Foreign-owned Social Media Companies

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I am not sure that I really understand the noble Viscount’s point. To be media-literate or social media-literate does not stop somebody making inaccurate or offensive comments. The key issue is that we should not say that different rules apply to people on social media. We should look to have public discourse, which is the responsibility of us all, to be at all times courteous and factual, and to conduct debate properly. That is not to say people cannot disagree or debate, or even be offensive. We cannot have what is almost incitement, and people not worrying about what the truth is and what is accurate if it gets a reaction. Sometimes too much of what is being said on social media is designed to get a reaction rather than to help inform people.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, the victims of many of the actions that have led to this tsunami of bad words are being revictimised by that sort of language and the way people are talking. I work with many of them—with small women’s groups, particularly in the north, around Doncaster, Rotherham and Newcastle, that are working still with victims who have been abused and violently treated. Is it not time that all of us said that our main concern has to be for them, and to be working to make sure that social media is not a means of abusing and exploiting vulnerable women?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a profound, wise and appropriate point. A lot of the current issues around social media have arisen on child sexual abuse, and there can be no crime more vile or abhorrent than that. If it is used for political purposes or is somehow stirred up, then I come back to the very point I made at the beginning: we must lower the temperature of the debate, not the tone. We should not seek to use such an abhorrent crime for political purposes but, at all times, try to have a debate that moves the issue forward in a positive way and seeks to protect those who are vulnerable.

Plan for Change: Milestones for Mission-led Government

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for those comments. He is welcoming the mission-led strategy with the milestones, and he is right to say that you have to measure them and look at what is behind them overall. He has a point about experience and longevity. The Prime Minister has been wise and has spoken about Ministers being in post for longer—I have some skin in the game here. We saw such a churn of Ministers under the last Government, and it gets very difficult for them to build expertise and relationships with civil servants and stakeholders, only to be moved on. I speak as a Minister who has served in a number of departments over the years, and the good sources of information are the civil servants who have been there a long time, as well as new civil servants—who bring fresh experience to you—and past Ministers in your role.

All of us, at any stage in our careers—whether we are new to the job or have been in it a long time, and whether we are politicians or civil servants—need to find that way of learning from each other, building on the best and having respect for different perspectives. We expect civil servants to give that professional advice and guidance and to understand that we are politicians, who need clarity. I hope the milestones bring that clarity to the workings with the Civil Service as well, so that both politicians and civil servants have clarity about what they are doing. My own experience of civil servants over the years has been very positive. I have never known a civil servant to balk when I said that I wanted outside expertise; they have never had any issue with that, and in fact, they have welcomed it in many cases.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, will my noble friend take the opportunity to develop the issues around young people? It is tragic that over the last 10 to 15 years the opportunities for young people in this country have diminished rather than increased. Some of that is external, but a lot has been caused by decisions taken by previous Administrations which limited what young people were able to do. Now, in the missions and the milestones, we have the opportunity to bring in mental health expertise, with both the voluntary sector and the NHS—alongside the work of improving buses. I can tell you about a youngster who left the care system and was then in a village nine miles away from the DWP offices and the jobcentre. It took three buses to get there. He missed his appointment and was sanctioned. Bringing everything together will make a difference for that youngster but also for lots of others. That is why the White Paper on opportunities for getting people back into work was so important, but the DWP and the department of health cannot do it on their own. You cannot even do it just from the Cabinet Office; it has to be across departments. I hope that the Government are really working to crack those issues, to give our young people real opportunities.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a very powerful point. I followed on from her at the Cabinet Office, where we had the v programme in place. I was reminded of that only last week when I had an email from a young man who became a volunteer in my office and is now a mental health worker. He would never have taken that step had it not been for the opportunity to volunteer and the support to do so. She makes a powerful point around linking government together, and I was interested in her comment about mental health as well. Talking to a number of young people, it seems to me that one thing that has quite a significant impact on young people’s mental health is the insecurity of their housing. If we can address some of that to ensure good-quality, secure housing for young people—and that young people are part of the solution in building those homes as well—that goes a long way. The opportunities for young people and the expectations of young people about their future concern us enormously. She is right that the only way to tackle that is across government.

Volunteering Abroad

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a good point—that is something we should consider. It is not my responsibility but I will ensure that her views are conveyed, because there is an opportunity to include that when we consider the negotiations.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his continuing engagement in the debate around what a future international volunteering programme for young people might look like. My experience with VSO over many years is that it has learnt that the most effective volunteering is when young people from here are partnered with young people in a developing country. That enables both to learn skills such as leadership, working together and understanding what is going on in a community and responding effectively. The AU recognised that when it signed a memorandum with VSO. The Government have a huge opportunity, and it is cheaper than the ICS. I can offer the Minister some suggestions. Will they make sure that they carry this on?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. We need to understand how successful ACTIVE was in terms of volunteering. The VSO operated the Volunteering for Development programme and reached 5.4 million people across 19 countries in its first two years. My noble friend is right that our policy should be about volunteering across the globe, ensuring that young people are aware of how important volunteering can be in holding people like us to account.

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend. As ever, he did what I expected him to do and covered the breadth of this subject with intensity but also personal knowledge and understanding that I have a lot of respect and time for, and he knows that.

Since so many other noble Lords have talked about the more general issues, I want to speak about a particular issue. Some noble Lords may say, “She’s at it again”. I want to speak about what the SDGs say about the role of volunteering in delivering outcomes. We rarely talk about it. We have incredibly good experience of and knowledge about it, but we have sort of abandoned it, and we need to get back to it.

Noble Lords have heard this from me before if they have been in debates such as this one, but I value enormously the role that Voluntary Service Overseas has played in my life and recognise that it has had the same effect on many other people’s lives. I went to Kenya to teach from 1967 to 1969. That was a long time ago, but it changed my life. Since I came back, I have never let go of keeping in touch with VSO, pursuing its objectives and understanding the changes in how volunteering now works. I was involved in its governance for over 10 years and have seen that volunteering is very different from when I did it all those years ago. It is now seen and recognised across the world as a very important means of developing objectives in international development.

I am sure noble Lords know that there is now a global volunteering standard. More than 60 organisations around the world have signed up to it, including the African Union. I went to Ethiopia after the signing of the SDGs and met the AU. We signed a memorandum of understanding between VSO and the African Union to develop national volunteering around Africa. VSO now works through joining together international volunteers, who usually come from here, with national volunteers who are volunteering in their own country. Frequently, they will be moved to another part of that country so that they learn a bit more about their country, in Kenya often working with a different tribe in the locality and so on. This means that high numbers of young people in and around Africa, as well as in Asian countries, have developed skills in leadership, working together and going across borders of traditional ways of doing things and have been able to participate with international volunteers, particularly young people, in tackling climate change and in peace and reconciliation at a very local level. They live in the local community and work with the local people and build their resilience and knowledge and understanding of how to tackle these issues.

I therefore agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Lane- Fox, that we see the inspirational and challenging things that are happening that local people are pursuing and that we are letting go. We gave up the youth volunteering programme during Covid, and I understand why, but we lost a raft of people who knew what to do and how to do it. I know that there are now thoughts in the FCDO about how we return to that, and I urge the Government to get on top of that and look at it much more carefully.

VSO is doing some incredible work on the border of Sudan and Ethiopia and in the Philippines on peace and reconciliation and on how local people can think about the things that will keep their community going, whatever is happening, and how they do that. Some of the work is remarkable and, as I say, inspiring. It is also working on issues around women and girls, particularly what is happening to them in conflict, and on climate change. On climate change, a lot of that is about how you develop resilience at a local level to make sure that a flood can be handled in a different way and the way that other climate change effects can be dealt with in the local community. This is what international development is all about, and it is also the way that many young people in this country have learned about the rest of the world and about how they can work in the rest of the world and get an enormous amount out of it themselves in terms of learning, skills and future opportunities.

There is someone here who did a short programme with the International Citizen Service. She came back and said, “I’ve totally changed my life aspirations and what I was going to do”; she is now working here in the CPA. We can change people’s views of what is going on in the developing world and the global South, if we get more involved and enable more young people, in particular, to get involved in volunteering.

I urge the Government on this. I know how tricky it is, but I have ideas for them which would mean that the new youth volunteering programme would cost a lot less than what the previous Government were working on when they left office. It can be done and I am sure that, even in times of difficulties, we can do it. I hope that the Government will take the opportunity to do that as quickly as possible.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th February 2024 Lords Chamber

When I was reading the briefings related to this group of amendments, I was struck by how often the term “pro-contact culture” was used. I am, generally speaking, pro contact culture, because I want to be in a situation—which has been well laid out in the other amendments—where the presumption is that the best interest of the child is to have contact with both parents. I do not necessarily think this is gendered, although I appreciate that obviously, more women—

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

It is.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Yes, I said the other day in speaking to my amendments, I hope everyone accepts, that more women are the victims of domestic violence, but it is also the case that it can work both ways. I would like each allegation to be carefully examined by the courts; that is all. It needs to be that way, because we should have the aspiration that both parents should work to restructure the family in a healthy manner after separation, even after the massive disruption of domestic abuse. In the spirit of saying that I want people who commit certain crimes to become rehabilitated and to become responsible citizens, I do not want something that is so blanket as Amendment 82.

Democracy Denied (DPRRC Report)

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the maiden speech of my noble friend, who has been involved in the trade union movement all of his working life, as he said. He has had significant achievements within that career. I first knew of him when he was working on the merger, which he talked about, of very different public sector unions: NUPE, COHSE and NALGO. He subsequently became the general secretary of the merged union, UNISON. I know how difficult weaving together those different cultures, traditions and interests was and still is. To have maintained the confidence of those members for 20 years, as general secretary, is no mean feat. He championed the cause of those working across the public sector, but he never forgot the particular challenge facing low-paid women, ensuring training and support for career progression for very many of them. As general secretary, he oversaw several successful equal pay claims, which have been transformative for all women, whatever workforce they are in. So I am delighted that he has joined these Benches.

My noble friend could not have arrived at a more propitious moment. The future of public services absolutely is dependent on their workforce, and no one is better placed than he to understand the elements of a well-functioning, motivated and, yes, productive workforce. We would all do well to listen to what he has to say and to work with him to deliver those public services from their current crisis into what the public have the right to expect. His outstanding speech today gives us some idea of what we can expect and what we should be working on.

I come to the subject of this debate. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Blencathra, for two outstanding reports, which were published at a particularly challenging time for democracy. They and other members are right that much of this will often be described as boring, technical and so on. However, these reports show just how wrong we are when that is what we think about these committees. They go to the heart of the rationale for much of Parliament’s work, and they are searing in their critique of the creeping imbalance between Parliament and the Executives, and the dangers of that.

I am not a member of either committee, so I hope I am allowed to stretch a bit further. The problem is exacerbated because the reports were published at a time when it seemed almost fashionable to question the institutions that traditionally hold up democracy. These institutions are part of the proper balance of power, holding the Executive to account. Of course, prime among those is Parliament, but we in this House lost good Ministers, who had responsibility for how the rule of law was exercised through the criminal justice system, because of their concerns around all of this. Parliament was prorogued because the Executive felt that they could not get their own way, and civil society—another important institution for holding the Executive to account—has too often been criticised for speaking truth to power.

We have seen in other countries how democratically elected leaders have questioned opposition and the very process of elections. That means that we have to recognise the fragility of democracy. We have a responsibility not just to defend parliamentary democracy but to strengthen it in this country.

Having listened to the previous speeches, I am reluctant to blame civil servants, parliamentary counsel, clerks and whoever else works with us when we are in government for all this, because at the end of the day it is politicians’ responsibility. We are responsible and we must be accountable. I remember that, when I first became Chief Whip, the principal private secretary said to me, “I work for you 51% of the time, and I work for the other parties 49% of the time”, reminding me that, in a parliamentary democracy, opposition and different views are important, and we must reflect them.

I wanted to make two other points, but my time has come to an end. We must find ways to strengthen pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny, and this House is particularly well placed to do that. I hope we can think about changing how we do things here with the Government to improve post-legislative, pre-legislative and legislative scrutiny. We owe that to the public we seek to serve. Unless we take that very seriously, parliamentary democracy will continue to be under threat.

Covid-19 Update

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As the noble Earl rightly says, we have created the £1.57 billion culture recovery fund, of which £500 million in grants has already been awarded to more than 3,000 museums, music venues, independent cinemas, circuses, heritage sites and theatres in England. I know that there is ongoing dialogue between the Secretary of State and the sector to which he refers, and I am sure that all is being done to try to see what else can be done.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, as we now know that, in facing this virus, no one is safe unless everyone is safe, are the Government going to repeat and expand the successful Everybody In programme from the first lockdown, to ensure that every rough sleeper is in safe accommodation, with adequate washing and toilet facilities, so that they are safe and the community is safe?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

The noble Baroness refers to an extremely important issue. Through this dreadful time, we can all agree that the programme to help get rough sleepers into accommodation has been one of the positive things that has come out of it. I can assure her that our £15 million Protect programme, which is running alongside the Everyone In campaign, is providing targeted funding for councils in areas with high numbers of rough sleepers, prioritising the clinically vulnerable and those with a history of rough sleeping. That is on top of the £10 million cold winter fund, which is helping all councils support rough sleepers into self-contained accommodation. By September 2020 we had housed 29,000 vulnerable people as part of the successful Everyone In programme.

Covid-19 Update

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As we have made clear, the furlough scheme is a UK-wide scheme, and, as the Prime Minister said, we will always be there for all parts of the UK.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that local authorities now get sufficient information and data to know where their centres of infection are? Will the Government commit today to working with them to ensure that they have the resources to bear down on those places, whatever they may be, so that they can confidently be prepared to come out of lockdown and to keep on top of that? That means that they will need to be on top of test, track and trace in that more dangerous time after lockdown in particular. Local authorities have shown that they can do track and trace effectively. Why do the Government not work with them in a more trustworthy way and give us all hope that we can get out of lock- down and begin to deal with this virus more effectively?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I entirely agree with the noble Baroness. We are working very closely with local authorities, and they do indeed have significant resources and powers to do local contact tracing. In fact, there are more than 128 local authority contact tracing teams in place around the country, with more to come. I am sure she will be aware of the Liverpool pilot scheme, which we are hoping will be successful and roll out. Everyone living and working in Liverpool will now be offered a Covid test, whether they have symptoms or not. Whole-city testing aims to protect those at highest risk and find asymptomatic cases in order to prevent and reduce transmission in the community, exactly as the noble Baroness said. If this approach works—and we are looking to roll it out—we are hopeful that it will play a significant role in doing exactly what the noble Baroness says in helping to make sure that local authorities and local areas can bear down quickly and effectively on outbreaks within their area.

Brexit: Negotiations

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I thank my noble friend for his more optimistic outlook. He is absolutely right: our proposal is that before the end of the transition period, then for every four years after that, the UK will provide an opportunity for democratic consent in the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive for the regulatory alignment arrangements, within the framework set out in the Good Friday agreement.

My noble friend is also absolutely right that the reason we have brought forward these new proposals and will be working incredibly hard over the coming weeks is that we need to get agreement in the other place to support them, which we have not managed to do with the backstop in its current state. That is an absolute priority for us. We very much hope that through further discussions and negotiations across all parties and all Benches, both in this House and the other place, we can get to a point where we can get a deal and move on to start talking about the positive relationship we want with the EU. That is what we all want to be talking about, and it feels as if it is time we really tried to get on to that, so that we can move on.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, do the Government recognise that consent is a tricky issue because the DUP does not represent the whole of the unionist community? Many unionists voted to remain and would certainly want to be in the single market and customs union in any future agreement. I remain very concerned that the Government seem to see one side of the story in Northern Ireland as represented by only the DUP. It is simply not true.

Regarding the regulation of goods—as opposed to customs—the Government’s explanatory note says that these arrangements must receive the endorsement of the Northern Ireland Assembly. We have already had questions about what happens if that is not there, and I realise that the Minister is not able to respond. If they are meant to receive the endorsement of the Assembly and Executive, Paragraph 13 of the paper states that that should happen before the end of transition period and every four years thereafter.

What happens if they do not give consent? What will then be the position? Do we revert to what we have now—common regulations—or is the reversion to the hard border, which differs absolutely from what most people in Northern Ireland voted for?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I once again reiterate: we have made very clear that there will be no return to a hard border in Northern Ireland and that we believe that it is only right that the people of Northern Ireland have a say through the Executive on whether they wish to consent to the proposed arrangements. I believe that that is right. I will not second-guess their decision, but we fundamentally believe that it is their democratic right to decide that.

European Council

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

It is because this is an international agreement. It has always been the case that agreements at an international level take precedence.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure that many people outside will be amazed that the Prime Minister paid no attention to the events in London on Saturday, or to the unprecedented numbers signing a petition to Parliament about revocation. The Prime Minister acknowledges in the Statement that she needs to compromise. She has a compromise on the table: enough people will back her deal if she agrees to a confirmatory vote following a vote in Parliament. This would get all of us through the impasse, embarrassment and humiliation we are now in. Will the noble Baroness the Leader please put this position to the Prime Minister in Cabinet?