International Development: Aid Distribution

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure that aid is directed by the Department for International Development to the most vulnerable.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Sugg) (Con)]

My Lords, through UK aid we are firmly committed to leaving no one behind and supporting the poorest and most vulnerable. We are global leaders in disability inclusion and gender equality. Our Global Disability Summit in 2018 has driven real change, as has our mission to ensure that girls all across the world access 12 years of quality education. Over half of DfID’s funding goes to the most fragile and conflict-affected states, where the poorest are the most vulnerable in the world.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

I thank the Minister for her Answer. As she will know, our policy sets out four objectives of aid. The first has to do with security and good governance, the last with supporting the most vulnerable and impoverished communities in the world. Will she perhaps consider whether the emphasis in recent years has swung too far from the fourth, helping the most impoverished, to the first? To take one example that happened to catch my eye, in Nigeria the biggest grant went to help elections, with the success of that judged by how many people voted. Meanwhile, Nigeria has 100 million people with no access to sanitation and 60 million with no access to improved drinking water. Will she consider whether it might be better to channel more aid through NGOs working on the ground with local communities, particular smaller NGOs? This might be a better way of reaching the most vulnerable.

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, on supporting elections, of course it is incredibly important to support democracy and the rule of law around the world, and we will continue to do so. We are committed to spending 0.7% of our gross national income on international development. Of course, we always consider how that money should best be spent and how we can spend it more effectively and efficiently. We will continue to do so in order to support the poorest and most vulnerable.

Pakistan: Aid Programmes and Human Rights

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, I was talking recently to a distinguished Pakistan citizen, with businesses around the world. I asked him what life was like in Pakistan at the moment. “Just like here”, he said. “Really” I said, “what about the blasphemy law, and the people suffering under it”? “Oh”, he said, with a rather dismissive wave of the hand, “It’s the uneducated people in the villages”. I am afraid it is all too easy for the elites, whether in Pakistan or this country, to live in an environment divorced from the reality of life for so many. The fact is that the blasphemy law in Pakistan is blighting the lives of countless people, causing apprehension, anxiety and in some cases imprisonment and death. Too many, like the government Minister mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, live in a cocooned world of their own and have shut their eyes to what is happening in the countryside.

As we know, Pakistan is a country with a number of minority groups. Between 0.22 and 2.2 percent of the population are Ahmadiyya Muslims, although they are actually forbidden by law from even describing themselves as Muslims. Some 2.6 percent of the population are Christian, about 2.5 million in all.

Between 1987 and 2017, 1,500 people or more were charged with blasphemy: 730 were Muslims, 501 were Ahmadis, 205 were Christians and 26 were Hindus. Although, as the noble Lord, Lord Hussain, said, no judicial executions have yet taken place, at least 75 people involved in accusations of blasphemy were murdered before their trials were over, and as we have heard, prominent figures who opposed the blasphemy law have been assassinated. It is this mob violence, so vividly brought home by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, which is so frightening. It affects not just the accused and their family but anyone who stands up for them, especially any lawyer or judge.

We rejoice that Asia Bidi is now safe and in Canada with her family, but we cannot forget the suffering that she had in the years before. We cannot forget that the Minister for Minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, who spoke against the blasphemy law, was assassinated as a result. We know that the blasphemy law is being used to settle grievances and vendettas in villages. We look to the elite in Pakistan to open their eyes to what is happening. It is quite wrong for successive Governments to refuse to stand up to religious extremism and intimidation. In negotiations about aid, we look to the British Government to make it quite clear that this law causes untold suffering and is totally unacceptable. I hope that the Minister will take from this debate a clear message that aid needs to be directed towards minorities.

Modern Slavery: Indian Supply Chains

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many British businesses have taken action and reported their efforts to prevent modern slavery in supply chains from India.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the UK is the first country to require businesses to report on the steps that they have taken to tackle modern slavery. Thousands of businesses have published transparency statements, with many examples of good practice emerging in India across a range of industries, from textiles to landscaping materials. I encourage businesses to stay vigilant and to work with local NGOs to understand the risks in their supply chains.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

I thank the Minister for her Answer. According to the Government’s estimates, between 9,000 and 11,000 businesses with a turnover of more than £36 million a year are required to submit these statements, but the Government have not been willing to set up a central register. Groups of NGOs have set up two websites. According to them, less than 4,000 businesses have so far set up statements. Only 14% of these conform fully with the law. The NGOs further add that there is particular complacency among certain high-risk industries, which might also point to high-risk groups such as the Dalits and Adivasis in India. If the Government are still not willing to set up a central register, what steps will they take to ensure that all businesses comply with the law and provide a statement?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble and right reverend Lord gives a figure of 14%, but two independent NGOs have collated statements and found that between 32% and 50% of eligible companies have produced a statement. Clearly there is further to go. The legislation is relatively new. On compiling a register, we have considered in detail whether the Government could publish a list of businesses covered by the Modern Slavery Act. It is not easy to do so because it is not currently possible to filter the databases of Companies House by turnover size, but the Government are looking at this.

India

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the challenges facing the government of India on the issues of poverty and caste discrimination.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, India is one of the most ancient civilisations in the world. It has had, to take just one example, a highly sophisticated level of mathematics from the 12th century up to today. Its achievements are truly staggering. India produces 5 million graduates a year and one-third of the world’s software engineers. It is the world’s largest democracy and earlier this year ran a successful election in which 540 million people voted; 66.4% of those eligible. The new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, comes with the clear support of the majority of the population and the world can only wish him well as he faces the challenges of poverty and caste discrimination.

Those problems are on a massive scale. One in six Indian women is illiterate and India has more absolute poverty than the whole of Africa put together. In particular, there are people who suffer extreme degradation, the Dalits—the former untouchables. More than 320 million people in India live below the national poverty line. Of these, some 200 million are Dalits or scheduled castes. Caste discrimination, one of the most serious ongoing human rights violations in the world today, has rightly been described by the former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as “a blot on humanity”.

Dalits, who occupy the lowest position in the caste system—strictly speaking, outside it altogether—continue to suffer deeply hurtful rejection, violence, poverty and a level of exploitation which often amounts to modern-day slavery. India has a very fine constitution and excellent legislation but, sadly, there is little political will or judicial capacity to enforce the laws. The result is that caste discrimination continues with impunity and its worst excesses culminate in the rape and murder of Dalit girls and women every day. That extreme disparity between a financial elite, and those who can tuck in the slipstream behind them, and the millions who are left far behind—which is such a feature of the world as a whole today—exists in India in extreme form.

According to official Indian crime statistics, more than three Dalit women are raped every day. You may have read of the recent case of the two young Dalit girls, raped and murdered in Uttar Pradesh. Like many in India, they had no access to water or the most basic of sanitation facilities, forcing them to defecate in the open fields. This put them, and millions like them, at risk. However, it was because they were Dalit girls that they were particularly vulnerable and regarded as “fair” targets for the violence meted out against them. This case received global media attention and it is important to note that this was the first time a story about Dalits received such publicity, even though these types of crimes against Dalits happen every day. Until now there has been no public outrage or political will to address them.

That is violence against women, but it is not just women who are subject to such brutality. Another case which reached the world press a couple of weeks ago concerned a boy who allowed his goat to wander on to land owned by a higher-caste family. The boy was murdered on the grounds that he had made the land unclean. What is no less terrible than the crimes themselves is that no action seems to have been taken against the perpetrators, once again highlighting a fundamental aspect of the problem: that although there are good laws in place, they are simply not being enforced when the victims are Dalits because of pressure from the families of the perpetrators. There is a law in place— the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989—but it is simply not being enforced. Implementation and conviction rates are less than 5%, mainly due to the mindset of the general populace, the apathy of the judiciary and lack of political will.

I urge the United Kingdom Government to offer technical assistance to develop the capacity of the judiciary and police to deal more effectively with these crimes against Dalits. In particular, what is needed is, first, to improve accountability through better documentation, investigations and prosecutions, and better legislation implementing international obligations and standards. Secondly, what is needed is greater support and protection for survivors of sexual violence, including children. Thirdly, we need to ensure that the responses to sexual and gender-based violence, and the promotion of gender equality, are fully integrated in the security and justice sector and also in all military and police training.

There is in India a tension-a -paradox that affects the human spirit itself. On the one hand there is the sheer scale of the problem: a country with a population four times the size of America, so much corruption and a political class too often out of touch with how the majority live. This makes it all too easy to despair. Yet the sheer resilience of the Indian poor simply in surviving always staggers me. There is something else too. On one visit with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association a couple of years ago to look at aid projects, the group I was with had a session with some girls who had been able to stay on at school, with the support of a few pence a day which their day labourer fathers could not afford. They had bussed 12 hours to see us, and in their smart uniforms they shared with us their ambitions to be doctors, teachers and politicians. They came from nowhere with nothing, but they had confidence and they had hope. In Rohinton Mistry's devastating novel, A Fine Balance, about the appalling suffering of lower castes in India, one character says:

“You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair”.

Since taking up office, Mr Modi has offered some hope. Traditionally many Dalits, for generation after generation, were allowed to work only as manual scavengers, but last month he launched his Clean India mission to modernise sanitation within five years. He started by trying to change attitudes, and he set a personal example by taking a broom and sweeping up rubbish in a Delhi neighbourhood occupied by members of the Valmiki sub-caste, whose lot in life is traditionally manual scavenging, a euphemism for clearing other people’s faeces. Mr Modi said:

“Often we assume the job of cleaning up belongs to the safai karmacharis and don’t bother to clean”,

and he went on,

“Don’t we all have a duty to clean the country?”.

To drive home his point, he ordered government workers, including his Ministers, to come to work on the Thursday to sweep offices and clean toilets. He made a similar commitment to end poverty and bring the shame of so many rapes to an end.

He has, however, so far as I can find, said nothing on the caste system itself, which is at the root of the problem. The fundamental point is that there is an inescapable connection in India between its massive, degrading poverty and the caste system. The poverty cannot be tackled without facing and dealing with the reality that this poverty affects those at the bottom of the caste system in a totally disproportionate way. I urge Her Majesty’s Government to bring this point home to the Indian Government and to offer help, particularly in strengthening the judiciary.

Recently the impressive Indian space programme sent a spacecraft into orbit around Mars. It was the first country that managed to do so on its first attempt and the first Asian country to achieve that. It has the technical ability and political will to achieve there. It has the technical ability and the skilled human resources to bring clean water and sanitation to millions of people now without these basics, a lack of which makes women in particular so vulnerable to violence. Has it got the political will to do this?

We had a wonderful example recently from the Bikaner district in Rajasthan, where local leadership, getting the whole community activated, actually managed to improve 500 toilets in 10 days, with the villages working themselves. Faecal-related diseases went down from more than 50 a month to one or two. Where there is a will, things can happen.

Mr Modi has said he wants every Indian to have a bank account. However important that may be in the modern world, surely it is not as important as access to clean water and sanitation. Is there a political will to do this? Is there a political will to bring about equal concern and respect for all members of the society? Is there the courage to see that this cannot be done without looking at the way these terrible ills are linked through caste? The world wishes Mr Modi well, and I very much hope that the British Government will strengthen him in his resolve.

India

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the new Government of India and the challenge presented by poverty in that country.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

We congratulate the new Indian Government on their decisive victory in the largest democratic election in history. Development through good governance was a central plank of Prime Minister Modi’s election campaign. He has announced a government programme that aims to raise economic growth and improve opportunities for the poor.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

I thank the Minister for her reply. As she knows, poverty in India is on an enormous scale. It has one-third of the world’s poor and more poverty than the whole of Africa put together. Is she aware that of the 320 million people living below the poverty level, 200 million are Dalits, 50% of Dalit villages have no clean water and 75% of Dalit women are illiterate? In her discussions with the Indian Government on this issue, will she press home the fact that tackling poverty on such an epic scale is integrally linked to tackling also a system that leaves the Dalits and other scheduled castes trapped at the bottom of an oppressive pile?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble and right reverend Lord makes a very good point. We and the Government of India are well aware of the figures that he outlines. It is encouraging to see that when the President addressed Parliament to lay out the new programme for the new Government, he emphasised that and said:

“My government is committed to making all minorities equal partners in India’s progress”.

DfID is giving a great deal of technical assistance to the Indian Government in this regard.

Human Rights

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating this very important debate, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley, for her very clear and powerful speech. It is particularly important that she mentioned something that has not been mentioned so far in this debate, namely the way that children are still exploited in so many parts of the world. We look forward to hearing her clear and powerful voice on subsequent occasions.

When future historians look back on the immediate post-World War II period, they will judge that one of the greatest achievements of that time was the UN declaration of human rights and the ensuing conventions. Those affirmed in law the unique worth of every single individual. They are, in the words of the late Ronald Dworkin, “trumps”, which cannot be overridden by any raison d’état. Of course the trouble, as we know, is that it is so easy to be deeply depressed at the massive way in which human rights are violated in so many countries in the world. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, gave us a long list at the beginning, although he did not mention some of them. It is very easy to get depressed by that, and it is difficult to know what to focus on in this debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, reminded us, it is important that we should not be selective. However, when we get depressed, we need to go back to the fact that we still have a benchmark in the UN declaration. It is a question of being as persistent in the pursuit of that as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has been in setting us a very good example in his wide-ranging and persistent concern for human rights.

I hope that noble Lords will excuse me if, as chairman of the All-Party Group on Dalits, I focus very briefly on them. I do so first because of the sheer scale of the problem that affects them: there are something like 260 million Dalits in the world, mainly in India and other south-east Asian countries. Secondly, although all human rights violations are appalling—torture, religious persecution and so on—there is something particularly humiliating and degrading about the way in which Dalits are totally rejected by the surrounding culture in which so many of them live and every area of their lives is affected. If anyone doubts the sheer horror of this I would recommend the novel A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. The “fine balance” of the title is the balance between hope and despair. I have huge admiration for the poor of India, for their sheer resilience, hope and even joy, despite everything. However, the problems are huge. In almost every area of exploitation the Dalits will be found at the bottom, more exploited than anybody else.

I am glad to say that we will hear more over the next months about different forms of trafficking. Noble Lords will not be surprised to know that because the Dalits are the most vulnerable of all groups, they are found in all forms of trafficking and at a much higher percentage than other groups. Trafficking takes the form of bonded labour. It also takes the form of the Sumangali system for the payment of dowries. Although that system has been officially abolished in India since 1961, it still goes on. However, the sex trade is perhaps the most shocking of all. As Dalit Solidarity Network UK puts it,

“Most girls and women in India’s urban brothels come from Dalit, lower-caste, tribal, or minority communities”.

Much of that has its origin in religiously sanctioned prostitution. It has been reckoned that some 250,000 women in India fall into this category, many of them enslaved unknowingly when they were still young children. Dalit Freedom Network has said that almost all women trapped in ritualised prostitution are Dalits.

When the concept of human rights was first formulated after World War II, the particular concern was the way in which individuals need to be protected against their states. There is a particular complication, of course, with the kind of discrimination the Dalits experience, because it is so deeply embedded in cultures. Therefore, I very much hope that the Government, when they raise their general concerns about human rights in India and other south-east Asian countries, will continue to bring this issue before those Governments.

India: Aid

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of United Kingdom aid to India being phased out in 2015, and the high proportion of that aid being targeted at the Dalit or Scheduled Caste communities, what information they have about how those aid programmes will be replaced.

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, faster and more inclusive development, including for Dalits, remains a priority for the Government of India. India’s own development efforts have lifted 60 million people out of extreme poverty in the past five years. After 2015, we will support India’s poverty reduction efforts through technical assistance and private sector programmes.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

I thank the Minister for her reply. As she knows, despite the growing wealth of the Indian middle class, poverty in India still exists on a horrendous scale. It is worse than all the African countries put together, with 500 million people living on less than $2 a day. One of the great advantages of DfID aid, as the Minister knows, is that it was focused on the poorest of the poor. Can she spell out—or, at least ask DfID to spell in more detail and set down on paper—what particular practical arrangements are being made for the continuation of these projects? On a government visit to these projects last year, of which I was a member, we saw the extraordinary and valuable work being done. Can we have something in writing about the practical arrangements to ensure that these projects will continue?

[Baroness Northover]

I thank the noble and right reverend Lord for his tribute to the work conducted by DfID in India. I am happy to write to him with a great deal of detail on what is happening. I think the noble and right reverend Lord saw the Odisha project for girls; boys are also being brought into secondary schools, initially supported by DfID. That is being taken over by the government there. DfID is in talks with both central and local government about how best to take forward the various projects in which it is involved, with the intention of carrying forward looking after the poorest and most vulnerable in India.

International Development Policy

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

Like other noble Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for initiating this debate on such an important subject. It will be a particular pleasure to be able to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Singh.

I strongly agree with many of the points made by previous speakers, but I shall focus exclusively on the second part of the Motion regarding the proposals on the situation of the Dalits. Everyone is aware in general terms of the situation of the Dalits—the former untouchables—but it is difficult for us fully to take on board the extent and seriousness of their plight. To take, for example, the extent, more than 260 million people in the world continue to suffer from practices linked to caste, and of those, 170 million are Dalits living in India. As to the seriousness of their situation, more than 200 years ago William Wilberforce described what he referred to as “the cruel shackles” of the caste system as,

“a detestable expedient … a system at war with truth and nature”.

Since Wilberforce’s time, one form of slavery has been abolished, as we know, but not that associated with caste. It is properly described as a form of slavery. As the Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, said in 2008,

“caste is a blot on humanity”.

He described it as being parallel to apartheid. Manual scavenging, of which all noble Lords have heard, is just one of the many forms of degradation to which Dalits are subject.

In the light of this, it is obvious that it is not possible to consider issues of education, health and poverty reduction in India or other countries such as Bangladesh or Nepal where the caste system operates without highlighting and prioritising in policy terms the issue of caste and its terrible effect on the most vulnerable. Studies show that Dalits suffer quite disproportionately in education at every level, in health at every stage of their lives, and in access to benefits. There is absolutely no hope of achieving the millennium development goals without ensuring that every aspect of development policy takes fully into account the dire effects of caste with an appropriate focus on those suffering most as a result. DfID is of course aware of this, but does that awareness drive every aspect of policy in a concerted and consistent way and is the effect of this monitored?

More specifically, does DfID explicitly address caste exclusion across all the civil society programmes that it funds, developing clear benchmarks and indicators to monitor this? Furthermore, does DfID integrate social exclusion into all its programmes, beyond those of civil society? Does DfID support excluded groups in their advocacy and help them increase the accountability of Governments to the most excluded? In order that we might be clear that we are practising what we are preaching, does DfID ensure that in its own employment practices it has a team that is fully inclusive and representative? Following on from that, does DfID, throughout its India office, build understanding of social exclusion? Without positive answers to these and other questions, all attempts at poverty reduction will be undermined, as a growing body of research increasingly shows.

DfID also has a key role to play in influencing other donors, such as the Asian Development Bank, the European Community, the World Bank, the UNDP, and so on, better to understand and address these issues. DfID has a key role in ensuring that all UK NGOs and foreign investors adopt best employment practices in their policies. There is evidence in the past of some employment agencies used by NGOs excluding certain Dalit and Muslim names before passing on selected candidates.

I have mentioned that there are at least three key areas—education, health and access to benefits. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will address education in particular and how Dalits are heavily disadvantaged in every aspect of education. I shall not therefore deal with that. However, I will briefly mention another area—children’s health. A recent study of children under 12 being treated showed that Dalit children were discriminated against in a variety of ways. By every indicator, this discrimination was shown to affect between 80 per cent and 90 per cent of encounters between Dalit children and those charged with providing them with some kind of medical help. I shall give some small examples. Medicine was placed in the hand without the person giving it actually touching the hand; or the medicine would be put on the floor or window sill; they were given less time with doctors and nurses; and the children were called names and treated roughly. It is not surprising that infant mortality—high in India as a whole—is particularly high among Dalits.

There is another particular area that the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, would have highlighted if she had been able to speak in the debate. I refer to the human trafficking and slavery of India’s Dalits. For example, there may be as many as 20 million people in Indian bonded labour, of whom between 80 per cent and 98 per cent are Dalits. In addition, children, particularly Dalit children, are being trafficked into domestic servitude and prostitution, with 40 per cent of India’s sex workers being children. Then there is ritualised prostitution and bride trafficking. In all these areas, it is Dalits who are most at risk and find it almost impossible to obtain redress. Often they do not have identity papers, they have difficulty being believed, and—believe it or not—a third of rural police stations do not even allow Dalits to cross the threshold. DfID has done well to institute the human trafficking in south Asia programme, but at the moment its resources are too small to make the impact that is needed—not just in cross-border trafficking but in India itself.

My point is therefore very simple. It is impossible to tackle the subject of poverty, particularly in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, without highlighting and prioritising the issue of Dalits and expressing those priorities in real policy terms. DfID is aware of this, but is that awareness driving every aspect of policy in a concerted and consistent way? Is the effect of this policy on the Dalits being properly monitored?

International Aid Reviews: Conclusions

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

I thank my noble friend for both her questions. I know she has some concerns about aid going to India. Perhaps I can point out to noble Lords that India has one-third of the world's population living on less than $1.25 a day. Last year, DfID spent 58p per poor person in India compared with £3.50 per poor person in sub-Saharan Africa. We shall have to shift our focus and, therefore, the Secretary of State has decided to shift it to three states in India—the poorest states—to ensure that we are able to maximise our aid there.

India’s space programme adds up to 0.1 per cent of the country’s overall budget, but the issue is not just about the space programme. From that programme, the Indians are able to use the technologies to deliver mobile technology to villages and particularly to women who are able to access information which they would not otherwise be able to access. The programme is not just about space but about using the technology for other things as well. I completely understand that the noble Baroness has concerns, but she would perhaps also agree that we have a special relationship with India. If we are to see the aid programme go down, we must be able to lift far more of the people of India out of poverty.

On the organisations in special measures, I respond to the noble Baroness by saying that two years may seem a short time, but the organisations are fully aware that they have to make some serious reforms. Of course we will keep in constant dialogue with the Commonwealth Secretariat to see where the improvements are taking place. The secretariat reaches out to places where we, as a single country, would not. It has special niches and therefore it is important to support it fully.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

What the Minister has said is very encouraging indeed and, I am sure, will enjoy widespread support across the House. I have two brief questions. Will she say something about how this review is affecting non-governmental organisations such as Oxfam, Christian Aid and CAFOD? As she will be aware, they are sometimes able to provide the most sharply focused and effective forms of aid and they are often in receipt of government grants for their projects.

The second question follows up on India. As the noble Baroness knows, the poorest section of the Indian population is the Dalits, of whom there are 200 million in the world, most of whom are in India. They are not only desperately poor but are shunned and humiliated. Would she say something about how the Government will support the Dalits in raising them from the very bottom of Indian poverty?

[Baroness Verma]

I thank the noble and right reverend Lord. On the NGOs, the Secretary of State has made it very clear that much of our aid, particularly in countries where there is conflict, is delivered through NGOs, and we want to strengthen that ability. We recognise that there will be times when we will work in partnership with NGOs to ensure that we can reach a much wider population. The Secretary of State has made it clear, time and again, that the major NGOs are key to the success of development programmes at grass-roots level, and therefore we will work hand in hand with them to ensure that that is strengthened.

I accept what the noble and right reverend Lord says about the Dalits. Through the programmes, we will continuously see that monitoring is in place to ensure that all the poor benefit from our programmes and that no one who needs a beneficial response is excluded. I hope that he is reassured by that. I am very aware of the difficulties that the Dalit community faces, and I raise it constantly.

Equality Act 2010

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Baroness for her kind words. I think I understand caste probably better than most people in this House, which is why I say to the noble and learned Baroness and to Members around the House that this is an incredibly complex area. Legislating for it would not deal with the issues behind the continuance of this abhorrent practice. Therefore, I ask noble Lords to look at the report, consider it carefully and then decide whether there is a need to take on board Section 9 of the Act.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

As chair of the All-Party Group on Dalits, perhaps I may say how pleased the Dalit communities—that is, the former untouchables—in this country will be that the discrimination that they experienced and reported to the previous Government over many years has now been shown to be a fact by the report of the National Institute for Social and Economic Research. The Minister mentioned education, as indeed does the report. Does she not agree that it would be a vital instrument in achieving education on this sorry situation if there were very firm legislation in place, as there is in India, prohibiting discrimination in the areas of employment, public education and public goods and services?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, the noble and right reverend Lord raises the question of Dalits and I understand the issue. Even with legislation in place in India, the problem has not been eradicated. It is a question of shifting attitudes within individuals, and I think that the only way of doing that is by ensuring that, if there is discrimination against people on grounds of caste, it is dealt with through the legislation that we have. We need to ensure that the law plays its part in this but, as I said, the report has to be considered fully and I ask the noble and right reverend Lord to give us time to do so.