Minister for Disabled People

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The present Prime Minister does take an interest. I re-emphasise that the Budget had a major package for the disabled. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions represents the disabled at Cabinet. Even more importantly, we all have a duty in relation to the disabled. I work to try to get the disabled into public appointments; we debated One Login in the Moses Room and talked about its accessibility. The whole point about the strategy is that it is cross-cutting, and it helps us to move forward and help the disabled into life, because they can make such a great contribution.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, so important is the title “Minister for Disabled People” that I managed to persuade Mrs Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister, to change the name to that from its original name, Minister for the Disabled, because disabled people do not like being called “the disabled”. At first the Prime Minister objected, saying, “They’ll want to change all the notepaper”. I said, “Yes, they will, but make them use up all the old notepaper first”. Using this economic principle, could we not find some way of doing what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, suggested and restoring the name, even though the pay may not be restored to what it should be?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Mims Davies is the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, but I do not think we should spend all our time focusing on titles. I do not want to tread on my noble friend Lord Younger’s toes but, having studied this subject in preparation, I was trying to talk a little about what we will actually do for the disabled. Of course we need to respect them and talk about them in an appropriate way but, as noble Lords will know, it is important to have action and get things done.

Covid-19: National Memorial

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

I will bow to the superior ingenuity of the noble Lord opposite on that question.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, the question has been raised about trying to prevent mortality from a future epidemic. The present epidemic is largely due to—or at least made much worse by—the fact that 71% of British people over the age of 70 are obese, and obesity and Covid are a fatal combination. If we want to prevent future mortalities, we have to get the nation to slim down. The Prime Minister has raised the whole question of reducing obesity by himself taking three stone off and advocating that that is what we should all be doing.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend lays a gentle stiletto between my ribs. Apart from the humorous side of it, there is a very serious side to what my noble friend says. There is an unequivocal connection in the terms that he describes, which each of us should bear in mind and which we should all be well aware of.

Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for his inspiring opening speech. One of the most important requirements for future well-being in the secular world is good health. Without good health, the chances of well-being are remote, so I was very pleased to hear my noble friend Lord Moynihan bringing up the subject of good health because the main cause of ill health in the so-called civilised world is obesity caused by putting too many calories into the mouth. The countries with the highest Covid mortalities are the countries with the highest prevalence of obesity, notably the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy and other countries. For 15 years there have been repeated warnings in your Lordships’ House of the dangers of the obesity epidemic, and one of the few leaders to take notice was the Prime Minister himself, who urged the nation to deal with obesity and led the way by reducing his weight by 3 stone. If only others had joined his worthwhile campaign.

I am afraid that two-thirds of British people are obese. What is even worse is that half our children are obese. There is little well-being lying in store for them. We urgently need an all-out, nationwide campaign not to tell people what to do, but to make sure that they know the truth if they wish for a well-being future. Obese people have trillions of excessive fat cells and the fat leaks out of them and impairs their immune system. This leaves them susceptible to all kinds of diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, strokes, heart attacks and infections of all kinds, especially Covid. As we are bound to suffer more epidemics, we desperately need to slim down now. That is, if we really want a well-being future.

Budget Statement

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate all the maiden speakers on their splendid speeches. At the start of the pandemic, the British economy was in very good shape, thanks to Conservative Governments, but the Marxist elements of the Labour Party tried to rubbish this—no doubt because a former Prime Minister reminded us that every Labour Government since the war had wrecked the economy. They are now trying to blame the Government for the present financial situation, which is associated with the huge amount of money and help given to the British people.

The cost of the pandemic has been huge and the Marxist elements have tried to blame the Government. They then went on to accuse the Prime Minister over the deaths of more than 100,000 people in the United Kingdom. They know very well that most Covid deaths are associated with obesity and population density, so whatever possessed them to make such a despicable accusation? The answer to that was given by the shadow Minister for Education when she said, “We should use this Covid opportunity and not let a good crisis go to waste”. What a scandalous conspiracy: to misuse the Covid crisis to further the Labour Party. Its plan to win the next election seems to be to rubbish the Government every hour of every day, with the help of the left-wing media. It hopes that its deceiving propaganda will win over enough of the public. This is what Marxist regimes do. Keir Starmer’s dream to become Prime Minister is the nightmare for our nation.

EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Wharton on his splendid maiden speech.

It is understandable that there have been serious doubts about the expensive Erasmus programme, which last year was reported as costing €3.3 billion and serving 940,000 participants—which means that each participant cost €3,600. The scheme involved twice as many people coming to the UK as going from it. Can the Minister assure us that the proposed UK Alan Turing scheme will be less bureaucratic than what we have seen in Brussels?

Our new scheme, unlike the parochial Erasmus, will enable students to go further afield to Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and North America. Some of our forward-thinking universities have already established exchange programmes beyond Europe and have the Government’s full support. Unlike Erasmus, the government scheme will explicitly target students from disadvantaged backgrounds and areas which did not have many candidates benefiting from Erasmus+, making life-changing opportunities accessible across the country. It will be backed by over £100 million for about 35,000 students in universities, colleges and schools, as well as students on apprenticeships, to go on placements and exchanges overseas. It will deliver greater value for money to the taxpayer.

EU: Visa-free Short-term Travel Mobility

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the original Question was about visa-free and short-term travel; tourism is certainly germane to the Question and I am sorry if that was unsatisfactory to the noble Baroness. I have referred to our efforts on short-term visits in relation to business activities. Our offer on mode 4 is extremely generous and we continue to impress on EU negotiators that the agreement we are proposing is very much in their workers’ interests as well as our own.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]]

My Lords, what efforts are Her Majesty’s Government making to ensure that the visa-free short-term travel arrangements will not be used by traffickers to get their victims into the UK, because it looks as though there will be no effective checks at the borders?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that the UK authorities will remain eternally vigilant against this bestial criminal activity.

Civil Service Impartiality

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree. It is the job of civil servants to bring to Ministers’ attention the consequences of their policies and to argue forcefully against them if they believe they are misguided but, once the decision has been taken, to go out and deliver them as best they can. My experience with civil servants is that that is exactly what they do, and I agree with the noble Lord.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that disparaging remarks were made in a debate 10 days ago in this House by a Member of the Opposition Front Bench who impugned the integrity of the civil servants in our Library because she did not agree with the brief that they produced? I went straight to the Library, apologised on behalf of the House and said that no one would agree with her.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I hope my noble friend will understand if I pass on that one, not having been privy to the accusations that were made or the evidence, but I am sure my noble friend did what he felt was right in defending the Library.

Opinion Polling

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, I think it was generally accepted that the 2015 election was not the pollsters’ finest hour, although I have to admit that I, too, got it wrong: I predicted to my friends a Conservative majority of 20, so I was out by eight seats. The vast majority of companies in the industry predicted the vote shares of most of the parties correctly within the margin of error, and several were within the margin of error on all vote shares.

The British Polling Council and the Market Research Society were exceptionally fast in, first, recognising that things had not gone as well as they should have, and, secondly, setting up a comprehensive review under the auspices of Professor Patrick Sturgis at Southampton University. That review has yet to hear evidence—its first session is actually tomorrow—so we should not prejudge its outcome.

That said, the vast majority of polls during the campaign pointed to a much closer result than we eventually saw and it is right to consider the implications of that variance. Establishing a regulatory authority to regularise question wording and sample design, far from increasing the accuracy of polling, has the potential to compound the problem further. All scientific inquiry relies on a cycle of experiment, evaluation and modulation. Polling firms ought to be encouraged to experiment with novel methods and trial their own question wording and sample design, rather than being prevented from doing so. It is also in their commercial interests to try to out-compete their rivals and develop more accurate methods, and we ought to cheer them on as they do so.

With regard to a ban on publication of opinion polls before elections, we should remember that it is voters, not polls, which change election outcomes. A ban would not prevent such polls from being conducted; rather, it would lead to a small number of wealthy individuals and organisations being the only ones with privileged information, leaving the wider public at a disadvantage. Even if we wished to deny voters access to this type of information, in the 21st century it would be impossible to do so. The internet makes a mockery of enforced censorship. We could try to emulate the practice of North Korea and prevent our own citizens having information which is so freely available throughout the rest of the world, but it simply would not work. Political bloggers such as Guido Fawkes use servers in countries such as Ireland and the United States which the Government could not block even if they wished to. British voters would therefore be left open to the unchecked rumours and misinformation that would result from such a ban.

The idea of a voluntary agreement not to publish is interesting, but I suspect that it would ultimately be doomed to fail. The question of who enters into the agreement is fundamental. Even if all the established members of the British Polling Council agreed not to publish polling in the final week before an election, it would not prevent new entrants and overseas pollsters doing so.

The polling industry may be licking its wounds but I do not doubt its integrity in seeking honest answers from the post-election inquiry. We must be able to hear the results of that and understand what went wrong before leaping for the statute book. We are privileged in this country to have a polling profession which, through the good offices of self-regulatory bodies such the British Polling Council, is clearly committed to transparency. That is quite a rarity. In the United States, for example, voters have access to a far poorer quality and quantity of information about individual polls. The industry here ought to be commended for its transparency. Our role should be to recognise and encourage that and to find ways of enabling more and greater competition to encourage greater accuracy.

I am concerned about what has been said about the ComRes polling for the charity CARE in relation to the proposed three-parent, pronuclear and maternal spindle transfer techniques. In addressing this subject I should declare an interest: I have worked closely with CARE over the years. It has provided me with invaluable assistance, especially in relation to my human trafficking Bill. Criticism of this polling seems to hang very much on a report commissioned by the Wellcome Trust—one of the principal advocates for changing the law to permit the controversial procedures—to critique some of the polling in question. That report is deeply flawed in four respects.

First, and most importantly, the report criticises the polling against benchmarks that would be appropriate only if a deliberative public consultation was being discussed, in which lots of background information could be provided. Both more deliberative public consultation exercises and polling have their place and their respective strengths and weaknesses, but to critique one against the standards of the other is to make a very basic blunder. While deliberative public consultations can contain lots of information and nuance, and can in turn receive lots of information and nuance, polls cannot do so. The questions have to be relatively short, and as long as they can provide a range of responses other than simple yes or no answers, the responses are predetermined.

The CARE poll questions were designed very obviously to measure public opinion on pronuclear and maternal spindle transfer as these were defined in common parlance by the media, which spoke almost universally about “three-parent embryos” and “three-parent children”. Far from it being inappropriate to design questions reflecting that terminology, it would have been illogical and poor research practice not to do so. Moreover, as a matter of scientific fact, the designations “three-parent children” or “three-parent embryos”, while disliked by some, were not inaccurate, in that the resulting children will have DNA from three rather than two parents.

The aim of the questions has also been misrepresented. Their aim was first to track basic attitudes in response to the information gleaned by the public through the media, and, secondly, to test responses to a range of arguments both in favour of and against permitting the procedure. This is basic standard practice in any campaign. The purpose of testing arguments in favour of the procedure is to understand which of one’s opponent’s arguments are the strongest and which are the weakest. The purpose of testing arguments against the procedure is to recognise which arguments are the strongest for CARE itself to deploy. Publishing all the results was not an attempt to distort public discourse but rather to ensure that CARE and ComRes were compliant with the British Polling Council requirement for full transparency.

Secondly, the report objected to the polling on the basis that it had been commissioned by an organisation opposed to the introduction of PNT and MST. I found that rather odd. Most polls are commissioned by organisations that want to test public opinion to see whether it fits with their own position. To suggest that this is somehow inappropriate is to misunderstand polling completely. Indeed, the point has been made that the report commissioned by the Wellcome Trust has been commissioned by a body with a very clear agenda. The irony of its position, however, does not seem to have occurred to it. None of us approaches these things from a position of value neutrality. For the record, as a doctor, I am very much opposed to the use of pronuclear transfer but am more open to the use of maternal spindle transfer. Thirdly, the report seeks to criticise the polling on the basis of an assessment of the press coverage secured, which is entirely irrelevant to the efficacy of the polling in question. Fourthly, the report lays great stress on stakeholder interviews but is entirely lacking in transparency. Parliament has looked at these matters and decided what it has to do.

In conclusion, I state that ComRes did not threaten to sue the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, but the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, pointed out to it that he intended to have a debate in your Lordships’ House, which would, of course, be privileged.

[Lord Lipsey]

May I just correct the noble Lord? He said that ComRes did not threaten to sue. It said that it was taking legal advice and would take what legal action was recommended to it. If that is not a threat to sue, I don’t know what is.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

It said it would defend its position, which is not quite the same.

G8 Summit

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

My Lords, I too would like to thank my noble friend Lord Trimble for introducing this debate. I would like again to draw attention to the devastating effect that undernutrition has on millions of children throughout the world, as my noble friend Lady Jenkin has just emphasised.

The World Health Organisation estimates that half of those suffering from undernutrition are afflicted with diseases or parasites caused by a lack of safe water and a lack of sanitation. Efforts to increase access to these services must be a vital part of efforts to improve nutrition.

Apart from the direct disease link, access to water and sanitation services also affect women’s education and empowerment, which also impacts on their and their children’s nutrition. I was pleased that the UK commitment at the Nutrition for Growth summit this weekend recognised these links. I hope that this will lead to more effective integrated and cross-sector efforts to tackle disease and poverty.

When I visited Kathmandu recently, with the charity WaterAid, I was able to see at first hand these very problems of lack of sanitation and clean water. I also took part in my first demonstration. We marched through the streets of Kathmandu carrying placards with slogans addressing the need for toilets. It was my first venture into this kind of activity—it is never too late to learn.

Last week DfID published the Lough Erne accountability report, which reviews the G8’s delivery against its commitments and is a valuable tool for holding leaders to account on their promises. As it reports on the G8 as a whole, however, it hides individual members’ performance, and those that are doing less well are sheltered from true accountability. On water and sanitation, the report indicates that the G8 has made good progress both on maintaining political momentum and on increasing funding for the sector. It highlights the importance of the Sanitation and Water for All partnership as a way of improving aid for water and sanitation and shows that the G8 countries have increased their aid to water and sanitation projects, including a 16% rise in 2011. Crucially, it fails to show how and where this money is being spent.

G8 members have a rather mixed record on this front. They should direct aid to basic water and sanitation systems and to the countries and populations who are most in need. The majority, however, spend their money on large infrastructure projects. WaterAid’s report entitled Addressing the Shortfall states that less than 3% of French and United States water and sanitation aid goes towards creating basic systems. Germany does a little better, at 17%. As for Japan, only 38% goes towards basic systems but it is by far the biggest donor to water and sanitation aid. The UK is the notable exception, with 81% of its water and sanitation aid going to basic systems.

Moreover, aid for water and sanitation is focused on the wrong countries and seems to be associated with political allies and strategic relationships. WaterAid’s report, Addressing the Shortfall, shows that 20% of United States aid goes to Iraq, 12% of Germany’s aid goes to Turkey and 10% of France’s aid goes to Egypt. The countries in most need of water and sanitation include Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique and Niger, but they are not among the top recipients of water and sanitation aid from any G8 country.

More than ever, aid must be focused on where it is most needed—the poorest and most marginalised. The United Nations high-level panel report rightly calls for the eradication of poverty by 2030 and for everyone everywhere to have access to water and sanitation. Can the Minister assure us that the Prime Minister will use his leadership of the G8 to continue to push the message that aid money should, first and foremost, go to those who most desperately need it?