Food Insecurity in Developing Countries due to Blockade of Ukrainian Ports

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this debate, which, as expected, has already been high-quality in its focus on both dealing with the immediate crisis and looking at broader issues. There is absolutely no doubt that there is an immediate crisis. It is essential that every possible string is pulled and every emergency step taken to keep hunger, child stunting, desperation and fear to a minimum in the Horn of Africa, east Africa and elsewhere more broadly.

I will mostly take what might be called the longue durée view, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, did in his powerful and clear introduction to this debate. This crisis did not start with the illegal Russian attack on Ukraine; it is a crisis with a long history of centuries of destruction of human knowledge, ecosystems and tens of millions of lives by a global political system that has concentrated wealth in the hands of a few in a few countries by a narrow and ignorant scientific orthodoxy. This system has destroyed ecosystems and farming systems that operated successfully and sustainably for millennia on principles that we would now call agroecological. It was a system that relied on terror and murder to enforce its inequalities and starvation, as the British Empire did in India with the Great Famine of 1876 to 1878. That system has now clearly failed due to the long series of disasters predating the Russian invasion, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, set out. These disasters include, but are far from limited to, the creation of the new geological age of the Anthropocene.

In attempting to tackle the structural failures created by an extractive and exploitative political system, the work has concentrated—again unsuccessfully—on a few narrow aspects of human ingenuity and thought. There has been so little innovation in our mainstream economic, social or political thought that has been in the hands of a neoliberal consensus which has, for decades, dominated an extremely narrow band of what has been considered mainstream politics. This has even further concentrated financial resources in the hands of the few, frequently parked in extraordinarily unproductive and pointless tax havens, and robbed by a corruption that steals at least 5% of the world’s total production—a figure from the International Monetary Fund.

The noble Lord, Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick, spoke about food waste; 5% of the world’s entire resources have been wasted and stolen. Collectively, those in power have shown enormous hubris in treating soil ecosystems, of which we have had no understanding, such as inert substrates, and in assuming that, by focusing on the handful of crops that now form the majority of human diets, we would be able to tackle whatever pests and diseases nature, with its hundreds of millions of years of biological development, would throw up. Their military forces continued to support despotic dictators; Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein are two of the most frequently cited examples, but I have been reading recently about the Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo. Should an alien be unfortunate enough to land today on the island of Hispaniola, blighted by centuries of colonialism and neo-colonialism, they would get a crash course in the nature of the world that we have created—a world built on exploitation and inequality.

That exploitation, inequality and repression started close to home. I am not sure how many noble Lords know the history of why wheat became such a dominant crop: the aristocracy wanted to eat white bread because it was the posh thing to do, so peasants who wanted to grow a variety of crops were forced by feudal systems to grow only wheat—a much more dangerous and riskier crop—rather than other alternatives.

We can see a parallel in maize, a crop that came from the new world, where it was grown in ecological systems, mixed with beans and squash—yet we have brought it here and grown it at huge expense, with desperately bad human, animal and environmental impacts, to feed to animals and into our car engines. But that is all the past; we cannot change it—what we have to do now is look to the future. In the days, weeks and months ahead, we have to focus on getting people fed. We know of some ways. We have seen, at least at a trial level, the institution of universal basic income to give people cash transfers that they can use to meet their own needs and make their own choices. That is far better than imposing on them whatever food aid, often from our own resources, we think we can deliver to them.

The Government’s official development aid policies, already referred to by many speakers, have taken a disastrous direction, not just in slashing the volume of that ODA but in an explicit redirection towards our own trade interests. I know that the Minister will not be able to make a commitment, as we do not know what the new Government will be like, but we can hope that they might take a different direction in future.

What we need to do is to get away from the hubris of the narrow areas of what we have called science. We need to draw on, develop, enhance and support traditional ways to produce food and traditional agricultural systems. I shall give one example of the kind of system that is so essential to meeting our future food needs. There is a traditional practice in Niger, known as tassa. Farmers dig small pits uniformly across fields to collect rainwater and place manure in the bottom of each pit to increase soil fertility. Seeds are then planted in the long ridges of each pit. In one trial with millet, a matching piece of land planted without the technique yielded 11 kilos per hectare. The tassa land yielded 553 kilos per hectare.

Small-scale agriculture can and must provide a good secure living, with some essential prerequisites, including security of land tenure, with democratic local structures of input and information enabled among farmers, and crops grown that are suited to the natural environment and are diverse and resilient. We can start at home by supporting our own farmers to move fast towards agroecological systems, to feed ourselves, as work at the Centre for Alternative Technology has demonstrated is possible. What right do we have to rely on other people’s soil, water and labour to feed ourselves? Sure, if they produce something extra-special, tasty and attractive, such as spices or coffee, there is nothing wrong with swapping that for something we produce that they want, but we should not be taking essential staple foods or nutrients out of the mouths of others, particularly the world’s poor.

It is a pity that the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, is not in his place, because I want to address some of the points he raised, starting with the free trade deal with Australia. Noble Lords may not know, but I suspect it will come up a lot in our future debates that a major “state of nature” report has just come out in Australia. It is a bit of a contest, but it is probably even worse than our “state of nature” reports. It says that Australia

“lacks an adequate framework to manage its environment”,

yet we are planning to take food from there.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannan, said that the last place on earth to experience man-made famine was North Korea. I am not sure that he was actually listening to the introduction by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in which he gave a very long list of famines experienced in the world now and in the recent past. Relying on the market for food means the rich can get what they want while the people without money cannot. Relying on the market for food has left us, since the 1990s, when most of these figures started, with a world in which about the lowest figure we have managed to get is 750 million people regularly going to bed hungry. We have never done better—if that is the right word—than that. That is a failed model.

The idea seems to be that we will just ship this food round and round the world. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans made a really important point about the sheer fragility of relying on global supply chains, which of course the situation in Ukraine only helps to highlight.

I come to a final point and a direct question for the Minister. I talked about small farmers needing land security. I believe it is time that our Government spoke out strongly against the transnational land agreements that are stealing the most basic resource, particularly of Africa, from people who are effectively powerless to resist. Will the Minister comment, and perhaps update the figures I have from 2008 and a study from the Wilson Center, which say that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and the eastern nations controlled more than 7.6 million cultivated hectares overseas? I have no doubt that that figure has since grown. I am almost out of time, but—

[Noble Lords]

You are out of time.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Well, I have one sentence, to finish, about that transnational land ownership. In the Victorian-era British Empire, men who stood in this very Chamber forced Indian soldiers, abused into submission by the vicious repression after the Great Rebellion, to guard trains that were taking away desperately needed food from their wives and children, to be shipped to these shores—

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, that is a very long sentence.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Will we tolerate the same thing happening in the 21st century?

Women and Girls: Economic Well-being, Welfare, Safety and Opportunities

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I feel I must begin by asking the noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, to reconsider some of his assumptions. As he was speaking, he was facing a female rugby player—me. Thirty years ago, I was playing informal but full-contact games against and with men. I suggest he looks at the distribution of the bell curve, because some of the men on those pitches were smaller and lighter than I was. I also suggest he reads a book called The Frailty Myth.

Since we are on sport, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, in celebrating the women’s Euro 2022, which is happening now. I am hoping to make it to a match next week, but I point out that this is one of the last areas—probably the last area—of legal discrimination. In 2006 I wrote about a potential woman, whom I named Waynetta Rooney, who might have wanted to be selected by a Premier League team. She is not allowed to play for that team or to get the salary that would go with it because of her gender. All those wonderful players we are watching now are paid vastly less and are not allowed into teams where they could be paid more, because of their gender.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, for securing this debate. I will focus briefly on a lifestyle economic analysis. We start with a girl in school who faces stereotypes about the subjects she should study and restrictions that will affect her lifetime earning potential. She will be expected to sit quietly and to be polite and compliant, something particularly difficult for neurodiverse girls.

A recent study by the charity In Kind Direct found that in some cities and towns period poverty affects two-fifths of girls and women. In Brighton and Hove it is 46% and in Oxford 40%. I am proud that Green councillors on Oxford City Council have just this week submitted a motion for free period products to be put in public toilets, town halls and community centres. However, the fact that this is necessary is a dreadful indictment of our society.

I note the points made by the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, about discrimination in science and work. Why do we have the Francis Crick Institute, named after a very controversial character, instead of the Rosalind Franklin Institute? Lynn Margulis is one of my scientific heroes. She is an evolutionary biologist who proposed a real change to the science of evolution. Her gender definitely had something to do with the difficulties she had in having that accepted.

Going back to economics, there is something called “sheflation”. Note that figures from the Living Wage Foundation show that 20% of women earn less than a real living wage. The figure for men is 14%; it is unacceptable for both. Every worker of whatever age should earn enough money to live on. Many people have referred to the situation of single parents, 90% of whom are women. The New Economics Foundation has figures showing that, in the current cost of living crisis, single-parent families have seen 50% more of their income lost to the crisis than families with two adults.

We come to middle age and the generation trap. So many middle-aged women are now caring for younger children and teenagers and providing support for older children and their own parents, or even grandparents. The slashing of government services has meant that the practical reality is that the overwhelming weight of that has landed on women.

I come to my worst figures. They are from the Health Foundation. A number of other noble Lords have referred to the situation of female pensioners and older women. Life expectancy for women in the poorest areas of the UK is lower than the overall life expectancy for every country in the OECD, except Mexico. We are doing worse in the poorest parts of the country than all but one other OECD country. That is a measure of the level of discrimination.

I shall make one final point. Sometimes this is seen as a zero-sum game—more for women, less for men. Actually, however, if we make a society that is fit, decent and caring for women and girls, we make a better society for everyone.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)]

I start by echoing many of the tributes paid to the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, for bringing forward this debate, and to all Members who have spoken and contributed to such an all-encompassing discussion. I would also like to pay tribute to those men who have joined us today and made very forthright contributions. It is great that you respect women, and their role and potential in the country. I thought the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, gave five minutes of excellent value, and it was a very significant contribution which I will refer to as I go through.

One thing is as sure as eggs: I am never going to be able to answer everybody’s questions. If I do not answer your question, it is not because I do not want to, or I am disrespecting you, but I will, at the end, make sure I write to all noble Lords who took part in the debate, and make sure all your questions are answered to your satisfaction.

I had the great pleasure of being part of the International Women’s Day debate held in March, when again the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, made a very powerful and eloquent speech. While that debate was not all that long ago, I will never turn down a chance to highlight the great work taking place across government to ensure that everyone can access opportunities and reach their full potential.

I suspect that for most Members here, as is certainly the case for me, 2010 now feels like a very distant memory, although it was a momentous time for me, being the year that I first took my seat in this place. I am conscious that, while this Chamber still looks the same, the world around us has changed immeasurably. A great number of things may be different, including those currently in government. However, one thing that has remained constant is our commitment to achieving gender equality. Each successive Government have reaffirmed their resolve to make the UK a place where women and girls can access all opportunities on an equal basis and be able to thrive.

We know that this is not something that can be achieved overnight; there are no quick fixes or silver bullets, much to the frustration of probably everybody in this Chamber. It can often feel as though the pace of change is too slow, and progress is always just out of reach. But this week I have more than one reason to step back and appreciate just how far we have come since 2010.

On Monday, we celebrated—and the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, was there—10 years of the Women’s Business Council, and I was overwhelmed to hear what it has achieved within that time. In 2010, the gender pay gap was 19.8%, and in 2021 it was 15.4%. There are nearly 2 million more women in work since 2010, and the number of women in FTSE 100 boardroom roles has jumped to 39% from 12.5% 10 years ago. At the 2010 election, 143 women were elected to the other place; in 2019, it was 220. We have got some way to go on this, and more about that later. While we can all agree there is more to do, and my ministerial colleagues and I are certainly not complacent when it comes to tackling that challenge head on, it is remarkable to see the strides that we have already made in such a short space of time.

I do not believe that we should dwell on the past or rest on our laurels, so I want to focus on the exciting work that we are doing now to ensure that this progress does not stall but in fact is accelerated. The underpinning principle behind government work undertaken since 2010, is that women should have the economic freedom to make choices about their lives and careers, unconstrained by inequalities or expectations. We want women to be economically empowered, and to remove the barriers that prevent them from reaching their full potential.

The noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, Lady Prosser and Lady Thornton, all talked about the importance of women in careers where they could really achieve their potential, not least of all construction and science. I am pleased that one of the ways in which we are doing this is by ensuring women can enter into higher-paid sectors and positions. The STEM world is calling for people with the right skills to come and help them meet the needs of our future economy, yet women currently make up only 24% of the STEM workforce. If we are to meet those challenges, then we need to first tackle this occupational segregation.

Of course, much of this relies on inspiring girls to consider STEM careers and study STEM subjects from a young age. We are already making some progress here, with girls representing 44% of all STEM A-level entries in 2021, and the proportion of women entering full-time undergraduate courses taking STEM courses having increased to 42.2%. The Department for Education is currently supporting a number of initiatives to encourage a more diverse uptake of STEM subjects and pathways. To name but a few, it funds the Inclusion in Schools project and the Stimulating Physics Network, it is researching interventions to tackle the barriers young women encounter to studying STEM, and it is enhancing mathematics teaching through a national network of 40 school-led maths hubs and funding the Advanced Mathematics Support Programme.

However, it is not just getting young women interested in STEM that is important; the real challenge is how we get them into STEM and keep them there. On International Women’s Day, I announced a programme to encourage more women to return to STEM careers after taking time out for caring. The pilot will give them the opportunity to refresh and grow their skills in sectors where their talents are most needed, and will build on what we have learned from previous government returner initiatives.

The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, also mentioned women and diversity on boards and women in leadership. We are not just supporting women into higher-paid STEM careers; it is also about helping them to reach the top within their chosen profession across a range of sectors. Over the last 10 years, the Government have lent support to successive reviews, most recently the FTSE Women Leaders Review, to drive progress on female representation at the top of our biggest companies. This business-led framework has had fantastic success. In 2021, the UK FTSE 100 ranks in second place compared with 11 similar counties. But it has now turned its attention to fixing the pipeline of talent, making sure that this level of representation spreads through the entire leadership team and across a wider range of companies.

When the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, speaks to that school tomorrow, will he pass on the very best wishes of everybody in this Chamber today to that head teacher, who has given and given, and thank her on our behalf?

We also want to help women to realise their entrepreneurial aspirations. As it stands, only one in three UK entrepreneurs is a woman—a gender gap equivalent to 1.1 million missing businesses. That is outrageous, and we must do something about that. Our aim is to increase the number of female entrepreneurs by half by 2030, so we will look very closely at that.

Many noble Lords mentioned the gender pay gap. One of the ways we are helping women in every workplace, regardless of how senior they are, is by driving transparency on pay. We will not have the situation where a woman goes for a job and is asked, “How much did you earn in your last job?” We do not want that. We want a salary on the advert so that women can negotiate the pay that shows their worth. We recently announced that we will take this transparency one step further. We will provide women with the information they need, making it easier for employees to understand whether they are being paid fairly.

However, as many of my noble friends have noted today, the world of work does not exist within a vacuum. So much of what goes into getting work right, not just for women but for everyone, is about making sure that workplace culture and practices fit with the lives that people lead outside of them. All the effort we put into empowering women and girls throughout their lives and careers goes to waste if we do not also remove the barriers that can prevent them being able to fully realise their ambitions.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Prosser and Lady Thornton, touched on the subject of childcare. This is something that is vexing me. I am on it. I cannot make promises, but I can promise to try getting to the bottom of some of the things that we can do to enable women to get the childcare that they need so that they can fulfil their potential in the workplace. The Government have doubled free childcare and have done much on tax-free childcare. But we want to help parents with the cost of childcare so we have introduced, as I have said, tax-free childcare, providing working parents with up to £2,000 of childcare support a year for each child. Much has been done on flexible working and parental leave. I am really proud that we extended the right to request flexible working to all employees with 26 weeks of continuous service with their employer.

Half the time has gone already, and I will not be able to answer everything, but let me turn to some of the other points that were raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, spoke about the remit of the Government Equalities Office being reduced. The equality hub will move beyond the narrow focus of protected characteristics and drive real change that benefits people across the United Kingdom. We have announced a new approach to equality, which will extend the fight for fairness beyond the nine protected characteristics covered by the Act, to include socioeconomic and geographical equality.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, raised Section 106. If the aims of Section 106 are to be realised, all political parties must be truly committed to it rather than be forced to do something. It is our job to drive that change to come naturally. The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, raised the Istanbul convention. We are delighted to be ratifying the convention. This will send a clear message, not only within the UK but overseas, that Britain is committed to tackling violence against women and girls. Whatever the differing views on the two reservations, we can all agree about the vital importance of ratification. Ratifying will make it easy for us to hold to account those countries elsewhere in Europe that are pulling away from the convention.

Many noble Lords have raised the cost of living crisis and the impact on women, particularly lone parents. We understand completely that millions of households across the UK are struggling to make their incomes stretch to cover the rising cost of living. That is why the Government have provided an extra £37 billion this year. On a point of difference that the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, raised about giving one-off grants as opposed to fixing the system as one would like, the Government are not standing there watching people struggling. We are adding vast sums of money for people as quickly as possible. Our Plan for Jobs campaign is working, as is the Way to Work campaign, which got over half a million people into work. As my Secretary of State, Thérèse Coffey, an outstanding woman, said, we want people to be in work. Once they have a job, it is easier for them to get a better job and then into a career. I cannot say more about the benefits system than I have said and said yesterday. We are doing all that we can to support people.

On the point raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Gale, about what we are doing to improve rape prosecutions, protecting women and girls from violence is a key priority for this Government. We have made it clear that we need to make improvements to restore victims’ faith in the criminal justice system. We published our rape action plan setting out clear measures to more than double the number of adult rape cases reaching court by the end of this Parliament. However, there are no holds barred here. There is still work to be done, still progress to be made. We will not stop driving actions forward to rebuild confidence in the criminal justice system to pursue justice for rape victims.

My noble friend Lady Jenkin, the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, and others mentioned women in politics. If I may, I will take a moment to congratulate my noble friend on the work she and others have done on Women2Win. She does not take her foot off the pedal at all on this. We have more women MPs than ever before and political parties, as I said, are responsible for their candidate selection and should lead the way in improving the diversity of representation. Let us all redouble our efforts to see whether we can get to that 50:50 target. I would also say that we need to understand why people do not want to enter politics. I had a conversation with someone about this earlier and if we can address the reasons why people do not want to do it, perhaps we will inspire some younger people to take it up.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, got us off to a great start about the football. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, is obviously very excited about the performance of our wonderful team. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, a rugby star in her own right—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Not a star!

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

Oh, she has changed her mind. Noble Lords are absolutely right that these women are doing a great job.

I was at the football on Monday in Brighton. I have never been to a football match in my life. Before I went, my other half said to me, “Please behave. Don’t start shouting out and telling people what to do. You know nothing about football.” I had been there about 10 minutes and I was alive with it. They were like rockets running round the field. They were absolutely fantastic. I just wondered why I had not seen them before. They are doing a great job and if they get to the final at Wembley, I will be pleased to represent all noble Lords and shout. I started to get excited and then realised that I was sitting next to the Duke of Gloucester and I had to calm down. I take on board the challenge from the noble Lord, Lord Addington. I will speak to my noble friend Lord Parkinson about investment in sport.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, raised the issue of transgender athletes participating in sport. All sports which compete internationally must comply with their international federation rules on that level and the Government are clear that a way forward is needed that protects and shows compassion to all athletes while maintaining the integrity of the competition. I heard the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, and others in the Chamber today. I am very happy to commit to meeting the noble Baroness and other noble Lords to discuss this.

The gender pensions gap was raised. We take this very seriously. Our reforms, including automatic enrolment, have helped millions more people save into a pension. Pension participation among eligible women working in the private sector was 86% in 2020, up from 40% in 2012.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, on her 30% Club. I will have to write regarding 50% of women on government boards because I do not have that figure to hand. The noble Baroness also mentioned women and girls in the Ukraine conflict. To mark International Women’s Day this year, the UK was proud to launch new funding for women’s rights organisations and civil society actors working to support the critical needs of women and children both inside and displaced outside Ukraine. There is more information, but I will include that in my letter.

The noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, mentioned levelling up for men and women. I thought her explanation of the fact that if we levelled up, it would still be unequal was really quite interesting—

Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 8th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer the strongest possible Green Party support for the Bill, which has just been so powerfully introduced by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. He clearly and powerfully demonstrated that this is an inhumane and illogical policy, and I commend him on his long-term campaigning on this issue.

As we debate a succession of Private Members’ Bills today, it is telling how many of them address either health or simple humanity. The next Bill up is the Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill from the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. Where the Government are failing, heading in the wrong direction and creating a hostile environment for both children and the vulnerable, in the Department for Work and Pensions as well as the Home Office, your Lordships’ House is trying to steer them in a somewhat better direction. I cannot avoid noting, as I look across to the other side of your Lordships’ House, that there is not a single Tory Back-Bencher here to defend this policy, which I think is rather telling.

The two-child limit is a policy targeted specifically at newborn babies—the very definition of absolute innocence. It has been pernicious since it was introduced in 2017 and, given the cost of living crisis that is squeezing families harder and harder by the day, it is becoming more pernicious every day. We know that people are struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head. Do we really think that people who have just had another baby in the family should be told, “Go down to the food bank”? That should not be government policy.

I am sure the Government will say that this is targeted not at the babies but at the parents. But as the right reverend Prelate outlined, that is clearly not working. I am drawing on LSE research under the title Benefit Changes and Larger Families. It used birth records from England and Wales from 2015 to 2019 and the annual population surveys to show that the probability of people having a third or subsequent child has reduced only 5% since the policy was introduced. The nature of any social science research is that it is impossible to control for any other variables. If we think of the fact that the cost of living crisis is not a new thing created by the Russian attack on Ukraine but a long-term trend that has seen households struggling more and more every year simply to survive, we can easily imagine that that 5% might well have happened anyway, even without the two-child policy. That means 5,600 fewer births per year.

I am probably about to be accused, as I often am, of showing a characteristic of my nation of birth—Australian bluntness. I will definitely display that now because the fact is—the right reverend Prelate touched on this in quoting the BPAS statistics, but I will be even blunter—that 45% of the pregnancies in the UK are unplanned, as are around a third of births. As a feminist, I believe as an absolute foundational principle that people should have the right to control their own bodies. It is a great tragedy that US women have just lost that right—although on the positive side I note that it looks as if Sierra Leone is heading in the opposite direction. The right to control your own body should also be the right to securely, without fear or poverty, continue a pregnancy—to bear and rear a child in decent conditions. This government policy pushes pregnant people who may not wish to do so into having an abortion. I ask whether anyone in the Tory party believes they can defend that position.

I am just about out of time. We need to look at the issue that having a child should not be a luxury available only to the rich. People do not have a child because of money. I will quote the LSE research, in which Sara, a mother of four children, said:

“I don’t … have kids to get benefits and stuff like that, I have kids because I love ‘em and stuff like that.”


Surely the Government should be supporting people like Sara, not deliberately and wilfully putting them into impossible financial situations.

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[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I think it is fair to say that the Government have a differing view from that of the noble Baroness and people on the Opposition Benches. It is exactly that our helping people to get a better job, if they can, and more income—plus all the support that we are putting through the welfare system—is the policy that the Government are pursuing. We want everybody to be able to find a job, progress in work and thrive in the labour market, whoever they are and wherever they live. Our support for people out of work is tailored—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The Minister just said “wherever they live”. Does she agree that the two-child benefit policy has different impacts in different parts of the country, and that there are parts that are supposed to be subject to the government’s levelling up agenda where it is much more difficult to get a higher paying job?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

Of course we accept that there are regional variations, which is why, with the levelling-up agenda, we are doing our very best to improve the work opportunities for people in those areas and to support them. That is, again, another policy of this Government that we are actively pursuing. Our support for people out of work is tailored to individual circumstances, recognising the different issues that people face in the labour market, notwithstanding the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made about the regional differences.

Improving work incentives was a key design criterion for universal credit. We have cut the universal credit taper rate from 63% to 55%—a major step forward—and increased the universal credit work allowance by £500 per year. These two measures mean that 1.7 million households will keep, on average, an extra £1,000 a year. These changes represent an effective tax cut for low-income working households in receipt of universal credit worth £1.9 billion a year in 2022-23. This will allow working households to keep more of what they earn and strengthen incentives to move into, and progress in, work.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised the issue of the cost of living, which is a subject on all our hearts and minds. Millions of households across the UK are struggling to make their incomes stretch to cover the cost of living. The Government have stepped up to the plate in order to make sure that we support people, providing £37 billion, which includes the £650 payment, as I have regularly repeated in the House—I do not intend to do today, as I want to get on to some of the other issues that noble Lords have raised.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham raised the issue of poverty increasing due to policy choices. Again, providing £22 billion of funding in 2022-23 to help families with the cost of living, including through universal credit changes, means that working families and households are much better off, as I have already said.

The delicate subject of abortion has been raised, which I completely understand. Research from the Nuffield Foundation larger families consortium of researchers published this month has outlined that fertility rates for those claiming or eligible to claim benefits have changed very little since the introduction of this policy. This evidence refutes earlier evidence from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which suggested that people were having abortions in response to the policy. The report argues that this was in fact a small and self-selected sample. This wider, more robust study takes evidence from administrative data on births and the annual population survey and uses a difference-in-differences approach to compare before and after the policy for different groups. It concludes that, while fertility rates have fallen, this has been the case for all socioeconomic groups.

The right reverend Prelate asked if I could commit to carrying out an impact assessment and to taking all this back to the Government. To be truthful and straightforward, I cannot commit to an impact assessment. I do not believe, with what I know, that the Government would welcome from me the request that he has made; however, having said that, I will make sure that they understand that it is in Hansard.

The right reverend Prelate also asked about policy exemptions not accounting for those from ethnic backgrounds. The Government’s published impact assessment noted that ethnic minority households may be more likely to be impacted by the policy. This is because they are, on average, more likely to be in receipt of tax credits and universal credit and, on average, have larger families.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised the issue of half of all children living in lone-parent households living in relative poverty. The latest available data on in-work poverty shows that, in 2019-20, children in households where all adults were in work were around six times less likely to be in absolute poverty, before housing costs. Through our plan for jobs campaign, the department is providing broad-ranging support for all jobseekers with our sector-based work academy programme and job entry targeted support scheme.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised the important point, as did others, about claimants being aware of the policy. There is information on the GOV.UK website, but this is something I am absolutely content to take back to the department to review how we communicate it and see if there are other things we can do to promote it. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham talked about paying childcare costs up-front being a barrier to moving into and progressing in work. Where people need up-front childcare costs on universal credit, the flexible support scheme is used and will continue to be so; if anybody knows of anybody who has been denied that, let me know and I will sort that out.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked me what level of spending on benefits is sustainable. I can only tell her that in 2021-22 we spent around £244 billion on welfare, with £41 billion on UC specifically. On the exam question, “How did the Government decide on two children?”—for which I thank her—I will need to write to her. She made a point about the two-child limit increasing policy and punishing families, so I say that the Government have a range of policies which support children and families across the tax and benefit system and public services. We remain committed to supporting families on low incomes and will spend around £108 billion through the welfare system, as I have already said.

In conclusion, the most sustainable way to lift children out of poverty—I keep going on and on about this, but it is government policy—is by supporting people and parents to progress in work wherever possible. This Government have a range of policies to support children and families across the tax and benefits system and public services. The policy to support a maximum of two children must strike a balance between providing support for those who need it and ensuring a sense of fairness to taxpayers, which I know noble Lords have already raised. I am quite sure that the answers I have given today have not been well received, but I am sure the debate will continue.

Shortage of Workers

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I wonder whether the noble Lord will allow me to read Hansard and respond to him in writing.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Altmann!

Food Insecurity: England

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My noble friend makes a good point, and I refer him to my previous answer.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister is aware of the crisis in the supply of infant formula in the United States, which is associated with an extremely oligarchic concentration of production and ownership of supplies. What assessment have the Government made of similar risks to supplies of critical products in the UK?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, the UK has a resilient food supply chain. The preparations we were required to make in the event of a no-deal exit from the EU ensured that the UK made preparations that otherwise perhaps would not have been made. In a very real sense, the possibility of a no-deal exit led to an audit of our supply chains, which has resulted in a much more resilient system than we might otherwise have had.

Child Poverty Strategy

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I am not able to make a commitment right now, but I know that the department is looking at all the recommendations and will respond to the Church in due course. I reiterate that we will be spending £64 billion on benefits to support people who are unable to work or who are on a low income. Another point I would like to make—I ask all noble Lords to help me on this—is that we urge people to check whether they are receiving all the benefits to which they are entitled and to be aware of the wider support this opens up, including help with transport, broadband and prescription costs.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the report highlights the widespread agreement among concerned organisations that the two-child limit is a significant cause of child poverty. Given that this is an explicitly punitive measure directed at children, should the Government not be taking this advice to end that policy?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

It is important that we support families. I note the point the noble Baroness makes about the two-child policy, as did the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, but it is important that we are fair to the many working families who do not see their budgets rise when they have more children. This does not apply to child benefit nor to the disabled child element, and statistics from the Office for National Statistics show that in 2021, 85% of all families with dependent children had a maximum of two children, and for lone parents the figure was 86%.

Xinjiang Internment Camps: Shoot-to-Kill Policy

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, we are certainly working with our partners. As I am sure the noble Lord acknowledges, we have acted to hold to account senior officials and organisations who are responsible for egregious abuse of human rights within Xinjiang. That said, we keep policy constantly under review and it remains very much on the table. We will continue to work in co-ordination with our partners in that respect.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the Answer given in the other place made no reference to an asylum response to these shocking reports. As it is very clear that the Uighurs are being persecuted because of their religion and ethnicity, and are in need of legal protection, will the Government issue visas for Uighurs fleeing persecution in China, including or perhaps particularly those who are in countries where they face the risk of deportation to China?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness raises a very valid point, and I assure her that the United Kingdom has been and remains very much a place where people seek sanctuary. That applies to the Uighurs specifically and indeed to any other persecuted community around the world. This is a tradition and a right that continues to be alive—and long may it continue.

Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 7th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Polak, for securing this debate. One of my fellow Peers here today expressed some surprise at my presence, given the range of other topics on which I engage. Of course, if we had more Greens in the House, your Lordships would hear from me less—and I would be very happy with that.

But I have a particular interest in Iran, which dates back many years to when I looked academically at the place of feminist movements within Iran in the fall of the Shah—it was a major one, for those who are unaware of that—and the way in which they were viciously swept aside by what became the current theocratic regime. There are also, of course, my numerous encounters with this region as a journalist for 20-plus years, many of which were spent in international news. One of the reasons I always knew that I would leave journalism is that the same cyclical, depressing, disastrous and deadly stories came round again and again. Eventually, you reach the stage where that is very hard to take.

I also think the Green perspective on foreign and international affairs is a different one, which can be useful to this debate, and it lines up with what might be described as more mainstream perspectives. One of those is that we believe that everything is linked to everything else, which makes a five-minute speech very difficult. It is impossible to look at just one issue as a cog in a machine and say, “We’ve fixed that”, without acknowledging the entire context in which it is operating.

Before this debate I looked at some very interesting, detailed work from Chatham House, which is calling for a “JCPOA plus” process which

“must lengthen and strengthen the deal”.

Here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, that this is not an “instead of” situation but an “in addition to” arrangement. Regional challenges must be managed through multilateral negotiating tracks. That means we have to think about the context of the wars in Yemen and Syria, building greater solidarity among the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, in the Israel-Palestine conflict and through the creation of meaningful confidence-building measures. We have to think about the place of the UK in all this rather differently to the way in which we traditionally have and perhaps still do—humbly, acknowledging our tremendously difficult history in the region and the continuing situation of issues such as UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

I also want to put this in the context of a feminist foreign policy. It may surprise this Committee—it certainly rather surprised me—that the last time I talked about feminist foreign policy in the House it was something of a hit on TikTok. That was not something I expected, but I think that is a sign of the world looking for different ways of looking at our international situation given where we are now. So what does that mean? It means a fundamental shift away from a total focus on hard security—nuclear and military weapons issues—to thinking about the environment, hunger and pandemic relief.

It is worth looking at the context of the region. The MENA region has 50 million undernourished people. The climate emergency and the crisis of water supply press particularly hard across this whole region. Two-thirds of its food is imported; we should think about what we know about the global food security situation now. SDG 2, zero hunger, looks further away by the day. Iran imports sunflower oil, wheat, corn, barley and soya beans from Russia and Ukraine—predominantly Russia. It has had much less rainfall, and yields are expected to be down by 30% this year. It is impossible to look just at nuclear without looking at all of this context.

The other side of a feminist foreign policy is that it is important to focus on women’s rights. That is particularly true in the context of Iran, given its hideous record in this area. We should note that women in Iran have in recent years been at the forefront of leading civil disobedience on a scale not seen since 1978-79, going back to where I started. It is really important to stress when we are talking about feminist foreign policy that that has sometimes been interpreted as the idea of us going in as saviours. Instead, let us think about the agency of women in Iran and the region and how they can be involved and engaged in this process. This is a matter of understanding security very broadly. If we look only at that single cog, without the total context, we are always at risk of doing more harm than good.

International Women’s Day and Protecting the Equality of Women in the UK and Internationally

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I begin with the good news. I very much welcome the return of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori and acknowledge that they were victims of geopolitics in which they played no part, as indeed are the women, girls, men and boys in Ukraine.

It is important in a debate such as today’s that we look around us. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, looked at the situation across the political parties. He left one out, however, and I am very proud to say that it currently has 100% female parliamentary representation. Like the Liberal Democrats, we are looking to greatly grow our representation. I am sure there will be some men in the next tranche, but I hope we keep the percentage of females very high.

I associate myself with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, on the location and timing of this debate. I do not know how many people have looked up and thought that we are conducting this debate at the feet of the patriarch. There could hardly be a less appropriate place for it.

When I speak in your Lordships’ House, I often seek to share the words of women of today who are less privileged, who do not have access to the Chambers and who do not have a voice. Today, as we speak in the midst of a building filled with portraits and statues of largely dead, white, rich males, I shall seek to allow voices of women from the past to be heard in your Lordships’ House. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, said, there has been a conspiracy of silence. The words and voices of women right through history have so often been suppressed. I will bring a few of those to your Lordships’ House today to see what we can learn from their courage, determination and achievements.

I start by looking at tackling and calling out violence. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, spoke very powerfully about the risks women face outside the home today, as they always have, but of course we know that, today and in the past, the greatest risks of violence against women are inside the home. The 15th-century Italian poet and author of The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine de Pizan, wrote:

“How many women are there … who because of their husbands’ harshness spend their weary lives in the bond of marriage in greater suffering than if they were slaves … ?”


I also quote the 18th-century English legal theorist, Sarah Chapone:

“a Man … he may be as Despotick (excepting the Power over Life itself) as the Grand Seignior in his Seraglio, with this Difference only, that the English Husband has but one Vassal to treat according to his variable Humour, whereas the Grand Seignior having many, it may be supposed, that some of them, at some Times may be suffered to be at quiet”.

We sometimes think that, in the past, women were forced to endure but they always fought back and spoke out. It is really important that we listen—during this Women’s History Month, as well as by marking International Women’s Day—to our foremothers there. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham talked about how so much education in other countries is male-orientated. Of course, that is also true of so much of our education system today. I do not know, if we went into a school today, how many pupils would know of the two authors I have just quoted.

Looking at the issue of art, there is another woman who I wish to quote, the Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. I would posit that she produced some of the most wonderful art that has ever been created. She did so after the most awful and difficult origins. She was raped as a young woman in 1611. When she was 18 years old, she was tortured in court to forcibly prove the honesty of her testimony. Artemisia Gentileschi went on to produce wonderful paintings. Among them, and perhaps the most famous, is the biblical story of “Judith Slaying Holofernes”. That painting depicts Judith, with a knife, cutting off the head of an enemy, while she is helped by another woman to hold that enemy down. I invite your Lordships’ House to imagine what it might be like if that painting were up there, instead of the one that is before us. One of the quotes which comes down to us from Artemisia is:

“As long as I live I will have control over my being.”


What an inspirational phrase that is.

I will also look more broadly than the fate of individuals by turning to Hypatia, the fifth-century Alexandrian philosopher and political adviser. One of her quotes which comes down to us is:

“Regardless of our colour, race and religion, we are brothers”


and sisters. We might think that we have culture wars today, but the culture wars between pagans and Christians in fifth-century Alexandria were considerably more violent. Those noble Lords who know the fate of Hypatia will know that her body bore extreme scars and the cause of her death was that culture war, but she said that we are all brothers and sisters. Let us listen to this wisdom from women of the past.

Finally, I come to one last person to quote, someone who is much closer to the current day: Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner. She said:

“We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own—indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder.”


Wangari Maathai was talking about a different kind of model to that which existed, not just in past decades or centuries, but past millennia. In a very fast scan, I have gone through women’s history over the past two millennia. For those millennia, we have had a man-made system. It has given us the world we have today. It is a world in which people are exploited—particularly, but not solely, women—and in which nature is exploited and destroyed, just as people are also exploited and destroyed.

The Minister, in opening this debate, spoke about the slogan for this International Women’s Day, “Break the Bias”. I argue that we need something far more fundamental, as all those women from history teach us. We need to break the system. The system has failed us, and we need a new system with women as leaders at its heart.

Women: Cost of Living

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

Again, we have another question that is very Treasury driven. I have no doubt—indeed, I know it for a fact—that the Chancellor is well aware of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, has been making on this subject.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the 15 years from 2007 to 2022 are forecast to be the worst on record for household incomes. Is the term “cost of living crisis” really adequate for the situation we are in now? What we are really seeing is a long-term collapse in the financial stability of British lives; this is not just a crisis of the moment. Do we not need to take a different approach to offer people true security, particularly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, single parents—overwhelmingly women—who are bearing the greatest weight? Do we not need a universal basic income?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

We have spoken many times about universal basic income, and I have heard nothing on the airwaves to suggest that it is being considered. I will finish this Question by saying that it is a difficult time, and that we understand the great challenges people face. Please do not think this Government do not care—because they do.