Israel and Palestine: Humanitarian Aid

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

We urge all in the region to be restrained. There is massive civilian casualty resulting from the conflict there, as the noble Lord will be well aware. We would impress on everybody in this situation to draw back. We need an immediate ceasefire. It was appalling to hear this morning our noble colleague, Valerie Amos, saying that a child an hour is being killed.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (LD)]

While welcoming the Minister’s answer, could I ask her how much of the aid—particularly the £30 million that the Government are giving to the Gaza Strip—is she confident is reaching the real beneficiaries and is not being diverted to other purposes?

[Baroness Northover]

We have very strong safeguards in place to ensure that the money is spent as intended. As the noble Baroness may know, our financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority is provided through the multi-donor trust fund, which is administered by the World Bank, which very closely monitors Palestinian Authority expenditure. It is absolutely right that we need to make sure that the funds reach those who most need them.

United Nations International Widows’ Day

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (LD)]

I warmly thank my noble Friend, Lord Loomba for giving us the opportunity to discuss this incredibly important topic. I pay tribute particularly to my noble friend Lord Shipley for his speech, and I endorse the points that he made more fluently than perhaps I would be able to do myself.

I work a lot with widows. I have always seen economic freedom as the key to widows gaining a new foothold in life. Of course, the law is crucial—they must be allowed to work in order to be able to find a way of working—but custom and practice are also crucial in implementing the law. If custom and practice are dramatically against you, it is extremely difficult to work and earn a living. When one looks at work, one has to think what sort of work they can do, how and when they will do it and what their alternative employment might be, and whether the source of work that a widow is allowed to do will in fact bring such a stigma on her family that carrying out that work may be something that she cannot even bear to do.

I chair the AMAR International Charitable Foundation, and the women whom I work with are trapped in continuing complex emergencies. For them, very often the only possible work that is immediately open to them is to become prostitutes, and once you become a prostitute it is extremely difficult to shake off that stigma again. I therefore work with those who are doing all that they can to create different kinds of employment for widows that would give them not just an immediate leg-up but a future.

It will come as no surprise to noble Lords on all sides of the House that I intend to comment briefly on Iraq, where until last month there were 1 million widows and now, alas, there are considerably more, and there will be more next week and the week after. Human misery is rising as the result of the toll of 50 years or more of war, with the first tranche of widows coming as a result of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, when 1 million people were killed and perhaps 250,000 were left widowed. I will also comment on the needs of the widows’ children. The figures in Iraq show that there are 4 million orphans. “Orphan” sometimes means the loss of both parents but in this context nearly always means the loss of the father, so I am going to comment on how that problem may be tackled as well.

The work that I believe is best for widows comes within a much wider programme. I would counsel against us picking out widows; we need to be helping the entire community so that our help for widows does not seem to stigmatise them by accident. Indeed, I think that work for widows should come from within the community itself because it must be permanent help; it cannot be a short-term thing. There will be more widows tomorrow, the day after and the day after that. There has to be not just a safety net but a continuing programme of personal growth and development that enables women who are widowed not only to have a life for themselves but to have a proper one and something for their children, their elderly and anyone else they may be looking after.

The AMAR foundation works throughout Iraq. It works in Syrian refugee camps in the north and has a vast programme in Iraq for the prevention of gender-based violence, which, incidentally, is critical for working with widows. It runs a large programme on gender violence awareness through the radio and the internet, which is crucial. It runs a very big programme with women health volunteers, as well as an educated child initiative. It has mobile health centres, health posts, health clinics and road safety training. It works on the empowerment of widows throughout the country. Indeed, it is working in 16 of Iraq’s 18 governorates and currently employs more than 2,000 local professionals on projects across the country. A very large proportion of this work is for women, and a large proportion is therefore for widows and their children. We work through the 23 primary health centres that we have created, the six mobile health centres and some health posts, with about 500,000 patients connected with the primary health centres and the mobile health centres. Last year there were between 250,000 and 300,000 health consultations.

Of course, if you look at that, women’s health is primarily the focus, as it is in all contexts everywhere. We take up about 80% of all health inputs and outputs in every society: pregnant women, pre- and post-pregnancy and so on, elderly women and, of course, the women at home. At the moment I think we visit 34,000 women at home every month; one-third of them are single parents, mainly widows. The mothers and children instructed during those visits number about 140,000 every month.

Turning to the widows and vulnerable women who receive skills training, in the past 12 months we have given 12,000 sessions of skills training, and 2,500 children have been enrolled in accelerated learning programmes through kindergartens and primary and secondary schools. We are teaching in 171 schools, seven kindergartens, three universities, 12 of our own training centres and, most importantly, five prisons, where you will find more women and more widows, because they are so vulnerable. The programme being run at the moment aims to integrate 1,000 widows and female heads of households into Iraq’s social and economic fabric by empowering them with skills, qualifications, social support and employment opportunities, and by increasing their rights—and their knowledge of their rights—as Iraqi citizens.

One of those important points is to help those women to find what is available to them from the Government; for example, there is a widow’s stipend. Only a small proportion of widows in Iraq get that stipend, because most widows there cannot read and write, so they do not know that it is available to them. A key thing is to teach widows literacy and numeracy. We have a very important programme that teaches adult literacy and numeracy to about 7,000 adults a week, of which a proportion are widows. I strongly highlight literacy and numeracy, which are absolutely crucial. That is one of the first steps to take when you think about widows.

On access to employment opportunities, my noble friends Lord Shipley and, I believe, Lord Loomba mentioned the Government and the international community. In order to get those widows known about, we create access to employment opportunities by involving businesses, government, parliamentary committees and academic institutions in the project itself. That means that bit by bit those ladies become known, and their opportunities emerge because of that.

We teach practical skills, assisting them to set up their own businesses. The practical skills, apart from literacy and numeracy, are sewing and design, food preparation, hairdressing, IT, English language for business, and human rights—the latter so that they know what is theirs by right. We teach English language because with that you have the globe, and IT because you can get into the internet. However, the practical skills are ones that they have confidence in themselves. They know that they can do hairdressing—they are taught how to do it so that it can become a business. They know that they can cook and do nursing.

Therefore, the programme does the full range of training courses, all integrated with the Ministry of Education’s own education opportunities, and it is seen as a highly successful programme. I also suggest that no programme can succeed for widows or for any other section of the community unless it is sustainable. As part of the programme, we have heavy-duty monitoring work, but on top of that we have a sustainability programme. So far, we have been steadily raising funds locally—not necessarily here, although we have done some here—to enable this project to continue in perpetuity.

That is a very small example of programmes globally that I know many other wonderful organisations are carrying out. However, I have put it in front of your Lordships in the hope that it may provide an example of a simple but highly effective way of working.

Girls’ Education Challenge

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

DfID constantly monitors its programmes, including these. As I mentioned before, it is looking for results to be secured, which, as I said, means making sure that there is high-quality education and that children attend all the way through so that they reach the next stage.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (LD)]

My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that in Afghanistan girls are not allowed to know their father—their basic heritage? Given that deliberate depth of ignorance in the female sex in Afghanistan, and since the UK will have no locus following our withdrawal, how does the noble Baroness feel that we can influence such a tragic and miserable situation through educational means?

[Baroness Northover]

My noble friend is right that there are many challenges in Afghanistan; but one of the encouraging things over the past few years has been the extension of the education of girls and women and their absolute determination that that is going to continue. That will help to underpin what DfID is doing in this area.

Overseas Aid: GDP Target

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord will be aware that in the previous Question we talked about the MDGs. Their environmental goals are clearly extremely important and need to be agreed by developed and developing countries. He is right about the burden on us in terms of taking this forward. He will also know that there was a major emphasis on tax at the G8 and the G20. The United Kingdom is leading with regard to addressing the issues that he has highlighted.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s robust response. None the less, it is how the money is spent, rather than the amount of money, that actually tackles poverty effectively. With that in mind, how does her department intend to respond to the continuing challenges posed to it by the further report of the Select Committee on International Development in another place, published this morning, on accountability and transparency?

[Baroness Northover]

I saw the press coverage of the International Development Select Committee’s report this morning. I was then astonished to look at the report itself, and wondered how on earth the press came to the conclusions that they did. They were reviewing DfID’s multilateral aid review. They pointed out that it was extraordinarily important for DfID to review how its aid is given, and suggested that there were strengths, but also some areas where DfID might want to investigate further, including—to pick up the noble Baroness’s question earlier—ensuring that multilateral organisations focus on gender. I welcome the Select Committee’s report; it helps keep us on our toes, and it does not match up with this morning’s press reports.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

My Lords, following three decades of conflict and international sanctions, Iraq’s economy is set to become one of the fastest growing in the world over the next 10 years. Its GDP growth for 2013 is forecast for around 14%, largely fuelled by a rapidly developing hydrocarbons sector that already generates around $8 billion a month in oil revenues. On the back of this sizeable wealth stream, Iraq’s import demand is projected to increase by 150% by 2020, with major opportunities in sectors including power generation, infrastructure, healthcare, education, financial and professional services, telecoms, security and defence, IT and beyond. Inevitably, rapid population growth is also anticipated, from maybe 30 million today to maybe 70 million or beyond. These are large numbers for government and the private sector to satisfy demand for investment.

Where is Britain in this? British companies are especially well placed to capitalise on investment opportunities in Iraq given the significant historical and cultural ties that exist between us, as well as the UK’s solid reputation for quality and transparent business practices. UK exports to Iraq totalled £782 million in 2011 and exports of goods increased 40% in 2012 to just over £1 billion. Although commendable, this is minuscule compared with Turkish trade with Iraq, which climbed to $8.3 billion in 2011 from $2.8 billion in 2007 according to Turkish government statistics. Almost 600 Turkish construction companies are working in Iraq according to the Turkish Foreign Economic Relations Board. Iran’s trade with Iraq is worth more than $10 billion according to the Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce—that is 10 times as much as Britain’s.

Iraq is rebuilding the country from the ground up but there is continuing evidence that Britain is losing out to competitors, especially from the Far East and other European countries. There are many examples: massive contracts to build huge power stations in Basra have gone already to Greek and Turkish companies and recent defence expenditure favoured Russia and the Czech Republic. Iraq is rebuilding her railway system at a cost of more than $60 billion. The world’s first railway engine was invented here in Britain and a UK company, Bombardier, makes high-performance trains that are sold all over the world. Yet only this week the Iraqi Government announced that they were importing 10 trains from China.

I must point out that British company BP and Anglo-Dutch company Shell are between them producing more than 70% of federal Iraq’s total income from two giant oil and gas fields at Rumaila and Al Majnoon. Shell has just started a unique $18 billion gas capture programme, the first in the world, which will enable Iraq to fuel all its power stations with gas by the end of the decade. That will provide wealth for the Iraqi economy and jobs for the Iraqi people. It is a fantastic achievement by one British-owned and one partly British-owned company, with subcontractors that in many instances are also British. We should be very proud of their achievements.

Other sectors in Iraq such as construction and infrastructure are wide open to British expertise. Where is agriculture or the many other things we have to offer? With a few exceptions, I am sorry to say that British business is making less impact than we should in the federal Republic of Iraq and even less in areas such as the Kurdish regional government.

Alas, it is not only in Iraq that Britain has failed in the region. At the Opportunity Kuwait conference last week, I was disturbed to hear that Britain had only 2% of all investment in Kuwait by foreign companies, compared with 14% by the Netherlands. High-profile and important British politicians, including our Prime Minister, the Mayor of London and the Lord Mayor of the City of London, have shuttled through Gulf countries lately, aiming not just to sell British goods, such as warplanes, but to attract oil money to help fund pressing UK infrastructure needs.

Our bilateral trade with Gulf countries is estimated by analysts to be worth more than $15 billion annually, but that is still a modest sum given the estimated $2.2 trillion-worth of infrastructure under way in the Arabian peninsular states. We can and must do more. I pay tribute here to the extraordinary skills and sheer hard work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I share its focus on the paramount importance of the development of the free market and the private sector as fundamental to the development of democracy. I am delighted that under the skilful leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint, UKTI’s excellence is both more obvious and more effective in the region. UKBA is also working immensely hard.

Indeed, I am proud to be leading a UKTI-IBBC 100-strong mission to Iraq—I should explain that I chair the Iraq Britain Business Council. There, we will be led by a UK Cabinet Minister, the right honourable Member for Havant. We will be focusing on opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises and, in particular, on universities and science—his portfolio.

I believe that the key to success for Britain in Iraq and the region lies in rebuilding confidence. There remains in Britain much hesitancy about Iraq. We should be proud of the important part that we played in freeing the Iraqi people from their decades-long misery, which included institutionalised torture, genocide and slaughter by chemical weapons. We should be very proud of the work of our wonderful Armed Forces.

In just 10 years, Iraq has made huge strides forward. The recent free and fair local elections, and a growth rate today of well over 10% surely show that Iraq is fast becoming one of the most powerful countries in the region, and also the most stable. It is surely the best financial partner for us all. I believe that confidence-building measures, which I urge the Government to adopt, are the key to opening the door for a truly successful partnership between Iraq and Britain.

International Development

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I may need to write to the noble Lord with details but I assure him that, as I think he knows, a great deal of United Kingdom assistance goes to support the people in Gaza.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

Following the Minister’s most helpful answers and given that not one of the conflict-ridden and sensitive countries has reached a single millennium goal, will the Government consider recommending to the United Nations that for those countries the single millennium goals in place now be retained rather than put something more complex in place which they would never reach?

[Baroness Northover]

There is a strong argument for keeping the current MDGs. They have been a great international focus and have done a great deal to relieve poverty around the world, get children into education and so on. I am somewhat sympathetic to that. However, these are to run until 2015. The important thing now is to build on the progress that has been made, carry forward the things that work well and learn some of the lessons of those MDGs: for example, universal education for children does not necessarily mean that those children in schools are actually learning something. All those things need to be addressed. However, my noble friend is right: we have to build on what has already been set in place.

European Union Bill

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

It is a very great honour to follow such eminent speakers in this debate. This is a topic of very high value. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, commented on the great emotion that it raises. I am afraid that in comparison with his speech and that of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, for example, mine will be very dry, and I hope that your Lordships will forgive me.

The Government are right to believe that United Kingdom membership of the European Union is in our national interests, and the promise vigorously to champion those interests while playing an important role in the European Union is to be welcomed. Of course, Britain has always played a powerfully important part in all affairs of the European Union, and we have been wonderfully well represented by successive generations of our diplomats. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is generally considered to be primus inter pares and is spoken of as such by other delegations in the EU. With the inspiring presidency of the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, who has spoken today, the tremendous Commission competences exercised by the noble Lord, Lord Brittan—another powerful and important British figure—and the Commissioner today, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, we have been wonderfully well served. Many speakers in this debate have not touched on the eminent contributions that the United Kingdom has made so effectively in Brussels and Strasbourg over such a long period. Indeed, I cannot move on without commenting most positively on the wonderful way in which the different Ministers here in the United Kingdom have briefed Ministers in the EU, enabling them, too, to play their part in successive Councils of Ministers in different sectors of our involvement.

The coalition agreement states that in the context of a leading role in an enlarged European Union,

“no further powers should be transferred to Brussels without a referendum”,

on the basis that this would strike the correct balance between constructive engagement with the European Union and protecting our national sovereignty. This Bill seeks to enshrine that principle in statute. However, I suggest that much of the debate in the United Kingdom that has been sceptical or hostile towards Europe has gained disproportionate traction through a perceived remoteness and democratic deficit. There should be nothing to fear in seeking to improve the democratic accountability of the European Union, thereby ensuring that the British public are engaged and active participants in the future of Europe. This remoteness was not addressed by the Treaty of Nice, nor by the Lisbon treaty, which increased the relative powers of the European Parliament. However, the intractable problem of lobbyists—6,400 of them—operating in Brussels, and within the European Parliament in particular, makes it even more important today that national Parliaments deliver the necessary accountability and public scrutiny. Your Lordships’ House and the other place should not be reticent in providing the necessary counterbalance to, and additional scrutiny of, European matters.

Part 1 of the Bill, which deals with the so-called “referendum lock”, specifies the circumstances in which parliamentary scrutiny is to be undertaken. The effect is likely to be at least an enhanced involvement of Parliament with EU matters, which have often been more or less left to Ministers. However, I believe that in our debates on the European Union we should be mindful that we are discussing our intergovernmental structure. The European Parliament, where I had the privilege of serving in the Comité d’affaires étrangères, was conceived to provide only occasional scrutiny of Council of Ministers decisions—once or twice a year perhaps—giving the flavour of democracy and not the real thing. Why was this so, or perhaps more importantly, why did we not raise this point at the time of our entry?

In the decade or so running up to UK membership, we took the view, or our Government of the day perceived, that Brussels would create laws only very occasionally and that this feather-light European legislative touch would not imperil nor even infringe our national sovereignty, as those few Brussels laws would be inferior in status to our national legislation. How wrong we were. That view held good even 20 years ago when the picture was changing fast in consequence, at least in part, of the European Parliament’s transformation from a nominated body of national parliamentarians to today’s directly elected European Parliament with significantly enhanced authority, which often seems, from the perception of the electorate, to overrule Westminster and locally elected councillors time after time.

Today the picture is very different. Together the five EU institutions create, modify or influence a larger part of member states' legislation over an ever increasing range of competences. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, has already confirmed, European Union legislation has acquired autonomous status. Unless a member state Parliament takes an exceptionally active and determined position in scrutinising, debating and voting in a timely manner, European Union legislation rolls through, apparently unheeding of national parliamentary rights and obligations. However, parliamentary involvement in the essentially intergovernmental system on which the EU was built and still remains, relies in large part on Governments’ willingness to allow that to happen. I suggest that history shows that successive UK Governments have been unwilling to involve Parliament in a timely and appropriate manner.

For a decade, I served in the other place on European Union Standing Committees A and B. We should have had papers; we should have had debates; and we should have been able to put statements to the House before the Council of Ministers made its decisions. Too often, that was not the case. Not only was it not the case, but sometimes we got the papers after the Minister had made the decision in Brussels and had reported back to Parliament. It was the most extraordinary democratic deficit in the United Kingdom, within the powers of successive Governments, that I could ever have imagined experiencing. That was not the fault of the European Union, the Commission, the Parliament or the Council of Ministers, or even the Court of Justice or the Court of Auditors; no, it was the responsibility of the United Kingdom. The heart of the democratic deficit of the European Union lies in the United Kingdom national Parliament.

Even today, Council of Ministers debates and reports are rare and post hoc. That is not necessarily the case in other member state Parliaments or in other Governments. When I reached Brussels, I was astonished to discover that other Parliaments did not have information withheld or their authority undermined by their own Governments. The Danish situation is particularly interesting. Before a Danish Minister goes to the Council of Ministers with a proposal from his ministry or before he or she embarks on a debate or a decision-making process, he goes to the relevant committee of the Danish Parliament and tells that committee what the topic is all about and what will happen. Then the committee instructs the Minister or debates with the Minister. When the Minister has been to Brussels and attended the Council of Ministers at any level, he or she reports back to the relevant committee and then to the Floor of the House. That is the case not just in Denmark but also in other member state Parliaments.

Where is the democratic deficit? I suggest that it has been here in Westminster. Hence, I suggest, the coalition is right in its determination to take some action to bring the British Parliament and the British public closer to the heart of the EU decision-making process. To involve Parliament, Ministers must decide to do so, not once, not twice but consistently and for the long haul. That is why the Bill is of such high value to the UK. Despite its perhaps necessary complexity, it commits the Government to what I and many others perceive as the right course of action. Even if it is late, it is never too late in democratic terms.

However, I must admit that the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution’s report on the Bill finds:

“The multiple specification of individual Treaty provisions hinders rather than helps transparency and accessibility in the law”.

It is therefore wholly legitimate to debate in your Lordships' House the use of referenda as a mechanism in our constitutional practice, as the Bill represents a change. That alone may warrant wider detailed consideration.

We have not had referenda in the United Kingdom with the great frequency that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, for example, suggested in his speech. He talked, for example, of the Single European Act. I was in the other place during the passage of the Single European Act—I beg your Lordships’ pardon, I mean the Treaty of Maastricht. With the noble Lord, Lord Hurd of Westwell, who was UK Foreign Secretary, I recall spending a full year debating the Maastricht treaty. Was that not democratic? Would it have been any better if we had had referenda every moment with the British public? We are not California, I suggest; referenda should be scarce and carefully thought through, and then they will bring the British public into greater familiarity with European Union legislation and competences. Regular referenda would not be welcome. Your Lordships’ House will want to debate the use of referenda in considerable detail.

I therefore particularly welcome Part 3, even though it does little more than reassert what is already the common law position: that European law has currency through legislation and a mechanism agreed by Parliament. Case law has upheld that common law position, but there is nothing to be lost and much to be gained in placing that principle on a statutory footing. Similar provisions exist through a sovereign act in other member states, such as Germany.

The Government’s undertaking to use the Bill to reconnect European Union citizens with European Union decisions is appropriate. To be most effective, as I have already stated, that will require the Government to be proactive in making the case for our continued membership and demonstrating the benefits which our active participation brings. Those are significant, serious, long-lasting—permanent—benefits. The general public does not understand that because the Government have made no effort at any time in the past 30 years to explain that point. By leaving out Parliament to the degree that I have identified, we do not give our Members of Parliament in the other place or us in this place the opportunity to speak more clearly, as we should do, on European Union matters. The Government should be significantly more ambitious in establishing a true and lasting connection between the European Union and the people of this country.

The Bill is therefore to be welcomed as the first step towards establishing a robust connection between the public and the European Union, but many unanswered questions remain. I hope that in responding to the debate, the Minister will be forthright in responding to the issues that the Government have yet to address. The Bill is so technical and complex—a point that has been accepted by Ministers—that it risks creating greater uncertainty than it resolves. The principle underpinning the Bill is sound, but the Government have yet to explain how it will be applied in practice. Its breadth is considerable, and how it is to be applied will be important. Can the Minister clarify precisely how the Government envisage this concern being addressed?

Ministers have argued that this Bill will strengthen our democracy, but mostly powers will continue to rest with the Government. Ministerial determination will remain pivotal. It will be the Government who determine whether there has been a transfer of power. What mechanisms does the Minister propose to address that deficit and overcome those concerns? What action will the Government be taking within their own programme and communications to facilitate greater engagement between the electorate and European Union business? Their approach to European scrutiny, even within your Lordships' House, has not always been as open and timely as would be desirable and it has been historically lamentable in the other place. How long does the Minister anticipate before the results of this will feed through to the public consciousness? What action do the Government envisage taking to make more widely available the workings and considerations of the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers?

This Bill is profoundly useful, insofar as it restates the common law position and provides a mechanism to establish a new and proper connectivity between the electorate and the European Union. The measure of success will be the extent to which the Government’s intentions are truly reflected in their application of these mechanisms for advancing our national interest through serious parliamentary involvement here in Westminster in EU matters and through the active incorporation of our electorate in major decisions such as transferring UK powers and competences to the European Union. I support the Bill.