International Women’s Day

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

Friday 6th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my entries in the register of interests, but I start by congratulating my noble friends on their outstanding maiden speeches. If I may say so, I am particularly looking forward to the contribution that the noble Baroness, Lady MacLeod, will make to this House in reminding us of the history, the beauty and the potential of the highlands of Scotland.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lloyd, said in her introduction that society has improved, which is undoubtedly the case. All those women who fought for decades for rights and change have enabled my daughter to have choices that were not available to her ancestors or even to her mother or grandmother, and enabled my granddaughters to worry more about AI than they do about inequality—and one in particular to worry more about beating the other girls’ football team than whether she can get the pitch off the boys.

These and other women and girls have built their success and potential on the hard work of women down through the ages. However, in far too many places and homes around the world today, women are still denied ownership of land, free access to money or proper access to education. They suffer daily violence or the fear of that violence; they are restricted in their choices and limited in their freedoms. In such a world, we need always to step up, never to step back.

Earlier this week, I met Maggie Banda, the CEO of WOLREC, the Women’s Legal Resources Centre, in Malawi. WOLREC is the operational partner of the Keep Girls in School scholarships, sponsored by the McConnell International Foundation. In rural Malawi, 200 girls are successfully completing school and are in many cases beating the results in the national exams that favour girls who attend better-provided schools in the towns and even boarding schools of Malawi, so they are doing exceptionally well, and we are very proud of them. This week, because of the incredible barrier that exists for girls, not just in Malawi but elsewhere in the world, due to menstruation, and the limitations put on them sometimes because of it, particularly in the school environment, we successfully launched an appeal for dignity packs for girls. When we stigmatise menstruation, we turn our backs on them, and the McConnell International Foundation is not going to do that.

Maggie Banda is also responsible for the Pamodzi Kuthetsa Nkhanza programme in Malawi, which is the largest programme in the UK-funded What Works to Prevent Violence initiative, which I believe may well have been started by the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, when she was a Minister. This programme is reducing violence against women in the Balaka and Lilongwe districts; it is currently impacting on 750,000 people, changing attitudes in local communities, reforming local police operations and supporting survivors. It is just one example of work that is at risk as a result of our cuts to overseas development assistance, yet Maggie, a proper leader, is someone whom we should invest in to make that change in Malawi, not just for the girls that my foundation supports but for all those others who are affected by violence against women.

There is widespread concern, as passionately described earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, in particular, that there may be cuts to the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative or to women, peace and security initiatives more generally. Surely, in today’s world, when we see so much devastating violence and restriction of rights, which has been spoken about so eloquently here today, we cannot allow a situation where we make that worse rather than better. I hope the questions asked by the noble Lords, Lord Bates and Lord Ahmad, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, will be answered by the Minister today.

During the past 18 months, I have gone from disappointment at our lack of action to improve our overseas development budget to a sense of shame last year, when it became clear that we were going to spend less money than the Conservative Government had, for the first time in Labour's history. I am now angry about the impact of that—the girls who are going to be left out of school; the rape and violence victims we have heard about in this debate, who we will turn our backs on as a result of the programme cutbacks; and the girls and women who will be silenced in countries where we no longer support the groups that advocate for their rights.

This is a time for the UK to step up, not step back. I implore Ministers and the Government, today, this weekend and in the weeks ahead to make “Give to gain” more than a slogan. They should make it a reality and ensure that we rethink and reverse those cuts in the short term, before the allocations are made before the end of this month. We should prioritise women and girls in the allocations that will be made from the reduced budget and give them a chance.