Syrian Refugees: Food Aid

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Northover

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

Clearly, the situation with refugees right across the region is extremely challenging. However, the United Kingdom’s emphasis is to try to make sure that the situation in Syria and around is alleviated. We are putting a huge amount of support, as the noble Baroness has recognised—I thank her for that—into those countries surrounding Syria. What is needed is to try to bring this incredibly challenging crisis to an end so that people are safe within their own country. We do not underestimate the challenge of that.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the only comprehensive and long-lasting resolution to this problem of refugees is to bring them back to Syria where they can live their lives in the communities they were in? What discussions have the Government had with the UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura about his attempt at a new plan to bring about those ceasefires?

[Baroness Northover]

I will need to write to my noble friend with the details of that.

Gaza: Reconstruction

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Northover

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I do not know the details of that but I will write to the noble Lord. I know that we are gravely concerned about Gaza’s fuel and energy situation.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend will be aware that the Egyptian Government are starting to clear eastern Sinai to create a buffer zone to close the Rafah crossing, which will further limit supplies going into Gaza. Given that very limited construction materials are already agreed, how does she see Gaza being rebuilt in these very constrained circumstances?

[Baroness Northover]

We were very clear at the Gaza reconstruction conference in Cairo that movement, including access restrictions, needed to be improved to have the kind of meaningful reconstruction that my noble friend is talking about. We have welcomed the agreement on the UN mechanism for importing construction materials as an important first step. Egypt’s actions in this regard are less than helpful, but Israel has primary responsibility as the occupying power and we continue to urge it to ease restrictions and reach a durable ceasefire agreement.

Queen’s Speech

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Northover

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for setting out in very succinct terms the overview of where we are on foreign and defence policy today. However, I point out to her—I know that this view will be echoed around the House—that it was perhaps a bit of a mistake for the usual channels to schedule foreign affairs, defence and international development alongside the significant issue of constitutional affairs, over which, for the first time in 300 years in this country, we have a real dilemma. As it was known that some 80 or so speakers had put their name down, it would have been far better to have set aside separate days for these important matters.

I will stick to foreign affairs, as I would be expected to. My time is brief, so I will stick to just two things. The Foreign Secretary addressed a conference on globalisation last week at Chatham House, where he remarked that the world was more unpredictable and unstable now than in the last decade of the previous century. He also noted, wryly, that his period in office at the FCO coincided with some of the most unstable events that have taken place. Both statements are of course correct, but I am delighted to add that there is no causal link.

I will talk about the capacity of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to undertake deep analysis and problem-solving that renders it—or should render it—equipped to undertake the level of strategic thinking that is required to deal with the level of instability that the Foreign Secretary spoke about. We know that the role of the Foreign Office has changed; it has had its own pivot, if one can describe it as such, towards being a more commercial and trade-focused arm of the UK Government. I also appreciate that the Government have made structural changes, such as the Foreign Service Academy and the language academy, but the positive effects of that will not be felt for some time. In the mean time, the capacity of our diplomatic service to see long-term trends and to identify policy responses does not seem as robust as might be needed for these difficult times.

One example of the lack of capacity is still the dearth of senior women in leadership roles in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In the lead-up to International Women’s Day in March this year, I asked several parliamentary Questions about the role of women appointees at the United Nations, the European Union, other international agencies, NATO, other permanent members of the UN Security Council, our allies, BRICs, and so on. The response I got was truly extraordinary, and bears repeating. Some 11 women had served in senior roles in the past 25 years—I was only able to go back 25 years—while 173 men had served in those roles.

At a time when women’s equality has been pursued by both the Labour Government and indeed by this Government, I was interested to read in the rebuttal to my letter in the Financial Times that Sir Simon Fraser, the Permanent Under-Secretary in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is a Civil Service diversity champion. We shall not hold our breath, although I fully respect the fabulous role that Sir Simon carries out as head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Diversity matters because problem solving is complex and requires considerable thinking outside the box—which is impossible where one gender or class dominates. I am not trying to say that excellence should be sacrificed to obtain diversity. Indeed, one other sector of excellence in the United Kingdom, the university and higher education sector, has embraced diversity to its credit. Diversity is one of the reasons it ranks so highly among higher education institutions in the world.

Let me turn to my other concern in terms of a lack of strategic thinking in the Foreign Office. That is thinking around dealing with failing and failed states—or indeed states that are too big to fail but that may have to be allowed to fail. The noble Baroness talked about Iraq and Syria, and we know that there are several failing states in Africa. I will concentrate on one in which I know the noble Baroness takes an interest, which is Pakistan. Pakistan suffered an egregious terrorist attack on its principal airport in its principal commercial city earlier this week. It is mired overall in an ongoing decade-long deep and existential crisis.

I discussed the problem of a UK strategy for Pakistan in 2008 with the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and the then Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. The problem as I saw it was that the regional instability that an unstable and conflict-prone Pakistan would bring about was more profound and far-reaching than the issue of winding down the Af-Pak mission as it became to be known in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in those days.

The very concept of Af-Pak as a single prism was flawed in my estimation. The nature and dispersal of power in Pakistan, which had had authoritarian rule over many decades, was very different from Afghanistan and needed disaggregation from the Afghan war nexus. I was sent off by the Prime Minister to meet the senior Pakistan people in the FCO and it became apparent to me that the advice they were getting was shallow and short-sighted. What we have ended up with, as we have seen with the attack this week, is a Pakistan—which is a nuclear-weapon state of some 170 million people—in which the writ of the Government does not run in large sections of the country. The Governments of the day, each as incompetent as the previous one, do not have a strategy of dealing with the Taliban and are caught in this dilemma of trying to make peace with the terrorists they themselves inculcated and tried to bring about.

In our Foreign Office today we conflate the role of the diaspora—the Pakistani ethnic minority diaspora in Pakistan—with the dilemma that we have as a United Nations Security Council member dealing with Pakistan as a foreign country. So in concluding, I will to come back to our role as a United Nations Security Council member and simply ask the noble Baroness one question. The role of United Nations Secretary-General is coming up for renewal and reappointment in 2016. Will the United Kingdom Government give its backing to a senior female potential Secretary-General should one come up on the horizon?

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I could just intervene and remind noble Lords that we do not have a fixed time; we have an advisory time of five minutes. We have 82 speakers and for the courtesy of those speaking later in the debate, I ask noble Lords to bear in mind that when the clock hits five, they have had five minutes.

Gaza

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Northover

Monday 27th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assistance they have given to the people of Gaza over the last three months.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, the humanitarian situation in Gaza is precarious. There is a significant danger that food, water and fuel will run out later this year. The UK is a leading provider of humanitarian support, which includes supporting the UN Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, to provide basic services, providing food vouchers to vulnerable households, supporting the International Committee of the Red Cross to provide humanitarian assistance and supporting the UN Access Coordination Unit to assist the passage of personnel and humanitarian aid.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that response. The humanitarian aid is terribly important, particularly when the 1.7 million people in Gaza are now living life at breaking point, with 11,000 people displaced by last month’s floods. Fuel shortages are such that donkey carts have replaced cars as a means of transport, the streets are overflowing with raw sewage and, with nearly 50% unemployment, the situation is like a tinderbox. The United Nations has said that Gaza will be unliveable by 2020, so what are Her Majesty’s Government doing to facilitate Hamas and Fatah talks, and more importantly talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, so that a final settlement can be reached for people to live in civilised form next door to each other?

Philippines: Emergency Aid

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Northover

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.