Covid-19: International Response

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome much of what the Minister said. However, it is particularly important that we do not neglect medium-term to longer-term issues by focusing on an immediate response and that in particular we avoid ignoring the huge economic damage that is being done around the world.

When a vaccine is eventually developed, it will be vital to ensure that wealthy countries do not selfishly focus on their own needs, so I was glad to hear the Minister’s plans to try to ensure that poor countries are not priced out and have equal access to the vaccine. We will need to be updated on the implementation of these plans. Other speakers have referred to the unintended consequences of Covid-19 for other preventable diseases such as TB and malaria. If tackling them is neglected, there will be many more deaths than from the virus itself. Family planning and maternal health must also be protected to avoid an increase in maternal and infant mortality in poor countries.

On economic issues, the IMF has forecast a 3% contraction in GDP across Africa next year. This will lead to hunger and hunger-related deaths in poor countries, especially among children. Will the Government take the lead in multilateral fora to support the economies of less developed countries? The Minister mentioned supply chains, but does she agree that action will also need to be taken on debt relief, where debt servicing will throttle economic recovery, on diversification in countries overdependent on one or two commodities, and on support for SMEs and the informal sector? Concerted international action is needed on all of them. Finally, will the Government give high priority to tackling climate change in developing countries, which threatens to devastate the agricultural sector that so many people depend on and which will further undermine their economies?

Visas: European Union Students

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I hope that the British Government would encourage British students who decided to study in the EU or elsewhere to continue. I do not think that there is going to be any impediment to that.

[Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)]

Given that many EU students will no longer be eligible for fee loans and therefore will not be able to study here in the medium term, do the Government intend to restore Chevening scholarships for MA students? How much money will be put behind this and how many students are likely to benefit?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Baroness has asked me a very niche question to which I do not know the answer. I have never heard of a Chevening scholarship.

Overseas Students: TOEIC Tests

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Tuesday 30th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for making that point, because we need to start from where we are now. The system in place was a very old one and, as he said, the coalition Government did much to close down those dodgy colleges, as he called them. The same NAO found that well over 97% of students are compliant with their visas, which is very good news. We would not want to conflate our welcome for those coming to this country to study with what was a very dodgy process—fraudulent, in fact. I welcome what the noble Lord said, and I would not want to conflate what happened then with a very good news story now: a 28% increase in the number of international students since 2010 and a 10% increase in only the past 12 months.

[Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister reassure the House that, in those cases where after further investigation it is discovered that individual students have not cheated nor committed any kind of fraud, they are properly compensated for the fees that they paid, the loss of their courses and a loss of income in employment?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Baroness for making that point. Of course, it will be in the light of the NAO report and the additional advice of the Home Secretary that next steps will be able to be articulated to both Houses.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)]

My Lords, each year when International Women’s Day comes round, we can celebrate the extraordinary contributions that women have made both nationally and internationally. We can also celebrate the fact that in many aspects of women’s lives there are improvements over what went before. However, we cannot be complacent and assume that gender equality is just a few years away. It is not. On present progress, it could be a century or more before the gap is closed, according to the World Economic Forum.

Last year, the UNDP reported:

“The disadvantages facing women and girls are a major source of inequality and one of the greatest barriers to human development progress”.


In considering those barriers, I want to focus on the sexual and reproductive health of women and girls in poor, developing countries. Unless this is addressed, millions of young women will not achieve their potential as fully engaged citizens and many will suffer horribly. The subject of this debate is the UK’s role in advancing gender equality globally, and it is my contention that there can be few areas more worthy of our attention and our commitment to securing a better life for women and girls than this one.

One source of vulnerability is the lack of education. In spite of huge advances in access to education in many countries, girls are still more likely than boys to leave secondary education before completing it. Girls with poor levels of literacy, and who lack the capacity to obtain secure employment, are likely to become victims of sexual abuse and exploitation, and to be trafficked. They are also more likely to be pushed into very early marriage. Extending the education of girls must be part of a preventive strategy to promote improvement in the lives of young women in poor countries, and countries where there is a prevailing culture that fails to recognise the rights of women.

One of the most horrific statistics I have seen for a long time is that in South Sudan, where 72% of children are out of school, a girl is more likely to die in childbirth than to complete secondary education. According to the UN, in 2017, an estimated 21% of women aged 20 to 24 were married or in an informal union before the age of 18, and one in three girls aged 15 to 19 have been subjected to FGM in the 30 countries where it is most concentrated.

Very early marriage and FGM run the risks of problems in childbirth. Both need to be prevented. New laws specifying a minimum age for marriage of, say, 18 would be of great value. Better information about the risks of giving birth at too young an age is needed, and better access to contraceptive services is vital. If a young girl becomes pregnant, she will need to obtain antenatal care to identify whether she is at risk and likely to need specialist help during childbirth. Advice should be available on access to safe abortion, where it is legal.

In remote, rural areas, and in countries where there is conflict, it is especially important to try to provide these services through development aid programmes. Can the Minister say what priority DfID is giving to these services? I ask this against the fact that the leading cause of death for 15 to 19 year-olds globally is complications from pregnancy and childbirth. Around 11% of all births worldwide are to girls aged 15 to 19. According to the UN Population Division, one or two countries have an adolescent birth rate as high as 200 births per 1,000 girls of this age, compared with a global average of 44 births per 1,000 girls.

While, overall, maternal mortality has declined, there are still far too many preventable deaths, especially of adolescents. The involvement of DfID in the sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda is very welcome, but I would like to raise two or three points for clarification about how it is taking its work forward. First, can it more clearly articulate its vision in this area and give greater priority to the neglected areas of safe abortion and the care of at-risk adolescents before and during childbirth? Secondly, when it articulates its vision for comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights, can it translate them into concrete measures in all DfID country plans, ensuring that fragile and conflict-affected areas are included? Thirdly, will DfID ensure that family planning is given high priority in its programmes, and support national Governments in sustaining the supply and distribution of contraceptives?

In conclusion, I hope that the needs of girls and women who are still suffering from a denial of access to good reproductive healthcare will remain central to the UK’s programmes under DfID, as well as to overseas development aid financed by other departments. Even if it will not be achieved in my lifetime, I want my daughter and granddaughters on some future International Women’s Day to be able to celebrate global equality in the provision of sexual and reproductive health rights. We still have a long way to go.

Budget Statement

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest: I chair the board of the Orbit Group, a large housing association, and it is on housing that I want to focus all my remarks. It seems appropriate to do so as we were told some time before Budget day that housing was to be the centrepiece of the Chancellor’s announcements. While there are some welcome proposals in the Budget, unfortunately the actuality does not match the preceding hype. Andrew Sentance, a former member of the MPC of the Bank of England, described the Budget as a whole as,

“a bits and pieces budget”,

with “small measures” and “little impact”. I describe the housing sections as medium-sized measures with a likelihood of limited impact when very large measures are needed to have a substantial impact on the serious housing crisis we face. The Government’s White Paper which came out before the 2017 general election recognised that the housing market was bust and proposed some, although not enough, radical measures to address the massive problems we face. The Budget picks up on some of the proposals in that White Paper but is not nearly ambitious enough if we are to crack these problems.

As my noble friend Lord Darling said, at the heart of the issue is a problem of supply. We simply do not have enough houses to go around, especially in London and the south-east, but elsewhere too. Moreover, there is an acute shortage of social and affordable houses for rent. This supply-side problem has driven up the price of houses for sale, making them unaffordable for most first-time buyers, yet until now the Government have fiddled around with demand-side measures, such as Help to Buy, that have driven prices up further. I congratulate the Chancellor on recognising that we need to build 300,000 new homes per annum, which is a big increase on the 140,000 average over recent years, but it is a sad reflection on our failure to give new housing the importance it deserves that the last time this country built more than 250,000 new homes a year was under the Labour Government of the 1970s.

The target is to achieve this supply increase by the mid-2020s. I recognise that it will take time to achieve the target but I wonder whether there is enough urgency in the Government’s proposals and whether the £15 billion of new money will be enough to get us there. Incidentally, it is not the £44 billion that was hyped up earlier. I welcome the decision to loosen the housing revenue account borrowing cap on local authorities in areas of high demand for housing. This was a central recommendation of the Economic Affairs Select Committee, on which I sat, in its report on the housing market.

We must be pragmatic and go for a mixed economy in the building of new homes, to which public and private sectors both contribute. I remind the House that in the 1970s 40% of new accommodation was built by local authorities. The ideology of the 1980s and 1990s, of cutting them out and leaving it to the private sector, has contributed to the mess that we are now in. Local government must return to building more social housing for rent, sometimes in joint ventures with housing associations. Allowing them to borrow to do so is vital. I agree with the LGA, the RICS and others that the lifting of the cap does not go far enough to get to the scale that is needed to reach the 300,000 target.

It is obviously crucial to building new homes that land is available and that better use is made of it. Sadly, this Budget fails to address this issue adequately. The National Housing Federation is right to say that the Government must stop selling public land at the highest possible price. They should update their guidance on best value so that all public bodies are required to set a price for their land that will support the delivery of more affordable housing. The Government should also insist that unused brownfield sites owned by their own departments should be sold off in areas of high need. A more radical approach to support social and affordable housing would require new developments on private sites to set aside 35% for it and for public-owned land to deliver 50% affordable housing.

Turning to the related subject of planning reform, I accept that focusing on urban areas and avoiding the green belt avoids a political storm in many Conservative constituencies but I wonder why the Government have not been brave enough to include a policy of green-belt swaps so that suitable sites on the edge of urban areas could be made available for housing. Perhaps the Minister could say whether this will be considered in the review of the planning system that was announced in the Budget. Resolving the scandal of the discrepancy between planning permission levels and the building-out rate should not be batted into the future by including it in the proposed review. We need action now so that developers are forced to get on with the job after permissions are granted. The suggestion that densities in urban areas should be increased and more small sites should be made available is welcome, and I congratulate the Mayor of London on announcing his intention to adopt this approach.

I will end with one of the few tax changes announced in the Budget: the abolition of stamp duty for first- time buyers purchasing a property costing £500,000 or less for the first £300,000 of the price. Apparently, Conservatives in another place cheered this announcement. Perhaps they should think again. The cost of the concession is an enormous £3 billion and it helps only a tiny proportion of those with housing need. Because this is a permanent reduction in stamp duty for first-time buyers, the OBR has calculated that it will increase the price of properties by twice the size of the tax saved; in other words, a first-time buyer of an average-price property will experience a £3,200 price increase to offset a £1,600 tax cut. This really is a nonsense. Moreover, the OBR calculates that the change will increase the number of first-time buyers by just 3,200.

In addition, the Resolution Foundation has calculated that this change will make a tiny difference to how long it takes a first-time buyer to save for a new property. Thirty years ago, it took three years. The current estimate is 19.1 years. Removing stamp duty will lower it to—wait for it—18.5 years. This is not a gain that young people would think worth a celebratory drink in their local pub. The £3.2 million spent on tax relief would be enough to provide government funding to support building 400,000 social rented properties in high-demand areas or to see around 140,000 properties built through the Government’s own Housing Infra- structure Fund. Would the Minister care to comment on this in his reply, especially since these figures are from the OBR?

In conclusion, of course there are elements in the Budget’s housing provisions to welcome. However, I regret that the Government have not been radical in devising policies to ensure that they reach their targets. I fear that the Government have not matched the expectations we had of them after the PM dedicated her premiership to fixing “the broken housing market” and the Chancellor trailed this Budget as the “housing Budget”. It has been a lost opportunity. What is needed most is a big, comprehensive housebuilding programme directly commissioned by the Government, working with local authorities and housing associations. Then and only then will the target of 300,000 new homes per annum be reached, and then and only then will the poor and the just about managing have the housing and, in the words of the Minister in his opening remarks, “the stability and security they deserve”.

Public Sector Pay Cap

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to start by making a general point about setting a five-year pay cap. It is an unsustainable policy, because it is rigid and cannot be easily adjusted according to changes in economic circumstances. When the decision was made to have a 1% cap, inflation was extremely low. Indeed, there were fears of deflation and high unemployment. Moreover, private sector pay levels had still not recovered from their downturn following the earlier economic crash. None of those conditions applies today. Indeed, the pay of many public sector employees has already been eroded by rising levels of inflation and staff shortages are occurring in key areas, such as health and education. In spite of teacher shortages and growing evidence of teachers leaving the profession, the Government have just announced a 1% award. The 1% cap is too crude a method of pay restraint; it is unfair in its impact on the public sector workforce. As several other speakers have said, it constrains what the independent pay review bodies can say, leading to a question of how independent they are.

I want to focus on one important group of public sector workers—nurses. As a member of the Select Committee on the Long-term Sustainability of the NHS, I was impressed by the evidence that we received on the central importance of the sustainability of the NHS workforce. Failure to address the interlinked issue of nurse numbers and staffing standards with pay policy poses risks to the NHS and the quality of the care that it provides.

Does the Minister accept the following facts? Between 2010 and 2017, the pay of health service workers in general, and nurses in particular, has been eroded by inflation, falling by 6% in real terms while, in the economy as a whole, it has fallen by only 2%. If the current cap continues, after inflation forecasts are taken into account, pay will have been cut by 12% in real terms for band 5 and above staff in the decade 2010-20. There is now a shortfall of nurses, particularly caring for adults, of 22,000, which is nearly 10% of the workforce. Does he also accept that the shortfall could increase to 15% of the workforce, unless there are changes in policy?

With respect to the supply of nurses, does the Minister agree that the decision to abolish grants for students doing nursing degrees has led to a large decline in applications for these courses, which has been confirmed in the latest UCAS figures, which came out just this week? Does he agree that Brexit will create further supply problems because, as far as the recruitment of nurses from Europe is concerned, there has already been a decline in the numbers wishing to come to work as nurses in the UK?

This really is a very serious situation, which is likely to lead to an unacceptable decline in the quality of care in our National Health Service, in a context where the demands on it are growing to unprecedented levels, mainly as a result of an ageing population. The situation in psychiatric hospitals, other mental health settings and learning disability settings is particularly worrying, since the percentage decline in the number of nurses there is considerably greater than in acute hospitals. The Government have pledged to attach greater priority to mental health, yet this is happening under their watch.

According to the Royal College of Nursing, just last year, in 2016-17, 45% more UK-registered nurses left the register than joined it. This puts greater pressure and stress on those who remain, who feel that they cannot do the kind of job that they want to do, and on medical staff. This in turn leads to further resignations. The NHS needs a pay policy that enables it to recruit, retain and engage the workforce it requires in order to succeed. The cap on public sector pay must be removed, and it is urgent that this happens.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

I can give that information. It was from the NHS Pay Review Body’s report of March 2017. It said:

“We do not see significant short-term nationwide recruitment and retention issues that are linked to pay”.


Returning to my key point about UK nurses, where the UK is measured at 100 in the OECD index, France, which was cited, is at 84.2. Therefore, I think that average salaries bear some comparison.

I want to turn in particular to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sawyer, about the importance of public opinion here—a view that I recognise. The Government are seeking to balance the opinion of public sector workers with that of taxpayers, who contribute to the maintenance of our public services. Frequent mention has been made of comparisons with real wages in 2010—the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, referred to that. Of course, 2010 is a particular point at which to make the comparison. The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, will recognise that if you make the comparison with the situation at the beginning of the great financial crisis of 2008-09, you get a different result, because at that point there was a significant reduction in private sector pay, which has recovered recently.

In response to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sawyer, taxpayers’ confidence is maintained by looking at reductions in the deficit. I know that that may be greeted by groans in some quarters of the House, although perhaps I am wrong about that, but we should bear in mind that the interest that we pay on the debt—£50 billion—is equivalent to the entire pay bill for the NHS. Therefore, it is simply not true to say that macroeconomic and fiscal responsibility does not have a bearing on the public finances. However, it is true to say that at present we have record levels of employment—we have never seen them at such a high level—and that in itself leads to pressure on recruitment in the professions.

It is also true that, because we are seeking to manage the economy well, interest rates are at historically low levels, and that reduces the cost of living. The noble Lord, Lord Monks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, referred to the fact that inflation has increased to 2.9%, which is outside the target. We believe that that is associated with short-term exchange rate issues relating to last year’s decision to exit the European Union and that over time the rate will return to being within the 2% target that we want to achieve.

The noble Lord, Lord Monks, quoted the Prime Minister at the party conference and referred to equity between public service employees’ salaries and the taxpayer—a point I mentioned in response to the noble Lord, Lord Sawyer. On 4 July—that is, last week—he said, “It’s all coming out of the same pot. Therefore, you have to, as a government, have a view on how much you are prepared to spend on pay and how much you are going to spend on the day-to-day running costs of the services you provide”. That is a very fair observation and we would go with that.

The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, referred to productivity, which I recognise is important. Between 2010 and 2016, total public service productivity is estimated to have increased by 3%, with growth of around 0.5% per year. This represents a longer, sustained period of growth in public service productivity since the start of the series in 1997. We have also invested £13 billion to improve productivity, supporting Charlie Mayfield’s work, to which the noble Lord referred.

I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for having given me notice of the points he raised, and I want to make sure that they are covered. He asked a number of questions about pay. I think that the House will have been in some shock as he quoted the numbers relating to public sector pay for vice-chancellors and the specific example of the University of Bath. The answers may not surprise him but I put them on the record. Universities are independent and autonomous institutions, and are responsible for setting the pay for their staff. As such, government does not have pay controls in place for senior university staff. The Government have no current plans to intervene in universities’ remuneration. Vice-chancellor pay is decided by official university remuneration committees, which include expert representatives from outside the sector. We expect these committees to examine robustly the evidence for pay increases for all relevant staff. As I said, I know that those answers—

[Baroness Blackstone]

My Lords, would the noble Lord accept that, where the regulatory function of remuneration committees in universities is obviously not working properly, as in the case of the University of Bath, the Higher Education Funding Council ought to intervene to see that it is put right? It cannot be accepted that a pay package of £0.5 million is appropriate for any vice-chancellor, particularly the vice-chancellor at the University of Bath.

[Lord Bates]

I certainly undertake to relay to colleagues the views and concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and others in the House to see what further can be done, and I will be happy to write to the noble Baroness when I have done that.

Our position remains that we value the public services. We recognise that we have a duty of responsibility to the people who pay for them and to those who work in them. These are difficult judgment calls but we believe that we are delivering a balanced approach, involving fiscal responsibility to get our financial status in order. It is delivering benefits, whether through average pay growth, through benefits and pensions or through taxation policies. The personal tax threshold has been raised significantly over a period of time, meaning an increase equivalent to £1,000 a year for the average person, and 1.3 million of the lowest-paid people have been taken out of tax altogether.

I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions to the debate. I will review them to see whether there are any points that I have not responded to and will write to noble Lords accordingly.

Syria: Refugees

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2013 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Blackstone]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the short and long-term implications of the large influx of refugees from Syria into neighbouring countries for those countries; and what steps they are taking to work with the international community to provide improved humanitarian aid.

[Baroness Blackstone]

My Lords, I put down this Question for Short Debate in a context where the prospects of an end to the civil war and peace in Syria seem ever more remote. In these very sad circumstances the flight from Syria to neighbouring countries of people seeking a safe haven from the shelling, bombing and destruction of their communities seems likely to continue indefinitely. In the past six months there has been a rapid increase in the numbers fleeing, which shows absolutely no signs of flattening off. There are now close to 1.5 million refugees in neighbouring countries, nearly half of whom are children under 18. The United Nations predicts that the figure will rise to 3 million by the end of the year. Inside Syria there are currently another 2 million displaced people, and the UN estimates that more than 4.25 million are in need of urgent assistance.

The number of refugees who have fled the country has almost doubled, then, since the beginning of February, when the Secretary of State for International Development made a Statement in another place. In that Statement she said that pledges at the special conference in Kuwait in January to discuss the humanitarian crisis amounted to £1.5 billion from 60 countries, which exceeded the UN’s target. Can the Minister indicate how far these pledges have turned into tangible commitments? The estimates I have seen make very depressing reading: only just over half the pledges appear to have been committed. It would be helpful if she could also give the most up-to-date figures on how the funds are being distributed across the region.

I am pleased, as I am sure other speakers will be, that at that time the UK’s total commitment to humanitarian support had reached £139.5 million. However, given the huge increase in the numbers of people displaced since then, I ask what plans the Government now have to increase aid, given the terrible suffering of those fleeing, which I have seen at first hand, as well as the intolerable pressures on neighbouring countries that are being overwhelmed by the escalation in the number of refugees.

Early in February, along with my noble friends Lady Jay and Lord Warner, who are also speaking in this debate, I visited the Lebanon under the auspices of the Council for European Palestinian Relations and witnessed what is happening to one particular group of refugees, Palestinians, who constitute 10% of all refugees from Syria. Their situation is even more dire than that of the Syrians. When they come across the border into neighbouring countries such as the Lebanon they are not eligible for UNHCR support but instead are looked after by UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for supporting Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as well as in neighbouring countries. Many of them arrive with little money and not much more than the clothes they are wearing. They are traumatised, having been bombed out of their homes, and in some cases have lost members of their families, too. They are poor people, made poorer by the war that has enveloped them.

When they arrive in Lebanon they are looked after by the existing Palestinian population who live in semi-segregated communities in refugee camps, many of which have existed since 1948. These so-called camps are already overcrowded and without the space and facilities needed to take in the new influx of refugees. As a consequence, families with children of all ages have to fall back on renting appalling accommodation at exorbitant rents with money that they brought with them from Syria, or sharing makeshift rooms that have been provided with the help of NGOs or the Palestinian political organisations. In some cases, Hamas and Fatah have made over their offices to house these families; in other cases, the refugees are accommodated in totally unsuitable vacant school buildings; in yet more cases, they are put up in new temporary buildings with tiny rooms divided by plywood partitions. Sometimes two or even three families have to share whatever accommodation they have managed to find in a room furnished only with thin mattresses. The washing and cooking facilities are primitive and shared by many people. Some rented rooms have water coming through the ceiling, and exposed wiring.

The influx of refugees has already pushed up the population in Lebanon by over 10%, compared with around 6% in Jordan. As the conflict in Syria continues, the numbers of refugees in Lebanon, and indeed elsewhere, will go on growing, exacerbating the problem of accommodating them. So far, the Lebanese Government have agreed to keep the border with Syria open, but, in a context where their survival is by no means certain, political pressure could push them into closing it.

Meanwhile many of those crossing the border arrive with unresolved health problems and injuries sustained from bomb blasts and shrapnel. They cannot afford to pay for the treatment they need after they arrive; even modest amounts of medication to relieve suffering among children and the elderly are often unavailable. Providing schooling for their children has been jeopardised by differences in the curriculum between Syria and the Lebanon, and many school-age children are receiving little or no education.

UNRWA is struggling to deal with the crisis and has insufficient funding. It is focusing its efforts on providing small cash grants to families and trying to rectify the lack of schooling. It seems unable to tackle the fundamental problem of providing adequate accommodation. The Lebanese understandably consider that it is a matter for the international community, and there is little or no political will to shoulder the burden. This means that the burden falls on the existing Palestinian community, which has never been able to throw off its refugee status in Lebanon.

While there has been some lifting of the prohibition on Palestinians obtaining jobs, the reality is that there are few employment opportunities for them. Hamas and Fatah are trying to raise money from their own sources and are co-operating with the UN. Sadly, the EU makes no contact with Hamas in Lebanon, even on humanitarian issues, and I would welcome a view on this from the Minister. Do the Government consider that contact on these issues would help?

My noble friend Lady Jay will focus on the effects of the influx of refugees from Syria on the surrounding countries, so I shall be brief. We owe our thanks not only to Lebanon and Jordan but to Turkey, Iraq and Egypt for their generosity in supporting thousands of traumatised and penniless people. However, it is imperative that the international community does more to help these countries, several of which have fragile regimes with their own problems of maintaining stable rule and political, ethnic and religious harmony. These countries also face increased economic pressures, with steeply rising rents caused by the increased demand for housing as well as rising food prices.

Most aid is going to refugee camps, even though about 70% of Syrian refugees live outside the camps, whether in urban or rural areas. Above all, the urban infrastructure needs to be strengthened. Cash assistance is also needed to help refugees feed their families. There is evidence that women are going without food to provide what little they have for their children. For the host countries the refugees are straining water, sanitation, housing, health and education systems. Obviously, as this continues there will be growing tension between the host and refugee communities in the already depressed areas where they settle. The political ramifications are obvious and could push some countries into closing their borders, trapping refugees inside Syria.

What progress have the Minister and her right honourable friends made in securing greater earmarked commitments, especially to Lebanon and Jordan, from other donor countries? Is further consideration being given to whether the UK’s earmarked contribution of £8.5 million for programmes in Lebanon might be increased? Could she also comment on how the vital co-ordination of humanitarian agencies’ work with UNHCR, which is needed to produce a more effective response to the complex challenges that they face, might also be applied to UNWRA? What is being done to facilitate co-ordination between the Gulf donors and the United Nations?

I end with the emotional plea of one elderly Palestinian woman I met outside the Wevel refugee camp not far from the Syrian-Lebanese border: “We are human beings but we are being forced to live like animals. Please help us”. She will of course be helped when a ceasefire takes place and a political solution is found that leads to peace, but we cannot leave her and the many others like to suffer so terribly until that happens. We have to prepare for a protracted humanitarian emergency with longer-term funding, allowing NGOs to plan for the future. We should also be aware that an end to the conflict and a post-Assad regime will not necessarily lead to an end to sectarian violence. I hope that the UK Government will act urgently to do all that they can in the international community to avoid a much larger-scale humanitarian disaster than the one that we already face today.