’s sport. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, talked about the drama and professionalism exhibited in women’s sport and the soft power that it can wield. The noble Lord, Lord Pendry, talked about the This Girl Can campaign. My noble friend Lady Barker can, and I can too. I am still dead slow—but still lapping everybody on the sofa.
We have had a lot of discussions about other areas. The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, talked about Albania and the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, about Pakistan. Last December I went as a volunteer to Karachi to support the work of VSO and its celebration of Women of the UN’s 16 days of activism against violence against women, working with the police and others to publicise efforts to encourage abused women to come forward and report their abusers. There is a whole culture change going on, particularly in Sindh province, where I was. I met some incredibly inspirational characters, such as Majida Rizvi, a Supreme Court judge who succeeded in getting the laws on rape changed. Before her long campaign to secure a conviction for rape, there had to be four male witnesses. That just shows how far they have come.
We in this place are in a highly privileged position. We can open doors and use our diplomatic skills to put pressure on those who have power over women’s lives, at home and abroad.
A country which is arguably much worse in its treatment of women is Papua New Guinea and the surrounding islands, where families who want marriage for a son are exhorted to pay the bride price. The presence of companies extracting mineral wealth has distorted and inflated the bride price market. Where once, payment would have been in shells—a beautiful way to trade before other forms of currency were introduced—today the monetary wealth that working for refineries has brought has caused the bride price to skyrocket. Leaving aside the lack of say that a girl is likely to have in the matter, many families, having laid out a huge amount of money to “buy” their bride, feel justified in treating her literally like a slave.
Our parliamentary group, extremely ably led by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, was treated with great honour, but I fear our entreaties and remonstrations fell largely on deaf ears. What people say and what they do are sadly often different things when it comes to relinquishing power.
How bad are things in the world today? The noble Baroness, Lady Browning, referred to the international measure of the gender gap, which incorporates disparities in health, education, economy and politics. It has assessed the global gender gap at 68%. In Britain it is 33% and we are ranked 15th out of 144 countries for overall gender parity. Women in Britain are treated twice as well as in the average country but a third less well than the men here. If we are meant to be grateful for this statistic, I can tell you, we are not. Never mind for a moment about the rest of the planet. On this little part of it, which is under our control, we are failing women.
So what should we be doing about it? The first thing that I believe will effect change is to have as many women sitting around the table making the decisions as men. In Parliament we are making great strides in increasing the number of women parliamentarians, as several noble Lords have mentioned. Labour’s policy of all-women shortlists has helped enormously and I am delighted to say this is now being introduced in the Liberal Democrats—and about time too. However, despite the remarks of the Minister, currently there are still only six women in the Cabinet, including the Prime Minister, which is 26% of 23 Cabinet posts; so we have a way to go, is all I am saying, although I applaud all the strides that have been made. It would be very churlish not to do so. Having a woman as Prime Minister is not quite good enough when only a quarter of the Cabinet is female. I note that Mrs Thatcher did the same, with only one woman in her Cabinet apart from herself.
In the workplace, women are still severely underrepresented in any job that involves decision-making, and receive less pay than their male counterparts even when they do succeed—usually at great personal cost—at breaking through the glass ceiling. One piece of government legislation conceived in the coalition and implemented by this Conservative Government is making companies look very seriously at how they reward talent. I speak of the requirement to report on the gender pay gap, which has been mentioned several times. I am already being approached by companies that want to tell me all about their pay gap results and get them out there and justify them before being forced to publish them in April. Our overall gender pay gap stands at 18.4% in favour of men, but I know of at least one large construction company that has been prompted to fundamentally rethink its pay structures and how it values work.
What should Parliament do? Women are held back by the lack of affordable childcare—that is nothing new; we all know that—and that is probably the number one issue for us. In recent years strides have been made in the provision of free childcare and making fees tax deductible. However, that is still not enough. For women in lower-paid occupations, the economics of working while having small children just do not stack up—even when the children are of school age, the benefits can be marginal. We have to do something. It is the fundamental thing that would change the balance.
I have talked already about shared parental leave in the context of what business should do. Really, it is up to businesses to change their culture. Parliament, however, can give them a nudge, as has proved so successful in pay gap reporting. Naming, and by implication shaming, companies has two functions. First, it makes companies think about the policies they are operating compared with others, and a bit of healthy competition—“We’re a better, more compassionate and enlightened employer than you are”—works wonders. Secondly, of course, what you do not measure you cannot manage. For a start, what about requiring that companies over a certain size publish their maternity and paternity pay policy?
The Liberal Democrats have put forward several proposals, including that “upskirting” should be made a criminal offence. Several noble Lords have worked on proposals dealing with period poverty, and we look forward to a response from the Government on that. Other proposals include gender-neutral school clothing, making sexual harassment outside of work illegal and improving knowledge among employers—for example, it is illegal to ask women whether they plan to have children but a lot of employers do not know that. What about changing the rules so that men can register children’s births if they are not married to the mother? To me, that seems a sensible and sane thing to do, and it would be especially helpful if the mother is unwell—it is a partnership, after all. What about changing the name of this place from the House of Lords to the House of Peers? That would make it a lot more gender equal. Finally, we should set a date to look at the Gender Recognition Act, so that we can see changes and progress following the completion of the consultation.
If I can pray the patience of the House for one moment more, I want to talk about my lapel badge—for anyone who cannot see it, it is a spoon. My lot know all about it because I have been on about it for a while, but the charity Karma Nirvana works very hard against forced marriage. Part of its charitable work is to advise the police, airport authorities and schools. If someone is absolutely desperate and fear that they are being taken abroad for a forced marriage, they should pop a spoon in their underwear. That way, they will be stopped when going through security and taken into a separate room on their own where they will be able to express their concerns. If anyone would like to know more about Karma Nirvana and the wonderful work of Jasvinder Sanghera, please see me afterwards.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, we have had another great debate today. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on getting us off to a brilliant start. As usual, a range of challenges and celebrations characterised this International Women’s Day debate.
I want to mention two internal parliamentary things that we need to celebrate and which have not been mentioned so far. That, of course, is that we have our first woman Black Rod in 600 years here in our own House. We can also celebrate the fact that the chairman of the Press Gallery and the chairman of the Lobby are both women. They are Kate McCann and Emily Ashton. They issued a press release today—I shall not read it all out, but its headline reads:
“Top female lobby journalists say ‘we need to show it’s not an all-boys’ club’ on International Women’s Day”.
Well, hear, hear to that and congratulations to them.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, I shall not try to cover everything that has been said today, but there are a couple of things which I think are worth mentioning. I certainly support my noble friend Lord Young in his remarks about Malala and his saying that her addressing both Houses of Parliament would be a great thing to do. I do not think that it is the Government’s job to organise that; it is Parliament’s. I invite the Minister to support us in that ambition, but I would exonerate her from having to deliver it. We need to talk to the two Speakers and others to help us to do it.
I enjoyed in particular the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, about Albania, about which I did not know very much and have not thought very much. It was absolutely fascinating. I also enjoyed the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, about “Who would have thought?”—and quite right, too. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, was also quite right: our gains are fragile, and we have to fight to protect all of them all the way through. My noble friend Lady Donaghy’s appraisal was, as usual, devastating and quite correct. I enjoyed enormously the “Oscars speech” of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning—she was quite right. The noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, was quite right to ask the question about CEDAW. However, the coalition Government abolished the Women’s National Commission, which was the main organisation that collected the views of British women to take to CEDAW. The noble Baroness is right—so what are we going to do about that? The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, was quite right and has my support in bringing forward the gender recognition Bill. As she said, it will be an important moment for a group which is small but has a very hard time. I have always thought that part of our job in the House of Lords is to champion those people and groups who may be quite small in number but who have the most difficult time and are discriminated against.
The noble Baroness, Lady Burt, was right to remind us that the World Economic Forum finds that the UK has a gender gap of 33% overall and is ranked 15th out of 144 countries. Against all the indices about economic empowerment and opportunity, we could probably say, “C-plus. Could do better”—that is the sort of grading that we are approaching; I think that most people would agree with that. One needs to ask why we do not do as well as we should on all those economic indices and I want to suggest something we might consider. I say this in tribute to the Women’s Budget Group of feminist economists, and it is about how we measure economic activity. We can see quite plainly the way in which GDP is measured: it takes into account the value produced through wage labour but not through unpaid domestic care work carried out predominantly by women in the home, even though all are essential to a well-functioning economy. Indeed, proponents of feminist economics argue that, in terms of methodology and focus, modern economics is too centred around men, with women’s contribution to the economy routinely ignored.
From a political perspective, feminist economics is an economics that focuses on what is needed to produce a gender-equal society. It argues that because modern economics is built around the idea of the “economic man”, it is ideologically weighted towards normalising men’s lives and consequently ignores the experience of women. This is important: we cannot expect models based on economic man to understand or even notice gender inequalities, let alone create policies to alleviate them. Would the Minister raise this issue with her right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and with the Prime Minister, and perhaps suggest that the Treasury take account of it in its economic policies?
This is important, because while there has been progress on some aspects of gender equality, women still experience structural inequality throughout their lives. For example, independent research carried out before Christmas revealed that women have borne 86% of the impact of austerity, largely through lost services and changes to the tax and benefits system. Were we measuring things differently, we would come to a different conclusion about that.
This morning I was privileged to attend an International Women’s Day conference organised by Unity Trust Bank and the Employee Ownership Association. We were addressing the empowerment of women across the world through employee ownership, social enterprise, co-operatives and profit-for-purpose businesses. By the way, women are eight times more likely to be the chair in a co-operative than in a FTSE 100 company. A recent British Council report that looked at social enterprise and women’s empowerment across the world found that 75% of women who start a social enterprise say that it had given them an increased sense of self-worth, while 64% reported enhanced self-confidence.
Such empowered women—social entrepreneurs—provide crucial role models for the next generation, so I congratulate the FCO and DfID on the support they have been giving to the British Council in the social enterprise programme, and I hope that will continue.
We have all been going to lots of celebrations of International Women’s Day. Yesterday I attended the launch of What Women Want 2.0. I remember—as I am sure will other noble Lords—the 1996 What Women Want survey, which was linked to the Beijing United Nations women’s conference. I took part in it. It had a great impact: 10,000 women took part in the survey. The same thing has happened again, and with social media it has generated a huge digital discourse. Fascinatingly, the results mirror almost exactly what women were asking for in 1996, which must make us pause to wonder why there is so much unfinished business: equal rights, equal pay, respect, a child and carer-friendly working world, an end to the culture of pornography and rape, more women in politics, more women running big organisations and companies, and a peaceful safe world for our children and the ones we love. It is very much the same as 1996, but the difference now is that this new wave of feminists—and in 1996 it was still unfashionable to call yourself a feminist—are not only saying that this is what women want but also that this is what women believe they deserve. I took great encouragement from the large and diverse group—hundreds of women—who came to Parliament yesterday.
As the health spokesperson, I finish by raising an issue about women’s health. It is to do with women and mental health. In 2003 we had an excellent women and mental health strategy. It was archived in 2011 by the coalition Government, which is a great shame. This is important: poor mental health among women has increased, with one in five experiencing common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, compared to one in eight among men. Young women are the group most at risk, experiencing alarmingly high rates of self-harm, eating disorders and PTSD. Women’s mental health is closely linked to their experiences of violence and abuse, which should not be surprising, and many women struggle to get the support they need from the mental health services. Agenda, a women’s organisation supporting women and girls at risk of abuse, poverty, poor mental health and homelessness, found that women and girls are regularly and repeatedly restrained in mental health settings, despite the risk of re-traumatising women who have already experienced violence and abuse.
Can the Minister tell us—if not now, perhaps she could ask her noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy to do so later—what steps are being taken to respond to women’s mental health needs and tackle the rise in mental ill-health among women? Is it not time for the new women’s mental health strategy that we need?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
My Lords, the theme of International Women’s Day this year is “Press for Progress” and I have been struck by the amazing examples of progress in many of the contributions today. Similarly, as many noble Lords have noted, there is more—much more—that needs to be done. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, highlighted so many shocking and astonishing examples; I will have to have a word with my husband tonight about whether he would give me a kidney. My noble friend Lady Browning enthralled us with her contribution about culture and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has just expanded our understanding of economics. There is so much food for thought and I give my heartfelt thanks to all the contributors. There are far too many to mention.
The vote has been mentioned by many and it would be remiss of me if I missed it out. It is just 100 years—about four generations—since women, albeit not all women, were granted the right to vote. Since then, other courageous and inspirational women from all sides of politics have blazed the trail that has got us to where we are today. We have our second female Prime Minister and our third female Home Secretary, and almost a third of government posts are currently filled by women. There are so many more, as mentioned by my noble friend Lady Jenkin and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. Some of the campaigners of 100 years ago have their names written forever in history, including Emmeline Pankhurst, Millicent Fawcett and Emily Wilding Davison—and Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, who was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Suri. I know that she has been mentioned in your Lordships’ House before. A great many more have not achieved national recognition, or perhaps notoriety, and we may never know their names. They were just ordinary women doing their bit to challenge injustice.
It was 40 years after women gained the right to vote and to become MPs that they were able to sit as life Peers in your Lordships’ House. In 1958, just 60 years ago and within the living memory of some noble Lords, Baroness Swanborough became the first female Peer to take her seat. Since then, 294 female life Peers have been created and there are now 203 female life Peers in your Lordships’ House. That means that seven out of 10 such Peers ever created are still here. The noble Lord, Lord Loomba, talked about getting our own House in order—so I had a quick look. I have been in your Lordships’ House for 18 months and made my debut at the Dispatch Box in this debate exactly a year ago. Of the 14 political appointments 18 months ago, of which I was one, eight of us were women—more than half. So the former Prime Minister, my right honourable friend David Cameron, was a man of deeds and not words when it came to women’s representation.
This is the most diverse Parliament in British history, with the highest number of women MPs ever. Women make up 32% of all MPs, up from 22% in 2010. But compare that to countries as diverse as Senegal, where 41.8% of MPs are women, and Norway, which has 41.4%. We must and can do better. We must use the examples of all courageous and inspirational women to galvanise women and girls, including those from the BAME communities, as mentioned by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hussein-Ece and Lady Uddin, and my noble friend Lady Manzoor, to use their voices and have a say over what our future looks like.
Since 2010 the Government have been making a real difference to “Press for Progress” for women. There are 1.48 million more women in employment than in May 2010 and the employment rate remains at a joint record high of 70.8%. What is more, the full-time gender pay gap, as mentioned by many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, has fallen to a record low of 9.1%, while the overall gender pay gap has fallen from 27.5%, in 1997 to 18.4%. Our ground-breaking gender pay gap reporting legislation, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, will encourage employers to take responsibility and take positive steps to close the gap even further.
The deadline is approaching and I am sure that all noble Lords are very excited by this. I can share with noble Lords that many times more companies have registered than have already submitted their data. So time will tell; I remain positive. Companies leave things to the last minute, as we know. So let us keep an eye on that and see how we do.
We are championing female representation at all levels—an issue that was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. Through the Hampton-Alexander Review and the Women’s Business Council, we are supporting business to get more women into senior leadership positions.
We recently launched the national campaign to promote and increase the uptake of shared parental leave, and 97% of all UK workplaces now offer some form of flexible working. The noble Baroness, Lady Burt, mentioned childcare. As a mother I agree with the noble Baroness that it is one of the biggest challenges that any family faces when they are deciding how to structure their family going forward. We have doubled free childcare for working parents of three and four-year olds and we have introduced tax-free childcare to help working families.
We have had a wide-ranging debate today. The noble Lord, Lord Pendry, gave us a stunning tour-de-force on the world of women in sport. He paid tribute to my honourable friend Tracey Crouch in the other place in her role as Minister for Sport, and I would completely agree with him. He talked about Sport England and the This Girl Can campaign. This girl can, too—but only very occasionally because I am usually too busy. In terms of This Girl Can, over 11,000 organisations have registered, which is a great step forward. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, will agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and indeed with me, that we now have some more superstar sporting heroes and role models who have come out of the Winter Olympics, including of course Lizzie Yarnold and Elise Christie for the way she faced up to the challenges that she had. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, also spoke about the benefits of sport and the action being taken. I note his question on coaches. If he will forgive me, I will write to him further on that when I have the full facts at my fingertips.
My noble friend Lady Manzoor spoke very movingly about a crime of the past that is still a crime of the present: sexual abuse, rape and grooming. This was also mentioned by my noble friend Lady Wyld. Large-scale sexual abuse and grooming in our cities must be tackled. Indeed, it must be stopped. The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, spoke about sexual harassment in schools. The Government are taking concrete action. We are working to make relationship and sex education mandatory in secondary schools and relationship education mandatory in primary schools. The DfE, too, is busy improving the guidance available to schools. It will be publishing specific guidance on child-on-child sexual harassment and violence, revising bullying guidance, and consulting on proposals to strengthen the safeguarding guidance Keeping Children Safe in Education. Those changes should come into effect in September 2018—so the Government are not hanging around. The DfE is ensuring that all expert views are reflected, including through an expert advisory group, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, and wide consultation on both the content of the sex education programme and also Keeping Children Safe in Education.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, also spoke about the domestic abuse consultation launched by Her Majesty’s Government today, and mentioned why she thought that the Bill was solely focused on criminal justice and a criminal justice approach. The Government are committed to doing everything they can to end domestic violence, and the consultation seeks views from all sides. From legislative and non-legislative action, we need to look at the different things that the Government can be doing to tackle this devastating abuse.
The consultation and the proposals for the domestic abuse Bill are all about intervening early so that we can get people the support that they need. We have made clear in the consultation document our commitment to review funding for safe accommodation, including refuges. This is why we are conducting the most thorough review of domestic abuse services that we have ever undertaken—to make sure that we get this absolutely right.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, mentioned mental health. This is an area that is very close to my heart as I have worked in mental health provision in the past. The Government are committed to achieving parity of esteem for mental health. I am proud of our achievements. We have invested more than ever before in mental health, with spending estimated to have increased to £11.6 billion. There is additional investment to improve services for eating disorders, which, as we know, disproportionately affect women, and we have introduced the first waiting time standards for mental health.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, raised the issue of apprenticeships. We are using the employer Apprenticeship Diversity Champions Network to champion gender representation in industries where improvement is needed. The recently published careers strategy includes a commitment to ensuring that STEM encounters—I think that just means meetings with people from STEM organisations—such as employers and apprenticeships—yes, there we go—are built into the school careers programme by updating the statutory guidance.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, mentioned encouraging women into STEM and engineering; as a former engineer myself, I think that is a great thing. This is the Year of Engineering, and we have invested in many programmes to encourage the take-up of STEM-related subjects and courses. We announced substantial spending commitments in the 2017 Autumn Budget on maths, digital and, of course, technical education and the T-levels, which I think will be very important.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, mentioned BAME women and the particular challenges that they can face. We are committed to addressing these issues. In October 2017, the Government published the Race Disparity Audit showing how people of different ethnicities are treated across public services, and we have begun a programme of work to tackle some of the disparities with targeted action in employment, education and the criminal justice system.
The noble Baroness, Lady Healy, mentioned women in detention at Yarl’s Wood. We are committed to treating women who seek protection with dignity and respect. We take our responsibilities towards detainees’ health and welfare seriously. We have worked closely with partners including Asylum Aid, the Refugee Council and UNHCR on a range of initiatives to ensure that gender sensitivity is embedded in the asylum process.
On the last area that I would like to mention in relation to domestic matters, the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, spoke about the reform of the Gender Recognition Act; I have heard her mention this in the past and I encourage her to keep going. The Government have already begun engaging with a wide range of people and organisations, including LGBT groups and women’s groups. I would like to reassure her that we are standing firm and will bring forward the consultation shortly.
However, it is not just at home where we are pressing for progress. The UK is an international leader on gender equality. We have brought critical issues such as sexual and reproductive health and rights, female genital mutilation and child and early forced marriage to the world stage. The noble Lord, Lord Loomba, called some of these practices uncivilised and barbaric, and I would agree with him. The noble Baronesses, Lady Northover and Lady Tonge, graciously mentioned the good work done by DfID over many years, and indeed many of these issues were raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, in her contribution.
We have been able to leverage ground-breaking international partnerships and commitments. A good example of this is our instrumental role in securing the inclusion of global goal 5 on gender equality and ensuring that gender equality is mainstreamed across all the other goals. Since 2014, the Department for International Development has had pioneering legislation in place requiring the Government to consider gender equality in all our development and our humanitarian aid. Our leadership puts us at the forefront of global efforts to demand rights for women and girls, and is the key feature of global Britain.
Key to this is that we work across government to achieve the best development, diplomatic, defence and trade approaches to achieve the maximum impact for women and girls. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, will feel reassured that there is indeed cross-departmental action. A good example of this is our cross-departmental government strategy on ending violence against women and girls. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for his work in this area, particularly in highlighting the plight of widows and the Spotlight Initiative.
In January, the Government launched our new UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace & Security, which has nine focus countries, many of which we have discussed in the Chamber today. They include Afghanistan, the DRC, South Sudan and Syria. It puts women and girls at the heart of our cross-government work to prevent and resolve conflict and focuses on diplomacy, development and peace. As my noble friend Lady Hodgson noted, we absolutely know that in peace processes where women are able to exert a strong influence, it is much more likely that an agreement will be reached and implemented and peace is 35% more likely to last for 15 years. This is why the UK has provided around $2 million to the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund, to enhance the capacity of local women to prevent conflict, respond to crises and emergencies and seize key peacebuilding opportunities. We work across government to deliver strong gender-equality messages and secure progressive languages, for example, through the G7 and the G20.
Education was mentioned by many noble Lords as a priority. Between 2015 and 2017, DfID supported 7.1 million children to get an education. That included 3.3 million girls. In April, we will collectively strive for a commitment at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting to 12 years of quality education for all girls across the Commonwealth.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, mentioned LGBT issues and the Commonwealth. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has spoken about the UK’s special responsibility to help change hearts and minds, and is committed to ensuring that LGBT issues are discussed at the Commonwealth summit. I heard what the noble Baroness said about the evidence being gathered of the costs of discrimination, and look forward to seeing that when it is available.
My noble friend Lady Hodgson mentioned a variety of issues, including the prevention of sexual violence in conflict, an initiative set up in 2012. The UK has committed more than £40 million to this initiative since it was founded. We have supported 23 projects in 14 countries in this year alone, and more than 17,000 police and military personnel have been trained. She will be very pleased to hear that the UK plans to host another PSVI summit to continue with the momentum that we have, and it will take place in 2019.
My noble friend Lady Hodgson and a number of others mentioned CEDAW. The UK strongly supports CEDAW and believes that it is an effective treaty-monitoring body. It is one of the best mechanisms to promote women’s rights around the world. The Government engage with CEDAW and submitted their eighth periodic report to the UN CEDAW committee in 2017, which highlighted the UK’s record on gender equality. A range of factors are considered before making a decision about UK representation on bodies such as CEDAW, and sometimes this means making difficult decisions about which bodies to seek election for. The Government are carefully considering whether to nominate a candidate for the 2020 election.
I turn to the comments made by my noble friend Lord Suri. I thank him for his ideas and thoughts on the activities of NGOs overseas, particularly on potential unwelcome behaviour by certain members of staff. On 12 February, the DfID Secretary of State wrote to all UK charities that directly receive UK aid, asking them to provide full assurances that they have sufficient safeguarding measures in place. Based on these returns, DfID has made 26 serious incident reports to the Charity Commission. At the safeguarding summit on 5 March, the Secretary of State put in place new, enhanced and specific safeguarding standards for all organisations that are recipients of UK aid.
I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Hooper for her work with the Inter-Parliamentary Union. It is very interesting to hear about women in local government. Often, we talk about women in national government and it is very heartening to hear that women are active in local government. Indeed, it is disappointing to hear that progress at a national level is slightly slowing. Obviously, we will continue to support that work.
I may just have time to address the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge. I pay tribute to her tenacious campaigning in this area over the years—I know that she has done a lot of work on it. The UK firmly believes in supporting comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls. On the issue of safe abortion, our position is absolutely clear. Research shows that restricting access to abortion does not make abortions less common, just less safe. The UK will continue to show global health leadership in this area.
We all know that there is still a way to go before we achieve gender equality in the UK—
Lord Young of Norwood Green
Before the Minister sits down—I was looking at the Clock—perhaps she could at least comment on Malala Yousafzai. I do not expect her to deal with the issue, but perhaps she could comment on it.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
It is a superb idea. I had her speak at a conference I organised in 2015—but that does not mean that I take responsibility for it. I encourage all noble Lords to support that idea.
We all know that there is a way to go, but we simply cannot afford to let anyone waste their talents because of missed opportunities or social barriers. In 1903, the mantra “Deeds not Words” was adopted by Emmeline Pankhurst, and I encourage all noble Lords to carry on the deeds they are doing. Together we must, and we can, create a fairer and more equal world where everyone has the same rights and the same opportunities, no matter their gender.