Queen’s Speech

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, there are so many subjects that one could talk about after this Queen’s Speech, but I will talk about some rumours and speculation which are causing much concern among the people with whom I work.

We have heard from various sources that the Department for International Development is to be absorbed by the Foreign Office. The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, referred to something in the Daily Mail this morning saying that this was not true and was not going to happen. If it were any newspaper but the Daily Mail, I might have torn up my speech and decided to talk about something else, but I am not going to as I do not trust that newspaper.

It was suggested most graphically by the Prime Minister nearly a year ago, who alerted me when he said to the Financial Times:

“We can’t keep spending huge sums of … money as though we were some … Scandinavian NGO … The present system is leading to inevitable waste as money is shoved”—


shoved—“out of the door.” He went on to say that aid should “cohere”

“much better with UK political and … commercial objectives.”

I found that very disturbing. I dispute whether his political and commercial objectives would be less wasteful than concentrating on improving the lives of people all over the world, many of whom are seeking asylum because of our mistaken foreign policy or migrating—some here—because we have wrecked the lands on which they depend through our overconsumption of everything. This has been mentioned by many during this debate.

I remind the Government that with our exit from the European Union they want us to become a force for good in the world. The work of the Department for International Development, since it was created in 1997, when I went into the House of Commons, has hugely enhanced our reputation worldwide. If we want the soft power we hear about, it is being exerted already by that department, a point emphasised earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson.

Wherever I have been in the world in my development work since 1997, I have heard good things about the Department for International Development and the wonderful work it does—far better than any other country and possibly even better than some of those Scandinavian NGOs mentioned by the Prime Minister.

I remind the House that 25% to 30% of DfID’s budget is already being diverted to other government departments and cross-government funds with little accountability. These departments include the Foreign Office, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the interestingly named Conflict, Stability and Security Fund. This made me smile a bit, and I wondered whether this fund would be better spent on keeping Donald Trump permanently on his golf course up in Scotland instead of allowing him to further destabilise the Middle East.

I hope that the Minister will reassure us that the Department for International Development will remain and that the commitments made by our Government to family planning and maternal health—my pet subjects—will be honoured, especially those to UNFPA, IPPF and Marie Stopes International. The World Bank has said that providing universal family planning is the single most effective intervention we can make in developing countries for their economic progress; it is the single most effective measure we can take. In particular, I hope that the £600 million pledged by the Secretary of State, Alok Sharma, at the UN Assembly last September and the pledges to prioritise funding for sexual and reproductive health made at the ICPD conference in Nairobi in November will be honoured. Can the Minister please reassure us that the great work done by previous Conservative and Labour Governments through DfID will continue, and that women and girls will remain the top priority in the development agenda?

Folic Acid

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

A lot of medical professionals wonder why, after such a long time asking for this to happen, the Government are doing a consultation—whatever that means—only now. It is quite ridiculous and they should be ashamed that it has been delayed for so long. People are suffering because this is not happening. Will the Government please get on with it or tell us the real reason for not doing it before?

[Baroness Manzoor]

I agree with the noble Baroness that the issue has been on the agenda for some time. I am an optimist. There is a consultation, which will be sharp and rapid. She is raising her eyes but the reality is that we have to take into consideration all the issues. It is about responsibility, and choice too. People can go on the NHS website Change4Life, which talks about healthy lifestyles. There is a positive and proactive campaign to ensure that women of childbearing age take folic acid. Young women—and all those of childbearing age—need to ensure that they have a well-balanced diet that includes things such as broccoli, spinach, pulses and so on. That is their responsibility as well as a matter of government accountability.

Occupied Palestinian Territories

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Tonge]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what guidance they provide to United Kingdom companies who wish to trade with companies based in Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, a company’s decision to trade with businesses based in Israeli settlements is primarily commercial. When considering activities in the region, the Government urge British businesses to consider the illegal nature of Israeli settlements under international law. We also encourage British businesses to take account of our Overseas Business Risk online guidance, which provides comprehensive information on the security and political risks of trading in the region.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

I thank the Minister for that reply and for talking about international law. Is she aware that I table Questions every week concerning the actions of the Israeli Government in Palestine, putting on record the relentless expansion of those settlements and the appalling behaviour of the settlers, including the demolition of Palestinian property, the destruction of their farmland, the denial of their fishing rights and the theft of their water? Does she realise that I have asked Questions about the imprisonment of Palestinian children and the maiming and killing of others? This is not to forget the blockade of Gaza, which the United Nations has said will be uninhabitable by 2020. Does she agree that these are all examples of Israel breaking international law, human rights law and the Fourth Geneva Convention? The Government have admitted this in the Answers that I receive, which I have here. When will our Government stop talking and writing Answers to Questions and take action to stop Israel’s illegal activities, as they do when other countries misbehave? Do we have to wait another 70 years?

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, I am aware of the noble Baroness’s interest in this area and of the many Written Questions that she has laid down. To restate what has been outlined on numerous occasions, the UK’s position on the settlements is clear. They are illegal under international law, present an obstacle to peace and threaten the physical viability of the two-state solution. That is why we supported UN Security Council Resolution 2334, regularly raise our grave concerns on this issue with the Government of Israel and urge them to reverse their policy on settlement expansion.

Iraq Inquiry

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, I am no expert on defence or foreign affairs but the invasion of Iraq has had so many consequences and raised so many issues that I feel I must get a few things off my chest and into Hansard.

I well remember a meeting of our weekly parliamentary party in the Commons to discuss whether or not we would support the call for the invasion of Iraq. Conditions in Iraq at that time were pretty bad because sanctions had been used by Saddam Hussein to half-starve his people and limit what had been good medical services. That was all blamed on the West, of course. There was enough from the amount of oil he was allowed to sell to get by but his people did not get that benefit.

As international development spokesperson at the time, I was very concerned that going to war in Iraq would make the humanitarian situation far worse. I went to the Library and asked for the latest publication on the evidence of weapons of mass destruction, known ever since as the dodgy dossier. Some of my colleagues may remember me coming back from the Library and waving it about, saying that it looked a bit like a student’s A-level dissertation and did not contain much evidence. That was actually not far from the truth because, as my noble friend Lord Campbell reminded us, it was in fact taken from the thesis of a PhD student from somewhere in California. Our instincts were right. It was not impressive or convincing and I am proud to remember that my party, led by Charles Kennedy—against the jeers and mockery of a lot of people in other parties—opposed military action at that time. We wanted to see a second UN resolution and Hans Blix and his team given time to finish their work. Those were heady days and I am proud to remember them.

What struck me when reading the summary of the report, and even more so the Prime Minister’s Statement this week, was the frequent use of the words “belief” and “believed”. They were constantly recurring: in only two pages of the Statement, they were mentioned five times. Tony Blair “believed” that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to us as well as the wider Middle East, but would a surgeon operate on a patient who he “believed” had a cancerous tumour? No, of course he would not. He would weigh up the facts revealed by investigations and conclude that surgery was necessary. I am glad that Tony Blair was never a surgeon. He went to war because of his beliefs, and I find that very chilling.

I also pay tribute to those people who constantly warned that no plans had been made for the aftermath once Saddam Hussein was defeated. It seems a common problem nowadays. What do you do? “Lessons will be learned”, they say. How many times have I heard “Lessons will be learned” in this Chamber today? Are they ever learned? Do our children ever learn from the lessons we learned? No, we have to learn for ourselves. I despair of the phrase “Lessons will be learned” because I do not think that they are.

We have heard tributes to Robin Cook, who was honest, extremely honourable and resigned from the Government at the time. I also pay tribute to Clare Short, who warned consistently of lack of planning and eventually resigned at the end of that period. In particular, I would like to mention Caroline Spelman MP, who was the shadow Secretary of State for International Development and had several meetings with us on the international development teams. She asked many times of the Government where the plan was for the reconstruction of Iraq, and who was going to take charge when it was over. Answer came there none. Those people should be remembered.

During the discussions with the then President of the United States, and in return for supporting his invasion of Iraq in the absence of a second resolution, Tony Blair asked that we would make progress on the Israel/Palestine peace process, which had been “quiescent”, to use the term of the Chilcot report and as Tony Blair described it, since the Oslo accord in 1993. That word is a sick joke if you are a Palestinian—nothing was ever quiescent.

Much has been said about the invasion of Iraq leading to the rise of Islamic fundamentalists and the so-called Islamic State or Daesh—I call them barbarians still. Anyone who has travelled in the Middle East knows that the causes lie much deeper and longer ago. The justified angst of the Arabs started after the First World War with the Sykes-Picot agreement. A major cause of this angst continuing is the increasingly appalling policies and brutality of the Israeli Government and the lack of any solution to that problem. Israel is allowed to break international law and the Geneva Convention with impunity. Together with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the other Gulf states, they abuse the human rights of people in their countries. If we in the West could stop this totally hypocritical foreign policy and treat all nations equally and fairly according to international law, we maybe would have more peace in the world.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge]

My Lords, I rise as the fourth noble Baroness to speak in the debate tonight, which is sad when you look at the UNICEF figures which show that women and children suffer disproportionately in conflict and form the highest proportion of casualties. I am sad that so few of the sisterhood are here.

I add my tribute to our Armed Forces as the weekend of remembrance begins. I never cease to be grateful for the great life that I was given as a result of their sacrifice during the Second World War and since. Their worth was also brought home to me when I was spokesperson for international development in the other place and often went into conflict or post-conflict areas. The efficiency of our Armed Forces was praised in places as different as Kosovo and Sierra Leone—both of those places benefiting from our troops’ ability to wage peace after conflict as well as to wage war.

I was therefore instantly attracted, as was my noble friend Lord Chidgey, to sections in the review that discussed diverting development aid to fragile states to try to prevent conflict—a noble aim. I well remember getting into big trouble—not the only time—when after the horror of the attack on the World Trade Centre I called for food and aid, instead of bombs, to be dropped on Afghanistan. I had been receiving reports of the terrible famine raging in that country and could not see how bombing would catch Osama bin Laden or win over the people of Afghanistan.

I still think I was right on that occasion. We were very slow to start to improve the lives of the people of Afghanistan, which is only now just beginning to happen. Poverty causes conflict, which causes more poverty, which leads to more conflict. It is a common pattern that we see all over the world. So I welcome the emphasis on aid to fragile states and the announcement that it will be donated according to the OECD guidelines for aid drawn up in 2005. However, I note that under the previous Government DfID scaled up its aid to fragile states and more than doubled its support over the past five years, spending £1 billion, or 46 per cent, of its bilateral expenditure in 2007-08, and in 2009-10 spending 61 per cent, or £1.6 billion, of country-specific bilateral assistance in the fragile states. So excuse me for asking the Minister why it is now trumpeted that DfID will spend 30 per cent of ODA to support fragile states in conflict areas. We need some clarification; what is new here? What worries me is that DfID’s core mandate of development and poverty reduction will lose out and a large proportion of ODA will be diverted to security and defence.

Poverty, climate change and population growth all combine to cause conflict and migration as land and food resources get less and less. ODA must continue to be used for education, health and especially maternal health and family planning, which will increase the country’s prosperity and reduce the number of people that have to be fed. Assistance must not be used for military purposes, and I hope that we can get assurance on that.

Prevention of conflict also means that we must start being honest about international law and UN resolutions. It is a disgrace to us all that problems such as Kashmir and Palestine are still alienating Muslims all over the world. The treatment of Palestinians by Israel is held up as an example of how the West treats Muslims and is at the root cause of terrorism worldwide. Even Tony Blair has now admitted this publicly. Why do we let it continue? Is it Holocaust guilt? We should be guilty—of course we should. Is it the power of the pro-Israel lobby here and in the USA? I do not know. Or is it the need, maybe, to have an aircraft carrier called Israel in the Middle East from which to launch attacks on countries such as Iran? The cynic might think that that is why HMS “Ark Royal” and the Harriers can be dispensed with—we already have a static “Ark Royal” in a strategic position, armed to the teeth and ready to fight, provided that we do not offend Israel. I feel sorry for the people of Israel sometimes. Their Government’s policies have made that country the cause of a lot of the world’s problems, yet now they are seen in the middle as the remedy and the base for the West to fight back.

If we were serious about conflict prevention as talked about in the review, we must start taking action to stop Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians and to ensure that it and other countries obey international law and the Geneva conventions and respect human rights. That is the only way we shall get world order, and that would be really something—real conflict prevention.