Female Entrepreneurship
Debate between Lord Bates and Earl of Listowel(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Bates
That was a particular focus of a report done by Vince Cable when he was Secretary of State. It was carried out by Lorely Burt MP, now the noble Baroness, Lady Burt. He came out very much on the side of more needing to be done for entrepreneurs. Alison Rose identified that the problems occur at school with not getting more females into STEM subjects. While some progress has been made, with a 25% increase since 2010, the report recognised that significantly more needed to be done to ensure that people had the skills necessary to set up their business and make a success of it.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, while I warmly welcome the investment that the Government have made in childcare, is the Minister concerned that childcare work, done principally by women, is still very low status and low paid? Will he talk with his colleagues about investing more in continuous professional development for early-years workers so that they start their own businesses and develop themselves?
Lord Bates
Many of them have done that. As well as skills strategies, developments such as the national living wage have made a significant difference to people in those professions. We need to look at all those issues.
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
Debate between Lord Bates and Earl of Listowel(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Bates
The noble Lord is right. Some middle-income countries, such as China, India and Indonesia, show the highest incidence of TB. The highest incidence of HIV/AIDS is to be found in South Africa, with an increasing number of instances in the countries of central and eastern Europe due to drug-related infections, so this has to be part of the overall effort. The noble Lord and I have often talked about the fact that the SDGs are very important because they focus on eradicating the disease rather than focusing on a particular geographic area.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, how has the Global Fund contributed to reducing the transfer of HIV/AIDS from mother to infant, and what progress has been made with regard to reducing maternal transfer?
Lord Bates
I do not have a specific answer to that, so perhaps I may deal with it in my written response to my noble friend Lord Black.
Education: Disability Financing
Debate between Lord Bates and Earl of Listowel(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Bates
One thing that was identified in the report to which we have just referred was the lack of data about what the need was and what the responses were. We have a disability framework in the department, which guides everything that we do across our aid strategy. We are looking at finding better practices for what is working; for example, we are working in Kenya and Uganda with Leonard Cheshire to try to find better examples of what is working on the ground to address this problem.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
Is the Minister looking at how many of these children are in institutional care and whether it is always appropriate for them to be so? Many of them could be better placed in foster or kinship care. Is that a matter that the Minister might look at?
Lord Bates
A number of excellent charities are working in this very area. It is certainly something that we are sympathetic to; disability has been one of the core criteria for UK Aid Direct, a new round of which has come in. We also have the Girls’ Education Challenge, which has educated some 46,000 girls with disabilities in schools. The next round of that project will increase the allocation still further to 15% of the total fund.