COP 27

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I understand from my noble friend that we lead the campaign for 30/30.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome my noble friend’s response to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, but I encourage her to have discussions between our Ministers and other Ministers at COP 27 on getting businesses to help the less developed countries be able to respond better by investing in them, and countries helping to support that through business. Will my noble friend comment on that?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I am very glad my noble friend raised that, because the Glasgow climate pact emphasised the importance of collaboration across sectors in all parts of society to deliver on climate change, and business plays an important part. I remember from my experience of net-zero plans when I was in business, many years ago. Business can contribute in some of the poorest countries in the world by helping the transition, reducing carbon and being more efficient. There is a real win-win there, and what has been encouraging both at Glasgow and in the prospective agendas for Sharm el-Sheikh is how businesses are stepping up to the plate in this important area.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 13th July 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. Before I speak to Amendment 66, I express my wholehearted support for the amendments so well introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. Of course, this is a place where we see the colours of the Government, because this is how they spend their money. So, this is not about idle words—it is about hard cash and what actually happens on the ground.

Having worked in local government on a London council, I know the power of procurement—it is absolutely massive. The amendment that I am introducing—I am pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is supporting it—is about how we can ensure the health and sustainability of food and catering services. That priority appears to be currently missing across the NPPS. My amendment sets out in subsection (3A) a range of topics that must be covered in relation to food, including the requirement to set targets on those matters. I know that the targets are a matter for the NPPS, but I have specified a minimum target, which has come from the national food strategy.

In common with other noble Lords, I see this amendment as addressing a key strategic priority, which is both nationally and locally important: that high-priority, cross-cutting topics such as sustainability and the health of our food system must be front and centre in legislation, rather than being left to a policy statement that could be changed unilaterally when we get a change of Government. While I fully accept that you have to have flexibility and be able to change, this argument applies to the technical detail and second- order priorities. It seems reasonable to assume that it is unlikely that considerations such as local and environmentally sustainable sourcing, servings and diets, or the management of resource inputs and waste outputs, will cease to be key national or local priorities, even in the medium to long term. Even were we to fully address them, we would wish to be watchful and continue to prioritise them to ensure that they remain addressed.

I have been pleased to see that the Government agree with me on the importance of this issue, hence the recent public commitment in the government food strategy to consult on extending the government buying standards for food and catering services across the whole of the public sector and the accompanying Defra consultation on how we are going to do it. The government food strategy also agrees that public sector food should be healthier, more sustainable and provided by a range of local suppliers, which will improve accountability and inform future policy changes. It also commits us to requiring public organisations to report on the food that they buy, where they serve it and what they waste. I think that this amendment is wholly uncontroversial. It simply captures the key topics that make up the buying standards.

My amendment sets one minimum target on the face of the Bill in relation to local and sustainable sourcing. The government food strategy has an aspirational target that 50% of food by value should be sustainable or local, but my assumption in setting a target of 30%, rising to 50%, is that the strategy’s target was not intended to mean that 50% of food should be local but unsustainable, with the other 50% being wholly sustainable but from miles away. I have therefore anticipated a degree of overlap from the start, until, over time, both sides meet the 50% criteria.

I do not think that there are any sensible grounds to reject this amendment on the basis that procurement authorities are wholly on top of this agenda and that a statutory footing for food and catering standards, however flexible, is therefore unnecessary. Rather, a considerable amount more might be done to strengthen the oversight of food and catering.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee highlighted a number of issues in its report last year. Monitoring appeared to be almost absent, no penalties were ever applied where standards were visibly not adhered to and an independent survey covered in the Select Committee report found that 60% of secondary schools were not even following the school food standards. Another report found that half of hospitals were not complying with the government buying standards—you can see why that happens when they get paid by Coca-Cola to keep a machine in their lobby, which then becomes part of a hospital’s budget.

Its conclusion was that we do not have a clear picture of how frequently and effectively buying standards are being followed by the public bodies that are mandated to follow the standards. It means that food supply chains cannot normalise around one set of baseline standards. If we put a framework for the food aspects of the NPPS on a statutory footing, it will flow down through all areas of the contracts.

Before leaving this subsection, I draw noble Lords’ attention to what has happened in one particular place in the UK—Preston. Between 2010 and 2016, the council estimated that it lost roughly 60p in every £1 from central government payments. Preston City Council identified the biggest organisations in the city—council, university, police and housing associations—and worked out that they had a combined annual spend of £750 million. In 2012-13, only £1 of every £20 stayed in the local economy. It was reworked so that, by 2017, the six local public bodies spent £38 million in Preston itself and £292 million in the area. It used the social value Act, a 2013 law that requires people who commission public services to think about how they can ensure wider social, economic and environmental gain. Local food obviously creates local jobs in horticulture, which is also set out in the Government’s response to the National Food Strategy. A target on local spend will only help to make this really work.

Proposed new subsection (3B) takes the recommendation of an updated reference diet for the nation, in line with our health and sustainability goals. As Henry Dimbleby explained in the food strategy, this diet, which he recommended to be published by the FSA working with the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, Defra and a range of other consultees, would create a single reference point and a consistent approach across government policies. The NFS observed that

“Dietary guidance in the UK is based on evidence of the health effects of individual nutrients and foods rather than overall diet”.


Therefore, it is not consistent. It continues:

“Our current Eatwell guide, the closest we have to a reference diet, does not take sustainability into account”—


at all. The absence of mandatory dietary guidance for public procurement has been widely cited as one of the reasons—in fact, probably the main reason—for the poor quality of food on offer in public settings. Creating a legal obligation for food procured by the public sector will not only avoid inconsistencies—as in an “eat as I say, not as I do” approach—but allow the Government to lead by example.

The point of all this is that it empowers local communities and farmers, creates jobs and makes children more interested in food. All the way through, it will help to change the health of our nation and put us on a much better footing. If this diet is created in the future, the Minister of the Crown who produces the NPPS would be obliged to have regard to it, which does not tie the Government’s hands or force them to carry out work they do not want to. It merely provides for joined-up governance.

With those remarks, I reiterate my belief that this amendment is completely uncontroversial and ought to meet the Government’s support. I commend it to the Minister and look forward to hearing their views.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. I have already spoken to the positive case for the inclusion of climate and nature in the Bill. Amendments 65 and 546, to which I have added my name, would offer the particular benefit of providing additional stability or, if noble Lords wish, discouraging repeated tinkering through the frequent updates of the national procurement policy statement by putting the essentials of the NPPS in the Bill.

I make one other point, which relates to the contrast between the Green Paper and the language on the national procurement policy statement. The Green Paper said, strongly and correctly, that

“money spent through public procurement will be used to deliver government priorities through projects and programmes that generate economic growth, help our communities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and tackle climate change.”

These have all been mentioned already by noble Lords. Elsewhere,

“government spending must be leveraged to play its part in the UK’s economic recovery, opening up public contracts to more small businesses and social enterprises to innovate in public service delivery, and meeting our net-zero carbon target by 2050.”

The eventual text of the current non-statutory NPPS is perhaps a little more modest in its application: it only requires contracting authorities to have regard to considering contributing to the UK’s climate target—but not to its interim carbon budgets or climate adaptation—and to considering identifying opportunities to enhance biodiversity. There are no specific environmental targets. With such a large annual spend on public procurement, this may be a missed opportunity for the Government to strengthen these provisions by instead requiring contracting authorities to have regard to actively contributing to specific climate and nature targets, rather than just considering contributing to them.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 6th July 2022 Grand Committee

I have great sympathy for Amendment 81, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and the need to introduce a further test to see how we can best meet our goals of public procurement and whether this is an important part of the process that seems to be missing. On that, I will sit down; thank you very much for your time.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, in supporting Amendments 85 and 87, I declare my interests as someone with small and medium-sized businesses in adult social care; as the chair of a renewable energy company; and as someone with 44 years of experience in the SME sector—taking away the 10 and a half years of my Front-Bench life, which excluded me from my businesses.

I start by supporting the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley. They very much touch on what the SME sector faces constantly: the challenge of being able to enter into procurement. Today, I had a delegation of small and medium-sized manufacturers come to me from Leicester because they are fed up to the back teeth with constantly being outed from the process of some public sector contracts, with which we could reinvigorate our manufacturing sector. Covid taught us a lot about outsourcing. What we want to do is build back our insourcing. It hits all the challenges that we want to get to net zero on.

Listening to their struggles, I know, having come from the textiles industry at the early age of 19, that this country is remarkably good at producing goods if people are given the opportunities. This Bill will be one of those routes in to being able to demonstrate how much this country can focus on supporting industry, making the procurement system a lot easier. I know that, when we have to do this in adult social care, it is a nightmare to get through the processes because we as an independent business are competing with large organisations that are based overseas and have tens of thousands of pounds to put behind writing bid tenders.

I champion small and medium-sized businesses—particularly from the Midlands because that is my place and I will always champion it—but we are constantly missing out on the great talent that we have here. Reducing our carbon footprint because we can produce things here is a no-brainer for me.

I will go back to my script, which I have worked a little bit on. In its guidance on sustainable procurement, the World Bank recognises the role that procurement can play in driving sustainability goals and highlights the value-for-money benefits of sustainable procurement, stating:

“Sustainable procurement is strategic procurement practice at its optimum.”


Taking sustainable procurement considerations into account from the outset of the procurement process is critical. These amendments will help to deliver on that vision and meet the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendation in its progress report to Parliament last week that procurement decisions by all government departments be aligned with the net-zero goals.

In ensuring that contracting authorities design a procurement system that proactively seeks out suppliers who are doing the right thing and providing goods and services that help to deliver a resilient society and tackle climate change and biodiversity loss, I hope that my noble friend the Minister will look at these changes and try to incorporate them in the Bill. If we have an opportunity, we should take it now because it will save the planet and will save our own sectors in this country as well.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I am happy to support Amendments 85 and 87 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. As we have heard, procurement is an incredibly powerful tool and, if we do not use it in the right way, we will never get to our net-zero targets.

I thoroughly support the aim to shift the ambition of any new procurement regime to positively reward and incentivise suppliers who are innovating and providing climate-positive, sustainable products. As well as helping to achieve our climate and environmental goals, it will bring economic benefits. I would go further and say that we should not award any contracts to people who do not fulfil these categories from now on.

I note that the Government’s response to the consultation on the procurement Green Paper commented that many respondents had

“provided details of aspects that they would like contracting authorities to take greater account of, for example more focus on social and environmental impact.”

This amendment would help to ensure that contracting authorities always take this goal forward. The net-zero strategy, which many of us have referred to, clearly establishes the strategic importance of net zero at the project design stage. This amendment would make it much easier to draw this golden thread right through the procurement process to the end product.

With that in mind, I conclude that this amendment to incorporate the climate, environment and wider public benefits of procurement at preliminary market engagement when the authority’s procurement exercise is at the design stage is fully in line with policy. It needs only to be reflected in the Bill in the permissive way in which it is expressed in this amendment. I very much hope that the Minister will welcome it.

Before I sit down, I support Amendment 82 from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. As someone who has chaired many charities and tried to work with local authorities about picking up contracts that have lapsed, such as meals on wheels, I can say that you really need to know in advance what money might be available. No one should take the charities sector for granted in this respect.

Elections Bill

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 6th April 2022 Lords Chamber

I particularly support Amendment 6 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, because it accepts the Government’s manifesto commitment to the principle of voter ID but goes a long way towards ameliorating the worst consequences of a thoroughly undesirable and unnecessary proposal. Allowing a range of documents, including the poll card, to be presented as ID, and allowing another elector with ID to vouch for the one who does not have any, would greatly increase the likelihood of minority groups successfully voting.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to pick up on a couple of comments. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, spoke about the objection to grouping all BAME communities together and believing that they will not be in favour of an ID card. I have spent weeks talking to people from all communities, including BAME and poor communities, in my own city of Leicester, which is one of the most diverse cities in the country. When I asked them whether they would object to a voter ID card with a photograph, not one person said that they would. I do not understand where this evidence keeps coming from that BAME communities or people on the lowest incomes are going to be disfranchised.

I have spent my whole life in Leicester. I understand the worries that there are in Leicester. One case has been pointed to, but I have had people coming to me, over several elections, worried about the integrity of the elections being held in Leicester. I am speaking about Leicester because it is my home city and I want it to be a city that believes voting in this country is fair for everyone.

When people in this Chamber say that eight or nine out of 10 people are happy with the system as it is today, I do not know who has been consulted or how far that has reached out into communities such as mine, because I would love each and every one of your Lordships to come and speak to people in my home city and get a real reflection of why I am so passionate about making sure that voter ID is part and parcel of the way we take our elections forward. So many people tell me that they do not feel safe or happy with the current system.

Following on from the noble Lord, Lord Desai, I say: please stop talking on BAME communities’ behalf as if all of us are grouped as one lump and we all think and do things in the same way. We do not. We actually are consistent in our duty as citizens to try to partake in elections in the UK, but part of the problem, which I have seen, has been demonstrated to me. At the last local election I was involved with, people showed me two cases where people came with proxy votes: five proxy votes in one case, four in another, and the only registered proxy was one vote in the council.

I really want there to be a genuinely good system for all of us. This is not about the BAME community. It is about the integrity of voting, which is all I am interested in. Not one of the people I spoke to has objected to voter ID. The only clarification I should like from my noble friend on the Front Bench is: will the ID card be for everyone, or for those people who do not hold a photo ID of any kind? Will this £180 million be spent on ID cards for everyone, or is it particularly for those who have no photo ID of any sort? I was not sure about this.

[Lord Maxton (Lab)]

Can the noble Baroness tell me exactly what “photo” means? Looking at the list produced by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, it could all be contained on one identity card or, as I prefer to call it, a smart card for all.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I am only saying that I have had no objection to it being a photo ID. The implication seems to be that we, as communities, would object and become disenfranchised but I have not found that. This is the only point I am trying to raise.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma. She has raised some of the issues that have prompted me to speak today. I have had a slight change of heart or mind—or my mind has been changed—which is why I am speaking, rather than repeating everything that I previously said.

My concerns about these photo IDs have fairly consistently been that there is no evidence of voter impersonation; it is not an issue. I do not like any move towards a “show us your pass” society. I worry about the unintended consequences of the Government pushing voter ID. In itself, it implies a problem which might then undermine trust in the democratic process. In particular, I echo the query from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, about the consequences of people being turned away from polling stations. I have raised that before.

I am not very good at paperwork. I am the kind of person who gets it wrong. We have only to look at the best-intended interventions in Ukraine, or in Poland with the issuing of visas to Ukrainian refugees, to see that paperwork can go wrong. I am concerned about people turning up with the wrong thing and being sent away when they only have that day to vote. It would imply to fellow citizens that something dodgy was going on—that they were cheating, rather than just having the wrong piece of paper. What does the Minister advise in this instance?

In following the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, the problem is that we have probably got to a point where the ship has sailed regarding trust in democracy. Something has gone wrong. A constant theme in commentary on elections is that too many people seem to think it impossible for their side to have lost without implying that the other side has somehow won by cheating or that the vote was manipulated. I have been quite shocked by the commentary around the vote in Hungary, in which it has been implied that the only basis on which Orban won was become something dodgy happened and that it was unfair. That was said about Brexit, about Trump’s win and about Biden’s win. In all those instances, there have been implicit or explicit accusations by losers that somehow cheating has happened. There is a broader problem of the undermining of trust in democracy, which I think a lot of people in this Chamber and outside it have created, but it has nothing to do with voter ID.

When I started to talk to people after my speeches at Second Reading and in Committee, I was absolutely inundated by those who said that they disagreed with my opposition to voter ID. Those were not the cut-and-paste emails, which we all receive, or from organised lobby groups. They appeared to be from ordinary people. Pundits and loads of people contacted me—some I knew and some I did not. I have had more correspondence on this than on anything else.

I tell your Lordships this because I was taken aback, but when I started to talk to people, they said that because there is a big debate about trust in the democratic process, for whatever reason, they want reassurance that the ballot box is secure. People said that their motives were about protecting the vote and respecting democracy. I do not know that it can be described as fake news when the Government say there is a discussion about the democratic process, because it seems that there is. I suppose that has happened in the name of transparency, accountability and trying to be honest, so when people say that they want to shore up democracy through ID, I want to take at least some notice.

Another thing that was said, which fits in with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, was that they felt insulted by the idea that showing ID would put them off voting. They said, “You think we have such a low view of democracy, that we are so easily put off voting. The problem is that we go out to vote and when we do, people tell us we voted the wrong way.” That was their problem.

I have thought about it a lot and am still not sure but I am prepared to consider some compromise, particularly on Amendment 8. It does the job by letting us have some ID, as wide a range of IDs as possible so we do not have the problem of turning people away at the ballot box. It is also important to recognise that, whether we like it or not, there is a debate about how much we can trust the democratic process, so if there is a way of reassuring people—although I wish we had not got to that point—then maybe we should think about this.

I would like to know what the Minister thinks about the dangers of undermining our trust in democracy by pushing this too hard. Is there a compromise that the Government can make that would, relatively speaking, satisfy all people? Even the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, said he might reluctantly go down that line, despite it going against what he wants, which is to get rid of it altogether.

Elections Bill

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 17th March 2022 Lords Chamber

We have an opportunity to reset—to use this legislation and say, “You know what? We’ve looked at the evidence, and we’ve got a lot wrong.” I heard the debate on Tuesday, when the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and others said that if we do not put things right, the blind and those with eyesight impediments may not be able to engage. I am talking about young people and people from African, Asian and Caribbean communities. The report on the 2019 review says that Asian communities in Derby were disproportionately affected by voter ID. We can do better than that. This is our opportunity to tell those communities that we are listening and caring. We must get them to the voting booth by being positive—not by being negative as this Bill shows.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I did not want to be here either today, because of my fractured foot. The noble Lord, Lord Woolley, and I go back a long way, fighting on the same side on many things. However, I am worried that we are pulling everybody together and thinking that wanting to clean up the system is disenfranchising people.

I have worked so hard locally engaging with people, and the thing I hear back all the time is, “What’s the point of my vote when it’s not going to count?”, because they are not engaged—not, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, because they do not want to be, but because in cities like mine, they are not encouraged to be engaged. I have talked about those who cannot speak and understand English over and again in this Chamber, and I am talking about the many women I engage with every single week in my city. I really try hard to get them engaged in what is going on in their city because their rights are constantly being set aside.

I want our voting system to reflect these women’s desires too, just as the noble Lord and I have fought battles against everything else that is discriminatory. I want to remove this inability for them to believe that they matter. They do not matter because, most of the time, the decisions they want to make are made by people who tend to speak on their behalf because they are the only people who are engaging.

It is not just about the £180 million for me—it really is not. I am passionate that we have a system where every single vote counts, whether it is from the poor, white working class in my city or the women I am engaged with. I spoke with many of them about this Bill—before I did this to my foot—and said that I would listen carefully to what was being said. Often as not, I ask for clarification from the Government Front Bench because I want to know that what I am taking back to them will actually empower them and not take power away. A lot of the time, what they said to me was that they want to be the people who matter in this process. At this moment in time, they do not feel that they matter. For me, anything that tidies that up is a great thing.

I of course want young people to be engaged, but more important than the young people coming forward are the people who are there today—the women from my communities and the noble Lord’s communities, and the poor, working class—who do not feel engaged. If that means we have to have something that helps that process, I am all for it. Do not think for one minute I will not challenge my Front Bench if I do not agree with it, but I really want a system that enables us all to feel that we are part of a process where one vote matters. At the moment, there are plenty in my city who do not believe that.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, what a wonderful, emotional, eloquent contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Woolley. I have to say I totally agree. Here we are this afternoon debating the minutiae of the costs of voter ID, when the big issue we are failing to debate and come to terms with is the huge number of people in our country who should be able to vote but are not able to because they are not on the register. It is disproportionately and discriminatively against those from black communities, Asian communities and working-class communities. That is why the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, was so powerful.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

I am tired of this divisiveness that keeps coming up. We have been in this country for a very long time. The divisiveness that has been caused has been caused because we have refused to allow people to be fully engaged. I am going to stand here and say that over and over again. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, can shake her head, but I have heard it over and over again that minority communities do not want to engage. They do, but unfortunately the systems do not always help them.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I have found this absolutely fascinating—I genuinely have. This is not a rhetorical point. I understand that both the noble Baronesses opposite who have spoken have said they want integrity in the system. The noble Baroness has just said she feels passionate about a lack of engagement and obstacles to people’s engagement—an issue on which I suspect she finds common cause with the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, and everyone in the Committee. My question to the noble Baroness, because I really want to understand her position, is whether she feels that, at present, a significant bar to the engagement she seeks is coming from widespread voter fraud in the communities she is discussing. Is that the problem she feels is the stumbling block and is that why she is a supporter of the Government’s policy?

Budget Statement

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con) [V]]

I refer noble Lords to my interests in the register, and I join all noble Lords in congratulating noble Lords who have given maiden speeches today.

I welcome the Budget: the Chancellor has had to strike a very fine balance in protecting jobs. Could my noble friend the Minister tell me whether he or the Government are considering a review of local enterprise partnerships—LEPs—to see whether they are able to provide greater support to the SME sector, as raised by my noble friend Lord Sterling? He is absolutely right that small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of our country, and they will need as much support as possible in creating and protecting jobs; we—certainly I—have not seen enough.

My interest is in Leicestershire, and I am extremely grateful for the work that is being done by my colleagues there with the Midlands Engine. However, there is a lot more that we can do, and I would like my noble friend the Minister to see whether it would be possible to review and look at the LEPs and how they can work more closely with the SME sector in particular—especially companies that are now looking at new areas of job creation, on digital platforms and in the science and creative sectors.

I will also ask my noble friend to be very mindful of the impact that this has had on women workers and women-led businesses. Can he give some words of comfort to, and see what further support and advice is available to support, those businesses with offices or premises on high streets that have suffered simply because they have had to close for long periods of time, because landlords will expect a renewal of their rents as soon as lockdown is over?

Space Industry

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Verma (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Willetts for this debate, be it short. I also want to welcome my noble friend the Minister and congratulate him on his maiden speech and new role. As a person from Leicester, where we have the National Space Centre and where the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, is the chancellor of the University of Leicester, I want to ask my noble friend where we can explore better collaboration programmes with the emerging markets in space development and high-tech knowledge exchange. Cities such as Leicester need to reinvent themselves post pandemic. We have brilliant universities and brilliant research collaborations going on across the world. We now need to maximise those partnerships globally. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sarfraz, that it is not just about space; it is about all the other side events that can come into fruition from better collaboration.

EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. It is now time to ensure that, against the challenges of Covid-19, we as a country talk up our ability to go out, to engage, to get progressive and advantageous trade deals and stronger engagement with the emerging economies of the world, and to develop even closer relationships and exchanges of information and intelligence with our EU friends and those globally that we share common goals and threats with.

Can my noble friend the Minister provide comfort and confirmation to the SME sector, which throughout the transition period raised concerns about preparedness and readiness, that it will be properly supported, not penalised, if it makes errors in the early days, and that there will be some grace period to help SMEs to embed the processes and systems required? Many have told us that they are fighting the impacts of the pandemic, and that has dramatically impacted on their cash flows.

Would my noble friend also tell me what support those currently working in the EU are being provided to ensure that they do not face any untoward hardship or difficulty in continuing to work in Europe? I wish to know what they need to be done in a respectful way, just as we would be treating EU citizens in the UK.

Finally, with the growing rise of racism in some parts of Europe, will my noble friend ensure that all UK citizens are free from harm, discrimination and barriers to opportunities with this new relationship? I do not want to see certain parts of our country unable to access the benefits that we will find outside the European Union.

G7 Summit

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, unfortunately, I was not able to catch every word of the noble Baroness’s question but certainly, as I have said, the commitment to helping the fight against Covid, such as through the COVAX initiative, will continue, and I can confirm that climate change will be one of the priorities, as I said in my opening Answer.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the G7 also has a responsibility to look at how it will respond to women and girls, post Covid, because the biggest impact has been on them? Will he please ensure that, as we hold the presidency, they will be at the forefront of access to finance for enterprise and education?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend makes a profoundly important point. Again, within the constraints of not being able to anticipate announcements, I say that further details will come. What I can say to her is that, as she and I are both aware, girls’ education and training have always been a priority for the Prime Minister, and I am certain that he will drive that forward through the G7 discussions.

Finance Bill

Baroness Verma Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 17th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I too start by thanking the Government and congratulating them on the measures that they have introduced so far. I largely agree with my noble friends Lord Shrewsbury and Blencathra, and the noble Lord, Lord Empey, that we now need to move fast and encourage people to go out and back to work. I want to focus my attention on small and medium-sized businesses. In my own city of Leicester, we are in a second lockdown that only yesterday was extended. Many businesses will now look for further support from the Government, and I hope my noble friend can confirm that I can tell them that help will be available. Grants of £10,000 and £25,000 were issued for businesses at the start of the lockdown, but if money is still available in local authority coffers, it should be reassigned to provide further help for struggling businesses in cities like my own, because we are going to have to work even harder to ensure that they do not close down.

I would like my noble friend to speak to colleagues about skills, an issue raised by my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury. It is critical that in cities like mine where manufacturing was the main driver of economic growth, a skills programme be provided so that manufacturing can return and help support economic growth in the country. I am thinking in particular of the fallout from PPE production, which cities like Leicester and others across the East Midlands could deliver. Can my noble friend assure me that every step will be taken to put in place a skills agenda for young people in these industries? The spotlight has been shone on Leicester in recent days because of poor working conditions and workers being paid less than the minimum wage. Let us eradicate these practices and put in place proper working conditions, training and skills, so that not just the people but their local economies and the national economy as a whole can benefit. I hope that my noble friend’s response will be positive.