Environmental Protection (Plastic Straws, Cotton Buds and Stirrers) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Oates Excerpts

Friday 10th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the regulations as far as they go, but I fear that the scope of exemptions for plastic straws may undermine their effectiveness and make enforcement harder. I recognise of course the need to provide exemptions for people with disabilities, but the exemption seems wider than necessary. Although catering establishments will not be allowed to display them, as I understand it, they will be able to provide them to anyone on request, whether or not they have a disability need. Can the Minister confirm whether that is the case?

Finally, what assessment has been made of local authority trading standards’ capacity to enforce these regulations? Does the Minister recognise the impacts of budget cuts to trading standards of up to 60% over the past decade? Will he urge his colleagues in the Treasury to provide local authorities with the funding to allow trading standards to enforce the laws and regulations that we pass in this House?

Chemicals Regulation

Lord Oates Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park]

The noble Lord is right that we will reduce the costs that have been mentioned if we can facilitate the sharing of data between the UK and the European Union, and that is something that we are pursuing. It is not something that I can describe in any great detail now because much of it depends on the ongoing negotiations. However, he is absolutely right, and it is certainly our intention that data sharing should be used wherever possible to bring down the costs for businesses both here and in the EU.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that the outcome of the UK/EU trade negotiations will be vital for the chemicals industry and indeed for the economy as a whole? In view of that and the fact that both the UK and the EU will, rightly, be distracted from those negotiations by the current public health crisis, will the Government consider amending the withdrawal Act in the forthcoming emergency legislation so that they have the power to extend the deadline of 31 December should that prove necessary?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park]

Were it the case that the British Government felt the need to do such a thing, they would take the step that the noble Lord has outlined, but that is not the view of the British Government today. There is no need for any additional delays.

Environmental Programme: COP 26

Lord Oates Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park]

The noble Viscount raises an important point: there is such a thing as good environmental policy and such a thing as bad environmental policy. Unfortunately, the last few decades are littered with examples of the latter. We disagree in relation to the value and contribution that can be made by onshore wind. It is telling that this year we expect a new wind farm to come online that will be the first to require no public subsidies of any sort at all, which is testament to that technology. It has proven itself, just as we have seen with solar power. However, I absolutely take his point about the burning of wood on a very large scale to produce electricity. This has all kinds of consequences—I would say unforeseen, but they were not entirely unforeseen.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, if the Government’s environmental ambitions are to mean anything, they have to be matched by action. In that context, does the Minister agree that a good start would be for the Government to back the Domestic Premises (Energy Performance) Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath with cross-party support? Does the Minister understand that if the Government are unwilling even to support such a modest but very important measure such as this, their talk of environmental ambitions will ring very hollow indeed?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park]

To be able to meet our commitment of net-zero emissions by 2050, every single department of government has to deliver a plan showing how they intend to do their part. One of the most difficult areas—perhaps the least avoidable—that we will have to tackle is ensuring that existing homes are made more efficient. Money invested in that is not just money spent; it is an investment because you can expect, through normal means, to receive payback and make savings within four to seven years, depending on the work conducted. I am not familiar with the Bill that the noble Lord cites, but energy efficiency is certainly a major priority for the Government.

Israel and Palestine: United States’ Proposals for Peace

Lord Oates Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, if today’s Times is correct, I should start by wishing the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, a happy birthday, although I cannot help wondering what sin he must have committed to have to spend his birthday debating the intractable subject of the Middle East peace process. None the less, I wish him a happy birthday.

I read the Trump plan with disbelief and despair. If it were ever to be implemented, it would represent not only a disaster for the Palestinian people and a threat to world peace far beyond the Middle East, giving as it does the green light to annexation and dispossession, but above all an unmitigated and unparalleled catastrophe for the people of Israel.

The safety and security of Israel is, in my view, critical not only for the Israeli people but for the world at large. After the horrors of the Holocaust and the centuries of prejudice, pogroms and expulsions, the ability of the people of Israel to live in security in their own democratic state is essential to the values of a liberal international order. It is something that we must defend to the end.

We have heard some references to Israel and apartheid South Africa. I have always resisted those comparisons; anybody who has had the misfortune, as I did, of spending time in apartheid South Africa knows that the democratic State of Israel is a million miles away from the vile and poisonous ideology of apartheid. The Trump plan, however, resembles nothing so much as a map of the Bantustans. In any event, as I have said in previous debates in this House, there is no escaping the fact that while the State of Israel is a very different place from apartheid South Africa, the situation that prevails in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is very similar to that which operated in apartheid South Africa: the occupation and settlement of land; the checkpoints; the separate laws; the night raids; the destruction of homes and property; the closed roads; the ongoing humiliations; the deepening anger; the loss of hope; the spread of violence; and the steady dehumanisation of one side by the other. None of this should be the least bit surprising. Whenever one people seeks to dominate another through occupation and settlement, it is inevitable that similar methods are used and similar reactions engendered.

That is why the Trump plan represents such an unmitigated catastrophe for Israel. It is not a peace plan: it is a plan for the permanent national humiliation of the Palestinian people. It would make Israel de facto ruler over millions of people who do not wish to be ruled by it. As a consequence, it guarantees insecurity and instability for Israel, Palestine and the whole region for decades if not centuries to come.

I have always supported the cause of a Palestinian state, not only because it is a just outcome for the Palestinian people but also because it is the only just outcome for the people of Israel. Throughout the time of the coalition, I urged the Government to recognise a Palestinian state. Each time I was told that this was not the right time. As every year passed, more settlements were built, more positions became entrenched and more intractability was introduced. Unless we act soon, there will be no viable state to recognise and no viable peace to achieve.

The only long-term resolution of this conflict will come from an understanding that the aspirations of the Palestinian people are little different from those of the Israeli people and that a just peace can be achieved only on the basis of international law. I have heard some Israelis say, “We have tried trading land for peace and it has not worked” but that is not right. There is only one occasion on which Israel has traded land for peace, when it made its historic peace with Egypt and returned the Sinai. It has lived in peace with Egypt ever since, but in Menachem Begin, it found a Prime Minister with courage. Today the Prime Minister’s office is dripping with self-interest and cowardice. Wise men make peace from positions of strength. Fools believe that strength inevitably lasts for ever.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has sadly deceived many of the people of Israel into embracing the fantasy that it is possible to live in security alongside millions of people who are indefinitely denied their national aspirations and daily subjected to humiliation. The renowned Israeli writer Amos Oz has used this analogy:

“the drowning man clinging to this plank is allowed, by all the rules of natural, objective, universal justice, to make room for himself on the plank, even if in doing so he must push the others aside a little. Even if the others, sitting on that plank, leave him no alternative to force. But he has no natural right to push the others on that plank into the sea.”

The Trump plan would push the Palestinians into the sea. As the founder of the State of Israel, David Ben- Gurion, said in a speech to the Knesset:

“our standing in the world will be determined not by our so-called material riches, and not by our military’s bravery, but by the moral virtue of our undertaking.”

It was the wisdom and humility of Ben-Gurion on which the State of Israel was founded. Let us pray that it is not on the foolishness and arrogance of Netanyahu and Trump that it will founder.

Bilateral Trade: United Kingdom and Africa

Lord Oates Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD) (Maiden speech)]

My Lords, it is an honour to make my maiden speech, albeit necessarily briefly, in this debate. I want first to thank everybody who made my introduction to your Lordships’ House so easy—in particular, Black Rod and his staff, the doorkeepers, attendants and police officers, who have been an unfailing source of directions, advice and, above all, patience. I also want to thank my two supporters, my noble friends Lady Parminter and Lady Suttie, who have been great friends to me over many years.

I have taken the geographic part of my title, Denby Grange, in tribute to my late uncle Lawrence, who was a miner at Denby Grange colliery in West Yorkshire all his life. My title is not only a tribute to him; it is a wider acknowledgement that my good fortune is built on the shoulders of my grandparents and parents, uncles and aunts. They all faced much tougher challenges than I ever have and, through the sacrifices they made, they opened up a whole world of opportunities to their children and grandchildren that they never had themselves.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this important debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, whom I first had the pleasure of meeting when we both took part in a delegation to Ethiopia this September. That was not my first visit to Ethiopia. Thirty-one years ago, aged 14, I sat in front of a television set and watched Michael Buerk’s harrowing BBC news report from northern Ethiopia exposing the horrific human tragedy that was unfolding. That broadcast ignited an enormous sense of anger in me. Much of the disaster was manmade. In the West, we sat on millions of tonnes of intervention stocks—the legendary grain mountains and wine lakes—as hundreds of thousands of people starved to death.

I decided that something had to be done and, with the self-righteous certainty of a by-now 15 year-old, I felt that I was obviously the person to do it. So I ran away from home, to Ethiopia, determined to change the world—the full story is actually a little more complicated than that but, given the time constraints, I hope that noble Lords will forgive this rather concise summary. Once in Ethiopia, I rapidly discovered that the demand for unskilled 15 year-old English boys was not huge, and that Colonel Mengistu’s Ethiopia was a particularly terrifying and dangerous place. I was rescued from it by an Anglican clergyman, to whom I owe my life. He told me bluntly that I needed to go home and learn some skills, but he also told me that it would not be long before the TV cameras forgot Africa again. He asked me not to do the same. I never have.

Over the past two decades, I have had the opportunity of living and working in Zimbabwe and later South Africa, where I have learned many important lessons and been nurtured by deep and enduring friendships.

Ethiopia today is a very different place from the Ethiopia of 30 years ago although it remains hugely vulnerable to drought, as Clive Myrie’s BBC news report on Monday underlined. The Ethiopian Government have achieved impressive development successes over the past decade with the help of UK development aid. I was proud to work in the coalition Government when we met the 0.7% target for development aid and when Mike Moore in another place and my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed enshrined that in law. But if Ethiopia’s successes are to be sustained, the Ethiopian economy needs to continue to grow sufficiently to support development from its own resources. Trade could and should play an increasing role in that. Expansion of UK-Africa trade offers huge and mutually beneficial opportunities for African economies and British companies. With the right policies, we have a real opportunity to lead the world in a growing trading relationship with Africa.

The Government have rightly put much store by expanding trade with China and India, but we are well behind the pack there. In Africa, we still have the chance to lead. I hope that we will take it.