Immigration: Hostile Environment

Lord Jones of Cheltenham Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, on introducing this important debate and explaining so comprehensively what happened to the Windrush generation and why it was so wrong. Let me say also what a joy it is to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, who is always worth listening to in this House.

I would like to describe another example of the effects which current government policies have on those from other countries who are here legitimately. A case came to my attention recently of someone who married a UK citizen in 2015. The appropriate spouse visa was issued, at significant cost, and a health surcharge was paid; again, not a small amount. Both husband and wife have master’s degrees—exactly the kind of people this country needs to be a success in the future.

Under current rules, a spouse visa lasts for two and a half years and then an extension spouse visa must be applied for, again at considerable cost and with another health surcharge. The extension visa lasts for another two and a half years, after which the applicant is able to apply for permanent leave to remain, again at considerable cost and with another health surcharge. This particular applicant has just been through the spouse extension visa application, which seems to me to have been a pointless but quite damaging process. Let me explain why.

The Home Office website advises that an application to extend a spouse visa should not be made more than 28 days before the existing visa runs out, yet the Home Office’s own target average processing time for such a visa is eight weeks. Therefore, on average, following all the advice of the Home Office, the applicant is likely to experience what I will call a limbo period of four weeks after the original visa has expired but before the new visa is issued. The website also says that interviews can be held at certain offices around the country to speed up the issuing of the spouse extension visa. Unfortunately, at the time of applying, no such interviews were available.

This application should have been a five-minute job for any competent civil servant, or 10 minutes at the most—allowing for a coffee break, make it half an hour. The paperwork was in order, there had been no contact with the police, all taxes had been paid by both partners and the large fees had been paid. This application was not dealt with in half an hour but dragged on.

Consequently, the applicant fell into the limbo period, which caused a number of problems. A close family member had decided last year to get married this year on one of the Greek islands—this was arranged a long time ago—and the applicant was invited. Airline tickets and accommodation were purchased. However, because of falling into the limbo period, the applicant was unable to travel—the Home Office still had the passport and had not issued the extension visa—and so missed the wedding, where I understand a good time was had by all but there were mutterings over the visa-issuing process. Needless to say, in the week after the family wedding the passport and renewed visa arrived on the last day of the eighth week since application.

The Minister may recall that I have tabled several Parliamentary Questions recently. She is one of the best Ministers in the House for at least trying to answer the Questions posed. On 14 May I asked:

“Why an applicant for a spouse extension visa may not apply more than 28 days before the expiry of their current visa when the standard processing time … for someone resident in the UK is eight weeks”.

The Minister replied on 22 May:

“The requirement to submit a spouse extension application no earlier than 28 days before the expiry of existing leave is advisory, not mandatory. However, an application submitted earlier may result in a shortfall in the applicant’s qualifying period when they later apply for settlement”.


I understand that. I also asked:

“what advice they give to applicants if they need to make international travel after their visa has expired but before their renewal visa has been granted”.

The Minister replied:

“Applicants are advised when applying not to make any non-urgent … travel arrangements until their passports or travel documents are returned to them, followed by their Biometric Residence Permit if their application is successful”.


She went on to say:

“Applicants can request the urgent withdrawal of their application for international travel. They would then have to apply for entry clearance from overseas to return to the UK”.


So you go to a Greek island to attend a wedding and spend most of the time there applying for leave to come back to the UK. It does not make a great deal of sense.

On top of the disappointment over missing the wedding, the applicant had just completed a research project for one of the UK’s universities and was applying for similar work elsewhere. However, because of the “Windrush” publicity, potential employers were deterred from offering employment because the Home Office had the passport and they did not want a potential “illegal” on their books. So there was an interruption to the applicant’s contribution to the UK economy.

Out of the blue, a telephone call was made offering employment carrying out recovery work on one of the UK’s overseas territories because the applicant had the correct qualifications and experience to do the job. Noble Lords will be aware of the damage caused in some overseas territories by the Caribbean hurricanes last year. Unfortunately, that opportunity had to be turned down because under the law as it stands anyone holding a spouse visa is not allowed to spend more than a certain number of days outside the UK, otherwise a subsequent application for permanent leave to remain will be refused. This is nonsense. It feels like another example of a hostile environment towards someone who is here legitimately, has done nothing wrong—except, perhaps, to fall in love with a British citizen—and has a lot to contribute to our country.

Perhaps I may ask the Minister these questions to help with the new Home Secretary’s review. Why does it take eight weeks to process a routine application for a spouse extension visa? Does she agree that no one should be left in a limbo period? I cannot believe it, but are the Government trying to discourage mixed marriages? How much of the high fee charged is actually incurred in the processing of these visas? Why is a spouse extension visa needed at all? Why cannot the applicant apply for permanent leave to remain instead of having to apply for another two-and-a-half year visa? Surely two and a half years is long enough to show that the relationship is genuine. Further, will the Minister look at the rules on the number of days an applicant can be out of the country, particularly if they have been invited to help in the UK overseas territories, which after all are technically British?

Yesterday I received an email from a project worker in the organisation Just for Kids Law. Its “Let us Learn” campaign is youth led and aims to achieve change that helps young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who were brought to the UK at a young age from over 70 different countries and consider the UK their home. The project worker points out in her email that:

“Most of us have to go through a 10-year process of applying and repeatedly renewing our immigration status. This currently costs £8,521, before we are entitled to naturalise as British citizens, costing a further £1,330. Since 2014, the limited leave to remain fees we have to pay every 30 months to keep our immigration status up-to-date have increased from £601 to £1,033 excluding NHS surcharge of £500. The government mentioned earlier this year that the surcharge is set to rise to a total of £1,000. With no legal aid … many of us are struggling to keep our heads above water”.


She goes on:

“Because of this, we are calling for a government review of the impact of spiralling fees on lawful young migrants. We would like to see an immediate freeze of limited leave to remain fees and, ultimately, a shorter and affordable route to citizenship. The recent Windrush scandal has shone a light on an immigration system that is broken”.


There are many trouble spots in the world and the UK has a good record over the centuries of responding to the needs of those at risk. Unfortunately, in recent years there has been a tendency to kowtow to the racist nonsense spouted by some very unpleasant people both here and abroad. We should reject that approach. The Chicago-born actor, Mandy Patinkin, sums up the situation perfectly. When asked what was currently bugging him, he said:

“The global insensitivity to the most vulnerable people among us in the world: the refugees displaced by war, climate change, and the hatred of others. That insensitivity towards our fellow human beings is a wound to our collective soul”.


My Lords, I agree with him.

Brexit: Least Developed Countries

Lord Jones of Cheltenham Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl for initiating this important debate. During my 25 years in Parliament, I have devoted some of my time to understanding and supporting the work carried out by the Department for International Development.

I also have an interest in spreading democracy, and have been to several countries in Africa, including Mozambique and Sierra Leone—two of the countries mentioned today as being most in need of help—and to the Palestinian territories, as an observer of their elections. Observing elections is always a fascinating and uplifting experience. The UK uses its international development policy to address a number of global challenges, including poverty, diseases, climate change, migration and state fragility. While we are a highly generous donor, we cannot hope to solve these problems alone and need to work with other donors and to mobilise them to pursue similar goals.

It is possible—indeed likely—that, as a result of Brexit, the EU’s development focuses will shift. The central and eastern European countries are keen on diverting EU aid from the poorest countries, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, towards the EU’s eastern neighbourhood, something which the UK—quite rightly —has so far resisted. The migration crisis has also strengthened calls for diverting EU aid.

A potentially long and painful Brexit-induced recession may force the Government to make cuts and abandon the 0.7% overseas aid target. In September this year, the UK Government published a policy paper, Foreign Policy, Defence and Development—a Future Partnership Paper, which stated that,

“the UK will continue to use its international development budget through its international development partnerships, to advance global development impact or to tackle specific country problems”.

I was encouraged by that. However, the former Secretary of State, Priti Patel, said in October that leaving the EU would allow the Government to reclaim billions of pounds of annual aid funding currently diverted via Brussels. It could then be used not only for “humanitarian” work, but for,

“prosperity, Britain post Brexit, trade and economic development”.

She said this to the Commons International Development Committee. She added:

“There are a whole raft of opportunities”,


where we can use that money for,

“our national interest, global Britain’s interest, as well as helping to alleviate poverty around the world”.

The primary purpose of development should be lifting the poorest people in the world out of poverty, not serving the Government’s post-Brexit trade strategy.

When Hurricanes Irma and Maria tore through the Caribbean in September, the UK Government came under sharp criticism for a slow and seemingly reluctant effort—although they got there eventually—in the recovery of its Overseas Territories, including the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands. One of the excuses used by DfID was that, under international rules, those islands are too wealthy to be eligible for official development assistance. That may be so, but these are UK Overseas Territories. They are not independent countries; they each have a UK governor. They are our responsibility and we carry any liability caused by unusual and devastating events such as hurricanes. Frankly, neither France nor the Netherlands had any hesitation in getting support to their overseas territories.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. What discussions have the Government had with the Department for Exiting the European Union to ensure that funding for British Overseas Territories is protected in real terms if and when the UK leaves the EU? What assessment have they made of the UK’s ability to commit to spending 0.7% of the UK’s GNI on overseas development assistance after we have left the EU?

International Development Policies

Lord Jones of Cheltenham Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Earl on securing this debate and the noble Lord, Lord Barker, on his excellent maiden speech.

Page 156 of DfID’s latest annual report reveals that in recent years, the UK Overseas Territory of St Helena and Dependencies received more DfID assistance than either Uganda or Sierra Leone. The figures are due to the project to build an airport on that island in the South Atlantic. The airport itself will probably be ready in the first quarter of next year and is expected to come in on budget at £210 million. Weekly flights are currently scheduled to begin on 21 May: initially, a Comair flight from Johannesburg with a capacity of 120 or so passengers. Once a month, this service will fly on to Ascension before returning to St Helena the following day to pick up passengers returning to Johannesburg and beyond. Another airline, Atlantic Star/TUI-fly, is keen to begin charter flights from London Gatwick, refuelling in the Gambia.

Several concerns are being raised by the islanders. First, will there be enough tourism accommodation of adequate standard to cope with the influx of tourists? Currently, there are just 45 serviced en-suite accommodation bedrooms available. The recent worldwide surge in interest in St Helena, as manifested in the travel press and national newspapers, suggests that with just one flight a week the island’s accommodation will be fully taken up at an early stage. A new hotel in Main Street, Jamestown, has been delayed. Shelco’s long-standing intention to build a five-star plus complex, Wirebird Hills, has changed to a phased development, with the first phase scaled down due to a reduction in the projected tourist numbers in the first few years. Once a month, when the plane links with Ascension, will there be sufficient accommodation overnight for the new visitors arriving, as well as those who will be returning to Johannesburg the following day?

Secondly, will internet access be adequate to cope with the expectations and needs of visitors? Two Atlantic super-fast broadband cables are currently being laid into which, with adequate financial assistance, St Helena could link. Thirdly, are enough private sector businesses being set up to cope with the demand for restaurant food, island tours and fishing and diving expeditions? Will the island be able to produce enough fruit, vegetables and eggs to meet the demand? Fourthly, what plans are there for bulk freight for the island once the Royal Mail ship “RMS St Helena” is retired from service?

The UK taxpayer was right to invest in this overseas territory—what Harry Ritchie called in his book one of “the last pink bits” of the Empire. However, having spent more than £200 million, how will the Government measure the success of the project? St Helena has many attractions. Napoleon was exiled there, and died there. His home, Longwood House, was given to the French nation by Queen Victoria. More than 1,100 ships were wrecked approaching the island, running aground on the lava plateau just beneath the surface of the sea around this former active volcano. Divers will find the strikingly clear waters of the South Atlantic a paradise, as will sports fishermen and water sports enthusiasts. Beautiful seabirds in large flocks surround the island. Delicate indigenous flora and fauna inhabit the island, including the St Helena wirebird, a type of plover. Historic buildings can be explored, including High Knoll Fort, and farms from the era when sailing ships called in to replenish stocks of fresh fruit, vegetables and water. And of course there is Jonathan, the giant tortoise, which is believed to be the oldest living being on the planet. More than 200 years old, Jonathan may have met Napoleon. He is British and lives in the grounds of the governor’s residence, Plantation House. Visitors to the island will want to meet him—and his five girlfriends.

At the end of the day, the key may be to entice enough people who know St Helena back to the island to invest their future in making a success of this DfID project—including some of the estimated 20,000 saints who live in the Falklands, on Ascension, in the UK and elsewhere.

St Helena

Lord Jones of Cheltenham Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend on securing this important and timely debate. Last month, a ceremony was held at the airport site in St Helena to mark the construction of the airport terminal building. His Excellency the Governor of St Helena opened the ceremony with a speech to the invited guests. In his speech the governor praised the airport construction company, Basil Read, for the marvellous work it is doing. He said:

“Over the past two years when asked about the biggest challenges of my job I have always said that the least of my concerns was construction of the airport. Why? Because it was clear from early on that Deon de Jager and Basil Read were up to the job”.

Other speeches by St Helena officials also praised the airport construction company, Basil Read, and the company’s island director, Deon de Jager, for keeping the project to schedule, budget and specification. It is reassuring to know that the St Helena airport project is proceeding to its completion without any problems serious enough to cause significant delays. That is good news; it is a government project which is not overrunning on cost or timescale.

Our Government were right to decide to build the airport. Currently, St Helena has an odd sort of society made up of grandparents and grandchildren, with the intermediate generation earning a living off-island because there is next to no economy on St Helena. In 2016, there will be the prospect of a tourism industry that may eventually lead to the island becoming self-supporting economically, which will save the British taxpayer tens of millions of pounds each year.

St Helena has many attractions for tourists, some of which we have heard about already. They include Napoleon’s Longwood House, which is a little bit of France on a UK island; 1,100 shipwrecks; spectacular birds and abundant varieties of fish; endemic species of flora—I understand that it is hoped that the St Helena ebony will be made the national flower; the unique St Helena wirebird, which is a kind of plover, which we have already heard about; Jacob’s Ladder, with 699 steps, for those who are a bit fitter than me; Jonathan, the giant tortoise who lives in the grounds of the governor’s residence, Plantation House, who is reputed to be 200 years old and to have met Napoleon; and a golf course with horizontal trees. There is also plenty of history about the appalling slave trade in which the island played a part.

It is vital that we keep it in mind that the airport itself is only the foundation for the hoped-for economic development of St Helena. The goal is to transform St Helena from a small and remote community that is dependent upon grant-in-aid from Her Majesty’s Government to an island which, in time, can become self-sustaining based on a thriving tourism economy. To achieve that goal, the airport is one part of several interrelated and interdependent developments to which my noble friend has already referred to and which are all needed in order for St Helena to achieve at least some degree of economic independence. The airport will, of course, need aeroplanes flying in and taking off. The passengers carried by those aeroplanes will need somewhere to stay. A further aspect directly related to that crucial interdependence between airport, airline and tourism accommodation is the securing of a new shipping service to bring bulk cargo to St Helena. That is needed because the Royal Mail Ship “St Helena”, which the noble Lord and I both travelled on and which has been the lifeline to the island for the past 25 years, is due to be taken out of service after the airport opens.

Each day the airport buildings rise higher from the dust of Prosperous Bay Plain. However, the other vital components remain very much in the early stages of development. The governor of St Helena acknowledged the magnitude of the task ahead in his speech at the ceremony I referred to earlier. He said:

“The more complex, less easy task, is preparing St Helena to be able to benefit from new economic opportunities. But we can do it”.

The acting head of economic development exhorted her listeners,

“to rise to this opportunity and that means all of us working together to grow our economy. To do this we must put business first. This means we must encourage business development, and we must encourage entrepreneurs, both local and overseas”.

With a mere 19 months left before the airport is due to open, progress on developing some parts of the infrastructure for St Helena’s new tourism-based economy have remained virtually static while other parts started to move very late and continue to move slowly. I understand that the first stage of the tendering process for the contract to operate an air service to St Helena will not be completed until 17 July, with the contract scheduled to be awarded in February or March 2015. This gives the successful tenderer no more than one year to successfully complete the job of attracting an adequate number of passengers to a new air service flying to a new and little-known tourism destination.

Beyond that, the technical clearances and ticketing arrangements all have to be resolved at the same time. To attract the number of tourists envisaged, which it is estimated may reach 30,000 a year, there will need to be flights from Europe—the UK and France in particular—as well as from Africa. I hope that the Minister will be able to report significant progress on this, including which airlines have expressed an interest—BA, South African Airways or Atlantic Star, perhaps? When does she anticipate a contract will be signed? The earlier it is signed, the better. This contract-signing could unlock significant inward investment once investors can be assured that flights really are going to arrive.

The other main consideration is accommodation that offers a quality of service for the high-value, low-volume sector of the tourism market that St Helena is aiming to attract. Tourists will need somewhere to stay and so far I understand that no hotel development has started. With completion of the airport just 19 months away, we need to get a move on to build at least one.

Last week at the meeting of the St Helena group, I met two councillors from St Helena—Les Baldwin and Gavin “Eddie Duff” Ellick—who told us that the St Helena Government have set up a company called St Helena Hotel Development Ltd. It would be helpful if the Minister could say something about this. Is the contingency amount for the airport project going to be used to build a hotel? That would make some sense because it could be argued that the hotel is part of the total airport project. In which case, will Basil Read build the hotel? It is already on the island and has a successful track record. Is the Minister able to tell us the situation with Shelco’s plans to build a top of the range eco-hotel? Lastly, I understand that the first stage of the tendering process for the contract for a shipping line for bulk cargo to serve the island after the airport opens will be completed later this month. This contract is scheduled to be awarded in April 2015.

The islanders who are in contact with me are very enthusiastic about the future. I hope the Minister will give credible assurances that Her Majesty’s Government and DfID believe that, as my noble friend Lord Shutt sometimes puts it, “they have all their ducks in a row”.

Finally, many Saints live and work on Ascension and in the Falklands. What progress has been made with the USA over using Ascension as the divert runway for St Helena and on operating a shuttle service between the islands? This would open up the possibility of commercial flights from St Helena and Ascension to the Falklands, thus providing a more complete package for adventurous tourists. In the longer term, have the Government thought about a south Atlantic federation of overseas territories linking St Helena with the Falklands, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha?

Ivory Trade

Lord Jones of Cheltenham Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing this timely debate. It is timely because the Independent newspaper group, along with the Evening Standard, have launched a campaign on the subject, and made Space for Giants their Christmas appeal. It is also timely because last week the International Fund for Animal Welfare, IFAW, launched its briefing, Criminal Nature, to which my noble friend has already referred. It is timely, too, because this week an international conference has been held in Botswana on the subject.

Ivory—its acquisition, transportation and sale—is a complex, brutal and horrifying process. My noble friend has tried to answer the question of how the world can protect rhinos and elephants from the ivory trade. There are only two ways: stop poaching or eliminate the market. Elephants, rhinos and many other species need protection. Elephants are invariably killed for their ivory, and, as I do not believe any are on licence right now, they are invariably poached. This is a situation of which the locals may or may not approve, but it is hard to show disapproval of a gang of poachers with AK47s at the ready.

So how do you crack down and eliminate the poachers? First, you have to put up a tangible reward for information on poachers and their whereabouts. Incentives need to be scaled and relevant to those on the receiving end. If you seek information on poachers, sooner or later you will get some. Then there has to be an immediate and appropriate reaction, otherwise the information flow will become tainted or tail off due to lack of interest. This means that park rangers, game wardens and other law enforcement agencies need to be trained and equipped for the task. This costs money and a long-term commitment, although the finances are marginal in global terms—you could save all the elephants in Africa for a small portion of the feed-in tariffs generously paid to the renewables industry.

Secondly, penalties for those guilty of poaching must be severe. Some recent small fines are frankly laughable. Two Irish smugglers who were found with eight rhino horns were find €500 each, whereas the street value is €500,000. It is good to see that Zimbabwe has introduced heavy fines for poaching—$120,000 for a rhino, $20,000 for an elephant—and if you do not or cannot pay you go to a Zimbabwean jail.

I am not in favour of the death penalty. However, poachers do not think twice about killing wildlife rangers if they get in the way, so it is likely that you are going to have to kill a few poachers before the message sinks in that poachers are effectively on licence all day, every day, of every year, from now on. This worked for a while in Kenya, but poaching has been overtaken by terrorism on the security agencies' priority list, although—as we have heard—in Kenya, as in Tanzania, the two crimes are probably closely linked.

The Minister of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism in Botswana, the honourable Tshekedi Khama, received flak recently when he said:

“When we meet the poachers, we do not negotiate”.

It follows, therefore, that declaring war on terrorists and terrorism by removing sources of income extends to eliminating the poachers, and this could most usefully be tasked and funded from anti-terrorism budgets. The conference held in Gaborone in Botswana this week has agreed more tough measures to cut wildlife smuggling. It is to be classified as a serious crime, and gangs risk having their assets seized.

In some countries poachers with machine guns use helicopters in their murky exploits. They shoot elephants and rhinos from the air, land, take the ivory or horns and take off again. This is not random poaching: this is organised crime, highly financed. There is now hard evidence that these helicopter missions, in particular, are linked to terrorism, drug money-laundering and arms smuggling. They kill for ivory to fund terrorist activity or gun-running or drug activity elsewhere in the world.

I favour the bazooka option for the helicopter raids. It only needs a few of these aircraft to be blasted out of the sky to ram home the message that the poachers are not going to win. Next year the United Kingdom will withdraw its Armed Forces from Afghanistan. Perhaps we could offer to help train wildlife rangers to combat poaching. I know two members of our Armed Forces who would jump at the chance to help.

Finally, the market needs reform, preferably by elimination. A recent poll showed that seven out of 10 Chinese did not know that ivory comes from dead elephants. They seemed to think that it was some kind of mined mineral. Education is the key, not the elephants-are-lovely “Blue Peter” stuff but more along the lines of, “You are ridiculous idiots who need to get a life”. Now, as a realist, I suspect that the Prime Minister is unlikely to have had that sort of discussion on his visit to China this week, but it is encouraging that, according to this month’s National Geographic magazine, the Philippines has become the first non-African country to destroy its ivory stock. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary, Ramon JP Paje, said:

“The Philippines will not be a party to this massacre, and we refuse to be a conduit to this cycle of killing”.

Education is also needed as to the efficacy, or otherwise, of ingesting the powdered teeth or horn of elephants, rhinos and the like. Frankly, those who indulge in this practice need to be told that they would get as much benefit from consuming their own toenails, and they are free of charge. China and its inhabitants are both changing at a rapid pace, arguably for the better. As a state, it is buying up much of Africa and therefore should have a cultural interest in preserving what might, one day, become its playground. Education, in the final analysis, is the only solution to the demands of the market. Remove the market, and you stop poaching.

It is not all bad news; there is hope out there. Elephant and rhino populations have plummeted in recent decades, but they still exist. They have not yet become extinct and gone the way of the dodo and numerous other species. In some countries, populations are growing. A shining example is Botswana, and I draw attention to my declared interest in that country. At the end of 2012, Botswana’s elephant population was 207,545, which is more than one-third of all African elephants. The number has almost quadrupled in 20 years and is currently growing at 5% each year. This time next year, there will be more than 10,000 extra elephants in Botswana. The reason is not hard to find. Botswana’s rulers pay attention to and love their wildlife. The country’s first president, Sir Seretse Khama, and successive presidents since, knew and know the value of wildlife, not for its ivory and skins, but to attract visitors from around the world to see these magnificent creatures. Botswana has banned so-called trophy hunting. I recommend that noble Lords visit Botswana to see for themselves the most incredible wildlife on our planet in its natural habitat. If noble Lords wish to have elephants on their estates, I understand that the Government of Botswana will let you have as many as you like free of charge. You just need to arrange the transport.

I shall end with this personal experience. A few years ago I was on a boat on the River Chobe near Kasane in northern Botswana. In the distance I could see a large dark object in the river—it was a very large elephant. As we got closer I asked the guide why the elephant was there. “Oh, she’s dying”, he said. “She’s in the water to keep cool”. He added, “She’s the matriarch”. All around there were hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands, of elephants of all shapes and sizes. A few weeks later I went back and asked what had happened to the elephant. I was told that she died. The wildlife wardens had dragged her onto the river bank and removed the tusks. That is what they do in Botswana with dead elephants; the Government take control of the ivory. Then, for hour upon hour, elephants had filed past her in an orderly fashion, touching her body with their trunks. They were her family paying their last respects. Elephants are amazingly intelligent creatures with feelings just like humans. In my view they are far more intelligent than poachers, the organisers of poaching, those involved in the ivory trade and the end consumers. Bad humans have caused the current crisis. It is now up to good humans to ensure that the species survive by eradicating once and for all the trade in ivory which has led to the horrible and indefensible crime of poaching.

Women: Developing Countries

Lord Jones of Cheltenham Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jones of Cheltenham]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Loomba for instigating this debate and I congratulate him on the marvellous work that he does through the Loomba Foundation.

UN figures suggest that on average women perform 66% of the world’s work, produce 50% of the food, but earn only 10% of the income and own only 1% of the property. That comes from a report by the UNDP in July 2011. That is a dreadful situation and it is the fault of men. We should be ashamed and should work relentlessly to change society to ensure that women are properly appreciated and rewarded for the work that they do.

Lack of proper pay is only one of the challenges that women face. Unequal access to education limits the ability of women to develop their skills so that they can enter the workplace, improve the lot of their families and contribute to the wealth of their country. Two years ago, I visited Sierra Leone and Cameroon on parliamentary strengthening visits organised by the CPA. Sierra Leone is a tough place where all the indicators for women and children are at or near the bottom of world league tables: death in childbirth, maternal health, child mortality and educational opportunities. Cameroon is slightly better but in both countries the attitudes to women are unacceptable.

In both countries we were given a briefing on gender issues that described an uncomfortably grim picture. In Sierra Leone, one MP told us that there was a real problem with witches. I thought he was talking about the punishments that were meted out to supposed witches by lynch mobs, but no, he actually believed that there really were witches causing trouble in the country. I am sure that he and other MPs thought I was mad when I told them that witches do not exist and that they must stamp out this belief. Fortunately, members of the Sierra Leone diaspora who left the country during the long civil war are slowly returning, bringing some capable women and men who are determined to bring about improvements. I wish them well.

In Cameroon, one MP, who was also a chief, told us that he did not understand why every time anyone speaks about gender issues they always talk about women. In his view, there were male issues too. It was right, he said, that boys should go to school and be educated because they needed to work, but he was not sure that it was worth doing the same for girls, because it was their job to help their mothers at home and anyway they would soon have children and be unable to work. He regarded girls as second class citizens. He was equally strident about violence. He told us that men had to keep their womenfolk under control. He also astonished us by saying that what we call female genital mutilation was exactly the same as circumcision for boys. Fortunately, the leader of our delegation, who at that time was a woman Labour MP, rose to give him a good ticking off. After dismantling all the points that he had made she finished by saying: “So let me be clear: girls are equal to boys, women are equal to men, and if you don’t like it we may just have to dominate you”. She was magnificent.

Access to birth control is patchy or non-existent in many countries, leading to women being unable to limit the size of their families. In Sierra Leone, we were proudly told that the abortion law was exactly the same as that in the UK. Unfortunately, that was a reference to the 1837 Act, which decreed that abortion was illegal. The result is that abortions take place in that country but are done illegally in the backstreets, and many women die as a result.

Professor Nynke van den Broek, head of the maternal and newborn health unit at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, tells me that almost 300,000 women—the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, said the figure was 270,000—die each year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. This equates to a woman dying every two minutes. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, said that it was every minute and a half. Professor van den Broek added that for each death, 30 women live but suffer life-long morbidity. She said that there are at least 2.6 million stillbirths every year and that 99% of maternal deaths are in developing countries. Most deaths are preventable. Maternal conditions are the second most common cause of death in women of reproductive age, between 15 and 44 years, in low and middle-income countries. In sharp contrast, in high income countries such as ours, maternal death does not feature in the 10 most common causes of death.

Men often desert women who bear their children. The number of children born outside marriage is startling. I have no figures for most African nations or countries at war, because they are not collected, but many places in the Caribbean reveal extraordinary numbers: St Lucia 86%, Dominica 76%, St Vincent 84%, Panama 83%, Seychelles 80%, Guadeloupe 77% and French Guyana 87%. Before we get too smug, let me tell noble Lords that the figure for the United Kingdom is 46.3%, similar to that of Belgium with 47%. The country with the lowest proportion of children born outside marriage is Turkmenistan with 3.8%. Of course, in many developed countries, couples live together without marrying, but that is not the case everywhere. Noble Lords can imagine how the chances of children are affected when they are abandoned by their father and the burden of parenthood is solely on the mother.

The worst challenge to the well-being of women is, of course, violence. I commend Angelina Jolie for appearing this week before a UN committee to campaign against rape in war zones. However, it is not just in war zones where women are abused. Last year, I attended a conference here in Parliament organised by the UK branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The theme was how to encourage more women to become parliamentarians or councillors—to become leaders. There were delegates from developing countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, alongside those from first-world countries. The most moving session was on domestic violence. I was one of only three men present among 100 women. The atmosphere was electric. We heard from three inspiring keynote speakers: my colleague Lynne Featherstone, a Minister in the Department for International Development; the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, who is passionate about this issue; and Harriet Harman, who did a lot on this issue when she was a Labour Minister in the previous Government. After the presentations, delegates poured their hearts out about the dreadful conditions that women face in their countries, including violence, mental abuse, rape and female genital mutilation. You name the abuse, it got mentioned, and it was happening in their countries.

Things are bad even in Britain. In recent years, the number of women killed in the home has reduced, but it still goes on. My noble friend Lord McColl of Dulwich cannot be with us today because he has an appointment with his dentist. He told me yesterday of the lady in Dulwich who wore sunglasses in winter, not because it was sunny but because she had two black eyes from an abusive husband. At least a third of women suffer violence at some time in their lives. Figures released this week suggest it is up to two-thirds. Sometimes physical violence is not involved; it can be mental attacks with constant shouting, undermining a woman’s self-confidence. It is still abuse. The effect on children in households where this abuse takes place is particularly corrosive. In one family that we heard of in the conference last year the children could tell from the sound of the key in the front door what kind of mood the father was in and whether they were going to be beaten up that night.

In this country if you hit someone in the street, that is a crime. If you hit someone at home, that is a crime too. We must end this misery. Parliament must oblige the police and social services to protect the abused. If we suspect abuse each one of us should blow the whistle to prevent another tragedy. Women, children and, yes, men need to be able to say: this is my body and you do not touch it unless I say so.

When she replies to this debate, I hope my noble friend the Minister will tell us what our Government intend to do to help women now and for the new post-2015 millennium development goals framework. ActionAid tells me that this must include eliminating violence against women and girls, reducing women’s and girls’ responsibility for unpaid care work, securing equal access to and control over land and other resources, securing women’s participation, voice and influence in decision-making, the completion of quality secondary education for young women in safe school environments, universal access to sexual and reproductive health rights, and access to decent work on an equal basis to men. In order to make a significant difference to the lives of women around the world, it is vital that women are placed at the heart of the global economic architecture post-2015.