Philippines: Emergency Aid

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I thank the noble Baroness for asking this extremely important Question. There is a dedicated team at the moment working continuously on this in Whitehall and things are constantly under review. The noble Baroness mentioned a number of things that we are doing. I shall expand on the points about vehicles. She is quite right that we need to get to some of the affected areas and there are flights going to the Philippines. Two flights are going in at the moment and three more cargo flights will go from Dubai shortly. We are delivering 4x4 vehicles to get to these areas and the noble Baroness mentioned the C17s. Noble Lords will probably be aware that the United Nations has just launched an appeal for $301 million. All the numbers are under review. We have published a Written Ministerial Statement today, but I should point out that it mentions that 4.3 million people have been affected by what is the strongest ever tropical cyclone on record. The figure is now 6.9 million people, and no doubt it will increase.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, given that the Prime Minister is leading our delegation to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka imminently, what discussions will he have with other heads, particularly those from countries in the region such as India, Singapore and Malaysia, which could provide timely logistical support? Of course, Brunei Darussalam could help with financial aid. Will the Commonwealth get behind the relief effort as well?

[Baroness Northover]

I am sure that all countries, and certainly those that are close by, will wish to help. Our colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, who is the head of UN OCHA, has just arrived in Manila. The Government of the Philippines are in overall control of what is happening, although of course they are working closely with the United Nations. Our NGOs are being co-ordinated by the Disasters Emergency Committee. It is extremely important that everyone works well together, and for that to extend internationally as well as nationally.

Syria: Refugees

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, for giving us this opportunity to debate Syria in this short period of time. It is sobering to speak yet again on the situation of the people of Syria in the context of humanitarian assistance. It speaks to our impotence that more than two years into the civil war, which is bordering on genocide, all these rich and powerful countries are simply squabbling between themselves about not violating national sovereignty.

We are in 2013, eight years since the General Assembly of the United Nations passed overwhelmingly a resolution defining the international community’s responsibility to protect, yet all we can do is offer sticking plasters and bandages to the 22 million people who have had the misfortune to be born of Syrian nationality, who are now killed or driven from their homes, or take up arms on one side or another.

It is right that we have a generous programme of assistance to those unfortunate enough to be displaced, either formally as refugees or informally, relying on their friends and families or simply co-religionists in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq or Turkey. We have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, and the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, about the fragile situation in those countries. Our attempts to stabilise them are to be commended but to restrict this debate to the humanitarian situation, while pragmatic in the best British tradition, is to miss the point.

If the civil war continues for the next few years, there will potentially be no Syria left. What we might find when everyone is exhausted of fighting and everything is destroyed is a series of provinces run by warlords or rebel armies, ethnically cleansed, existing in a sullen peace if peace is there at all—a larger Yemen, in the grip of al-Qaeda or other Salafi groups, controlling their own territories with different degrees of terror, in the name of Islam.

So what is to be done by the West or at least by the United Kingdom and France? For a start, we should let the EU arms embargo expire so that arms can flow to the Free Syrian Army. Syria is flush with arms. They are mainly going to our opponents in the terrorist groups or to our opponents in the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Moreover, we should seriously contemplate enforcing a no-fly zone, at least over the part of the country that we might declare a humanitarian enclave, and then press the Syrian national coalition to work with the elements of the FSA that are representative of all communities to run that enclave peacefully. To do so would require us to equip the Free Syrian Army more adequately.

Noble Lords will have seen the interview in the Financial Times with General Salim Idriss, the chief of staff of the various groupings in the rebel forces, which are described as the “supreme military command”. He says:

“What’s the point of medicines to save one wounded soldier if the regime’s air force is striking and killing 40 people at the same time?”.

The only argument used against supplying lethal weapons to the Free Syrian Army is that the weapons we might give them will slip away into the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra, which declared its allegiance to al-Qaeda only last week. In Istanbul General Idriss gave a commitment to the West that his people would track every single advanced weapon provided and return it when the conflict was over. If one did not believe his assurance, the question remains: how do we expect the conflict to end when Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other neighbours are arming some factions, while Russia and Iran are arming the regime? Our Government must ask themselves how they expect to bring the conflict to an end. Is it the surest way to stop humanitarian disaster just to continue if everyone bar us puts arms into the equation or provides military support? How do we somehow obtain a peaceful Syria? What are we to do if chemical weapons are used or if genocide is committed but we do not live up to our legal obligations under the genocide conventions? Noble Lords will know that the ICJ ruled only a few years ago that every state has a duty to prevent genocide. That was the ICJ’s case in Bosnia-Herzegovina v Serbia.

Therefore, for those who fear a repeat of Afghanistan, their inaction may well bring about an analogous situation nearer our borders and lie heavier on our consciences than they have seen before.

EAC Report: Development Aid

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, for the opportunity to speak about aid effectiveness. Some causes take on an aura of inevitability and become incontestable by their very nature. So it is with international aid for the Liberal Democrats. One of the things that drove me into political activism in the 1980s was the belief, articulated by the Liberals of the time, that we as a country needed to reach the UN target of 0.7% of GDP to alleviate poverty beyond our shores.

Liberal internationalism has always been one of the foundational values within this party and is virtually a part of its DNA. Therefore, the coalition agreement committing this Government to honouring the commitment given by all three parties to the 0.7% target was, and remains, an entirely valid and honourable promise to those who have the very least on this planet. However, to say that one believes in the moral imperative of alleviating hunger or sickness is not to say that one should be impervious to the evidence of what works. Moreover, a balance has to be struck between providing relief today and ensuring that relief is sustainable. The most powerful helping hand is one that lifts a person to his feet with sufficient strength that he may stand on his own feet thenceforth.

This report provides a sharp analytical framework for assessing where a helping hand is most effective, and I congratulate the committee on its work. I will confine my remarks to the general issue of the effectiveness of aid and then pick up the more controversial aspects of the report to do with whether we should commit to the timescale that we set ourselves and the manner of so doing. The consensus across the report that poverty alleviation and sustainable development should continue to be our priorities is welcome. I was much taken by Professor Collier’s succinct description of the need to continue with giving when he said,

“growth is not a cure-all; but the absence of growth is a kill-all”.

That speaks volumes. The other area of great consensus across the field is that private investment and capital flows, along with remittances, are far more powerful levers and actually do most of the heavy lifting when decent governance is in place and countries are able to move from being low-income countries to middle-income.

I was disappointed to note that the share of technical assistance in the overall development assistance budget expended by us both in the UK and in EU programmes was rather lower than the budgetary support provided. The report points to all the evidence showing that technical assistance, and the expertise provided through it, strengthens institutional capacity in low-income countries through improved tax collection, audit and legal systems and can embed capacity within those countries in the longer term. Can my noble friend give the House the Government’s current assessment of the Commonwealth’s technical assistance programme, which they found to be less than effective in their last review?

I also have to disagree profoundly with the report’s scepticism about using aid to put in place mitigating measures for climate change. There are good reasons why we have to help developing countries with the mitigation challenge. First, we have a historic responsibility as one of those countries that have pushed the earth’s atmosphere close to the point where further climate stability can no longer be guaranteed. Secondly, there is a need to put developing countries on a development trajectory that does not repeat our mistakes in pursuing a fossil fuel-based industrialisation strategy. Thirdly, it is imperative to widen the participation of developing countries in international mitigation efforts so that we can build a broad coalition in support of a stronger climate regime post-2015. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Stern, is in his place and look forward to hearing his remarks in this regard.

One of the main thrusts of the report is that it is rather difficult to measure the marginal impact of spending with an increase in growth. These things are different for each country at each stage of its development, so I welcome the committee’s view that it is clear that there is no negative impact on growth. However, leaving aside economic growth as measured by GDP, there is good evidence that it is very useful, and promotes growth in the long term, if it is used for building resilience. My noble friend Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon noted in his Humanitarian Emergency Response Review that for every £1 spent on preventing disasters, £4 was saved in responding to them. Likewise, the committee notes that post-conflict states also have better marginal returns for every dollar expended. Again, as Professor Collier points out, it is important to provide jobs if you want sustainable demobilisation for soldiers.

I know that the committee was rather taken with the evidence of Mr Rory Stewart, who dismissed the concept of a “lessons learnt” model whereby one can to some extent extrapolate from one particular circumstance to another. Although I agree with the idea that there is no template for stabilising post-conflict situations, we do have useful experience to draw on. Mr Stewart, in my view, misunderstands what he describes as liberal imperialism. The idea was founded in the 19th-century context that if you were going to expand empire to other parts of the world, you should try to promote standards there that reflected what you thought was successful at home. The idea that our development assistance today, whether disbursed bilaterally or multilaterally, is to replicate “civilisational standards”—in the lexicon of 19th-century liberal internationalism—is, frankly, to treat today’s endeavours with contempt. I wonder whether the role of the Marshall Plan in providing aid in post-conflict Europe or the writing of the Japanese and German constitutions to entrench the rule of law would count as liberal internationalism. Furthering gender equality or the rule of law is the right thing to do in a post-conflict society and some of us are sure that Afghanistan will emerge the better for our engagement there, even if it takes longer than we expect.

I will touch on the enduring concerns that we all have on the propensity for aid to be wasted through corruption. In 1950, the economist Lord Bauer said:

“Foreign aid is a system of taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries”.

It can do no justice to the taxpayers of the DAC countries to find that their donations are siphoned away by corrupt elites in developing countries. The fungibility of aid clearly makes this a trickier problem to solve, so will my noble friend be able to tell the House whether the Government intend to take up Transparency International’s recommendation that they should attempt to get the G20 countries to agree rules to discourage illicit capital flight from those developing countries?

I come to the issue of whether we should stick to our target and, secondly, whether we should enshrine this in law. The argument for spending 0.7% seems irrefutable for the UK currently. It is certainly a significant sum of money in raw numbers but looks rather different when seen in perspective: it amounts to just 1.6p of every pound of government spending, when 75% of the world’s poorest people live on less than $1.25 a day. Setting our sights on fulfilling our target is right, despite the current state of our finances.

However, I will speak to the merits of legislating for the target ad infinitum. I am not speaking for the Liberal Democrats here but as an individual who has seen, more than once, the effects of legislation that is not fit for purpose after some time has passed. I am also keenly aware that if I were a taxpayer in Greece, Spain or Portugal—all three of which are DAC members—in the current climate I might feel that restoring my own country’s finances, in light of the enormous strain that those economies are under, might be my priority. Were we to enshrine this commitment in law, it would take away any flexibility on our part should our own financial situation weaken. Even more importantly, noble Lords might be able to imagine some sunny uplands in the future where our statute-enshrined obligation for development assistance is no longer needed to the same extent or for the purposes it was defined for.

To use another analogy, if we were to take peace and stability as our target in this increasingly unstable world, then perhaps we should have enshrined our implicit commitment to NATO spending, which is at least 2% of GDP but below which we have fallen.

I wholeheartedly support the target but am concerned about enshrining it in law. However, I accept that all political parties committed to this and that it is part of the coalition agreement. My own proposal, which might assuage some of the concerns about an enduring commitment, would be that if we do move to legislate, we have a requirement for a substantial review at the end of a 10-year period and perhaps insert a sunset clause into the Bill that will come into play should the conclusions of the review suggest that we are able to adjust the target either up or down. This would allow us to fulfil our current commitments, provide space for the planning of programmes and provide certainty of funding for the next period; but would enable us to reconsider, if necessary.

I conclude simply by thanking the committee for this report, which has added significantly to our understanding of the issue.

Middle East: Water

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to follow the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Baglan. He and I share many similar interests. He read international relations a few years before I did, but he put it to far better use through a long and distinguished career in academia, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the United Nations and think tanks. Looking at his background, I was struck that our House, too, is becoming a refuge for that elite band of political fixers, the special advisers. The noble Lord was a special adviser to the late Robin Cook and to Jack Straw, Foreign Secretaries who in their time were certainly in the hot seat.

The noble Lord also brings a wealth of knowledge on the Middle East, as we just witnessed in his maiden speech. He will be pleased to know that a singular feature of this House is its expertise and strength in numbers of Peers who speak on foreign affairs. No matter how esoteric a subject, he will always find friends here to share his concerns and we look forward to his active participation in this House.

I turn now to the substantive debate, for which I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Alderdice for initiating. It is seldom that one sees an initiative on peace in the Middle East without the presence of my noble friend somewhere in the frame.

Water was always a source of conflict, but what has changed in recent years is that it is being seen much more clearly in that light. It is therefore appropriate that the Strategic Foresight Group has gone to the heart of the region which is most conflict prone—the Middle East—to look at this aspect of what constitutes an impediment to peace and prosperity.

Prosperity in the region, and the role of water in providing for this, is the key to future development for the millions who live there. The pressures of demography, the requirements of agriculture and food security, jobs and livelihoods, sanitation and health and the natural environment are all dependent on adequate supplies of usable water. The politics of water is therefore closely linked to the politics of sovereign statehood. It is seen as an essential element of territorial integrity, but one which is increasingly beyond the control of a single state, if it ever was.

One factor that is gaining recognition in the debates over water security is the advent of climate change. As is now widely recognised, continuing climate change will exacerbate the water crisis in arid regions of the Middle East. Given that average global temperatures are likely to rise by 2 degrees Celsius during the 21st century, Middle Eastern countries are inevitably faced with a worsening water crisis.

This report builds on a successful record of transboundary water co-operation, which can be drawn on as models to go forward. In 1963 the European countries along the Rhine river signed up to the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine against Pollution. This helped to institutionalise co-operation between Germany, Switzerland, France and the Netherlands, and led to a dramatic decline in pollution. In 1972, the United States and Canada signed the Great Lakes agreement to protect the Great Lakes from pollution. This, too, significantly improved water quality in a heavily industrialised area.

The single distinguishing factor in those successful examples was that those countries already had good relations between each other. There was little fear of conflict and all had an economic interest in improving quality rather than disputing quantity. The main problem with water in the Middle East is scarcity. The competition for scarce water promotes a zero-sum mentality and can lead to greater tension.

Pollution issues, by contrast, are more amenable for resolution in a co-operative manner, as they can give rise to positive-sum co-operation. In the case of the Middle East, as we know, history has a long tail. The legacy of Ottoman rule still affects relations between Syria and Turkey. The more recent tensions in the Lebanese-Syrian relationship are being further aggravated by current events in Syria, and the Israel-Palestine dispute is one which has been already mentioned. The deteriorating relationship between Turkey and Israel also makes political co-operation in the region more challenging, as does Iraq's relationship with Turkey.

Let me turn to the most significant proposal in the report—that of taking a coalition of the willing, to establish mutually agreed circles of co-operation. A body comprising a political mechanism to define and take forward a common vision, to identify priorities, and to arrive at and implement decisions, would represent a major step forward. I like, too, the idea that the co-operation council would create protocols, devise guidelines and promote practical measures for joint projects. In reading the report I was struck by the singular lack of scientific consensus on how much water, and of what quality, was available as the sources flowed downstream. The lack of agreed data sets is bound to lead to conflicting versions of reality. This is further compounded by seasonal variations in rainfall and water surges across the region, which makes it impossible for one country to be able to realistically measure what has happened in another country without any co-operation on the ground.

It is also right that the envisaged activities of the council focus on issues that are less politicised and require relatively low levels of international co-operation. Developing common principles, promoting research, setting up early warning systems and developing methodologies for water management are all sensible steps and can be achieved below the level of high politics. Streamlining the legal architecture within countries is far more doable than trying to get countries to sign up to fresh treaties from the outset.

The proposals are ambitious—rightly so, in my view—in calling for engagement at the level of heads of government and/or high representatives. Unless the political will is there to support and deliver the objectives of the co-operation council, there will be little advance in policy co-ordination.

What was nevertheless confusing in the proposals was the rejection of the council as a negotiating platform. It seems to me that it is sort of self-contradictory to define a body as being run by Governments to reach political decisions yet to deny that negotiations between the parties will take place, particularly where concessions are sought in the face of a perceived national interest.

However, I also take encouragement from the examples of co-operation in the report, using water as an instrument for peace. The 1993 formation of the executive action committee including Israel, Palestine and Jordan, to share information and keep a dialogue open regarding their shared water resources, points the way. The setting up of joint measurement stations on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers also moves us forward. The initiatives between Syria and Turkey in 2009 and 2010 also show promise by focusing on areas where agreement is within reach, rather than being bound down by the evident disagreement that already exists. However, with the political situation in Syria, as with all other politics I suspect that there is now little progress in building on those measures.

Turning to that other long-term conflict—that between Israel and Palestine—I welcome the proposals for confidence-building measures between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. What is urgently needed, however, are moves towards reconciliation between the Authority and Hamas to allow for the Palestinian people to be represented by a single Government. I was in Gaza in July and saw for myself the effects of water scarcity there which are so graphically described in this report. In fact, at the main water management station which we visited, the maps defining usable aquifers painted an even starker picture than that presented in the report.

Overall, the report gave us a wealth of ideas for managing the problem of water. Seeing how pressing the problems are, I was disappointed in its lack of development on the theme of demand management. We know that poor infrastructure, inadequate use of waste water, leaking pipes, agricultural misuse and household demand are all significant contributors to water waste. Lebanon, which is described as being in the middle of the spectrum of water scarcity, loses over 40 percent of its available water to leakage and poor transportation networks. We have the example of Jordan, which loses 35 per cent of its water to bad systems and old pipes, while in some parts Syria loses 60 per cent.

Many of the solutions to managing water can be found in domestic politics and can thus be adopted without waiting for international solutions. Developing a comprehensive water law, investing in drought and flood management and improving water use efficiency by households and businesses are all measures that can be undertaken here and now. I note that the report details Israeli expertise in this area and points to successful pilots in reusing waste water in the West Bank territories. I also know that the UK has expertise in all these areas. Can my noble friend the Minister tell us today whether the Department for International Development has resources that can provide assistance in this regard?

To conclude, the work of the Strategic Foresight Group has provided an excellent platform for anticipating a potential problem, looking at it comprehensively and arriving at pragmatic solutions which can be implemented in the short, medium and long terms. All that remains is to find the political will to implement it. The changes in the Arab world in the past year have provided both opportunities and threats. It is for the countries involved to see that doing nothing is no longer an option. If they are to safeguard the interests of all the people who live in the region, The Blue Peace’s idea is one to build upon.

European Union Bill

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, before I get on to the points I wanted to make this evening, I must deal with the speech we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, because it was such a good example of the classic Eurosceptic speech. It had an absolute maximum of sloganising and an absolute minimum of thought, reflection or familiarity with the facts. I shall take three points on which the noble Lord seemed to be making an egregious error.

First of all, the noble Lord said that the European Court of Auditors has qualified the accounts of the European Union. The Court of Auditors has not qualified the accounts of the institutions of the European Union, the Commission, the Parliament or the Court of Justice. The court has qualified, because it has been unable to certify, the accounts of certain member states in the administration of European Union programmes. If he is consistent, perhaps the noble Lord would be in favour of the Commission taking over the administration of all EU programmes, for example, the structure and agricultural funds within the member states concerned. That is an enormously federalist proposal and I do not think the noble Lord really meant that. He should think about this a little more and perhaps look at the actual statements of the auditors in question.

The noble Lord then started referring to tariffs, saying that 90 per cent of tariffs have been abolished anyway. He has clearly not understood the distinction between tariff barriers being reduced and the creation of an internal market. The whole point of an internal market is that it deals with the non-tariff barriers, the really difficult obstacles to trade. Those problems have been dealt with very successfully by the creation of the single market. That seems to me to be a significant point.

Thirdly, he said that we have been forced to bail out Ireland because of our membership of the EU. Obviously he does not listen to his own Government. Ministers made it absolutely clear the other day that the reason we are contributing to Ireland has nothing to do with our membership of the EU, but is simply because it is in the national interest to help a neighbouring country with which we have a close economic relationship and a lot of ties, and indeed we hold a number of Ireland’s assets that we do not want to write off. The noble Lord needs to think about all these things and perhaps take some advice on some aspects before he addresses the House again on EU-related matters.

The Bill before us has already been described several times as a “bad Bill”. It is worse than that: it is a disreputable Bill and the most cynical Bill that I have ever read—and I say that coolly, reflectively and seriously. I shall explain exactly what I mean in saying that. As has already been pointed out, of course, the Bill was born in cynicism. It has nothing to do with trying to increase democratic accountability in this country or with advancing the interests of this nation. As we all know, it was a decision by the Prime Minister to give a sop to the extreme Eurosceptics in the Tory party to get them off his back, and no doubt to make an attempt at getting some UKIP voters back into the Tory fold. The Lib Dems went along with this and thus have swallowed a lot of their own principles—just as they are swallowing their principles in supporting the Government on their excessively rapid spending cuts, on a Bill to restructure and privatise large tracts of the National Health Service and on the abandonment of their electoral promises on tuition fees and so forth. It is not a very edifying spectacle.

I pay tribute to the brave dissenting voices of a number of distinguished Lib Dems that we have heard in the course of the debate, and I hope that we hear more from them in the course of the Committee stage. But the fact is that the Liberal Democrat Front Bench has completely sold out. That is particularly sad because—

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

The noble Lord waxes on about principles, but perhaps I may respectfully suggest to him that he would know a thing or two about them, and indeed the Conservative Party, given where he is today and where he was for many years.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

The noble Baroness may have better things to do with her time, but if she feels like going over my track record in public life and indeed before, I have to tell the noble Baroness that it is a matter of fact that my first political campaign was conducted on the 1975 referendum. That shows how old I am. I have been absolutely consistent on the matter, as indeed I have on other matters. When I joined the Tory party in 1974, it was actually the pro-European party. The noble Baroness would not have been born or thought of then, so perhaps she has forgotten that fact. I have been extraordinarily consistent.

Neither the Tory party nor, I have to say in all honesty, the Labour Party has been consistent on this matter, but until this moment, the Liberal Party was. We can go back to the 1950s when the treaty of Rome was first conceived and signed. The Liberal Party was the one political force in this country that was in favour of our joining the European Community as it then was, and has been committed to its principles and spirit ever since. Those were the days of Jo Grimond and Lady Violet Bonham Carter. There is thus a personal as well as an intellectual tradition that goes straight back to the internationalism of Sir John Simon to Asquith and Gladstone. What would all those figures be thinking today if they saw the Liberal Front Bench subscribing to a measure like this? It is a very sad day for all of us. I have been happy to pay tribute to the consistency of the Liberal Party and its successor the Liberal Democrat Party until this moment, and precisely because that history has been so honourable up to the present time, today’s picture is a squalid and sad one for the country as a whole.

I said that this Bill was born in cynicism, but unfortunately the cynicism does not end there. The very fabric of this Bill is hypocrisy. The Government state that what they want to do is bring about a situation where there is direct public involvement through referenda and accountability to the electorate as a whole. All I can say, using reasonably parliamentary language, is tell that to the marines. There is no intention to have a referendum on anything at all; there could not possibly be. We know already that this Government are not going to have a referendum in this Parliament while they are still the Government because they have committed themselves not to on any grounds. Horrible thought that it is, let us suppose that the Tory party wins the next election and this Bill remains on the statute book—I take it as axiomatic that a future Labour or indeed a future Labour/Lib Dem coalition Government would immediately rescind this nasty piece of work—so can the House imagine for one second that there would be a referendum on any of this?

Let me remind noble Lords of the sort of subjects that would call for a referendum listed in Schedule 1. They include:

“Article 17(5) (number of, and system for appointing, Commissioners)”.

Are we going to go to the public, spending tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of pounds—I have no idea what it costs to run a referendum—with a referendum on the number of and system for appointing Commissioners? The list goes on:

“Article 19(2) (appointment of Judges and Advocates-General of European Court of Justice)”.

Are we going to have a referendum on that? Possibly we might do so on,

“(specific provisions on the common foreign and security policy)”,

but what about,

“(decision of European Council extending time during which treaties apply to state withdrawing from EU)”?

The scenario there is that a country wants to withdraw from the EU. It is a complicated negotiation, so the suggestion is that we should agree timetables and negotiate with that state on a qualified majority voting basis so that we do not take a month of Sundays agreeing everything or failing to agree anything at all. Are we going to have a referendum on that? Does anyone in the House seriously think that the Government are going to go to the public and say, “Can we please have consent to have qualified majority voting to resolve this particular issue?”.

The list in the schedule goes on and on and includes:

“Article 192(2) (adoption of certain environmental measures)”.

Is the idea of introducing QMV on environmental protection really so shocking that we are going to go to the public with a referendum on it? There is also:

“Article 127(6) (conferral on European Central Bank of specific tasks relating to prudential supervision)”.

Unless the Government have gone completely mad, Members on both sides of the House are in favour of good banking supervision, which probably does not involve 27 people all having to agree unanimously and then going back to their Governments to pass referenda and so forth. Is that a sensible thing to have a referendum on?

Again, I could go on and on. The list includes:

“Article 115 (approximation of national laws affecting internal market)”—

that is hardly shocking, because we have had that for many years—and,

“Article 89 (cross-border operation by competent authorities)”.

What is wrong with that? The most extraordinarily minor things are covered, such as anything to do with the “European Public Prosecutor’s Office”. All of these might be resolved by QMV, but they have to have a referendum. Are we going to the wonderful electors of the Grantham and Stamford constituency and say, “We want you to take the time to look at all these documents about the Public Prosecutor’s Office and then we want you to go to the polls”? I thought that we were all worried about excessive public cynicism about politics and low participation rates in elections. If we start having referenda on this kind of stuff, how can we expect those participation rates to be at all respectable? We cannot, of course.

Anyone who reads this thing will see more of the same. I shall draw attention to something which is the absolute killer argument. It arises in Clause 3(2):

“The referendum condition is that—

“(a) the Act providing for the approval of the decision”—

it is a decision, not a treaty change—

“provides that the provision approving the decision is not to come into force until a referendum about whether the decision should be approved has been held throughout the United Kingdom or, where the decision affects Gibraltar, throughout the United Kingdom and Gibraltar”.

Are we going to ask the British public to go to the polls to determine something that does not affect us but merely affects Gibraltar? Who in this country has ever heard of such lunacy? Cynicism understates the matter. I am looking for a stronger word than cynicism or hypocrisy to describe a situation in which the Government seriously suggest that we will have referendums on these kinds of subjects taking up the time of the British people. Are we going to have dozens of referendums on this kind of nonsense? Of course we are not. This is absolutely through and through false; there is not the slightest intention to have a referendum on any of this.

There is, however, an intention to initiate a freeze—and, if possible, create a crisis—in relations between the United Kingdom and the rest of the European Union which would make it absolutely impossible for us to give even the sensible, pragmatic and reasonable responses required by the evolution of events, which we all know to be necessary. The British Minister there will be completely paralysed and he will become Monsieur Non or Mr Niet, whatever it may be; that will be his role.

That can lead to only two things. Eurosceptics dream that what will happen is that the whole of the European Union, which they hate so much—the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, is a good example of that—will come to a juddering halt or pack up and go home and that this nasty European Union will dissolve itself or throw in the sponge and give up trying to do a serious day’s work in making sure that the interests and the futures of the peoples of Europe are properly looked after and defended. They may dream that that is going to happen, but of course it is not. The alternative will happen. The EU will proceed under the enhanced co-operation programme, the framework for which has already been created in the Treaty of Lisbon, and we shall be left behind. So that is the real agenda. It is so far from the declared agenda that I stand by my words—cynical and hypocritical.

International Aid Reviews: Conclusions

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I broadly support my noble friend in describing the outcome of the two reviews. The Government should be congratulated on becoming, by 2014, the largest rich economy to attain the United Nations target of providing 0.7 per cent of GDP in aid, which in the light of our very straitened circumstances is noble indeed. Fourteen years since the establishment of DfID—I pay tribute to the Labour Government for having set up that department—it is right that there should be this level of comprehensive review to look at the focus of its expenditure. I particularly welcome the emphasis now on fragile and conflict states. It is right that we focus on those where the need is greatest.

I have two questions to put to the noble Baroness. One is on the bilateral review and concerns India. I am somewhat concerned that a country which is in the queue to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a country which has a £20 billion space programme and which gives aid to other countries, should still continue to be a recipient of hard-pressed aid which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, pointed out, should be going to other organisations, such as UN Women. I look forward to hearing my noble friend's response to that. It leaves one slightly uncomfortable.

On multilateral aid—I declare an interest as a former employee of the Commonwealth Secretariat until 2003—I notice that the Statement suggests that those organisations in special measures will be given two years to show significant improvement. I wonder whether two years is too short a period and whether there have been any conversations with those organisations in special measures to see whether they believe that they can show significant improvement in just two years or whether they need longer.

[Baroness Verma]

I thank my noble friend for both her questions. I know she has some concerns about aid going to India. Perhaps I can point out to noble Lords that India has one-third of the world's population living on less than $1.25 a day. Last year, DfID spent 58p per poor person in India compared with £3.50 per poor person in sub-Saharan Africa. We shall have to shift our focus and, therefore, the Secretary of State has decided to shift it to three states in India—the poorest states—to ensure that we are able to maximise our aid there.

India’s space programme adds up to 0.1 per cent of the country’s overall budget, but the issue is not just about the space programme. From that programme, the Indians are able to use the technologies to deliver mobile technology to villages and particularly to women who are able to access information which they would not otherwise be able to access. The programme is not just about space but about using the technology for other things as well. I completely understand that the noble Baroness has concerns, but she would perhaps also agree that we have a special relationship with India. If we are to see the aid programme go down, we must be able to lift far more of the people of India out of poverty.

On the organisations in special measures, I respond to the noble Baroness by saying that two years may seem a short time, but the organisations are fully aware that they have to make some serious reforms. Of course we will keep in constant dialogue with the Commonwealth Secretariat to see where the improvements are taking place. The secretariat reaches out to places where we, as a single country, would not. It has special niches and therefore it is important to support it fully.

Equality Act 2010

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My noble friend is right about education, but I think that education needs to start within the communities in which such discrimination is practised. I understand completely how difficult it is for some communities to raise the question but, unless they deal with it themselves, legislation will not do so.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that it is very worrying to see in the report that caste is seen as providing identity and support and reinforcing community? Does she agree that integration, education and legislation are what are needed and that we do not need to support community cohesion by supporting discrimination?

[Baroness Verma]

My noble friend is absolutely right. As one who has always supported equality through integration, I think we need to come away from the idea that constantly supporting people to be separate is an easier form of dealing with the problem now. The big picture should be that we can get on with our lives and treat people without having to worry that we will offend them in some way because of one issue or another. The law will not cover every possibility of discrimination, even if we are constantly legislating to bring in more and more groups to protect.

International Aid

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords—

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords—

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lea, can speak and then the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, we will deliver aid through multilateral agencies as well as through bilateral programmes. However, as the noble Lord is aware, we are going through reviews to make sure that the money spent is best directed towards achieving better outcomes.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

May I help my noble friend by congratulating her on this Government’s stance on international development? Are we going to continue to press for reform of the multilateral institutions, most notably the IMF and the World Bank, so that their recipients are the beneficiaries of better governance?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, my noble friend has raised a very good point. That is why we are determined that any money spent on aid, through both our bilateral and multilateral programmes, is reviewed and spent in the most effective way possible.

UNESCO: Equatorial Guinea

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will make representations to the regional electoral group representing the United Kingdom’s interests on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) executive board regarding the withdrawal of the UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences in the light of the human rights record of the Government of Equatorial Guinea.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, we have made representations at ambassadorial and ministerial level to the EU, Regional Electoral Group 1, the Commonwealth group and the director-general of UNESCO, calling for this prize to be withdrawn. We shall continue to press this point until a final decision is reached. We welcome the executive board’s decision on 15 June to work on a new set of rules for prizes and, in particular, to examine this prize more carefully.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

I thank my noble friend for that reply. She will know that in the scientific and human rights communities, a UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo prize for scientific achievement is roughly the equivalent of a Robert Mugabe-UN prize for democracy and freedom. How can we, the United Kingdom, UNESCO’s fourth largest donor, convince its executive board by its next meeting in October that it should try to salvage UNESCO’s credibility by not voting for this award?

Will the Minister assure the House that media reports suggesting that the US, France and other western countries are not taking this issue up with other UNESCO members for fear of upsetting the Africans are incorrect, and that we in the UK will do all that we have to to prevent this from happening?

International Development: Universal Primary Education

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I welcome my noble friend Lady Verma to the Dispatch Box and thank her for the opportunity to discuss this issue.

On a day when we have learnt of the gravity of the economic situation facing our country it would be too easy to concentrate on matters at home and the consequences for families up and down this country. However, it is a mark of a civilised people to recognise the bonds of a common humanity which transcends national borders to reach out to people in distant places. Looking at the challenges those people face in attaining fulfilment of their most basic rights is sobering indeed and will bring balance to our deliberations today. It is a brave and morally upright position for this Government to have maintained their commitment to meeting the UN target when so many other rich countries have not. It is a measure of this country’s intrinsic liberal internationalism that we do not forget those further away from our shores.

It is, of course, also a tribute to the previous Labour Government that we have achieved so much in lifting others out of poverty and made such a significant contribution towards the millennium development goals. There has been substantial progress across the board in the early years but the global economic crisis imperils many of the objectives in the period that we have now entered.

Before I move to that scenario, I want to concentrate on what has been achieved in the all-important area of primary education. In determining this goal in 2000, Governments were clear about the overlapping benefits to accrue from education overall. In countries which live in peace and security, it is an essential component of development. It undoubtedly lifts individuals out of poverty and increases their life chances. For girls, it increases their economic participation, improves their own and their children’s health outcomes and reduces their family size based on informed choices and consent. They are, quite simply, empowered individuals because of access to literacy and, hence, information. Education results in true sustainability as future generations will benefit from today’s investment.

In the developed world, universal and compulsory primary education has laid the foundations for secondary and tertiary education, which is now taken for granted by 40 per cent to 50 per cent of young adults. It is a legacy that has been built on by successive generations for more than 100 years. However, there are still large sections of the globe where it is only recently that children have had near-universal access to primary education. According to the latest UN MDG report in 2009, in developing countries overall enrolment had reached 88 per cent by 2007. Improvements were most striking in sub-Saharan Africa, where enrolment rose by 15 per cent in the period since 2000, and in southern Asia by 11 per cent. Hence the number of children of primary school age who are out of school has dropped by 33 million since 1999.

Nevertheless, despite these gains, statistics can tell the other side of the story as well. It now appears that challenges remain whereby we will not be able to meet the target of ensuring that by 2015 children are able to complete a full course of primary schooling. Even in 2007, 72 million children were denied the right to education, of whom nearly half live in sub-Saharan Africa and 18 million in southern Asia. UNESCO figures show that 29 million children will still be out of school in 2015—29 million too many.

The factors leading to this are several, and I will touch on just three: the reduction in donor support in the period ahead, the gender gap in education and the situation in the poorest conflict-affected fragile states. Financial support for attaining this MDG was always viewed as insufficient for the scale of the problem. Not only did it require investment in infrastructure for the poorest rural areas, where schools simply do not exist, it also required capacity-building in terms of teachers trained to adequate levels with adequate teaching aids and resources. Furthermore, the greatest barrier, that of school fees and other indirect costs, reduces enrolment. In some less-developed countries, children in the poorest 20 per cent of the population are three times less likely to be enrolled in primary school than children from the wealthiest 20 per cent.

Several countries have made progress in eliminating school fees, most notably India last year, which passed legislation to provide free and compulsory education for six to 14 year-olds, thereby aiming to lift millions of children out of illiteracy in the next decade alone. Among sub-Saharan countries going down a similar route, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia have also moved to provide free education at primary level and there are others still in the pipeline. Nevertheless, the situation in conflict-affected fragile states is still dire and several streams of donor funding are simply unavailable to these countries due to their fragile governance arrangements. It becomes, therefore, a Catch-22 situation. The greatest need requires greater risk-taking on the part of donors and their accountability mechanisms militate against taking risks.

The impact of the global economic crisis should also not be underestimated in the period going forward. We know from UNDP figures that when oil prices increased in 2007-08 that was accompanied by higher food prices due to increased consumption in the more affluent parts of still developing countries such as China and India. The combination of the price of oil and food had an indirect impact on accessing primary education. With fiscal consolidation and reductions in the economic growth, it is inevitable that even in those countries aiming to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of GNI the figure will fall in absolute terms as their economies shrink. The cake, in effect, will become smaller still. Does DfID have contingency reserves specifically dedicated to this possibility and will it be able to plug the gap in any meaningful way?

Gender inequality in south Asia and the Middle East is also of great concern. At the midway point in measuring progress toward this MDG in 2007, it was found that the target to reduce gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005 had already been missed. Several aspects affect the completion of primary education. In the case of girls, culture has a significant impact as well as geographical location, and rural communities have greater disparities than urban areas. It is also the case that social and economic constraints impact on girls disproportionately and that families and societies give a lower priority to girls’ education. This is when the importance of making primary education not just free but compulsory comes in. In Muslim countries, where this problem is particularly acute, waiting for cultural change will take too long and is of itself a by-product of education. One cannot come until we have achieved the other. This is when compulsion becomes necessary. We should welcome India’s move to make free education additionally compulsory so that all parents have to comply with the law irrespective of religion or values. Implementing that will be expensive; the estimates for India are $40 billion alone for the first tranche of children to go through school.

While the gender disparity figures for enrolment are improving slowly, the staying on and completion rates are not promising and the drop-out rates for girls, which is significantly higher than for boys, is worrying, with the resultant impact on secondary education as well. In sub-Saharan Africa, the ratio of girls’ to boys’ enrolment in secondary education actually fell from 82 per cent in 1999 to 79 per cent in 2007. Overall, only 60 per cent of countries have achieved gender parity in primary education, with a mere 30 per cent achieving it for secondary education. This gender gap is replicated through tertiary education, in stark contrast to the developed world, where women outnumber men in higher education.

I turn to the situation in conflict-afflicted, fragile states. Displacement is a major factor, with the average period in a conflict calculated to be some 10 years—in other words, potentially the entire period that a girl or a boy would spend in education. Hence millions of these children do not even have basic literacy. Therefore, there is a pressing need for the donor countries’ humanitarian aid policy to be revisited. Currently, the 2008 humanitarian consensus action plan does not even mention education, which is seen primarily as a development activity. What priority are this Government likely to give to education in conflict situations? We have amassed some considerable skill in this area in Afghanistan, and perhaps we need to build on this best practice to replicate elsewhere.

Finally, I draw the House’s attention to the critical recent report of the National Audit Office, which found that since 2001 funds spent by DfID have meant a positive contribution towards achieving this MDG, but it has not improved the quality of education or reduced drop-out rates. Its report recommends that funding should be better targeted towards improving people attendance and attainment—in other words, to deliver a more sustainable educational outcome.

We welcome the DfID review recently announced of bilateral aid. In seeking value for money, considering countries such as China for partnership agreements in this area may need revisiting. Such countries have growth rates and the ability to lift their people so dramatically out of poverty at a very different scale to those poorest and fragile states in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

This is a critical time for the world economy. The resilience of the developed world has been tested in the past three years and it has, on the whole, risen to that challenge. It has had the human capital and resources to do so. However, the poorest countries in the developing world do not have these levels of resilience, as we have seen from the rise in small-state conflicts. It is imperative that this country, the European Union and other developed countries rise to the challenge of international solidarity by meeting in full their obligations for these MDGs.