Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2019

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

Because of the issue of affordability, we have to make some difficult choices. I will not pretend that we are not constantly looking at this; indeed, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions made a speech only today amplifying the fact that we are looking at different ways of supporting people with disabilities. They may not attract a price tag, if I may put it that way, but they are going to help transform the lives particularly of people with severe disabilities, because the reality is that we cannot simply take that difficult leap and say that we are going to lift the benefit freeze. As my noble friend said last night in another place, we have to face the fact that under the previous Labour Government, welfare spending increased by £84 billion—the equivalent of £3,000 additional cost for every working household in this country. We have to strike a fair balance between those who are funding the welfare system and those who are in receipt of it. It is always a difficult balance, but again, I thank noble Lords who are making suggestions and encouraging me to amplify the fact that we have a particular interest in supporting those who may not have been in work for a number of years, or who may never have worked, to have the confidence to do so.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is speaking with great passion and conviction about her commitment to get people back into work. Is it not also incumbent on us all, irrespective of party, to keep constantly under review exactly what some of this work amounts to? It is hardly surprising that there are large numbers of families still not in work: the attraction of going into the sort of work available is the attraction of going into hell.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I am pleased to say that the vast majority of jobs which people are taking are full-time employment but, as I have said before at this Dispatch Box, it is really important that we focus on low pay. We have introduced the living wage, which has made an enormous difference. However, there is an issue not just in the private sector but in the third sector and others, where low wages are paid on the expectation that they will be supplemented by the state. We have to think about how we can tackle that. It is a very tough one. In a sense, I speak now not as a Minister but we have to take it on board. The reality is that until we have more people being paid what one might call properly, so that they do not have to turn to the benefits system, there will be the issue of how we maintain and sustain an affordable welfare system in the years ahead.

The costs are going up. I do not know whether I dare say this without checking my notes but the reality is that in a few short years—here we are, it is by 2022—our expenditure on welfare will rise by a further £28 billion. We are already spending more than £100 billion on benefits for people of working age. That £100,000 million will go up by £28,000 million by 2022.

Syria

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former director of Oxfam. I warmly thank the right reverend Prelate for giving the House a further opportunity to review the huge humanitarian challenge that faces us. I also pay tribute—and am sure that other noble Lords would like to do so—to the humanitarian workers from across the world who are serving in this situation. Their courage and resilience has been of a special order.

I acknowledge that, in preparing for this debate, the briefs from the UK NGOs actively engaged in the front-line activities have been impressive and most helpful; I am thinking particularly of Christian Aid, Save the Children and Oxfam. HMG have won the support of all these NGOs and, I believe, of all parts of this House, for the good lead they are giving on behalf of the people of the United Kingdom.

It is important to recognise that, as we have been reminded, the UN estimates that 6.8 million Syrians are trapped in conflict areas and are in immediate need of assistance. A joint NGO assessment carried out in May 2013 found that, in fact, the need may be much greater, with 10.5 million people not getting enough essential supplies and seven northern governorates alone in special need. Moreover, at least 4 million Syrians, half of them children, are in need of emergency food assistance. Save the Children’s latest report, Hunger in a War Zone, shows how food is getting dangerously scarce, expensive and risky to access in Syria, and how efforts to address this are falling dangerously short.

The Syrian Government have permitted assistance provided from Damascus across conflict lines, but administrative, logistical and security constraints continue to prevent this being provided on anything like the scale required. The UN and its partners have faced major difficulties providing aid in this way. Between January and July 2013 only 21 UN convoys crossed the conflict lines.

Many parts of Syria can only, or can more easily, be reached by cross-border operations from neighbouring countries. Agencies have not been permitted by the Syrian authorities to do this; nor have neighbouring countries given their formal approval. The fast-changing dynamics of the conflict, coupled with frequent shelling and the multiplicity of armed groups also threaten the security of agencies delivering cross-border aid.

As we have been reminded, on 2 October, the UN Security Council adopted a presidential statement on humanitarian access to Syria. This called on the Syrian Government to allow cross-border aid deliveries where appropriate and called on all parties to the conflict to agree on humanitarian pauses in the fighting, including along key routes for relief convoys. It called on Damascus to take immediate steps to facilitate the expansion of humanitarian regional relief operations and to lift bureaucratic impediments and other obstacles. Obviously, the UN presidential statement must be urgently implemented. Four weeks after it was adopted, it would be helpful if the Minister could tell us just how much progress has really been made.

What are the Government able to do to urge states with influence over the parties to the conflict to implement the presidential statement? What are they able to do to encourage the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Security Council itself and all donors, both bilateral and multilateral, to expand relief operations and to vigorously pursue the removal of obstacles to cross-border aid delivery? The figure of more than 100,000 deaths is terrible enough, but there are also wider human costs about which we have been hearing in this debate.

Seven million men, women and children have been compelled to leave home. Two million have sought refuge in neighbouring countries such as Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. One million have gone to Lebanon alone and, as we have been reminded, others to Jordan, added to the Palestinian refugees already there. The number of refugees has now reached more than a quarter of the total population. Goodness knows what it will become in the future. We have to face up to the incredible hospitality being provided by neighbouring countries, which puts a huge moral responsibility on us to respond and to ensure that those countries get the support they deserve in infrastructure, education and all that is being done. If the Minister can reassure us of this, it would be very helpful.

I want to say a word about the children. The trauma and the disruption of their education will have long-term effects right into the future, hindering development and the rest. Then there are the horrific experiences of too many women and girls. Women and girls face a nightmare. The needs and opportunities of women must be a priority in all aspects of the response. Clinical care and counselling for victims of sexual assault and gender-based violence is another priority. Physical security, adequate water and sanitation, adequate cultural and gender-specific hygiene and dignity kits, adequate access to healthcare, facilities in camps and host communities—all these should be receiving our focused attention. We cannot neglect equal access for women to income-generating projects and to relief supplies in general. Can the Minister tell us that enough is being done?

We all yearn for peace, but I remind the House, in conclusion, of the wise words of Christian Aid:

“A key concern is that an over-reaching and hasty push for peace without a clearly planned process of moving towards ceasefires could generate an intensification of the conflict as the sides seek to establish facts on the grounds and gain territorial advantage. Initial areas of focus should concentrate on creating openings for looking at reinforcing locally defined ceasefires (of which there are several) into creating opportunities for wider ceasefires and humanitarian pauses. Geneva II should seek to establish a process of negotiation and efforts towards building the foundations of peace through … inclusive talks; civil society engagement, and establishing conditions for ceasefire”—

of which, as I say, there are already a number of examples.

Millennium Development Goals

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

I declare an interest as the former director of Oxfam and VSO, and also currently as a trustee of Saverworld. Congratulations are due to the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, on having secured the debate and on her highly effective speech in introducing it. She established the need for a major debate in this House, preferably in government time, because this is such an important part of their commitments and strategies that we need to have a proper, full debate.

It is essential to recognise that we must ensure shared objectives. It is not us, the wealthy, telling the poor what to do, but ensuring that the poor themselves are involved in the ownership of the programme that is put forward and to which they are expected to respond and that they feel that it is theirs, not ours. It is is also recognising the interplay between specific targets and the matrix. What is the matrix? Let me rattle through the points to illustrate it: children and women, education, ecosystems and sustainable management of natural resources, climate change with the consequent vast movement of people, gaps in achieving MDGs within individual countries, and also the inequality and injustice in income levels between men and women, social groups and the able and disabled, universal public services, redistribution of wealth, effective and progressive tax systems, strengthening resilience and advancing human rights, sustainable peace and state building, conflict resolution, and analysing the causes of conflict. There is a huge list. We cannot possibly do it justice tonight. The sooner there is a full debate, the better.

Leveson Inquiry

Lord Judd Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I believe that perspective is essential in our considerations of this matter. It is essential that we pay a warm tribute to many fine and courageous journalists and to excellent parts of the media, who provide invaluable service to society even when we at times get very upset by it. I am totally convinced by the courageous work of Lord Justice Leveson and think that we should fall behind him and quickly implement his emphasis on regulation, which must be independent of government and involve the media themselves. I also believe, as we have heard convincingly argued in this debate, that it must be underpinned by statutory authority. I am very glad that my noble friend Lady Liddell laid emphasis, rightly, on the importance of governance in the media.

I believe that the crisis in the media is a symptom of a deeper crisis in society as a whole. We are obsessed with quantitative rather than qualitative considerations. The increasing reality is more and more of a sad absence of ethical and value dimensions. There is now an emphasis in education from the youngest children to postgraduate studies onproducing efficient, operational people to feed the economic machine, less and less matched by an equal commitment to producing citizens who think, evaluate and challenge in the context of a search for truth and with the ability always to ask not simply what is happening but why it is happening or why it has happened. That is the key word—“why”.

Of course, we desperately need efficient management and highly professional competence, but for what? Where are we going? What is it that really matters? Historically, there has always been a tension in a pluralist free press between commercial success and fulfilling the high and demanding calling of being the essential life blood of an informed and imaginative democracy. This is, of course, complicated by arrogant love of power by some. Democracy cannot be better than the quality of the information on which it functions.

Whether we be of the left or right, the issue of ethics applies to us all. Adam Smith was first of all a teacher of ethics. He approached his economic theory in the context of being a highly ethical and somewhat dour, I suspect, Presbyterian. He took the ethics for granted. We now want a free market, and all the rest, but not the ethnics. When the Berlin Wall fell, Lord Soper made a debate-stopping intervention. He said that it was not a question of socialism having been tried and failed but of socialism having demanded an ethic of which humankind has so far proved itself incapable. So whether we are on the left or the right, that struggle to see the ethical dimensions has pride of place and must always be there.

The issue with which we are now dealing reflects the pressures in the machine that constantly push downmarket to ensure sales, circulation and advertising. Other absolute principles have to be present all the time, such as truth, responsibility and integrity. These should be basic to, and inherent within, the culture; it is no good for them to be present simply because they have been imposed by a regulatory body. They have to be internalised in all that is going on.

The media themselves have a key part to play in tackling all this. Education, not just the training of journalists, matters desperately. That is why the humanities such as history, philosophy and the creative arts are so critical in our educational system. It is sheer short-sighted foolishness to undermine their primacy in our educational system.

The repeated disturbing events which made Leveson necessary must raise questions about the prevailing or developing culture among too many journalists—though not all, by a long chalk—their sense of responsibility and how far any inadequacy is the inevitable outcome of the state of our society. To take Leveson seriously demands a fundamental look at ourselves, society as a whole and the quality of our educational system. If we are really to live up to the challenge of Leveson, we urgently need to promote a nationwide debate about the values of our society.