Undersea Internet Cables
(1 month ago)
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Baroness Rawlings
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the cutting of undersea internet cables in the Baltic Sea in November 2024.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, and with her permission, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Vallance stated on 3 December 2024, we continue to work closely with international partners following the breakage of subsea telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea on 17 and 18 November 2024. We must let those investigations run their course.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. He will be aware that on Christmas Day, the “Eagle S”, a Cook Islands-registered vessel and part of the Russian shadow oil tanker fleet, cut more cables in the Baltic Sea. I am delighted that the Finnish coastguard authorities arrested that vessel while it was still in international waters and brought it to port. Do the UK Government applaud the Finnish authorities’ reaction to that, as I do, and would they act similarly in UK coastal waters?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Of course, we are keen to support any country which supports international law and freedom of navigation, and Finland acted appropriately. As a member of JEF, we work very closely with Finland. The noble Lord will know—no doubt this will come up in many of the questions that follow—that the UK Government are leading a number of Joint Expeditionary Force operations. Operation Nordic Warden, for example, involves operations with respect to the Baltic. NATO is taking action with Baltic Sentry. All of us are acting more robustly with respect to the threats, as we see them, in the Baltic Sea and beyond, to ensure that we protect critical underwater infrastructure.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, NATO’s launch of Operation Baltic Protector and the other initiatives the Minister has mentioned are to be welcomed, but of course, the threats to our undersea infrastructure extend far beyond the Baltic and one or two isolated areas. What action is being taken to extend this initiative to a more comprehensive approach to our vulnerabilities? What discussions are being had to ensure that the actions of the military are fully co-ordinated with civilian investment in redundancy and resilience to ensure that we have a properly comprehensive approach to this very dangerous situation?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
The need for greater resilience across government is something that the Government are taking up. We understand the need for all departments, not just the Ministry of Defence, to take action on resilience. The noble and gallant Lord will also have seen that the Ministry of Defence has taken action on other threats that have occurred in other areas, including the channel and the North Sea. We expect further attention to be given in the defence review to what resources and capabilities are needed to ensure we deal with what is an increasing and emerging threat.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, will participate remotely.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]
My Lords, with undersea internet cable interference presenting only the latest challenge to security, along with threats to energy supply, banking, telecommunications, shipping and other potential use of viruses, should traditional defence chief responses, based on naval and military interventions, remain the main strategies in response? Should we not be reprofiling our expenditure towards nuclear deployments, defence satellite communications, selective sanctions enforcement, political exchange through dialogue and old-fashioned negotiations in conflict zones? The military option, costing billions in Ukraine, has hardly been a success.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
To deal with the last part of the question first, I am pleased to see the Prime Minister in Kyiv pursuing what has been a cross-government—and across all parties in majority—defence of freedom and democracy in Ukraine and what that means for the rest of Europe and beyond. With respect to the other points that my noble friend made, he is right to draw attention to the increasing threats to critical underwater infrastructure. The military option is one option that we need to use. I say that because, as I have said at this Dispatch Box before in answer to, I believe, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and others, we must deter people from doing things in the first place. The use of maritime assets and underwater drones, the actions of the Joint Expeditionary Force and those of NATO are key to protecting these vital cable links on which much of our livelihoods, data, telecommunications, energy and so on depend. Military resource is one way in which we have to deal with that.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, in light of recent concerns over security of undersea communication cables and the involvement of foreign state actors in potential sabotage, how do the Government plan to balance their intention to reset relations with China while addressing the risk posed by Chinese entities to our critical infrastructure?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. The Government’s position with respect to China, as I have said on many occasions, is to co-operate, to compete and to challenge. Those are the three strands of the policy. The Ministry of Defence will challenge China, where appropriate or necessary, to ensure that the international rules-based order is protected, whether that is to do with critical underwater infrastructure or with other areas in the world where the rights of navigation and free passage are threatened. The Ministry of Defence is responsible for that, not alone but with our allies, and we will challenge China where necessary to ensure that the international rules-based order is protected.
Lord Rogan (UUP)
My Lords, how are we dealing with the threat to transatlantic undersea cables from hostile actors? Around 75% of the cables in the northern hemisphere pass through or near Irish sea waters. However, in a recent response to me on the Floor of this House, the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, seemed to suggest that the task of protecting these cables is carried out by a single ship which, with respect, does not sound remotely credible. As an esteemed Defence Minister, can the noble Lord advise me of what arrangements are actually in place to safeguard these cables serving the British Isles and how much of the bill is being paid by the Irish Government?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I will leave what the Irish Government pay for to the Irish Government. Regarding the protection of critical underwater infrastructure, the UK has a large number of assets. The noble Lord of course points to the maritime assets that we make available, some of which we cannot discuss openly, but we also have surveillance aircraft and other means of protection. We will see in the defence review further suggestions as to what we might do in that respect. Let us make no mistake about it: one of the key functions of the Government is to protect the underwater infrastructure on which our livelihoods and prosperity depend. We will do that. It is not only about dealing with things when they happen but about deterring people from doing them in the first place. The Government will take the action necessary to achieve that.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, undersea energy cables are being targeted by the Russian shadow fleet. My understanding is that all three power cables between the Baltic and Nordic countries were targeted last week. Undersea gas pipelines and electricity interconnectors are a critical part of our energy security, both now and— even more—as we transition to net zero. What actions are we taking with allies to deter, monitor and protect our undersea energy infrastructure?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
A lot of action is taking place. I have pointed to the work of the Joint Expeditionary Force that has taken place, and we have mentioned the maritime assets that have been deployed to protect infrastructure. We have seen the announcement of Operation Nordic Warden, which is another JEF initiative and is run from Northwood. We are applying artificial intelligence to some of the information that comes into there to predict the ships that may threaten those undersea cables. Alongside that, Secretary-General Rutte of NATO recently announced Baltic Sentry. There is a lot of work going on to deal with this. Do we have to give it greater priority? Of course we do. Ten years ago, we were not talking about the threat to undersea cables in the way that we are now. It is another way in which the threats to this country are changing and transforming. The defence of our realm needs to change and transform to meet those threats, which is what we are seeking to do.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, the principal response to this threat in the Baltic is coming from NATO. May I press the Minister a little further on the contribution that United Kingdom naval assets are making to that endeavour? In particular, the planned multi-role support ship was always intended to be an important contributor to that. May I ask for a report on progress on that important new addition to the fleet?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
If I understand the noble Baroness rightly and she is talking about the provision of a second additional ship to support and augment the ship “Proteus”, that will be part of the defence review. On the other assets that she talks about with respect to the Baltic, she will know that in December 2023, under the previous Government, a huge maritime collection of ships across NATO and JEF was sent to the Baltic, including UK maritime assets and UK surveillance aircraft. There was a further initiative in June 2024, again under the previous Government, and just recently we have had the announcement of Operation Nordic Warden, as I have said. All the way along, there have been significant UK contributions.
Another thing that is important, since we are often questioned about this, is that it is not only the contribution that we make in terms of our assets but the thought leadership, co-ordinating power and other leadership potential that the UK provides. Let us remember that it was in 2014, under the previous Government, that JEF was set up under UK leadership. It has worked particularly well. We should sometimes recognise what this country contributes to the defence of the world as well as some the challenges that face us.
Online Safety
(1 month ago)
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Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the implications for online safety posed by small, high-risk online platforms, such as 8Chan.
The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)
The Government are extremely concerned about the impact of small but risky services that host hateful and harmful content. The Online Safety Act will require such services to remove illegal content and, where relevant, protect children from legal but harmful material. Ofcom has established a Small but Risky supervision task force in recognition of their unique risks. The regulator will identify, manage and enforce against such services where they fail to comply with their duties.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
I thank my noble friend the Minister for his Answer, but will he set out whether the Government expect Ofcom to take enforcement action against small but high-harm sites that are identified as problems? Have they made an assessment of the likely timescales for enforcement action, including the use of service disruption measures?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that important question. Where there is evidence of non-compliance, Ofcom has set out that it will move quickly to enforcement, and that action will follow in spring this year, because companies will have had three months to get their positions sorted out—I think that 16 March is the date by which they have to do it. Ofcom will be able to apply fines, including global levies, and it will be able to apply to the courts for business disruption measures and have the flexibility to submit these applications urgently.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, the Minister’s response is somewhat baffling. Given the amendment to the Bill as it passed through the House, as a result of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, it was quite clear that high-risk smaller platforms would be included in category 1 and bear all the consequences. Yet, despite the Secretary of State’s concerns, which were expressed in a letter last September, the Government have not insisted that Ofcom include those platforms in category 1. What does that mean? Why are the Government not taking proper legal advice and insisting that these smaller, high-risk platforms bear all the duties of category 1 services?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question. Category 1, in the way that the Bill was ultimately approved, was for large sites with many users. The possibility remains that this threshold can be amended. It is worth remembering that category 1 imposes two additional duties: a duty that the company must apply its service agreements properly and a duty that users can make it possible for themselves not to see certain things. For many of the small and harmful sites, those things would not apply anyway, because users have gone there deliberately to see what is there, but the full force of the Act applies to those small companies, which is why there is a special task force to make sure that that is applied properly.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
My Lords, Ofcom’s illegal harms code states that it has removed some of the code’s measures from smaller sites, due to evidence that they were not proportionate, but it is not clear which measures have been removed and why. Can the Minister provide further detail on which small sites are impacted and what measures they will not be required to follow?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
My understanding of this is that the Online Safety Act applies to all small companies and nobody is exempt. The things that would not apply would be the specific things in category 1, or indeed in category 2A and 2B, which are to do with the ability to apply and monitor a service contract, and the ability to ensure that users can exempt themselves from seeing certain activities. Those would not apply, but everything else does apply, including all the force of the Act in terms of the application to illegal content and the priority harms that have been identified.
Lord Markham (Con)
I must admit that, probably like many noble Lords, I had to do a bit of research into 8chan and the others as part of this. In fact, I got a bit worried that I might get into trouble doing it on House of Lords servers. What I saw was that, before 8chan, there was 2chan and then 4chan, and 8chan is now 8kun. It is like whack-a-mole: while we can try to do all the technical moves, it is very difficult. So, coming at it from the other end of the telescope, the user end, I think we have done a lot of good things about getting messaging out about anti-fraud and I wonder whether there are things we can learn from that, to educate and equip young people, teachers and parents so that they are aware, and attacking it from that end as well.
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I hope the noble Lord does not get caught out from his search terms. Of course, he is absolutely right that part of this is about education and making people aware of what is there. I suspect that, as this gets introduced over the course of this year and enforcement starts, awareness will rise, and it will be incredibly important to include education as well.
Lord Winston (Lab)
My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister kindly tell the House how the Government can ensure that the people who are putting their dates of birth online are actually the people who are putting their dates of birth online? How do we ensure that accuracy?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his question. I am not able to give him a technical answer on exactly how that is done. There are verification systems in place to ensure that, and indeed there are more detailed verification systems coming online in terms of children’s ages. That is something that Ofcom is pursuing, but I will find a more detailed answer for him.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, the Minister quite rightly mentioned children in his initial Answer, and we all want to protect children primarily, but will he also recognise the harm that can be done to vulnerable adults? I think particularly of those with addiction problems, eating disorders and people with learning disabilities, who are not as safe online as we are. Can he say whether the Government have made an assessment of the different types of harms that are on these smaller sites that fall outside the regulations? Have they broken down this type of harm by distinct categories and will they make this information available?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
The so-called Small but Risky task force that was set up in response to an exchange of letters between the Secretary of State and the CEO of Ofcom is undertaking a review of all the risks of these small units. I do not know the detail of whether it has broken it down into the categories suggested by the noble Baroness but I think that is an extremely good idea and I hope it will do it, because it is an important activity.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, having recognised the Herculean task that Parliament has given Ofcom in terms of regulating platforms—Ofcom is set to become probably the world’s most formidable regulator in this space, with commensurate expertise—I will trot out a quick cliché and say, let us not allow the best to be the enemy of the good but support Ofcom as it navigates this very complex environment. Picking up what the Minister mentioned earlier about education, can he update the House on Ofcom’s plans for what is clunkingly called “media literacy”, because prevention is better than cure and the more we can educate children, and indeed adults, on the perils of the internet and how to navigate it safely, the better it will be? It seems almost to be a bit of an orphan within Ofcom’s responsibilities.
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I think the noble Lord is right that Ofcom has a very large task ahead of it. It is a very professional organisation and one that takes all its duties very seriously. I cannot comment in detail on what it is doing on the media side, but I know that that is part of what it intends to do. I will pick up on something else he said: the urgency now is to get this implemented and the danger is that we add lots of things to it now. We must get on and do this. It is very important to get this working. We know that the enforcement starts just after March and that the new codes for children will come out in early summer. Getting this moving is the key priority, and working out how to stop the really unacceptable activity that goes on on some of these sites.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, is the Minister sensitive to the dangers to free speech of overfetishising online safety and to the censorship recently admitted to by the head of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg? This is all under the cloak of Governments demanding the clamping down on online harms. Are the Government advising Ofcom to ensure that any overzealousness, however well intentioned, should be reined in for the protection of free speech in a democratic society?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
Well, the issue of Meta is one for the US. It applies there and not here. The rules of the Online Safety Act apply across all companies and we expect all companies to adhere to them. They are carefully calibrated and designed to ensure the safety of users and to protect them from sometimes disgraceful content.
Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery
Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to reform the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery to strengthen its independence, powers and accountability.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent)
My Lords, the Government are committed to building the confidence of victims and families in the work of the commission and to making timely progress so that they can obtain the information, accountability and acknowledgement that they have long sought. To do this, the Government are engaging with all parties to help determine what provisions should be included in primary legislation to reform the commission, as outlined in the Secretary of State’s Statement to the Commons on 4 December 2024, which I repeated to this House.
Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that answer. We are aware that 90% of the killings that took place during what are known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland were caused by terrorists, many of whom emanated from the Republic of Ireland. What are the Minister and the Government doing to try to engage with the Republic of Ireland? As we have heard from both the former Director of Public Prosecutions and the former Lord Chief Justice in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland’s proposals for dealing with those killings that emanated from that country have been very weak. Will the Minister also give an undertaking that no former security force members who served in Northern Ireland will be excluded from serving as investigators in the ICRIR?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question, and for his service with the UDR in Northern Ireland and as a politician. With regard to our engagement with the Government of Ireland, as co-guarantors of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, we are working closely with the current and incoming Governments of Ireland to ensure that their role in dealing with legacy cases is recognised. We are looking to engage with them as key stakeholders as part of our new plans for legacy, which, as the noble Lord knows are in development. He will be aware that there are currently no prohibitions on investigators for ICRIR and I would not expect there to be any.
Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, yesterday the Prime Minister promised that the Government would stop Gerry Adams receiving any compensation. Why, then, in July, did they so abruptly drop the appeal against the High Court judgment on the amendments I made to the legacy Bill that would have achieved just that and which Labour supported at the time? Was the Advocate-General for Northern Ireland consulted before that decision was taken? Until publication yesterday of the Policy Exchange paper, what proposals of their own were the Government actively working on to remedy this situation?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question. I think it would be helpful for people to appreciate what the Prime Minister actually said yesterday, which is that the legacy Act was
“unfit, not least because it gave immunity to hundreds of terrorists and was not supported by victims in Northern Ireland—nor, I believe, by any of the political parties in Northern Ireland. The Court found it unlawful … We will put in place a better framework. We are working on a draft remedial order and replacement legislation, and we will look at every conceivable way to prevent these types of cases from claiming damages”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/1/25; col. 324.]
The objective in Sections 46 and 47 was right, which is why my party supported it in opposition. The method has been found to be unlawful and we are looking at every option for engagement. The noble Lord may be interested to look at the comments of the High Court. Although we did not appeal, the court chose to comment and suggested that we would have failed in our appeal. I have the exact wording which I will send to the noble Lord.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister provide your Lordships’ House with an update on the progress of the remedial order and of repealing the legacy legislation, which, as she rightly said, was opposed by political parties in Northern Ireland? Will she indicate that this new process will lead to the end of collusive behaviour on all sides, a root and branch review of ICRIR, and a commitment to the standards of legacy which were agreed by parties and by both Governments at the Stormont House talks in 2015?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for her question. On 4 December, the Secretary of State laid a proposal for a draft remedial order in Parliament. This is the first step in correcting the mistakes of the previous Government’s approach and in fulfilling this Government’s commitment to repeal and replace the legacy Act, as was in our manifesto. The remedial order must sit in both Houses for two periods of 60 days to allow for proper scrutiny of the draft and for proper representations to be made. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has a key role in the process. It has already launched a call for evidence, which is due to close on Monday. The Secretary of State’s Statement, which I repeated in this House, also announced plans for primary legislation when parliamentary time allows. This will include provisions to reinstate legacy inquests halted by the Act, and to reform and strengthen the independent commission.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, may I press the Minister a little more on the timing of the primary legislation? It is important to get this legislation right, but does she accept that this continued legal uncertainty on legacy issues is serving nobody in Northern Ireland well? Will she commit, for example, to bringing forward the new legislation, including a comprehensive reform of ICRIR, by the next anniversary of the Good Friday/Belfast agreement in April?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right. Let us be clear—this is about the victims of the Troubles and giving their families and those still affected by the Troubles the answers they so desperately need. Too many people have had to wait for too long. The Government are engaging with all parties in a spirit of openness to deliver on the promise of the Good Friday agreement, as well as on the Stormont House agreement. We will bring forward draft legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
My Lords, I belong to one of the families of those victims. Does the Minister accept that resolute action must be taken to deal with the legacy of the past? Without it, former soldiers will continue to find themselves in court, facing vexatious claims, while prominent terrorists such as Gerry Adams will fill their pockets with British taxpayers’ money to the horror of innocent victims and to the shame of this Government.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, I have already touched on that last point and how we will deal with it. On next steps and protecting veterans, both the pain of those victims and the fear and concern of our military community need to be established. I put on record and declare my interest as an honorary officer of the Royal Navy and part of the defence family. It is clear that we need to act to protect veterans. Any veteran who needs to go through legal proceedings will receive welfare and, where appropriate, legal support. I am pleased that, last month, the Secretary of State announced the appointment of David Johnstone as the new Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner. This will ensure that veterans’ voices across Northern Ireland will continue to have a strong advocate to support them.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the Government have decided to hold a public inquiry into the Pat Finucane case, rather than pass it to ICRIR, which the Secretary of State said was exceptional. A judge has now ordered a public inquiry into the death of Sean Brown, which, I am glad to say, is being appealed. Will the Government commit to a policy of there being no more public inquiries into legacy issues and legislate to this effect?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, the UK Government have enormous sympathy for those killed, injured or bereaved as a result of the Troubles. I may be putting words into the noble Baroness’s mouth, but I assure your Lordships’ House that there is no hierarchy of pain or injustice. The Pat Finucane inquiry was agreed in the Weston Park agreement in 2001 and again in 2004 as part of a series of public inquiries. There is a public inquiry into Patrick Finucane because of the unique circumstances there. Noble Lords will appreciate that court proceedings on Sean Brown are happening today, so I cannot comment on that, but the Secretary of State has made clear his confidence in ICRIR as a vehicle for inquiries. That is why we are doing everything we can to secure confidence and make sure that it is the appropriate vehicle.
Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)
My Lords, to be clear and to reinforce what the Minister said, there was a concrete agreement 20 years ago that the British Government would have a public inquiry into Pat Finucane’s murder. As one who was party to that agreement as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, before moving on to other positions, I am very glad that the Government have finally honoured it. It is a matter of honour when you explicitly carry out an agreement, not once but twice, that you eventually do something about it.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, not for his question but for his work in helping secure and continue peace in Northern Ireland. We are where we are today because of his work and that of many others in this Chamber. We are very grateful for the work he did as one of the signatories to the Weston Park agreement.
Asylum Seekers: Accommodation
(1 month ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in moving asylum seekers from accommodation in hotels.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
The Government are committed to reducing hotel use through reform of the asylum system, including streamlining asylum processing and establishing the Border Security Command to tackle people-smuggling gangs at source. In the year ending September 2024, 35,651 people were in hotel accommodation, down 36% from September 2023.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
I am grateful for that reply. Labour’s manifesto said that it would
“end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds”.
That must be right, as hotels are an expensive and inappropriate solution, but it will be a challenge for the Government as, since July, there are 5,000 more asylum seekers in hotels than there were and all the 35,000 the Minister has just mentioned are likely to get leave to remain. Responsibility currently rests with the Home Office, but do we not need a much more joined-up approach with local government if we are to reduce dependency on hotels, not least because a hotel costs £145 a day per person, whereas so-called dispersed accommodation costs less than 1/10th of that, at £14 a day? Should we not transfer responsibility for asylum seekers in hotels from the Home Office to local authorities, together with the funds, saving public money and enabling those in the hotels to be more integrated with local services when they leave them?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The noble Lord is a fair gentleman and I understand the challenge we face with hotel accommodation. He will know that, although hotel numbers are stable now, the Government have a manifesto commitment and in March we will close a further nine hotels. He raises local authorities. Around 252 local authorities had dispersed accommodation in January 2024 and 176 did in April 2022. We have increased the number of local authorities that have it. He is right that we need to discuss and consult with them, but ultimately the integrity of the asylum system depends on the Home Office having oversight of it. We want to progress the matters he has raised in a sensible and efficient way, but we have to retain responsibility.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, as always, the noble Lord, Lord Young, raises a good point. He talks about the challenge. Will the Minister remind us who gave the present Government that challenge? Who created it for us? Did the noble Lord and many of his colleagues make these positive and helpful suggestions over the last 14 years?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
My noble friend gives me the opportunity to say that in 2015 no hotels were housing asylum seekers. That figure rose to 400 at its peak just over a year ago. It has now dropped considerably. For the very reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Young, mentioned, the failure to control borders and sea crossings led to these daily costs to the taxpayer and legitimate asylum seekers using that asylum accommodation. That is a failure of political management and we are determined to address it.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, the Minister may well recall the response he gave me when we discussed the proposal for allowing asylum seekers to work, thereby not only reducing the need for accommodation but dramatically reducing the budget. He said that it was a policy idea. Given that, what consideration have the Government and his department given to reducing the demand for accommodation through allowing people to work? If they have not already done so, when will they?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I think I recall answering that it was a policy submission that we would reflect on. The important point for the Government is to do three things: first, speed up agreement on asylum claims to ensure that people with genuine asylum claims have a right to live here, and, presumably, will subsequently wish to work here; secondly, put in place Border Force control to stop illegal migration and gangmasters subverting the asylum system; and, thirdly, ensure that we reduce the asylum accommodation that we have, for the reasons mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Young—cost and efficiency—and look at dispersed accommodation in the meantime. I will keep the policy suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord German, on the table as part of the contributions to discussions on how we achieve those three objectives.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, the Minister will recall that a few months ago University College London and ECPAT issued a report on the position of asylum-seeking children in these hotels. They found that dozens of children had been kidnapped by criminal gangs from hotels run by the Home Office; 440 children had gone missing, 144 had not been found and 118 were still unaccounted for. Is the noble Lord engaging with ECPAT and University College London about their report and can he update us on the figures—and, if not, can he write to us? Is he aware that the Joint Committee on Human Rights is engaging with the Home Office on this issue? I know him well enough to know that he will take a personal interest, but I hope he will commit today to doing so.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I will update the noble Lord in due course. As a rough estimate from memory, around 90 children are still unaccounted for. The importance of safeguarding in asylum accommodation is critical. It is ultimately the responsibility of the local authority where those children are placed. However, I take on board his suggestions and concerns; I will look into them and write to him. It is key to ensure that the safeguarding of unaccompanied children and accompanied children who are at risk is paramount.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, whether it is a local authority or the Home Office, there is the difficulty for families who are moved around too much that the children lose their education and friends. It is very dislocating and destabilising. Can we have some continuity and awareness of that difficulty?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
It is vital, as my noble friend says, that we ensure continuity. The key point is that we get people out of asylum hotels and into dispersed accommodation as quickly as possible and, ultimately, speed up the asylum system so that people have a decision on whether they can stay or have to leave. If they can stay, that stability is there and, as the noble Lord, Lord German, mentioned, they can contribute to work and potentially help fill some of the labour shortages this country faces.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, in the 2024 Labour Party manifesto there was an announcement that new measures to clear the asylum backlog would be taken, through caseworkers, returns and the enforcement unit. It also pledged to hire 1,000 new staff for this unit. What progress has been made on this and how many staff have been hired?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I remind the House that there were no hotels in 2015 and 400 when the noble Lord was in office. We are recruiting those 1,000 staff and have improved the return rate, the assessment rate and the efficiency rate. Although I do not have the numbers in this brief, I have them in another brief; I will send them to him and put them in the Library, and he will see improvements over when he had tenure over this job.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, what would be the downside of allowing asylum seekers to work? Why is this idea just still sitting on the table rather than being urgently agreed?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful and I realise that this is a live discussion point. The downside of asylum seekers working is that sometimes asylum claims are not upheld or found to be fraudulent and sometimes people have to be returned. Sometimes, therefore, asylum seekers could be put in positions whereby they are undertaking work they have no legal right to do. I understand that is a difficult issue, but the Government are committed to trying to resolve it by processing asylum claims as speedily as possible so that people can be legitimised or, in the case of non-legitimisation, returned to a place of safety elsewhere.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, given that the Government are trying to get all parties to collaborate on social care, when the policies emerge, and given the difficulties we have across the board with immigration and the suggestions that we need some new policy approaches, should we not attempt to bring all the parties together to try to get some movement and commonality to deal with the whole range of topics that face us, which none of us have been successful in addressing properly so far?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The Government have an immigration White Paper due to be published shortly and I hope that all parties and Members can contribute to the discussion around that.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, is it not correct that the people of this country are concerned ultimately with having people removed who are shown to be illegally here? In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, when I was the Minister and the Conservative Party was in Government, we concentrated considerable resources on doing just that. I think the people of this country were very happy with that approach.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am pleased to inform the noble Lord that the current Government have removed in excess of 16,000 people who have no right to live in this country since we came to office in July last year, and we will continue to do that, but the key to removing people is the speed of assessment, which, to go back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, requires individuals employed to assess, test and determine. That is what this Government are focusing on: removals, speeding up assessment, and in the meantime, to go back to the original Question of the noble Lord, Lord Young, trying to find a way to save the taxpayer money on the costs associated with that temporary period when no determination has been made.
Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill
Thursday 16th January 2025
(1 month ago)
Lords ChamberNon-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill 2024-26 View all Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 15 January 2025 - (15 Jan 2025)
Foot and Mouth Disease
(1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, I refer the House to my register of interests, including as a dairy farmer who remembers well the terror and isolation experienced by all livestock farmers during the last foot and mouth outbreak. Can the Minister explain to the House what lessons have been learned and what would be done differently, were this dreadful disease to reach our shores, to prevent a repeat of that terror and the awful scenes of burning carcasses that tormented our entire country?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
The noble Lord is right when he says that the mounds of burning carcasses tormented our country. I do not think any of us who were around at the time will ever forget that. He asks about lessons learned. In addition to regularly exercising our disease response capabilities, lessons identified reviews are undertaken at the end of any outbreak in order to identify and evaluate where improvements to disease response capability processes and organisational structures for managing an outbreak of exotic notifiable disease can be made. This is something we always do.
Following both the 2001 and 2007 foot and mouth outbreaks, extensive inquiries and reviews were undertaken. That led to some critical changes coming in, including, for example, the introduction of a ban on swill feeding, standstill periods for cattle, sheep and goats of six days and 20 days for pigs, and improvements in livestock traceability. These were all implemented in response to the recommendations of those lessons identified reviews and they are critical in order to prevent infection—in the case of swill feeding bans, for example—because we need to minimise any implications of the disease coming to this country again.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, the last time we had a countrywide outbreak of foot and mouth, it was devastating to both the farming community and the rural economy, as tourism-dependent businesses were badly hit. I commend the Government for their swift action to prevent German meat products entering the country. Biosecurity is vital for the protection of farmers and to maintain public health standards. A veterinary and phytosanitary agreement with the EU is essential. Do the Government have a timetable for signing such an agreement?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I cannot provide the noble Baroness with any specific dates on those agreements at present. All I can say to her at this stage is that it is very much a government priority and we are working closely with the EU to make progress as best we can.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
The Government have imposed a blanket ban on all livestock products coming from Germany to England, Wales and Scotland but it is a much narrower ban in respect of Northern Ireland, where the ban applies only to a restricted zone around where the outbreak took place. Can she comment on that, and say whether she and her colleagues have been in touch with her counterparts in the Irish Republic?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
We are of course regularly in touch with our counterparts across all the devolved Governments, and the Governments in Germany and the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland is subject to the EU import rules, which is why it is not included in the ban we brought in yesterday. This includes regionalisation requirements and is set out in EU legislation. Northern Ireland is protected from the disease coming in through being included in the EU ban, so Northern Ireland is as protected as the rest of Great Britain through those measures. The noble Lord can be certain that the EU would not want to see any spread of this disease to any other part of the European Union, and that includes the Republic of Ireland and, through the way the regulations are currently set up, Northern Ireland as well. I met yesterday with politicians from Northern Ireland and reassured them that we are as serious about stopping the disease entering Northern Ireland as we are in respect of any other part of the UK.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
I congratulate Defra on the decisive action it has taken. I, too, have memories of the former outbreaks, travelling with my father to farms where what happened was devastating. Part of the risk comes from illegal movements of cattle and meat products. What additional briefing and support has been given to border and police forces to try to protect against this? Also, are there any additional resources for the mental health and well-being of our farming community, who will find this a huge threat to their livelihood?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
We meet very regularly with the port health authorities, which are of course responsible for managing any illegal imports into this country. Dover has picked up more illegal meat imports recently than at any other time, so the authorities are clearly doing an excellent job. Of course, we work very closely with them and with APHA to ensure they have what they need to manage any imports. There are issues around the mental health of farmers across many areas. It has been a struggle for them over many years, and the Government and Defra offer support in that regard.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I wish the Minister well in this situation. As Animal Health Minister, I announced to Parliament what we thought was the first case of foot and mouth in February 2001. In fact, we later found that there were already probably 78 other cases in the country. That leads me to the conclusion that you do not have a lot of time to plan or to implement when you have the first case. What contingencies have been made, and what consideration has been given to vaccination, particularly ring vaccination? We had not developed plans for that, but it could have changed the progress of the disease.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The current policy reflects our experience of responding to past outbreaks and is in line with international standards of best practice for controlling the disease. Alongside culling and immediate movement controls, we are now looking at deploying vaccination as a control option. In order to achieve that, we now have a vaccine bank for a range of foot and mouth disease stereotypes.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, this is a highly infectious disease and no respecter of borders. The illegal meat trade has already been referred to. Is the Minister satisfied that limiting these restrictions entirely to Germany is appropriate, rather than also including its bordering countries?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
It is probably helpful to explain the disease outbreak in Germany, in order to put it in context. The German authorities have put in place strict controls to prevent onward spread, and they are currently investigating the circumstances of the outbreak. They have put in very strict controls already: the herd at the infected premises and all susceptible farmed livestock within a kilometre of the premises have been culled; there is a three-kilometre protection zone and a 10-kilometre surveillance zone surrounding the infected premises, out of which no susceptible animals can move; and clinical examination, sampling and testing of susceptible animals in the zone is under way.
It is also important to point out that at the moment, it is just one incident and there have been no further incidents. Our Chief Veterinary Officer is in close contact with the German chief veterinary officer so that, if we get any further information, we can act accordingly.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I am sure the whole House will join me in offering sympathy today to all the farmers who are fearing a repeat of the previous disastrous events. As the German Animal Welfare Foundation said, we are seeing a continual stream of animal diseases breaking out around the world, due to
“industrial farming and a globalised trade in live animals”.
Is this not a sad further reminder of the fragility of our global food system, which has huge implications for food and economic security, welfare and human health?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
It is important to point out that our animal welfare and husbandry standards are very high compared to many other countries. One role we can play is to encourage other nations to follow the example of our animal husbandry standards. Also, we have very clear controls at our borders to ensure that the meat that comes into our country is of a standard we would expect.
Local Government Reorganisation
(1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, what local residents want from their local council are good quality services at a reasonable cost, however it is organised. When the Conservatives took control of Harlow Council in 2021, they cut council tax, and have kept it frozen ever since. Under this Government’s new local government funding formula, Harlow will lose approximately 30% of its grant funding next year. Why is the Government’s new formula punishing councils that are keeping taxes down and providing better value for money for taxpayers in their area?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
I find it astonishing to hear the party opposite challenging us on funding issues in local government, when it has punished the whole of local government for 14 years in this respect. I agree with the noble Baroness about what the public want from their local government services. They are not worried about the overheads of additional councils; they want to see good public services at local level and good value for money. That is what the devolution and local government reorganisation programme is all about.
The review of the funding formula will happen as we go into the spending review in the spring, and is there to make sure that funding is directed where the need is greatest. That will be what we set out to do. It is what we said we would do in our manifesto, and we will continue to do so. Let us not take any lessons in that from the party that has starved local government and brought it to its knees over 14 years.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Liberal Democrats do not accept the assumptions behind Labour’s following the Conservative imposition of directly elected mayors and larger councils across England. It is easier to impose yet another reorganisation than to address tax reforms, public service limitations and trust in democracy. Distant mayors cannot revive local democracy, and cancelling elections will deepen public mistrust. Given that this reorganisation is intended to save money, have the Government factored in the costs, such as redundancy payments, movements of staff and buildings, etcetera? What plans do the Government have to strengthen the role of really local town and parish councils, in which it will still be possible for ordinary voters to get to know their local representatives and for representatives to know their voters?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I disagree with the noble Lord. I believe that creating councils that can deliver good public services at local level is vital. We have seen from the areas that already have mayors that they have been able to take a strategic approach to delivering vital strategic assets that drive the local economy in their area, which will improve the lives of their residents. On the question he raised about funding, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that there would be a one-off reorganisation cost of around £400 million, but that there would be billions of pounds-worth of savings to the public purse over subsequent years, which could be reinvested in delivering the services that people are looking for.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
As my noble friend knows, the White Paper suggests that the optimum size for a unitary authority is a population of about 500,000. Can I get her assurance that those unitary authorities that are working effectively and efficiently, and providing good local services, and which may be short of 500,000 in their population, will not be unnecessarily disrupted? Furthermore, over the years I have seen so many different optimum sizes being recommended for the provision of local government services. Will she place in the Library the basis of the calculation that the Government have made that leads them to the conclusion that 500,000 is the right figure?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his important question. It gives me an opportunity to clarify some of the misunderstanding around the number that has been given. It was in our manifesto that we would pursue a devolution agenda, and for many months after the Government were elected we were pushed to give an optimum number for the size of a council. Of course, when we did so, everyone said, “Not that number; that’s not the right number.” There is some flexibility around it. The important thing in the whole of this process is that the size, geography and demography of the units created make sense for people. We can be flexible around the numbers, but the number of 500,000 was intended to set out what we feel would be around the right size for the economies of scale and to deliver effective services at local level in a way that gives value for money.
Lord Mawson (CB)
My Lords, can the Minister please inform the House of any work the Government have done on what the practical implications might be of this local government reorganisation on their encouraging plans to build 1.5 million homes during this Parliament? Will this reorganisation help speed up the delivery of these homes or, in practice, slow the whole process down? Can the Minister give us a clue as to how this will work in practice as public sector staff look for new jobs?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The intention is that this will help with the delivery of both growth and new homes. The intention, as set out quite clearly in the White Paper, is for mayors to have powers over strategic planning—not the local planning that local authorities currently do—so that they can work with the constituent councils in their areas to set out plans for housing. The noble Lord referred to issues of planning. We have put in a significant sum of money to improve the capacity for planning authorities as we take forward the programme of delivering 1.5 million homes.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a councillor in Central Bedfordshire Council. On Monday, in Grand Committee, the Minister stated that
“we move into a picture where we have all unitary authorities”.—[Official Report, 13/1/25; col. GC 200.]
Can she confirm that it is the Government’s intention to oblige all county and district areas to unitise?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The process of local government reorganisation will do that. We want to move at a pace that is right for the local authorities concerned. That is why we have set out a four-track approach, depending on where people are with their readiness to go forward. We believe that unitary councils can lead to better outcomes for residents, save significant money which can be reinvested in public services, and improve accountability, enabling politicians to focus on delivering for their residents. Generally speaking, as I said earlier, residents do not care about structures; they just want good public services, delivered at value for money.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, it looks as if the provisional local government finance settlement for 2025-26 will disadvantage rural areas, with the removal of the rural services delivery grant making the situation even worse. What steps are being taken to ensure that the needs of rural communities are being considered in the devolution process and that the strategic policy approaches developed by the combined authorities meet the specific needs of service delivery in our rural communities?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the right reverend Prelate for his question and for his continued interest in rural communities. We believe that part of the process of devolution will mean that the people who are taking the decisions for rural communities will be people who have skin in the game in those rural areas; that is very important. Places with a significant rural population will, on average, receive an increase of around 5% in their core spending power next year, which is a real-terms increase. The rural service delivery grant does not properly account for need, and a large number of predominantly rural councils receive nothing from it. That is clearly not right, and a sign that we need to allocate funding more effectively. We are keen to hear about rural councils, as well as others, as we go through the spending review, so that we can work on what would work best for them in the new funding system.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, no doubt the Minister will be aware of the eye-watering debts of over £2 billion left to the people of Woking by their former Conservative council. What is the level of risk to other local authorities if they are merged with Woking? What analysis have the Government undertaken of chronic failures of financial management, such as Woking, and the likely impact on reorganisations if the Government fail to find a way to resolve a debt of this nature?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble Baroness is quite right to point out that there are councils that may be in scope for this programme which have significant debt. We are working through a programme with those councils—Woking is one of them and Thurrock is another. It should not be for people outside those areas to pick up that debt. This is not helped by the fact that our Government have inherited a broken local audit system. For the financial year 2022-23, just 1% of audited accounts were published by the original deadline. That is not good enough. We are working on fixing that, and we will be working through a process with the councils concerned.
Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan
(1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Markham (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s Statement in this space, and I start with an apology. When I agreed to speak to this, I was told it would be first business after Questions, and I am afraid I have to leave for a flight midway through, so I apologise to noble Lords and hope that they understand. My colleague will be here all the way through.
As I say, we welcome the Statement and we welcome the Matt Clifford plan, which my noble friend Lord Camrose kicked off when he was leading these efforts in government, so we see this as a positive step forward. As Health Minister during that time, I saw first-hand the potential of AI, how it can really transform our services and how the UK really does have the potential for a leadership role.
Matt Clifford's plan, we believe, is right that the role of the Government in this is really to establish the foundations for growth: namely, making sure we have an AI-skilled workforce, the computing power, the energy needs to drive that computing power and the right regulatory framework. Then we use the assets we have, such as the data, to create the right datasets and use our public sector to help the rollout in many of them. I will focus my comments and questions on how we are going to make sure that those things happen.
Turning to the first one, the AI-skilled workforce, I must admit that when I read in the report that 5,000 AI jobs were being created in this, like most of us, I thought “5,000—that is great.” Then you realise that, actually, 4,500 of those are in construction and only 500 are in AI itself, and you start to get worried that maybe this is a bit style over substance. I am very keen to understand from the Minister here what we are specifically doing in this space. I am mindful, for instance, that we talk about having government develop training for the universities with a delivery or reporting date of autumn 2027. We all know how quickly AI is moving in this space, and we are saying we are just going to have the training in place for the universities to give these courses in two and a half years’ time. I think we all know that, in two and a half years’ time, the world will have moved on massively from that, and no doubt the training will be out of place. I hope the Minister can come back on that and give us some reassurances that we will actually have an accelerated process—I am afraid this will be a bit of a recurring theme.
On computing power, my noble friend Lord Camrose, when he was in government, had secured an £800 million commitment to build a supercomputer in Culham. Now I read, in the Government’s action plan, that they will
“start to develop the business case process”
for an AI computer. Unfortunately, like many noble Lords, I know what that means: a Treasury business case process, so you are talking about a year and a half to two years, at least. All I can guarantee is that, if you take that length of time to produce a business plan, whatever you were planning in terms of a supercomputer will be superseded by advancements and events. What is the Minister doing to streamline that business plan process and get action on this front so that we can get that new supercomputer fast?
On energy, we all accept there is a desperate need for energy; again, that is laid down in the action plan. The Government’s answer to that is to set up an AI energy quango. I think most of us would say that we need to set out what our energy needs require, but then surely it is up to the network or GB Energy to fulfil that. Why do we need another quango and another layer of bureaucracy? What powers is that quango going to have if it will not be commissioning these facilities, which I assume GB Energy will do?
On regulation and governance, the regulatory framework is another very important part of the foundation. I know the Government have plans for an AI Bill, but what is the timeline for it? Again—this is a recurrent theme—it needs to be quick so we can keep up with events.
Moving on to AI datasets, I know that this is something that the Minister is very keen on in the health space, as am I, being the former Health Minister responsible for this area. We have the best health data in the world; the beauty of having a National Health Service is that we have data on primary and secondary care going back to the Second World War. We have data coming in from the UK Biobank and other sources, such as retina scans from opticians which, we are hearing, can be used for stroke detection or maybe the early warning signs of dementia. There are fantastic opportunities for this, and we can already see its applications around the health service today. We have been doing the research with focus groups to bring the public with us on the use of their healthcare data. We have the potential to create the UK Silicon Valley in the life sciences on the back of the data that we have. We had in place a data for R&D programme, which was looking to utilise and create datasets in the health space. Could the Minister update us on where we are with that, and whether it is going to be his focus? As we discussed, that is something I would be very happy to work on together.
The last part of the foundations is to use the assets that we have in the public sector as a rollout plan for that and, again, health is a perfect place for this. We have seen brilliant applications already in cancer treatment and in overprescriptions; there are possibilities with the NHS app, which is really taking off, and to use AI in the 111 service to help triage; these are all fantastic opportunities. We put in place an NHS productivity plan which was very AI driven and AI heavy. Could the Minister update us on the AI productivity plan for the NHS and what progress we are making on it?
To conclude, we are very positive about the opportunities AI provides to transform the whole country’s economy and public services in ways that we cannot even imagine. However, it is businesses that need to drive this. It is the role of the Government to set the foundations to allow business to deliver; it is not the role of quangos, which are not going to deliver it. This area will need a Minister to drive it through and make it happen. Is the Minister the one who will do that? If he is, I give him all our support and wish him the best of luck with it.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I also welcome this plan, perhaps with rather less baggage than the Conservative Benches. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State invoked Babbage, Lovelace, Turing, the pioneering age of steam and even the white heat of the technological revolution, but at its core there is an important set of proposals with great potential. However, it is a wish list rather than a plan at present.
I particularly welcome the language in the plan around regulation, particularly where it refers to regulation assisting innovation, which is a change of tone. However, the plan and Statement raise many questions. In particular, how will the Government ensure that AI development mitigates risks beyond just safety to ensure responsible AI development and adoption, especially given the fact that a great deal of UK development will involve open-source applications?
On the question of the introduction of AI into the public sector, the Government are enormously enthusiastic. But, given their public sector digital transformation agenda, why are the Government watering down citizens’ rights in automated decision-making in the Data (Use and Access) Bill?
We welcome the recognition of the need to get the economic benefits for the UK from public sector data which may be used to develop AI models. What can the Minister tell us at this stage about what the national data library will look like? It is not clear that the Government yet know whether it will involve primary or secondary legislation or whatever. The plan and response also talk about “sovereign compute”, but what about sovereign cloud capability? The police cannot even find a supplier that guarantees its records will be stored in the UK.
While the focus on UK training is welcome, we must go beyond high-level skills. Not only are the tech companies calling out for technical skills, but AI is also shaping workplaces, services and lives. Will the Digital Inclusion Action Committee, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, have a role in advising on this? Do the changes to funding and delivery expected for skills boot camps contribute to all of this?
On the question of energy requirements for the new data centres, will the new AI energy council be tasked with ensuring that they will have their own renewable energy sources? How will their location be decided, alongside that of the new AI growth centres?
The plan cannot be game-changing without public investment. It is about delivery, too, especially by the new sovereign data office; it cannot all be done with private sector investment. Where is the public money coming from, and over what timescale? An investment plan for compute is apparently to be married to the spending review; how does a 10-year timescale fit with this? I am very pleased that a clear role is identified for the Alan Turing Institute, but it is not yet clear what level of financial support it will get, alongside university research, exacompute capacity, and the British Business Bank in the spin-out/start-up pipeline support. What will the funding for the Compound Semiconductor Applications Catapult and the design and manufacturing ecosystem consist of?
The major negative in the plan for many of us, as the Minister already knows, is the failure to understand that our creative industries need to be able to derive benefits from their material used for training large language models. The plan ominously recommended reforming,
“the UK text and data mining regime so that it is at least as competitive as the EU”,
and the Government have stacked the cards in the consultation over this. We on these Benches and the creative industries will be fighting tooth and nail any new text and data mining exemption requiring opt-out.
The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)
My Lords, I anticipated that this Statement would attract interest from Members of this House, and I thank the noble Lords, Lord Markham and Lord Clement-Jones, for their comments and their broad welcoming of the report. I will try to respond to as many points as I can, but first I will reiterate the importance of this announcement.
Through the publication of the AI Opportunities Action Plan and the Government’s response, we are signalling that our ambition is high when it comes to embracing the opportunities presented by AI. This is a plan to exploit the economic growth that AI will bring and to drive forward the Government’s plan for change. Training the UK’s workforce is a key part of the plan, and there are steps with clear timelines as to when we will do that. I will come back to training a little later.
We need to diffuse AI technology across the economy and public services for better productivity and opportunity, and embrace the transformational impact it is going to have on everyday lives, from health and education to business and government services.
As has rightly been pointed out, AI is advancing at an extraordinary pace. That is why you will see in this response very tight timelines for actions. The one that was picked out on training, which is 2027, is only one part of the response; you will see that Skills England is due to report very shortly with the first phase of its recommendations and will follow that in autumn with further work. So most of the timelines are very tight, recognising the challenge that the pace of advancement in AI brings.
The benefits extend far beyond economic growth. It is the catalyst that we need for a public service revolution, including, of course, in the NHS. It will drive growth and innovation and deliver better outcomes for citizens. It also lies at the heart of two important missions for the Government: kick-starting economic growth and delivering an NHS fit for the future. By investing in AI now, we are ensuring that the UK is prepared to harness the transformational potential that undoubtedly exists. This will improve the quality and delivery of public services. The plan is a way to do that with real speed and ambition.
The issue of regulation has been raised and there is no doubt that the regulatory environment will be critical in driving trust and capitalising on the technology offers that arise. By bringing forward the recommendations in the plan, we will continue to support the AI Safety Institute and further develop the AI assurance ecosystem, including the small companies that will arise as a result, to increase trust in and adoption of AI.
The Government are committed to supporting regulators in evaluating their AI capabilities and understanding how they can be strengthened. Part of this is the role of the regulatory innovation office. The vast majority of AI should be regulated at the point of use by the expert regulators, but some relates to fast-evolving technology. That is why we will continue to deliver on manifesto commitments by placing binding requirements on the developers of the most powerful AI models. Those commitments will build on the work that has already been done at the Seoul and Bletchley AI safety summits and will be part of strengthening the role of the AI Safety Institute. This issue of making sure that we get the safety side of this right as we develop opportunities is of course key.
The question of copyright was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and I know that this is an extremely hot issue at the moment, which will be discussed many times over the next few days and weeks. The Government have issued a consultation, in which there are three principles: the owners of copyright should have control; there should be a mechanism to allow access to data to enable companies to develop their models in the UK, rather than elsewhere in the world; and, critically, there must be transparency. Where does the data flow and how can you work out the input from the output? Those three areas are a key part of the consultation and the consultation is crucial. We have a session planned for next week to go through this in some detail, and I invite and welcome all noble Lords to it, because getting this right will be important for the country. I look forward to discussing those proposals over the next few days and weeks.
Delivering the AI Opportunities Action Plan will require a whole-of-government effort. We are starting that work immediately to deliver on the commitments, build the foundations for AI growth, drive adoption across the economy and build UK capability. We are already expecting initial updates on a series of actions by this spring. For instance, DSIT will explore options for growing the domestic AI safety market and will provide a public update on this by spring this year.
Turning to some of the very specific points, I completely agree that training is crucial and we have to get it right. There are several recommendations and, as I said, the earliest will give a readout this spring. I do understand that this is not something that can wait until 2027; it has to start immediately.
It is important to lay out for the House the situation with compute. This spring, there will be access to two new major compute facilities for AI: Dawn in Cambridge and Isambard-AI in Bristol. When fully active this year, they will increase the AI compute facility something like thirtyfold, instantly. Those are the types of compute infrastructure that are needed. It is AI-specific compute infrastructure. It is not the case that the plan for the future starts now; it is happening now and those compute infrastructures will be used by academia, SMEs and others over the course of the year and beyond. The plan beyond that is to increase the compute infrastructure twentyfold by 2030. That requires a 10-year plan and for us to think into the future about what will be needed for us to be at the forefront of this. Exascale of course is different; it is being looked at as part of that, but it is not the same.
On energy, the noble Lord recognises that one of the most difficult things in government is to join up across departments. That is why it is important.
The national data library will be essential. I welcome the offer of help on health from the noble Lord, Lord Markham, and I will certainly take him up on that; this is an important area to look at. Noble Lords will be hearing much more about the national data library over the next few months. I completely agree that, as we develop this technology, we will need to ensure that citizens’ rights are properly protected. That is something that we will continue to discuss as part of the Data (Use and Access) Bill, among other issues.
Funding will be picked up; it is a fully funded programme, but then we will need to go into a spending review, as Governments always have to.
I will wrap up there to leave plenty of time for others to ask questions, but I hope that I have addressed some of the initial questions.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, on behalf of the Communications and Digital Select Committee of your Lordships’ House, I am pleased to welcome the AI Opportunities Action Plan, with the exception of the recommendation that relates to copyright. We will come back to that. It is important to emphasise the extent to which change will be necessary to deliver on this plan. In particular, the Government have to acknowledge a change in mindset across Whitehall and the public sector.
Perhaps I could ask the Minister how the Government will ensure that the action plan benefits UK start-ups and scale-ups and does not entrench market dominance by the established players in this area.
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her input to date and on the important copyright issue. The question of market dominance is important. It is worth reflecting that Matt Clifford is an entrepreneur who deals with start-ups; the report is very strong on start-ups and what needs to be done to make sure that they are part of this, including what regulatory change needs to take place to encourage start-ups to do this. At the moment, it is quite difficult for them to navigate the system, including procurement. Government procurement is notoriously difficult for start-ups, and many of the specific aims of the plan pull that together to allow start-ups to access government procurement plans.
So there are very clear ambitions here to make this about growing an ecosystem of companies in this country, while recognising that many of the existing major companies, with which we will also have to work, are not here. Driving this forward will be a key task for DSIT right the way across government. It will need all-of-government activity, as outlined in the report.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
My Lords, the Minister talked about the national data library, which is very welcome, but data in the library needs to be safe and its use carefully thought through. What role does the Minister think public interest thresholds should play in deciding what data is collected and how it should be used?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
Noble Lords will hear much more about the national data library over the coming months, but it is important to recognise that data is valuable only if it is collected well, curated properly and is interoperable and accessible. We need to ensure that it is properly protected, both for individual privacy, which is the point the noble Lord raises, and to make sure that we get the appropriate valuation of the data and that that value flows back into the UK and into public services. These will all be key features of the national data library.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the Statement, but I draw my noble friend’s attention to the element which refers to the “immense” energy used by this new technology. Is the AI energy council already in the process of estimating the quantity of energy required, and am I right in thinking that the data centres will be placed around the country in locations that enable them to have access to sufficient energy for them to work?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
My noble friend is quite right. The energy issue is crucial for any plan for AI, and that is why the energy council is being set up. It is precisely why Culham is the first place identified; it has a significant energy supply already. We anticipate that the centres will be based around the country in places where there is renewable energy or where other sources of energy can be accessed easily in order to provide the power the centres require. It is also important that the council looks at the overall environmental impact, which will be part of this.
On energy consumption, it is known what is required for a single data centre and, as we need multiple data centres, the type and amount we will require is known. It is crucial that this is done on top of everything else that the energy is required for. This is a big and difficult problem, but we can already see an answer to it with the first identification of a site for the AI growth zone.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, I declare my technology interests as set out the register. I welcome the plan; it has 50 excellent recommendations, but does the Minister not agree that to bring these to life we need an arrowhead focus from government on broad AI legislation—much broader than what is currently planned—that includes an AI authority that is agile, nimbly focused and horizontally applicable; AI-responsible officers; the protection of creatives; and right-sized regulation that is good for citizens, innovators and consumers, in order to deliver according to the fundamental truth that these are our data, our decisions and our AI futures?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I certainly agree that it is a significant challenge, and I add one other thing. The challenge is not only one of regulation of procurement and making sure that we have the data systems correct; it is one of making sure that we actually deliver, rather than talking about it. Delivery will be key, and we need a proper mechanism to deliver this in the form of a mission with real delivery outcomes. That is why I was pleased to see that we have very tight timelines on all the recommendations in the report. We must make sure that that happens and, as we do so, that we bring in the other necessary controls and actions to propel every part of this, from funding start-ups right the way through to procurement, and, as the noble Lord said, ensuring that we look after the privacy and autonomy of the data.
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)
My Lords, the Minister acknowledged the importance of the data collected being interoperable and very reliable. With that mind, what discussions has he had with the First Ministers of Wales and Scotland to ensure that data such as NHS data is collected in a fashion that is comparable and therefore usable?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
Clearly, this is a UK-wide issue. I am pleased that Scotland has been at the forefront of data in health for many years and has done an extremely good job of getting that into the right place. As we develop the national data library, these questions of data collection, interoperability, curation—which is incredibly important—and systems to ensure privacy and protection will be discussed widely right across the UK. We need to make sure that everything is interoperable, otherwise we will undo the value that we are creating.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s focus on delivery, which is vital if we are to make an impact in AI. I say with the greatest respect to my noble friend Lord Holmes that legislation is the last thing we need. The coalition Government’s experience with the Government Digital Service was to find that we made rapid progress before powers were devolved down to individual departments, which then did everything in their power to make sure that nothing worked. While the Minister focuses on the delivery of the AI action plan, could he sort out the confusing quango landscape that now exists after 14 years of endless initiatives, and perhaps have a central function which relentlessly pushes through this excellent plan?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord very much. I will not add to his comments about the 14 years of endless initiatives, but it is crucial that when we do something such as this, we do it properly. Obviously, my experience was in setting up the Vaccine Taskforce to do just that, and this is the same sort of problem. We have to get everybody across government working on this; there is a big delivery task. Delivery should be our focus and we should keep holding ourselves to account for timelines and deliverables.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
My Lords, Monday’s Statement on the AI Opportunities Action Plan highlighted the Government’s ambitious vision on AI adoption across the UK, and I welcome it. While the plan outlines significant investment and initiatives to boost AI infrastructure and capabilities, there are concerns about how SMEs will fare in this rapidly evolving landscape, which is largely dominated by the big tech companies. Recent data shows that only 25% of SMEs are currently using AI, despite 42% of them wishing to use it to increase their productivity. However, these small companies often lack the resources and the expertise to fully benefit from AI adoption. What specific measures will be implemented to protect SMEs from being squeezed out by the larger AI companies, and how will the Government facilitate meaningful collaborations between SMEs and the AI giants to foster the innovations and maintain a diverse, competitive AI infrastructure?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank my noble friend. There are two different aspects to his SME question—the SME use of AI, and the AI SMEs—and both are dealt with in the report, I think. Many of the recommendations indicate what would be done, but I will outline some of the points on SMEs for AI. There is an important join-up task to be undertaken, which is part of what this plan does: the things we fund at the beginning of the process, such as grants from Innovate UK to get companies off the ground, to supporting that funding through BBB and beyond, linking to regulation to make it as simple as we can to enable innovation, and linking in turn to procurement to ensure that there are procurement signals to allow these companies to get the investment to grow and to scale into the companies they could be.
On the adoption side, there is a specific group working on adoption of AI technologies across the UK and a report is due out by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser and the National Technology Adviser on adoption of technologies more broadly, which is about ensuring that we get uptake of new technologies in companies. We know that we have a long tail of companies that do not do that in the UK, and it will be an important part of making sure that the entire economy benefits.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I am sure the Minister has noted that the Statement he has given us has a certain flavour of the 1960s about it, with the talk of harnessing the “white heat” of revolution, and all that, but from the point of view of those of us who went through that period, it might be helpful to know one or two of the things that went wrong, because it did not end terribly happily the last time we had this revolution of white heat. The problem then was that the Government’s PR people became a little too enthusiastic, and the Minister might discourage them today from phrases about seizing the future, embracing this, that and the other, and other generalities, of which there were plenty last time, but none of them led to the results that people wanted.
There is a repeat of the old fallacy that the Government deliver growth. It does not. We know that the Government can facilitate growth and can stop growth, and certainly that has happened in the past, but the idea that the Government alone are somehow going to lead, rather than develop entirely new relationships with the private sector as the digital age demands, is one that needs to be examined carefully before the Government rush into more mistakes.
There is another problem, which the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, reminded me of—it was not quite so intense then but it is intense now. This whole revolution and the data centres demand enormous amounts of electricity—far more than seems to be planned by the energy department. It talks about 200 gigawatts, moving up from 65 gigawatts, but data centres can drink whole communities’ electricity, just like that. The Statement mentioned 500 megawatts, but we are really talking about gigawatts of a kind for which no planning is in place at the moment. Can we be assured that the SMR side of the Government’s energy transition gets a push? Will the Minister talk to the energy people and tell them that, unless they bring forward the SMR revolution, which is going on in many other countries, and go slow on the white elephant technologies such as Sizewell C—
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
I will finish my sentence.
Unless that is done, we will not get the necessary electricity to drive through this revolution. Obviously one welcomes it, but there are many snags ahead.
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his enthusiasm for the white heat of SMRs, which is an important point. There is a very clear set of recommendations, from an entrepreneur who understands how to set up and run companies. The approach is one of ensuring that there is funding for start-ups, innovation, regulatory clearance and a procurement pool, which are exactly the types of things that will deliver growth. They are facilitators of growth, because the noble Lord is right that growth comes from the private sector. That is what must be supported and that is what this plan aims to do.
On the power supply, I have already said that the join-up between DSIT and DESNZ in the energy council is exactly the right approach to make sure that we get a joined-up government approach to this. I suspect that it will require SMRs, among other approaches to getting energy in the right place.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I draw the Minister’s attention The AI Mirror, a book by Shannon Vallor, who holds a chair at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. It makes the crucial point that generative so-called artificial intelligence is not intelligent or creative but only reflects back to us—hence the mirror metaphor—what we have previously created. Will the Government acknowledge that one of the great risks of the explosion in the use of AI is stagnation—a building in and entrenching of the discrimination, racism and inequalities that already exist across our public and private systems, as was infamously demonstrated in Australia in the Robodebt scandal?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
It is important to recognise that there is more than one type of AI, including generative AI and specific models. It is the case that AI is very dependent on the data put in, and there are risks of bias being entrenched. That is an important safety issue that must be looked at and that we must be aware of. On whether it is intelligent, the answer is that we are not in the era of general artificial intelligence but at an earlier stage. These are not yet fully intelligent machines. Whether they get to that and over what time period is something of an unknown, but we are in an era where we can do pretty remarkable things, and we should harness that.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that there has been a tendency for high-tech and research investment to go overwhelmingly to the south and east of England in recent decades. I want to underline the regional dimension of AI. The supercomputer was going to be in Edinburgh, which has an excellent computing faculty and a large element of highly trained people. Leeds and Manchester also have useful workforces already trained for this. The renewable energy and the water—which I understand is necessary to cool these computers—is much more easily available in the north and west of the United Kingdom than in the south and east. Can the Minister ensure, to the best of his ability, that we do not yet again have facilities built in the south and east of England, thus increasing the pressure on housing and everything else in the south and east and leaving the north and west in poverty?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I absolutely assure the noble Lord that he will see growth zones in those areas. They will not be concentrated in the south-east. The reason the first one happened to be in Culham was to do with the immediacy of potential private sector interaction and the power supply. On the compute facility in Edinburgh, ARCHER2, the very important computer there, will be extended to the end of 2026, and we are looking actively at what happens next. I reiterate that that computer is not primarily about AI, although it will have AI capabilities.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, it is the turn of this side.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, I reassure my noble friend on the Liberal Democrat Benches that he should not worry too much about this. In September, I spent a significant amount of time in Ayrshire, in the company of a representative of one of the largest asset managers in the world. They were looking for a site in Ayrshire, thankfully, for what has become known as critical compute infrastructure. I was in the company of the local Member of Parliament, who was very keen to get this infrastructure there. In the first conversation we had with this investor, it was clear that access to energy was the most important factor as to whether we got this substantial investment. It was equally clear that global competition for this sort of investment was going to be dependent on the comparative rollout of newer advanced reactors.
We have a particular problem with this in Scotland. The current Scottish National Government are in opposition to building new nuclear power stations. When they were in coalition with the Scottish Greens, the position of the Scottish Greens was that there was nothing safe or secure about nuclear power. The point is that the new advanced reactors are much safer than they were. Will the Government, and the Minister in particular, come to Scotland to talk to SNP politicians and explain that this nuclear power is much safer, and that investment in it will bring this sort of investment into the country, so that we will not be left behind?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I reiterate that SMRs are part of the solution to this: they have lower core power and lower pressure, use a large fraction of coolant, and have safety advantages over traditional approaches. That will be made clear. That is why the AI energy council is so important, to make sure that this is properly thought-through and that we get these in the right place to support the data centres that are required.
Live Events Ticketing: Resale and Pricing Practices
(1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, we appreciate the Statement from His Majesty’s Government. As the Minister in the other place said, the Department for Business and Trade and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have launched a consultation on the resale of live event tickets. That consultation will consider a cap on the price of ticket resales, increasing the regulation of ticket resale websites and apps, and strengthening consumer protections.
All noble Lords will be aware that the resale market plays an important role in supporting artists, fans and venues. Authorised resellers can provide a safe and secure way to transfer unwanted or unusable tickets, which ensures that seats are not left empty at venues and that those who cannot attend events any more are not left out of pocket. This is a mechanism which would seem to be sensible and which we can all support.
Indeed, His Majesty’s Official Opposition, when in government, launched a review of secondary ticketing, led by Professor Michael Waterson, in 2016. We passed the Breaching of Limits on Ticket Sales Regulations 2018, which banned ticket touts from using automated software to avoid security measures designed to help fans see their favourite musicians and sports teams at a fair price.
The Consumer Rights Act 2015 required resellers to inform buyers of the true price of tickets, which should allow fans to make informed and educated decisions on what they choose to purchase. Much was done to protect fans and supporters from unfair practices in secondary ticket markets. Although protecting consumers from bad practice and exploitation is critically important, we should also remember that secondary ticket markets are not new and are no different from other types of secondary market that exist in many different sectors.
The consultation proposals announced in the Minister’s Statement in the other place consider imposing price caps on secondary ticketing. This may, prima facie, sound like an attractive proposal but His Majesty’s Official Opposition are concerned about this increasing the likelihood of a black market emerging. Price caps in other countries have been known to lead to shortages in the availability of goods subject to them and tickets are no different. That view has been supported by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which has warned:
“Draconian regulation, targeting only the secondary market, will only mean more tickets changing hands in informal settings without the same protections that exist in proper marketplaces”.
Rob Wilson, a professor of applied sport finance, has said:
“There is little doubt that a cap on resale prices will lead to an explosion of underground activity as punters seek market value for their purchases and the flexibility to buy and sell when and how they wish”.
If the proposal for a cap on secondary ticket prices were introduced, what safeguards and extra precautions would the Government take to prevent a rise in scammers and black market ticket reselling?
Another concern we have is the proposal for a ticket resale cap. The issues with such a policy were very well evident at the Paris Olympics, where the restrictions on the resale of tickets meant that many event venues had empty seats. This not only impacted the Olympic venues themselves but meant that many fans could not participate and enjoy seeing their nation compete in a sport that they love following.
This is not the right time to go back over the national insurance contributions debate, but one has only to read Hansard to see that many noble Lords are greatly concerned about the impact that measure will have on the live music and sporting industries. At a time when these sectors already face potential negative headwinds, many of the proposals in this consultation could have further significant and detrimental effects on the venues, not to mention on the fans.
We very much hope that the Government will proceed with a measured approach and carefully consider how such proposals as outlined in this consultation will affect music, sporting venues and, crucially, those who derive so much fun and enjoyment from attending these events.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, unlike the Conservatives, with their somewhat lukewarm response, we on these Benches very strongly welcome the Statement, not least because it is a clear promise of action. We welcome the words of the Minister in the other place, Chris Bryant, that
“the House should be in no doubt that we intend to act”.
To date, there has been too little action to address concerns that have been raised over very many years. Twenty years ago, in the other place, I asked the then Labour Government what they planned to do about widespread concerns about ticket touting. I waited until 2006 to get an answer, which was to call on the industry to find a voluntary solution to ticket touting. After four so-called summit meetings, very little was achieved.
More recently, the same voluntary approach was adopted by the then Conservative Government, who said in response to the CMA’s report and recommendations in 2021:
“The Government believes in the power of competitive markets to give consumers choice and flexibility”,
and concluded that
“it is too soon to conclude that the only way forward is further legislation focused on this market”.
The voluntary approach has not worked.
There have, of course, been some improvements over the years—measures restricting the use of bots have been referred to already—but overall, Governments of all persuasions have failed to seriously address these issues, despite the growing concerns of fans, artists, event promoters, live venues and many others. With the Government doing little, many in both Houses have pressed for action. I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, who, together with my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, has doggedly raised concerns and, more importantly, offered solutions to the ticketing and touting issues that are now at last being covered in the consultation.
It is no wonder that the Statement—a statement of intended action—is so widely welcomed, including on these Benches. That is, of course, hardly surprising, since we supported amendments covering many of the points in the consultation paper during the passage of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. The FanFair Alliance, which also deserves praise for its dogged campaigning on these issues, has gone so far as to say that the suggested measures “are potentially game-changing”.
The Statement sets out the issues to be addressed very clearly, but while it illustrates the Government’s intended direction of travel, I would have preferred, and wished for, greater clarity about some of the preferred options. I hope the Minister will provide more detail. What is the preferred limit on resale price? Are the Government in favour of a licensing system for resale platforms? Will they prohibit platforms from allowing sellers to list more tickets for an event than the seller can legally procure from the primary market? Will they make platforms strictly liable for incorrect information about tickets listed on their websites?
There are two further issues. Not included in this consultation is dynamic pricing, which is to be consulted on separately. Although I welcome that it is only in relation to the live events sector, I regret that it is not part of the main consultation. Surely it would have been better for implementation if the two were considered alongside each other with the outcomes forming one plan of reform. Can the Minister explain why they are not? Given that we know that the separate consultation is to last 12 months, can she tell us when it will start and how the two consultations will work together?
Finally, it is obvious that there is little point in new legislation unless it is rigorously enforced, but despite existing regulation on bots, for example, we know that there are still cases of them being used. We need tougher enforcement in this area. There are continuing concerns about the black market and even about our ability to deal with touts operating outside the UK. Can the Minister say a little more about plans for enforcement of both existing legislation and the new legislation that will arise following the consultation? Does she accept that a licensing system for resale platforms will be a great help in that enforcement procedure? Is she aware that various bodies, such as the CMA, will be involved? Trading standards departments will certainly be involved, yet in recent years there has been a significant drop in the number of available qualified trading standards officers right across the country.
Trading standards and other enforcement bodies will require additional resources, including to recruit new staff to take on additional responsibilities. What assurances are there that funds will be provided to meet these additional needs? Will the new burdens principle apply, for example?
Our current ticketing market is not working for fans, and voluntary measures will not solve the problems. We have waited too long for action, so we welcome the Statement and the promise of action. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, as has been noted by the noble Lords, Lord Effingham and Lord Foster of Bath, on Friday, 10 January, the Department for Business and Trade and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport published a consultation on live events and the resale of tickets, and a call for evidence on pricing practices in the live event sector. Tackling the resale market was a manifesto pledge and I am grateful for the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, noting and reminding us of the work over many years by Members of your Lordships’ House. I am also grateful for the broad support for these measures from the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and for the support of the Opposition—albeit caveated—from the noble Lord, Lord Effingham. I hope I can respond to the noble Lord’s concerns as I go through my speech.
The UK has a world-leading live events sector, which is the heartbeat of the UK’s cultural and economic landscape. It employs, as noble Lords will be aware, over 200,000 people and contributes to local economies and communities up and down the country. Live performances create unforgettable shared experiences, uniting communities up and down the country. However, too many fans are still missing out on opportunities to experience these live events, because ticket marketing, as noble Lords will be aware, is not working for fans.
We agree with the noble Lord, Lord Effingham, that a well-functioning ticket resale market can and will play an important role in redistributing tickets between genuine fans. Far too often, however, we see tickets being listed on the resale market at extortionate prices—many times the original price in the primary market—which removes tickets from the ability of legitimate fans to buy. It is not a question of legitimate fans buying tickets they cannot use and needing to get their money back by reselling their tickets; what we are talking about here, and we need to be clear about this, is the work of organised touts—big business buying up tickets in bulk on the primary market, solely to sell on to fans at hugely inflated prices.
These people are not only denying true fans the opportunity to buy tickets on the primary market, they are pocketing any profit for themselves. Very little of the additional revenue goes to the live music sector. This Government are committed to putting fans back at the heart of live events and clamping down on unfair, exploitative practices in the secondary ticketing market. In doing so, we want fairness for fans and an economically successful live events sector.
We have launched this consultation as the first major step towards delivering on this ambition. The consultation outlines a range of options to address problems in the resale market, including a statutory price cap on ticket resales, a licensing regime for resale platforms, new limits on the number of tickets individual resellers can list, and new requirements on platforms to ensure the accuracy of information about tickets listed for sale on their websites. We also want to understand whether there is scope for the primary market to do more to prevent touts getting hold of tickets in the first place.
In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Foster, on whether the Government have a preference on where that price cap would land, we are open through the consultation to hearing from a range of stakeholders and we do not have a preference on that. The noble Lord, Lord Effingham, suggested that it is possible that the price cap could lead to an increase in unregulated activities, scams and a potential increase in black-market sales. We have launched a consultation to learn from the experience of other countries introducing measures such as price caps on the resale of tickets. The ticket marketing is broken for fans, in our view; doing nothing is not an option. The measures will be intended to ensure that revenue flows to the sector, including the venues and artists, and not to the touts.
The noble Lord, Lord Foster, asked about enforcement. I absolutely recognise the importance of enforcement of consumer protection legislation, and the consultation seeks views and proposals to make this more effective for ticket resale. In many areas, there are successful enforcement measures taking place. For example, in May last year, following an investigation by trading standards, notwithstanding the point the noble Lord made about trading standards officers, four people were sentenced to a combined total of six years and five months in prison, with substantial fines, for criminal activity in relation to ticket touting. Prosecutions such as these send a message to the ticket touts. We hope the consultation will allow us to strengthen the enforcement of consumer protection legislation, as well as making it more difficult for touts to operate.
There were a number of other questions the noble Lord raised to which I do not have the answer now, but I will write to him. There was a question around dynamic pricing more generally. For our live events industry to be successful and sustainable over the long term, we believe that fans, artists and organisers all need to feel fairly treated, so, where dynamic pricing is used, it must be done in a way that is compliant with consumer protection law.
We are also issuing a call for evidence on pricing practice across the live events sector to better understand the changes adopted by the sector in selling tickets in recent years, including the use of new pricing strategies and technologies, and how these impact on the experiences of fans. It is important that fans are treated fairly and openly, with timely, transparent and accurate information presented ahead of sales.
We are seeking evidence on how the ticket pricing system for live events generally works in UK, if and how consumers are being impaired by lack of transparency in this area, and whether new business models and technologies are creating new risks for consumers or gaps in the consumer protection framework. The consultation and call for evidence will be open for 12 weeks. It is closing on 4 April. We will then decide on next steps, but be in no doubt that we intend to act. I look forward to hearing Members’ views in the debate today and also, hopefully, through the consultation period. For too long, fans have been excluded from seeing the artists and shows that they love, due to organised touts. This Government are determined to clamp down on touts. The question is not whether but how we improve protection for fans.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I warmly welcome today’s announcement and congratulate Chris Bryant on piloting the consultation legislation through Parliament. I declare an interest: I have worked passionately on this for 15 years with Sharon Hodgson, the excellent Labour MP, as co-chair of the APPG, and ending up as her frenemy on Times Radio couple of weeks ago— such is the way we work together. I totally share the commitment by the Government to better protect genuine fans through legislation, and I support them.
I have a few quick questions, but first I will say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that I do not believe that the Paris Olympics was a fair comparison. We did ban secondary ticket sales in the London Olympics 2012 and we managed through other measures to completely fill it. It was a phenomenal success, both at the Olympic and Paralympic Games, in demand for seats. It was done with very strict regulation—legal requirements—not to allow the secondary market, which was criminalised for the tickets.
The only seating that was a problem in Paris—and it was: I was there—was for the athletes. It is very difficult to determine how many seats should be left for athletes. They train, they go home, they do not necessarily decide whether they are going to be there, and that does lead to seats being left. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the secondary ticketing market.
I have three quick questions. Seeing how many excellent consultation exercises have landed in the long grass over the past 15 years—being hijacked, frankly, by modern-day ticket touts using bots, who have been very effective and put a lot of money behind their efforts—can the Minister promise primary legislation as soon as possible after this? I hope it will be in this Parliament, I hope it will be before I leave this House and I intend while I am here to work exceptionally hard to see that it is on the face of the legislation.
My number two question is: will attention be given to more details of the cap than have already been given today? Should it be face-value only? That, for example, is what the Principality Stadium does for Welsh rugby union matches. Or should it be a fee plus 10% to 13% for, say, administrative costs? That is the kind of range we should be consulting on. I would like to ask the Minister whether she agrees.
Finally, many modern-day ticket touts unfortunately move abroad—they are multi-billion pound organisations that are based overseas—and legislation has to be supranational in this context. We have to think about that very carefully in this consultation period.
Any crackdown on the black market has to be fully enforced. It is the terms and conditions that are abused time and again. That is illegal but, unlike in the current situation where prosecutions are few and far between, we cannot go through this consultation exercise without significantly reflecting on the fact that we have a prosecution service that can tackle this problem. We are talking about the future of true fans, many of whom travel the length and breadth of this country with their families, only to find that someone has swept the market with bots and printed forged tickets in order to satisfy the relationship with the secondary market, such as viagogo and Seatwave. They have to go home deeply unhappy, with little recourse in respect of their tickets, having travelled across the country to go to an event in their diary that was most important to them and their family.
This is the time for action, and I am delighted that the Government have come forward with measures along these lines.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
Having spent many weeks on opposing sides on some of the aspects of the Football Governance Bill, I am delighted to be able to agree with the noble Lord on the importance of these measures. I particularly note, as did the noble Lord, Lord Foster, the long-standing work the noble Lord has done over many years. I will endeavour to answer as many questions as possible, and I will come back on others that I do not get the chance to cover.
The noble Lord asked about legislation. We are clear that this issue may require additional legislation, and we will look to do that as soon as possible, potentially in the second Session of this Parliament. We are clear that taking a view on where we would land on a cap could lead to accusations that we are pre-empting the consultation, but we are keen to hear views, and I have heard the noble Lord’s point on that very clearly.
The point about touting based overseas is an important one. We want to make it easier for enforcers to tackle breaches of the law, and the consultation explores options for achieving that. We know that many touts target UK fans while operating abroad, and that will be an important factor to consider in the design of any new measures. However, that issue is not exclusive to ticketing, and enforcers such as the CMA and trading standards are empowered to take action against traders outside the UK. The reformed consumer enforcement powers in last year’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act will empower enforcers to impose penalties on or directions against traders that target UK consumers, regardless of where they are based.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for bringing this forward, and I welcome what is there. Until three and a bit years ago, I chaired National Trading Standards, and we were involved in trying to pursue some of precisely these cases. My question is simple: do the Government recognise the need for equality of arms in respect of those responsible for enforcing these new regulatory new arrangements, given that these are potentially multibillion-pound operations, sometimes operating overseas? It is quite difficult for either National Trading Standards or an individual local authority trading standards to pursue cases, given that heavy court costs will often be involved.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
My noble friend raises a critical issue. This is about major ticket touting, which is incredibly well organised and heavily financed. The issues that have been raised are ones we will want to explore through the consultation, because there is no point in our having stronger laws unless they have an effect. We are clear that we need to act on ticket pricing, and that cannot just be words; there has to be action.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, I welcome this initiative. Can the Minister assure the House that the consultation and eventual legislation will stretch to cases where it is the seats that are owned rather than the tickets, and the seat holders are putting the seats up for resale? At the moment it is impossible to get tickets through the Albert Hall for the Last Night of the Proms because the programme has not yet been devised, but online you can pay £13,000 for a single ticket. But don’t worry: if you cannot run to £13,000 then for £450, if you move fast, you can get a restricted-view ticket. I ask the Minister to reassure me that this sort of resale will be included.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
Mindful that your Lordships’ House is going to be debating the Royal Albert Hall Private Member’s Bill, if not next week, then the week after, I raised this issue myself. On debentures, we are consulting on a range of measures, including a price cap on the resale of tickets for live events. We will consider all views in determining the best route forward once the consultation is concluded.
Baroness Keeley (Lab)
My Lords, it is time to take action to protect fans from extortionate ticket prices and the illegal practices that are now the hallmark of the secondary ticket market, with the profits going to ticket touts rather than to the artists and performers at live events. As shadow Minister for Music and Tourism, I was pleased to put forward this policy on capping resale of live event ticket prices for the Labour manifesto. So I welcome the Government’s consultation on this policy and the call for evidence on pricing practices in the live events sector.
I must say that my actions followed years of campaigning by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, my friend Sharon Hodgson MP and the FanFair Alliance, which has done sterling work on this. However, as my friend the Minister, Chris Bryant, said in the Commons, it is not a consultation on whether to act; it is about how we should act. I too feel that enforcement is essential in this crackdown on the black market for ticket sales. We saw so few investigations and prosecutions taking place under the previous Government. Will my noble friend the Minister and the DCMS team take that challenge on board, as other noble Lords have asked?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
Absolutely. I mentioned in a previous response that there was a successful prosecution relatively recently. Without prosecutions, without teeth and without action, all the work by Members of this House, including my noble friend and others who have been campaigning for years to address these issues, will have been in vain. I am clear, as my noble friend indicates, that this needs to lead to clear action.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I am going to break the cosy consensus here. The Conservative Party always used to be, and perhaps still is, the party of markets and economic freedom, so I am going to say what I think a lot of Conservatives might still think, which is, I am afraid, that this is a silly idea and the price of a sporting event or a Taylor Swift concert is nothing to do with the Government and can safely be left to the market. Does the Minister agree—I suspect she does not, but I will ask her anyway—that the best way of avoiding the problems we have been discussing is to deregulate, legitimise secondary markets and allow individuals who want to participate in cultural events to decide how much they want to pay for them and get access to them accordingly?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The noble Lord correctly identifies that I am not going to be in agreement with his views. There is a difference between a market that acts fairly and one that does not. All UK Governments look at competition markets to make sure that they are legitimate and fair. What is happening at the moment with the ticket resale market is not fair and does not reflect the ability of individuals to see the shows or live events they want to see, nor does it give money back to the artists and venues. So although this is very much about people accessing tickets at a fair price, it is also about making sure that people do not skim off huge profits through the illegitimate means that we want to regulate. I could not disagree more with the noble Lord.
Rules-based International Order
(1 month ago)
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Baroness Northover
That this House takes note of the challenges to a rules-based international order, and their impact on global cohesion, stability and security.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have put down their names to speak in this debate. I look forward to hearing what they have to say.
We are a few days before the second inauguration of President Trump. Before he has even taken office, he has spoken of taking over Canada, the Panama Canal and Greenland. We know that what he says does not necessarily translate into what he does, though whether, this time, his chosen advisers will have much of a check on him remains to be seen. We now have autocratic leaders in three of the five permanent UN Security Council members: Russia, China and the US. We will have to see what kind of restraint on Trump can come from American democracy, the media—see even the Washington Post under Bezos—and the apparent separation of powers within the US system. He is the first convicted criminal to take office as President in the United States.
Globally, we see nationalists and populists exploiting economic challenges, post Covid and post the invasion of Ukraine, with climate change potentially destabilising the world. We see the use of misinformation becoming a fine art, not just from Russia and China but many other actors, and now via X and unchecked Meta. AI threatens to turbocharge this. Biden has just spoken of the US becoming an oligarchy, with huge wealth, power and influence concentrated in the hands of very few. Given the US’s position as the world’s largest economy, that has global implications. Huge wealth as possessed by Musk, along with social media influence, seemingly allows him to threaten to overturn our own democracy. Putin is also an oligarch, of course, and Chinese oligarchs have to dance to the tune of their leadership—see Jack Ma.
The institutions put in place particularly after the Second World War and Nazi genocide seem to be under threat. The rules-based order, whatever its limitations, is being shaken up. The world faces the existential threat of climate change but instead of pulling together to address this, we seem to be pulling apart—a far cry, seemingly, from where we were when the Paris Agreement was signed 10 years ago. Trump may indeed pull out of that, despite the huge financial and human costs, not least of what has happened in California. It is a tinderbox world. Are there even foreshadowings of the catastrophes of the mid-20th century as we look at widespread economic challenges, the social instability that usually follows, populists deploying new propaganda tools and the rise of authoritarianism?
It has always struck me that it was remarkable that any global agreements on international law and global institutions should be agreed. However flawed people may feel them to be, it is worth emphasising that point. The very idea of states potentially agreeing to limit what they might do, either within their own countries or in their relations with other countries, is striking. The establishment of the Red Cross in the 19th century reflects this: the First Geneva Convention of 1864, including the non-targeting of medical services on the battlefield. It is ironic that our next debate should be on attacks on healthcare in Gaza.
The brutality of the First World War led to the far-sighted, but ultimately ineffective, League of Nations seeking to resolve competition between nations through dialogue and diplomacy. The economic consequences of reparations, the stock market crash of 1929 and the depression, with propaganda lethally harnessed, destabilised the West and helped to pave the way in Germany for Hitler and the Nazis, through genocide, to begin the invasion of neighbouring countries and thence to the Second World War.
It was in the wake of those catastrophic years that we saw the setting-up of the global institutions we have today: the Bretton Woods agreements on the establishment of what became the IMF and the World Bank in 1944; and most importantly, the UN in 1945, whose charter will be 80 years old this July. Among the other plethora of organisations set up following the Second World War, there was the International Court of Justice at the Hague in 1945, agreements on regulating trade which eventually developed into the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization in 1948 and NATO in 1949. Brits played key roles in those—global influence. Of course, established as a project for peace, there was also the Common Market in 1957, which later became the EU. It brought together in remarkable fashion France and Germany in particular in the hope of avoiding future wars in Europe, and now includes states of the former Soviet Union, with candidates such as Ukraine keen to join.
Over the years since the Second World War, the Nuremberg trials were held, then others were held to account for genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, the Balkans and elsewhere. International law steadily developed, and, after much struggling, the International Criminal Court came into existence in 2002. Whatever the flaws, those were remarkable developments since the catastrophe of the 1930s in Germany and the Second World War: a framework of political, legal and economic rules to manage relations between states, to prevent conflict and to uphold the rights of all people, wherever they lived. Of course, things have not been perfect. We have had wars and even genocides. The veto in the Security Council has stymied action. The complaint is made that these international arrangements particularly favoured the US and the western world. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that such global organisations were set up.
UK Governments have long argued for the international rules-based system. Thus, the last Government in their refreshed integrated review committed the UK to working to
“shape an open and stable international order of well-managed cooperation and competition between sovereign states on the basis of reciprocity, norms of responsible behaviour and respect for the fundamental principles of the UN Charter and international law”.
I expect that the current Government will say the same, but the challenges are immense.
There are autocratic leaders of states. Putin apparently wants to recreate a historic Russia or Soviet Union by dominating neighbours and brutally invading Ukraine. I heard Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov at the Doha Forum defending this in a way that reminded me of domestic abuse: “We had to; we were provoked”—in effect, “They asked for it”. If Trump seeks to end US engagement in Ukraine, how ready are we to work with European partners to ensure that Putin does not benefit from gains in Ukraine or undermine the security of the Baltic states and others? We know that much of the rest of the world does not share our concern about Ukraine. The External Affairs Minister of India put it thus:
“Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems”.
Then there is China. The Chancellor argues that China’s economy is vital for our own. Clearly, China’s slowdown affects the rest of the world. Tariffs from the US on China will affect us all. China leads on manufacturing renewables. It controls much of the world’s critical minerals supply. Industrial espionage is seemingly widely used to maintain its position at the forefront. Its engagement with the global South and its indebtedness to China, plus its human rights record, all make its role in the international order challenging. China’s cultivation of the global South is why we could never win votes at the UN on Hong Kong. Yet, interestingly, it maintains support for the principle of the UN charter, so long as it does not mean so-called internal interference. China has been expansionist in seeking control and influence. We do not know what Trump will do if China invades Taiwan. What will Europe do?
Both Russia and China are able to seize on the global South’s resentment at what seem like western double standards. One of the major areas where double standards seem to hold is the Middle East. It came across very strongly from leaders and others across the region and Africa at the Doha Forum in December that the response by the Israeli Government to the attack of 7 October 2023 is viewed as devastatingly disproportionate. The UN and ICC have said as much, but in return have come under attack. The West has not pushed back, critics say, allowing the Government of Israel to get away with actions others are condemned for.
The growth of populism and nationalism globally, reflected in Trump’s election, seems to show that lies are believed just as easily, maybe more so, than the truth, and that politics is being driven to the extremes. Those seeking power seem adept at using this. Sufficient numbers of people believe them, as we have seen in Latin America, Europe—including the UK—and elsewhere. We see that the likely victor in Canada in its upcoming elections is one who, in an interview before Christmas, expressed a desire to pull out of the UN. The WHO too is under misinformation attack.
Economic pressures, populism, nationalism and the spread of disinformation all played their part in our pulling out of the EU—that project for peace—even though we damaged ourselves economically and in terms of our global influence by doing so. Has withdrawing from the EU neutered the right wing in Britain? Hardly; if anything, it is stronger. The Government need to recognise that and move further and faster in rebuilding ties with the EU, both for growth and to maximise our global influence. Pandering to the right clearly did not work.
It is said that we are now in a multipolar world, but it is striking that even the BRICS countries nevertheless sign up to the principle of the UN charter. It is just that they say the West has double standards in applying this.
There has been a rise in authoritarianism around the world, including in Europe. Terrorism networks are better funded, exploiting concern over certain conflicts to raise funds. Crime is often international, including exploiting the increasing number of migrants on the move in Africa, to Europe and up through central America—a trend that climate change and conflict are exacerbating.
States, as ever, involve themselves for their own interests in the conflicts of others, as we see in the terrible case in Sudan, or risk seeing in Syria. Agreement on the equal rights of all—particularly women, and especially control over their own bodies—is seriously in danger of going backwards. We see that in full force in Afghanistan. Major new challenges, such as climate change and the transformative expansion of artificial intelligence, face us, with global institutions talking about these but not necessarily finding it possible to take action.
Nevertheless, as I have said, it was a huge achievement to have any global rules and institutions, which, since World War II, have helped protect citizens, including those in conflict, bring millions out of poverty and hold leaders to account. We should seek to strengthen them and not walk away.
We are indeed in very challenging times. I look forward to hearing noble Lords’ contributions, and especially the Government’s view, on this very wide-ranging topic. It is just the future of the world—that is all. I beg to move.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, on her excellent speech, which was extremely well argued and well constructed. I did not entirely agree with everything; I think that the role of Iranian-backed terrorism must also be taken into account in the Middle East.
I want to start my speech by quoting from another speech that is now almost 25 years old:
“Globalisation has transformed our economies and our working practices. But globalisation is not just economic. It is also a political and security phenomenon. We live in a world where isolationism has ceased to have a reason to exist. By necessity we have to co-operate with each other across nations … We are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not … We cannot ignore new political ideas in other counties if we want to innovate. We cannot turn our backs on conflicts and the violation of human rights within other countries if we want still to be secure … We are witnessing the beginnings of a new doctrine of international community. By this I mean the explicit recognition that today more than ever before we are mutually dependent, that national interest is to a significant extent governed by international collaboration and that we need a clear and coherent debate as to the direction this doctrine takes us”.
That was Tony Blair, in Chicago in 1999, almost 25 years ago. What a mess we are now in. I still believe that what Blair set out in that speech, which I played a very small part in drafting—very small, I assure noble Lords—is the objective to which our policy should be aimed. However, it has obvious weaknesses given what has happened since. Interestingly, Blair did not mention China at all 25 years ago. On Russia, just to show the change of mood, he said:
“We simply cannot stand back and watch that great nation teeter on the brink of ruin. If it slides into the abyss, it will affect all of us … We must not let our current differences set us on a route towards … mutual hostility and suspicion”.
Tony was an optimist about Russia and Putin, which has proved to be bitterly disappointing.
We thought then of the United States as a hegemonic power and that we Europeans should be its constant loyal friends and partners. Now we have Trump to reckon with and we no longer live, as the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, said, in a unipolar world.
Britain is in a much weaker position to exercise any global influence. We are no longer at the centre of the councils of the European Union. Our economic strength, which is the basis of foreign policy strength, has been gravely weakened and, as a result, we halved our overseas aid budget—which, at 0.7%, was one of Labour’s proudest achievements previously—and we are struggling to meet our defence target.
If we want to be influential, we have first to prioritise economic growth here and have a successful economy, and to establish a new, more positive relationship with the EU—that is fundamental. Our top priority has to be to deal with the United States, not to moralise towards Trump but to make sure that we keep the Americans in Europe. That is fundamental to our security. To do that, we will have to become a leader in European rearmament, which will be necessary in the next decade.
A lot of numbers games are played on defence spending. Trump is said to want us to spend 5% of GDP. We are presently spending 2.3% with an objective of 2.5%. Interestingly, from a historical perspective, at the time of Suez we were spending 7% and at the time of our withdrawal east of Suez in the late 1960s we were spending more than 4% of GDP, so we are at a very low level. The point that I see as fundamental is that we will have to have European rearmament—I know that it is a word that people do not like—if we are to convince the Americans to back NATO and be a source of security in Europe against a revanchist Russia. We have to press for a European rearmament that is collectively planned and delivered, probably with the creation of a single market in defence, because that is the only way it will be affordable. If every member state does its own thing, we will waste a lot of money, as we presently do, on defence.
The defence budget has to go up, and I fear to more than 2.5%. That will involve difficult decisions. Some of it can be done through innovative financial means, as we have seen with the latest Ukraine package, but it also raises profound questions for tax and spend and public spending in the five to 10 years ahead. We have to establish a national consensus that we need to spend more on defence, to keep NATO as fundamental to our security, and to be willing somehow, collectively, with all-party agreement, to pay for it.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, this important debate on the international rules-based system is both timely and necessary. I put on record my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for tabling it and for outlining some of the key challenges that the world faces. As she noted, this system emerged in the aftermath of the human destruction witnessed during the Second World War. It is underpinned by institutions such as the United Nations and the IMF.
Since then, over several decades, we have seen the emergence of other organisations, legal structures and related institutions, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, which seek to hold perpetrators of crimes to account and bring justice for victims and survivors. Other organisations have been established to further economic empowerment, such as the World Trade Organization, which evolved into more focused groupings such as the G7 and G20. Treaties emerged as the nuclear age evolved, and we saw agreements such as the non-proliferation treaty to avert further global wars, which would be devastating if they ever happened. In a post-colonial era, we saw new dynamics emerging, with the ending of the imperial age of dominance and its replacement with what we have termed “partnerships”, underpinned by organisations set in renewal, such as the Commonwealth.
Yet, as 2025 begins, geopolitical tensions dominate. Wars rage in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Structural inadequacies and evolving dynamics mean that we are truly living through uncertain and challenging times.
As noble Lords are fully aware, for seven years it was my huge honour to represent our country around the world, including as the Minister of State charged with leading on our relationships with multilateral organisations, including the United Nations and the Commonwealth. I truly saw our capabilities and networks at work. I experienced high points: the strength of UK equities through diplomacy; the massive repatriation of more than 20,000 Brits during the Covid pandemic; development support in conflict zones; defence and security partnerships; the focus on new trading agreements; and success in international elections through investment in our relations with other nations.
I also witnessed the most tragic and testing of circumstances, such as the ill-judged and rushed NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, which saw the Taliban ascend to power. I worked around the clock with Members of your Lordships’ House and of the other place simply to get people out. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, will remember that time well. Then, there was Russia’s illegal war on Ukraine and, more recently, the shocking terror events in Israel on 7 October and the devastating war in Gaza. Humanity is suffering.
We have seen the erosion of multilateralism. I experienced the UN at first hand. We passed resolution upon resolution to try to avert conflict and, where conflict began, to stop it. Yet, tragically, we have seen these collective arrangements fail to bring about that valuable commodity that we hold so dear—peace. Major powers have opted for unilateral or bilateral approaches, undermining the very system that they claim to support. We have seen withdrawals from agreements, such as the Paris climate change agreement; the rise of regionalism; and organisations emerge based on common economies, such as ASEAN, the African Union and, indeed, the EU. In the modern age, new powers have emerged, such as India and, within the Middle East, the UAE, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These have emerged not just as economic powers but as brokers for peace.
US-China competition continues, with disputes about trade, technology and military influence. Of course, Russia’s annexation of Crimea was an early warning sign, unheeded not by the UK but by many others. We now see this manifesting itself in Ukraine.
We have seen issues concerning climate change, cyberwars and digital governance, and global health crises—although under the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, we led on multilateral action through the COVAX Facility, established by the World Health Organization.
We have also seen the challenges of extremism and terrorism by non-state actors such as Daesh and al-Qaeda. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, just referred to them. In Syria, sadly and tragically, despite its efforts, it was not the UN that delivered change and got rid of Bashar Assad, but HTS—a proscribed terror group.
Multinational corporations—companies such as X, Google, Amazon and Facebook—wield growing significance, often bypassing national regulations. They are a growing influence over the next generation.
The lack of reform of institutions remains a challenge for us all. The UN Security Council and the IMF face criticism for the geopolitical realities that now exist in the world. We see economic inequalities, global trade imbalances, and the rise of nationalism and populism, with the rejection of global norms and populist leaders in various countries rejecting the very international standards and treaties they are signed up to.
There are challenges to human rights, which I have always said was the most challenging but, equally, the most rewarding of the wide-ranging briefs I held in the Foreign Office. Even institutions such as the Human Rights Council are not being used for what they were set up to do; instead, they deliver blocks and see power-broking that ensures national issues and priorities emerge. Of course, military conflicts and security issues continue.
How do we move forward? Addressing these challenges requires a renewed commitment to multilateralism while recognising the desperate need for reform. It must happen through the recruitment to these institutions of talent that reflects experience and the strength of personal relationships. With this must come the willingness of all nations to balance the importance of national sovereignty with collective action.
Human rights and justice initiatives can be established. I pay great tribute to my predecessor, my noble friend Lord Hague, on the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, which I was pleased to take forward, marshal and lead for seven years. We held the conference in 2022. Today, Ukraine takes over the chair and First Lady Zelenska will chair a debate. Can the Minister update us on who is attending from the UK?
We led with the previous Trump Administration on establishing the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance. I hope that will go from strength to strength during the second Trump presidency. On women’s rights, we led on important issues such as WPS and women mediators’ networks. I would welcome an update on Women Mediators across the Commonwealth, which the last Government established. There is also the question of addressing terrorism and extremism. We need international collaboration to combat terrorism and ensure the security of nations.
The UK’s commitment to upholding the international rules-based system, even amid rising challenges, by prioritising what we are best at—diplomacy, standing up for justice and inclusive development—must remain at the heart of our foreign policy approach. It is for us and the Government to keep this flame alive.
Baroness D'Souza (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for her comprehensive introduction to this important debate. I think many of us will be emphasising the many points that she made.
That there is a threat to the system of political, legal and economic rules which have governed international relations since the end of World War II is in no doubt. A new feudal order is emerging. The question becomes: should this, if not be accepted, at least remain unchallenged or should there be new international norms and treaties taking into account current realities such as environmental conditions, international commitments, and principles of national sovereignty and self-determination? If the latter, what might these new norms look like and who would draft them? Perhaps it is preferable to go for a middle way and focus on reforms to the existing order. The task is to salvage an international order that is now gravely weakened.
cthe last almost 80 years underpinned the principles of sovereignty, democracy and human rights. More recently, international rules have resulted in trade liberalisation through economic governance, the advent of a number of new peacekeeping missions, the International Criminal Court, as we have heard, and the insistence on women’s and LGBT rights. But there remains suspicion and departure from these accepted norms because they are perceived as imposing a system invented by liberal democracies for the benefit of western diplomatic, military and economic agendas.
These growing views of western manipulation have given rise to a gradual but quickening departure from these rules. Egregious examples abound. They include the distaste for multilateralism, with Trump—I nearly said “chump”—insisting on the unimpeded exercise of American power in pursuit of defined national interests; China’s preference for bilateral diplomatic transactions, together with a newfound assertiveness in the UN, as well as its unbending approach where its interests are threatened, an example of which is its refusal to abide by the court of arbitration decision concerning disputes with the Philippines over the South China Sea; and, of course, Russia’s subversion of international rules.
We have the continuing fragmentation of the system brought about by new centres of world power, increasing populist and nationalist pressures, new and empowered centres of political dissent, international crime and terror networks, and the rise of non-state actors, among other 21st-century developments. This democratic backsliding and the accompanying rise in authoritarianism threatens international peace and stability by undermining the democratic political process—for example, by using technology supply chains as a means of repression.
Last September, the United Nations adopted a resolution, a “pact for the future”, which called for a recommitment to international co-operation based on respect for international law and the strengthening of multilateral institutions. The actions pledged included sustainable development, peace and security, digital co-operation, and a focus on youth and future generations. Subsequent suggestions concerned amplifying these actions—for example, strengthening the International Criminal Court, establishing global conduct for outer space, further embracing soft power, trade policies that better protect human rights, and a recalibration of the “responsibility to protect” principle. At the same time, it was acknowledged that this was no easy task, assuming, as these actions do, a common standardised definition that would enjoy legitimacy, reward investment in co-operation, reconcile clashing interests and deter conflict.
Another major theme was the necessity of engaging with a far wider range of constituencies, from citizens and civil society to the private sector and even local political actors. Above all, there has been a consensus among reformers that preventive mechanisms are key. The UN enjoins states to facilitate more sustainable and robust frameworks for prevention, again working with local knowledge and skills, especially with NGOs.
This is a task that has scale and complexity. The responsibility to protect is a failing norm, codified by all UN member states in 2005 but too often seen by some states as intervention by the backdoor. The three main pillars of R2P are: the primary responsibility of the state to guarantee the safety and security of citizens; the responsibility of the international community to support states to implement this norm; and the responsibility of the international community to ensure protection of civilians where the state has failed to do so and when the state targets its own citizens.
It is not unfair to question the relevance of this principle in the face of ever-growing challenges. What strategies might work? Should R2P be recalibrated, defining more closely the second pillar to reflect the increasingly multifaceted nature of governance? Should the UN promote capacity building as its main plank, developing joint response mechanisms with regional organisations in collaboration with civil society organisations? Surely broadening the base of actors to provide evidence would help to embed R2P. It is encouraging to note that ASEAN is beginning to develop and integrate the R2P curriculum into its training courses for police and justice agencies. We cannot allow this crucial principle to die. Everyone with an interest in peace and security should be working to make it more agile, widespread and effective.
Finally, recent UK Foreign Secretaries have given support to a modernised rules-based international order that benefits everyone and holds to account those who infringe it. It has been pointed out that defending the rules-based order will require multi-pronged strategies. I hope that the UK Government will be closely involved in helping to achieve this.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, on getting this subject before your Lordships yet again. As she said at the end of her speech, absolutely correctly, this is just a small matter of the future of the world, and it is certainly the future of liberal democracy and capitalism, or the socialised versions of capitalism that we need to be working to develop and preserve. This is not the first time we have looked at this subject; we have returned to it many times in your Lordships’ House over the years, and rightly so. There are two reports in particular that I think are worth scrolling back to as we try to breathe some momentum into the whole subject.
The first was the December 2017 report from the International Relations and Defence Select Committee, UK Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order. Going back further, the second was the March 2014 ad hoc Select Committee report, Persuasion and Power in the Modern World. I had the honour and privilege of chairing both committees and I think both reports had some influence in encouraging the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as it was then called, to start taking the whole issue of the soft and smart power dimensions of our world interests and influence much more seriously, and, I hope, led up to and connected with yesterday’s soft power initiative taken by the present Government at Lancaster House. I am glad that the idea is alive, but it needs to be connected with the other great issues we are discussing today.
The more recent report went much deeper still into what was happening in the world, which is widely disputed, and why. That “why” is the most important aspect of all because, unless we really understand the real and root causes of this now very troubled world, where we have the highest and most dangerous number of conflicts since the Second World War and where trust is undermining democracy on all sides, will never be effective in our focused efforts to halt the downward spiral of democracy going on at the present time. It is a sad contrast to our high hopes at the end of the Soviet Union.
Not all that many experts and commentators seem to quite grasp what is happening. Of the ones who certainly have—there are some very authoritative and excellent voices—several gave evidence to our 2018 enquiry. The best one of all was a very senior and good public servant of the nation, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, former National Security Adviser and our man at the United Nations, who held all sorts of other high offices as well. Certainly, speaking personally, he always gave me superb support when I visited the United Nations in New York as a Minister.
He is rightly quoted in the Library briefing that has been supplied on this debate—although unfortunately the briefing gets his name wrong. It is not just “Lyall”, it is Sir Mark Lyall Grant. He said:
“The most visible features”
of the world we are now living in
“are new centres of world power and influence”.
A vast shift has taken place in world power. He added that there was increasing populism, as has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, and others, and
“nationalist pressures, far-reaching networks of crime and terror, new and empowered networks of political dissent and assertions of identity”
of tribes, cells, groups, communities, localities and mini-nations,
“the rise of non-state actors and movements, the disruption, and in some cases”
total
“destruction of established industries, the distortion and corruption of news and views on a worldwide scale”,
which the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, rightly emphasised and which is of course growing by the hour, particularly with AI, which can bring great good to our lives but can also do great damage, and is doing so already,
“and mass movements of migrants and refugees”,
which we do not really know what to do about. Sir Mark went on in our report that it was very clear
“that the influence of the ongoing digital revolution and the accompanying global connectivity on an unprecedented scale”
affects
“every sphere of modern existence”
and
“plays a central role in this turbulent scene”
that we now face.
I think Sir Mark has really got it. He really shows how deep we must go in seeking to contain the onward march of technology, which is disrupting human relations on a global scale and threatening not only international stability but the safety and security of every family, man, woman, and child, and every nation’s integrity and unity, including ours.
I refer to the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, again, because he has been such a good Commonwealth Minister over the years. He asked where we should start to rebuild. Obviously, right now we would like to solve the horrors of Gaza and Ukraine. We may even get some good news tonight on Gaza—although I fear it will only be temporary, whatever comes. They are the worst running sores.
They are not necessarily the deepest sores, because the real problems may lie in the Pacific and around China, but all this has yet to unfold. We certainly have to build on new collective international organisations. There are those who say, “Start again”, but I do not think you can do that; you have to build on the United Nations. We must take the Security Council issue really seriously day by day. The trouble is, of course, that it has been wrecked by Russia and China sitting in the middle of it like cuckoos in the nest. We have to move, we have to go for new alliances, we have to think of our neighbours in Europe. If the European Union is not going to move in the directions we want, we have to think about new European structures, perhaps through the European Political Community. Now that the spine of the old EU has broken, with France and Germany no longer co-operating, clearly, new structures are required and we should take a lead there.
Finally, we have to re-energise the Commonwealth, again as the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, remarked. It is a safe harbour for the neo non-aligned nations of the world which do not want to be under either American or Chinese hegemony. Oddly enough, mention of the Commonwealth still seems to be very difficult for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office today to come to terms with. It is in fact the network of the future that is going to help more than possibly any other.
I divide the world between those who have grasped the enormity of what is now happening—the biggest shift since the Gutenberg printing press, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution—and those who have not grasped it and remain glued like errant insects to the surface of events. Events now will not wait for interminable reviews, commissions and councils. Whether in politics, business and investment or social development, events, technology and innovation will pass them all by, and are already doing so.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Cryer) (Lab)
I apologise for interrupting. I just point out that, apart from the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, every speaker so far has gone well over the seven-minute limit. If we carry on like this, it will eat into the wind-up speeches, so could we observe the seven-minute limit, please?
Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Northover not just on securing this debate but on the width and vision expressed in her remarks.
The news from the Middle East gives some relief to Israel and respite to Gaza, but, after conflict, there must be accountability if a rules-based international order is to survive. As a boy, I saw the scenes from Belsen and I felt relief when the war ended. Vital to the durability of peace was Nuremberg, the tribunal which brought the leaders responsible for the world war and the Holocaust to account.
The Draft Code of Offences against Peace and the Security of Mankind was drawn up under the auspices of the United Nations. Decades later, that code was applied in separate international tribunals for Rwanda, for the former Yugoslavia and for Sierra Leone. American judges, among others, shaped the jurisprudence of international criminal law. American lawyers served as senior prosecutors and defence counsel.
In 1998, it was a delegation from the United States which played a key role in negotiating the Rome statute and its rules, establishing the International Criminal Court. Some 122 countries, including the United Kingdom, voted for the Rome treaty and seven, including the United States, China and Israel, voted against. In 2000, President Clinton, despite that contrary vote, signed the Rome treaty for the United States and said that
“we wish to remain engaged in making the ICC an instrument of impartial and effective justice in the years to come”.
He did not, however, submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification. Jesse Helms, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proclaimed it “dead in the water”, and George W Bush, on coming into office, agreed.
Last November, warrants were issued by the ICC for the arrest of the Israeli Prime Minister and his former Defence Minister, together with three now-deceased leaders of Hamas. There must be other Hamas leaders in the frame for their unprovoked slaughter in October 2023. Hamas puts the figure of deaths in Gaza at over 46,000 in 14 months; the Lancet last week reported 64,260 deaths in nine months. To put those figures in perspective, the number of US military killed in the Korean War over a period of three years was 36,516. The impressive Vietnam War memorial in Washington carries 58,320 names from eight years of US involvement in that conflict. We can see how that compares with the deaths in Gaza.
Can Hamas truly justify its savage attacks? Were the retaliatory deaths inflicted by Israel in Gaza proportionate self-defence? Who will decide? I know from experience, and respect, the Israeli system of military justice. I have no reason to conclude that Israel’s Military Advocate General is either unwilling or unable to conduct the necessary investigations and criminal proceedings, if warranted, into battlefield crimes by IDF forces. But Mr Netanyahu, as Prime Minister, is not subject to the military system of justice in Israel.
In his opening in the Nuremberg trials in 1947, the American Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, the lead prosecutor, said in a blazing speech:
“The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched.”
The International Criminal Court has the benefit of the procedures and safeguards set out in its charter, with the support of a vast majority of the world’s nations. It is a fair and impartial court, not under-resourced for its output. It is an important part of the architecture of the world order.
However, a Bill passed in the United States House of Representatives just last week instructs the US President to freeze property assets and deny visas to any foreigners who materially or financially contribute to the ICC’s efforts to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute a protected person. Protected persons are defined as all current and former military and government officials of the United States—and allies that have not consented to the court’s jurisdiction, such as Israel. Brian Mast, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said:
“America is passing this law because a kangaroo court is seeking to arrest the prime minister of our great ally.”
He accused the ICC of anti-Semitism in prosecuting Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity, in an equivalence with leaders of Hamas. He further said:
“Do not get in the way of America or our allies trying to bring our people home. You will be given no quarter, and again, you will certainly not be welcome on American soil.”
Similarly, Senator John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota and the Majority Leader, referred on the Floor of the Senate to, “the ICC’s rogue actions.”
To categorise the ICC as a kangaroo court and its proceedings as “rogue actions” undermines the rule of law. It casts doubt upon the validity of Nuremberg, the very mechanism that brought justice, if not peace, to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and a durable and lasting settlement in Europe. Will the Minister explicitly tell us what the reaction of His Majesty’s Government is to this pernicious Bill in the House of Representatives and what representations they will make to the US Government about it?
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
Today’s debate, introduced so eloquently and powerfully by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, is certainly timely and is perhaps overdue. One would need to be blind not to recognise that, in recent years, the rules-based international order has taken some heavy hits and has failed to make much serious progress towards the goals subscribed to by all members of the United Nations—whether they are reversing and mitigating climate change, increasing freer and fairer trade, reducing world poverty, combating global pandemics or many of the other pressing challenges.
In Ukraine and the Middle East we see wars raging—perhaps to be paused this Sunday in Gaza, I hope—that defy the rules of the UN charter itself and of international humanitarian law. The prospects for regress rather than progress in the period immediately ahead are all too evident. The hard fact is that this order, so laboriously constructed in the decades following the Second World War, is being deconstructed before our eyes.
We need to recognise that the proclaimed champions of this order, among whom successive British Governments have ranked themselves, bear some of the responsibility for that lamentable state of affairs. The sharp decline in our overseas aid spending from the still existent legal commitment to 0.7% of gross national income, which is now fast disappearing in the rearview mirror; our weak performance on trade issues since we unwisely decided to leave the EU; our failure to head off serious outbreaks of war in Europe, the Middle East and Africa—all have contributed to the failure to meet these challenges, which are to our own future security and stability every bit as much as they are to others’. Too often, warm words subscribed to at global gatherings have not been followed up by effective action.
Moreover, we have failed to recognise that the watchword we call a rules-based international order, and the detailed application of its component parts, have not been meaningfully communicated to our electorates. In many western countries, people are turning inwards and backing policies that are likely to make matters worse if the consequences of trade protectionism and the appeasement of the enemies of global order during the 1930s are anything to go by.
Some of this continued deterioration is likely to come upon us pretty fast, perhaps as early as the end of this month when a new Trump presidency begins in the US. It does not require much clairvoyance to predict that the US will again withdraw from its commitment to the Paris climate change accords. What will our response be? Will we simply wring our hands or collaborate with others to ensure that the next COP meeting, in Belém in Brazil, will keep alive and act more effectively towards the build-up of renewable energy resources and the reduction of carbon emissions from fossil fuels?
On world trade, how will we react if new tariffs are imposed unilaterally and trade wars break out? Will we be drawn into tit-for-tat retaliation, the damaging consequences of which, not only economically but in security policy terms, were clear for all to see in the 1930s and 1940s? Or will we work collectively with like-minded countries to sustain open, tariff-free trade and the equitable resolution of trade disputes—in particular to ensure that those benefits reach developing countries?
We must also face the grim reality that there will be other global health pandemics. Negotiations for a new WHO-based pandemic convention stalled last May and are continuing into 2025. Will we work wholeheartedly for intensified systems that will ensure earlier warnings of outbreaks? Will we back arrangements for the equitable distribution of vaccines as they are developed without leaving poorer countries behind? Will we do that whether or not the universal acceptance of those new rules can be achieved?
These are just three fields where urgent action is already needed and is likely to be required in the immediate future. The Prime Minister is clearly right to say that they are not susceptible to clear-cut binary choices, but hard and, in some cases, costly choices will have to be made if our backing for a rules-based international order is to be more than mere empty words; if that order is to be protected from falling into decay and disintegration and is to be developed and strengthened for the future; and if we are not to find ourselves in a world where our own security is to be diminished and put at risk.
I have painted a rather bleak picture. That is not to deny or belittle the good news of the Gaza ceasefire, but it is to relativise it. I hope the Minister, in replying, will find it in herself to offer us some reassurance on how the Government will point the way ahead.
Lord Tugendhat (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on sticking to the seven-minute speaking limit; he is the first person to have done so. This is a very broad, wide-ranging and complex subject and I will concentrate on its economic, international trade and financial aspects—or some of them, at any rate—and try to answer the question posed by my noble friend Lord Howell as to why.
As with the other aspects of the international rules-based order, the principles and institutional structures were set up by the United States, with some assistance from us, in the immediate post-war years. Therein lies one of the problems: the world has changed out of all recognition since then, and this has led to efforts by China and others to adjust the system to reflect more closely their rise in the world. That, in turn, has led to practices that challenge the systems and bring them under stress. But the real nub of the problem is the fact that the international order no longer reflects very closely the international realities, and until that is put right, we will continue to have major problems, with people breaking the rules and seeking to undermine them.
The main challenge, as has already been made clear by a number of speakers, now comes from the United States. That is not just because of the rise of Trump; it is the culmination of a number of factors. For most of its existence, the rules-based international economic order worked not just in the overall interests of the United States but, broadly speaking, to the benefit of most sections of its society. The great majority of people shared in the fruits of an expanding economy, enhanced wealth and widening opportunities. Of course, that was also true of other industrialised countries and countries that were not industrialised at the beginning but found ways of taking advantage of the opportunities that were open to them.
But in recent years, the system has increasingly worked in another direction. Those with the right education and skills, in the right part of the country, have continued to do very well—indeed, in some cases, exceptionally so—but as new industries have arisen and prospered, others have gone into decline, often terminally. Those who were dependent on these industries, such as steel, motor manufacturing and textiles, have seen their livelihoods disappear and with it their status in society. Wealth inequalities have widened enormously and social tensions have increased. These factors have fuelled the rise of the MAGA movement in the United States and the rise of Donald Trump as its spokesman. He reflects the frustrations, disappointments and anxieties of a very large segment of American society.
In addition, we have had two further problems: one, of course, is the resentment caused by immigration, and the other is the resentment caused by the strong sense in many parts of the United States that a number of their closest allies, who benefited considerably from trading with America, have freeloaded in defence. I am afraid that we, like other Europeans, stand guilty under that head.
Trump has been elected in large part to put all this right, from the point of view of his supporters. We do not know what exactly he will do, nor how he will prioritise among the incompatibilities of a number of his objectives, but we do know that we have arrived at a point where the leader of the country that was the principal founder of the international rules-based order is going to approach this problem on the basis of transactional, unilateral negotiations without regard to the rule books or to the views of multilateral institutions that might shackle or inhibit American power. This is a novel and very worrying situation, and one where the Government will need great wisdom and support if they are to carry the British ship of state through these turbulent waters.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, I welcome very much the debate introduced by my noble friend—which is absolutely necessary at this time—the way she has introduced it and the shape it has taken.
It is perhaps inevitable that any rules-based international system of order is going to be determined by the relative political, economic and military strengths of the parties. Nevertheless, these rules were constructed with a motivation to reduce conflict and increase the space for better living conditions. What has threatened that order in the last 20 years has been a series of crises that have undermined increasing prosperity and threatened living standards. We had the financial crash, the growth of mega-multinational corporations largely outside the control of Governments, a global pandemic, accelerating climate change and an outbreak of conflicts. Big-player states have turned in on themselves and become protectionist, suspicious and expansionist: the actions of Putin’s Russia and the rhetoric of Trump smack of craving for Lebensraum.
Sadly, I have to say that the UK has not only been prey to these developments but, to some extent, in the vanguard. When a once-major political party threatens to take the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights and hypocritically promotes large-scale immigration while then demonising immigrants as a prime cause of social breakdown, it is clear that human rights and common humanity are at risk. The driver of Brexit, which has been mentioned, was a diversion to blame failure at home on outside factors but also to attack international agreements as hostile to our national interests. It is questionable whether the narrow victory for Brexit would have been achieved if the Ukraine war and Russia’s aggression had been foreseen. As a result, the outcome of Brexit is a weaker UK and a weaker EU—a divided Europe in the face of dire threats. I very much welcomed my right honourable friend Ed Davey’s speech this week on how we rebuild our relations with Europe.
The incoming US Administration threaten intervention in Greenland, Panama and Canada, even as they are handed a ceasefire in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin has a twisted vision of history that makes Ukraine the cradle of Russia and the demise of the Soviet Union a disaster that needs to be reversed. Aggression and conflict, usually promoted by male bullies, do nothing to enhance the welfare or security of citizens who crave peace and security.
On Tuesday this week, I raised my concern about diminished UK engagement in Africa. On the one hand, the continent has huge potential, but corruption and rapid population growth hold it back. Yet Russia and China are moving in to secure economic resource and political advantage, while we stand back and let them do it with their total disregard for transparency and support for anti-democratic forces. The UK’s behaviour in recent years has undermined our integrity and trustworthiness, which surely we need to rebuild. Many countries in Africa will inevitably accept involvement from Russia and China, but many would also welcome much more engagement from us. In my years as chair of the International Development Committee, and since, I have found a surprising reservoir of good will towards the United Kingdom, which we seriously undervalue.
When Boris Johnson called overseas development
“a giant cash machine in the sky”,
he showed not only total ignorance of the transformational impact of our development programmes but a lack of respect for the partners with whom we were working. When he followed this up with a chaotic merger of two departments and a sudden drastic slashing of the budget, he left development partners shocked and disillusioned. When he threatened to tear up agreements with the EU post Brexit, he exposed the UK, once a proud upholder of the rule of law and what we were pleased to describe as an international rules-based system, as, in effect, tantamount to pirates. People’s hopes were dashed, lives were lost and a process of building resilience and capacity to sustained poverty reduction and a path to prosperity was summarily terminated.
If we expect countries in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia to have a favourable attitude to the UK and our role in the world, we will require to invest in rebuilding trust and integrity. If the international rules fall away and the world breaks into like-minded authoritarian blocs, we should not be surprised if many choose to throw their lot in with the BRICS, given how little leadership we have offered them in alternative. We need to act urgently in rebuilding relationships with partners who would welcome the right approach, whether it be the EU, the Commonwealth or the global South, but there is not much time.
Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)
I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for her masterful introduction to this debate. I intend to drill down into one of the threats she noted—the one we all face from unregulated technologies and the unchecked influence of technology billionaires. Those threats are eroding the very foundations of accountability, equity and co-operation that sustain our global system.
Elon Musk’s current global dominance exemplifies the dangers of concentrated power in unregulated domains. His Starlink satellite network has become indispensable for global communications, particularly in remote regions and conflict zones. Yet its control rests solely with Musk, allowing his whims to dictate access to vital infrastructure. This monopoly undermines state sovereignty and creates a “tragedy of the commons” where a shared resource is privatised for profit.
X has become a global epicentre for misinformation. Under Elon’s leadership, the platform has abandoned traditional content moderation, dismantled trust and safety teams and replaced verification with paid subscriptions. This has allowed bad actors to amplify lies about politicians, elections, public health and climate change. Musk himself, with 200 million followers, has promoted misleading narratives that have been viewed billions of times. His controversial comments on Taiwan and international affairs highlight the risk of unelected individuals wielding disproportionate influence over our international discourse.
X’s reliance on a crowd-sourced “Community Notes” system to fact check content has proven ineffective. Studies show that this approach fails to curb engagement with misinformation, instead creating a chaotic information landscape where truth is obscured. Musk has a deep aversion to transparency, such as restricting data access for researchers. This further compounds the problem, making it nearly impossible to assess the scale of harm caused by his platform.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is following a similar path. In a recent announcement, Meta revealed it would replace its third-party fact-checking program with a community-driven system akin to X’s. Zuckerberg’s disingenuous justification was that this is a return to “free expression”, but clearly it is a political move aligned with the incoming Trump. By removing fact-checkers and reducing content visibility, Meta is becoming another breeding ground for disinformation. The decision to rely on community moderation not only weakens safeguards against falsehoods but also places the burden of truth-telling on users who may lack expertise or accountability.
Unregulated artificial intelligence compounds these issues. AI systems are already linked to biased decision-making, privacy violations and job displacement. Worse still, authoritarian regimes exploit AI for mass surveillance and censorship, while democratic nations struggle to regulate its misuse. The lack of global AI governance leaves a vacuum where corporations prioritise profit over public safety, fostering inequality and undermining human rights.
We are ill-equipped to address these challenges. By enabling private actors to dominate critical sectors such as digital communications and AI development, we have ceded control over public goods to corporate interests. This shift not only weakens state authority but also exacerbates global inequality and political instability. Mr Musk’s accumulation of power is one of the most stark outcomes of this failure:
In my opinion, it is not sufficient to say that our UK-focused Online Safety Act will mean we are protected. The information ecosystem is global, and the inter-relationship between traditional media and social media is complex. Noise and nonsensical opinions travel fast.
So, what now? Ofcom must accelerate its enforcement of the Online Safety Act road map to ensure platforms comply with their duties as soon as possible. This includes holding companies accountable for illegal content and misinformation through fines or criminal penalties. The Act, however, as this House well knows, has limited powers over disinformation. We need to consider how to address legal but harmful content, such as election disinformation and health-related falsehoods that destabilise society. We should consider including a mandate for transparency in algorithms and a requirement that platforms such as X and Meta publish regular audits on content moderation. In addition, platforms should be legally required to share data with independent researchers to enable real-time monitoring of misinformation trends. This can empower us to identify high-risk narratives.
Secondly, we must bring together the many skills initiatives to ensure our local and our global institutions are equipped with the digital understanding to think through current and future challenges. To counter both foreign interference and domestic vulnerabilities, we need a workforce equipped with cutting-edge technical expertise. Expanding initiatives such as the UK Institute for Technical Skills and Strategy will help us build capacity in cybersecurity, AI governance and digital resilience. But it is not enough. We must also ensure collaboration between universities, employers and training providers. The UK Government, where they are able, must keep up pressure on our multinational partners to also invest in talent.
I want to end with a personal anecdote. In 2022, I was on the board of directors of Twitter and deeply involved in the sale to Elon Musk. As chair of the nomination and governance committee and the compensation committee, we had multiple interactions. In one conversation I had with him, he told me—and I quote directly—that he had “solved the climate crisis by inventing electric vehicles, solved interplanetary travel by inventing SpaceX” and was now going to “save democracy by joining the board of Twitter”. At the time, I was bowled over by the arrogance of his words and thought he was wildly overestimating both his own power and that of the platform. How naive I was. Fast forward to today and we have a man who, through an investment of $250 million in a presidential campaign, has increased his own wealth by $200 billion and has become a figure who dominates global headlines on a near daily basis. He exerts massive cultural and geopolitical influence. It is easy to see him as a cartoon-like supervillain. We do so at our own peril.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, I too pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for introducing this debate and for doing so brilliantly. It is so important that we recognise why the world embarked on a moral course after the Second World War. It was designed to prevent war. It was designed to prevent the escalation of conflicts into war, to prevent the commission of atrocity crimes and acts of gross inhumanity, and to create a better world. It was out of that sense of altruism that we saw the creation of institutions which have lasted until now.
Even though we have a changed world, as the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, has described, those institutions matter. The creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was based on a set of shared values of that time, and the International Bar Association—I declare an interest as director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute—was set up at the same time to bring together lawyers from around the world and all the bar associations of the world to ensure that the law was respected, and that law was part and parcel of that new order.
We followed up with the renewal of the Geneva conventions, seeing that they were not delivering just and fair war. The bombing of Dresden is an example: the new Geneva conventions made after the war said that total bombardments such as that of Dresden amounted to collective punishment of civilian populations and should not happen, and that there had to be rules for the conduct of war. Then there were the subsequent conventions to prevent genocide, to protect refugees and to eliminate discrimination against women—we know so many of them. The idea was that “never again” did not apply to just one community; it applied to all of humanity. We should never again stand by while human beings were subjected to terrible crimes.
For over 70 years, the memory of that war seared the minds of my parents’ generation until they died, and indeed of my generation because we were the children of that. We knew the stories of our parents fighting in the war and enduring the bombings of their homes. My mother lost her home and was left with small children while my father was in the Army abroad. Those experiences created empathy for those who suffered around the world, and that was why having a rules-based order mattered so much.
The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, tells us that the world has changed, and that is true. We have seen a difference in the position of Russia evolving into a criminal mafia-run state. China is authoritarian still but wants to be a market player. Both of those are on the Security Council and blocking many of the things that that one would want to see being done. So it is true that there needs to be change in some of those institutions, but what does not need to change is the commitment to justice and peace.
There has to be accountability, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas said, if there is to be justice. That means there has to be law. There have to be courts and prosecutions. In the same way that domestically we need to have courts in order to resolve disputes and deal with crime that affects our communities, there have to be international courts to deal with the ways in which states behave towards each other, regulating relationships internally and domestically as well as externally and internationally.
All this has been documented in other speeches, but we somehow did not expect democracies to be dismissive of the rules. However, we are now seeing democracies being created where there are populist nationalist Governments or isolationist Governments who are interested only in their own sovereignty. After the war, there was a recognition that a certain amount of pooling of sovereignty was essential if we wanted to make a better world and we needed to have international law; law has to apply. However, the institutions that maintain democracy are under attack because we have new kinds of Governments, and I am afraid that many of them do not believe in the importance of law. We have seen in Hungary the capture of the judiciary, for example; while in the United States we are seeing something similar, where the judiciary is supposed to deliver what the President or Government of the day want. The independence of the judiciary has been abandoned.
There are attacks on the media, or appropriation of the media so that it is owned by friends of the Government, which means that corruption and crimes by the state are not exposed. Then there is the whole business of the dismissal of civil servants who are fulfilling their independent status. We are denuding democracies of the checks and balances that are essential to just societies.
I reiterate what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, about the importance of multilateralism and partnerships in our world. That is the only way in which we can have a world that will create peace and justice. However, I would say that it is the economic model of neoliberalism that has allowed money, not our common humanity, to become the supreme value.
Markets, as we know, know no morality; they are amoral. It is we who have to inject morality into markets, but then we hear from someone such as the noble Lord, Lord Frost, about market fundamentalism being the name of the game today. What that has done is create huge gaps between the rich and the poor. It has created a whole cadre of billionaires in our world, so rich that they can buy government—or whatever they want—and now running the technologies which are corrupting our democracies.
The whole business of that combination of neoliberal economics—low-tax economies, getting rid of welfare, every man for himself—is about deregulation. That is what the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, was talking about: deregulation is the name of the new order being created and we have to resist it. That is why it is so important that our Government are standing by the rule of law and the role of international courts.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for introducing this vital debate and congratulate her on her speech. As other noble Lords have noted, the international rules-based system is under unprecedented stress. It faces not only the test of time and a world vastly different from the one it was designed for but the shortcomings of our collective response to global challenges, from climate change and mass migration to artificial intelligence and advanced weapons systems. Revisionist autocratic powers seek to disrupt and displace the system, while regional powers pursue nuclear and missile programmes and terrorism. Populist movements and illiberal democracies challenge global economic integration.
The founders of the international order could also not have envisaged the way in which the large tech companies operate as quasi-states, often prioritising profits over democracy. Unregulated algorithms amplify harmful content, fuelling disinformation and even ethnic violence, as tragically witnessed in the genocide against the Rohingya. With more active conflicts occurring now than at any time since the Second World War, global cohesion, stability and security have entered a dangerous phase.
As we approach the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz this month, we should remember those who perished, reflect on our values and never stop learning from that tragedy: never allow its lessons to be algorithmed away, diminished or deliberately reinterpreted by those who seek to distort history. The international institutions, treaties, and laws we rely on today were born from the two world wars and the particular tragedy of the Holocaust. Britain played a proud and pivotal role in establishing these foundations. As prosecutor Ben Ferencz said after the Nuremberg trials:
“I learned that if we did not devote ourselves to developing effective world law, the same cruel mentality that made the Holocaust possible might one day destroy the entire human race”.
Today, these institutions need more than our respect or fond memories. They require us to recommit to their principles and work to strengthen and reform them. It is widely accepted that Russia and China pose primary challenges to the international order. Both seek to reshape it: Russia through force and subversion, China through subtler means. One crucial way to counter this is by defending—and adhering to—the international rules and norms that we helped to establish, remembering that international law is not discretionary: something to be ignored when it is inconvenient and adhered to only when convenient.
After Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, our collective response showed international co-operation to uphold international law at its most effective, with Ukrainian courage bolstered by decisive multilateral action. On the other hand, our darkest moments—the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica, the invasion of Iraq, the impunity for atrocities in Syria and, most recently, the mounting catastrophes in Sudan and Gaza—occurred when we disregarded our collective responsibility to uphold international norms.
While we all welcome the ceasefire in Gaza and hope that it holds, and deplore Hamas’s terrorist attacks, we must acknowledge that the Israeli Government, with the support of the United States, the United Kingdom and other friends and allies, has ignored numerous orders from both the ICJ and the International Criminal Court to comply with humanitarian law. In the words of Omer Bartov, the Israeli-American genocide scholar, these acts have destroyed
“the entire edifice of international law that was put into place after WWII”.
Whatever one might make of the merits of this assertion, the fact that it had to be made at all is tragic.
Britain too has fallen short on occasions. Between 2015 and 2023, we dropped from second to eighth place in the global humanitarian aid rankings, even as crises multiplied worldwide. While these cuts may have saved some money in the short term, they have cost us in international credibility and soft power. At the same time, our responses to human rights violations have shown some inconsistencies. In Ethiopia, we seem to have prioritised trade over justice. In the DRC, where M23 rebels rape and pillage with Rwandan support, we defer to President Kagame. In Sudan, we would rather not talk about external enablers. In Gaza, while rightly supporting Israel in its response and defence after 7 October, we have failed in our duty to be a candid friend and to defend and uphold international humanitarian law.
Theodore Roosevelt once observed that the most unpleasant truth is a safer companion than a pleasant falsehood. If we believe that we are safer in a world without rules or that we can pay no price for selectively applying them, we gravely misunderstand our own interests. Our international engagement is not about idealism; it is about self-interest. During moments such as the Falklands War or after the Novichok attacks on British soil, most of our allies stood with us because they believed in shared principles. We must therefore reaffirm our commitment to international institutions, investing in diplomacy and deterrence while leveraging soft power through mechanisms such as the BBC World Service. Most importantly, we must restore moral principles at the heart of our foreign policy, not just through stirring rhetoric but through consistent actions that reflect those values.
Human nature remains constant. It is prone, as ever, to error, greed and conflict. This reality demands a response from international institutions and sustained efforts to address poverty, injustice and conflict. The rules-based order is not merely a diplomatic construct; it is humanity’s best hope for lasting peace.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Northover on securing this debate and on her excellent and wide-ranging introduction.
After the terrible attacks on 11 September 2001, which killed 2,977 people, President George W Bush said:
“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”.
The world was supposedly divided into good and evil. It is argued that, with 9/11, we saw the prelude to widespread conflict. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died, many were displaced, and we saw a refugee crisis as a result. It is argued that the global war on terror has served to blur the lines of war and human rights. We have seen this in the abandonment of Afghanistan.
The international humanitarian law principles of distinction and proportionality were a touchstone. We believed in and provided important protections for civilians, as well as medical and humanitarian staff. These are the bedrock principles on which the United Nations was founded, as has been mentioned. Proportionality prohibits attacks that would cause excessive civilian damage, for example.
On the current conflict in Gaza, we have heard recently with some relief that there is to be a ceasefire. We can only hope and pray that it will lead to a lasting peace and an end to the killing and destruction. We have witnessed graphically a 21st-century manifestation of the erosion of international law, in which few to none of the restraints set out by the post-World War II system have been respected. The United Nations and the ICC have been under attack.
The law of occupation, based on the Fourth Geneva Convention, is relevant here. Israel is recognised as an occupying force in the West Bank. It is also effectively occupying Gaza, its borders, airspace and coastal waters. Occupational law prohibits the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, collective punishment and other measures that harm the civilian population. The Israel-Palestine conflict is exposing the inherent contradictions in the West’s stance as guarantor of the international order. It is something that we all believed was a given. Since Hamas’s attack back in October 2023, in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 240 taken hostage, Israel’s air and ground campaign has killed over 46,000 Palestinians. As my noble friend Lord Thomas outlined, that is being seen now as a gross understatement; far more people have been killed or are buried and missing under the rubble.
It is hugely depressing that millions of people in this country and around the world now believe that there is an inherent racism at the heart of British foreign policy in respect of Gaza. I do not say that lightly. People who are non-Europeans, from the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean—people who look like my family and with heritage such as mine—are deemed not worthy of similar protections. That is being said much more consistently, and I can say that it is felt very keenly. When Putin bombs hospitals and attacks civilians, there is rightly instant condemnation. Thousands of Palestinians have been blown up and killed, and almost all hospitals have been destroyed, with barely a murmur from the United Kingdom Government. Why is that? Why are Palestinians not deserving of the same protections given to the millions of Ukrainians who were able to flee, with hundreds of thousands being rightly welcomed with open arms here in the UK?
The majority of Governments and people in the region, and globally, do not support Israel’s actions. Opinion is increasingly citing the clear contradictions between policy in Ukraine and Palestine as double standards. Younger generations in particular are increasingly frustrated, expressing their strong opposition to and outrage at what they believe to be the collapse of the rules-based international law, especially when they see viral videos of death and destruction across the internet—including, sadly and depressingly, those of Israeli soldiers openly singing and dancing in Gaza, many wearing dead or displaced Palestinian women’s underwear. This is a reality.
This situation will almost certainly breed even more despair and animosity—and more radicalisation. If you have lost your entire family, your home, your school and your neighbourhood, you may feel that you have very little left to lose. Depriving Gazans of electricity, water, food and medical aid, as well as targeting residential areas, hospitals, mosques, churches, schools and refugee camps, is clearly incompatible with the Geneva conventions. These attacks are seen as nothing short of a war crime, and history must eventually hold those responsible to account. Our rules-based system is increasingly weakened.
Andrew Miller was the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs under the Biden Administration. He resigned last year and has since gone public in expressing his concerns about the role of the US in the war. He said:
“I’m unaware of any red lines being imposed beyond the normal language about complying with international law, international humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict”.
International institutions such as the UN appear increasingly weakened and in need of reform, as has been mentioned by others. This apparent double standard undermines the rules-based global order and plays into the hands of the extremists and authoritarian leaders, who we have heard so much about. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, has just articulated that. They will exploit these inconsistencies.
Many believe that untold damage has been done to the standing of the United Kingdom. Many are now saying, with increasingly loud voices, globally, that they do not want to be lectured by western countries about international law and human rights. An honest and constructive approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is vital. Why has this country, with its long history in the region, in effect absolved itself of any responsibility other than to support and facilitate these ongoing breaches of human rights?
Over many decades, the UK has led the way in effective diplomacy and soft power, underpinned by a strong sense of regional responsibility. The catastrophic war in Gaza is a test of our commitment to a rules-based international order. Now more than ever, we must rely on the moral compass of international law to guide our actions. To quote Martin Luther King:
“It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people”.
Baroness Moyo (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the rules-based international order exists to support two primary goals. The first, as indicated in the title of this debate, is to offer global cohesion, stability and security. The second, I believe, is to provide a foundation for the global economy to grow and prosper. I am speaking in this debate because I believe that economic growth ought to be explicitly part of this conversation.
The ability of the rules-based international order to drive global economic growth rests on globalisation. However, as we know, since the 2008 global financial crisis, economic growth has slowed and globalisation has stalled. According to Bloomberg, globalisation peaked in 2009. Since then, the world has continued to fracture, through the 2020 pandemic and the rise in geopolitical conflicts, both kinetic and ideological.
We see widening fissures in the five key pillars of globalisation. The first is trade in goods and services. According to the World Trade Organization, the volume of global trade slumped in 2023. Looking ahead, estimates suggest that the growth in worldwide trade volumes will flatline. This reflects both the slowdown in global economic growth and a more siloed world, as the world order is replaced with a proliferation of bilateral agreements and the reconstitution of regional trading blocs—think, for example, of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The threat of higher tariffs by the incoming US President, Donald Trump, will only accelerate this trend.
The second pillar is capital flows. Global investment is being hampered by growing protectionism and regulatory bans on the flow of capital. According to UNCTAD, global foreign direct investment fell by 2% to $1.3 trillion in 2023, partly because of rising geopolitical tensions. Investment restrictions, such as the US ban on investment in Chinese technology, have contributed to weak global FDI since 2021.
The third pillar, the free movement of people across borders, has been interrupted by national Governments looking to stem the flow of disorderly migration into their countries. The United Nations estimates that there are now over 120 million refugees and displaced people globally—the highest figure on record.
The fissure in the fourth pillar is the “splinternet”, which refers to the fierce competition between technology leaders, such as the United States and the West versus China. A more geopolitically and economically balkanised world with competing factions must surely make the world a less safe place. This is particularly worrisome at a time when innovation in AI and quantum computing are leaping ahead. Technological fissures heighten the risk of cyberwarfare in a way that can only destabilise the world order.
The fifth and final pillar, multilateralism and global co-operation, is being undermined on two fronts: via growing economic nationalism across developed countries, and through the rise of competition from new configurations of countries such as the BRICS, which is a group of 10 of the largest emerging countries, representing 45% of the world’s population and 35% of world GDP. These new groupings reroute and reprice global trade and commodities, and can often be dominated by nations which have stark ideological differences with the West. The worry here is that such differences make it more difficult to tackle or confront global pandemics, climate challenges or financial crises in a unified way.
Clearly, based on the reversal of globalisation’s important pillars, the rules-based international system is at breaking point. It should come as no surprise that with a hobbled rules-based system and deglobalisation comes slower and lower economic growth.
As an example, here in the United Kingdom, annual GDP growth averaged 3% in the era of globalisation between 1993 and 2007. Since globalisation peaked, between 2009 and 2023, average GDP in this country has halved to 1.5%. This deglobalising world slows human progress and impedes improvements in living standards. At this time of deglobalisation, the International Monetary Fund already predicts that the world’s leading economies will struggle to reach 3% per year—the minimum required to double per capita incomes in a generation, which is 25 years.
I know that it has become unfashionable to promote globalisation. However, the United Kingdom must remain steadfast as an advocate for global institutions and treaties that can defend and sustain the rules-based system. There are efforts to step up and reinvigorate multilateralism. In 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted the pact for the future, pledging a new beginning in multilateralism that focuses on peace and stability, sustainable development and digital co-operation. However, there was no mention of action on global economic growth. Yet, actively supporting a global economic growth agenda is a pre-requisite for global cohesion, stability and security.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for initiating the debate. Yesterday, I met her in the lift. She said, “I’d like to thank you for your contribution tomorrow”. I said, “Hang on; wait till you’ve heard it and then you can decide”.
I have spent most of my life in some part of foreign policy. I was in the European Parliament for 25 years. I spent five years in the Council of Europe and 15 doing odd jobs for the European Commission. As such, I have seen quite a lot of the world—some 90 countries in all, some of them more times than I would have liked.
I start by giving an example from the Council of Europe. One of the problems with the international order is that it sometimes gets beyond itself. For three years, I was the chair of the Council of Europe committee for the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. Of course, everybody says, “Oh, Russia never carried out any decisions”. That is wrong. The worst offender was Italy and the second worst was Turkey. The Russians were not too bad at carrying out decisions of the court that had no real political consequences. Beyond that, they were not very good at all.
I was on that committee when we debated the court’s decision to enforce prisoners’ votes in Britain, which David Cameron—now the noble Lord, Lord Cameron—said made him sick. I did quite a bit of work on this. One of the things I discovered was that most of the judges who had voted that Britain should give votes to prisoners came from countries that gave no rights to prisoners at all. Secondly, many of those judges did not understand the English prison system. In particular, they did not understand the difference between a remanded and a convicted prisoner. Thirdly, when it came down to it, they were open to negotiation. Thanks to the great skill of David Lidington, we managed to solve the case, get the judgment amended and accepted so that, once again, Britain was a country with no outstanding judgments. I mention this because there has been a lot of mission creep in international jurisdiction, which I do not think has done international law a tremendous amount of good.
The Court of Justice of the European Union and the WTO are unique in being courts committed to a very central, tightly drawn range of circumstances, but some of the other courts—including the International Criminal Court—have a tendency to go well beyond where it is sensible for them to go. I see that some noble Lords object to that. To issue an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu is downright foolish, because it will not be implemented. It undermines the authority of the court. People look at it and say, “What a bunch of jokers. Surely, they don’t expect Netanyahu to get off the plane in London and be banged up by the British coppers”.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
Does the noble Lord know that, when a warrant was issued for Kenyatta, he got on a plane, went to The Hague, submitted himself to the court and said, “I’m here to answer it. I have a defence to this”? It gave him permission to return to his country and to continue to lead it before there were eventually hearings. Why does Mr Netanyahu not do that? You have to remember that the warrant is in relation not to his conduct of the war but his refusal to allow humanitarian aid into the country to feed the population.
Lord Balfe (Con)
I claim damage for extra time, Mr Whip. I take that point, but I am making the point that the Netanyahu incident did the ICC no good at all.
My second point will also be a bit controversial. I believe that, if we are to redefine the international order, we have to bring the Russians and Chinese on board. It is as simple as that. You cannot do it without having the whole international order represented around the table. The Russians recently had their BRICS conference in Kazan. A number of Commonwealth countries were at that conference instead of in Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, because they judged it might be in their better interests. One of the problems we have is that the impact of sanctions has pulled Russian foreign trade in a southern direction. Suddenly, India, Pakistan, China and the countries in between are of far more importance to it than western Europe. We need to take that on board.
We also need to look at the way we construct the international order and give it a serious jolt because, finally, we need to look at the perception of Britain by its own citizens. As my noble friend Lord Howell, a good friend, has said in the past, capitalism has failed the young. There is an increasing distaste for democracy. My children know many people who say, “What the hell does it matter? We need someone who can get things done”. That, frankly, is one of the appeals of Nigel Farage. People look at him and think, “He’d soon sort you lot out, wouldn’t he?”
We are in a very dangerous situation. One of the questions that both major parties need to address is how to bring the younger people of Britain back into communion with them. They have fallen out of love with us. Not one of my children voted Conservative at the election —or Labour. They used to vote for both. A lot of the people in their circle have an attitude towards the two major parties—incidentally, not towards the third party—that they are finished, are past it and have nothing to offer them. They cannot offer them a house or a decent job and have frozen their tax thresholds. I think I have had enough of the extra time I claimed. Thank you all for listening.
Lord Mountevans (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, on identifying such a massively important issue for our time and on her excellent introduction. If I may, I am not going to predict what President Trump may or may not do, although I do share the concerns voiced by some present. To the extent that the UK seeks to be a force for good, what I principally wish to address is remarks concerning preparedness in changed and changing circumstances.
Perhaps challenges to the rules-based international order started most blatantly back in 2008 when the world witnessed the Russo-Georgian War. Six years later, in 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea and started a war in eastern Ukraine, which eventually transformed into a full-blown attack on the country, and which continues to this day. In the meantime, putting to one side its annexation of Tibet in 1951, China has been attempting to redraw rights of sea passage in the South China Sea by constructing an array of extensive military facilities and has systematically eroded Hong Kong’s freedoms. Alarmingly, it has also on multiple occasions categorically asserted its aim to unify democratic Taiwan with mainland China, threatening to do so by force if necessary.
But it is not just Russia and China, though they are the most important disrupters. There are numerous countries and regimes that are not full participants in the rules-based order or which, like Iran and North Korea, pretty much play by their own rules. The result is a world where an increasing number of nations and societies put a low value on human life—President Putin does not value the lives of conscripts and convicts at all—where there is the highest ever number of conflicts in process, and where the UN is highly challenged due to players who do not accept the current rules. In particular, Russia and China have a veto on the Security Council. A significant number of countries feel that the system is not working for them and in the meantime, need, greed and corruption see democracy being eroded on an alarming scale.
In the 2000s and 2010s, the democracies became complacent. On the one hand, Russia retreated from international aggression and entered a short and confused era. On our side, we became risk averse as we clung to that old system, and we became averse to conflict and reluctant in the use of force. We made steep reductions in defence spending and were comfortable in what seemed to be a period of peace. But the integrated review of 2021 and its refresh already pronounced the decay of the rules-based international system, so for the democracies this new era of intensifying geopolitical competition requires new thinking. The extent of the challenge posed by large authoritarian states is clear.
My good friends at the Council on Geostrategy—I declare an interest as a member of its advisory board—have summarised the mounting challenges we face succinctly under three headings, each highly destructive. First, we face an anti-systemic drive, primarily from Russia. Russia lacks the means to replace the prevailing order with a new one, even in the Euro-Atlantic area. Instead, it focuses on an anti-systemic approach designed to spoil and degrade the free and open international order, with a specific focus on eastern Europe, where, due to proximity and history, it is strongest. Secondly, we face a counter-systemic challenge, primarily from China. Beijing seeks to break down the free and open international order before replacing it with a new one centred on an authoritarian China. Thirdly, on a different point, many leading democracies seem unprepared to generate the power needed to underpin the system. For example, defence spending remains very low by historical standards, even when taking into account recent rises in NATO countries—particularly Poland and Germany—and elsewhere, such as Japan.
We need to move faster to invest in our infrastructure, domestic industrial base and state autonomy to move away from economic links with authoritarian rivals. This is particularly acute when it comes to China, on which we have become dependent for many critical minerals and manufactures. It is time for a rethink and a more vigorous stance in defence of our freedoms, prosperity and that which we hold dear. We need to think more about shaping the international order of the future—a free and open international order. This means that we need to learn to value power and be willing to utilise it once again. Our competitors appear to understand power very well and they are prepared to take risks: from building fake islands in the South China Sea to invading foreign countries such as Ukraine. Perhaps, sadly, they have come to understand power and escalation better than we do. Undoubtedly, they recognise the extent to which the democracies would really far rather not engage in hostilities. But unfortunately, in this new world, power is going to be increasingly important to international relations. It always was critical.
In the 1990s, however, our power became invisible and less important, at least to us. Power is not only about military strength, though we undoubtedly need more resources to uphold a strong defence which can deter. Power is also about economic strength and command over discourse and narratives. Much of this new era of competition already is—and will be—about economic, political and discursive instruments of power.
In my remaining time, I will look at some things that I believe could be done. We need a whole-of-society approach with full societal engagement, not just for Britain but in other democracies. We also as a matter of urgency need to adopt longer-term thinking. Business typically has a short-term horizon while government of course has to live within electoral cycles. We need to see the international world as one world. If we do not, our adversaries will continue to undermine the free world.
The best way to uphold peace is to deter, not just militarily but politically, economically and discursively. We need not overconcentrate on Russia; China is a much bigger threat. We need a strong domestic foundation, political and commercial, and a focus on emerging technical sectors. As for the new minilateral arrangements, we must be alive to any and all possibilities better to meet the challenges of our competitors, and I note the success of the AUKUS and JEF arrangements.
We need to develop a more competitive mindset and we must be ready to identify the attempts of others to undermine us and prepare to push back with a vision of our own, underpinned by strong domestic foundations. This is a battle for ideas, and this is a battle we must win if we want to ensure sovereignty, security and prosperity, both for ourselves and our key allies and partners.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lady Northover for securing this excellent debate, and for her comprehensive and sensitive tour d’horizon in her opening speech.
Only rarely in British politics do we consider international concerns in broad terms—largely, I suspect, because our media are overwhelmingly reactive and concerned with domestic issues. In July’s election, for example, international issues, with the possible exception of Gaza, hardly featured. In particular—and sadly—climate change, the number one issue for millions of young people, was largely ignored.
Turning to some of the threats we face, discussed by many noble Lords, Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, preceded by the annexation of Crimea, violated an independent nation’s sovereignty and territory. Yet many seem to believe that the West should somehow pressure Ukraine into a peace, however unjust. But that is not for us; it is for Ukraine to decide on any peace agreement and its terms. Furthermore, if Putin is rewarded with success for Russia’s invasion, the threat to peace will be increased and the Baltic states in particular will face existential threats, beset by nervous uncertainty that Article 5 of the NATO treaty will prove effective.
The uncertain US approach to NATO is a serious threat. Financially, Trump clearly has a point. We have relied for years on America to fund the bulk of our defence, but, if Europeans are to bear the primary costs of our defence, 2.5% of GDP simply will not cut it. A detailed paper by Intereconomics in November floated far higher figures, possibly 5% or more in the face of Russian expansionist militarism, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, pointed out. The shock of such an increase to the European economies and our spending priorities would be savage.
On the Middle East, despite the strength of feeling on both sides, there is in the mainstream a unity of view. We uniformly condemn Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel on 7 October 2023—the murder, the rape and the kidnap of innocent hostages—and we have also been shocked by the unrestrained conduct of the war in Gaza since then, with massive civilian casualties, untold destruction and the unacceptable failure to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid and the availability of healthcare.
We have now to hope that the fragile ceasefire holds and that the second phase succeeds, but that is far from assured. The region and the world will then have to navigate the massive costs of reconstruction in Gaza and the political difficulties of reaching agreement on a two-state solution that both secures Palestinian agreement and guarantees Israel’s security. That will be difficult.
Turning to trade, Trump’s proposed widespread tariffs threaten the entire structure of world trade, and geography means that protectionism is a far more attractive concept for America than it is for us.
Then there is the ever-present threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and other threats from China, and the American response.
I turn to climate change, a matter close to me this week as my daughter has had to return from the wildfires in Los Angeles to work from home in the UK. She is lucky: her flat is just outside the evacuation area. But, while it is standing, it is without any power and her office is closed. Nevertheless, we now have to accept that “Drill, baby, drill” will dominate Trump’s energy policy, and that the US is almost bound to leave the Paris Agreement once again, undermining, for the next four years at least, much of our already stuttering progress on climate change.
What I have said so far has been marked by a profound sense of pessimism. This flows from the widespread flouting of international law and the rules-based order, which depends on rules, conventions and treaties between nations, as emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and my noble friends Lady Northover and Lord Thomas.
My pessimism is tempered only by the belief that we now have a Government with a serious commitment to our treaty obligations—as has the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad. Many of us were profoundly shocked by the casual approach of the last Administration to international law. The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill introduced in 2022—ultimately, thankfully, withdrawn—was plainly a wilful breach of the recently agreed UK-EU withdrawal agreement. With the Safety of Rwanda Act, the British Government, in a Kafkaesque approach to legislation, forced through a Bill that inexcusably deemed what was plainly untrue to be unchallengeable truth.
The Illegal Migration Act clearly flouted the Refugee Convention of 1951. The failure to comply with our legal commitment to 0.7% overseas aid needs urgent reversal. The support of many Conservatives for the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the ECHR, which I should say is a major triumph of a previous Labour Administration, did little to improve this country’s reputation for a commitment to the rules-based world order and did much to undermine it.
So I ask the Minister once again to reaffirm this Government’s commitment never again to legislate to legalise a breach of the UK’s treaty obligations, and to underline our national commitment to upholding, while we can, the rules-based world order.
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
Noble Lords have rightly highlighted the threats around the world, and perhaps, out of this global instability, there is more yet to come. But I want to try and change the tune of the debate. Rather than focus on the negatives of the world right now, I will focus on the positives: that out of this darkness, there is still good, that all hope is not lost and that there is enormous opportunity.
I had the privilege to work as a special adviser to the Foreign Secretary for two years, and I saw first-hand a number of hard-working civil servants, here and around the world, furthering this country and our aims. I also saw how little old Blighty is enormously regarded and how we open doors—and that is, as some say, “despite Brexit”.
I say to some noble Lords that I do not agree that the last Conservative Government were absent from the world. I will give one example of many, Ukraine, long before the war, building the coalition and our continued support. But there is always more to do around the world, and Brexit was never an inversion or a retreat but, in my view, a chance to engage more intensely around the world and with individual countries, some of which may even fall within the EU.
In today’s world, we need to be nimble and bold. There are three areas I would like to talk about which seek to build on our strengths as a country. The first is the Commonwealth. With almost a third of the global population, 60% of whom are under 30, some of the oldest and biggest democracies, and a combined GDP or over $14 billion, with education and legal systems that we share and complement, we need to recognise the enormous wealth and scale of opportunity in the Commonwealth. It is ready-made for so much, not least on trade—crucially, trade deals that push exports, especially for British farmers, rather than the easier, cheaper imports which undercut them. There was talk about us being close to a trade deal with India. Can the Minister update us on that? Are there any other deals being considered with the wider Commonwealth family?
It was a genuine pleasure to hear the contribution of my noble friend Lord Ahmad earlier. I am reminded of the times we worked very closely on many great schemes, not least the Commonwealth summit in 2018. I think we would both agree that that was a very successful summit, with some great people behind it. We achieved much at that summit, not least on the rights of women and girls, with our campaign to deliver 12 years of quality education for girls around the world. That was something I worked on and care about, and I am pleased to say that it was agreed across the Commonwealth.
All this takes enormous effort and activity, day in, day out, at all levels and from all of government. As the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, noted, not everyone was present at the most recent CHOGM summit, and, sadly, some happened to be with Putin. What effort are His Majesty’s Government going to put in, beyond and more regularly than the CHOGM summit, to strengthen ties with our Commonwealth partners?
Secondly, as we have said, in just a few days America will welcome in its next democratically elected President. We should all welcome and congratulate President Trump on his win. I pay tribute to the outgoing ambassador, Karen Pierce, who I have previously worked with very closely. In her typically subtle yet determined way, she has executed her duties diligently, courting the American world for years, and has built strong relations with the new Administration. I wish our outgoing colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, well. I have long believed that, where required, political appointees are good. We need personalities in foreign affairs; people who are able to understand politics more generally and who can be blunt and strike deals.
It was one of the greatest privileges of my entire life to go to America with the then Prime Minister and join his meeting with President Trump. It goes without saying how much he is an Anglophile and a man who means business. With this new President we should be embracing this new America. We should be his number one port of call whenever he thinks of an ally. We should be careful and conscious of some of the language used in this discussion. This country has worked with President Trump before. He achieved great things in his first term around making states pay more for NATO, the Abraham accords, dealing with “rocket man” and tackling Iran, and, as has been said, he is already having an impact in the Middle East.
We should be in no doubt that America is still the number one country in the world, economically and militarily. Deals and agreements are there to be done, not least with the exponential growth of AI and technology, and in security, where we share direct interests, as with AUKUS. This is something which my noble friend Lord Hannan of Kingsclere talked about recently when he advocated for strengthening the ties of the Anglosphere democracies based on and building on Five Eyes.
My third point is on relevance. I used to challenge the then Foreign Secretary to explain what the purpose of the Foreign Office and foreign policy is when it comes to a single mum in Yorkshire. It is not a geographical point; the same applies to anywhere in the north or in the country. The point is to ask what the role of the Foreign Office is for the average person in the street and for those who feel left behind. How does it make their lives better, not just the lives of those who want to sound and feel good at dinner parties in north London?
I was once told by a senior Foreign Office official that it was one of the great offices of state and that, in effect, it had a right to exist. In today’s world, that will not cut it. We need to be honest, realistic and brutal as to what it is we want from our Foreign Office. There should be far more effort and focus on the national interest. If we cannot show why it matters, or articulate and demonstrate what foreign policy achieves for Brits—how it makes the world safer for them and creates jobs—then that is the challenge. The question then is why we are doing it. Whatever we have to do has to be relevant to the interests of this country—why we push human rights, why we support Ukraine, and why energy and food security matter.
I end with a quote from my good friend and foreign affairs specialist Professor John Bew. He wrote recently that
“the national interest of the UK—which I would define as improving the security and economic life of the British people—requires us to get down to work to seek hard economic and security outcomes, rather than the sentimental education of those whose world-view does not exist in perfect sympathy with our own”.
This is an opportunity to have more Britain in the world. All that is needed is the will, energy and vision to deliver for Britain.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, the quality of this debate has done justice to the outstanding manner in which my noble friend introduced it. She argued, in clear terms, why we have rules and why there is a structure for the way that nations relate to each other. It is to resolve competition and govern the means by which disputes can be mediated or adjudicated, and therefore for accountability. Representative institutions were formed to be the secretariats for this system of governance, in finance, trade, maritime law and, more recently, development policy, climate—as my noble friend Lord Marks indicated—and human rights, with global judicial procedures.
My noble friend outlined in compelling form the history. As my noble friend Lord Thomas indicated, that history was written by the UK and the US in many regards, and it is the UK and the US that loom large over this debate. Is this generation honouring the previous generation who designed the very system on which we rely? It is based on fundamental principles that should apply to all equitably, but, as my noble friend said, the concern is whether we in the UK apply them equitably. The double standards we have recently seen, as my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece said, have perhaps been seen elsewhere, as my noble friend Lord Marks indicated.
The rule of law is not just for our adversaries but for our allies. War crimes are crimes, whatever the war. A human right when denied to one is denied to all. It is interesting that, last year and just this week, when I have asked questions about war crimes, the noble Lords, Lord Ahmad and Lord Collins, agreed with sincerity that war crimes have been committed by Putin. They said so at the Dispatch Box. However, just on Monday, the Minister said that she could not proclaim what a war crime was within the Gaza-Israel conflict.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
We were talking specifically about genocide. I would be grateful if the noble Lord could make that clear.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I am grateful to the Minister for interacting, but what she said was in response to my question on war crimes. The Minister replied from the Dispatch Box that she could not proclaim what a war crime is. The point I am making is that, for other conflicts, Ministers speaking from the same Dispatch Box over the last year have proclaimed what war crimes are. It is not about whether Ministers have adjudicated; it is about whether Ministers can state what they are. That is where the world sees UK Ministers perhaps taking a different approach.
From these Benches, my noble friend Lord Thomas has said that we have had to be the vanguard in Parliament against recent Governments who have, in our country and abroad, moved away from honouring commitments—whether through the casual treatment of the ECHR or the Rwanda legislation, as referred to. We have tried to be dogged in what we believe: we believe in honouring commitments and know that, if we do not, we give license to other countries to dishonour them too. The United Kingdom remains a leader on rules and rights and others look to us. It is coming up to Burns Night, so we should
“see ourselves as others see us”.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Bruce that it was catastrophic for the UK to cut by a third our development partnerships and in the way that we did. It was heartbreaking that a new Government, with a historic mandate, chose in their first Budget to reduce even further ODA. It is now at its lowest level in 17 years.
As a prime example, over this period, the challenges of the world, be they Covid, the climate or conflict, have made the development need even greater. Some 80% of developing nations still have not recovered their economies to pre-Covid levels, as the World Bank’s most recent reported indicated. With the growth of conflict exacerbated by the climate emergency, the most recent data shows that 282 million people in 59 countries and territories face acute food insecurity. This is seen especially in Sudan, Afghanistan and Myanmar. Despite the global aim of abolishing absolute poverty by 2030, which was set in 2015 in the SDGs, the lowest estimate is that 600 million people will remain in absolute poverty by then.
In 2015, all parties in this Chamber agreed with the SDGs. They also agreed with the International Development Act, a statutory duty that we should honour our commitment and continue to honour it. We should be dependable, reliable and predictable. I agreed with 99% of what the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said—I did not agree with 1% of it because it was not the Labour Government who met the 0.7%. As political parties, we were all aligned to that ambition, and there is a need to restore dependability, reliability and predictability.
Those three words are not often used to describe the incoming President of the United States, but perhaps the Trump Administration will again have as their approach dysfunction by design. It is true that the previous Administration of Donald Trump had leverage, but I disagree that it was used to net benefit. I believe that legitimising the North Korean leadership, removing the guard-rails on Iran and putting at risk the NATO alliance was not strength. We have to ensure, as my noble friend indicated, that our relationship with our European partners and like-minded countries is as strong as it can be, given that we may well have uncertainty in the next Administration of the United States.
Many Trump supporters say that what he says should be listened to seriously but not taken literally. But the problem is that the people who now have to listen to what he says and judge whether to take it seriously or literally are his allies, not necessarily his adversaries, and the negative energy that will be consumed will be wasted energy, especially since the global challenges are immense.
Transactionalism at the core of United States foreign policy will potentially lead to openings of opportunity for the Kremlin and Beijing. The challenges of the 21st century are immense and include technology, AI, the climate and many others. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, indicated, we will see a combination of an uncertain American partner and the concentration of power in people such as Elon Musk or Peter Thiel—individuals who consider law as discretionary, standards as weakness and norms as anachronisms.
In 2015, there was considerable consensus that we should not only meet the 0.7% obligation but set sustainable development goals and work with others to meet them. It is 10 years to the week since we had the Second Reading of that 2015 legislation, on 23 January. I want to close my remarks now as I closed them then. In that debate, when we passed that legislation, I never felt that we would honour it in only three out of the following 10 years—and it is likely to be only three out of 15 by the end of this Parliament.
As I said then:
“I conclude by saying that the UK has less than 1% of the world’s population. Our global footprint is massively disproportionate to the size of our tiny islands. If the UK is a citizen of the world, what kind of citizen must we be? I say we are one that comes to the assistance of others who are in need, does not shrink from challenging those who abuse minorities, refuses to support those who prevent women accessing rights, and never turns a blind eye to those who disempower their own citizens. We establish our place and our identity as a citizen of the world if we uphold our obligations and encourage others to do likewise”.—[Official Report, 23/1/15; col. 1520.]
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, this has been yet another fascinating, wide-ranging debate in your Lordships’ House, and I join others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for securing it. I thought she introduced the topic very well, although I have to say that I did not agree with her on her list of authoritarian leaders, including President Trump alongside Presidents Putin and Xi. Of course, like many people, I do not agree with or support some of the wilder statements that President Trump comes out with, but there are many checks and balances in the US system that simply do not exist in Russia and China: Congress, 52 independently minded states, independent courts, et cetera. As my noble friend Lord Gascoigne reminded us, Trump won a fair, democratic election, and, of course, we know that he can serve only a four-year term. By all means, criticise some of his statements—I suspect that we will spend a lot of time in the next few months and years ruminating on the various utterances of President Trump—but I think the noble Baroness made a flawed analogy in comparing the US, which, in my view, is still the world’s greatest democracy, with Russia and China, so I hope she will reflect on that.
The rules-based international order has enabled nations large and small to co-operate under shared principles, ensuring that the rule of law prevails over the rule of might. Today, however, as many have pointed out in this debate, this order is under threat as never before, and it is incumbent upon us, as defenders of freedom, sovereignty and stability, to address many of those challenges head on.
As many have pointed out, the first and most visible challenges come from the authoritarian states that I just mentioned, particularly Russia and China, whose actions flagrantly undermine international norms. Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and brutal war in Ukraine represent a blatant rejection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations, a core tenet of the UN charter. I listened with interest to the comment from the noble Lord, Lord Liddell: possibly like Tony Blair at the time, I was optimistic about the direction Russia could go in following the collapse of the Soviet Union. I think all of us wanted to see Russia admitted into the family of western democratic states, and there was a possibility that that would happen, but we all now see the direction that Russia has taken, and we have to recognise it for what it is now: a threat to the international order and to European security. Similarly, across the South China Sea, we see China’s militarisation, economic coercion of smaller states, and flagrant disregard for any international rulings on territories or the famous lines that they impose on the maps, seemingly making up and deciding what is Chinese sovereign territory. This really offers a systemic challenge to the global order.
These actions are not just mere aberrations. They are, in my view, deliberate attempts to reshape the international order into one that privileges power over principles. Such behaviour destabilises regions, weakens alliances and creates a permissive environment for other rogue actors to flout international law—we can see how Russia is now cosying up to those paragons of democracy in North Korea and Iran to further its aims.
The second challenge lies in the erosion of trust within the system itself. Many multilateral institutions that were indeed put in place initially to safeguard global stability are increasingly seen as ineffective or politicised. The failure of some organisations to act decisively against aggression or hold nations accountable risks undermining their very legitimacy. We believe in strong, accountable institutions, but this requires reform to ensure that they are fit for purpose and responsive to the challenges of the 21st century.
Furthermore, the rise of economic protectionism and deglobalisation poses a subtler but equally significant threat. Free trade and open markets have lifted millions out of poverty and fostered interdependence, which discourages conflict. Yet, we will have to return to the battles many of us thought were won in the 1980s and 1990s in favour of multilateralism, free trade and globalisation, and refight those ideological battles, because retreat into economic nationalism risks dividing the world into competing blocs, undermining both prosperity and stability.
Those challenges are compounded by the growing influence of the non-state actors that a number of noble Lords referred to—from cybercriminals to extremist groups—that exploit the gaps in governance and the vulnerabilities of our interconnected world. Their actions transcend borders, creating a fragmented and volatile global landscape.
We must, first, reaffirm our commitment to the principles that underpin the rules-based order: sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law. This requires a robust defence of our values on the global stage, supported by credible deterrence. NATO’s unified response to Russian aggression is a great model of how alliances can serve as bulwarks against authoritarian threats. I would be grateful if the Minister could outline how we are continuing to build alliances around the world that help ensure that the rule of law is upheld while protecting our sovereignty.
Secondly, we have to champion reform of many international institutions to ensure they remain relevant and effective. This is not about abandoning multilateralism but about strengthening it to reflect modern realities. Can the Minister update the House on the Government’s view on reform of institutions such as the ICC, the ICJ and the European Court of Human Rights? Does she agree with the ICC arrest warrants that have been debated? The ones issued for Netanyahu and Gallant were, in my view, ridiculous and demonstrate how that institution needs serious reform.
Thirdly, we have to prioritise economic resilience—investing in secure supply chains, fostering innovation and supporting free trade agreements with like-minded partners. Finally, we have to harness the power of our values—freedom, enterprise and the dignity of the individual—to rally allies and inspire those in many parts of the world who yearn for a better future.
The challenges to the rules-based international order are real, but so too is our ability to overcome them. By standing firm to our principles and working with others who share them, we can ensure that this order continues to deliver peace, stability and opportunity for many generations to come.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for securing this debate and for sharing her thoughts on how we have arrived at where we are and what we need to do next. This debate has raised important questions that I hope we can continue to consider in the months and years ahead. I thank her for sharing her experience of serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development, now 10 years ago—I hope she does not mind me saying that—and for her continued dedication in the years that have followed. Her long view was inspiring and sobering. Her debate has enabled us to hear vast experience from across the House as well as fresh perspectives. By no means have we had unanimity, but there is broad agreement that the rules-based order is necessary and our best, if not only, prospect of tackling the greatest challenges the world faces.
It is interesting how much emphasis has been placed on populism and threats to our democracy. As the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, said, we are not immune to these pressures. We must defeat populism and rebuild our international reputation. His words about our relationships in Africa are well worth heeding.
Equally, concerns about disinformation, as highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, and others, are an urgent call to action that must be answered multilaterally through technology, governance and, as several noble Lords said, our use of soft power. We need global action to address global challenges and—more optimistically, perhaps—to make the most of global opportunities.
The rules-based international order continues to play an important role in making sure we can take action at the scale and pace that is needed, including in facing crises, with most countries trusting the United Nations to act effectively as first responder. Of course, we can all see, as many noble Lords reminded us, that the reality of today’s world is piling on the pressure. The system is being stretched by the strain, with millions of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people bearing the brunt of the consequences.
We can all see opportunists, such as Russia and China, seeking to set themselves up as the true defenders of the system and the true champions of the global South, even as they contribute so very little and strive to set countries against one another—just when we most need to be working together on everything from respecting sovereignty and upholding rights to getting help to those in desperate need and making sure the system is fit for the future. Indeed, it should give us pause to see just how hard they are working to pervert and undermine a system that is still robust, resilient and widely shared. We can all see, 80 years since it all began to come together, in the shadow of the war between great powers that engulfed the world in a generation, that it endures.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and—as he reminded us— Tony Blair have warned us, we must not take this system for granted. Our focus must be on making sure it thrives. As my right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary told the United Nations General Assembly and the summit of the future in New York last September, the Government are committed to multilateralism and to the mission of the United Nations. We recognise that this is an important part of how countries work together on everything from conflict to the climate and nature crisis, economic shocks, poverty, public health, and trade. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said, our commitment to justice and peace must be renewed, consistent and shared internationally. These partnerships are the only way forward.
The noble Baroness, Lady Helic, warned us that we need a massive global effort to get back on track to meet our shared goals for sustainable development by 2030. Learning from history, we must make progress towards our climate and nature goals together or we will never meet the urgent and growing humanitarian need that we see in so many countries. Indeed, as the Foreign Secretary said in a major speech just last week, across the board what we need now is
“a whole new level of global engagement”,
not only with our closest allies and strategic partners but with all those who are committed to the principle of the UN charter. That is how we work together: in genuine, respectful partnership with others, taking realistic steps towards progressive ends.
Over the last six months we have been putting this into practice across a vast range of work, spanning everything from irregular migration to emerging technologies, and the needs of women and girls and other marginalised people. At the UN Security Council, as well as standing with Ukraine, we used our presidency to keep the world’s worst crises firmly in the spotlight when others would prefer to look away. No doubt noble Lords will have seen the Foreign Secretary’s passionate address in November on the catastrophe unfolding in Sudan. We have not only doubled UK aid to Sudan but pushed our partners to do more for the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, and worked intensively with our partners to support people living through traumatic situations in Yemen, Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the central Sahel, Somalia, Mozambique, Bangladesh, and more.
We are committed to upholding and promoting the rule of law, putting it at the heart of our approach, from our domestic legal and judicial system, to strengthening accountability and the international institutions that defend international law, including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. We are seeking re-election to the Human Rights Council and to return a UK judge to the International Court of Justice. This Government will not withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights, and I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, that this Government support the effective and independent International Criminal Court.
We are pursuing justice at the local level too, and that includes helping Ukraine to build capacity to investigate and prosecute allegations of war crimes in its own judicial system. The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, asked who attended Ukraine’s First Lady’s conference on sexual violence. I can tell him that our ambassador in Kyiv attended that event to represent the UK. I also highlight that Prime Minister Starmer is in Ukraine today to progress and highlight our determination that we have a long-standing partnership with Ukraine.
We continue to promote compliance with international humanitarian law, including in Gaza. From our first day in office, this Government have pressed for an immediate ceasefire, to free the hostages and to bring relief, reconstruction and hope to civilians, who have suffered so much. All phases of the ceasefire deal announced yesterday must now be implemented in full. We were all pleased to hear that news yesterday, and we are hopeful that every phase of the agreement that has been reached can be implemented. The UK will continue to make every diplomatic effort to get lasting peace, security and a two-state solution for the Israeli and the Palestinian people.
The UK remains a top donor to the multilateral system. We are the largest flexible funder of the World Health Organization. Indeed, we have unlocked $42 billion from the International Monetary Fund to support our partners’ health systems, saving lives and safeguarding economies from future pandemics, as well as building long-term systems that will support communities for the future. From the UN regular and peacekeeping funds to the World Bank, we are channelling UK assistance through the multilateral system because it is effective and cost effective.
For example, last year we increased the UK’s pledge to the World Bank’s International Development Association by 40%. We did that because partners agree that this will help them to grow their economies long term. Indeed, since 1960 that fund has had a transformative impact for so many countries around the world. It supports 1.9 billion people, almost one-quarter of the world’s population, in 75 countries. Already every £1 that we put in pays for itself in results three or four times over, and that is set to rise as we encourage private sector investment as countries add their own fiscal resources to multiply that even further.
As we use our leverage to secure reforms, we are delighted that Tom Fletcher has started his new role as UN relief chief, working on the reforms that are needed to make sure that all our efforts are much more joined up across the humanitarian and development system that is so stretched. We are working with pioneering partners such as Mia Mottley to get more climate finance to those who need it faster and with greater impact, and to reform the global financial system, making the most of our leverage as a major donor to secure the reforms that we need to achieve it, not least through the multilateral development banks. In all my visits, I have heard our partners underline just how important that is for them. The UK is not only at the forefront of developing innovative financial tools in areas such as insurance but we are using our heft to implement much-needed reforms, with the World Bank now mainstreaming climate resilient debt clauses.
As part of our work to strengthen, improve and reinvigorate the wider system—as, to be fair to him, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, said we should—we are supporting expanded membership of the UN Security Council, with additional permanent and non-permanent seats. In all that we do, our approach is one of genuine partnership grounded in mutual respect.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, for highlighting the launch of the soft power council yesterday. I can assure him that promoting our values of the rule of law and democracy will be central to that work.
This Government are committed to fulfilling our first duty, which is to keep people safe, and determined to make good on our guiding mission to grow our economy and bring opportunity to people across our country. In today’s world, the work we do with our partners, overseas and globally, is an essential part of how we achieve that. I say that partly in answer to the challenge from the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne. I agreed with much of what he said about ensuring that what we do in foreign affairs is directly relevant and interesting and feels important to people from every part of our country. That is why this Government are focused on making sure that the way we do things works in today’s world, so that we overcome those who seek to set us against one another and reinvigorate hope for a shared future by working towards it together.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions and, as I expected, this debate has been very wide-ranging, drawing on huge expertise. I must respond to the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. I suggest that he reads back over what I actually said about President Trump, including the potential checks on him in the US system. I believe in being precise.
In this debate, it comes across loud and clear that noble Lords support the principles of a rules-based international system, with internationally agreed laws, fairly applied. There has been considerable concern about, first, the potential weakness of that international order and, secondly, the profound challenges we face: in particular, the new challenges of climate change and AI. It was out of appalling catastrophe—genocide, a devastating war and the flattening of cities, including the first use of nuclear weapons—that our current international system was born. We have to hope that we can work together to improve and modernise that system, without needing catastrophe to enable it. There was clear cross-party agreement on the need to do that, which I welcome.
Gaza: Healthcare System Support
(1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support the healthcare system in Gaza.
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
My Lords, before we start the debate, I remind speakers that they have two minutes and ask them to please stick to that time. We have a lot of speakers to get through and we want to finish the debate on time. Thank you.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, this debate sits comfortably on the back of the debate that we have just heard. Let me immediately set before the House my interests: I am the director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. Our work is global: it addresses human rights abuses, and breaches of humanitarian law and the laws of war around the world. We are currently engaged in work on China, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Belarus, Sudan and now Syria. We do legal training in many other countries too. At the moment, I am personally co-chairing a task force for President Zelensky of Ukraine on the war crime of the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russia. Warrants were issued by the International Criminal Court and celebrated by many nations.
I was a member of the legal panel which reviewed the evidence that was to be used, by the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor, to apply for warrants before the court against Hamas and its leadership for the atrocity crimes committed on 7 October—horrifying crimes—and against the Israeli war leaders Netanyahu and Gallant for crimes against the laws of war. That related to the failure to enable access to humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people.
The review involved looking at whether thresholds for evidence had been met, but decisions were always made by the prosecutor’s office. The warrants have now been issued by a court of law, not by the prosecutors. It relates to the impact of the absence of humanitarian aid on the well-being and health of the people of Palestine, of Gaza.
I sought this debate because of the grievous humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the near collapse of the healthcare system, with its enormous consequences for suffering people, and because of my concern that Parliament had been too silent on the suffering of the people in Gaza. We are on the brink of a negotiated ceasefire and, thank God, the release of the hostages. I hope and pray that it may be so. But it should not distract us from the dire immediate need for humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people. Those who are conducting this war on behalf of Israel, or who step in to the role of mediators or peacekeepers in the weeks and months to come, have to enable the immediate delivery of substantial aid.
A huge number of hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed and those which remain can barely function. Many medical staff have been killed. There is very little food and water in the region, and no fuel. A hospital cannot function without electricity for incubators, dialysis machines, operating theatres and sterilisation units. Disease is now rampant in the area because of the gross state of sanitation. The infrastructure of Gaza—from its sewers to its water supply pipes, to its schools, mosques and churches—has been destroyed: it is a moonscape. For over a year, no chlorine has been allowed to enter Gaza.
There is little medicine and virtually no medical supplies. Surgeons have had to operate without anaesthesia. The number of people, especially children, who have lost limbs runs into the thousands. To prevent people bleeding to death, ragged remains of limbs have to be sawn off and sutured. Modern doctors are not trained for the sheer horror of doing this kind of operation with patients who are conscious. Many of the international doctors have testified to the fact that they and other healthcare workers working for international organisations are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their experiences.
Israel’s debilitation of Gaza’s healthcare system is justified to the world on the basis that there are Hamas military targets within the hospitals, which may well be true. But what humane war leaders are prepared to kill people in their hospital beds or babies in incubators when there is a Hamas presence in a hospital? I will turn to some of the research that has been done on that in a minute.
Some 62% of all the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed. That increases to 80% in northern Gaza. It would be hard to find a single family that has not lost multiple relatives. According to Israel, it has used 70,000 tonnes of bombs, which surpasses the tonnage dropped in Dresden, Hamburg and London combined during the six-year Second World War. The Geneva Convention sought to create new rules of engagement after the horrors of the Second World War, but they seem to count for nothing.
On 10 January, the World Health Organization warned that the Al-Awda hospital, the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza, is so overwhelmed with patients and critically low on essential supplies that care is basically impossible. Damaged roads and insufficient facilitation by the Israeli authorities have made safe access for the WHO impossible. Are we accusing it of making these things up? The UN estimates that, as of 31 December 2024—Christmas time—14,000 patients required medical evacuation abroad in order to meet their needs.
In the emergency debate of the UN Security Council on 3 January, on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, the WHO said that Israeli forces had been conducting a systematic dismantling of the health system in northern Gaza. The WHO has verified that 654 attacks have been made on healthcare facilities. The UN human rights office published a report on 31 December claiming that
“Israel’s pattern of deadly attacks on and near hospitals in Gaza … pushed the healthcare system to the brink of total collapse”,
and that
“The conduct of hostilities in Gaza since 7 October has destroyed the healthcare system in Gaza, with predictably devastating consequences for the Palestinian people”.
The horrors go on. On 8 November 2024, the IPC Famine Review Committee stated:
“Famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future”
in northern Gaza. The UN estimates that 60,000 children will require treatment for acute malnutrition in the course of this year.
Before the conflict, some 500 trucks entered Gaza every day. Now, every single person in Gaza requires humanitarian assistance, but in October, 57 trucks a day were allowed to cross into Gaza on average. Of course, it vacillates, but in this House we keep hearing that looting is the problem, with people taking the aid. No mention is made, I have noticed, of the extent to which attacks have been made on the humanitarian aid trucks by settlers from the West Bank. They have torn down humanitarian aid and overturned lorries, with IDF soldiers looking on, inactive.
A report by 29 NGOs, including Save the Children, Oxfam and others, detailed the looting of aid trucks as an ongoing issue, but called the theft of goods
“a consequence of Israel’s targeting of the remaining police forces in Gaza, scarcity of essential goods, lack of routes and closure of most crossing points, and the subsequent desperation of the population amid these dire conditions”.
Many of the those who are looting are young Palestinians who are trying to get food for their families, their parents and other people suffering in the absence of food.
On 10 January, a study was published in the medical journal the Lancet which estimates that the death toll, which people refer to as 47,000, is higher than that: between 55,298 and 78,525. They have split it in the middle, with a best estimate of 64,420.
Finally, I have just read a book by Omar El Akkad called One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Each generation looks back in judgment at the moral blind spots of earlier generations, and it will happen on this subject too. One day, we will be ashamed of ourselves for our passivity and hypocrisy concerning what has been happening in Gaza. This silence has to be broken.
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, for securing the debate. I was honoured to serve on the justice committee that she chaired. I agree with her on most things—the treatment of the Uighurs, for example—but on this issue, it is different.
I could not be more delighted, as the noble Baroness was, at the prospect of seeing Emily Damari and all the other hostages released, but I remind noble Lords that Israel is not negotiating with the UK, nor with the UAE. It is having to make an agreement with a terrorist group, Hamas, which chillingly vowed yesterday to repeat 7 October. We will no doubt hear in the next hour distorted figures and distorted so-called facts provided by the Hamas propaganda machine. But let us be clear: Hamas is a terrorist group with scant regard for the welfare of the Palestinian people.
Do not take my words, take the words of Fatah’s statement of 11 January condemning Hamas for gambling with the interests and resources of the Palestinian people to the benefit of the Iranian regime, and holding Hamas responsible for the destruction of Gaza, in particular concerning the protection and healthcare of the population.
I have three questions for the Minister. Will she confirm that, according to HMG, Hamas will have no role whatever in the reconstruction of Gaza? We are likely also to hear today, by the way, about how Israel systematically dismantled the healthcare system in Gaza, and very little about Hamas using hospitals as command centres and ammunition stores, so will the Minister please confirm to the House that Israel has provided 13 working field hospitals in Gaza, in co-operation with international partners, since the beginning of the conflict? Finally, will she confirm to the House that 3,259 sick and wounded civilians and their escorts have been evacuated from Gaza? Israel cares, Hamas does not.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, it is hugely welcome that we finally seem to have a peace deal, and we must hope that this holds, but we must not look away now. There are lessons to be learned and only a sustained focus can give any hope of there not being similar conflicts in the future. Although this debate focuses on healthcare in Gaza, it is in essence about rights and responsibilities. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, has rightly laid out, under international law, civilians and medical staff must be protected, yet we hear that in Gaza, hospitals have been attacked, with patients killed, equipment destroyed and services lost. Numerous doctors and other medical staff have been killed.
The WHO has said that Israeli forces have conducted a
“systematic dismantling of the health system”
in northern Gaza. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has described a “pattern of attacks” that begin with Israeli air strikes and are followed by ground raids and the detention of patients and staff,
“leaving the hospital essentially non-functional”.
Israel has maintained that Hamas has been operating from these health facilities, but the UN high commissioner states that Israel
“has not provided sufficient information to substantiate many of these claims”
and has called for independent investigations. Why have these not been allowed? Why are journalists not allowed access?
It is in the interests of everyone—Israelis, Palestinians, the wider region and globally—for this appalling situation to end. A political resolution, with a two-state solution, is long overdue. International law must be respected without fear or favour.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, we all lament the tragedy of Gaza, the deaths, the devastation and, in particular, as this Motion reminds us, the damage to the healthcare system, but much of that tragedy is the inevitable consequence of a war, a war which Hamas was responsible for starting. It is a war that Hamas has continued, by threatening to repeat 7 October if it could do so, and by detaining Israeli and foreign hostages in conditions of unspeakable cruelty for 468 days and counting. We all hope that the agreement announced in the last couple of days will end that detention very soon and resolve the situation.
Hamas bears a particular responsibility for the damage to the healthcare system of Gaza. It is the consequence of Hamas’s policy of using civilian structures such as hospitals as bases for its weapons and its soldiers. I say very politely to my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, that I find it quite extraordinary that she can speak, eloquently, on this subject for eight or nine minutes and make only one brief, indirect reference to Hamas. I say to her and to the House that the best way
“to support the healthcare system in Gaza”,
which is the subject of this debate, is for this country and all civilised countries to do all that we can to ensure that Hamas is deprived of power and deprived of weapons. That is in the interest not only of Israel and the world but of the people of Gaza.
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, news of a potential ceasefire would indeed be a great relief for both sides, though we will now be going into a sort of truth and reconciliation phase in which blame will be laid on one or other party, and we will see Hamas’s very successful propaganda laid out for the BBC and others to swallow without question.
I want to head off some of that with a few facts. When we hear talk of hospitals being destroyed, I remind noble Lords that Israel built 13 field hospitals in Gaza to treat the Palestinians. It has sent hundreds of Gazan patients not only to Israel’s hospitals but to hospitals in other countries and managed the polio vaccination programme for all the children in Gaza. That seem to have slipped by the BBC’s balanced reporting.
Israel evacuated the patients of Kamal Adwan hospital, but it was not the patients or staff who were killing Israeli soldiers nearby—nine last weekend alone. It was Hamas terrorists who were shooting from tunnels under the hospital—tunnels to which Hamas has always denied access to its own people. Remember that, while Israel builds shelters for its population, Hamas builds huge tunnels for itself to which it denies access to its women and children so that it can cynically use them in the front line of its battles. This is where Hamas stores the food and medicines delivered from Israel that it purloins and sells at exorbitant prices to its deprived citizens.
There has been some talk of the role of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the Adwan hospital. Israel now seems to have evidence that not only is he a key member of Hamas, he may even have taken part in the 7 October terrorist attack. It is little wonder that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are turning against Hamas as they understand what horrific results Hamas has inflicted on them.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, a recent report by Save the Children reveals that at least 14,100 children have been killed. Gaza now has the largest cohort of child amputees in modern history. Additionally, at least 17,000 children—approximately 3% of Gaza’s population —have been orphaned.
For the last year, I have consistently supported Project Pure Hope, which, since November, has been trying to extend UK medical assistance to severely injured children in this country, at no cost to taxpayers, for a limited time and in limited numbers. So far, it has failed, and I have failed too. It has recently reached out again to the Cabinet Office but has not received a response. Can the Minister assure me that these initiatives will be considered?
There is a lot of passion and controversy about this issue. Can the Minister tell us whether international journalists will finally be allowed into Gaza so that they can bear witness to 13 hospitals, to the citizens of Gaza who have been cared for in hospitals on Israeli territory and so that we can finally get what could be considered an objective view of what exactly has been happening on the ground and the results of those actions?
I will use my last 20 seconds to ask the Minister to update us on the status of UNRWA and the UK Government’s current position on UNRWA being kept out.
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, I too welcome the prospect of a ceasefire, but the catastrophe of Gaza needs far more than a respite. We have heard about attacks on hospitals. There are no functioning hospitals in northern Gaza because of the bombardments which have removed not just healthcare but staff. Some 500 healthcare staff and 200 aid workers have been killed. We should pay tribute to the courage of these people, many of whom are volunteers. It is they who are providing the reports of what is going on in Gaza which are being refuted by others in this Chamber. I would ask those noble Lords to read the testimony of some of the people who actually work there.
Does the Minister feel that the Government have done enough to protect healthcare in Gaza, in light of the systematic attempts to destroy it? Aid is almost non-existent for Palestinians: 160 attempts to reach civilians in north Gaza by the UN resulted in virtually zero success. So far this year, eight babies have frozen to death in Gaza, largely as a result of denial of fuel, shelter and medical care.
Any lasting peace will depend on justice and accountability, so will the UK Government commit to pursuing those responsible for war crimes and ensuring that they are held fully accountable? The people of Gaza were already deprived, crowded and oppressed. They have lost everything in this latest catastrophe. Will the UK take a lead and insist on immediate access to aid and medical care for the dispossessed and displaced people of Gaza and will the Government play a full part in rebuilding a future for Gaza based on justice, accountability and guaranteed human rights?
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I begin by acknowledging the year of agony for the hostages held by Hamas and their families and friends. I regret that the International Committee of the Red Cross has not been able to check on their welfare and I express the hope, as we hold this debate at a point of continuing uncertainty, that both sides will use its offer to facilitate the return of the hostages and the release of Palestinian prisoners as expeditiously and kindly as possible.
I sincerely thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, for securing this debate on the specific point of the healthcare system in Gaza, but I must start by reflecting on what is happening now. These are hopefully final tragedies, but all the more heart-wrenching for family and friends. Overnight and today, reports suggest that at least 70 more people have been killed in Gaza, adding to a death toll of more than 46,000. Very many of them were children and the majority were clearly non-combatants. It is an awful blight on the whole world. Two million people have for 15 months endured a level of horror and inhumanity that should haunt us for ever: multifamily homes and whole blocks, streets, hospitals and schools obliterated to a pile of concrete, all too often with fragile human bodies entombed. Will the Government co-operate fully with the International Criminal Court in pursuit of justice against all those who have committed war crimes? What will they do to ensure the restoration of the medical facilities that are so desperately needed?
The Green Party has been calling for a ceasefire since October 2023. While the apparent agreement offers hope, it must mark the beginning of addressing the root causes of the conflict. The ongoing occupation, the siege of Gaza and the systematic violation of Palestinian human rights cannot continue. The UK Government must formally recognise the state of Palestine —a vital step towards justice, equality and a sustainable peace. It is also a demonstration of commitment to international law and a balanced approach to the region, which must include a full suspension of all arms exports to the Israeli military.
Baroness Gohir (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the fragile agreed ceasefire, although it was too late for those hostages who could have been saved and the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed and starved. Multiple generations of families have been wiped out. The death and destruction cannot carry on. What role is the UK playing to ensure the ceasefire is permanent?
The surviving Palestinians now face a critical threat. The healthcare system in Gaza has been decimated, leaving Palestinians without access to life-saving treatment, which could result in a doubling of deaths. The injured cannot be treated. There is the spread of disease. Newborns are dying. Pregnant women are having miscarriages and being denied safe birth. One overlooked tool of genocide is preventing births, which we are witnessing.
Hospital buildings have been destroyed and patients and healthcare staff killed, and medical staff have been imprisoned. All of this is in breach of international law. Why has Israel been allowed to violate international law repeatedly and with impunity, through actions which have undeniably contributed to the elimination and expulsion of Palestinians? Will the UK join efforts to hold Israel accountable for its repeated violations of international law and for the collective punishment of Palestinians?
I finish by commenting on the Prime Minister’s statement about the ceasefire. Language matters. He rightly described the deaths of innocent Israelis as brutal and “a massacre”, but then simply described the deaths of Palestinians by saying that “they lost their lives”. Palestinians, too, were brutally massacred. Given the atrocities we have witnessed, why did the Prime Minister downplay the suffering of Palestinians and show double standards in humanity?
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, the horrific effects of the Israeli Government’s callous treatment of Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, so I will not repeat them, but I do want to point to the long-term effects on children. They may escape death, but many are maimed, seriously malnourished, have been denied education because so many schools have been destroyed, and have lost close family members. They are traumatised and they will be left with permanent scars, meaning that their mental and physical health will require long-term treatment for many years. I also want to mention that the sexual and reproductive health of younger women has been shattered by the systematic destruction of primary care centres as well as hospitals. Miscarriages have trebled, as have maternal deaths. Women are giving birth with no medical assistance, no anaesthetic and no access to clean water or power. Moreover, their babies are dying because of a lack of neonatal care.
I salute the Government for welcoming the ceasefire and for calling for the entry of far more development aid to Gaza, but can I press the Minister on what the Government are doing to push for a permanent ceasefire so that medical facilities can be re-established for the long term? Will they hold Israel to account for its failures under international law in annihilating the health sector in Gaza? And what are they doing to ensure that UNRWA can remain in place to carry on its vital work in delivering humanitarian aid? Does she agree that UNRWA’s experience and expertise are indispensable in this area to allocate food, fuel, water, medicines and medical equipment, without which the health of Gazans will continue to deteriorate? Finally, will the Government commit to a leading role in restoring the Gazan infrastructure to allow its people the chance of a semblance of normal life, including proper healthcare?
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, on securing this debate and on her excellent introduction. I declare an interest as president of Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine. I join others in expressing relief at the proposed fragile ceasefire, while lamenting why it took so long, and mourning the many thousands, including Israeli hostages, who tragically did not live to see it. We hope and pray that this ceasefire holds.
It has been reported that over 1,000 doctors, nurses and medical personnel have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza over the past 15 months. The situation, as has been outlined by others, is catastrophic and I do not need to repeat some of the facts and figures that we have read repeatedly. Israeli forces arrested Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the last major hospital operating in north Gaza—the Kamal Adwan. He was among more than 240 people arrested and the IDF has accused him and all his staff members of being Hamas terrorists. We understand that he has been denied legal representation since then until 22 January, and these allegations are not proven, as others have tried to say.
MSF reports that every medical centre and humanitarian delivery system has long been destroyed and been replaced by unacceptable improvised provisions. There is no telling what the indirect human cost will be in deaths and long-term injuries as a result of the denial of aid and treatment. We have heard that the International Development Select Committee heard harrowing and chilling evidence from NHS doctors trained in this country who were over there. Can the Minister say what role the United Kingdom will take in helping to rebuild healthcare services and in asking for justice and more transparency for the doctors and medical staff who are being held without charge and without legal representation?
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I have huge respect for the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and I thank her for calling this debate. My heart goes out to all those suffering—Palestinians and Israelis—following the Hamas massacre. Hamas cynically exploits hospitals and healthcare, inviting attack by firing on Israel from those facilities. Hamas has turned hospitals into terror command centres. It has used them to hide hostages and terrorists. Hamas terrorists themselves go round disguised as women, even holding children. They are deliberately disguising themselves as patients and doctors and travelling in ambulances. They are callously putting ordinary Palestinians in harm’s way.
The protections for hospitals and healthcare are not unconditional, but the Palestinian Hamas terrorists cynically exploit international sympathy. I join in sympathy for those impacted. Article 8.2 of the Rome statute prohibits intentionally directing attacks against hospitals, provided they are not military objectives—but they have become so.
The December actions at Kamal Adwan Hospital found large terrorist operations there. Some 240 Hamas, PIJ and other operatives were caught, and 19 terrorists were killed. Even then, many tried to pose as patients and flee. This is the same in other hospitals that Israel has attacked, and it has set up its own. Notwithstanding all of this, Israel has provided fuel and medical supplies. It has even run a vaccination campaign for diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hep B and polio—hardly genocidal intent.
I pray for peace, and I pray for a relief for the Palestinians and Israelis.
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, I spent much of my childhood in a hospital bed. I did not know then that most of my surgeon’s family had been murdered at Auschwitz. But I am sure that, were he alive today, he would be as horrified as I am by the tragedy that has befallen the people of Israel and of Gaza since Hamas’s barbaric and depraved invasion from unoccupied Gaza in 2023.
Of course, the international community must do everything it can to help rebuild the hospitals in Gaza, whose sacrosanct position has been consistently violated, as we have already heard, by Hamas in defiance of international law. For it is their cynical cowardice, in turning hospitals into terror command centres, that has put patients, their families and medical personnel in harm’s way.
So, to support the healthcare system of Gaza must mean protecting it from Hamas. Never again can Hamas be allowed to perpetrate such crimes against the Palestinian people. I ask the Minister to confirm that His Majesty’s Government will prioritise ensuring Hamas respects and upholds international law, because unless and until that happens, no amount of support from us will remove the threat posed by Hamas to the security and viability of the Gaza healthcare system and, ultimately, to its people.
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register.
We awoke with news that gave hope that, 15 months after the monstrous Hamas attacks of 7 October, a ceasefire would bring the Israeli hostages home and end the devastating slaughter of innocent Palestinian civilians. This afternoon, we hear reports that Israel continues with airstrikes on Gaza and is backing away from the agreement, reportedly due to the intransigence of extremist Israeli Ministers, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. During this time, Palestinian health services have been attacked and largely destroyed and health service workers indiscriminately killed or seized by the IDF.
In light of these attacks, will the Minister restate that obligations under international humanitarian law to protect hospitals and health workers are unconditional? Will she tell the House what representations the Government have made to Israel regarding the recent IDF attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital and the treatment of healthcare workers who are being detained by Israel?
The destruction of medical facilities is putting at further risk the lives of tens of thousands of children facing acute malnutrition in Gaza and who are unable to get access to medical care. I hope the Minister will once again urge all parties to ensure unimpeded access for humanitarian aid, both into and within Gaza. We must all hope that an enduring ceasefire will be established in the coming hours and that the unconscionable disregard of both Hamas and Israel for innocent Palestinian lives will come to an end.
Israel is not only losing many of its friends over the devastation it has wreaked in Gaza; far worse, it is in danger of losing its soul.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, the families and friends of the hostages deserve their loved ones home, and the catastrophic humanitarian crisis inflicted on the Palestinian civilians needs to end. Therefore, the ceasefire must hold, and we all hope that it does, but the hours, days and weeks ahead will be tense, and there will be major uncertainty, because it is not a peace and governance agreement but merely a ceasefire. The conditions must be in place where we can hope that it leads to that, but it could have come to an end a lot sooner, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Helic and Lady Blackstone, were right.
UNICEF’s figures are 14,500 child deaths, 17,000 unaccompanied children with no foster care and 1 million displaced children. In context, that is the equivalent of the entire under-10 population of London now displaced, that now needs to be educated and homed. Of course, as we heard, even with this agreement there continues to be outpost and settler violence in the West Bank.
None of this was inevitable, but the task ahead is enormous. In the region, an unprecedented level of rubble clearance is required, as is corpse identification and certification, the restoration of health services, trusted law and order, judicial services and water and electricity services, and emergency shelter put in place.
I can only reiterate my appeal to the Minister from earlier this week that the UK can play a very significant role in the restoration of education services with pop-up provision, and we can perhaps start the process of moving away from recrimination. That may lead to recognition of the state of Palestine—two states—and long-term sustainable peace. Let us not lose all hope.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, I join others in hoping—the latest news seems to be positive—that the ceasefire is back on and that it will hold, although I fear it may be only temporary if Hamas is allowed to continue playing any kind of role in Gaza, dedicated as it is to the destruction of the state of Israel.
There is substantial evidence that Hamas has fought from within hospitals throughout the war, periodically hiding some of the hostages it has held since 7 October 2023 inside them and using the people of Gaza as human shields. There is video evidence to demonstrate that.
We must also acknowledge the measures taken by Israel to facilitate the flow of aid into Gaza. Despite the security challenges, Israel has worked to establish humanitarian corridors and to co-ordinate with international actors to allow the delivery of vital supplies. It is crucial in this debate to recognise these efforts, as in my view they demonstrate Israel’s willingness to balance its legitimate security concerns with its obligations under international humanitarian law.
It is essential to differentiate between the legitimate self-defence actions of a democratic state, Israel, and the actions of what is essentially a terrorist group that seeks to undermine peace and stability in the region. Hamas bears total responsibility for the suffering in Gaza, not only through its attacks on Israel but through its previous governance failures and misappropriation of the considerable resources delivered over many years by the international community that were meant to help civilians.
This Government took the decision to help resume funding to UNRWA after the previous Government had suspended it. UNRWA had to fire nine staff after investigations into their involvement in the appalling attack on Israel in October 2023. We are clear that all links to the Hamas terrorist group must be severed if there is to be a sustainable peace in Gaza.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for securing this debate and to noble Lords who have contributed. I know this House will join me in welcoming the news overnight of major progress on a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. This provides hope and the prospect of an improvement in the dire situation in Gaza. I pay tribute to those who have worked so hard to bring this about, including the negotiating teams from the United States, Qatar and Egypt.
At the same time, we recognise that for the hostages and their families, the suffering continues. We especially think of British citizen Emily Damari, and of Eli and Yossi Sharabi, Oded Lifshitz, and Avinatan Or, who have strong links to the UK, and their loved ones, who have shown so much courage and commitment to bringing them home. We stand with Gazan civilians as they await more information about what this deal will mean. They need to be able to start rebuilding their lives and livelihoods as soon as possible. Winter has come to Gaza, and after 15 months of conflict Gazans are in a desperate situation. The legacy of conflict will take time to address fully. Nearly 2 million people have been forced to flee their homes, and the whole population of Gaza, not least the children and the most vulnerable in society, bear the scars of the conflict, both physically and psychologically.
Since the appalling Hamas attacks of 7 October, hospitals and other healthcare facilities make up much of the vital infrastructure that has been destroyed in Gaza. What is needed immediately is a rapid surge in aid reaching Gaza and an effective security context for this to be delivered. We need to see commercial deliveries fully reinstated and medical supplies allowed. We must also see more medical evacuation routes opened and the urgent facilitation of new and sustainable healthcare provision. Reports that more than 1,000 medical staff in Gaza have been killed, injured or detained during the conflict only underline the scale of the problem. The impact on Gaza’s people has been devastating. They have been unable to safely access the healthcare they desperately need; child malnutrition has rocketed and the whole population has faced the risk of famine for some time now. Infectious diseases have spread, and babies have died for lack of warmth.
Throughout the conflict we have pressed all sides to meet their obligations with regard to healthcare in Gaza. The noble Baroness, Lady Helic, asked about UNRWA. In our view, UNRWA is the best way forward to get aid, and it should be allowed to continue. Last month, the Prime Minister committed an additional £30 million to UNRWA, which will support vital services including medical care. We have now committed £41 million of UK funding to UNRWA this financial year to support its work in Gaza and the wider region. As the ceasefire begins to be implemented, it is essential that UNRWA is enabled to carry out its vital mission in Gaza and beyond.
Through our wider funding to the Occupied Territories, we have supported UK-Med’s operation of field hospitals and other healthcare services. UK-Med has provided vital care to over 300,000 Gazans since the start of the conflict. We have also provided £1 million of funding to the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population, delivered through the WHO in Egypt, to support Palestinians who have been medically evacuated from Gaza.
Given the distressing plight of the sick and injured, we continue to look for opportunities to alleviate the suffering, particularly of those in need of specialised treatment and urgent care. Officials across government are examining all options to ensure we are doing everything in our power to help and to explore all avenues in order to support the critically ill in Gaza. It remains essential that all parties work urgently to establish safe passage for patients who need treatment that is not available in Gaza. We have to take the opportunity of the ceasefire to further enable this. It is true that Israel has provided field hospitals; I am happy to confirm that. But we must acknowledge that the humanitarian situation we see today tells us that this has not been enough. Journalists should be able to operate freely and safely in Gaza, and we hope that that can be brought about soon.
In closing, I reiterate that what we urgently need now is for the implementation of the ceasefire announced last night, long overdue though it is, to bring swift and significant relief to the people of Gaza. We need to see a rapid increase in the amount of aid reaching Gaza and immediate action to restore civilian infrastructure, including access to healthcare. Reconstruction should be Palestinian led, but Hamas should play no part in this. We stand ready to play our part in reconstruction and psychosocial support. I suspect that this House, like the wider world, will never agree on the balance of responsibility and blame for the deaths of tens of thousands of children, women and men. But what we can support, and we surely all have a duty to support, is that negotiation, dialogue, humanitarian aid, a ceasefire and the release of all hostages, today, is the only way forward.
Global Warming
(1 month ago)
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Lord Teverson
That this House takes note of the challenges caused by the effects of climate change on natural ecosystems and the role of nature conservation in combating global warming.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, it is late in the week. The reason why I wanted to hold this debate is that, as those who have been Members of the House for some time know, I have tended to specialise on climate change and energy during my career here. However, more locally in Cornwall, for the last few years I have chaired the Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership. Its aim is to tackle the crises of biodiversity and the retreat of nature regionally. For some time, I treated both those crises—they are crises—as separate issues locally and globally.
For instance, I was optimistic about biodiversity in the far south-west of the United Kingdom. I used to say about the climate crisis that, wherever carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere, they will affect us globally, wherever we are, but that we can really make a difference to biodiversity in our locality. We hope that the rest of the world gets it right, but we can get it right here as well. However, I quickly learned that, although that is just about correct in the short term, if we do not solve the climate crisis in the medium and long term, our attempts to repair our ecosystems will be equally fraught.
I make an apology in that, in asking the question, I have said something that I tell everybody else off for saying—“nature conservation”. Nature conservation was a 1970s and 1980s term. It is no good now; we need nature recovery. Conservation is not sufficient. However, the one thing that I will try to do during this debate is to be optimistic and not mention that our nature is the most depleted of any country in the world. I will not go down that route.
So we have two crises. On the climate side, we know that 2024 was the hottest year for our planet, and that all of the last 10 years have been the hottest on record. On biodiversity, the Living Planet Index has shown that, over the last 50 years, the average size of monitored wildlife populations has shrunk by three-quarters. In the UK, one in six species has been threatened by extinction, while 7% of our woodland and a quarter of our peat-lands are assessed to be in good condition—a minuscule amount. I will come back to peat-lands later and I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, is here to talk about caring for our forests, and the Woodland Trust.
Both these crises are linked by their cause but, optimistically, they are also connected by their solution. Briefly on the causes of biodiversity loss, it is now estimated that climate change is the third most important reason for biodiversity loss but that it will, over the coming years, become one of the most important.
Those individual threats include temperature, and the fact that species cannot migrate at the same rate as the planet is warming up—at the end of the day, you cannot go further north than the North Pole, and you cannot go further south than the South Pole; flooding and more destructive storms; fires, obviously; species migration, and the fact that we do not necessarily have the right conditions for all the migration routes; seasonal dysfunction, where perhaps a species of flora that an animal or species relies on is there at different times of the season because of changes; ocean acidification, which is directly related to carbon being absorbed by the ocean, which has been hugely helpful against climate change but will eventually be very destructive to marine species; invasive species, which when they come down to being pests can also affect human health; soil destruction; and desertification, as we have seen in Africa and beyond.
So we see all sorts of examples of that, including the current wildfires in California, coral bleaching, floods in the United Kingdom and Europe and extreme weather in the Caribbean. I ask noble Lords whether they can think of a day when they have watched the news, whether on television or YouTube, and not seen some form of extreme event problem over recent months. It seems to me that every night examples of this problem are there to see on our screens. This is not just about biodiversity; it is about trying to protect our ecosystems and ecosystem services, whether it is pollination, clean water and air, water cycles, healthy soils or flood control.
I will give a bit of bad news and then I hope to come on to the good news, so that everybody can at least feel that there is some solution here. When I first got involved in biodiversity, I was looking at the so-called Aichi targets from the Convention on Biological Diversity. There were a number of them: they were set in 2011 and were supposed to be completed by 2020. Not one of those targets, all of which were on biological diversity, was actually met and we do not seem any nearer to them now. Very few of the sustainable development goals, which we perhaps know better, have been met, either globally or here in the UK. Some have, but not very many in this area.
This is a big issue globally. Back in October, there was a convention on biodiversity in Colombia, and in November, a Conference of the Parties on climate change in Baku, Azerbaijan. The first ended without any conclusions whatever because the parties could not agree on the biodiversity side, and at COP, as we know, partly because of the fossil fuel interests that were there, again, there was insufficient agreement on how to move forward. In the meantime, we face a number of tipping points that we must avoid: the disappearance of the polar ice caps, the movement of ocean circulation and the survival of the lungs of the planet—not just the Amazon but the Congo Basin rainforest.
I will mention something that really disappointed me, as a parliamentarian, during the last Government. The Treasury, while under the control of Mr Sunak, produced the fantastic Dasgupta report, which was primarily about natural capital. To me, it was equal to the Stern report on climate change from several years before. It was a beautiful report, produced by the Treasury under the previous Government, but did anything happen? Did any of us do anything about it? It lies there, unused. Both nationally and globally, we are all committed to the 30 by 30 target, aiming for 30% of the land and sea to be managed for nature by 2030, but we are nowhere it.
Let us be a little bit more upbeat and look at where we go from here. I believe that we can solve all these by solving both together. We can rebuild our ecosystems and can substitute nature for concrete when it comes to adaptation. The first of those ways, as Members in this debate will know, is nature-based solutions. For example, unstraightening rivers, healthy soils, reforestation, beavers—as we have in Cornwall now—or healthy wetlands can all really confront flooding. For biodiversity on farmland, we have ranch-style grazing, herbal leys and lots of other things that I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Curry, will put far more powerfully than me. Of course, there are no-take areas for fishery regeneration as well. I congratulate the previous Government, particularly on the marine Blue Belt initiative across the globe.
I come back again to peatland regeneration. I understand that, although we had a ban on gardening peat last year, we are still able to extract peat and use it commercially. We have regenerative agriculture and nature-friendly farming, which will look after our soils, absorb more carbon and give long-term food security. Seagrass increases biodiversity and is an effective carbon sink. I welcome the Crown Estate’s mapping exercise of our coast, including salt marshes. Native forestry can absorb carbon and increase habitats, and individual trees or clusters of trees give shelter and moderate heat for livestock. Tropically, mangroves promote carbon capture and biodiversity in tandem. Of course, we should not forget urban green areas, which can be as good for human health, both mental and physical.
In this area, I would say that we have the promise of a triple win: climate mitigation, adaptation and a rebound of biodiversity. That is my good news—but I ask the Government the following questions. The Government are great on climate change and I really respect and encourage them in their objectives, particularly in decarbonisation of the energy system. I also welcome the rapid review of the Government’s 2023 environmental improvement plan, which has been ordered by Steve Reed, the Secretary of State. But where is the real plan for 30 by 30, even here in the UK? We have only five years left for that now, and the Office for Environmental Protection warned today that the Government are
“largely off track to meet”
the majority of legally binding nature targets, and time is rapidly running out, as we have seen. How will the Government avoid silo management between DESNZ and Defra? This is a problem for all Whitehall departments and it is absolutely crucial here that the two work together. Will the Government turn first to nature-based solutions rather than concrete ones? Will they look at the Dasgupta report again? In England, how will they deliver local nature recovery strategies? Is there a real way of stopping peat extraction as soon as possible? I beg to move.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, I declare my interests with a range of environmental organisations, as listed in the register. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for securing this important debate. I am very glad that he has seen the light on the road to Damascus and is now seeing climate change and biodiversity as a joined-up issue. Predictably, the noble Lord has done a splendid job of laying out the issues, so I will not duplicate that. I will simply say that looking after nature benefits not only nature but people, the climate and the economy; indeed, it is one of the most effective ways of reducing carbon and providing solutions to enable us to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
When I was looking at what I was going to say during this debate, I was very worried because, when talking about climate and biodiversity decline, you can begin to sound like Private Frazer from “Dad’s Army”—“We’re doomed!”—so I am going to talk about something much more positive: four real opportunities that are around right now, in the real world, that could make a difference for both climate and nature.
First, we will be building a lot in the next decade in pursuit of growth, housing, infrastructure and green energy. We have the opportunity to do all that in a completely different way—with planning decisions that are simultaneously good for the climate, the environment, the economy and people; using new green construction technologies; and building our new housing stock to the highest environmental and resilience standards.
We will have to change our current ways of doing things, of course, where too many developments threaten or destroy some of the most precious habitats for the storage of carbon and the support of biodiversity—vital carbon sinks such as, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, ancient woodlands, ancient and veteran trees, and peatlands, which store twice as much carbon as forests. You have no idea how difficult it was as a former chair of the Woodland Trust to put pen to paper to admit that something is better at storing carbon than trees are. What we must not do is what I call “doing an HS2”—driving in thoughtless straight lines across protected sites, important biodiversity and stuff that is really important for climate change.
My second proposition is that agriculture has probably the single biggest adverse impact on biodiversity and the climate change mitigation and adaptation that biodiversity can offer. But all is not lost; we have a significant amount of funding in this country already invested in agricultural support, which, if used skilfully, can simultaneously support biodiversity, climate change mitigation, food resilience and farmers. We have farmers who have shown that they understand the need for diverse and resilient farm businesses. So let us go for it, but with the climate change and biodiversity issues well embedded in all aspects of the agricultural landscape.
My third opportunity—I am sure the Minister will comment on this—is that right now we have an awful lot of initiatives across biodiversity and other environmental measures, planning and construction, energy systems and climate change, and very few of them are joined up. The Government set off in the right direction with joined-up mission boards in support of the manifesto, but we need to go further than that. We are blessed with one thing that joins up much of this: land. Land is a scarce resource. It is fundamental for a whole range of issues: climate impacts, biodiversity, housing, infrastructure development, energy, health, water quantity and quality, and growth.
So I urge the Minister not to keep us waiting any longer for the much-delayed—although I must admit it was the Tories who mostly delayed it—land use framework consultation, because that is the foundation that will join up many policies that currently are not joined up. But it also offers a process, nationally and locally, to get away from the sorts of conflicts in the past that were framed around the idea that we can either build or have biodiversity, but we cannot have both. I believe that we can have both and that local people have a right to expect both and to be part of that.
My fourth and last opportunity is that the majority of the biggest landowners in this country are public bodies. Look at the league table of land ownership in this country: I bet not many people know exactly who lies where in it. But if those public bodies, such as the Forestry Commission, the Crown Estate, the Ministry of Defence and others, were all to do the right thing by their use and management of their land in the interests of biodiversity and climate change, we could make tremendous progress and set some terrific examples of good practice for private landowners, and globally.
Let me take those three examples in a bit more detail: the Crown Estate, the defence estate and the Forestry Commission. I praise the Crown Estate for the progress it has voluntarily made in addressing environmental responsibilities and welcome the fact that, as a result of the Crown Estate Act, it will have an even stronger statutory requirement to do so. The defence estate is less promising, with land set aside for carbon sequestration through tree planting and habitat creation now being sold off for development as it searches for cash. The Forestry Commission, the biggest landowner in Britain, needs serious review. Its establishing statute is now over 60 years old and shows signs of age.
The statutory purpose of the Forestry Commission is to promote the interests of forestry and the production and supply of timber. Conservation is to be undertaken, but only if it can be balanced with timber production. We need an urgent review of the legislative framework of the Forestry Commission to bring it into the 21st century and, indeed, we might well consider tasking all public bodies that have major land holdings to deliver statutory targets for biodiversity, environment and climate in much the way that has now been done for the Crown Estate. I hope the Minister will grasp these opportunities.
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
My Lords, it is an absolute pleasure to follow the noble Baroness—someone, I confess, I greatly admire. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on securing this debate and his fantastic rallying cry at the beginning. Sadly—I am sure that I am not alone in this—he has stolen much of my thunder. It was a good speech. I thank all the organisations which I am sure have been in touch with all noble Lords ahead of this debate. I declare that I am a member and supporter of the Conservative Environment Network.
There are three things I would like to raise today. First, everyone knows the importance and beauty of our oceans and, sadly, the many challenges they face. Under the last Government the United Kingdom played a leading role in negotiating the High Seas Treaty and it now needs us—this country—to take it forward and to play our part. I ask the Minister: what steps this Government are taking to ratify the treaty?
There is one linked—utterly crazy, frankly—manmade thing we are allowing that is having a huge effect on biodiversity in the ocean, not to mention carbon, and which we could bring to a swift end. That is, of course, bottom trawling. Just before Christmas I met Oceana, the international organisation doing incredible work to promote ocean conservation. I asked for the meeting because I was struggling to understand why—this is not a political dig at all; obviously, this has gone on for far too long—we continue to allow bottom trawling to happen. I was blown away in that conversation to discover that it is also allowed in marine protected areas.
Let us be clear: this activity is unbelievably destructive. It is practically bulldozing entire habitats with extraordinary, ridiculously high bycatch, and it is disturbing blue carbon. As I say, this is actively happening now and in what are deemed protected areas. So urgent action is needed. What steps are the Government taking to ban this destructive form of fishing across our so-called protected areas?
The second issue, as has already been mentioned, is around forestry and rewilding. Trees play a massive role in society, in nature, in economic terms, in health and in carbon storage. What steps are His Majesty’s Government taking beyond the task force to unleash planting by the private sector to create new woodland habitats, thereby sequestering lots of carbon in the process?
More broadly, I have argued for—I am sure noble Lords have heard me bore for England on—rewilding. To me, nature is our ally on so much. It is not just about some green and pleasant land. It is not just about health. It is not the emotional attachment and the enjoyment it gives. It is not about the jobs it creates or the communities it pulls together; nor is it about the importance of restoring habitats or stopping them being lost. Nature does all this and more, especially when it comes our climate and weather.
The reason I pushed hard for nature-based solutions during our debates on the Water Bill is because those help us tackle water pollution. Often, they are far better and more efficient than manmade infrastructure. Flood plains, hedgerows and letting rivers meander, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, help tackle floods —as does our great and trusty friend the beaver. Trees, heaths and peatlands also cut gases. I say to those sceptics who say this is all nice to have but is impractical: it is not. Echoing the beautiful and moving words from the noble Baroness, Lady Batters, yesterday in her incredible maiden speech in this Chamber, nature does not stop things, including food production.
That leads me to my third area: farming. I want to raise it because the only people who can improve nature and biodiversity en masse are land managers. I am afraid it does feel as though this Government are knowingly making it more difficult for land managers to do their job. So I ask, respectfully: what assessment was done by the Government of the impact of the tax changes on farmers and, crucially, on nature restoration? If farmers leave and sell up, what will replace them?
In closing, I have a general point that again slightly echoes what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said at the beginning. Nature and the environment are not the same as net zero. They are entirely separate, albeit complementary, and I cannot help but feel that the wider Government—I respectfully exclude the two Front Benchers from this—see debates on the environment purely through the lens of net zero. I am not at all doing down the importance of green jobs or having energy diversification, and of course energy security is crucial, but so are food security and economic security. The Government, with the exception of the Minister, are broadly absent on nature. It is forced on them through the water Bill, or it is always under review, or, as we read the other day in the papers, policies are even killed off as options because they are seen as Tory policy.
By focusing solely on wind turbines and solar panels we miss a huge swathe of opportunities. You cannot tackle and mitigate the effects of climate change without recognising the limitless benefits and opportunities of nature. If we become the go-to place to lock up carbon, restore biodiversity and deliver green finance, those are the jobs of the square mile and the countryside as well as the solution to so much, not armies of civil servants or reams of legislation. Can I seek a firm commitment that the Government understand nature and the private sector’s ability to drive change? As I said, nature is a solution for so much.
Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB)
My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on sponsoring this important debate and on his impressive opening speech. Clearly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, stated, farmers have a key role in helping to address this challenge. Having been a farmer for most of my life until recently, I am conscious of that responsibility.
Some in this House may be aware that I was responsible for a report published in 2002 on the future of food and farming, commissioned by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair. We reported that agricultural policy had been slow to recognise the impact of post-war policies on the natural environment. When we drafted that report, participation by farmers in stewardship schemes was less than 10%. We recommended the introduction of a broad and shallow entry-level scheme, which the Government endorsed, and after five years’ participation it led to 70% of eligible land being in some form of stewardship. It was an important first step for the majority of farmers, but we still face a huge challenge if we try to slow down and arrest species decline. The subsequent stewardship schemes, and latterly the ELM and SFI schemes, have built on that early progress.
However, I am concerned that, having got the balance wrong in the latter half of the last century, when we as farmers were incentivised only to produce food, that we may still be getting it wrong. The pendulum has swung 180 degrees. We need to learn lessons from the past and get the balance right between sustainable food production and addressing the environmental challenges we face, including the restoration of habitats. Those are not incompatible objectives, and I am sure the Minister will reassure us that Defra is fully aware of this challenge.
Even if all farmers were to actively engage in trying to restore habitats and re-establish ecosystems, we may never recover some species due to other factors, including climate change, as we mentioned, rising temperatures, urbanisation and, I may say, the increase in predators. I mention predators because they are having a greater impact on the natural environment than is appreciated. I welcome the inclusion of grey squirrel control in the SFI. Just for information, the badger population has doubled over the past 40 years. Over the same period, the population of hedgehogs has fallen from 20 million to fewer than a million. Of course there are other factors at work, but badgers are the only predator of hedgehogs.
There is undoubtedly some urgency about the challenges we face. The year 2030 is just five years away and these are long-term trends that we need to turn around. We need landscape-scale participation, with targeted action to address specific environmental issues, including the encouragement of species at risk. There are some great examples of that beginning to happen, and we need more of them. Existing schemes may need revision in order to achieve agreed landscape-scale priorities.
Tensions are clearly apparent on some estates between landlords and tenants, with the latter feeling threatened by decisions taken without consultation, particularly with regard to short-term tenancies. The viability of farming businesses is being put at risk. I hope that the new tenancy commissioner will be given the powers to investigate perceived unreasonable behaviour by some landlords.
There is clearly a need to look at all schemes—the noble Baroness, Lady Young, stated this—whether that is woodland establishment, selective tree planting or flood mitigation, and the SFI and the various options available, to make sure they are reliable to deliver the desired objectives of restoring nature, climate change mitigation and sustainable food production. It does not feel as if policies are joined up. Peat has been mentioned and the planting of trees, so I will move on.
I want to make a plea to the Government. Soil quality is crucial for sustainable food production and the sequestration of carbon, but also for supporting effective ecosystems. Soil is fundamental. The previous Government committed to a soil action plan and then reneged on that commitment. We need a national plan to enable us to optimise the effectiveness of the contribution that our soils are capable of delivering. Northern Ireland has a national soil map; so does the Republic. We need one in England. We have the opportunity, through the ELMS, to capture information on soil quality, which could be supplied by all participants. Soil’s carbon content varies from farm to farm, from field to field, and within fields. GPS, in conjunction with soil testing, can help identify what actions are needed and where to improve soil quality. We need a national map and a plan.
I will make two other points. First, the statement by the Secretary of State for Defra committing to £5 billion of funding for agriculture support over the next two years is very welcome. However, despite fairly encouraging figures of farmer participation in the SFI, there are still thousands of family farmers, many in precious and vulnerable landscapes—some will be neighbours of the Minister and some neighbours of mine, on the other side of the Pennines—who have not yet engaged in the schemes. Can the Minister confirm that funding will still be available for those who have not yet applied, or have delayed applying, due to either the scheme being too complex or the options available being inappropriate until recent revisions? Is there a possibility that Treasury pressure on Defra might have to limit participation in the SFI? It would be deeply regrettable if that were to be the case.
I will be just a short moment. I have long believed that the public benefits that farmers can deliver are much greater than has been calculated in the past. Finally, I would like to ask the Minister, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, did, when we can expect an announcement—
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
Can the noble Lord wind up, please?
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on this debate. I agree with almost every word he said, but when he starts telling the House that the Labour Government are to be congratulated on their climate change actions, I am afraid that I disagree really strongly. In a debate on an existential crisis for the human race and the planet, we have one Labour Back-Bencher—albeit an excellent one. At least we have three Tories, most of whom will talk some sense—but not completely, obviously. I just do not understand how this Government can take this so casually. It is absolutely appalling and I have been sitting here fuming since we started.
We need nature and we need biodiversity. It is not a nice thing to have but absolutely necessary for human life. Biodiversity, in particular, is nature’s safety blanket; it cushions the shocks and creates resilience. We have been shredding that security blanket for decades with an industrialised agricultural system that is overly dependent on chemical life support.
Human actions have raised global temperatures by 1.5 degrees. We have done that a decade ahead of when we thought we would. Climate science is constantly wrong because it is constantly cautious in talking about impacts and because it is constantly running to catch up with real-time impacts that scientists are measuring. For example, last year the UN issued its big climate report that brings together all the other reports. It was its sixth assessment, and it declared that things were far worse and disaster much closer than it thought in its fifth assessment. Its fifth was worse than its fourth, and that was worse than its third. We have had decades of these reports and emissions are still going up.
The science that went into the UN report last year is already out of date. First, the rate of increase in global temperatures has accelerated and broken barriers that we thought we had over a decade to reach. It might be why Trump is so interested in the sovereignty of Greenland; as the ice sheets melt, zinc and all the other minerals and precious metals will be available for grabbing. His rich friends know that the climate is changing. Their denial is simply greed; they want to carry on making money while the rest of us have to swim to our lifeboats.
Secondly, the scientists who work on the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation—the Gulf Stream is part of that—are saying that it could fail because of all the freshwater running off the Greenland ice sheet, and a lot of those scientists are now saying that it could fail in the next few years, rather than in the next few decades. That research is important, as it talks about Britain losing the warm waters coming north and having the same climate as Newfoundland. Imagine icebergs floating off the coast of Cornwall and you will get the picture. That research will not appear until the UN’s seventh assessment report in 2029. We can see that the science is constantly behind in reporting.
I used to worry about what a seven metre rise in water levels would do to our coastlines and major cities when the Greenland ice sheet melts, but it turns out that, well before that happens, we will be very, very cold. That cold will probably destroy our farming industry and wildlife. This Government and the last—I blame the previous Government just as much—are unprepared for any of this because their plans are based on the out-of-date science of the last UN report, rather than on what the latest research is telling us. I hope that Government Ministers can get more up-to-date advisers. Please talk to scientists and find out the latest research.
Building up the countryside’s national resilience to the potential shocks of climate chaos should be a priority for our Government, farmers and planning system. The talk of constant growth does not fit with human survival. Capitalism places no value on nature, other than destroying it as fast as possible to create more wealth. We are destroying parts of the planet that we need for our own lives and well-being. That is utterly stupid.
I want to bring up a nationally important case for rivers. Labour committed in its manifesto to clean up rivers. There is a river in North Yorkshire—with a nice name, but I cannot find it in my notes—over which the Pickering Fishery Association, a club in North Yorkshire, won a landmark legal case against the previous Government and the Environment Agency. The anglers successfully argued that the Government and the Environment Agency had failed in their legal duties to clean up and protect the Costa Beck, a former trout stream near Pickering. Please can the Minister tell me what the change is? The previous Government put in an appeal against that ruling. This Government, through Steve Reed—who the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, congratulated—have continued with that appeal. This Government are refusing to clean up a river that the courts have said they should.
I do not understand why this Government cannot see that they should be the face of change—and they are not. We might as well have the Tory Government still in power—though I do not want that.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for including climate change and nature in this debate. They are and always have been inextricably linked. I agree with the Government in describing the crises facing them as the greatest long-term challenge the world faces. It is significant that, in the Global Risks Report published by the World Economic Forum yesterday, extreme weather and biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse are ranked first and second over a 10-year horizon in a table of severe global risks.
This interconnection, and the policy focus on measures to address the climate and nature crises, is likely to result in increased human-wildlife conflict. The global biodiversity framework recognises the role that human-wildlife conflict and coexistence plays in nature conservation in its target 4. In taking a lead, will this Government adopt the IUCN guidelines that provide the necessary framework to address conflicts and promote coexistence? If so, when?
While nature-based solutions—known as NbS—can help mitigate the effects of climate change, there is evidence from other countries that addressing climate change and biodiversity loss in isolation will result in other environmental implications. The Grantham Research Institute reports that, in some cases, NbS
“have been employed with a short-sighted focus on rapid CO2 removal without due attention to other environmental implications”.
To pick up my noble friend Lord Gascoigne’s point, this is a clear warning to the Government that a holistic discussion addressing the issue is needed. Does the Minister agree that NbS should be pursued alongside other measures, such as emission reductions and a concurrent focus on consumer consumption as opposed to just producer emissions?
Many NbS have long timescales and may not even achieve the ambition of the restoration of an ecosystem, such as peatlands, but rather the creation of a novel ecosystem that relates to current climatic conditions. It is claptrap to say that we can save our peatlands by rewetting, when it is estimated that only 30% of the Peak District can be rewetted as part of peatland restoration. Climate change will cause land degradation. Models of future climate projections suggest that the geographical distribution of blanket bogs gradually retreats towards the north and west. Therefore, the protection of these existing carbon sinks is vital. The question for the Government is whether the focus should be on adaptation rather than mitigation in some habitats and areas.
Wildfire is one of the drivers of biodiversity loss and is becoming a growing threat. The UK’s Third National Adaptation Programme identifies wildfire as a significant risk to forests, woodlands and peatlands, with the climate change risk assessment highlighting a significant increase in summer wildfire danger. While the risk is highest in the south and east of England, the change in risk is likely to be more pronounced in the north and west. The expected milder, wetter winters will promote vegetation build-up, and hotter, drier springs and summers will increase the risk of vegetation catching fire. This increased fuel load will be an added threat to new woodland plantations.
Some UK habitats consist of fire-adapted species such as heathlands and peatlands, but the projected increase in fire frequency and the increase in fire intensity and severity means that even fire-adapted species are at risk. Whatever the targets for habitats and biodiversity are, wildfire is just one example of where proper management is essential in ensuring that NbS are good for both climate mitigation and biodiversity. Each site or area will be unique, requiring a policy that does not take a one-size-fits-all approach. We all know how difficult that is for Governments to implement.
Proper monitoring will be necessary, for how can one judge whether a policy is successful or not without it? However, we know that Natural England and the Environment Agency are struggling with resources and that the lack of monitoring has already led to environmental problems. I therefore pose the question: do the Government have the inclination and resources needed to grasp the challenges and opportunities? We are waiting to hear how their policies will be designed to meet their targets. Sadly, they appear rudderless, with the Treasury treating Defra with disdain. They need good non-departmental bodies to help implement their policies.
I conclude with two further questions. Why is there is still an interim chair of the Climate Change Committee? The term of office of the chair of Natural England ends in April. Will he be reappointed and, if not, when will his successor be announced?
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for calling this crucial debate. I note my interests in the register and the various capacities in which I wrestle with the challenges of climate change and nature restoration, as both a sustainable economy lawyer and a sustainable land manager in Devon. Given that climate change is so significant to future generations, I also note my interests as a father of two children whose own recent experiences of climate change warrant mention.
My kids have been privileged and challenged to spend their childhood in the south-west of two different countries, the United Kingdom and the United States. In the UK, they schooled at Kenton Primary School in Devon, which was inundated when a biblical deluge swept through the village on a Sunday in September 2023. The beautiful building in the middle of the village had hosted a village school for over 400 years. Given the devastation wrought by an unprecedented spate of five feet of water within an hour’s rainfall, it will never host a school again. A new school is promised on the edge of the village, but the excitement of schoolkids’ playtime voices will not be heard from the Triangle ever again.
Having moved to California to finish their education, they have enjoyed the delights of the Pacific Palisades Charter High School, replete with surf and beach volleyball teams, where my daughter is a senior and my son a sophomore. Until last week, that is, when the school burned down, victim, along with a whole community, of the Palisades fire, which still burns—it is only 22% contained. They are safe and evacuated, but over 50 of my daughter’s classmates are now homeless. They have lost everything: wildfire has taken back that whole hillside. The Apocalypse is here and it is now, and I speak today in tribute to that community and the remarkable bravery of firefighters, volunteers and public servants. While their experience is, thankfully, somewhat unusual, it will not be in the years ahead. Whatever we can do, we should have done it years ago.
Of course, it is not just these personal challenges that we need to bear in mind. Climate change’s impact on our natural ecosystems has devastated recent harvests. UK wheat production last year was 21% down due to those rains, and the Spanish fires around Barcelona massively disrupted supply of fresh fruit and vegetables. Bad weather has added over £350 to national food bills. Tree disease is rife due to unseasonable droughts, and pollinators are stressed by parasites encouraged by warmer weather. Similarly, our national infrastructure is threatened by rising sea levels, with the main railway line past my home now under constant vigil at high tide due to the threat of breach of the Exe estuary’s Powderham banks.
Nature, of course, will survive these challenges. The fires may be life-threatening to us, but the Santa Monica mountains will recover; this is their natural cycle, after all. Rewilding is not the option; the removal of productive farming and the local communities that steward the land is not the solution. That way lies hunger and increasing food insecurity. What we need to do is to listen to nature, not to fight it; to embrace it and to farm with it, sustainably harvesting our food and regeneratively intensifying production where appropriate. Around the River Exe, we should not seek to hold back the tide, like King Canute, but we should embrace its return and look to harness nature-based solutions to the challenges of coastal erosion and flooding. I have long requested that intertidal habitat play a more important role in our land management structures; thus I applaud the inclusion of this land type in the recently announced SFI options.
As a priority, the Government need to turn around their relationship with farmers and land managers. The APR inheritance tax reforms were simply a disaster for rural trust. Steve Reed recently announced fresh reforms at the Oxford Business Conference: a farming road map. I ask that the Government take care in uprooting and changing farm policy yet again. Farmers, and the soils and biodiversity on which they rely, require consistent, long-term and dependable policies, not constant chopping and changing. I echo the call by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for us to honour the work of Professor Partha Dasgupta and his The Economics of Biodiversity. I happened to meet him yesterday at St John’s College in Cambridge.
In their tireless drive for economic growth, the Government need to recognise the cost of the natural capital that that growth will inevitably consume. If we do that accurately, and accurately measure what we consume, we may turn the tide on global warming and biodiversity loss.
To conclude on a positive note, both my children are passionate about the environment and hope to study it at university. They know that nature can provide a solution to these terrible challenges, if only we treat it with the deference and respect that it deserves.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on securing and introducing this debate, and I congratulate everybody who has taken part.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, regretted the small number of Back-Bench speakers here today, but I have to say that that has given us a little bit more time. With a debate such as this, the trouble is that this Chamber is an echo chamber: we all know what we are talking about and what we want to see happen. We have to get that message out there—not just to the public but to No. 10. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned the potential conflict between DESNZ and Defra. The people who can sort this out are in No. 10, which has to provide leadership on these issues. If there were anything we could do to give Defra more power to its elbow, I am sure we would all agree on that.
The trouble with being the last Back-Bencher to speak is that it has all been said. I was also struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Curry, said, and it is true; there are some conflicts. I should register my interest as a member of various conservation organisations. I would normally be seen, and hope to be seen, as someone who is on the side of nature, but the noble Lord is absolutely right about the number of badgers. I can attest to that in my own garden, where the hedgehogs have disappeared and, suddenly, a camera trap has produced badgers. I am delighted that they are there, in suburban Middlesex, but I lament the loss of the hedgehogs.
I have been interested in birds, and been a member of the RSPB, for more than 60 years. I have seen things change. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I have actually seen a species—although not in Britain—which is now recognised as extinct: the slender-billed curlew. I am sure there are a few other species I have seen during those years which will become extinct before I do. However, I am pleased to say that some breeding has gone on, so there may be some Randalls still around in generations to come.
As has been mentioned, climate change has affected mountain birds, which are going higher and higher. Snow-buntings and dotterel are running out of mountains because there is nothing left. It is not the right climate any more. This is an urgent and important issue.
My noble friend Lord Gascoigne mentioned the very good maiden speech yesterday by the noble Baroness, Lady Batters, who was president of the NFU for a long time. What struck me in what she said was how farmers can help. We must not have this conflict—it is not that farmers are bad for nature and conservationists do not like farmers. The most important thing is that we all work together.
My noble friend Lord Caithness mentioned the peatlands. This is another issue on which have to find a common theme. There are too many people taking a polarised view of these things.
Another issue, which has been hinted at, is wetlands, which present a fantastic opportunity. Some have been restored and new ones have been created. The Wild Fowl & Wetlands Trust has created wetlands on the Steart estuary, and it has just announced that it is trying to create them on the Awre peninsula, which juts out into the River Severn, by the Forest of Dean. These are places where we can restore wetlands, with all their benefits.
There will be a problem with the planning. As president of the Colne Valley Regional Park, on the edge of London, I am very concerned about this. Our green belt is being attacked by all sorts of things. No one seems to worry about whether the land in question is on a flood plain. This is not about housing; it is about databanks and so forth.
These are real issues. I would like the Government to think about creating wetland cities, as we had garden cities. We could re-wet some areas; the Fens would be quite a good area for that. The RSPB has the Lakenheath reserve, where it has recreated wetlands over some not particularly good agricultural soil—the original Fens. Perhaps we could create new towns there where people would actually want to live. The Minister could also talk to the MoD, which has a huge amount of land that it could do things with.
Let us not be too pessimistic, but, if we are not careful, we will have reason to be pessimistic because it will happen and happen badly. But we still have just about enough time.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I will speak in the gap, for one minute only, because there has been only a very brief mention in this debate—by the noble Lord, Lord Curry—of the potential for action on nature recovery by tenant farmers and the barriers to that. Half of all farmable land in this country is either fully or partly tenanted, so we cannot afford to ignore the contribution of tenant farmers. Is the Minister aware of the 2022 Rock review on tenant farmers led by the noble Baroness, Lady Rock? It was commissioned by the last Government following recommendations in your Lordships’ Science and Technology Committee report of that year on nature-based solutions to climate change. Will the Minister look at the review and assess whether recent developments in response to the recommendations have been adequate?
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, this has been an excellent debate and much more optimistic than it might have been. I felt, like the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, that we could have fallen into a bit of a doom loop, but thanks to my noble friend Lord Teverson’s tour de force introduction, as the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, called it, which gave good examples of how things link up, we have had a very positive debate.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Randall, for saying that we had not talked enough about wetlands, because that is what I intend to talk about in my wind-up. I will look at a couple of examples of how habitat restoration can substantially increase biodiversity, mitigate aspects of climate change and store carbon. Salt marshes and wetlands at the confluence of freshwater and saltwater are examples of this.
There are now 470 hectares of wetlands at the mouth of the River Parrett in Somerset. They are known as the Steart Marshes, which started out as a flood management project in 1998. I must declare an interest as my husband, Humphrey Temperley, was then chair of the Wessex flood management board. He was passionate and committed to this ambitious project for many years, so I have learned an awful lot about it. Under a different regime, it continues to thrive and go from strength to strength.
It is a multifaceted and, as my noble friend called it, triple-win situation. The mudflat habitat and tidal creeks provide nursery areas for fish, including sea bass, and overwintering migrant birds thrive. There are otters, marsh harriers and any number of species that had been in substantial decline. There is grazing for Dexter and other cattle and sheep command a premium price as salt marsh lamb. There is a lot of community engagement and Manchester Metropolitan University has estimated that, since the restoration, 30,000 tonnes of carbon have been stored that would not have been otherwise. It has certainly fulfilled its original aim of flood mitigation and management.
The noble Lord, Lord Randall, mentioned that it is sometimes controversial to do things of this sort. Indeed, this was, but, happily, one of the irritants in the way of further salt marsh plans in the area has been removed. The then Conservative MP for Bridgwater, Ian Liddell-Grainger, said such schemes were a waste of money. Thank goodness the community by the Severn estuary had the good sense to replace him with Rachel Gilmour MP, who has a wealth of experience in environmental issues.
There are lots of estuary and salt marsh projects. There is a huge project under way in the Humber which I have not visited yet. It is being undertaken between the Wildlife Trusts and Ørsted, the huge wind farm company. That is an example of a big one and there is a small one that I hope to visit tomorrow on the Dart estuary between Totnes and Dartmouth.
My noble friend did not limit his debate to what was happening in the UK; he also mentioned mangrove forests. That is another win-win-win situation. When I visited Sri Lanka in 2011 with War on Want, I was taken to see a community project then in its infancy. Noble Lords will remember that in 2004 Sri Lanka suffered terrible effects of the tsunami. Also, shrimp farms and salt pans had degraded the coastal strip very adversely, affecting fishing and making the coast vulnerable to erosion as well as tsunamis. The tsunami provided the impetus to think about mangrove forests and the immediate protection they offered, and the community was replanting them. In 2015 Sri Lanka became the first nation to legally protect all its mangrove forests and a decade later, in 2024, Sri Lankan mangrove regeneration programmes were recognised by the UN as one of its first World Restoration Flagships. Both wetlands here and mangrove forests there give us firm examples of a win-win-win. Blue carbon sequestration in mangrove forests is one of the most efficient methods of sequestration in the world.
I have to leave the cheerful examples now and move to some of the questions I have for the Minister. I certainly do not accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said, that this Government are worse than the last. She must have forgotten all the things that happened as a result of Brexit, such as no more regulation around water and air. The loss of the EU water framework directive alone should give her pause for thought. This Government are busy bringing in regulations that will make sure that some of these issues are addressed in the short and long term. There was also a starvation of funds to Natural England and the Environment Agency, which meant that they were not able to deal with the things she mentioned, such as the North Yorkshire issue. I feel that this Government are making a very good start.
However, I have to ask the Minister about neonicotinoids. They are a proven mortal threat to our pollinators. I mention it particularly tonight because the government decision is imminent on whether or not to allow a fifth year of derogation from the ban. I believe it would be an utter disgrace if this Government cave in and allow a fifth year of derogation. I agree there might be a bit of loss to the sugar beet growers but it is nothing compared with the loss of our pollinators. Each year for the previous four years the Conservative Government allowed the derogation even though the negative effects to our pollinators was known and proven. That derogation was subject to farmers implementing a strict rotation system but after four years it is unlikely that even they can comply with the conditions, because, as the Minister must know, you are not allowed to use the same fields that you have used neonics in for 46 months, so unless they are very large holdings, that rotational requirement is probably being ignored or not enforced. A further condition is that they monitor the levels of neonics in the environment and submit the results to the Government. Is the Minister satisfied that that data has come in and is it feeding in to the decision?
As I mentioned, I absolutely do not doubt that exiting the EU has had an extremely detrimental economic impact, but I believe that it has had an even more detrimental effect on our biodiversity.
The noble Lord, Lord Curry, called for a soil action plan. I absolutely echo his call.
Finally, will we in some form follow the EU chemical strategy for sustainability, particularly to address the issue of forever chemicals? They are really dangerous: they turn up in drinking water, and they threaten not only this generation but generations to come. We really need a chemical strategy with teeth to make sure that any manufacturing does not threaten this country’s drinking water in any way whatever. The Government should look at having that sort of regulation.
Having said that, I am delighted to have been able to take part in this debate. I look forward to the Minister’s answers.
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, I refer the House to my interests as set out in the register, in particular as a developer of new, woodland carbon code qualified forests through LR Strategies; as an investor in Cecil, a data platform for nature reporting, and in Circular FX, a trading platform for natural capital; and as a farmer and landowner.
I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for bringing this important debate. I always listen with great interest to contributions from the noble Lord, who has unique insights into these issues. Other noble Lords spoke with great authority on many different areas, and they have left me with little more to say on illustrating the extent of the problem.
How we in the UK interact with our landscape and ecosystems will have marginal impacts on global warming or global ecosystems, but it is still critical. As a wealthy and small nation, we are well placed through our actions to create, demonstrate and export best practice. Our actions will also have a massive impact on how we experience global warming and climate change in our country; we must continue to act.
It is also important that we remember the line of the great ice hockey player, Wayne Gretzky:
“Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been”.
Softwood trees we plant now will mature in 30-plus years in a climate not experienced in this country for 100,000 years. Our mighty oaks planted now will take 75-plus years to mature, and that could be in a climate that this country has not experienced for as much as a million years. Therefore, it is critical that we focus on planning ahead and stewardship rather than preservation, in order to protect and allow adaptation in a thriving, healthy, resilient ecosystem.
There is much anecdotal good news, as many noble Lords have highlighted. I add that Knepp and Nattergal have achieved remarkable things with rewilding, and evolving over time the balance between rewilding and food production. Foresight and Gresham are highly successful in reforesting tens of thousands of acres, with the help of the woodland carbon code. I was also lucky enough to spend a day with BaumInvest at its Finca La Virgen reforestation project in Costa Rica, where sloths, monkeys, frogs, deer and ocelots had all recolonised this 750-acre reforestation project since it was planted only 12 years ago. That project is enabled by the sale of carbon sequestration units under the gold standard.
However, all these achievements are measured in the hundreds, thousands or low tens of thousands of acres. There are 60 million acres in the UK, and we are a tiny country. Thunder Said Energy estimates that 6 billion acres globally have been deforested since 1850, releasing a quarter of all anthropogenic emissions and destroying ecosystems that had been in place since the last ice age and before. It estimates that 3 billion acres could be reforested, allowing decimated ecosystems to recover on a global scale and massive recapture of carbon dioxide. This is less than 20% of available land, and with careful planning can protect global food production.
Although the UK may be a small country, it is climactically advantaged for growing trees and has considerable areas that either are not farmed or could potentially be better used economically and environmentally for growing trees. We also have a strong market for timber, given that we currently produce only 20% of our timber needs. However, the cash flow profile of timber production, with it taking around 40 years until the first meaningful revenue is generated, has made it difficult to persuade land managers to change land use to forestry. Does the Minister propose to revise—I hope upward—our previous Government’s commitments to new forest creation? What more will and can this Government do to help achieve those targets?
In government, we established the Woodland Carbon Code, which creates additional incentives for reforestation via the award of carbon sequestration units, which can then be sold to help bridge the cash flows between planting and first harvest. It is unfortunate that recent rule changes appear to have made qualification unnecessarily difficult. Can the Minister say what progress is being made with the E&Y consultation on additionality qualifications, and what progress is being made with the code certification under the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market’s core carbon principles? When do the Government intend to announce the results of the consultation on admitting WCC units into the UK Emissions Trading Scheme? Could the Minister update the House on what other initiatives are being pursued to bring private finance into nature restoration and other nature-based solutions?
Within the context of the horrendous changes to APR and BPR for inheritance tax, forestry investment will also be damaged, as forestry previously qualified for 100% business property relief. Given that forests can take from 30 to over 100 years to mature, these are multigenerational assets that lose their appeal if they are subject to inheritance tax, requiring disposals to fund that liability. This will tilt the equation back towards annual crop and animal farming. I urge the Government to rethink this disastrous change in the tax code while there is still time and before permanent damage is done to families and family businesses.
The forestry sector has been disappointed with the Defra biodiversity net gain calculations, which appear unable to capture the full life cycle biodiversity gains from forestry, which are evident to anyone spending time in forests. While new forests may often be predominantly of productive species, all new forestry schemes are required under UK forestry standards to have strong diversity of species planted, which creates vibrant new ecosystems. What progress is being made to improve the BNG calculations so that they work for forestry?
The role of land use change in nature conservation, preservation and enhancement goes far beyond just forestry, as many noble Lords have noted. While this particular land use change may give the most bang for the buck in protecting and enhancing nature, we need other, more incremental land use changes that preserve and enhance our food security, while being kinder to our soils and our native flora and fauna. These include regenerative farming, the rewetting of peatland and highly selective rewilding, in addition to the reforestation I have discussed—lots of “re-” words.
Land use needs to change, but the right choices can preserve our ability to feed ourselves without it being at the cost of carbon emissions, and with massive benefit to ecosystems. With the excellent Environment Act, bequeathed to us by my right honourable friend Michael Gove, the last Government initiated local nature recovery strategies, biodiversity net gain, a general duty to preserve and enhance nature, species conservation strategies, protected site strategies, conservation covenants and the power to ban the import of commodities from forests at risk. That Act is the greatest boost to nature recovery since the original Wildlife and Countryside Act and the creation of the national parks.
I very much amplify the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, on the terrible impact of predation on our most prized species, as well as his call for a soil action plan. I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for her gentle chiding of this Government’s commitment to nature restoration, and to the noble Earl, Lord Devon, for his warnings to this Government on their need to restore trust with farmers and landowners after a disastrous Budget. I urge the Government to pay heed to my noble friend Lord Caithness’s warnings of increased wildfire risk as a result of global warming.
We have the opportunity in this small but productive country to take leadership on land use changes and demonstrate to the world how to develop nature-based financial solutions which can allow us to be a world leader in standards, markets, and advisory and financing solutions. To quote Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in The Leopard:
“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for securing what has been an interesting and passionate debate. Noble Lords have made a lot of good suggestions, so I am pleased to be responding for the Government on this important issue.
Resilient, naturally functioning ecosystems provide essential services that underpin our lives. Alongside the intrinsic value of nature, these services, such as pollination and flood management, are fundamental to our economy and future prosperity and crucial for our health and well-being. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, clearly demonstrated, the impact of climate change on the natural environment is becoming increasingly evident. The scale and extent of this impact is, unfortunately, projected to increase.
In addition to the direct environmental challenges it poses, climate change also exacerbates existing pressures on biodiversity and their impact. Environmental degradation increases the likelihood and impact of climate shocks that could create significant and material risks for the UK economy. A report by the Green Finance Institute found that ongoing environmental degradation could slow UK economic growth by up to 3% of GDP in the coming decade. When compounded with climate-related damages, this could result in a scenario where GDP is more than 8% lower, so this is an economic issue as well as a nature issue.
The UK was one of the first nations in the world to enshrine climate adaptation into law, in the Climate Change Act 2008. We published the third national adaptation programme in July 2023, outlining actions to address the risks and opportunities from climate change that were identified in the third UK climate change risk assessment. The national adaptation programme includes many actions that will be taken to support the resilience of the natural environment, such as delivering our legally binding targets for biodiversity in England that were set through the Environment Act and are central to our environmental improvement plan, which we are updating, as I am sure noble Lords are aware. These include to restore or create more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat by 2042. Delivering our biodiversity targets will help create more ecologically functional, better-connected habitats and larger species populations, which will confer resilience to the predicted impacts of a changing climate.
We also have international nature recovery commitments, as we have heard, such as to effectively conserve and manage 30% of our lands and seas by 2030—the 30 by 30 commitment about which we have heard so much. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, specifically asked about government plans to achieve this. We intend to deliver these targets through a variety of mechanisms, such as biodiversity net gain, local nature recovery strategies and environmental land management schemes. Our review of the environmental implementation plan will play a key role in that.
As we have heard today, climate and nature are intrinsically linked. Functioning ecosystems are required to tackle climate change, and climate change is a key pressure on nature. Natural habitats provide key carbon sequestration and storage, which is needed to combat global warming. Around 580 million tonnes of carbon are stored in England’s priority habitats; deciduous woodland, blanket bog and upland heath-land store about 76% of the national total.
Both the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and the noble Earl, Lord Devon, talked about nature-based solutions. When designed well, such solutions can contribute to tackling climate change. Planting trees and restoring peat, as well as tackling climate change and restoring biodiversity loss, can support other priority issues—for example, flood management, which the noble Earl mentioned. I reassure noble Lords that this Government absolutely support and promote nature-based solutions.
We are also improving the evidence base through the Nature Returns programme. Six projects are creating or restoring habitats to test which are most effective in promoting carbon uptake or preventing greenhouse gas emissions. We are also supporting organisations to develop investment-ready nature projects that use private sector investment, which the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, asked about, to benefit the environment and tackle climate change through the natural environment investment readiness fund. Through £15 million in grants, so far we have backed 86 pioneering projects to develop new business models that generate revenue from nature recovery, through carbon storage, cleaner water or enhanced biodiversity. We have confirmed the third round of grants, supporting an additional 50 projects to help farmers generate revenues from ecosystem services alongside food production.
The pathway to net zero includes actions to protect existing ecosystems, restore degraded landscapes and sustainably manage and create new ecosystems. We are actively pursuing the role of nature-based solutions to enhance habitats such as seagrass and salt marsh to deliver blue carbon and biodiversity benefits. This is not just about restoring land; it is also about restoring the sea.
A number of noble Lords, most recently the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, talked about trees and tree planting. Of course, other key habitats are trees and native woodlands, which are an essential part of our nation’s biodiversity and are at the forefront of our plans to reduce emissions. As the noble Lord said, reforesting has an important role in achieving this. We are working towards our target to reach 16.5% tree canopy and woodland cover in England by 2050. Achieving this target would remove more than 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2050 and more than 100 million tonnes by the end of the century.
As the climate changes, however, extreme weather events will become more likely. The right trees in the right places can help protect us from these extreme events: for example, they can slow the flow of flood water to protect people, homes and the natural environment during intense rainfall. However, trees can provide these benefits only if they are themselves resilient to a changing climate. Threats posed by a warming climate include direct threats such as drought and wildfire—the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, talked in particular about the challenges of wildfire—and the increased risk of new pests and diseases.
Good woodland management is key to tackling these threats, but only 57% of all woodlands in England are currently in sustainable management. To address this, in December last year we published details of the improved offer for woodland management as part of the Countryside Stewardship higher tier environmental land management scheme. This includes increased payment rates and a new payment option for woodland resilience. We are also providing guidance for woodland managers and grant scheme requirements to ensure compliance with the climate change guidelines of the UK forestry standard.
Noble Lords asked about peat. We have ambitions to restore hundreds of thousands of hectares of peat across the country and are working to make sure that we have the most effective mechanisms in place to go further than we have before. Peatlands are our largest terrestrial carbon store, so our peatland restoration will directly support the Government’s mission to make Britain a clean-energy superpower and accelerate towards net zero. Peatlands are also a haven for rare wildlife and are natural providers of water regulation, helping to reduce the impacts of climate change.
Private finance will be critical to meet our restoration objectives and peatland projects must be able to use new revenue streams, including carbon finance. The Government are implementing policies that will mobilise private investment, including working with the International Union for Conservation of Nature to attract investment via carbon credits through the Peatland Code. I hope that helps to answer some of the questions on that. On the noble Baroness’s specific question on extraction, we are looking at the best measures to end the use of peat, including working with the horticultural industry to look at how best we can get there.
To achieve the best outcomes, it will be important to spatially target actions to restore nature in a climate-resilient manner. I am sure that noble Lords are aware that local nature recovery strategies are being developed right across England to target and deliver land management changes where they will have the most impact for nature and the wider environment. These strategies will consider climate change projections to help local areas prioritise and spatially target nature-based solutions that take account of our shifting climate.
My noble friend Lady Young asked about the land use framework. We have clearly committed to publish the land use framework. I previously said that we would publish it “soon”; I am pleased to be able to say that we will publish it “very soon”. I cannot give an exact date, but it will be very soon. Over the next 25 years, England’s landscapes will need to change to support climate change mitigation and adaptation, economic growth, housing delivery, food production, clean energy and the statutory targets that we need to meet on nature recovery.
I also point out that the NPPF—the National Planning Policy Framework—has recently been published and has a lot that relates to the environment and nature and how we should involve planning, with a look at the impact and mitigation on environment. There are three sustainable development objectives in the plan—economic, social and environmental—and I will read noble Lords the environmental objective:
“to protect and enhance our natural, built and historic environment; including making effective use of land, improving biodiversity, using natural resources prudently, minimising waste and pollution, and mitigating and adapting to climate change, including moving to a low carbon economy”.
If noble Lords have not read it, it is very good.
I turn to international co-operation, which is very important, because we cannot address the huge crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss without co-ordinated global action. A good example of the impact of climate change globally was given by the noble Lord about what is happening in California at the moment with the appalling wildfires. At the UN Convention for Biological Diversity COP 16 last year, the UK took the lead on unlocking the climate and nature finance and resources that developing countries need to support emissions reductions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The UK co-chaired the negotiations, which led to the creation of the Cali fund on digital sequence information, which is the first fund of its kind to focus on channelling finance from the private sector towards nature conservation and restoration. At COP 29 recently, we continued to build on these successes by maintaining momentum on the interlinkages between climate and nature, focusing on sustainable agriculture, nature finance and the ocean.
I turn to some of the other questions that have come up. First, I reassure noble Lords that Defra and DESNZ work incredibly closely together: we have some staff who work between both departments, because we recognise the importance of working together to achieve these targets.
My noble friend Lady Young talked about public bodies. With the concerns that she raised, I remind noble Lords that the Corry review is currently looking at the effectiveness of existing bodies and whether things can be done to improve them.
The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, mentioned wildfire. I think it is important to say that we are working with and encouraging landowners and land managers to adopt good-quality wildfire management plans, because that can make a real difference.
The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, asked about the high seas. The UK played a significant and proactive role in over 10 years of negotiations leading up to the adoption of the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction agreement. I am sure he is aware that ratification of the agreement is in line with the Government’s determination to reinvigorate the UK’s wider international leadership on climate and nature, and we are currently working at pace on the measures needed to implement the detailed and complex provisions of the agreement before we then ratify.
The noble Earl also asked about the chair of the Climate Change Committee. My understanding is that that is a matter for DESNZ, so I would have to pick this up with that department, or the noble Earl could.
The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, also asked about bottom trawling. Over 60% of marine protected areas have restrictions on damaging bottom towed fishing. The department is now considering the next steps for fisheries management in the MPAs in the context of our domestic and international nature conservation obligations and how we can support the fishing sector at the same time. We are extremely keen to manage it and sort it out.
The noble Lord, Lord Randall, specifically talked about the green belt. There is a great big section in the NPPF on it if he is very interested in it. Again, we are taking our responsibilities towards it very seriously within that planning document.
The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, asked about neonics—neonicotinoids. I can confirm that we are committed to ending the use of those neonicotinoid pesticides that are known to carry substantial risks to pollinator populations, including through the use of emergency authorisations. In our recent policy statement, released on 21 December, just before Christmas, we set out our plans to deliver on that commitment.
A number of noble Lords asked about farming. First of all, I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that I have read the Rock review. I regularly discuss tenancy matters with the noble Baroness, Lady Rock. Also, the Farming Minister, Daniel Zeichner, is very keen to work closely with the tenant farming sector and is doing so.
On other issues around farming, we have committed to support the farming sector through a farming budget of £5 billion over two years in order to invest in the sector to support farmers to make their businesses and food production more sustainable and resilient. That is why the previous Government brought in the environmental land management schemes, and why we are continuing to support them and take them forward. They will remain at the centre of our offer for farmers with the sustainable farming initiative, Countryside Stewardship higher tier and landscape recovery all continuing, because we want to give farmers and land managers the support they need to help restore nature while supporting productivity and building in resilience to climate change. That includes restoration of soil.
The final question I come to was from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. There is nothing I enjoy more than a gentle chide from the noble Baroness. She asked about the EA appeal regarding the river in Pickering. I have asked about that because I felt the piece in the media was quite concerning. I now understand, and it is important we get this clear, that the appeal is seeking clarification on the interpretation of the water framework directive provided by the High Court judgment. The issue is whether the river basin management plans can be strategic plans to improve surface water and groundwater for a river basin district. That has been the approach in the UK and across the EU since the river basin management plans were first published back in 2009.
Following last year’s judgment, the Environment Agency has undertaken a further review of water quality at Costa Beck and publicly consulted on measures to improve that water body, which is one of nearly 1,000 covered by the Humber area, so there is good work going on to improve that river’s status. Finally, it is important to point out that we are committed to improving our water quality both through the Bill that has recently been through this House and through the commission that is taking place.
In conclusion, I reassure noble Lords that the Government are serious about tackling the challenges of climate change and the loss of biodiversity. To those who say that the Government are not taking it seriously, I point out that we have a Minister for Nature, who was appointed because we want someone to be focused on nature and nature’s recovery. That Minister is Mary Creagh MP. She is extremely competent and working very hard on delivering on the commitments and targets we need to achieve in quite a challenging space.
I hope I have demonstrated that the Government are taking action in many areas to deliver the restoration of our valuable ecosystems while recognising the increasing threat of climate change. I look forward to working with noble Lords to deliver on our targets.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I thank all Members of this House—all noble Lords and the Minister—for their contributions so late in the day. Very briefly indeed, I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for the challenge on the Government’s carbon policy. I would still say that the 2030 decarbonisation target—to make that possible, we need to be really focused—is excellent. They have a much bigger challenge on the 30 by 30. I thank in particular the noble Earl, Lord Devon, for bringing a personal and human aspect to this debate. Lastly, I really like the idea of wetland cities, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Randall. The bad news is that, if we do nothing, we will have lots of wetland cities into the future. But I am optimistic. We can get this right. We can do it, both nationally and globally, with both these crises together.