Immigration Detention: Shaw Review

Lord Deben Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Perhaps I might come back to the noble Baroness on this, because obviously I have pulled out some of the highlights of the report and I would not want to give her any details from the Dispatch Box that I am not certain about. So I will write to her on that point.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister has been clear about what the Home Secretary is going to do. However, one of our worries about this report and indeed about the Statement is that it is a work in progress as if we are moving to a position where it will be very much easier to solve these problems. We actually live in a world in which it is going to become very much more difficult. The pressures on immigration will grow not just because of disorder elsewhere in the world but because of such major issues—I say this advisedly—as climate change. We are seeing more and more disruption which will mean that more and more people are being pressed to find somewhere else to be. What worries me about the Statement is that I do not believe that we have yet grasped the magnitude of the problem—the fact that it will get worse and worse and that we ought to be addressing it on a much longer-term basis if we are going to resolve this very serious issue.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I should say to my noble friend that 95% of people are not held in detention at all. It is used only as a last resort where all the other possible mechanisms for removing people who should not be here have failed. On his point about climate change, I have heard various debates on that. I do not disagree with him that climate change will create more migration effects. However, the weather here over the past few weeks has made me think that people might not want to come here, either, because it is so hot.

Overseas Development Assistance

Lord Deben Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I am certainly happy to give that assurance. Of course, it was the multilateral development review that we undertook last year that the EDF scored so well in. Around the world we work in partnership with the EU and through its funds, and I cannot envisage a situation where we could do that effectively in the future without working very closely with the European Union. With regard to the fund itself, decisions on whether we want to contribute or stay out will be made as part of the process of exiting the European Union. Now at least we have a choice.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Will my noble friend the Minister tell me how much it is going to cost to disentangle ourselves from these arrangements in the European Union? Can I have his undertaking that none of that money will come from our overseas aid budget? If he does not have a figure, perhaps I might point out that it is the habit of this House to want to know the cost before we agree to action.

[Lord Bates]

A number of organisations oversee that important element of the budget. There are the Independent Commission for Aid Impact and the National Audit Office—all these organisations will be scrutinising the amounts of money that go out. In relation to the European Development Fund in particular, which is the focus of the Question, that amount is an annual supplement and therefore it should not be that difficult to make a decision on an annual basis, along with other multilateral partners, about how much we put in.

Global Hunger

Lord Deben Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The right reverend Prelate is quite right and I am sure he has noted that transparency in this regard is going to be on the G8’s agenda. One important development is the risk to companies and banks these days related to what they do in various countries. The spotlight is potentially on them. We have seen the backlash in the United Kingdom about the paying of tax. We need to get across very clearly the need for transparency, to highlight what is happening in different countries and to point out to companies that they incur risks thereby.

[Lord Deben]

Does my noble friend accept that the urgency of these matters is increasing all the time because of the world food shortage that will clearly be a part of our future? The effect of climate change and the like means that we have to live in a world where, if we are to feed 9 billion people, we really have to get more urgency in this whole issue. What worries me is that there are constant statements about debates, discussions and further targets, when actually this is far too urgent for us not to have it at the top of our agenda.

[Baroness Northover]

It has been suggested that global food production might decline by 7% by 2050 because of climate change and in some areas of the world by 20%. I emphasise that the United Kingdom takes this extremely seriously. One of the issues that came out of the hunger events that were hosted at the time the Olympics was a focus in the United Kingdom on agritech business. Defra, DfID and BIS are taking that forward because clearly investment in research, in which we have great strengths in the United Kingdom, should and could help to relieve some of these problems.

Women in Society

Lord Deben Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, if it were not for the helpfulness and kindness of those who work here and of my noble friends, it would in fact be even more overwhelming to speak to your Lordships’ House than it is, but being a new boy—so many here recognise that—is easier at 13 and at 18 than at the age which I will not now refer to. It is a great pleasure and privilege to be here, not least to follow what seems to be an age-old ritual of referring a little to oneself personally although, in my view, there is much in the public world already, and rather too much for most. However, three things have motivated me throughout my political life and I hope that there will be opportunities here in your Lordships’ House to continue that work.

The first is what brought me into politics and what has kept me there: a commitment to the closer unity of Europe and my belief of Britain’s place in the European Union and the importance of the European Union within the world. It is sad that the narrowness of view has not seen this as it should be seen: as the most exciting peacetime achievement of the peoples of these ancient countries, which have so much in common and so much to do together. Secondly, there is the environment, not least the battle against climate change. Europe is of course crucial to achieving that end, but climate change is the biggest challenge to human beings that, in material terms, stands before us. Thirdly, there is a commitment to social justice. We are not going to solve the issues of climate change unless we have a more just world, for there is no reason for poor to join with rich in defending the world if the poor feel that the rich are merely going to gain for themselves the advantages which the better use of our resources will provide.

It is a pleasure, then, to be able to make one’s maiden speech in this debate, which was so fascinatingly introduced by the noble Baroness. Of course, the truth is that that understanding of social justice must lead one to recognise not only the importance of combating the extreme forms of attack on women but the natural, day-to-day damage done to women by poverty. There is the simple matter that women, even where the social mores are more advanced than some of the horrible examples that have been given, bear the burden of poverty more closely and directly in more places: women carrying water for much of the day; women working back-breaking hours in fields; women looking after children in between doing those things. That is part of what we seek to change in the battle to raise standards throughout the world.

I add my voice to those who congratulate the Government on their insistence that the one piece of spending which cannot be cut is our contribution to foreign aid. One of the saddest things about the British and their media is the attack on this objective and wholly laudable decision. I am sad that very well-paid journalists should find it possible constantly to attack this and to talk about charity beginning at home. Those who say that mean that charity should end at home and that there should not be much charity either, so it is necessary for the whole House to say that, in this, the coalition Government have set an example which other nations should follow and which should deserve the support of us all, whatever background we have.

At home, if we are to do more, we ought to recognise first how much has to be done. I declare an interest because I employ quite a number of women, while one of my problems is to employ enough men. That is because in the jobs that we do, in looking after people’s corporate responsibility, dealing with climate change and the issues of bribery and corruption—I mean avoiding rather than encouraging them—and seeking to help people throughout the world, the applicants for jobs among women are almost always significantly better in quality and experience than their male counterparts. I almost need to have a bias towards men. This seems to me to be something that we should be pleased about, because it helps us in trying to improve things in areas where we have, so far, not reached the same kind of result.

I am also pleased to speak in this debate because I come from the county that produced both the first woman doctor and the first woman mayor in Britain, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and indeed, of course, her sister Millicent Fawcett. Suffolk has had a proud part to play in the history of women, as Members of this House from Suffolk, including two diverse but very feisty ladies of crime, remind us what has been done for women from the county from which I come.

I am pleased to speak, too, because I have two daughters. I want to emphasise the points about science education. We in this House should press for universities to provide the ability for girls who have not had access to science education early on, or even had the intention and desire to do science, to catch up much more easily than they can at the moment. Some universities demand that girls should have done physics at A-level when they could perfectly well do their physics in the gap year. They have the other subjects, but not that, and the system has not helped them—and will not help them because a big change needs to take place before it will. I believe that universities should do much more to help girls with that.

I, like my brother, the noble Lord, Lord Chadlington, owe a great deal to our mother. Oddly enough, when people say how much our parents would be proud of us, they always say how much our father would be proud. My mother would have been proud of us. She was one of those people who gave her life to bringing up her family and working in the parish. Like my brother, I have a wife who has taken the same view in her own way. In our advanced society, it is crucial to ensure that those women who choose—I agree that it is often a privilege that they are able to choose—that course of bringing up a family should be honoured to at least the same extent as those who have chosen differently.

I end with a simple example. Today one of my colleagues said that his wife had had a telephone call from somebody doing a survey. When she was asked what she did, she replied, “I am a housewife”. “No”, said the person on the end of the phone, “What do you really do?”. My colleague’s wife repeated that she was a housewife and in the end she was rather angry because the woman at the other end of the phone would not take that as a serious profession. I believe that one of the things that we can best do for women is that when they make the choice, we should accept it as their choice and honour them for it.