Syria

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. We have known for a very long time the huge impact that the situation in Syria was having on neighbouring countries, particularly the influx of refugees. We have been focused on giving financial and humanitarian support, not least to ensure that that support is not simply limited to the refugees but that the local population can accommodate and support them. One of the areas we were looking at previously was education and other facilities, and ensuring that people could work and contribute to the local economy. Even the recent further £50 million was also focused on giving support to those refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, and we will continue to do that. The real focus has to be on the causes of this refugee migration crisis, and one of the biggest causes has been the situation in Syria.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I return to the situation in north-east Syria, which was raised by the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Purvis. Al Jazeera and many others reported today that a Turkish official has denied yesterday’s statement by the US that Turkey was talking to the SDF, the group headed by the YPG. I applaud the Minister’s call for an end to military aggression in north-east Syria from the Turkish-backed forces and Turkey directly. What steps can the Government take to push Turkey to permit the Kurdish groups and the HTS-SNA alliance to talk to each other, and ensure that Kurdish interests are fully represented in the final destination for Syria?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I would not use the word “push”. What we are doing, with all international allies, is trying to push for an inclusive process that ensures that everyone forms part of the solution that leads to a Government decided by, and supported by, the Syrian people. We will continue to do that multilaterally, but also bilaterally, with all supporting countries.

Plan for Change: Milestones for Mission-led Government

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, said that few would disagree with the target to grow the economy. However, as Greens we disagree, because we think that the economy should be there to serve people, to deliver a decent, secure life for everybody and care for our natural world, rather than have the Government directed towards the artificial figure of GDP, which is so unequally distributed. With regard to that unequal distribution, I ask the Minister about the first milestone:

“Raising living standards in every part of the United Kingdom, so working people have more money in their pocket”.


Why are the Government explicitly excluding children from having more money be spent on them? Why are the Government explicitly excluding pensioners, most of whom are not working, from this first milestone? Why are the Government excluding those with severe disabilities and illnesses, who may not be able to work? Why are they not included in this milestone?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

If that is the best that the noble Baroness can do, I think that the Green Party will be disappointed by her interventions. Those people are not being excluded, but people who get pay packets are working people, which is why the milestone references working people. If she looks at the other measures that we have about child poverty, the triple lock and support for pensioners, she will see that all those are people for whom we want economic growth. I really am amazed that the noble Baroness thinks that economic growth can come only at the expense of the environment. I do not know whether she was here earlier today when I was talking about how we can have better houses, more houses and homes for people, and a better environment. The two are not mutually exclusive. I am disappointed, because I have to disagree with her: we want economic growth for the benefit of the country and the environment.

Syria

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I do not want to be repetitive, but we are monitoring the situation and keeping it under review. We are judging HTS by its actions, and so far we are hopeful for a positive, inclusive, peaceful transition. Reflecting the point of view of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, all our efforts over the last 14 years have been to support civilian groups and we will continue to do that. Protection of civilians is a vital part of our strategy on Syria.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, I am addressing events particularly in the north-east of Syria. There are reliable reports coming out that Turkish-backed militias known as the Syrian National Army are attacking the Syrian Democratic Forces across the region in central Syria and in the north-east autonomous self-governing region known as Rojava. There are reliable reports of Turkish aircraft and drones hitting Kobani and the capital, Qamishli. Does that reflect the Minister’s understanding of what is happening there? Has he seen some of the horrendous social media footage that is emerging from that area? What are the Government doing in diplomatic and humanitarian terms to address this situation? I should, perhaps for transparency, declare that I met with representatives from Rojava in Ankara in 2016.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I have not seen social media, but I think that the important thing is that we act based on the evidence presented to us. We have been focused, in terms of north-east Syria, on the battle against Daesh, and we will continue to focus on protecting the safety and security of all UK citizens, particularly in that area.

As the present situation unfolds in Syria, we are working closely with all partners to monitor the threat, as part of the global coalition against Daesh and other terrorist threats. I do not want to go into any more specific details except to keep repeating that we are working closely with all allies to focus on what needs to be an inclusive transition. At the moment, we are continuing to judge HTS on its actions and not simply on what others are saying.

G20 and COP 29 Summits

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments about John Prescott and Kyoto. It was one of the things of which he was most proud, and in many ways he was a man ahead of his time—many derided him on that issue but he was proved to be absolutely right. It remained an abiding passion of his right until the very end.

The noble Lord is right that the Brazil COP presents a major opportunity. Discussions are difficult when so many countries are trying to reach an agreement, so how these discussions are managed and how the countries work together is really important. The noble Lord has made the point about how the climate emergency affects every part of our lives in terms of food security and migration; they are interconnected, and that is why the role on the world stage is important. Food security is an issue that will be discussed at the next COP, because it is part and parcel of what is happening to the world with the climate emergency. The noble Lord is also right that the relationship between our country and Brazil has grown in the last few years. Certainly, at this COP, both Brazil and the UK were asked for advice on many occasions. After a very difficult COP this time, we must try to be as optimistic as we can to see what progress can be made in Brazil.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I think that many international and national observers will be surprised that we should have a Prime Ministerial Statement covering COP 29 in which the term “fossil fuels” does not appear once. Sadly, there were many disappointments coming out of COP 29, one of which was the key negotiating item known as the UAE dialogue, which was meant to follow on from the commitment in COP 28 to “transition away from fossil fuels”. What was put forward in Baku was rejected because countries said it was too weak. Saudi Arabia suggested that this was only one of the options which countries had agreed at COP 28. Does the noble Baroness agree that this is not correct? Are the Government considering showing real leadership such as we saw this week from Glasgow City Council—following London, Edinburgh and many other local governments around the country—in calling for backing for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty? Surely the UK should be showing leadership in the area of fossil fuels.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The noble Baroness will have seen the clean power objective—the plan that will be coming out before the end of the year—which I think will address many of these concerns. I understand her concerns about the last COP just gone, but we have to build on this. There are two alternatives: either we give up and walk away saying, “We did not get what we wanted, so why continue?” or we just have to keep going, because each time progress is being made. The noble Baroness will know that nothing happened for 11 years about the issues that were agreed in Paris to proceed on carbon markets; at this COP, we finally agreed the rules, so progress is there. It is not enough, and it is not fast enough, but that is why we have to keep on going. The noble Baroness will see that we are making progress on clean power. To respond to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, we have already started working with Brazil about what will happen at the next COP. Perhaps I am just an optimist, but I think we just have to try to make progress at every stage we possibly can.

Women, Peace and Security Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the absolutely expert contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad; I agree with everything he said. I join the universal commendations to the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, on both her tenacity and practicality in bringing this simple but important Bill forward.

I also commend the noble Baroness’s timing because, last night, I was at the Magnitsky Human Rights Awards here in London, as a number of noble Lords taking part in this debate were. We heard personal tales of enormous courage and conviction from women and men who are doing so much to fight for peace and security in their communities. It is a struggle, of course. Such awards can mark only a few people. So many women and girls around the world show that same courage and conviction. This Bill is a humble but important recognition of that fact; I join the call saying, “Surely the Government can accept this Bill”.

There is an important point to make about the Magnitsky Human Rights Awards and, indeed, the whole existence of Magnitsky sanctions. They were driven by civil society. The leadership did not come from Governments, as is the case in so many areas of human rights: Governments follow where civil society and campaigning women and men lead. This Bill is a way of ensuring that those voices can be heard.

In conducting this debate at this time, I must, in talking about women, peace and security, talk about the situation in Gaza. The figures out this month from the UN Human Rights Office state that close to 70% of the victims verified by it were women and children. This is in the context of what the office has described as “unprecedented levels” of international rights violations. Just yesterday, the UN Special Committee said that Israel’s policies and practices in Gaza are

“consistent with the characteristics of genocide”.

I cannot see how the national action plan can possibly be congruent with continuing any arms sales to Israel.

I turn to an issue that has not yet been raised but must be—it is an issue of long-term interest for me—which is the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nearly 6 million people have been killed there since 1996 and it has the world’s largest population of internally displaced persons: 7.1 million people. The province of North Kivu is particularly impacted; it is an area of massive long-term violence against women and girls, in particular sexual violence. I note the MSF report We Are Calling for Help, which acknowledges that 2024 saw a marked increase in violence. I want to make a quick point, which I will come back to: the conflict in that area is driven by the fight for control of the important raw minerals tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold, which are collectively known as 3TG.

The national action plan does not seem to square with the Government’s approach in the UK strategic defence review. As I have said in other contexts, it separates out the issues of defence from the broader issues of security, when they surely have to be considered together. As the NGO Rethinking Security has commented, we live in a world

“of complex interconnected crises from the Middle East to the Horn of Africa”.

For the sake of women, girls and everyone, we need a much greater focus on de-escalation.

Finally, I come back to two points. Parliamentary scrutiny can very importantly join up connections and make connections that a siloed Government might not. The Minister might not have thought about the action plan that we are discussing here and the action plan on antimicrobial resistance, but I point to the World Health Organization’s recent guidance on the key gender disparities in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of drug-resistant infections. I also point to the need to join these issues up. I mentioned the issues of IT and the DRC. Recently in your Lordships’ House we debated the digital assets Bill, and I was the only female speaker. We need to ensure that women are always in the room for all these issues relating to peace and security.

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for securing this debate. It is a take-note debate on conflict, extreme poverty and climate-related emergencies and their impact on the sustainable development goals. My speech is in the nature of questions to the Minister about the action the Government are planning in two specific areas where they could clearly take action.

I begin with what is happening right now in Nigeria, Mali, Niger and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where floods have driven nearly 1 million people from their homes and killed more than 1,400 people. Save the Children tells us that around 10 million children in the region are being kept out of their homes. Mali has delayed the start of the school year for a month because so many people are sheltering in schools. In Chad, every province has flooded—and this is a country where more than 40% of the population lives in poverty and which is home to more than 2 million refugees. Those who question Britain’s contribution in taking refugees might like to consider that figure. These floods are, in part, a consequence of a natural weather cycle, but they are undoubtedly worsened by the climate emergency.

What does this actually mean at the human level? In the capital of Mali, Bamako, Reuters spoke to a grandmother, Iya Kobla. Her fishing village has been destroyed and many of the mud homes have been swept away. She told Reuters:

“We lost everything and now my grandchildren are all sick”.


Those grandchildren are sleeping on makeshift beds in the very school rooms where children should be learning.

Lest it be thought that this is happening in just one continent, in Latin America we have had a year of record heat, floods and drought, as the World Meteorological Organization reports. Those countries have suffered tens of thousands of climate-related deaths in the past year, at least $21 billion-worth of economic damage and “the greatest calorific loss” of any region. It has to be noted that nearly all the people suffering, people like Mrs Kobla, have done nothing to cause the climate emergency.

This brings up the context of loss and damage in COP climate talks. This is supposed to be compensation from those causing the damage to those who are mostly suffering from it. COP 29, which is fast approaching, is being touted as the climate finance COP, yet the Heinrich Böll Foundation reports that rich countries are fighting the inclusion of loss and damage as a thematic focus of climate funding in those talks. Can the Minister assure me that the Government support the inclusion of loss and damage as a thematic focus? What other plans do the Government have to advance the loss and damage agenda within COP and to deliver the funds that are so urgently needed?

I move on to my second theme. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, spoke about business stepping up to support the sustainable development goals, and said that the City of London can make a real difference. I agree with that: it can make a real difference by cleaning up the rampant corruption that is robbing huge funds from the global South. The robbing of the global South that began centuries ago continues apace. I cite former Government Minister Andrew Mitchell, who was the Deputy Foreign Secretary. In May this year, he acknowledged that 40% of the world’s dirty money flows through the City of London and the British Crown dependencies. According to IMF figures, 5% of global GDP is lost to corruption.

I am particularly driven to this theme by a meeting this week of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax. The topic of the session was Bangladesh and the return of stolen assets. We heard from Professor Mushtaq Khan from SOAS that Bangladesh has lost an estimated $50 billion to $100 billion. We heard from the central bank of Bangladesh how desperate it is to recover this money and how difficult it is expected to be. We heard very directly from Al Jazeera journalists how that money has flowed into this city, right here, right now.

It is not that people are not trying to do something about this. I note that a group of anti-corruption NGOs wrote to the Foreign Secretary on 3 September with three key recommendations: a surge in resources for the National Crime Agency’s international corruption unit to allow it to prioritise the urgent work in Bangladesh and elsewhere; greater external help for the interim Government of Bangladesh to allow them to identify stolen assets; and collaboration with key allies of the UK to identify targets for potential sanctions and visa bans. Susan Hawley, the executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, said:

“The UK really needs to put its money where its mouth is”.


In response to that NGO letter, a letter has been released from Catherine West, the Minister for the Indo-Pacific, dated 10 September. It listed all the existing organisations and structures that have been in place for many years and that have not stopped this rampant pillaging of the assets of Bangladesh. It concludes:

“We share your concern about the need to support Bangladesh. We will continue to work with the interim government in Bangladesh on their specific requirements including working with civil society, political parties and international partners”.


My direct question to the Minister is this: what are the Government actually going to do about this stolen money?

I need to tie together the two issues I have raised. Bangladesh has a population of 161 million people. It is the eighth most populous country in the world and it is acutely vulnerable to the climate emergency. Tropical cyclones now cost Bangladesh an average of $1 billion a year. Sea rise means that saline intrusion is affecting the drinking water and irrigation water of 20 million people, who are frequently forced to drink unsafe surface water as a result. One projection from the World Meteorological Organization suggests that one in seven people in Bangladesh could be displaced by the climate emergency by 2050.

But, of course, Bangladesh also needs power; it needs renewable energy resources. A 2018 study from Frontiers in Energy Research looked at

“the mean capital cost of a power plant in Bangladesh”,

which was

“twice … that of the global average”.

Bangladesh desperately needs investment. It needs support. It needs us to stop robbing it—to return the money that has been stolen through the City of London and is being held right around where we stand today.

Let us deliver possibility for the people of Bangladesh and the people of the world. This means not just aid, nor just loss and damage finance; it very much means a transformation of our own society.

Business of the House

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, this is obviously a very notable victory for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and for the Labour Party. I pay tribute to all those who have been elected in the by-elections over the past few years. There are an excellent number on our party Benches, on the Cross Benches and right across the House, and I think these by-elections will be much missed. But I support my noble friend Lord Howe and I think he has done the right thing. It will be for history to decide in the future on the contribution of these by-elections—but I think history will note that perhaps it was better to have the Peers voting for one of their own rather than just being ticked in the box by the Prime Minister.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I wish to offer a small correction to the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, about people being elected to this House. Plaid Cymru and the Green Party elect the people who are to be their nominees. That does not mean that we do not want a fully democratically elected House with a full public franchise.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, sometimes all that is at stake is to do the right thing by your Lordships’ House. Many noble Lords approached me, the Leader of the Opposition and indeed the Convenor to say that they did not feel that this was the right time to hold such by-elections. If that is the will of the House, that is what the House should seek to do.

On a point about the rule of law, can I just correct noble Lords? I am not a lawyer and I do not know whether the noble Lords, Lord Moylan or Lord Hamilton, are, but my understanding of the law is that the House of Lords Act 1999 and the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 both stipulated that by-elections should take place. They did not say how they would take place; that was a matter for the Standing Orders of your Lordships’ House. So in no way does the proposal before your Lordships’ House on the Standing Orders breach legislation. Previously, under Covid, we suspended the Standing Orders; in this case we are seeking merely to amend them for a limited time period to allow the House to debate the legislation that it has before us.

Other comments will be made as we go forward on the legislation itself. I do not think that any Member of this House has anything other than respect for all Members of the House, by whichever method they arrived here—but what we are seeking today is to have a common-sense approach within the law to deal with the by-elections. The one regret I have is that I will not get to listen to my noble friend Lord Grocott quite so often.

Antimicrobial Resistance

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to secure multilateral consensus in advance of a political declaration at the United Nations General Assembly high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance in September.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)]

My Lords, the United Kingdom is actively engaged in the political declaration on antimicrobial resistance. We recognise that we must tackle the human and animal environment aspects of AMR to be successful, embodying a One Health approach, and recognising the needs of developing countries, including supporting them to have access to the essential drugs they need to treat infections. Of course, finally, we want to see the establishment of a new independent science panel to provide evidence-based guidance to national Governments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer, I welcome him to the Dispatch Box and I look forward to working with him on these issues. As research that I shared with him indicates, elevated levels of AMR genes have been identified as a new stand-alone factor in global change. Can he tell me what resources the Government plan to devote to this meeting but also whether they have a long-term plan? The meeting is only one moment of what needs to be a long-term process to engage with this through both aid and diplomacy.