Female Genital Mutilation

Debate between Baroness Finn and Baroness Sugg

Thursday 6th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support international efforts to end female genital mutilation.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Sugg) (Con)]

My Lords, the UK is proud to support the Africa-led movement to end female genital mutilation. Since 2013, DfID programmes have helped more than 10,000 communities pledge to abandon FGM. In 2018, we announced a further £50 million UK aid package to tackle FGM. Today, which marks the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM, the Secretary of State has announced funding to the World Health Organization and the United Nations to support affected countries as they address FGM through their health and legal systems.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her response. In 2013, the UK Government made a very welcome commitment of £35 million to be spent in efforts to end female genital mutilation. However, there are some genuine concerns that a large proportion of that sum failed to reach women on the front lines, with the result that very little has actually changed. Can my noble friend assure the House that the £50 million to which she referred that DfID promised in 2018, which is again very welcome, will reach the grass-roots activists who have been risking their lives to end this appalling abuse of girls?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for raising this issue today. FGM is a human rights violation that can result in a lifetime of physiological and emotional suffering. She is absolutely right that supporting grass-roots activists must be key to our approach to ending FGM. The first phase of our support built the Girl Generation, the largest ever global movement, which consists of over 900 grass-roots organisations. Our new programme will continue to support organisations based in affected communities, many of which are led by women and young people working on the front line to end FGM. We will also have a specific fund to support grass-roots activists and youth initiatives, with small grants to lead change in their own communities and to hold their own Governments to account.

Digital Understanding

Debate between Baroness Finn and Baroness Sugg

Thursday 7th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, on securing this very relevant debate. It is difficult to overestimate her role in promoting digital government.

In 2010, my noble friend Lord Maude commissioned the noble Baroness to carry out a review of government digital capability. Unlike most government reviews, which take months if not years, the Martha Lane-Fox report was produced in two weeks. Her recommendations were admirably straightforward: government should be digital by default with assisted digital for those not yet online, and there should be a new government digital organisation headed by the best person possible—the outstanding Mike Bracken took this role.

The results of what became the Government Digital Service, or GDS, speak for themselves. In 2010, the UK was a byword for car-crash government IT programmes. In contrast, as we have heard, in 2016 the UK was top of the UN rankings. We saved over £4 billion from the IT bill in just four years, Government became an attractive employer for a generation of digital talent, and start-ups and SMEs won government business, ending the domination of a few international companies. The award-winning GOV.UK became one of the most visited sites in the UK. GDS was hailed as Europe’s best start-up, with the Washington Post calling it the “gold standard” for digital government.

When the Australian Government set up their Digital Transformation Office, Malcolm Turnbull, now the Australian Prime Minister, emailed my noble friend Lord Maude to say that if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, he should consider himself very flattered. Many other countries, including the US, copied the model, often with the help of former GDS staffers.

These remarkable results were not accidental. Reform, especially in the Civil Service, needs leadership, stamina and political courage. The success of GDS depended on strong authority and leadership at the centre of government. The mantra was, “the strategy is delivery”. Yet the new GDS mandate—to support, enable and assure departments—seems to place the needs of departments over the needs of users. The battle over the use of shared platforms is worrying. Cross-government platforms such as Verify are designed for the user so that digital government is consistent and easy to deal with. Their use by departments is set to save billions of pounds, yet they are resisting their use.

One of the great myths of government is that while central control may be needed to drive initial reform, there comes a point where the reforms are said to be embedded and controls can be eased off. My experience is that reforms embedded in departments are precisely that. They are usually embedded six feet under so that departments can regain autonomy and go right back to their old ways without further interference. We should not risk our digital leadership position to maintain a pointless power battle in Whitehall.

The Government have published a powerful digital transformation strategy and GDS is vital to its delivery. I hope the Minister can reassure us that GDS must be empowered to do so. I wonder whether now is a timely moment for the noble Baroness to review progress after five years, which could address her other concerns.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, as noble Lords know, this is a time-limited debate and we must finish at 4.33 pm, which may cut into the Minister’s response.