Afghanistan

Lord Newby Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, just so there is no confusion, the Lord Privy Seal has not repeated the Statement; we have to rely on having heard the Prime Minister say it. I am a little disappointed that the Statement is being considered at the end of business today, given the importance of this issue. The Government made two Statements in the House of Commons; I had expected them to be repeated between the two Second Readings and was somewhat surprised this morning to find that they were so late, as it may affect the number of Members who are able to take part.

Having watched the very distressing evacuation scenes, I think we all have nothing but praise for the heroic work of the British troops, our diplomats and our civil servants, who were operating in incredibly difficult circumstances. They were having to manage a chaotic situation, following a series of failures and miscalculations by the Government. It was interesting that the Prime Minister’s Statement referred to them facing “every possible challenge”; it must be said, one of those challenges was a failure of political leadership, being utterly unprepared for what was to come. That withdrawal had been more than 18 months in the making, but the Government were unprepared, had been unwilling to plan and seemed unable to take a lead. Even in those final weeks before the fall of Kabul, Mr Raab failed to speed up evacuation efforts, failed to issue warnings to British nationals and failed to prepare the department’s crisis response. Even when he gave evidence to the Select Committee, he was rather hazy on the numbers of those, both Afghans and UK citizens, who have been left behind.

The Government have previously said that it was not realistic to stay beyond the US deadline. I think we all accept that, but I have put this question to the noble Baroness—I see she is taking note of what I am saying— I think twice before on previous Statements: what representations did the Government and Ministers make, mainly to the Americans but also others, on the management and timescale of the withdrawal? I am not clear about this and am trying really hard to get to the bottom of it: did the Government ever go back and say to the Americans and NATO, “This will be terrible under this timescale. It will be a disaster. We understand that you are moving US troops out, but can we reconsider how it is done?”

In the final days, as the Taliban entered the city, both Mr Raab and Mr Johnson—the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary—were away on holiday. I am not against Ministers taking holidays—we all need holidays—but there is an issue here of timing and priorities. We know that this is a Government clearly out of their depth, but those chaotic final days of the UK’s role in Afghanistan should not be allowed to undermine in any way the achievements of the past 20 years. The sacrifice of British veterans was not in vain. Their incredible efforts with allied forces facilitated stability and progress throughout Afghanistan, and we should all be proud of their service.

Unfortunately, recent events have opened up old wounds for veterans across the UK. The Government must recognise this and allocate the essential resources and establish the right support structures for them. I say to the noble Baroness, I welcome the additional funding announcement, albeit overdue, but that must sit alongside a strategy to confront the structural barriers that veterans are facing in the employment market, in healthcare and in their daily lives. It would be helpful if she could now confirm whether the Office for Veterans’ Affairs will still face a 40% cut in its budget this year. There must also be recognition for the more than 1,000 UK personnel who took part in Operation Pitting, which airlifted 15,000 people as the country fell to the Taliban. Unfortunately, as she may be aware, troops are not eligible to receive medals as this mission did not meet the 30-day service rule. I think most of us feel that, in these specific and special circumstances, surely that convention should be waived and we should reward the heroic efforts of troops who took part in Operation Pitting.

With the airlift now over, the focus must shift to the lifelong support that we can offer to those Afghans who worked side by side with our troops. I am disappointed that the Government still have not outlined the full details of the Afghans citizens resettlement scheme. We look forward to receiving them. Many of those evacuated are still uncertain and in the dark about their immediate future, let alone their medium- and long-term future. Can the Leader of the House outline when the resettlement scheme will begin and how many people are expected to join it? Can she also say something about how many evacuated Afghans are currently being housed in hotels and other temporary accommodation and how many have been moved into permanent or semi-permanent accommodation? Given that councils—I cite Greenwich Council—have already written to the Government asking for help in supporting refugees and are trying to do their best, what support has been made available to local authorities?

As we look to Afghanistan’s future, we cannot abandon those who have been unable to escape. The Government have to explore all opportunities to support the establishment of viable and safe routes for those who are now in danger. The PM said in his Statement:

“We will insist on safe passage for anyone who wishes to leave”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/21; col. 22.]


I want to probe what “insist” means. Yesterday, the Foreign Secretary said that the Taliban had offered assurances in this area, but he could not expand on that. It would be helpful if the Leader could say tonight what assurances have been received and what degree of confidence the Government have in those assurances.

We also have to confront the reality of the impending humanitarian crisis, where 40% of the crops have been lost through drought. While funding is important, efforts need to be made—perhaps the Leader could say more about this as well—to ensure that food and life-saving medicines are allowed into the country.

On security, human rights and many other issues, the UK needs to work with other countries and NATO to craft a clear diplomatic road map that seeks to protect the gains of the past 20 years. I am thinking specifically, but not exclusively, about the progress on the rights of women and girls. I am sure that, like me, the Leader has seen distressing accounts over the past few days of how women peacefully protesting the basic rights that those of us in this House take for granted have been met with aggression and violence. The efforts of the UK at the UN to secure a Security Council resolution are welcome, but they have to be followed up with prime ministerial intervention. What is the UK’s plan for ensuring that the Taliban are held to their word? What did the Prime Minister agree during his meeting with Secretary-General Guterres? Does he have any plans to continue to engage with the P5 on the implementation of the resolution that was passed at the meeting?

We cannot allow Afghanistan to be a safe haven for terrorism again and neither can we sit by as the Taliban tear down the basic rights that the Afghan people have enjoyed. The Government’s incompetence has let down the Afghan people who have so bravely worked alongside our personnel for two decades. That incompetence also puts us in danger. The security implications of recent weeks are grave and long-lasting and we cannot afford to ignore the risks that we now face. The humanitarian crisis, the displacement of people and the proliferation of extremism can now grow in Afghanistan. While our response should be driven by the need to help the Afghan people, we must also understand that a failure to do that for them will endanger us all.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I echo the Prime Minister’s commendation of the courage and ingenuity of everybody involved in the Kabul airlift. It was indeed the most impressive achievement.

This is a remarkably thin Statement. It does not contain any new facts or commitments to the people of Afghanistan, either in the UK or in Afghanistan. In terms of Afghans who want to come to the UK, in the Statement the Prime Minister repeated two promises: first, that for those to whom we have already made commitments, we will do our best to honour them; and, secondly, that beyond that we will work with the UN and other aid agencies to identify those we should help, as well as

“Afghans who have contributed to civil society or who face particular risk”

because they have stood up

“for democracy and human rights or because of their gender, sexuality or religion”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/21; col. 22.]

I support those commitments, but fear that the first is unachievable in the foreseeable future and that the second offers false hope to many thousands of people. The first is unachievable because we have no means to get people who have a right to come to the UK out of the country. They cannot fly out, and many of the border crossings are, in effect, closed to them. To echo the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, how much confidence do the Government have that the Taliban will give those people safe passage? Do they even know how many of them there are? How are they planning, in the absence of any diplomatic presence in the country, to facilitate their departure?

On the second commitment, the number of people in the categories which the Government wish to help runs into the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. How does the Government’s commitment to welcoming them into the UK square with their absolute limit of 5,000 refugees over the coming year? How will they decide who to prioritise when confronted with such large numbers of people who they say are technically eligible for visas and who are desperate, for their own safety, to leave the country now, not at some point over the next five years? The Government’s response to requests to take more than the 5,000 is that it is beyond the country’s capacity to do so. This claim does not withstand scrutiny. Even the Prime Minister accepts that the Government are inundated with offers of help from charities and ordinary citizens, and the Government appear to be doing nothing to require the large number of local authorities which are not offering to take a single refugee to play their part. Will they do so now? The fact is that the 5,000 one-year cap and the longer-term 20,000 cap have nothing to do with need. They are, frankly, the minimum that the Government think they can get away with, and they should do better.

The Prime Minister says that the UK will use

“every economic, political and diplomatic lever to protect our own countries from harm and to help the Afghan people.”—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/21; col. 22.]

Again, that is a positive statement, but what does it amount to? On economic support through development aid, how do the Government intend to ensure that funds can be channelled in an effective way? How closely are they working with the UNDP, which seems to be developing pragmatic working relations with the Taliban? Will they make the disbursement of aid funds contingent on the Taliban keeping its promises; for example, in respect of safe passage or human rights?

On political and diplomatic levers, it is good to see the Foreign Secretary engaging—at last—with the Qatari and Pakistani Governments. In his Statement, the Foreign Secretary sets out some of the issues he discussed in those meetings, but not the outcomes. Can the Leader give the House any specific examples of action that will flow from that series of meetings?

In relation to dealing with the Taliban Administration, the Government say that they will now engage with them, which I am sure is the right approach, and they have appointed a non-resident chargé d’affaires in Doha. While that is welcome, it must surely be desirable to work towards re-establishing a physical diplomatic presence in Kabul. There are clearly challenges in doing so, but to what extent are the Government working with other western Governments, who also need to re-establish their position in Afghanistan, to facilitate that? Have they, for example, spoken to the EU, which is looking to set up a single diplomatic presence in Kabul? There will surely be administrative and security benefits in co-locating with such an office. Are the Government considering that possibility?

More generally, the Afghan debacle has shown the need for the UK to recalibrate its whole foreign policy stance and, in particular, to rebuild relations with the US, through NATO, and with the EU. The Statement is silent on these larger issues, but, frankly, until we address them, much of the micromanagement of the next phase of our involvement with Afghanistan is bound to be more difficult to deliver, making it more difficult for us to deliver on the promises that the Government have already made to the people of Afghanistan.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness and noble Lord for their comments. Like them, I pay tribute to all those involved in Operation Pitting. We of course owe a huge debt of gratitude to the 150,000 people who served in Afghanistan and to the 457 who tragically lost their lives.

The noble Baroness asked about withdrawal. As she will recall from the speech that I gave when we came back to discuss this important issue a few weeks ago, we looked at a number of options when the US announced the plan for withdrawal, including the potential for staying longer or increasing our presence. But like our NATO allies, we had to be realistic about what was achievable without US support, and, like our other allies, we did not feel that we could continue the mission without the United States. The noble Baroness will know obviously that the Prime Minister convened a G7 meeting, at which he and other leaders asked President Biden to reconsider the timescale with which the withdrawal was taking place. Unfortunately, as the situation has shown, he was not successful, but efforts were made.

The noble Baroness rightly talked about the importance of the mental health of our veterans. We take this extremely seriously, encouraging anyone who is struggling to access support available, including a 24-hour mental health line. I was grateful for her recognition of the increased funding that we have put into this. Earlier this year, we launched the veterans’ mental health and well-being service, Op Courage, which provides a clear single route for accessing specialist care through the NHS. In the last financial year, NHS England provided £16.5 million for veteran-specific mental health services, which will be increased to £17.8 million in 2021-22, with an additional £10 million to the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust to distribute to charitable projects supporting veterans’ mental health needs. Of course, funding for the Office for Veterans’ Affairs is a matter for discussion between it and the Chancellor.

On the various questions that were asked around resettlement and relocation, I once again reiterate to the noble Lord and noble Baroness that we are clear that the Taliban must ensure safe passage for people out of Afghanistan—with the ongoing engagement that is happening, we are emphasising this first and foremost. The Afghan relocations and assistance policy for those who worked in Afghanistan remains open, and we will facilitate relocation from third countries, if possible, for those who are eligible. I am sure that my noble friend, who has been involved in conversations, will be able to shed some further light on the discussions that have been going on with Pakistan and Uzbekistan, for instance. I reassure the noble Baroness that the Home Office is working at pace to establish the details of the new Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, which will provide protection for Afghan citizens identified as being most at risk. We have announced that this new scheme will relocate 5,000 vulnerable Afghans in the first year, with this potentially rising to 20,000 over a five-year period.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, asked about an embassy in Kabul and what we are doing now. At this point, our diplomatic efforts have shifted to supporting the people of Afghanistan from outside the country, but we intend to re-establish an embassy in Kabul as soon as the security and political situation allows, and we are co-ordinating this effort with allies. The FCDO is sending rapid deployment teams to Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to reinforce our embassy staff to process arrivals from Afghanistan, and we have also sent a rapid deployment team of seven to help people to transit through Dubai.

The noble Baroness asked about support for local authorities and the work that they are doing. The support that we provide will be similar to the commitments that we have made under the Syrian resettlement programme, and we have already allocated £5 million of support to local councils to provide housing. Some 100 councils are already working across the UK to meet the demand for housing, and over 2,000 places have already been confirmed. The Communities Secretary is convening a round table with council leaders from across the country in the coming days to talk about how we can further work together to ensure that we can provide safety and security for the Afghans who have made it over here and to make sure that they can settle into local communities.

Both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness asked about the situation on the ground. I can reassure them that we are working closely with the UN and NGO partners to continue to ensure that vital humanitarian aid reaches those who most need it. All UK aid is subject to strict monitoring and verification to ensure that it is used only to help the vulnerable people it is intended for, and any support will be provided outside of all state apparatus. We will continue to provide support through trusted UN and NGO agencies that have a track record in delivering in challenging circumstances. As the noble Lord rightly said, the UN is working on the ground and is currently seeking commitments from the Taliban to enable humanitarian work to continue. These commitments include respect for humanitarian principles accessed in international law, as well as guarantees for female aid workers across UN agencies and NGOs. We continue to support it in that very important work on the ground.

Both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord rightly alluded to the fact that we have said we will continue to use every humanitarian diplomacy lever to safeguard human rights and the gains made over the past two decades. We are working, for instance, on options for convening a meeting in the margins of the UN General Assembly in September. The focus and format are still under discussion, but the objective will be to bring the widest possible group of countries together to discuss Afghanistan and how we can work with our international partners in this very difficult and challenging situation.

Afghanistan

Lord Newby Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I begin by joining others in expressing the sympathy of these Benches with all those affected by the Plymouth tragedy.

What a difference a month makes. On 8 July, following his excruciatingly complacent Statement on Afghanistan in the Commons, the Prime Minister confidently declared that

“there is no military path to victory for the Taliban.”—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/21; col: 1107.]

On Monday this week, he blandly asserted that

“we’ve known for a long time this was the way things would go”.

These two statements say a lot about the Prime Minister and, in particular, his irresponsible habit of saying whatever is most convenient on the day to get himself out of a hole, with no regard for consistency—or indeed the truth. But they also say a lot about the casual way our Government have overseen the final chapter of our latest involvement in Afghanistan.

The words now being used most to summarise this chapter—“failure”, “panic”, “humiliation” and “betrayal” —barely do justice to the situation that the precipitate departure of western alliance forces have created in Afghanistan. Of course, the primary responsibility for the debacle rests with President Biden and it is no excuse for him or the Prime Minister—as he did on 8 July—to say:

“The international military presence in Afghanistan was never intended to be permanent”—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/21; col. 1104.]


and, therefore, that it was inevitable that we would be withdrawing now.

The US has shown, most notably in Germany and South Korea, that it is willing, in certain circumstances, to station its troops in a foreign country for decades, if it thinks it necessary for regional and global strategy. It simply chose not to take the same view about Afghanistan. Time will tell whether international security will be jeopardised, as al-Qaeda, Islamic State and other terrorist groups now eye Afghanistan as potential future operational bases. There is no doubt that, for the population of Afghanistan, particularly women and girls, the return of the Taliban threatens a return to the Dark Ages—and this was preventable. The decision by the western allies to withdraw all forces brought it about, and it is to our shame.

No doubt China and Russia will be pointing out today that the US and NATO lack staying power and cannot be trusted long-term allies, and that the global influence of the US, the UK and NATO as a whole will be much diminished. Realisation of this new reality will be causing alarm across western capitals, but for the UK it is particularly chilling. For this complete and utter debacle has laid bare the hollowness of the Government’s claims to be a global power. We may be able, as a gesture, to send an aircraft carrier to the South China Sea, but we cannot act on our own in a real-life crisis such as Afghanistan.

The US did not even consult us when it decided on its final troop withdrawal timetable, and there is no indication that we even attempted to suggest that it had got it wrong. Perhaps the Prime Minister realised that there would not have been any point. Speaking to President Biden yesterday was good, but the horse had already bolted. With minimal influence in Washington, greatly reduced involvement and influence with our European partners, cuts in our most effective tool of soft power—the aid budget—a shrinking Army and a Navy incapable of independent action, the Government’s promotion of “global Britain” is a sad delusion.

In the absence of any credible action, the Government have resorted to platitudes. On 8 July, the Prime Minister said:

“I hope that no one will leap to the false conclusion that the withdrawal of our forces somehow means the end of Britain’s commitment to Afghanistan.”—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/21; col. 1104.]


This week, he said that Afghanistan must not become a “breeding ground for terror”—but what does our current commitment amount to and what exactly do the Government intend to do to stop the country becoming a terrorist breeding ground? These are questions to which we now need clear and urgent answers.

In the months ahead, we will need to explore how all the western intelligence agencies were so off the pace as to the consequences of the troop withdrawals. Given the lead role that the UK—not the US—played in the Kabul security force, we have some particular soul searching to do in this respect. Most importantly, we will have to look afresh at a credible role for Britain in the world. How do we adjust to a situation in which our interests and those of the US may increasingly diverge? How do we rebuild links with our closest natural allies —our neighbours in Europe? We will have to work very hard to persuade much of the world that we can again become credible, reliable partners.

However, for today there are more pressing issues. The most important is how to respond to the humanitarian crisis. As the Government accept, the starting point must be to offer residency not only to interpreters who worked for our troops and their families but to any locally recruited staff who worked for our troops, for our embassy or on our aid effort, and who might now be at risk. More broadly, as a minimum, we should certainly resettle 20,000 Afghan refugees, as the Government now propose. We need to identify those most at risk of persecution, with a particular focus on women in public life, those who have set up girls’ education schemes and other marginalised groups, and we should offer sanctuary to journalists, who are particularly under threat, starting with the 100 or so BBC staff in Kabul.

But we must move quickly. The threat to these people is urgent and we should certainly not limit our ambitions to taking just 5,000 refugees over the next 12 months. We should also move rapidly to resolve the status of the 3,000 Afghan asylum seekers already in the UK and make it clear that we will not return a single one to Afghanistan. We must work with allies to investigate the possibility of establishing a safe-passage corridor for those who now wish to leave the country, and we need clearly to refocus and increase our aid to help deal with the immediate humanitarian crisis. The Foreign Secretary said yesterday that we have increased the aid budget to Afghanistan by 10%. Great—but, as we know, this is a small fraction of the cuts that have taken place since this Government came to power.

We need to stiffen the UN’s resolve to remain in Afghanistan to co-ordinate the humanitarian effort. It has the trust of the Taliban, which we simply lack, and could now play a powerful humanitarian role. On broader issues of respect for human rights, the role of women and girls, and the re-establishment of terrorist camps in Afghanistan, we must accept that our direct leverage over the Taliban is extremely limited. We should, however, be asking our allies, particularly in the Gulf and Pakistan, to use the influence they undoubtedly have to hold the Taliban to the commitments it made yesterday in these areas.

It is difficult to imagine your feelings today if you served with our forces in Afghanistan or are a family member of a British soldier or airman who died in the conflict. How could you satisfy yourself that all that effort and suffering was not in vain? I do not believe that the Government can give a comforting answer to that question, but the least we can do now is to take every action, limited though that may be, to show that we have not ended our commitment to Afghanistan and that, more generally, we are finally prepared to accept a more realistic view of our role in the world. There are clear lessons to be learned from this disaster, and it is imperative that we learn them now.

Procedure and Privileges

Lord Newby Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I echo the comments of the Leader of the House and others about the way in which the staff rose to the challenge of introducing a century and a half of change into your Lordships’ House in about three weeks. That was most impressive, and they deserve all our thanks.

I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who I am rather distressed to see is not in his place, who said that we should return as if there had been no pandemic and then think about whether we want to make any changes. No organisation does that. That seems to be the worst of all worlds, whatever changes you then decide to make. I am very pleased we have not adopted that approach.

Of the changes that are being proposed, which take account of a changed ability to do things, the two most significant are: first, the continuing support we are going to give to disabled people; and, secondly, electronic voting. As far as allowing disabled people to participate in your Lordships’ House virtually in future goes, this is a tremendous improvement to the way we do things. Over a long period, we have said that we are very keen that your Lordships’ House should have disabled Members, but then made it impossible, in effect, for them to participate in many cases. Allowing them to participate in all cases where they are physically able to do so from their own homes is clearly an advantage.

The only wrinkle I put on what has already been agreed is that I hope that when the group that looks at these things does so, it will adopt a pretty wide definition of what is allowable for people who are disabled to continue to participate. In today’s debate two particular categories of people have been mentioned, beyond those who are already covered by the disability scheme.

The first is those who are clinically extremely vulnerable as we come out of the worst effects of Covid but have not left it. It would seem perverse if people who are clinically extremely vulnerable now, but do not have a long-term disability and have been able to participate for the last 18 months, should be denied that ability for a few months until they are allowed to come back.

I also think we should look further at the suggestion made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about short-term disability. She gave an example of her own case. Another case might be if a noble Lord on the Government Front Bench broke their leg in the middle of a Bill. Why should that Minister not be able to participate from home when they are still perfectly capable intellectually but have a short-term disability? We need to look at that as part of what is, in general terms, a very welcome change.

Secondly, on electronic voting, it is a huge improvement to be contemplating not voting through the Lobbies. Many of us have spent many of the happiest hours of our lives chatting to chums shuffling through the Lobbies, but the alleged benefits of being able to nobble Ministers and others going through the Lobbies is, frankly, greatly overdone. Having the continuing use of modern technology to vote, thus saving time, is a great boon.

I hope, though, that we will allow voting to take place in Millbank House, for the reasons my noble friend Lady Brinton and others gave. I hope we will allow people to use their passes and pass readers in the Committee Corridor so that we do not have a whole corridor of people traipsing down from a committee, sometimes several times during the committee, then traipsing back up again. It will save a lot of time.

The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, made a suggestion I had not heard before but has a lot to recommend it: that we should be able to vote in Portcullis House. It is quite difficult getting back from Portcullis House anyway, but many Members of your Lordships’ House go there for meetings of all-party groups and party groups, and other meetings. It would make our lives easier without undermining any principle of being on the estate at the point at which votes are taken.

I note the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, about the problems we might have in defining working areas in September and sanctions relating to that. I would just point out to him that we are talking about a couple of weeks, we hope, during which this system will operate. I would not have thought it would cause too many problems.

I had a lot of sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, when he said we might have missed one or two tricks in what we are planning to do. Personally, I think there is a lot to recommend the proposals made during our debate on 20 May to allow people who live several hours away to participate in non-legislative business. Again, it would broaden the number of people that could speak and I do not think it would undermine any principle of democracy that your Lordships’ House rightly holds dear. We have had that debate, however, in the commission and elsewhere. I think the case simply has not been won, but that is a pity.

On the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, my interest is to return to spontaneity because, as a leader, if I get up I can certainly trump people behind me, as I have found out to their fury in the past. Therefore, I have no personal benefit in having a speakers’ list. I should also say, without going too far into the substance of this, that the idea that Ministers have been obfuscating in their answers just over the last 18 months is, to put it mildly, stretching the point.

The important thing about what we do next is that we have asked people what they think. The noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Grocott, described this as an opinion poll. It is as though you had a general election and, instead of having a vote, you had an opinion poll in which 40 million people voted, because over 500 people voted in this opinion poll. As to whether they knew what they were doing or whether we debated or thought about it, I remind your Lordships that we had had a full day’s debate on 20 May in which this issue was discussed at some length, among many others. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, probably remembers it.

We have also had 15 months of actually operating the system. It is not a new system. People are not wondering how it might work; we know how it has worked up until now. People have formed a view about whether they think it was beneficial. In my view, this is a perfectly valid ballot of Members. I agree that it is contentious, but that is why the Procedure Committee decided to have the ballot in the first place—because opinion was sharply divided in that committee and probably more evenly balanced than in your Lordships’ House as a whole. It is slightly odd that Members of your Lordships’ House object to being asked their views on something, rather than allowing a committee to push something forward on its evenly balanced view.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, also talked about the report from the Procedure Committee. We will debate that at some length next week, and there is certainly no question of issues not being debated in your Lordships’ House. But the one thing I really took issue with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, about was the suggestion that, in some way, the operation of that committee is a denial of natural justice. I just do not believe that is the case. If anybody who sat through the debate on the case of Lord Lester of Herne Hill believes that was natural justice and what we have now is not, then I am afraid their definition of natural justice is very different from mine.

There are questions about what exactly we do with Question Time. The proposal from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, for example, was really interesting and one we should consider.

The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, falls if you accept that the ballot we had stands, so I do not intend to discuss that.

The final amendment was from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I have considerable sympathy with the view that we start somewhat earlier, for the reasons he gave. However, his amendment does only part of the job. I would support it to a greater extend if it were coupled with a firm proposal that the House finish earlier as a matter of course if we start earlier. At present, we sit early but, as last night’s midnight finish demonstrated, we are sitting longer and still at ridiculously late hours. However, this is a live and important issue, and I hope, given the concerns that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and others expressed, that this is something that the Procedure Committee will return to after the summer, whatever the outcome of the vote we have this afternoon.

That principle of returning to things applies to everything else. Nothing is set in stone. We must continue to evolve, as we have done in recent months, by experience. By accepting the proposals before us, we are taking the best of what we have done differently over recent months without closing the door to further improvements. I commend the report to the House.

Afghanistan

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I am sure that the whole House would like to pay tribute to the more than 150,000 UK personnel who have served in Afghanistan during the past 20 years. Their bravery and professionalism have denied terrorists a safe haven and helped Afghanistan build its institutions; they have trained and advised Afghan forces and supported the advancement of the rights of women and education for girls.

Those crucial advances were made with huge sacrifices: 457 UK service men and women lost their lives, and many thousands more and their families continue to endure physical and mental injuries. More than 70,000 Afghan civilians lost their lives, and while progress has been made, there remain huge challenges. We owe a debt of gratitude to our Armed Forces and they should be proud of their work and achievements.

In his Statement—which I unfortunately did not get to hear under our current arrangements—although the Prime Minister confirmed that our presence in Afghanistan as part of the international military effort was never intended to be permanent, he rightly conceded that we cannot

“shrink from the hard reality of the situation today.”

Progress made is not necessarily the same as those gains being secured and irreversible. Given the sacrifices made, the Government need to be clear about their ongoing commitment to Afghanistan.

Most of the UK personnel have already left, following the decision of the US Government in April that all US forces would leave in September, when, according to the NATO summit decision, operations were coming to an end. Can the Leader of the House explain the engagement the UK Government had with the US prior to that decision being taken? Did the Prime Minister suggest a different course of action? Did he offer a different timescale, or did he discuss how we could contribute to a lasting settlement?

Many in your Lordships’ House with direct experience of military action engagement have concerns about what happens next. We share those concerns, both for the stability of Afghanistan and for the remaining potential security threat to the wider world, including the UK. It would be helpful if the Minister could say something about the Government’s assessment of the possible return of al-Qaeda. There is evidence that the Taliban is making gains on the ground, and hostile states are now exploring options to fill any military and diplomatic vacuum. Serious questions therefore remain about the future stability of the country. The Prime Minister said in his Statement, which we have not heard:

“We are not about to turn away, nor are we under any illusions about the perils of today’s situation and what may lie ahead.”


Therefore, when the Prime Minister says that he will use

“every diplomatic and humanitarian lever to support Afghanistan’s development and stability”,

what does that actually mean in practice on the ground?

Nobody wants to see British troops permanently stationed in Afghanistan, but we cannot simply just walk away without seeking to ensure that it will not lead to bloodier conflict and wider Taliban control. I do not know if the Minister heard the same BBC interview as I did, in which General Sir Nick Carter outlined three possible, credible outcomes from withdrawal. The first is that the Afghan Government remain in power, supported by what is now a well-trained army. The second, and the most worrying, is that the country fractures and the Government collapse, which would lead to the Taliban and others making advances. The third outcome, which he described as the most hopeful, is a political compromise, with talks, which chimes with the Government’s statement that there must be a peaceful and negotiated political settlement. How are our diplomats supporting that process?

Also, how are we supporting the Afghan Government? Actions have to follow words, and, as we withdraw troops, we are also withdrawing financial support—unlike the US, which is determined to boost development and military aid. We have to ask why. Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world, but our aid fund to the country is being cut by more than £100 million. Why are we out of step with our allies on this? Have the Government assessed the security impact, as well as the social impact, of those cuts?

I am sure that many in this House were relieved to hear the Prime Minister say that we owe an immense debt to the translators and other locally employed staff who risked their lives alongside British forces. The Minister will have heard that issue raised in your Lordships’ House many times over the past few years. The risk to those staff and translators does not disappear when we leave: the likelihood is that it increases. Some staff have already been forced to flee to neighbouring countries, and some have ended up in refugee camps.

Last week, an FT editorial commented: “It is a matter of days, not months, that are critical for the interpreters and their families. The UK has opened up relocation schemes, but it is not enough.” Since the Government launched the new Afghan relocation assistance policy in April, how many applications have they received and how many have now been processed? Will she give a commitment that that will be kept under review and updated if the situation on the ground changes?

The recent NATO summit communique said:

“Withdrawing our troops does not mean ending our relationship with Afghanistan. We will now open a new chapter.”


I have commented previously from this Dispatch Box that we want the UK to be a moral force for good in the world. What we do next in relation to Afghanistan will be a test of the Government’s commitment to that.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, when the UK first committed troops to Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the mission was clear. It was to destroy al-Qaeda’s ability to mount any further international terrorist attacks from the country. As the Statement makes clear, in this crucial respect the mission has been a success. However, while this is undoubtedly correct, it does not begin to give a balanced picture of the state of Afghanistan as the final British troops leave.

While the original mission was limited to destroying al-Qaeda, it rapidly became something more ambitious: to replace the Taliban regime with one which more closely fitted western norms of behaviour, not least in respect of the treatment of women and girls. At one level, this too has been a success: there has been a series of democratically elected Governments; there has been the education of millions of girls, and there has been a degree of economic development, particularly in and around Kabul, but there has not been stability. The Taliban never went away, and it is now rapidly filling the vacuum left by the departed NATO forces. However depressing this situation is, the Statement is undoubtedly correct that the UK on its own is not in a position to fill the void created as American troops return home. For the United Kingdom, the Statement reflects harsh reality.

Anyone who has heard recent testament of young professional women in Afghanistan who now fear for not only their livelihoods but their lives or who sees the pathetic attempts of thousands in Afghanistan to sell what little they have to leave the country before the Taliban returns cannot avoid the conclusion that the broader aims of the international intervention in the country are under real threat. The Statement says that the UK will not turn away from Afghanistan and that we will use

“every diplomatic and humanitarian lever”

to support the country. If true, this would be very welcome, but what is the commitment likely to mean in practice?

Let us start with aid. The Government are dramatically cutting the amount of development aid they are giving the country, including a 70% reduction in programmes for women and girls. This is harsh and perverse. Will they now reverse these cuts, or are they in reality breaking their promise to maximise their humanitarian response?

After much dither and delay, the Government have recently allowed Afghan interpreters who have worked with British forces to relocate directly to the UK. As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, pointed out, and as we heard in Questions in your Lordships’ House last week, they are not automatically doing so for such interpreters currently in third countries. Will they now agree to do so not just as a matter of course but as a matter of conscience?

American intelligence currently believes that, as things stand, Kabul could fall to the Taliban within six months. Do the Government share this assessment, and are there any circumstances in which they would consider renewed military intervention to prevent it? The Taliban has claimed that it has changed and become less harsh, not least in its attitude towards women and girls, but such statements are widely mistrusted and not borne out by recent evidence. What diplomatic pressure is the UK seeking to bring to bear in association with its international allies and through the UN to ensure that the Taliban keeps to its commitments?

Today’s Statement reflects the fact that liberal interventionism, as expressed after the twin tower bombings, cannot succeed unless there is a broad consensus in the country where the intervention takes place to follow the norms set by western liberal democracies, but in countries where there is no history of democracy and where there remain deep tribal and regional fissures, and where no such consensus emerges, it is bound ultimately to fall short or fail.

The challenge now is to support those in Afghanistan who seek to promote democracy and tolerance and to put as much pressure as possible short of military intervention on the Taliban to moderate its policies. This will not be easy, but we owe it to the 457 British military personnel who have died in Afghanistan, to the thousands who still carry physical and mental scars and to those thousands of young Afghans, men and women, who are desperate for a brighter, tolerant future for their country to do whatever we can to prevent a return to the horrors of the past.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their comments, and I wholeheartedly endorse their tributes to our brave personnel who served in Afghanistan, to our NATO allies and, of course, to the people of Afghanistan. I also align myself with the comments made by both about the need to make sure that we do not lose the gains. I completely accept that there are many challenges ahead, but progress, particularly in relation to civil society and helping the development of the Afghan Government, cannot be lost. I hope to cover some of those issues as I go through my remarks.

The noble Baroness asked about discussions around the decision. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary spoke to US Secretary Blinken before the NATO announcement, and he has had numerous meetings since, as has the Defence Secretary, who met his counterparts from the US, France and Germany, and, of course, the Prime Minister discussed Afghanistan directly with President Biden on 10 June and at the NATO summit. There was also a lot of discussion about it at the summit.

The noble Baroness asked about the threat of al-Qaeda. We assess that al-Qaeda is now less active in Afghanistan than before 2001, but the group has not ceased to exist and remains a threat to both Afghanistan and the international community, so Afghanistan remains a counterterrorism priority. That is why we are working closely with the US and NATO allies to ensure that we are able to protect our shared interest in tackling terrorism, and we will continue to do that.

The noble Lord and the noble Baroness asked about the political process. We have provided crucial capacity-building and technical advice to the Afghan Ministry for Peace and training for the Afghan negotiating team. We have enhanced the inclusivity of the negotiations through capacity-building support to the Afghan negotiation team, women’s networks and civil society organisations to help build women’s meaningful participation and representation, an issue touched on by both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. We are working closely with international and regional partners to further support peace efforts. The noble Baroness and noble Lord are absolutely right, and we have been very clear about it, as have all our international allies, that any political settlement must protect the progress made in the country, particularly around protection for women and minority groups.

The Prime Minister also spoke to President Ghani on 17 June and underlined our commitment to supporting Afghanistan to achieve a stable and democratic future following the withdrawal of troops. He gave his personal support, and they resolved together to continue working to counter the terrorist threat in Afghanistan. Those discussions will continue through international fora and directly with colleagues in the Afghanistan Government.

I reassure the noble Baroness that we remain committed to working with the US, NATO allies and international partners to support the ongoing training and mentoring of the Afghan defence force, and we will continue to provide financial and sustainment support until at least 2024. That is a commitment that we have already made. Obviously, we are extremely proud of the role we played during our 20 years in Afghanistan in helping to build that defence force and the resilience it has shown. It has been leading the security in Afghanistan for the past six years, and it has been a privilege for us to work with it.

The noble Lord and the noble Baroness asked about our international support. We will continue to support Afghanistan with more than £100 million of development assistance this year; it will remain one of the largest bilateral recipients of UK aid. We will continue to be a significant contributor to the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, through which we will support rural development, building resilience to climatic shocks and infrastructure development. We will also continue to work to consolidate the substantial development gains that have been delivered since 2001. Through our Afghanistan multiyear humanitarian response programme, we will continue to provide urgent life-saving assistance and respond to immediate humanitarian need.

The noble Lord rightly talked about the significant progress that has been made in Afghanistan since 2001, not only on women’s rights but on the rights of minority groups, media freedoms, freedom of expression and access to education. It is imperative that we continue to work to protect this, and we will do so with our international allies and the Afghan Government to ensure this.

Both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness asked about the ARAP relocation programme. The noble Baroness is absolutely right; we owe a huge debt of gratitude to interpreters and other locally employed staff who risk their lives working alongside UK forces in Afghanistan. We have already supported more than 1,500 former Afghan staff and their families to create new lives in the UK. The noble Lord is right that the ARAP process requires applicants to be in Afghanistan, as they are likely to face the greatest risks, but those in a third country seeking help to relocate can also contact the Afghan Threat and Risk Evaluation Unit for advice, which they will be given, so they can also access support through that. We are significantly accelerating the pace of relocations, in parallel with the military withdrawal, because we understand and accept that the situation for some in the country has changed. We will do all we can to continue to support those people who wish to relocate to the United Kingdom.

G7 and NATO Summits

Lord Newby Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, had we heard the Prime Minister make his Statement in the other place, we would have heard the great joy with which he did so and how wonderful he thought the summit was, but we need to reflect on this. The Prime Minister hosted his first summit as the country basked in some much-needed sunshine and the England team delighted us all with their first group-stage win. The BBC reported that the US President raised Northern Ireland in a side meeting, and finance Ministers discussed global tax arrangements. That is not about 2021; the same issues were raised back at the G8, as it was then, in 1998, but the similarities end there. The differences between the Carbis Bay and Birmingham summits are stark, not just because it is now the G7 meeting.

The hope that we would see agreement on meaningful, concrete plans to tackle the biggest global challenges disappeared as the Prime Minister’s strained relationships with world leaders took centre stage. Not for the first time, the Government overpromised and underdelivered. There is no global vaccination plan and no action agreed on the climate crisis. At every step, Boris Johnson’s broken promises have cost us friends—but they also cost us our influence.

Bringing the pandemic to an end must be the priority. That means an effective, worldwide vaccination programme. While the virus circulates anywhere it is a threat to us all everywhere, so we welcomed and were optimistic about the Prime Minister’s promise to vaccinate the entire world, as he said, by the end of 2022—only to yet again be disappointed as that turned out to be unsubstantiated rhetoric, with no clear plan to deliver it. There is no funding formula, no operational strategy and no information on where the 11 billion doses of the vaccine would come from. We should have seen an immediate increase in global support for health services in developing countries for any plans to be truly effective.

The shadow Secretary of State for International Trade, Emily Thornberry, has written to the Prime Minister on those issues. I hope that the noble Baroness the Leader of the House has had an opportunity to see that letter to the Prime Minister and that he has read it. The 10-point plan my right honourable friend outlined addresses the fundamental problems about how we can produce the volume of vaccines needed, alongside making preparations for the infrastructure to deliver it. It would ensure we were better prepared for any future pandemic. Yes, it is expensive, but the human, social and economic costs of not doing so are far greater.

Ahead of COP 26, the G7 could have set the groundwork for an ambitious green recovery, leading global support across the world to tackle the climate crisis and finding common ground on climate finance. Again, the Prime Minister fell short: nothing was agreed on national determined contributions and there was nothing to support mitigation and adaptation in the world’s poorest countries. The complete failure of the green homes grant here at home and the impact of aid cuts on climate projects undermine our climate credibility and leave us recklessly out of step with our allies in the G7.

The noble Baroness the Leader of the House will be aware that I have repeatedly asked when, or indeed if, there will be a vote in Parliament on aid cuts. I have had no success, even though this is about the Government breaking their own legislation. This time I will be more specific about the effects of those cuts, because the Prime Minister’s Statement, made yesterday, refers to girls’ education. He clearly recognises the importance of the issue. Given that, and following the cut in the aid budget, will the Government now publish the full details of the cuts expected for such girls’ education programmes? This is just in the interests of transparency, so we know the exact impact they will have.

While Northern Ireland may have been missing from the communiqué and the Prime Minister’s Statement to Parliament, it was not missing from the meetings. Let us be clear: the protocol was not imposed on us but negotiated by this Government. Mr Johnson’s claim to

“do whatever it takes to protect the … integrity of the UK”

is meaningless unless the Government step up to find serious solutions to protect the precious Good Friday agreement. In refusing to do that, the Government are not only shirking their responsibility but damaging our reputation with our strongest allies. We have repeatedly suggested that a veterinary agreement which recognises the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland would remove the need for almost all the checks. Ministers must now show some leadership.

President Biden’s proposal for the global minimum corporation tax is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to stop tax avoidance and the undercutting of UK businesses which pay their fair share. This could provide us with billions of pounds in extra tax revenue, yet the Government have spent the last few weeks watering down proposals which could have put an extra £131 million a week into our NHS and other services for the public’s benefit. Can the noble Baroness tell the House why the Government stood in the way of this proposal?

Although Northern Ireland was not mentioned, the Australian trade deal was. We obviously want to see good trade deals, but we also need to see the details and not just the Government patting themselves on the back. I seek two points of clarification on that trade deal. First, there seems to be no mention in the Government’s agreement in principle of environmental or animal welfare standards. The noble Baroness will understand why it is so important to the farming community to ensure that our high production standards are not undermined. Can she provide any assurances on this? Secondly, can she also guarantee that, prior to ratification, Parliament will have full ratification well in advance and a clear and accurate impact assessment?

On a more optimistic note, the NATO summit in Brussels took some welcome steps towards future security in Europe and the north Atlantic. This underlines exactly why the alliance is so important to us. A collective understanding of new security threats, a recommitment to Article 5 deterrence and an emphasis on climate are each integral to global security and stability. We are also pleased that the leaders recognise the challenges that Beijing poses to global security and stability, so can the noble Baroness now detail and provide more information on what strategic actions NATO will agree in relation to China?

In a world of democracy under pressure, and as the US leads allies in facing the challenges posed by China in the Indo-Pacific, the UK’s military leadership in Europe is more important than ever. Having cut the British Army by a further 10,000, however, we are left not only unable to provide regional leadership but out of step with our allies. Again, the UK Government were unable to provide the necessary leadership or direction that we should be in a position to do. With that in mind, does the noble Baroness regret that the Government have broken their election pledge and are now cutting our Armed Forces by 10,000?

In conclusion, it has been 23 years since the Birmingham G8. International co-operation remains our most effective tool for global progress but the Government have to be ambitious, and that is what was really lacking from this summit. We could have enormous influence on the world stage, but that is a choice. We can do that only if we have the leadership to turn our values into action.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I suspect that, for many people, the sight of the G7 leaders going about their business in a professional and businesslike manner in Cornwall was a great relief after the chaos of the Trump years. The 25-page long White House communiqué, which covers most of the world’s most pressing problems is, at first sight, extremely impressive. Any lingering concerns are not so much to do with the institution—to coin a phrase, “the G7 is back”—but over whether the specific pledges made are substantial enough to meet the challenges the communiqué identifies.

Before coming to the G7, the Prime Minister made great play in his Statement of signing the New Atlantic Charter with President Biden. As noble Lords will be aware, the first Atlantic Charter, signed in 1941, led to the formation of the United Nations. Could the noble Baroness inform the House of any single, specific initiative—large or small—she believes or hopes will flow from the new charter? If she is unable to do so, could she explain why the charter should be seen as anything other than a mere PR stunt?

On the summit itself, the Government very sensibly chose to steer their deliberations by commissioning the noble Lord, Lord Stern of Brentford, to set out the scale of ambition they should adopt. His report, G7 Leadership for Sustainable, Resilient and Inclusive Economic Recovery and Growth, sets out a definitive agenda for action on all the key issues the summit addressed. The communiqué simply thanks the noble Lord, Lord Stern, for his efforts, but sadly fails to rise to the challenges he sets. Take just three examples.

First, on Covid vaccines, the noble Lord points to the urgent need to close the £20 billion funding gap for COVAX. The summit committed to only a small fraction of that. Will the UK Government not only redouble their commitment to make vaccines available to those in the rest of the world who need them most and can afford them least, but commit to diverting surplus vaccines in the UK, and do so in the speediest possible fashion?

Secondly, on climate change the noble Lord, Lord Stern, makes the case for a doubling of climate finance and for a commitment to go beyond the $100 billion target to help developing countries to decarbonise. Such a commitment is lacking in the communiqué. Does the noble Baroness accept that, by cutting overseas development assistance, the Government significantly undermined the prospect of getting the necessary funding into developing countries, and in doing so, have made it much less likely they will agree to ambitious decarbonisation targets at COP 26?

Thirdly, on girls’ education, the communiqué commits to the target of getting 40 million more girls into school by 2026, which is terrific. Can the noble Baroness therefore explain why the Government have cut their bilateral support for girls’ education in the poorest countries by 40%? Can she explain whether the funds the Government have announced for the Global Partnership for Education are new money or simply a new announcement of old money?

The communiqué covers an extremely wide range of issues, but one final issue leapt out of the page for me. The text praises the

“incredible contribution of caregivers in our societies … and the importance of improving decent working conditions for these caregivers”.

What improved provision do the Government have in mind? Will they, as a start, commit to improving the provision of respite care so that carers, who are increasingly at the end of their tether as Covid restrictions continue to affect them, will get at least some relief from the very onerous daily burdens they carry?

The Prime Minister includes in his Statement reference to the trade deal with Australia. Will the noble Baroness confirm that the absolute maximum benefit this trade deal could conceivably deliver equates to one penny per person per week? Does she accept that the cost of this derisory benefit will be overwhelmed by the damage the deal threatens to do to our livestock industry—particularly in upland areas—and that the potential increased access to Australia for young people is frankly risible compared to their reduced access to live, work and study in Europe as a result of Brexit?

The Statement very wisely ignores the unseemly row on the margins of the summit around the operation of the Northern Ireland protocol and perhaps that is a matter for another day. But may I remind the noble Baroness that the single most important ingredient for conducting summits and international affairs successfully is trust? Through his unwillingness to stick to international law and his track record of breaking his promises, this Prime Minister has squandered it. Until it is rebuilt, our influence on the world stage will remain seriously impaired.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness and noble Lord for their comments and questions. They both rightly asked about vaccinations and, as they will know, G7 leaders committed to providing at least a further 1 billion doses to the poorest countries to help vaccinate the world by the end of 2022 through dose sharing and finance. The G7 will share at least half of these by the end of 2021. We have committed to providing at least 100 million surplus Covid vaccine doses to the rest of the world within the next year and 5 million will be shared by the end of September, with another 30 million by the end of 2021.

The noble Baroness is right that sharing supply, boosting manufacturing and funding the COVAX scheme all have critical roles. That is why G7 leaders talked about, and want to take concrete actions to overcome, bottlenecks and want to boost manufacturing so that we can increase the supply. The vaccines we will be providing will be across all our supply: AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Janssen and Moderna. We will be working with leaders to continue to ramp up that effort.

Both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord rightly raised climate change and the work done on that. Commitments were made at the summit. Most G7 countries will be reducing emissions by more than half by 2030, compared to 2010 levels. All countries will formally commit to their specific reductions when submitting their nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. Each country will also set up policy plans and milestones on how they plan to meet these, as we have done with our carbon budget.

Both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness talked about the climate finance commitment and, of course, we were the first G7 member to substantially increase our commitment. At the summit, Canada committed to doubling its climate finance through to 2025 and France, Germany, Japan and the US also agreed to increase their commitments, so there was welcome progress.

Both the noble Baroness and noble Lord talked about girls’ education, which is a priority for this Government. At the G7 summit, the Prime Minister announced that we will be pledging £430 million to the Global Partnership for Education for the next five years, which is our largest pledge ever and an uplift of 15%. At the summit the G7 collectively pledged at least $2.7 billion towards the Global Partnership for Education and we will continue to encourage partners around the world to contribute to that fund.

Both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness asked about the Northern Ireland protocol. We are working to support the Good Friday agreement and urgently need to find solutions to support the peace process and minimise disruption. There was discussion of the protocol with our European partners at the summit. Those discussions will continue because we all want to ensure that we get to a satisfactory resolution.

The noble Baroness seemed to suggest that there had not been much movement on, for instance, global tax, over the last few years. But at the G7 we saw a major breakthrough on the issue that has been under discussion for over five years, particularly back in the historic two-pillar international agreement on global tax reform, to address the tax challenges we face. We are very hopeful that this agreement will provide a strong basis for securing a more detailed and comprehensive agreement among the G20 and OECD in July.

On the Australia trade deal, I am sure that the noble Lord will be delighted to know that the UK-Australia trade relationship was worth £13.9 billion last year and is set to grow under this deal. I assure him that British farmers will be protected by a cap on tariff-free imports for 15 years, using tariff-rate quotas and safeguards. To the noble Baroness I say that, when the agreement is published, there will be a chapter on animal welfare, because we have been very clear that we will not compromise on our high standards. I can also confirm that, of course, formal scrutiny of the ratification process will take place once we have laid the final agreement—this will be once we have undergone legal checks—and the impact assessment will be published with it.

The noble Lord asked about the Atlantic charter. It recognises that the values that the US and UK share remain the same as they were in 1941, including defending democracy, reaffirming the importance of collective security and building a fair and sustainable global trading system. There was a very constructive relationship between the Prime Minister and President Biden, and it was a very successful summit.

House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Newby Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, 15 months ago, we could not have imagined that your Lordships’ House would be discussing the extent to which it retained—not introduced —a range of ways of working that, at the time, would have seemed impossible, both politically and technically. So I, like other noble Lords who have spoken, begin by expressing my thanks to the staff who have worked so hard to implement the very widespread changes that we are debating today. I also acknowledge that many Members of your Lordships’ House now have a proficiency in new technologies that, 15 months ago, they would have thought impossible.

I had Covid in March and I therefore decided that, as soon as the House started meeting again, I was at less risk than my colleagues and that I would come. I have attended virtually every day since the House resumed, probably more than any other Member of your Lordships’ House. I have therefore seen at first hand, from in here, what it has been like as we have changed our procedures. As members of various committees know, I have chafed at the restrictions—many of which I have thought to be petty and overdone—with which we have had to put up over the last year.

As the country returns to normal, we now face the challenge that many other organisations are facing: how far should we simply revert to the ways we have done things in the past, and how far should we make permanent the changes that have been introduced, in an emergency, during a crisis? In making the decision, we have to begin by acknowledging the particular characteristics of Parliament, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, have set out so eloquently. It is a place for debate, for weighing the strength of argument, for exerting influence over colleagues, and, particularly in your Lordships’ House, for working together across parties on a daily basis. The conventional wisdom, which I support, is that this is best done face to face. It is undoubtedly the case that it is impossible to adequately hold Ministers to account through the sanitised environment of Zoom.

Against this, hybrid working allows those who cannot be present physically, because of either health conditions, work commitments elsewhere or problematic travel arrangements, to participate in our deliberations where otherwise they would not have been able to do so. This obviously allows a greater number of participants and a broader range of views. In a parliament, that is a good thing. The easiest option would simply be to turn the clock back and do everything as we did it before. That obviously has the benefit of simplicity, but it implies that the way we did things before cannot be improved upon, or at least cannot be improved upon by any of the innovations of the last year. Surely nobody can really believe that.

As we have more fundamental reform of your Lordships’ House, there is a disparity of view on the desirability of retaining virtually every aspect of the changes we have already made. In order to get a sense of balance among those views, we circulated a questionnaire among Members of the Liberal Democrat group to see what people thought. I thought it might be helpful if, instead of simply expressing my own view, I set out the headline views of my group.

First, while there is unanimity on virtually nothing, there is strong majority support for the following: that participation in the amending stages of Bills be restricted to those who can attend in person; that electronic voting should be retained in some form; that committees should be able to operate in a hybrid manner; and that each committee should decide for itself what degree of hybridity it thinks is most appropriate.

There was also support, by smaller majorities, for retaining a degree of hybridity for Oral Questions, Statements, Second Reading debates, SI debates, and party and general debates, as well as for retaining our earlier starting times from Tuesday to Thursday but reverting to 2.30 pm on Monday to allow those travelling long distances to arrive for the start of business. There was also a recognition that because some people would not be able to easily attend the House in person for some time after 21 June, mainly for health reasons, there should be a transition to whatever final arrangements were made to a point in the autumn, when, all being well, all significant Covid-related barriers to attendance would have lifted.

The only two glosses I put on those general findings, from my personal perspective, are these. First, while I do believe electronic voting should be retained, I accept that very many believe it should be restricted to those on the precincts. There is a good argument for retaining the current system, albeit without voting continuing to qualify for an allowance. But if, as I suspect, this is not a majority view, I hope that at the very least we allow electronic voting on the premises. Spending many hours a year shuffling at glacial speed through the Lobbies should surely be a thing of the past.

I also believe there is a strong case for allowing those who have a disability that makes attending the House difficult to retain the option to participate virtually on a permanent basis. The truth is that the House will not be able to benefit fully from the wisdom and experience of all its Members unless such an approach is adopted, and we will all be poorer as a result. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, says this is not an acceptable way forward, not least because people who participate virtually would not do so on the same basis, so there would not be parity. I do not know how many disabled Members of your Lordships’ House he has spoken to, but I can tell him that, from those I have spoken to, that would be a very small price to pay to have a continued ability to participate in the work of the House.

There are many more detailed aspects of the way we do things—for example, whether we retain speakers’ lists for Questions, or whether we repeat ministerial Statements made in the Commons on the same day here—on which I know Members of your Lordships’ House have strong and differing views. We should proceed with the maximum degree of consensus. This argues for not necessarily deciding on all the changes by 21 June—assuming that the next phase of easing happens on 21 June.

My principal plea, as we return to normality, is not to discard anything that we have done for the first time in the past 15 months simply for the sake of returning to normal. No other organisation is doing that. The noble Earl says that everybody is going back to the office, but, in my experience, virtually no organisation that has a large number of staff is going back on the same terms. People are working part-time and different methods of operation are being undertaken. This is happening everywhere else. It would be bizarre if your Lordships’ House was the one place that did not look to see where it could improve its efficiency and effectiveness by continuing changes it is already undertaking. Surely we want a new normality to embed those changes that have helped your Lordships’ House to undertake its core functions of scrutinising legislation, holding Ministers to account and leading a public debate. The Government want the country to build back better. We should aim to do the same.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Newby Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister’s confirmation of a statutory inquiry into the Government’s initial and ongoing handling of the pandemic is welcome. I think that all of us, especially the bereaved families of the almost 130,000 people who have died and those suffering physical and mental health consequences, need answers, as well as assurances that, where there have been mistakes, everything that can be done will be done to ensure they are not repeated.

Yet the language in the Statement about when this process will even start could have come straight from the mouth of Sir Humphrey Appleby in a “Yes Minister” script. I quote: “when the time is right”, “in due course”. All that is missing is “in the fullness of time”. I appreciate that the terms of reference need to be agreed and the appointments made to conduct the inquiry and support its work, but why on earth would there be such a long delay even to start the process? I do not understand the logic in delaying for at least a year until—a very imprecise timescale—“spring 2022”. We have all watched Ministers squirm at the Dispatch Box as they try to explain what they really meant when they said that something would be ready by spring and it is not ready even though it is August.

The Prime Minister embraced a new watchword in his Statement. He said “caution”—which we do not often hear in statements from him and which we know is not a word that comes easily to him, but he is clearly very aware of the dangers of new variants mutating and of a third wave of infections next winter. Given that, why not start the inquiry process as soon as possible in order to learn the lessons as soon as possible? If it is the case that delays in implementing lockdowns or other measures meant that the virus spread or mutated more quickly, leading to more lives being lost and more restrictions being imposed for longer, including lockdowns, and if that will help avoid a third wave this autumn or at least help us understand how better to respond, surely the work of the inquiry must be undertaken as quickly as possible. The last thing we need now is a further pause in learning from any mistakes.

I hope that the noble Baroness does not repeat the reasons given in the Statement for this delay. The Prime Minister basically says that it because of the burdens that the inquiry would place on the National Health Service. I can understand that, but surely it applies more accurately to the wholesale NHS and public health reorganisation that the Government are about to embark on than to an inquiry which so many in the National Health Service support.

I hope that I am wrong on this—I have said that I want to be proved wrong—but can she give me an assurance that there is no attempt to delay the report beyond a general election, given that, at the same time, plans have been announced to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act? If the noble Baroness is able to give an assurance on that, that would be really helpful and would give a lot of reassurance to colleagues.

The noble Baroness knows that there is increasing concern about a rise in cases of the so-called Indian variant of Covid within the UK, including the highly transmissible B.1.617.2, which has now spread rapidly in areas of the north-west of England and elsewhere. Can she tell the House something about the impact that this is likely to have on the Government’s road map out of lockdown, including the national restrictions that are due to be lifted next Monday?

Are Ministers considering a return to tiers and maintaining or increasing restrictions in Covid hotspots? She will understand why I am asking—it is deeply concerning to people living in these communities, many of whom, in the north-west at least, have remained subject to restrictions throughout most of the past 14 months.

Will she also say something tonight about the latest increases in surge testing and surge vaccinations? Are there now plans to extend this further than Bolton and, more recently, Blackburn? Until now, we have seen vaccines rolled out at the same pace across the whole of England, on the advice of the JCVI, but extra doses of the vaccines have now been given to Blackburn with Darwen in Lancashire to extend the vaccine rollout to all over-18s in the area. Is this part of a new surge vaccination programme to deal with the rise of the Indian variant, and will that be rolled out in other areas where the variant may crop up?

Could she also tell the House what assessment the Government have made of the impact that not adding India to the red list for international travel has had on the arrival of this variant in the UK? Why did the Government not implement a comprehensive hotel quarantine policy when the variant was evident in other countries that were transporting visitors to the UK?

The Government have repeatedly pledged to be driven by data, not dates—yet we do not yet know the full extent to which many variants, including those identified in Brazil, South Africa and India, impact on vaccine effectiveness. A lot of the information is very positive and encouraging, but it would be helpful to know what research the Government are doing and how accurate some of that information is. Is she also able to say what information and advice the Government have received regarding the potential risk? Can she update the House on the rollout of booster doses that will be available later this year?

On a related matter—she may want to write to me about this; I am quite happy with that—it would be helpful to have an update on the Government’s plans for addressing the persisting disparities in vaccination uptake among different ethnic groups. She will share our concern on this issue. It has particularly affected the social care workforce, which has had a lower take-up.

More broadly, with the World Health Organization referring to the shocking disparity in vaccination rates between countries, and Chris Whitty saying that the prevention of new variants involves the need to get on top of the pandemic, I ask what role the UK is playing in leading the global response? One Minister said very early on that none of us is safe until all of us are safe, and we obviously want to see an international rollout of the vaccine.

All of us are desperate to get to a place where the virus is behind us and we can accelerate the return to living and working more normally. However, we need to do this safely, and our understanding of what did and did not work at the start of this pandemic is an urgent and essential part of that process. So we welcome the inquiry and think that it is the right decision to take, but it needs to be started sooner than next spring.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I begin by apologising to the House that, in order for me to get home tonight, I have to be on a train at King’s Cross at 8.03 pm. Therefore, I may have to leave before the end of all the supplementary questions, for which I apologise. I will undertake to watch them tomorrow morning.

For some time, we on these Benches have been calling for a committee of inquiry to be established to examine the actions of the Government in handling the Covid crisis and to consider what lessons can be learned for the future, so the fact that the Government are now setting one up is very much to be welcomed. However, I am somewhat dismayed at the proposed timescale. In response to the Prime Minister’s Statement, the relatives of Covid victims have strongly argued that we need to be learning lessons now, not at some distant future date—and they are surely right.

The Government’s argument in favour of delay until next year is that we should not distract people who are

“in the heat of our struggle against this disease”.

However, without being complacent, by the autumn, unless the vaccines prove ineffective against any new variants that might by then emerge, we will not be in the heat of the struggle as we have seen it in recent months. In any event, there are many aspects of the inquiry—such as the planning, procurement or decision-making processes within government—that could easily be investigated now, without jeopardising the NHS’s ability to manage a further wave. To delay starting the inquiry by a year is simply unjustified.

The lengths of public inquiries vary; the 69 held since 1990 have varied between 45 days and 13 years. The average was two and a half years. It is therefore highly unlikely that this inquiry will be conducted and concluded before the next election. This will mean that the Government will avoid any accountability for their actions, for by the time we get around to the following general election, people and events will have moved on. More importantly, such a long timetable will enable the Government to hide behind the fact that the inquiry is ongoing, and delay making the changes needed to avoid repeating some of the errors of the past 15 months.

The Government’s mind is clearly made up on the timescale, but I wonder whether the noble Baroness the Leader of the House could be a bit more specific about some aspects of it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked, when the Government say “spring 2022”, what is their definition of “spring”? Also, can the Minister specifically deny rumours from within Whitehall that civil servants working on the inquiry have been told to expect it to start next July? Have the Government any thoughts on how long the inquiry might last? Will they set even an indicative deadline for it to report?

Will they encourage the inquiry to produce interim reports on specific aspects of its work that could be completed first—an approach adopted in some other, analogous inquiries? For example, it would be sensible to know at the earliest possible moment what went wrong in the planning for the pandemic. We need those lessons to be learned before the next one arrives. It would also be sensible, and possible, to have an early report on procurement practices to ensure that the excesses of the last 15 months are never repeated. Can the noble Baroness give any indication of who might lead it? If she cannot, can she give us any indication of when we might know? Yesterday, it emerged that the Department of Health and Social Care has already concluded an internal inquiry which the Government are refusing to publish. Why is this, and will they now do so?

The urgency of the inquiry might not be so great if we felt confident that the Government had already learned the lessons of the past 15 months, but I am afraid that we do not. I will take just two examples. First, the delay in implementing the stricter measures that were urgently required in the autumn has been replicated by the delay in adding India to the red list. This has led to a large number of travellers from India entering the UK while the virus was rampant in that country, and to its inevitable importation here. We need a timelier approach to dealing with such new threats. The inquiry could explain why that has been lacking until now.

Secondly, the central test and trace system is now being disbanded, with most of the central PHE staff having been sacked, leaving open how any future surges will be managed. We need an ongoing, effective test and trace system to deal with new variants and localised outbreaks. The inquiry could shine a light on how that might be achieved.

Finally, on the creation of a UK commission on Covid commemoration, I completely agree that a national memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral is a good idea, but I gently suggest to the Government that the best memorial of this crisis would be a commitment to paying properly those staff working in the NHS and social care, whose dedication has been phenomenal and without whose efforts the effects of the pandemic would have been even more destructive.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for their comments. I am afraid that I will not be able to go into the detail of the inquiry that both have asked for, but I will do my best to give the information that I can. The inquiry will begin its work in spring 2022. I do not know where the noble Lord got July from, but even I accept that that stretches the word “spring”. It will be funded by the Government.

The noble Lord asked about details. It will be for the chair of the inquiry to decide how to deliver it. They will be independent and will deliver it in line with the terms of reference and in accordance with the requirements set out in the Inquiries Act. That legislation sets out, for instance, that the chair will be appointed by the sponsoring Minister. It will all be done on a statutory basis, with full formal powers.

The noble Baroness and the noble Lord asked about timing. I am well aware of the differences of views on timing, and I understand calls for things to move forward. However, we believe that this is the right timescale, because the end of the lockdown will not be the end of the pandemic. The WHO has said that the pandemic has reached its peak globally, so we are certainly not through it. As the noble Baroness rightly said, we are uncertain about the effect of future waves, and new variants continue to present risks. We believe that a premature inquiry risks distracting the NHS, as the noble Baroness said, and Ministers, officials and departments from the ongoing response. An inquiry could not operate at sufficient pace to assist us in making the judgments that we might need to make in the medium term. So we believe that spring 2022, when we are on the other side of the pressures of this winter, which I hope will be far fewer than last winter, is the right time to start the inquiry. We are committed to that.

I will also say that we are continuously learning. While there has not been an inquiry, our whole approach in responding to the pandemic has been to draw up and develop plans based on experience. It is wrong to suggest that we are totally blind in what we are doing; we are learning lessons.

The noble Lord asked about the informal review. As is standard practice across departments, an informal lessons-learned review was carried out by DHSC officials to inform future working, so that we continually learn and improve our approach. It was not a formal or overarching review of the pandemic, but an internal, departmental ways-of-working review.

The noble Baroness rightly asked about the Indian variant. Cases have risen and we are watching it closely. We are assessing the threats but, at this stage, there is no evidence that the Indian variant is resistant to vaccines. This is something that we will keep under review. We are continuing to deploy surge and community testing efforts to find and isolate cases where there is evidence of community transmission, in addition to the comprehensive work under way to track and trace all contacts of cases.

The noble Baroness asked about the road map. At this stage, we are continuing with it and the next step is on Monday. We will keep things under review, but the road map remains the programme that we intend to follow, at this point. Having gone through the pandemic, as all of us have, I cannot make categorical commitments. All I can say is that the road map remains the programme that we are pursuing.

While we have been successful in closing vaccination disparities between different ethnic groups, I will write to the noble Baroness with the latest data, as she asked. I do not have it to hand.

The noble Baroness also asked about booster shots. As we complete the programme for first vaccinations, we are ramping this up. We are working with our current vaccine suppliers and new ones, such as CureVac, to work out which vaccines will be effective as boosters. We signed an agreement for a further 60 million doses of Pfizer, which will be part of the booster programme. That work is in train.

The noble Baroness also rightly asked about the global picture on COVAX. She and the House will know that we are one of the biggest donors to COVAX and we are working through it to ensure global access to vaccines. We have contributed £540 million, which has helped over 70 middle-income and lower-income countries receive doses. At the virtual G7 meeting in February, we encouraged other donors to give more money. At the G7 summit later, we will continue to play that role.

The noble Lord rightly asked about nurses’ pay and talked about the fantastic work that they have done during the pandemic. As he knows, we have committed to providing NHS staff a pay lift at a time when this has been paused in the wider public sector. We have given written evidence to the independent pay review, which is common practice, and we are now waiting to hear back its recommendations, which I cannot pre-empt. We will consider the recommendations when they are given to us.

Tributes: Lord Fowler

Lord Newby Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the job of the Lord Speaker exemplifies the British constitution. It is not properly written down, it is constantly evolving and the influence it exerts depends very largely on the quality of the occupant at the time. It is already a very different job from the days of its first incumbent and, with the strengthening of the House of Lords Commission, is set to develop further under the tenure of the noble Lord, Lord McFall, whom I welcome to his job.

The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, was the ideal person to be Lord Speaker in changing times because, to do the job so effectively, you need two characteristics which he possesses in abundance. First, you need acute political antennae to understand what is possible within the context of the House of Lords. That is not as easy as it sounds, but the noble Lord’s great experience in the Commons and within the Thatcher Government provided him with an acute understanding of what was possible and what, however desirable, was not.

Secondly, you need an empathetic approach. The Lord Speaker has so few formal powers that the power of persuasion becomes paramount—and the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, can be very persuasive. As far as I was concerned, I was invited to regular meetings in his palatial office and offered a cup of tea. We then had a broad discussion of the political scene, which typically and increasingly included some trenchant comments on his part about the present Government and their leader. He then looked down at his list of topics coming before the commission, on which he wanted my support. Lulled by the tea, the charm and the chat, I nearly always gave it.

On the big issues facing the Lords in recent years, whether on restoration and renewal, Ellenbogen and the ways we manage ourselves or how we respond to Covid, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, was always open to new ways of doing things and intolerant of resistance to change. He was unafraid to speak his mind to the media on issues facing the House, and was a strong public advocate for the positive part which your Lordships’ House plays within the British political system.

When the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, became Lord Speaker, I lived in Putney and almost literally opposite his flat—in my case, on the south side of the river. I discovered that the most civilised way of getting into Westminster was the riverboat ferry from Putney pier. Having to come in during the rush hour, like me, the noble Lord found himself either stuck in traffic or forced into the cattle-truck-like conditions of the District line. I was pleased to be able to introduce him to the merits of the Putney ferry.

I am equally pleased that he is not now sailing off into the sunset of a well-earned retirement but intends to resume his campaigning efforts on behalf of those worldwide who suffer with AIDS. There are not many politicians who, at this stage of their career, would choose to re-engage with such an unfashionable, though important, issue. It is a measure of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, as a politician and a person that he has chosen to do so.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Newby Excerpts

Tuesday 11th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I join other speakers in expressing my thanks to, and admiration of, the Queen for delivering the speech today. Her sense of public duty is an example for us all.

I congratulate the mover and seconder of the humble Address. I first met the noble Lord, Lord Bates, on his appointment as a Minister in the coalition Government, when I briefed him on how to prepare for questions from the Dispatch Box. Despite my advice, he became a most accomplished performer in your Lordships’ House, as his very thoughtful speech today so ably demonstrates. On this side of the House, we miss him from the Government Front Bench; perhaps one day he will return.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson of Welton, in her short time in the House, has already shown herself to be warm hearted, well informed and constructive, not least in her contributions on the Domestic Abuse Bill. Her speech today underlined those credentials, and we look forward very much to hearing her further in your Lordships’ House.

At the time of the last Queen’s Speech, in December 2019, most of us could not even spell coronavirus, much less imagine that the pandemic would utterly dominate our lives and political debate for the next 18 months. For many in our society, coronavirus has been a tragedy; many have died or been left with the debilitating effects of long Covid, and many families have had to face the consequences—and our thoughts are with them today. But for many more people, the complete dislocation of normal life that the pandemic has brought has led them to re-evaluate their priorities. What is most important to them? What might they change so that the way they live their lives reflects their readjusted priorities?

We have seen the outcome of this re-evaluation in many ways. The majority no longer want the daily commute. Living outside the capital has gained a new attraction. More people want to work for the NHS. More people want to volunteer in their local community. More people have a greater understanding of their local environment and want to enhance it—and we all now more fully appreciate the value of family and friends. In a nutshell, more people are more concerned about their overall well-being and that of their family and their local community, and realise that while a good job and a decent income are crucial, there is more to a full life than that.

These impulses have been felt wherever the pandemic struck, and some Governments have sought to use the terrible experience of the past 15 months as a spur to do things differently. We see this perhaps most notably in the US, where President Biden has seized the moment to think big and provide extra help for the poor, minorities and women, while creating jobs, rebuilding infrastructure and improving the provision of education and childcare—and he is proposing to pay for it by raising taxes on those who can best afford it. Such a vision is completely lacking in today’s Queen’s Speech. The Queen’s Speech contains many Bills of second-order importance but none offering fundamental change. To the extent that more public expenditure is planned, the Government are completely silent as to how it might be financed. Promising to return the public finances to a sustainable path is fine as far as it goes, but if the Government are to meet their stated public spending aims, this will, as in the US, require tax rises. What are they to be? We have no idea.

I readily accept that the Government had some successes in last week’s elections, principally on the back of the success of the vaccination programme, and allegedly the Prime Minister is to follow up today’s speech with a speech about what the Government plan to do to stop the brain drain to the cities. But this smacks of a tactical move to try to consolidate Conservative gains in some northern and Midlands seats. It does not amount to a vision for the country. In any event, speeches are only so much hot air unless they are followed up by effective action, and here, the Prime Minister’s track record is poor. I will take just three examples: social care, historic fire safety defects, and Brexit.

On social care, the Government yet again promise action but no legislation. They clearly have no plan. The Prime Minister claims to be interested in adopting the approach proposed by the Dilnot report, but the coalition legislated to implement a version of Dilnot, and it was dropped in 2015 by the Conservative Government. It is not exactly new. The ostensible problem now, unsurprisingly, is funding, but this is a classic case where you cannot have your cake and eat it. If you want a fair, workable and durable solution, you have to pay for it, but there is clearly no agreement within government about how to do so.

On historic building safety defects, the Prime Minister has said:

“We are determined that no leaseholder should have to pay for the unaffordable … defects that they did not cause and are no fault of their own.”—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/21; col. 945.]


Yet the Government simply are not proposing anything to prevent hundreds of thousands of people having to pay unmanageable bills. On a daily basis now, individual leaseholders are receiving massive bills which will force some into bankruptcy or homelessness. Many more will not be able to sell their houses, and the housing associations will have to curtail their building programmes because all spare funds will have to deal with fire safety issues on existing blocks. The debates on the Fire Safety Bill showed that the Government have no proposals that even begin to match the scale of this impending crisis, and the building safety Bill, whenever it comes, promises to offer too little, too late.

On Brexit—the most infamous case of the Prime Minister wanting to have his cake and eat it—we now see the consequences. Whether it is the problems around trade across the Irish Sea, the failure to protect the fishing industry, or the inability of musicians and other creative artists to travel freely to work in the EU, the costs are clear but the benefits remain elusive. Partial trade deals with countries with which we do a small fraction of our trade compared to that with the EU simply do not cut it.

If the Government were alive to the post-Covid opportunities facing the country, they would start measuring well-being alongside GDP. They would be transferring greater powers and resources to regions and cities. They would have a long-term fix for the funding of health and social care. They would be providing enhanced funding for education and training provision, which is so inadequate in many of our poorer areas. They would have a comprehensive plan for decarbonising homes. They would be making it easier for people to participate in elections, rather than requiring photo identity at polling stations. They would be honest with people about the cost of providing the public services they expect and deserve. They would be giving NHS staff a proper pay rise, not the prospect of another great reorganisation. They would be reinstating our commitment to 0.7% of GNI for international development. They would be encouraging the 750,000 people who volunteered to help in the Covid crisis to continue supporting community activities in the places where they live. If they do want to build 300,000 houses a year, they would be setting about training the workforce needed to make this possible, not making potentially damaging changes to planning law. But they are doing none of these things.

There is an old adage about not wasting a crisis, but the Covid crisis gave this Government a massive opportunity to change for the better the way we do things as a society, and they are wasting it.

Tributes: Baroness Williams of Crosby

Lord Newby Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I first met Shirley as a teenage student. I served with her on the Labour Committee for Europe. I was at her side as she chaired every session of every SDP conference. Latterly, I worked with her closely in the Lords where initially she was my leader and, more recently and improbably, I was hers. Over these 50 years, Shirley did not really change. She continued to be passionate about the things she believed in, principally social justice and Europe. She was always fearless in advocating these things and was prepared to take political hostility head-on to promote them.

Shirley had a long political career, which began as general secretary of the Fabian Society. She was MP for Hitchin and then Stevenage, and held a series of ministerial posts in the Wilson and Callaghan Governments, culminating in the position of Secretary of State for Education. In 1981 she left the Labour Party as one of the gang of four founder members of the SDP. Leaving the Labour Party was particularly hard for her because she remained popular within it, was an elected member of the National Executive Committee and could have expected further promotion, possibly even the leadership. But, having made the break, she never questioned her decision. She also quickly realised that good relations with and an eventual merger between the SDP and the Liberals was a political necessity. Her role in creating the Alliance and then the Liberal Democrats was crucial because she was able to build rapport and trust between parliamentarians and members of both parties.

Her victory in the Crosby by-election in November 1981 was critical in sustaining momentum for the SDP in its early months. Her eloquence, directness and popularity guaranteed her regular media appearances, which provided a vital part of the oxygen necessary for our future successes. Having lost Crosby in the 1983 general election, Shirley was nominated to the Lords by Paddy Ashdown in 1993. She combined many of her early years in your Lordships’ House with being professor of electoral politics at Harvard University. She took over from my noble friend Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank as leader of the Lib Dem group in 2001, a position she held for three years, and from 2004 until her retirement in 2016 she used the bully pulpit of this House to promote her principal causes, and, appropriately, used her final speech to argue for Britain’s continued place within the EU.

But Shirley was no ordinary politician. What set her apart from any other politician I have met was her empathy and charisma. She was genuinely interested in other people, their ideas and their lives. She had a special magnetic charm which meant that people warmed to her and were energised by her.

Two episodes summed this up for me, one personal and one political. In the early days of the SDP, Shirley invited my wife and I to stay overnight at her Hertfordshire house to break a journey up to Yorkshire. Our political discussions with fellow guests went on well into the night. She had all the enthusiasm of a student. But next morning, at 8 o’clock, a knock at our bedroom door heralded Shirley bringing us a cup of tea. It was impossible not to be infatuated.

In the 1981 Warrington by-election, Shirley took part in a cavalcade in support of Roy Jenkins. She stood on the front seat of the car, her head poking through an open sunroof. As the cavalcade progressed down the road in a council estate, we passed a man lying on his back underneath his car repairing it. On hearing Shirley’s voice through the loud-hailer, he looked up and beamed. “Hello Shirley”, he said, as if he had been expecting a visit from a dear friend. To generate that kind of warm response from strangers was as commonplace with Shirley as it is rare with the rest of us.

Shirley gained something of a reputation for disorganisation and was frequently late, but this was borne out of the mistaken belief that she could moderate the passage of time to allow her to fit in an impossibly large number of tasks to which she committed herself. She was immensely energetic and, in a crisis—of which I have seen a number with her—she demonstrated a steely nerve and a razor-sharp focus.

As one of the earliest female Cabinet Ministers, and a single mother, Shirley faced widespread prejudice, but this never embittered her. She simply got on with it. It did, however, make her particularly keen to support young women who wanted to go into politics, and to persuade them that this was an honourable calling—which she fervently believed it was. I know that many of my female colleagues in the Lords and Commons, as well as councillors and activists across the country, were inspired by Shirley to take up politics. This in itself is a powerful legacy.

More generally, in an era when politicians are widely distrusted, Shirley maintained popular affection. She was trusted and admired by millions. As I was writing this tribute, the phone rang on my office desk. The caller had never met Shirley, but had rung to express his condolences for someone he described as “a legend”. He was right: she was—and we will miss her.