Queen’s Speech

Lord Loomba Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Loomba (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I convey my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, on his well-deserved promotion to Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

I welcome Her Majesty’s gracious Speech and the opportunity to speak on international development in this debate. I am pleased to see the Government’s continuing commitment to spending 0.7% of our gross national income on international development. I look forward to working with the Minister and the Department for International Development to enable our common goal of alleviating poverty and assisting some of the poorest in the world to achieve better living standards and a life free from human rights abuses.

As we speak today about international development and the importance of helping those whose lives are blighted by poverty and injustice, I note that it is a particularly poignant time for me as it is now 20 years since I, along with my wife, Lady Loomba, established the Loomba Foundation, a charity that helps poor widows, starting in India and then spreading to more and more countries across the developing world where help was needed. From Mumbai to Mombasa, from Kigali to Chile, the lives of many thousands of widows and children have been transformed over the years through educational and skills-based projects.

Here, as well as declaring an interest as founder and chairman of the foundation, I will also thank the many noble Lords for the interest they have shown, the support they have given and the wise words they have spoken over the past 20 years, which have helped to bring to fruition many of the projects that have assisted widows and their children.

Since I began my humanitarian work, many things have changed and improved, but still there is a need for much more to be done. The SDGs have paved the way for progress to be accelerated and for the many poor and suffering people in this world to be helped, and it is incumbent on this Government to ensure that the promised 0.7% of GNI for the aid budget is spent wisely, used carefully, targeted correctly and prioritised properly, so that it is not wasted but reaches those most in need of it. Spending in alignment with the SDGs will go some way towards ensuring that aid gets to where it is needed most.

The importance of getting it right cannot be overstated, as shown by the EU when it marked World Refugee Day on Tuesday of this week and said that,

“around the world more than 65 million people are forced to leave their homes due to conflicts and violence, natural disasters or the very real consequences of climate change. These are 65 million lives, 65 million different stories”.

Every one of these people is in need, and if we are not spending aid properly we are creating more injustices and even greater inequalities, and heaping more suffering on the very people who need help the most.

Today is also a particularly important day for me for a second reason in the context of my humanitarian work, as it is the eve of International Widows’ Day—and I am sure many noble Lords are aware of its importance in helping Governments, NGOs, citizens of the world and ordinary people to focus their minds on the injustices and human rights abuses that still go on today against widows, who through no fault of their own suffer human rights abuses on a global scale. As World Refugee Day shows, these days serve a useful purpose in making stakeholders take note of the importance of not underestimating the need for aid and not forgetting who it is meant for—and, while the focus on refugees and widows plays out on the international stage, it is incumbent on this House to ensure that we do our bit, and do it wisely.