Syria: Idlib Attacks

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord about ensuring that we use our position on the international stage to its greatest effect. We continue to do that at the UN Security Council by advocating for the protection of all civilians, aid workers and indeed journalists in Syria. We were instrumental in convening two emergency UN sessions on Idlib held on 10 and 17 May, and another one is taking place today where we hope to see further action. We must continue to press all sides to return to the ceasefire agreement which was made in September 2018 in Sochi. I also agree with the noble Lord that if people are using hospitals and schools in this way, that is entirely unacceptable. However, we should also remember the complete unacceptability of bombing these civilian infrastructures which provide such protection to people in Syria.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, most sadly it has become apparent that a small number of British children are in this region, having been taken out there by their parents. The scant information we have is that we think they are in the north-eastern part of Syria. Can my noble friend please assure us that DfID is doing its best to locate these British children so that they can be kept out of harm’s way while we try to solve what is perhaps a legal lacuna as to what is in their best interests and whether to bring them home?

[Baroness Sugg]

My noble friend raises an important point. Sadly, due to the conditions in Syria, getting accurate information about what has happened to British children there is extremely difficult. We continue to attempt to build and improve on the information we have. We have no people on the ground ourselves, but we are working closely with our international partners to try to improve that information and to understand how many British children are in Syria.

British Citizenship: Children

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Berridge]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they have taken to review the access to legal redress and humanitarian protection of children whose parents have been deprived of British citizenship.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, if a parent is deprived of British citizenship, this does not affect the citizenship status of their child nor a British child’s ability to access legal support or humanitarian protection.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her Answer. The story begins for all these British children with their parents—such as the parents of nine year-old Sara—taking them out to join IS. My noble friend has not explained why these British children, who cannot make their own way home or access consular services, do not benefit from a decision-making process in the Home Office on whether it is in their best interests to remain with that parent, potentially in a refugee camp, or to return home. Nor, as far as I am aware, has the inherent wardship jurisdiction of the family courts been exercised on behalf of these children, which would relieve the Home Secretary of that legal conundrum. Will the Minister please agree to meet with concerned Members of your Lordships’ House? I am grateful that there is concern on all Benches about the situation of British children finding themselves in refugee camps.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I share my noble friend’s concerns about children who find themselves, in many cases through no fault of their own, in Syria. She is absolutely right to point out that there is no consular access, which is why the FCO advises against all travel to Syria. There is humanitarian protection out there in the region—it is not an ideal place for a child to be—and the UK has provided £40 million towards that protection in Syria. I would be very happy to meet with my noble friend, and I am grateful for the meeting I had with her and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham to discuss this matter previously.

Windrush Compensation Scheme

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The target time is as quickly as possible, but the noble Lord makes the right point and I know the episode to which he refers as well; I worked with him on it. There are several levels of assistance for claimants. We are about to contract with a third party so that our advice can be given online or by phone. As I say, the application form has been designed to be as simple and to provide as efficient and speedy a response as possible.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, while welcoming this compensation scheme, I find it very sad—the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, alluded to this—that the word “Windrush” is now in many people’s minds associated with this system in the Home Office. There is now, of course, a national day, 22 June. Can my noble friend the Minister please outline whether specific money is being allocated so that that day can be commemorated in such a way as to try to make good some of the negative publicity around Windrush and to return it to the place it should have in our national history—one of celebration and commemoration?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank my noble friend for asking that question. Yes, we need to turn what has now widely been seen as a negative period in our history into a positive period, one in which the Windrush generation contributed hugely to this country after the war. I do not know about funding, but I can certainly find out for my noble friend. I will let her know and place a copy in the Library.

Shamima and Jarrah Begum

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, we must make no mistake; the noble Baroness talked about making the situation worse, but it is hard to think how it could be any worse. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, two-thirds of the people who die in the camps are children under the age of five.

On people who hold another nationality, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has been absolutely clear that he will not deprive someone of their citizenship unless they possess the citizenship of another country.

On the interests of the child, the Home Secretary said that he took the decision based on all the facts of the case, which included the interests of the child. It would be very difficult to establish how one could take a child out of Syria, when it would be wrong to send British officials there to remove the child. The noble Baroness talked about safeguarding. Speaking of “safeguarding” in Syria seems to be a contradiction in terms: any parent who takes their child to Syria puts not only themselves beyond help but their child too.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, in relation to this matter, I raised the specific situation of children twice in previous Urgent Questions. Our law has a strong history of not just taking the interests of a child into account: in our family courts the interests of the child are paramount. How can it be that we do not have any legal process for the interests of the child to be considered separately from those of the parent?

The Statement said that children were taken out of the jurisdiction into Syria. Is it not the duty of a local authority to get this matter before our family courts, so that the interests of these children can be represented separately from those of their parents, and a decision made on whether it is safe to get them out of that situation if they should be separated from their parents?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend is absolutely right that the interests of a child should be paramount for local authorities. However, if that child is not in this country and is, for example, in Syria, they are—it is sad to say—beyond our help.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, today is the day to celebrate progress while recognising that there is more to do. I thank the researchers in the Library for providing me with a favourite number: 228. I am only the 228th woman to have been appointed under the Life Peerages Act since 1958. I find this sobering when I think of the centuries of history in this Chamber. Many barriers still exist, but like my noble friend Lady Seccombe, I count myself fortunate to have been born at this time and in this country, where I can own property, start a business or charity, vote—in most elections—and speak my views freely. As a lawyer by profession, I know that there are a growing number of role models. Twenty-five per cent of the Supreme Court judiciary, including its president, are now women. Overseas, the testimony of the former Attorney-General of Canada, Jody Wilson-Raybould, defending prosecutorial independence against interference by the Prime Minister, should be standard viewing for all law students.

Injustices still exist, however. The problem of forced marriage led the coalition Government to take the positive step of making it a crime. There are cases where the victims are men, but 77% of the victims are women. To make this criminal law effective, the Government changed the definition of marriage to any religious or civil ceremony, whether or not legally binding. Some women are brave enough to give evidence against their husbands and perhaps other family members, and successfully secure a criminal conviction, proving beyond reasonable doubt that there was a forced marriage. But they are left without a remedy in the civil court to get their share of matrimonial assets, as the woman is not viewed in the civil law as married. Our law is therefore contradictory: she is married for some purposes but not for others. It is not the crime of forced cohabitation; it is the crime of forced marriage. This irrational situation will last until a victim of forced marriage attains a media profile because, having no claim on his assets—his house, business and, probably most likely, pension—ends up claiming universal credit. I would be grateful if my noble friend could arrange a further meeting to discuss this gap in our law.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, said Martin Luther King. As a state comprehensive girl from factory-working parents, this lofty quote compels me to raise one of the last—perhaps the last—bastion of direct discrimination against women in UK law. I call it the “Lady Mary Crawley problem”, because Downton Abbey was in search of a male heir as women could not, and still cannot, inherit. When we changed the law for the monarchy, part of Her Majesty’s Government’s reasons for not getting rid of this discriminatory law was that it meant,

“disinheritance of individuals with legitimate expectations to inherit an hereditary peerage”.—[Official Report, 11/9/15; col. 1633.]

Men cannot possibly rely on legitimate expectations created by direct discrimination against women to prevent law reform. I pay tribute to the work of Daughters’ Rights and wish to place on record that, like many other Members of this House, I do not vote in any hereditary Peer by-elections where there are no women on the ballot paper. This law directly affects the gender balance in this Chamber; I would be grateful to hear the Government’s view on this matter.

Finally, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, I want to address briefly the double discrimination that many women face: additional barriers and prejudice against women from black and minority-ethnic communities. I support the recommendation made outside the Chamber by my noble friend Lady McGregor- Smith that companies should publish their data on this matter. The next logical step from a gender pay gap reporting requirement is publishing the ethnicity pay gap. However, this issue concerns not just business but the charitable and social investment sectors. I discovered that the UK has the fastest-growing social investment market in the world, worth £2.3 billion and growing at 17% a year, but BME women are sadly the least likely to hold a directorship, representing only 2.8% of such positions. I am surprised that charities are also underperforming, with 62% of the UK’s largest charities having all-white boards of trustees, despite black people being the ethnic group most likely to volunteer each month. Surely there should be some reporting requirement to make such boards justify this absence of diversity. I hope my noble friend the Minister will raise this with the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, the chair of the Charity Commission.

Today, I will finish work, as I often do, walking past the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst. Thank God for her life, but today I will also be grateful for her part in enabling me to be female life Peer number 228.

Citizenship Status

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, on whether it would be conducive to the public good if someone could be brought back and rehabilitated in this country, or could tell the British authorities what was going on and perhaps act as a conduit for good, without talking about a specific case, there are of course examples of people who have come back here and been rehabilitated through Channel programmes. That is absolutely correct.

Turning to the rights of the child, if any child is a British citizen, that child’s parents having been deprived of their citizenship does not affect the child’s citizenship.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the clarification of the legal status of any children of those deprived of their British citizenship. Will she clarify what exactly the duties of the Home Secretary are? If he is reviewing information that may be confidential but not classified, which reveals safeguarding issues in relation to the children of people who have been deprived of their citizenship, what are his responsibilities to refer information to other authorities so that the children can be protected in situations where their interests and safety are not the same as those of the parent who is having their citizenship withdrawn? It is important to know what the processes are for those children and what the safeguarding duty of the Home Secretary is.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend asks a very good question. Safeguarding is paramount when considering the rights of a child. It is a very difficult situation if a child is in a country where we do not have any consular access and therefore no means of helping them. Under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, we absolutely have a serious obligation—and we take it very seriously. If a child is in a war-torn country, however, those obligations are very difficult to fulfil.

Police: Recruitment and Retention

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I certainly agree with the noble Lord that positive action is absolutely necessary. I take his point about less recruitment happening in recent years. Now is the moment to put that positive action into place and encourage people from BME backgrounds to come forward and apply for roles in the police.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, in recent years television programmes have taken seriously the issue of role modelling: look at the BBC’s “Luther” and ITV’s DS Sunny Khan in “Unforgotten”. But these role models cannot be just fictional. Will the Minister outline the statistics for those in the senior ranks of our forces from a black and minority-ethnic background?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend points to an area where we are doing very badly: the senior ranks. In 2017-18, 27% of new recruits to the Met Police were from a BME background. To get people from BME backgrounds through to the senior ranks, we need new recruits as the pipeline for the future. She talked about role models, and I take this opportunity to give my good wishes to the brother of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary as he proceeds up the ranks of the police.

Deportation: Jamaica

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is right to make this point. When the Home Secretary first took up his post, he made it a central priority that that culture of a hostile environment—which had grown up over the years, if we are to be honest—would be far more attuned towards talking about a compliant environment and that the culture in the Home Office would be changed to be far more humane. That was demonstrated in the aftermath of what happened to the Windrush people. I hope this continues towards those who genuinely have a right to be in this country.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, while it is welcome that the new Home Secretary has made this a central plank, there is continuing concern as these cases continue to bubble up. Can the Minister assure us that the Home Secretary is having a series of meetings not just with the high commissioners of these various Caribbean islands, but also with community representatives? May I remind my noble friend that a considerable proportion of these people, particularly of this generation, are involved in faith communities? Maybe reaching out to these leaders would help resolve some of these cases more swiftly.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend makes a good point. The Home Secretary has been in touch with the high commissioners. Of course, local—particularly Caribbean—communities are best placed to know where people who need help can seek it and where cases can be dealt with. We have reached out to all these Caribbean communities and beyond in order to encourage people to come forward to get the help which they might need to resolve their status.

Asylum Applications

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Berridge]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve the assessment by the Home Office of asylum applications made on the grounds of religious or belief based persecution.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and draw attention to my interests as outlined in the register.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, all asylum decision-makers undertake a bespoke training package on how to assess religious and belief-based persecution claims. UK Visas and Immigration is currently working with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief to develop a specialist considering religion or belief in the asylum claim training course. This will be introduced in the new year and will enhance asylum decision-makers’ religious literacy in dealing with these complex issues.

[Baroness Berridge]

I thank the Minister for the work done by her and her officials since the publication of a report co-authored by the All-Party Parliamentary Group drawing attention to the problems with assessing these claims and, in particular, to policy and practice being somewhat different. Will the Minister outline what plans the department has to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of that training so that in a few years’ time we are not facing the same difference between training and the decisions being made?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank my noble friend for her Question, her follow-up question and the tenacity and commitment she has shown on this issue. The new specialist course will form part of a continuous training package for asylum decision-makers, technical specialists and senior caseworkers. UKVI expects to roll it out in early 2019. UKVI has an internal audit process to assess the quality of decisions and interviews and the application of policy. Allowed appeals are also regularly analysed. In addition, independent audits are carried out by the operational assurance and security unit.

Forced Marriage

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Berridge]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the Commonwealth Communiqué’s commitment to eradicate forced marriage is realised, and to assess its inter-relationship with forced conversion.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and I draw attention to my interests as declared in the register.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)]

The UK was instrumental in ensuring the inclusion of child, early and forced marriage in the Commonwealth communiqué. We deliver our commitments through the Forced Marriage Unit and through our work to end child marriage in developing countries. While there are highly publicised instances of forced marriage and forced conversion, we do not have evidence that this is prevalent at scale. Where it happens, it is context-specific.

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his Answer but, according to the Aurat Foundation, 1,000 Hindu and Christian women and girls are abducted, forcibly converted and married off in Pakistan every year. In India, there are similar allegations of Muslim girls being forcibly converted to Hinduism and married off. Of course, this has also been a feature of Boko Haram’s tactics. Despite the last four communiqués making reference to early, child and forced marriage, none has addressed investigating the interrelationship with forced religious conversion. As chair of the Commonwealth for the next two years, will Her Majesty’s Government commission the necessary research to understand this complex relationship and investigate potential solutions?

[Lord Bates]

I am grateful for my noble friend’s question and I pay tribute to her work with the Commonwealth Initiative for Freedom of Religion and Belief, which has had a significant impact. I draw attention to the very substantial measures on freedom of religion and belief—led by my noble friend Lord Ahmad—that we have already announced, such as a £12 million fund through Aid Connect to look specifically at this. On the specific instance of Pakistan that my noble Friend mentioned, one of the things that we were clear about in Pakistan’s UN review last year was the importance of protecting minority rights and the possible need for an independent commission on such rights. We are doing significant things but we have to be clear that this is not only about the communiqué. The Commonwealth charter talks about the importance of,

“tolerance, respect, understanding, moderation and religious freedom which are essential to the development of free and democratic societies”.

That is why we will continue to hold other states to account and seek to live up to that.