Child Labour and Artisanal Cobalt Mining in the DRC
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Lord Benyon (Con)
Through our modern slavery legislation and through the work we are doing in a variety of multilateral fora, we are trying to make sure that, with international companies mining not just cobalt but a whole range of other things—for diamonds, for example, using the Kimberley process, or for conflict minerals—we are doing work in-country, leading on partnerships that have seen great benefit, with children going into school as opposed to working in mines. UK taxpayers’ money is doing that, and we are working really hard on this. We want to make sure that companies are playing their part, too, and that their supply chains are transparent.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
The Minister has asserted that we are a world leader in modern slavery work. That may have been the case, but can he explain, then, why there was such a hiatus between the departure of the previous modern slavery commissioner and the appointment of a new one? I believe that the new one has not yet taken up her post. Secondly, if we are to lead on these issues, what are we doing to make sure that we are more resilient in terms of minerals such as cobalt?
Lord Benyon (Con)
On the first point, I will write to the noble Lord about the appointment of the new commissioner. On the second point, there is a market imperative to use less of certain products because they are expensive to obtain and transport across the world, so there is a market mechanism. But there is also a driver for the Government through innovation, particularly in areas such as battery manufacture, to reduce both the weight of batteries and, therefore, the quantity of minerals such as cobalt that are used. The Government are providing funding for innovation in a whole range of ways.
National Cyber Security Centre
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend raises a couple of important points. First, on ransom demands, as she will be aware, it is the firm position of the Government and UK law enforcement that we do not encourage, endorse or indeed condone the payment of ransom demands. For example, if you pay a ransom after your computer has been affected or your systems have been impacted, there is no guarantee that you will not be targeted in the future by criminal groups. In that regard, Lindy Cameron, the CEO of the NCSC, and the Information Commissioner have written to the Law Society and the Bar Council.
However, the Government offer specific support, including to small businesses. There are the 10 Steps to Cyber Security and the Small Business Guide; there is also a ransomware portal that provides fresh advice, as well as the NCSC’s assured cyber incident response scheme. It is ever evolving, but the Government are very robust, and we are working across departments to ensure that we give the best information and response possible.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, of course, I refer to my interests in the register. I suspect that the excellent schemes that the Minister has outlined are very useful but that they do not address the question that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked. If a company or organisation is subjected to a ransomware attack, can it get tailored help as to what to do in real time from the NCSC, and how do people know how to access that?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, if the noble Lord reflects on the answer that I gave, he will see that I answered the question quite directly. The first point is, “Don’t pay”, because the experience is that there is no assurance. Of course, a small company will have limited resources, and some of the portals, information and websites, as well as the response that I have outlined, are designed to help exactly those kinds of small businesses in their response. However, one thing is very clear, whether it is within my department or the Home Office: that by paying such demands there is no assurance, for a small or a large company, that a ransom attack will not happen again.
Ukraine: Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
The noble Lord is well-informed by his reading, and his is very much an accurate assessment. This particular plant is much more modern and state-of-the-art. The fact is that most of its activities and energy generations have been turned down—indeed, most of the reactors are now not operational. Even without inspections, that assessment can be made. However, I add the necessary caveat that all of us, including Russia, will get reassurance when the IAEA can get access and, as the noble Lord said, there is an expert opinion on the table that we all recognise. This war will continue but it is in Russia’s interests, not just Ukraine’s and everyone else’s, to allow access. Russia itself has been a signatory to ensuring that this kind of access and assessments of facilities are done regularly, accurately and comprehensively.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission. I am not sure that the Minister answered the supplementary question from the right reverend Prelate, which was very much about what is actually being done in this country in the event of this happening and it being on the more severe end of concerns. First, could he specifically tell us what guidance has been provided to local resilience forums as to what they should be doing and preparing for? Secondly, what contingency arrangements have the Government put in place for communications with the general public to deal with any panic, concerns or legitimate fears that there might be?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
On the second point, the noble Lord himself will know that there is comprehensive contingency planning by any Government. This is the case with successive Governments—we will seek to mitigate against all eventualities, all risks and all concerns, and we will seek to prepare for them. On the issue of communication and more access to information and information that can be shared, I will take back what the noble Lord has suggested. I have been assured that, from a cross-government perspective, all the key agencies that need to be involved are fully involved. I cannot stress enough, as the noble Lord, Lord Browne, said in a previous question, that this plant, compared to those of previous nuclear incidents such as Chernobyl, is very different. However, I have been very careful to caveat that, because only when we get a full comprehensive assessment can we make a full overall assessment. Mitigations, assessments and contingency planning are very much in place. If there is further information to be shared, I will share it.
Ukraine: Defence Relationships
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I respectfully remind noble Lords of the speaking limit. We are running very close to time anyway, and the Minister will not have very long if we do not all stick exactly to it. I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
That is a slightly strange intervention, given that the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, was well under time.
The whole House is grateful to my noble friend Lord Liddle for his, if I may say so, magisterial and wide-ranging introduction to this debate. I declare my interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission, the aim of which is to improve the preparedness of the UK to reduce the risk of and mitigate the consequences of a major crisis or threat.
My noble friend and others referred to the integrated defence review, which now appears—with all due respect to those who say its tone was right—somewhat stale in the light of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The Ukrainian resistance to a vile invasion has demonstrated what a well-led, resilient nation can do when faced with an existential threat. But how well prepared would this country be if faced with a similar attack, whether kinetic or hybrid? How resilient would our society be in responding to any other significant threat? We know from Covid how quickly what we would regard as the norms of society unravelled within a few weeks, with deserted town centres, lockdown, social distancing, mask wearing and so on. We are living in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world.
Eighteen months ago, the latest edition of the national risk register was published. It mapped 38 major risks facing the country, including environmental hazards, major accidents, malicious attacks—cyber-based and terrorist—risks arising overseas and, inevitably, animal and human diseases. Supply chain disruption and energy market instability are not mentioned; nor, since it pre-dated the invasion of Ukraine, is the threat of Russian retaliation by cyber or other means for the stance that the EU, NATO and, indeed, this country have taken.
That is why Chapter 4 of the integrated review, on building national and international resilience, was so important. It explicitly promised a “comprehensive national resilience strategy” based on a whole-of-society approach, involving individuals, businesses and organisations. This strategy has been expected for several months. Can the Minister tell us—this is the first of five specific questions I have for him—when it is likely to be published? I assume that it will address the three central questions of what we should prepare for, how much resilience is enough and how we finance the necessary investment.
A whole-of-society approach necessarily implies engagement with the whole of society. My second question for the Minister is: what plans do the Government have for this engagement? Specifically, how will the wider business community be informed, encouraged and incentivised to build its organisational resilience?
What about the general public? In 2018, the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency sent to every household in the country a revised version of its household preparedness guide If Crisis or War Comes. It asks the reader to consider what they would do if their normal everyday life was turned upside down. It cites climate change, external incidents and cyberattacks, but is essentially risk agnostic in the practical advice and information it provides. So my third question for the Minister is: do the Government plan such a publication here? If not, how do they envisage obtaining sufficient community engagement to deliver the necessary level of societal resilience to the threats we may face?
A familiar background to those broadcasts that we have all heard from Ukraine in the last few months has been the background sound of air raid sirens. I remember, as many noble Lords will, when air raid sirens were still placed on the top of large buildings in this country—as they had been in World War II. But that system was largely dismantled in the early 1990s. I am told that only about 1,200 remain and are used to warn the public in the event of floods in certain parts of the country. So, what is to replace them in the rest of the country?
In 2013, the Cabinet Office tested emergency alerts sent automatically to every mobile phone in designated areas. It is a technology that has been proven to save lives all over the world. Yet, nine years later, the technology has yet to be rolled out here. So, my fourth question for the Minister is: when will the promised cell broadcast technology—which incidentally is not the best technology to be using, but it is better than nothing—be available across the country and what advice is to be provided to the public on the actions they should take in response to an alert?
During Covid, communities had to come together to respond at local level. Councils and the emergency services worked with local community and voluntary organisations to support vulnerable people in the community. So my fifth question to the Minister is: how are those arrangements going to be sustained and built on as we go forward? This will involve increased funding and proper partnership. The lessons of the response by the Government and people of Ukraine demonstrate why whole-of-society resilience is so important. It is a wake-up call for us to look at our own arrangements. I hope that, when he winds up, the Minister will reassure us that this is central to the Government’s thinking, and that the fine words in chapter 4 of the integrated review will be turned into meaningful action.
Covid-19: Surplus Vaccine Doses
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I welcome my noble friend’s support. On his specific questions, we are not at the point where we can make specific pledges about excess vaccines, but I note what my noble friend said about support for particular countries. We will support primarily the AMC facility at COVAX, which we have led, to ensure the most equitable access. He makes an important point about distribution, which we will be monitoring closely with our key partners, including UNICEF, which is a key agency in the distribution of these vaccines.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab) [V]
The Minister continues to be suspiciously vague about whether the Government will simply transfer the right to buy vaccine supplies rather than pay for them themselves. No doubt this will be seen as an instrument of British foreign policy, so will the UK be claiming credit for its generosity in the recipient countries, if it does turn out to be generous, and will we be content to see these vaccines going to countries whose Governments are engaging, for example, in genocide or human rights abuses?
Shawcross Report: Compensation for Victims
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I note what the noble Lord has said. On the delay, the challenges of the pandemic have meant that we wanted to give the report appropriate discussion across Westminster. I assure the noble Lord that we put victims at the heart of our approach. He mentioned victims from other countries, and he will of course note that where there are direct victims—in the case of the United Kingdom, those around Lockerbie—appropriate compensation has been paid out.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab) [V]
Oh, come on, my Lords: the Government have sat on this report for almost a year. The first excuse, which the Minister has repeated, was Covid. Then, in response to an FOI request, the excuse was that it would affect unspecified British interests abroad; next, that it would somehow prejudice relations with the Northern Ireland Executive; and, lastly, that it contains private and confidential information, which presumably could be redacted. So what is the real reason? US victims of Gaddafi-backed terrorism have been compensated. There are £12 billion-worth of frozen Libyan assets in the UK. Last year, the Government promised that they were committed to supporting the victims of Libyan-sponsored IRA terrorism, so why have they been dragging their feet?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I believe I have already answered the noble Lord in part. I do not agree with him that we have been dragging our feet. As I said, the report is wide-ranging, and we are giving it careful consideration. On the asset freeze that he specifically mentioned, he will know that UK regulations prohibit any dealings with assets owned, held or controlled by designated persons, as specified in law. I note what the noble Lord has said, but I assure him that we are looking at this across government.
Flooding
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]
The noble Lord highlights an important point. We know that many of our coastal settlements are at risk if trends continue in the same direction. We are also investing, as part of our response and the £5.2 billion, £200 million to support more than 25 local areas to take forward wider innovative actions that improve their resilience to flooding and coastal erosion, with a big emphasis on nature-based solutions. I cannot provide the noble Lord with a numerical answer on the level of acceptable damage, but we are increasingly emphasising nature-based solutions, because we know that, in terms of pound-for-pound investment, that is where we are likely to see a very significant return. That is as true on the mainland as it is on the coast.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I refer to my registered interests. The national risk register orders the reasonable worst-case scenarios for each of the risks that it considers in terms of their impact. Floods rank in the second-highest category of impact, only exceeded by pandemics and a large-scale CBRN attack. So I ask the Minister: what is the estimated cost to the nation of a reasonable worst-case flood scenario? Less than £1 billion a year is scheduled to be spent on flood defences over the next six years. Is that anything like enough?
Integrated Security, Defence and Foreign Policy Review
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. I reassure him that this is well understood by the Government. Indeed, we remain committed to the NATO guidance to spend 2% of GDP and, furthermore, this is protected against any inflationary increase that may occur. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, there may be further lessons to be learned from the crisis. I am sure the House will join me in paying tribute to our Armed Forces who, not just in times of challenge globally but, as we are seeing, domestically, step up to the mark.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, my understanding is that the security and defence review has been put back six months. Can the Minister tell us what is now the best expectation of the timetable going forward? If there is to be rather longer to prepare, is it the intention to have a more root-and-branch look at the resilience of the whole security apparatus and the extent to which we are able to respond to all sorts of crises, those which are natural as well as those that are initiated by hostile actors?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Again, I find myself very much in agreement with the noble Lord’s last point. We need to ensure that there is a thorough review of all the challenges we face, whether it is from Mother Nature and pandemics or from sinister actors. Let us not forget that it is not that long ago that we were impacted by chemical weapon attacks on the streets of Salisbury. On the integrated review itself, given the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, we are, of course, keeping all non-related government work under review. The Prime Minister has already said that he will lead the review and bearing in mind his leadership on the current crisis, of course we will look to ensure that the learnings from this crisis can be fed into the review itself.
Anti-Semitism
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, as I am sure the whole House is, for securing the debate on this important subject. Quite rightly, she has highlighted shocking examples around the world. The re-emergence of hatred of Jews—to use the phrase she prefers—in continental Europe less than 75 years after the Shoah ended is a stark warning of the fragility of our post-war norms. Surveys show that, in many parts of Europe, Jews feel unsafe and insecure while far-right parties that unashamedly parade anti-Semitic tropes gain significant numbers of votes.
However, I want to focus nearer to home, on this country; with a deep sense of shame, I want to talk about the party I have been a member of for almost 50 years. Labour has a proud history of combating racism and discrimination, and of opposing fascism and anti-Semitism. It is therefore profoundly shocking for those of us brought up in that tradition to find our party now the subject of a formal investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. This is nothing short of humiliating for those of us on these Benches, it is causing dismay among party members outside this House, and is deeply alienating for those we might hope would vote for us, whether they are from the Jewish community or not.
It undermines the Labour Party’s whole ethos, the values of equality, decency and solidarity that brought so many of us on these benches into the Labour Party in the first place. Over three months ago, I wrote as chair of the Labour Peers’ group to Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the party. That letter expressed our dismay—no, worse than that, our alarm—at the continuing failure to remove anti-Semites from our party. I have not had the courtesy of a reply. Last week, I met two women who had been verbally and physically harassed at a meeting of their local Labour Party because they were Jewish.
I wish I could say that this was an isolated instance but, alas, it was not. The process of dealing with complaints of anti-Semitic behaviour within the party has been slow, tortuous and frequently inconclusive. Too often individuals are suspended only when their cases receive external publicity. Action was taken against one member of the party’s National Executive Committee only after a second anti-Semitic rant was recorded and publicised; he had been let off with a warning after the first one.
Too often those who have complained about anti-Semitism have been dismissed as being apologists for, or even in the pay of, the Israeli Government or Mossad, or we are told that the cases are few and far between. Any anti-Semite in the Labour Party is one too many. The party’s abject failure to deal effectively with anti-Semitism over the last three years cannot be ascribed to inadequate resourcing of the complaints and compliance function in the Labour Party head office, or blamed on inadequate or outdated processes. The failure is a political one; it is a failure of leadership.
Those of your Lordships who have been responsible for major organisations know that the tone, style and ethos of such organisations are set at the top. That is what leadership means. Leadership is not about hiding behind procedure, blaming more junior officials or allowing your acolytes to dismiss legitimate complaints as the spite of those who disagree with your political approach. We on these Benches must take on the task of cleansing our party of anti-Semitism and those who condone and foster it. If this debate tells us anything, however, it is that this is a global problem as well. Parliamentarians both here and elsewhere in the world need to make a stand. The lessons of the millions who died in Europe must never be forgotten—never.
Cyprus
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, it is clear that the process going on is extremely important, and we all wish it success. Can the Minister comment on the extent to which the consent of the people, to which my noble friend referred, relates to the people of Cyprus or to the wider diaspora of the various communities and, if so, how that is to be managed?