Domestic Abuse

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for introducing this important debate. It is crucial that we hold together support for victims and prevention. To get value for our investment we need to push back against the space that allows this crime to happen. I want to offer one or two thoughts about the framework within which resources need to be spent, and about the challenge to the Minister and to local authorities in the complexities that we are trying to deal with. The smaller the budget, the greater the odds against anything working.

Domus—home—is to many people a sacred space where they find their security and identity, and from which they negotiate into the world. That was probably a Victorian creation. The reality is that that private space has often been a space for rules to be made up and power to be exercised in an abusive way. That is a deep reality.

One of the big-picture things we have to consider is how, when we have public values and standards, we enable people to recognise that those should apply in private spaces, and that they should not feel free to run their own circus and make up their own set of rules—often short-tempered and fuelled by drink, drugs or whatever else. Somehow we have to connect the public expectations we can all sign up for, and which many people who get caught up in domestic abuse would sign up for, with the private space in which people sometimes feel free to behave in an abusive way.

The work of refuges is invaluable, and in particular the specialist care—but the point about funding made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, leads to the fact that a refuge is often a stepping stone in a whole process of destabilisation for people. Enormous resources and skills are therefore needed, not just around the refuge but around continuing care and continuing resourcing, for people to become stable and stand on their own feet.

The notion of partnership is crucial. If we are to invest in local authorities having a lead role, there must be an expectation and commitment that those authorities work in partnership with Women’s Aid and other experts on the ground, so that funding is deployed most effectively and the needs and voices of the victims are heard and help us shape the investment. It is the partnerships that allow that connectivity from the professionals and agencies into where the money needs to be deployed.

I will give some headlines from Derbyshire County Council—I work in Derbyshire—about what it is trying to do in this area. The council says that it has made no cuts at the moment, so that is a small sign of hope. The basic problem of victims not knowing where to turn was met by establishing a dedicated team and a phone line. In three months there were 12,000 calls. This is in just one county. The demand is enormous. As we said, there is a hidden demand below those who have the courage to pick up the phone. But it is complicated. In urban areas such as Chesterfield there are drop-in centres, and in rural areas one has to rely on GPs or other public officials. Resourcing all of those people is a massive challenge. There is a male-only refuge in Derbyshire, mainly for victims of arranged marriages. We must remember that, although this is a gendered issue, there is an underside of male victims.

We are trying to push back. In the High Peak area there is a programme in schools to try to identify vulnerable and potential victims. The Minister might like to think about the enormous investment that we make in education for 10 years of character formation for people. As the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, said, with this 2019 plan, how can we ensure that it is not just some gentle stuff about the perfect relationships that created the Victorian idea of the home? It is about the reality of people losing their tempers and drinking too much—all the kinds of things that fuel this. That is a huge challenge for government and educational authorities.

We in Derbyshire also run a voluntary scheme for perpetrators. It is right to challenge people’s criminal behaviour, but we have to look at the possibility of what I call reformation of character and reach out, as we do to victims, to those perpetrators. Again, that is a huge area of expertise that requires investment. We must not neglect the importance of trying to help people who are perpetrators to climb out of that cycle that they so easily get into.

I have a number of strands that the Minister might like to comment on. How can we deploy funds to give priority to partnerships around local authorities that involve victim input so that we can get value for money? Secondly, how can we make sure that education about relationships can be 10 years of formation about the realities and challenges of relationships, which are tough for all of us, and not just some academic enterprise? Thirdly, how can we make sure that we reach out to those who are properly criminalised when love and power go wrong and seek ways of reformation and reconnection often into families, through connection with children and into society?

Trafficked Children: Asylum

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am clear that the national referral mechanism meets the needs of children. As the noble Lord may know, the Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability announced the Government’s proposals to reform the NRM. For children, this ensures that support for child victims is improved by continuing with the rollout of the independent child trafficking advocates. We are trying new and innovative ways to give money to NGOs as part of the child trafficking protection fund.

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the advisory panel of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner. I ask the Minister about the role of the modern slavery unit in the Home Office, in this area to do with children and more generally. How does the modern slavery unit help those of us working in this area of children and care for victims? How do we know what its priorities and practices are so that we can best co-operate?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The role of the commissioner should be to assess how the system is working. As I said in answer to the previous question, children should receive the specialist support and assistance that they need according to their circumstances. The role of the NRM is to ensure that a trafficked child is given the appropriate support they need from all the agencies involved to be able to move on from that traumatic experience.

Water: Developing Countries

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for introducing this vital issue. The timeframe is pressing and getting shorter. It is wonderful to hear the testimony of colleagues about Nepal and the inspiring story of the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, on what can be done with commitment. However, it is the scale of the problem that we have to mark.

Clearly, water is basic not only to life but to health. Many of us now carry bottles of water because we know it is good for our health. Lack of water causes droughts, which cause death; too much water causes devastating floods; and untreated water causes death and disease on a vast scale across the world. So how we talk about water, and how as a country we contribute to the global management of water, is a mark of how civilised our world can be and the role we can play in a civilisation that takes seriously how basic good water is for human life.

I shall talk briefly about two areas. The first obvious area is how we can intervene when there is a crisis and a shortage of water. In doing research for this debate I was delighted to find that, within a few miles of where I live in Derbyshire, in the small town of Wirksworth the rotary club set up a scheme called Aquabox, which has sent to disaster areas over 100,000 boxes containing hydration units, education materials and cooking utensils. It is an amazing local charity, which received the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service in 2016. This shows, as in the example given by the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, that we can make interventions. My question to the Minister is: how can all those small, passionate efforts be gathered up strategically to contribute not only to staving off disasters but to building creative steps to put things right in the long term and not just plugging the gaps, if I can use that terrible metaphor in a debate about water?

In addition to responding to disasters, the second area concerns the lack of an infrastructure to provide proper water for so many of our brothers and sisters. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and others have said, the statistics of the number of people who lack access to proper water and sanitation, who suffer from the results of contamination and who have to go miles and spend many hours to collect water are horrific, as is the sheer vulnerability of the women and girls who carry the water.

I want to ask a number of questions about big players such as DfID. In terms of DfID’s strategic operation, to what extent can the long-term provision of a proper infrastructure to provide good water be built in to the grants given to areas for development? All the evidence shows that if we do not do that, however much money we put into education, other forms of healthcare, malaria control and so on, if the basic infrastructure for water to provide a quality of life is not there, it is a dubious investment. There will be short-term gains but, in the long term, disease will keep coming and people will struggle.

What leverage do DfID and people like the Minister have, when we are negotiating to give aid and to join in partnerships with aid agencies, to make the provision of long-term infrastructure for good water a part of the deal? Otherwise a great deal of our investment will be far more short term than we hope.

On a similar track, I should say that I am proud of our amazing aid budget and I congratulate the Government on maintaining the percentage. As we decide on how to invest that budget, how can we build into our aid programmes a challenge to the kind of culture that the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, talked about, where people are expected to sort this out locally and get by? One of the problems with water supplies is that we expect the local people to sort them out and get by. They do that by travelling to fetch water and by losing many of their children at young ages to disease. But that is getting by in an uncivilised way. If we can make targeted and strategic investments into a culture that would allow this kind of development to happen locally through investment in infrastructure, we might begin to make some progress. I turn to the third area: DfID often carries out development in partnership with business enterprises. To what extent can they be challenged to push this issue up the agenda through how we work on development as a Government?

I want to make two more brief points. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that what is key is the development of appropriate technologies. We have some marvellous research and technological wisdom in this country and through other countries we partner with. That needs to be part of the planning equation and the crafting of the strategy equation. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that for us. Lastly, as the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, said, we have a number of levers in terms of international co-operation. Water knows no borders and so it has to be managed politically as well as practically. It would be interesting if the Minister could share with us the role of the Government, especially through DfID but also in terms of other foreign policy relations, in how they approach the political importance of the management of water and what kind of aspirations DfID may have to see that within its portfolio?

Women and Girls: Employment Skills in the Developing World

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, and congratulate him on the splendid work that his foundation does in targeting widows, who are some of the most vulnerable people. I also congratulate Oxfam on producing such a helpful report. Many noble Lords have spoken about the issues. I want to stress the fact that this is not just about inequality and discrimination; the report shows that they are both growing. That growth is the context in which we look at this debate.

I will ask three brief questions about our approach. The Oxfam report rightly talks about the importance of companies. The Minister knows a great deal about my work on modern slavery, as we were partners on the Modern Slavery Act. As we know, given what is happening to companies in an age of tight margins, agency working—because you want a flexible workforce—and desperately vulnerable people needing work, it is very easy to exploit human beings. In fact, as modern slavery increases as a crime, so people become commodities in an economic process. That commodification of people is reinforcing the cultural commodification spoken about by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, whereby women and girls especially are treated as bits of equipment—as cooks or those who run agriculture, or whatever their role is. There is an urgent need for companies and the consumers on whom they rely to raise important questions about the value of human beings, especially the neglected such as women and girls, and to push back against a force which is accelerating and which treats human beings who are vulnerable as commodities. The place of women and girls especially is being reinforced at the bottom of the chain—something that has been culturally true for so long.

The Oxfam report also talks about the importance of government in creating a frame for taxation. One issue we have to face is that in our society, as in others, it is non-governmental actors who call the tune. In some countries, sadly, that is by military action, but multinational companies are also non-government actors that call the tune. But of course there is a noble and strong tradition—we need to bless and work with DfID on these things—of churches, faith groups and volunteers being non-state actors who can make a difference.

In the diocese where I work in Derby, we have partnerships with churches in Calcutta and Delhi, for instance. At this very moment, we are working in partnership to create employment and education for women and girls because all the evidence shows, as I know from visiting these projects, that when you put the energy and wisdom of women and girls into the mix, things take off. That is often because the economy has been slow and leisurely, with its male-dominated kind of norms—so this is a very important thing. Good things can happen and are happening. I hope that the Government and DfID can recognise that non-state actors such as charities, churches and faith groups are already doing important work and can get under the radar of some of the problems with government policy and multinational behaviour. They can begin to empower people from the grass roots up—which is where women and girls make such a difference.

My last point is one that I want to bring home much more to us in this Chamber, and to the people whom we serve in government. One key which the Oxfam report points to is taxation: that is, raising money for the common good. If we are honest, we all live in a culture where nobody wants to pay any tax. Governments get elected by promising the lowest taxation margin that they think they can get away with. There is an urgent need to help people understand that to be mature is to be a citizen who sees it as a joy and a privilege to pay tax into a common pool for a common life—one that will look out especially for the vulnerable, such as women and girls in our own culture, let alone in others. That common pool will create funds for us to invest in DfiD, in the United Nations and in the well-being of people in our own society.

We have to speak up on this issue because if we take it as normative that nobody wants to pay tax and somebody else will pick up the bill, the inequality and discrimination that is increasing as we speak will just accelerate, along with the commodification of people. The small efforts of churches and faith groups will be less and less effective as the problem expands. So I would be interested if the Minister would comment on the possibility of appealing to people to be good citizens and to contribute gladly to a common good, especially for those who are vulnerable.

Middle East and North Africa

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I shall make a couple of comments and invite the House to think a little about the humanitarian basis of this debate.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has just said, and the Minister said in her introduction, the scale is unprecedented in our times. The challenge, therefore, to be nimble is very great. I applaud the Government for the amount of investment that has been made in refugees and migrants. I also applaud the Government’s scheme to target the most vulnerable, including victims of sexual violence and torture, the elderly and the disabled. However, I agree with Lord Ashdown that because of the unprecedented scale we need to be generous in our approach and spirit. It is interesting that in the Financial Times today—as some noble Lords may have noticed—a number of senior business people in the City say that we should welcome migrants because of the skills shortage that our country faces. As the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, stated, there are many skilled and able people looking to come into Europe.

In Derby, where I work, we already have many migrants and the pressure on our inner-city infrastructure is enormous. Yet people are keen for us to be generous and to do what we can to reach out to people in such need. Churches are on the front line, administering to those who have already arrived. We have more than 600 people waiting for decisions on asylum applications. So we need to get organised if we are to take any more people. On 2 October we are organising a summit in our cathedral for MPs, local government people, faith groups and civil society, so that we can help the energy to prepare and be generous become organised and make a proper offer.

I invite the House to think briefly about the humanitarian basis of this debate and of our country’s policy. I am privileged to be a trustee of Christian Aid, which for 70 years has been reaching into these situations, and which began—you may remember—by helping refugees and migrants within Europe. Christian Aid is especially involved with those who are still in Syria. It tends to be the better-off and the well-organised who are leaving and the poorest of the poor who are left. I ask the Minister to consider—she mentioned this—how we can continue to encourage investment within Syria to help the most needy as well as those who are leaving.

My main point is about the humanitarian understanding of this debate. Humanitarianism is really based on the Christian understanding in Europe of the unique value of every person in the sight of God. In our modern, secular times that has become the human right of each individual. Because—sadly, I say, in brackets—it lacks the Christian understanding of sin, forgiveness, sacrifice and things that nuance that attempt at equality, it just becomes a simple right. It is a common secular theology in Europe that every human being is unique and precious, and that we should reach out to them, which is why the spirit of generosity is rising up in people.

We have seen what is happening with ISIL: the beheadings; the horrific and systematic sexual violence; the selling of women and girls, especially from the Yazidi tribe; stories of fighters buying young girls for as little as £16, abusing them and selling them on. I heard yesterday of a girl of 10 who died from internal injuries because she was raped so often by her captors. I heard another story of an ISIL fighter, who, before he rapes a girl, kneels down and prays, because he believes that he is fulfilling the will of God. I share these horrific stories because the people who ISIL are recruiting are being recruited to found a new state. It is a state based on those kinds of values, which are horrific for women and girls and for violence against the enemy. Those values are totally incompatible with what we in Europe understand as humanitarian. This is a bold attempt to establish a whole state and society on values contrary to the Christian ones, which, in their secular mode, are recognised throughout the world under the banner of human rights.

So there is an urgent challenge to us all—in this Chamber, in our Parliament and through our Government—to, as the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown said, cohere with Europe around a set of values that are humanitarian, whether we are of a religious or a secular background, because those values are vital to human beings being seen as unique and precious. We face a very well-organised and well-funded organisation that is trying to set up a state on a totally different and contrary basis. I encourage the Government to engage clearly with the organisation of aid and generosity towards refugees in such great need but also to take a lead in Europe in reaffirming our common European, Christian-based values about the rights of every person to be treated generously when in need, and as a unique and precious individual.

Developing World: Women

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I, too, want to thank Lord Loomba for securing this debate and giving us this chance to discuss with the Minister and the Government our priorities and contribution to these issues across the world.

We all know that there is a strong link between the well-being of women and girls and peace, security and development. It is in our UK national plan and is a very big part of my own experience. I am privileged to be a trustee of Christian Aid, and we deliberately prioritise investment in women and girls to secure the transformation and development of needy societies. Within my own Anglican tradition, the Mothers’ Union Worldwide does amazing work in places such as Rwanda, empowering women to transform communities. In my diocese, we have an annual harvest appeal and, for the last several years, have invested in helping women in Delhi set up recycling businesses and, this year, helped educate girls and women in Angola. It is right on the forefront of making a difference. My work on the Modern Slavery Bill opened my eyes to the appalling international abuse and oppression of women through sexual violence and exploitation.

I am very pleased that we include widows in this debate. Some noble Lords may have noticed that, in May, we had Christian Aid Week, and there was a particular focus on widows in Ethiopia. We know from work that we are already doing there that investing in cows and providing a means of a livelihood for women, and then for their families if they are widowed and become the head of the household, creates not just economic empowerment but gives people status in the community as a proper agent and therefore a much stronger position, especially for their daughters, to stand up against things such as forced early marriage or female genital mutilation. If we empower widows in that way as they head households, it has an amazing effect on the children, especially girls, in those households.

The UN estimates that one in three women suffer from beating, sexual coercion or abuse. It is an issue of confronting social norms and institutions, because it is those social values and institutions that enable this oppression and abuse just to roll on. It is very important that we do not depict women simply as victims needing help, but as contributors with a very important part to play. One critique of the millennium development goals, as you know, was that focus in this area was perhaps on symptoms rather than causes—trying to reach out to empower women in an initial way but not giving them the capacity to make a difference to cultural norms and their institutional frameworks. The danger is that women are seen as providers and consumers for the benefit of the family. That can be a cheap way into development—women provide and are consumers to develop the family.

It makes me think of the struggles in the 19th century in our own country, when Ruskin and others developed the doctrine of the two spheres. This was designed to help women by saying that women had a sphere in which they should really grow and develop—that of the home—and men dealt with the world and all the stuff outside. That was an attempt to be positive by creating space for women to grow in. However, it is such a powerful doctrine in the DNA of countries across the world that it in fact entraps women, as we know. My own Church of England has only just succeeded in the struggle, after years, to appoint a woman as a diocesan bishop. There is still an amazingly patronising, two-sphere kind of culture, not just in our church but in our country. If it is a struggle in our own culture, how on earth are we going to help contribute in developing cultures to moving away from that kind of mentality, which is so oppressive?

It is an issue of power relations, education opportunities and cultural values, and that is the most difficult thing to get transformation on. All the evidence shows that an unregulated market of goods and cultural values actually makes the situation worse for women because it gives the impression that development is happening and that there can be economic benefit. However, if we do not tackle the gender imbalance that is built into cultural values, an unregulated market makes this problem worse in development, rather than better, by giving some signs of development but, underneath, women are trapped in these very limited and oppressive spaces.

There has to be a multipronged approach involving government, business and faith groups. In Christian Aid, we work with partners on the ground that know about the pace of change and how to deliver it. I just heard a report at a Christian Aid board meeting of a seven-year project to work with communities to help the male elders begin to involve females in the leadership of their tribes. It took seven years to make any change. That local expertise and sensitivity is needed to make a social transformation that will last, rather than some great perfect plan that everybody says yes to but does not really buy.

It is the same with economic development. Christian Aid works in Malawi with women with HIV and malaria. The project is not just a medical, caring one, which is the way that development for women is often done; it involves giving people loans, facilities to develop businesses and mentoring so that the development is wholesome and the culture is challenged to change, with women taking leadership roles, across not just politics but economic activity.

I would like to finish by asking the Minister to consider four questions. The first is to add my voice to that of a number of others in this debate on the sustainable development goals. How might the Government ensure that there are targets on gender equality and women’s rights and opportunities, and widows, in those sustainable development goals? What are the Government’s plans for these last few months of negotiation?

Secondly, picking up on a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, we could do a lot more to collect data in many countries about rights, social groupings, incomes and the pattern of development. We have the wherewithal to bring data together and see new things that might identify where women are being held up and not enabled to contribute and to make a difference. How do the Government see their role in helping to enable data collection and analysis, and what contribution can this country make?

Thirdly, I told you the story about a seven-year project to get women even beginning to be involved in the political leadership of their tribes. How can the Government offer funding, through DfID, for instance, that is for the longer term and for a sustainable timeframe? What are the Government’s funding policies and priorities that will enable projects to work over seven years in a given place and not just in the short term, which is often what many deals are about?

Finally, what part might the Government play in challenging the unregulated market forces that unintentionally, I think, make the problem worse? What can the Government do to have a proper counterbias to change the gendered culture and give space for women to contribute? The market does not give space for that and the two-sphere idea is still pretty powerful in developing countries. How could the Government articulate, through DfID and its investment and support, a real gender bias to counter the inertia of that two-sphere culture that the market otherwise can just uncritically develop?

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Friday 23rd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the Government and the leaders of all the major parties on, at a time of amazing austerity and financial challenge, this bold commitment to a generous settlement in our public finances for the support of those in developing countries, especially the poorest of the poor. As we have heard, the 0.7% is an international target and therefore a very important sign that we play our part in an international community in a responsible way. Many activists, and church members in particular, are concerned for us to make that witness to global citizenship, and see this as an important issue. We have heard that it is important for us to be able to plan and be efficient and effective in the deployment of these resources. We have also heard that it creates more stable and peaceful societies, and gives us better communities with which to trade.

Some of your Lordships were in a debate in December about soft power. This is a very important sign to the world of a narrative of a generous country that has high values. We need that narrative in an age when our young people are being radicalised by other, more violent and narrow-minded narratives. This is very important sign not only to our own society but across the world, especially to young people, about generosity and commitment to others. Some of us, too, were involved in the legislation proposed for slavery. I met a young man who, when he was six, was sold by his family into slavery in the fishing trade in Africa because they were so poor. I met a young woman who, when she was 12, was sold into sex slavery in Nigeria because her family were poor. This kind of policy and this kind of committed, regular and properly audited investment in building societies across the world joins up with other concerns we have, such as the slavery issue, and the fact that it is not just an issue here but across the globe.

Like my colleague, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Williams, I am privileged to be a trustee of Christian Aid. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, gave some statistics, and we are proud to be involved in the provision of clean water, schools and financial services, and in working with women and girls. They all provide stability and capacity for local societies to be healthy, peaceful and forward-looking. The OECD estimates that for every pound spent on some of these enterprises, developing countries gain an additional £350 in increased revenue, which shows how effective targeted and planned investment can be. Christian Aid is proud to work with DfID in programmes such as those to eradicate malaria; to give priority to women and girls, as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said; and to provide mobile technology to help health services develop appropriately in rural areas. All those things need consistent and planned investment, as does the response to climate change. There are more and more signs of flooding in El Salvador, for example, and more and more problems relating to a lack of water supply in Kenya as the climate changes. Christian Aid is proud to work with DfID and others to be proactive in being able to plan to tackle those issues and to invest in them properly.

I say thank you to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for his inspiring words and say to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, that it is not just a matter of neat systems. This is a moment for giving a sign, to our own people and across the globe, about our commitment to generosity, the development of others and a mutual world that works through partnership—a narrative that is radical in the proper way.

Developing World: Maternal and Neonatal Mortality

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on securing this debate and on introducing it with such expertise and such a challenging sense of the statistics. Millennium development goals 4 and 5 are not being met and, as other speakers have said, the consequences are horrendous. My contribution will be from my own experience working with people at the grass roots, and I will then tease out what the implications of that experience should be.

I work in the diocese of Derby, in England, and we are twinned with the Church of North India, which extends from Calcutta to Mumbai—the whole of north India is twinned with our diocese in an ecumenical link. I work with people in a number of Indian communities where this issue is enormous. In 2012, one-third of global neonatal deaths happened in India. The highest rate of first-day mortality is in India. That is the context in which we are working with our partners, through whose eyes we discern some factors.

The first, as other noble Lords have said, is poverty. People just do not have the means to call medical help and there is no local infrastructure available anyway even if they could. That kind of poverty is a major factor. The second factor is the lack of education about basic hygiene. I visited slums in Calcutta with the Cathedral Relief Service, which trains very young girls of 10 to 12 to wander in and out of people’s houses, giving good advice about hygiene and childcare. This helps families learn good practice in an unthreatening way and will produce a new generation of young mothers with those skills. This is a practical, grass-roots response.

My colleagues in India would say that the third factor is that a lack of respect for women and girls is behind these terrible statistics. The attitude so often is that this is their role—illness is not taken seriously—and their job is to run the household. New mothers are expected just to get up and carry on with things. Fourthly, in the urban areas, the issue is not so much a matter of the infrastructure being hundreds of miles away but that whole families live on pavements and give birth there. I was in Calcutta in December and saw families living in the street with no resources, cutting the cord with an ordinary knife because that was all that was at hand.

That was a snapshot of some of my experiences; what are the responses? I work with ISPCK—the Indian version of the publishing house—and the Cathedral Relief Service in Calcutta. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, was hinting, they say that the key is to have strong, empowered women. Research by the Cathedral Relief Service in Calcutta shows that 63% of pregnant women in the slums are anaemic. That is an appalling starting place. I visited a slum where they had just invented a green goo to give to people to build up their resources—I had to taste it, and it was a really testing moment in intercultural activity. People have to take this kind of local initiative to build, literally, physically strong women.

Women have to be empowered, too, and many people in development know that it is by building up women that families survive and have structure and leadership. We spend a lot of time in our diocese raising funds to provide sewing machines for women so that the family has a livelihood. This year, we are raising funds to create businesses for recycling in Delhi, where all the waste from industrialising India needs dealing with. It is only by giving women that kind of strength and security that they will be able to deal with some of the issues about family planning and their self-respect and standing in the community.

Other things that we do with our partners include running education and immunisation programmes, as well as doing home visits. We show films in the slums, and some villages have health days, when volunteers go out and gather people around. So what are the implications that I am learning? The key one is partnership. There is a partnership between the people of Derbyshire and people in the slums and rural areas of India around this issue, which provides practical help and tries to empower women and provide infrastructure.

I am privileged to be a trustee of Christian Aid, which specialises in partnership working with local agencies. We work in Kenya, Malawi and Bangalore, in India, and there are lots of stories that I could tell—like the ones from Derbyshire—of partnership working. Most exciting is our partnership at the moment with DfID. The Minister came to the Christian Aid carol service and launched a match funding scheme for a project in Kenya on this very topic. We should congratulate the Government on their approach to partnering with organisations such as Christian Aid, which have a lot of expertise on the ground and grass-roots connections and can deliver real change. I am proud of the way that our Government are investing in that. Clearly, we can always do more and clearly we need millennium development goals that will challenge the Government more, but I record on behalf of Christian Aid our positive experience of working with DfID and what a good job comes out of it.

I finish with two questions for the Minister. If developing countries need encouragement to ensure provision for maternal healthcare, what can the Government do to up their game about partnership with those who have grass-roots contacts? That is where we need to operate—with those who are excluded at grass-roots level. We need to connect with those people. How can the Government up their game, working in partnership and investing their funds, while using their influence with other Governments for grass-roots activities?

Secondly, we all know that a lot of problems in developing countries are caused by the unsatisfactory tax base. So much of what could be raised by taxation to provide money for health and other infrastructure is shifted out of the country by the way that corporations operate financially. Both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have spoken out against this practice, commendably, and we have had debates in this House about it. I would be interested to know what the Minister thinks about the part that getting a better tax structure in developing countries plays if we are to equip people in their own places to take up this work and meet the challenge.

Human Rights

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on securing this debate, and I also associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk.

Many of the pictures painted are dramatic and challenging, and I invite the House to think a little about the context that we are in and how we might approach some of these huge issues. The Government have identified six key priority areas, including women and freedom of religion, and those are the two things that I will look at in particular. We are in a world where we have ideals and fall short of them, and need to negotiate between the two.

In my own language, I start by inviting us all to look at the motes in our own eyes. I am embarrassed that my church has legislation in place to discriminate against women, as much religion still does. We are moving towards tackling these things, and the prime movers have been women themselves. One point that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, made is that the victims need to be listened to so that they can help us understand what changes are required. It is not legislation but the stories of the victims that need to come first.

We as a church have been criticised, rightly, for the long and tortuous path of giving women full access to leadership in our institution. It is very easy for society to think that we have already done that: we have sex equality legislation and human rights legislation. Noble Lords will know that next Monday is White Ribbon Day, when in this country we remember the increasing levels of violence against women in our society. That is part of the context.

Just yesterday I was involved in a debate for Parliament Week—where the theme, as we know, is “Women in Democracy: Women in Society”—about lads’ mags and the fact that companies such as Tesco sell these magazines along with cheese and cornflakes. They objectify women and normalise the offensive attitude of making women commodities. We give large companies such as Tesco the freedom to degrade the women in our midst. That is the context in which we come to this debate: the motes in our own eyes.

I will suggest a way in which we might move forward. I think that the Government already have some line on this: the Foreign Secretary talks about engaging with complexity and the Minister talks about being pragmatic. We need to be pragmatic in negotiating between ideals and reality. As a trustee of Christian Aid, I know that women are key to development, with new voices and new perspectives, but I also know through my work with Christian Aid that the human trafficking of women and girls is increasing exponentially. Therefore, the ideals and the practice are in enormous tension.

I turn briefly to my specific point. The 2012 list of countries about which we have particular concern does not include India. My diocese works with churches in north India and is especially involved with Christian Dalit peoples—the lowest caste. In the past week, I have been in touch with a colleague in Delhi who worked with Christian Dalit women. She told me about Lakshmi, who works on a construction site from six in the morning till six at night and has to sign a register saying that she is getting the minimum daily wage, although in fact she is paid less than half of it. She also told me about a girl called Anjum, who was put into a brothel at the age of 15 and, last week, was rescued by the churches. She had found herself in that position because she was a Dalit woman in that culture.

The Prime Minister has just visited India and is talking about a special business relationship with that country. We need that: it will be good. However, what can we put into that relationship that will lead these issues to be taken seriously? In your Lordships’ House earlier this year, we made a decisive intervention during the passage of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill about Dalits in our own country. First, how can we take that learning and that experience into our work with business in India to help people aim for a similar result?

Secondly, how can we maintain concern for women and girls caught up in the ever-expanding criminal work of human trafficking? Thirdly, how can we look at the motes in our own eyes and challenge the right of large companies such as Tesco to degrade women in the midst of selling cheese and cornflakes and make it normative? As has already been asked, how can we better play a role in the UN? Finally, I guess that I and my colleagues on these Benches need to go back to our own institution and ask how women can play a more constructive and creative role among us so that we have more integrity in contributing to this debate.

Tourism: Music

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on securing this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, mentioned the iconic Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park in 1969. Perhaps I should put on record the fact that I was there.

As we have just heard, music is not only important but a much underrated offer that we make to the rest of the world through tourism. When people come here for music tourism, they engage in making community and in being joined with others in a common culture through hearing a common language. Such things are very important for us to offer across the world as well as across the regions in this country. It is important that we do not just measure its significance in terms of economic impact, although that is important, but that we recognise a cultural, human hinterland that is enriched from Plato onwards and we must be proud of it and contribute to it.

The VisitBritain document, Delivering a Golden Legacy, identifies four principles to encourage this kind of tourism. The first is to recognise our international image, which is about heritage, arts and music—as the noble Lord, Lord Black, mentioned. The second is to develop an overall product so that performance, hotels, shopping and local businesses are all connected. The third is to be ambitious in our invitation and the variety that we offer. Fourthly, tourism needs to be embedded in other strategies for other sectors. Many noble Lords have spoken in this debate to illustrate some of those principles.

The UK Music report, Destination: Music, starts, as did the noble Lord, Lord Storey, in his speech, with Glastonbury. The research is based on concerts and events of 5,000 people or more. That is very important, but I want, in just a few brief words, to go to two other areas which fall below the radar of that kind of scale but which show the importance of music and culture for tourism.

They both come from the east Midlands, which is where I operate and which has the exact national average proportion of music tourists—that is, 5% of the tourist mix. We need to increase that of course. The first area is the story of the Buxton Opera House and the Buxton Festival. If any noble Lords are looking for some wonderful entertainment this weekend, I can tell them that the Buxton Festival is still in operation—you can go to its website. In 1976, a fairly decrepit building with “Opera House” over its door was on the verge of being turned into a cinema. Three years later, by 1979, local residents together with the Royal Northern College of Music and the Welsh National Opera—contacts in those places—opened the first Buxton Festival. It now has a turnover of £1.4 million and receives only 10% of its income from grants. I want to emphasise that, because many people look at the arts, especially music, and think that it needs very heavy subsidy. In fact, a mere 10% of the building’s running costs enable a turnover of £2 million into the local economy. We are not asking a great deal, but strategic investment can create such opportunities locally for music tourism to flourish. The Buxton Festival works through a partnership between local enterprise, VisitEngland, Visit Peak District and local businesses.

Of course, the opera house has to be very nimble in what it offers because it needs to run all year. It runs a programme that includes everything from Abba tribute concerts to opera and all the things in between. It has to be nimble and offer a very catholic range of music.

I have told this story because it has moved from 1979 to 2015, which is the projected opening date for the Buxton Crescent and spa hotel—a crescent that has been carefully restored and will become a hotel destination for international tourists in that part of England in 2015. It has taken all that time, from 1979 to 2015, to establish a festival, to establish international links and for there to be a demand to come and stay in that kind of quality of accommodation. I therefore urge the Government to take seriously not only the regions and the small scale but the need for secure and sustained support for such incremental growth that will be the backbone of a national policy for music tourism.

The second area that I want to mention but which, again, does not feature in the most recent report of UK Music is of course—and you would expect me to say this from these Benches—church music and especially cathedral music. We have recently launched in Derbyshire a diocesan tourism website, because churches are a key part of the fabric of the tourism offer and we need to be organised to present them attractively. A key bit of that is music, because churches are among the few places that you can go where there will be a guarantee of music of some sort or other. Just this last weekend, in the parish of New Mills, we have had a festival of choirs—five choirs making the festival over the weekend. On the same weekend, in a parish called Fairfield, there was a five-day music festival with blues, the vicar getting together an impromptu jamming band and all kinds of music to bring people in. Our cathedral, like others, has an extensive programme of concerts, organ recitals and lunchtime events.

I go to a lot of these things and I spent 10 years working in a cathedral. Something that strikes me all the time is that when one goes to the door after a concert, particularly of the English choral tradition, it is people from overseas who want to say how amazing that kind of music is. It is something they rarely experience live in other cultures. The English choral tradition and English church music are a great jewel in our musical armoury and we need to ensure, as part of a tourist offer, that we can make them available and support them in small ways. That 10% investment in the Buxton Festival is an example of how small support can create stability, incremental growth and an attractive offer.

I invite the Minister to comment not just on the large-scale music offer to tourists but on how the Government can encourage support for smaller-scale events such as the Buxton Festival and for the English choral tradition and English church music, something that is unique and right at the heart of how we are perceived internationally in terms of heritage, art and music culture. How can we make that a key part of what we offer? I want to finish by reiterating that I think our musical heritage is a key ingredient for encouraging international tourism. In an age of terror and despair, we have a rich gift to offer and we must do all we can to make it available and to secure its sustainability.