Safeguarding Children: British Overseas Territories

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the noble Baroness raises an important point. The overseas territories are of course very diverse in their population level and engagement in civil society organisations and NGOs. There are international NGOs that can assist in this and, in some areas, there are local ones. For example, there was a notable achievement in Bermuda, where the Government partnered a local NGO, Saving Children and Revealing Secrets. This was done last year to deliver child sexual abuse training across the whole island. We support CSOs and NGOs wherever we can and help them to develop because, in some areas where they feel isolated, it is very difficult.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will join me in congratulating ChildLine, as it reaches its 30th year, on the work that it has done to ensure that helplines are available not only in this country but by developing the international helpline organisation in many countries across the world. What are the Government doing additionally to help adults to have helplines? The Lucy Faithfull Foundation has its own helpline for adults but unless we can tackle adults and get them to come forward then it is left to the children to do so, and that is not where the issue should be left.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

In this case, too, the noble Baroness raises an important issue of ensuring that those who are abused—the children—have a voice but that those who are the abusers are also able to seek information and be persuaded that that is not the behaviour which they should perpetrate. I know that a number of overseas territories have expressed a desire to establish a private and confidential counselling service for vulnerable children and young people, along the ChildLine model that the noble Baroness explained. With regard to working with adults, we can do that work through our support to NGOs and CSOs and also through DfID, in the support that we give to promoting education about the way to change adults’ attitude towards social norms.

EU: Disintegration

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The details of this have been set out, particularly by my right honourable friend the Minister for Europe in front of the Lords European Union Committee the other day. I recommend that the noble Lord reads them. They are very detailed and answer his question very closely. Broadly, however, the preparations were of course there but had to be conditional on the initial drafts of what was going to be, and now is becoming, the intergovernmental agreement. It was presented in the first instance in December as a treaty for the 27. The draft of that was available only 24 hours before the actual meeting, so inevitably there had to be some last-minute reactions and adjustments, but at the end of it all it was perfectly clear that the safeguards sought by the Prime Minister were not going to be available and that haggling over an intergovernmental treaty that other members wanted to achieve rapidly would have been very disruptive. The best way was simply to say that we did not wish to be part of it, and that is what happened.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, if we are so influential in Europe, what are the Government doing to ensure that the financial framework matches the plans for 2020? At the moment, the common financial framework has not been adjusted to the 2020 planning, particularly regarding the work on the common agricultural policy, where a huge amount of funding continues to go into non-innovative processes.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Well, we are. The Government and many outside government continue to work to strengthen and reform all aspects of the European Union. The common agricultural policy is by no means set in concrete and certainly requires reform, as do infrastructure fund arrangements and many aspects of financial regulation, all of which can be improved. We are working away at those things all the time.