India: Democratic Freedoms

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, one area I am very focused on is the importance of the constitutional protections that we have, as well as those that we see abroad. India is a country that provides constitutional protections to communities. I understand the concerns the noble Baroness alludes to. I assure her in every respect that, on every one of the legislative instruments she has mentioned, we have made our views known to India and we will continue to do so. India is a country which is multi-party and elections are coming forward. It is for the people of India to decide on their Government, but it is a country which celebrates a wide diversity of religions as well.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, how are the Government collaborating with western partners to address shared challenges and promote democratic governance, human rights and the rule of law? What opportunities exist for joint initiatives and co-operation in supporting India’s democratic trajectory while advancing mutual interests?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My noble friend raises the important issue of collaboration. I also put to my noble friend that with India we do not just have a partnership; I would term it a friendship. The nature and depth of the relationship allows us to raise issues of concern on a broad range of human rights indirectly in a constructive way, and we continue to do so. Of course, we learn from each other. India is the world's largest democracy, and its election is imminent. There will be a larger degree of commentary on that, but I believe very strongly that the transparency of the election will be very clear. We hope that all communities in India, as is their right within the constitution, will exercise their right to vote.

Foreign Affairs

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I join others in recognising and thanking my noble friends Lord Ahmad and the Foreign Secretary for all the work they do. It gives us all confidence seeing them on the world stage on our behalf. I thank them very much indeed.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the United Kingdom currently faces the most serious and sustained threat to its international relations position since the end of the Cold War, in the context of our position as a prominent member of the free world. We face emboldened aggressors and multiple threats. How we respond to these will be a defining moment for British foreign policy. Two current conflicts encapsulate the possibilities and problems for the United Kingdom in a fast-changing world: Ukraine and Gaza.

Although, at first, they do not seem connected, they share a common pattern and, even more importantly, a common message: if the free world does not stand up to aggression until it has been defeated, we can only bring further aggression on us. This is an obvious lesson from history, notably the history of the 1930s and what it teaches us, and which His Majesty’s Government would be wise to understand.

We are now in the third year of a war visited on Ukraine solely by Russian aggression. For all Vladimir Putin’s fictions about why he started this war, none of us in this Chamber should be under any illusions that it was anything other than an old-fashioned land grab. We are discussing Ukraine because it did the incredible: it stood up to the Russian steamroller and stopped it in its tracks through the bravery and commitment of its own people. Since then, in addition to its admirable courage, Ukraine has been emboldened in its defence by the staunch support of its allies, but now we face a troubled year ahead, with crucial supplies from the United States stalling and debates abounding about whether, and for how long, Ukraine can survive without our full-throated and continued backing.

The cold-blooded murder of the largest number of Jews in one day since the Holocaust was always going to elicit a severe response from the Israeli Government, and rightly so. No democracy, even our own in the United Kingdom, could turn the other cheek to such atrocities without seeking to prevent those who committed the crimes from ever doing so again. This is all the more so given the despicable taking of large numbers of hostages by Hamas and others in Gaza, 130 of whom remain unaccounted for nearly five months into this conflict. We all grieve and react with total distress to the horror of the tragic deaths of children, women and all those citizens killed in Gaza; but far from being a genocide, or the greatest crime in history, the care that the Israel Defense Forces have largely taken during this operation to minimise civilian casualties will likely be studied for years by free-world military planners facing similar campaigns.

As with Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, the Hamas war of aggression against Israel initially elicited firm free-world support. Free-world leaders, this country’s included, understood entirely that Israel could not allow Hamas aggression to go unpunished and that the hostages needed freeing. In just a few short months, that solidarity of purpose has been undermined as, country by country, elements of the free world have peeled off from the idea of defending democracy. Instead, we have seen vapid and inane requests for an Israeli ceasefire now, sometimes even with no conditions on Hamas’s continued rule in Gaza, or the release of hostages, attached.

I posit, therefore, that British foreign policy must make 2024 a year of decision for the free world, and that our stance in the two conflicts I have addressed will be central to this. It might be tempting to give up on supporting Ukraine because we are growing weary of doing so, or to force Israel to compromise because we are tired of fending off the aggression of the street mobs here in the UK that did so much damage to the reputation of the other place a couple of weeks ago. But neither approach is in our national interest. If Ukraine is driven to the negotiating table through weakness this year, Mr Putin’s decision to wage war will have been vindicated with additional territory, and if Israel gives in to the international pressure before it has succeeded in delivering a final death blow to Hamas, terrorism will be seen to have triumphed through the improbable act of survival, even after committing the most heinous of crimes.

Do we think that Russia and international terrorists will be satisfied with their ill-gotten gains after achieving them? Of course not, they will come back for more, after a period of reconstruction, certain that the free world will eventually crumble before aggression if they just wait out our period of outrage over their actions. For this reason, I implore my noble friend the Foreign Secretary to stand firm with our fellow democracies in 2024. We must make the decisions that allow our allies to finish the jobs that they did not want but were forced on them—the same jobs that we would do if we were in their place.

Israel/Gaza

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I share with others my thanks to the Minister for his excellent introduction to this debate. I also thank colleagues for their contributions on a subject which so many of us feel so passionately and deeply about.

The Hamas seizure of hostages during its murderous rampage through Israeli border communities is a horrific act and contrary to international law. The types of hostages seized, as well as the murders and rapes committed of civilians, proves that Hamas’s claims that its actions were about resistance are lies. Leaving aside the fact that the holding of hostages is a crime in itself, Hamas is breaking international humanitarian law by refusing medical care to the hostages or allowing a humanitarian corridor to them. As many other speakers have tonight, I ask His Majesty’s Government to make every representation to the Palestinian authorities and other interlocutors to Hamas, such as Qatar, that the hostages should be immediately freed. Failing that, further negotiations around humanitarian corridors to Gaza must include aid being provided to the hostages.

The scenes on British streets over the past two weeks have been nothing short of disgraceful. While nobody wishes to restrict the right to protest in this country, and we all value the principles of free speech, it is quite a different matter to allow the spreading of hate and the glorification of terrorism, as has quite obviously been occurring in some portions of pro-Palestinian marches. It is telling, for example, that the first pro-Palestinian marches assembled on our streets on 7 October, when the only activity that had happened in Israel to that date had been the massacre of Jewish civilians by Hamas terrorists. The dead had not yet been identified and Israel had not responded, yet certain sections of the United Kingdom population felt that they should come out on to the streets, not in sympathy with the victims but seemingly celebrating their murder. Something has gone badly wrong in our society for that to be considered a normative action.

Since then, calls for jihad and intifada have somehow been explained away by police language experts as not being meant as violent. “Free, free Palestine, from the river to the sea” has been suggested to be offensive only if directed at a Jewish person, rather than chanted generally. We have been told to believe that these blood-curdling cries on British streets somehow relate to spiritual struggle. This is in complete contravention of the view of the average British citizen, who rightly concludes that those shouting such slogans after the grim massacre of Jewish civilians might well be intending to show support for such actions and could even inspire further ones. Meanwhile, marchers have also referred to the rhetoric of the Battle of Khaybar, which of course celebrates the massacre of a Jewish Arabian tribe on account of its alleged betrayal of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. There can be no doubt what suggestions of repeating this could mean in the contemporary context.

The police have been made to look like fools on account of their attempts to convince themselves that black is white and white is black, to avoid making arrests in the name of preserving public order. The net effect has been to surrender the streets to the baying mob crying for the armies of Islam to re-conquer Palestine, in the apparent belief that this is a safer course of action than enforcing British law and supporting British public safety. The consequences of this threaten to be calamitous. Already, our spy chiefs have warned that this tragic conflict risks increasing the threat of terrorism in the United Kingdom. What message does the police backing off from enforcing the simplest of public order ordinances therefore send to those who might be inspired to carry out a terrorist attack?

Our policing authorities need to get a grip and restore confidence in their abilities to keep the streets safe, in the eyes of both a despairing general public and those who might be thinking of pushing the envelope still further in what they might be able to get away with. We should be under no illusions. British Jewish communities may be the first victims of the extremes seen thus far with worrying regularity in these marches, but they will not be the last. We are all in the firing line of such extremism and we ignore it at our peril.

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

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, has initiated this debate today, which will consider the status of women and girls in the UK. I am hugely honoured to be a Member of your Lordships’ House, a prospect that seemed completely out of the question to me as a woman when I was growing up. My selective single-sex grammar school did nothing to engender aspiration in any of us. The choices of careers were made clear to us: as girls we could as aspire to be a teacher or a nurse. Both are very valuable professions, but limited choices in a world that should have had so much more to offer.

It was a great pleasure to see the hugely improved opportunities in practically all walks of life for women and girls, and I share with others the pleasure that there are four women standing for the election of our new Prime Minister, showing how much attitudes have changed. Women can now move more readily, aim for the top, and actually reach the top in so many fields.

Having seen a generation of women growing in confidence and success in so many fields, I have at present a real worry that there is a very great danger that this is being seriously undermined. Obscure, dehumanising terms are frequently used to replace ordinary words such as “women”, “girl”, and “female”. As the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, has mentioned, we hear of “birthing people”, “menstruators”, “chest feeders”, and “people with a cervix”, and we have all heard the embarrassing interviews with leading politicians who were unable to define what a woman is. The Lancet, a trusted medical journal, on its cover in 2021 called women “bodies with vaginas”. Our so-called national treasure, the NHS, is removing words such as “mother” and “female” from its website, and replacing them with unacceptable, dehumanising terms such as “birthing people”.

Women most definitely are not a collection of sexual organs, bodily excretions and reproductive functions. Such language reduces women’s power as a political constituency. Women’s needs are erased by turning us into a series of micro-groups—“menstruators”, “birthing bodies”, “lactators”—when actually they are all the same group. All these things are done in the name of inclusion, making sure that men who identify as women are not upset by being reminded that women are a group with characteristics that no man can ever have, and making sure that women who identify as men are not left out when we talk about women’s issues. In the name of inclusion, all these actions and words actually exclude many more women. By using language such as “people with a cervix”, women and girls who do not speak English as a first language may miss out on important health messages. Older women, women with a history of sexual assault, teenage girls suffering sexual predation, women from certain faith traditions—all may have a greater need for privacy and women-only spaces.

It grieves me to think that girls are growing up in the United Kingdom and receiving such undermining messages about their status as young women. Having seen society recognise the valuable role that women and girls can and do make in society, we should use clear, polite language for the two sexes, ensuring the dignified provision of single-sex facilities, and keep all males, however they identify, out of women’s sport. These are all inclusion measures, ones essential to the dignity of women and girls, giving them status and full participation in society.

Cost of Living: Low Income Families with Children

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

The Government’s position is that we have made money available throughout the cost of living crisis. We are doing extra things for children, such as free school meals and all the other holiday support payments. As it stands at the moment, I am not able to say if we will be doing anything further. As we have always promised, we keep everything under review and respond where we can.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that the cost of living measures are more beneficial than uprating benefits?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

We are spending over £5 billion for qualifying means-tested benefits, which is around £2 billion more than the additional cost had the qualifying benefits been increased in July 2022 to 9% higher than the previous year. By delivering flat-rate payments at pace we can make transfers to over 8 million people, and 6 million disabled people. The IFS has said that government support means that, on average, the poorest households will be approximately compensated for the rising cost of living this year. The Resolution Foundation said that the May 2022 packages were highly progressive. There is support for what the Government are doing.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president and former chair of the Local Government Association, and as a member of Beckfoot Trust, which is a multi-academy trust, and the Leeds Diocesan Learning Trust.

I thank the Prime Minister for showing that this Government are serious about levelling up all areas of the country, as this Queen’s Speech seeks to enshrine the 12 missions into law. These missions will all be crucial if we are finally to tackle the inequalities in our communities. As a former council leader, I would like to put on record that councillors are as ambitious as the Government are for the people and places they serve. Given councils’ role in providing more than 800 different services to local communities, local government will be vital to ensuring that we can deliver on our promise to the nation.

As a former teacher, I am also passionate about ensuring that every child and young person has the best start in life. The Schools Bill seeks to achieve this by introducing measures that will deliver a higher-performing school system. The Bill rightly recognises the important role councils play as education partners. I know that the Local Government Association has commended the Government for that. In particular, the measures to allow councils to set up their own multi-academy trusts have been welcomed. Councils have an excellent track record in providing a high-quality education, with the highest proportion of schools rated good or outstanding. The plans to introduce a home schooling register have also been welcomed by councils, which have been calling for these reforms for a number of years. This shows that the Government are in listening mode and take action when they hear that things need to change. With this in mind, I urge the Government to listen to the call of councils that want to be able to deliver safeguarding checks on home-schooled children and hold the powers to take action against illegal schools. I would be grateful to hear the Minister’s views on this.

As the Government explore bringing the reforms in the SEND Green Paper forward, I urge Ministers to look at the complexities in the funding system that make it almost impossible for councils to transfer money for funding to the high needs block to best meet children’s needs.

I will briefly touch on the important issue of skills. Research commissioned by the LGA and carried out by the Institute for Employment Studies, published today, shows that in two-fifths of the country there are more vacancies than unemployed people. With the right powers, councils could do much more to ensure that everyone has access to targeted local support and the chance to learn new skills and find work. Locally led solutions are often the best way of fixing the national challenges we face. This is why I am pleased to see the Government introduce the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill so quickly after the Queen’s Speech.

The UK remains one of the most centralised countries in the democratic world, so it can only be a good thing that the Government are seeking to pass power to local areas. All experiences of previous rounds of devolution deals have underlined the value of local collaboration and consensus. I trust that the Government will approach these new deals in the same way. In the same spirit, I know that those of us who sit on the devolution all-party parliamentary group would welcome engagement on how we can ensure that the Government’s plans reflect the diverse needs and aspirations of communities across the country.

Finally, I would like to touch on the women’s health strategy that has been announced. This presents an important opportunity to improve women’s health outcomes, particularly if the strategy adopts a preventive public health approach. I would also like to put on record the significant health and care challenges experienced by men. We know that 75% of deaths by suicide are those of men. In Mental Health Awareness Week, the Government demonstrated the importance of tackling poor mental health through their commitment to reform the Mental Health Act. Will the Government commit to addressing the very real male health issues by bringing forward a men’s health strategy?

To conclude, I share the Government’s ambitions to level up all parts of the country and look forward to working with the Government to deliver the proposals in this Queen’s Speech.

Palestine: Recognition

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, the United Kingdom’s position on settlements is clear: they are illegal under international law. We regularly call on Israel to halt the settlements, because they are an obstacle towards the two-state solution. On the sentiments the noble Lord expressed about inclusivity and respecting all communities, I have visited the Palestinian territories as well as Israel. Israel in itself and the current Government represent and seek to represent the whole of Israel in its diversity of communities, which are present and very much brought together in the city of Jerusalem.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, the United Kingdom has rightly long maintained that recognition of a state of Palestine should take place in the context of a final status agreement negotiated by Israel and the Palestinians. However, a credible peace process with active dialogue between parties has been absent for years. Given the UK Government’s strong ties with Israel and the Palestinian leadership, can the Minister tell me what steps the UK Government are taking to bring all parties together to establish a lasting two-state solution?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, we continue to engage with Israel and the Palestinian leadership, who were invited to and represented at the COP at the end of last year. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary met the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Administration, so we do engage with both sides. I share my noble friend’s view that it is important that we bring both communities together. The United Kingdom stands as a partner and friend of all communities to ensure that we see lasting peace in the Holy Land.

Social Security System

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend say why the child element of UC is limited to the first two children?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

As I have said many times—this subject comes up regularly—a benefits structure that adjusts automatically to family size is unsustainable. We recognise that some claimants are not able to make the same choices about the number of children in their family, and we have exceptions to protect certain groups. We continue to take action to help families with the cost of living. At the moment, as I have said before, there are no plans to change the two-child limit.

Nagorno-Karabakh

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The UK Government have not made a full assessment of the impacts of the Russian peacekeeping efforts, but this is an area that my colleagues in the other House keep under regular review.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister make urgent representation to the Government of Azerbaijan to allow UNESCO to investigate all Armenian cultural and religious sites to ensure their physical preservation, and to guarantee the rights of Armenian clergy and religious communities to continue to run and live in them?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The Government strongly support the noble Baroness’s appeal for full access and full transparency, in relation both to cultural heritage and the allegations that have been made, and to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which does not currently have full access to all prisoners of war. That is something that we are pushing hard for.

Environment Bill

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and my husband’s forestry interests. A legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic must be that we grasp the opportunity to protect and enhance our natural environment and tackle the climate emergency. I welcome this important piece of legislation as it is vital that we continue to improve air quality, protect against flooding and ensure that our transport, waste and energy policies are environmentally sustainable.

Local government is already prioritising environmental goals, including leading the way towards achieving net-zero carbon emissions, increasingly with ambitious plans to achieve this before the Government’s 2050 target. The Bill points to a new environmental relationship between local and national government, with potentially greater responsibility sitting with councils. The impact of this is that councils will have a new environmental improvement role within their localities.

Local government is well placed to take the lead on this agenda, but, to deliver on these ambitious plans, authorities will need to have appropriately skilled staff, which many do not have at present, and be given adequate resources. I would like to see more detail about how certain provisions within the Bill will be implemented and the potential associated new burdens that will be imposed on councils as a result. Will producers be required to pay councils the full net cost of the waste generated by their products? Will councils have the freedom to decide locally on the best system of waste collection? At this stage, it is difficult to predict the impact of the legislation and the costs for local authorities in meeting their new statutory duties. It would be helpful if the Government could confirm that there will be an assessment of how the new duties are operating into the future.

The Bill includes provisions to strengthen and improve the duty on public bodies to conserve and enhance biodiversity, including mandating a biodiversity net gain through the planning system. I support the principle of increasing biodiversity net gain through the planning system, but the Bill currently does not require that biodiversity credits raised from developments be reinvested in the locality. Communities that accept developments in their area should be able to see improved biodiversity. I believe that credits should be retained by local authorities so that funding stays in the area where the development takes place and local people can have a say in how it can be used to improve the natural environment.

There would be a bigger set of opportunities to deliver change if the Environment Bill is properly aligned with the Agriculture Bill and the recently announced planning Bill. Getting land use right is a key factor in protecting nature and meeting net-zero targets. Forestry is a vital component in getting land use right in order to protect nature and meet net-zero targets. The Government recognise that increased tree planting is important. There was a manifesto commitment to increase planting to 30,000 hectares a year in 2025. However, little progress has been made over the past decade: only a few thousand hectares a year have been achieved.

The Environment Bill provides an ideal opportunity to put tree planting on a statutory footing and set a target for England that will drive delivery. The 25-year environment plan, published in 2018, identified the need to plant 7,500 hectares a year. I believe that this should be the target set in the Environment Bill. In order to achieve it, the Government must ensure that the necessary annual grant funding is made available for tree planting. It is vital that the process for approving grant applications, especially for larger areas of planting, is substantially improved. At present, the uncertainty and delay deter many applicants.

Aside from areas of ancient woodland, it is important that landowners are able to plant and manage their woodland to release the ongoing income that is required to pay for the management of woodland and support the continued benefits that these woodlands can provide. There needs to be scope to plant a variety of tree species, including conifers, which make up at least 90% of the market demand for wood.

I look forward to working with the Government and noble Lords as the Bill is debated in this House. We need to listen to councils, charities and other partners, which are calling for a holistic approach to tackling the climate emergency across a wide range of legislation and policy decisions.