International Widows Day

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to participate in this debate on widows, intended to mark International Widows Day. The term “widow” has different meanings in different cultures. Broadly, there is a sharp divide between the modern world and the pre-modern world. In the modern world, a widow is simply a woman who has lost her husband—full stop. Nothing changes about her status. She can continue to do the things she used to be able to do. There are no restrictions on what she may or may not do.

In pre-modern society the situation is very different. A widow is not somebody who has merely lost her husband; she has also lost her social status. It is social death. She may not wear colourful clothes, visit a religious temple or eat certain kinds of food. She must be ghettoised and isolated from certain functions. In other words, being a widow in a pre-modern society is a social identity, scripted very heavily by society. The first thing that therefore must be done if we are to do anything about widows in pre-modern societies is to change this notion of widowhood as a status and turn it into a condition of life. It is not one that has to bear the burden of duties and obligations; it is simply a condition of life that one has lost one’s husband.

To deal with the problems of widows in developing countries, the first question is how we deal with the stigma—the violence and isolation the woman suffers. Here, one of the most important things one has to do is think in terms of women’s education so that they begin to think of their own dignity and pride, to demand certain kinds of rights and do not allow them to be taken away. It is also a function when you are fighting a cultural construct—a whole culture bears down on a woman. How do you fight a culture? You transform it. As my noble friend Lord Bragg will bear out, you do that by telling stories, not only about the widow’s suffering but about her talents and the kind of things she can do, so that one begins to see the widow not merely as an object of pity and suffering, but as somebody who has her own hopes and ambitions, and can do the sort of things other women can do.

This is the first thing any Government intending to improve the condition of widows should do. Another is tonsure that widows and women in general have equal rights, not only to property but to custody of their children. If they do not, widowhood becomes an occasion when somebody who has a claim on a family property is quietly removed and the property goes to others. The second thing is therefore to insist on equality of rights and of treatment in general.

Thirdly, one should not merely give handouts—that is not the way to do things. Give her employment, because employment is a capacity-building activity. It gives her pride and dignity. It enables her to build up a network of social contacts, and to go out and meet people and share her joys and sorrows. The most important thing, therefore, is to give her employment. This capacity-building activity is far more important than handing out so many pounds or rupees.

Fourthly, one has to help widows secure employment with a kind of preferential treatment in jobs and higher education. It happens in India and in other countries. I do not see why it cannot be generalised. A widow applying for a job ought to be able to get an extra point, just as the Americans do when an applicant is black. If widowhood is taken as a factor in deciding whether someone gets a job—likewise if a woman, after having become a widow, wants to go to university or college—she might be given preferential entry. That makes this task much easier.

Finally, in any society concerned to improve the condition of women, there has to be a state agency—a government agency that takes full responsibility for the condition of women and carries out a kind of “widow impact analysis” to see how government policies and actions impact on a widow. According to UN Women, there are 285 million widows in the world today. Half a million are to be found in Afghanistan. According to the latest report, which came out in India only two days ago, there are 56 million widows in India—7.4% of the population. Out of 285 million widows in the world, 150 million live in deep poverty, and 40% of the 187 countries surveyed do not grant women equal rights. We are talking not about isolated pockets of poverty, but about systemic groups of millions of human beings in acute poverty and suffering. That is the problem we ought to be tackling.

Victims of Domestic Violence and Abuse

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, for securing this debate and introducing it so well. Domestic violence and abuse is a serious problem. There were some 2 million incidents last year alone; 1.3 million against women and just under 700,000 against men. That does not give a full picture because I am told that 83% of partner abuse is not even reported to the police, so if that were to be taken into account then the figure would be much larger.

I suspect that the figure will be larger still over the years, partly as a result of Brexit. We know that when people feel frustrated and angry, they build up aggression. That aggression takes many forms, one of which is attacking the vulnerable. I suspect this will become an even more serious problem than it has been thus far. It requires a lot of attention.

I want to make four or five points rather quickly. Each one contains a question. My first point is about definition. When we talk about domestic violence, we seem to think largely of violence between partners. We tend to ignore—we certainly have so far—violence done to children under 16 and to people over 60. These two groups should not be ignored; they are important. In the case of children, there are all sorts of forms of abuse, such as denying them love and affection, or denying them any kind of support. In the case of elderly parents, there is a tendency to ignore or maltreat them, or not let them talk to neighbours in case the neighbours find out what is going on. We should think of domestic violence in not just the narrow context of relationships between partners but also in the context of children and elderly people.

Secondly, when we talk about domestic violence, we concentrate on the victim. Although that is important, I suggest that we ought to also concentrate on the perpetrators. After all, here is a man who must have loved his wife once, or fallen in love, or built up some affection. Why has he turned so violent? What has gone wrong? How have his circumstances changed? Is he unemployed, or experiencing difficult relationships with people at work? What has gone wrong? It is important to concentrate on the individual and help him regain his balance and sanity, so that the old relationship can be restored. It is also important that it is a question of not just understanding him but attaching some sanctions. It is quite serious that a perpetrator does not lose his house or job, but stays where he is, while it is the victim who we think of resettling somewhere else.

My third point relates to the role of doctors. Doctors are important, because many women, and some men, who are victims of abuse will tend to turn to their doctor as the first port of call, indicating what the problem is and asking for help. Doctors are not trained for this kind of thing; they are not social workers. So what will the doctor do? He might say, “Well, go and make your marriage work, forget all about it”, or simply, “Look, these things happen, don’t worry too much about it”. He might even offer to talk to the husband, in which case things become even worse. Therefore, there has to be some concentration on doctors as the first point of entry for those in this situation.

I am sorry for rushing through my points, but I would like the Minister to take account of them. My fourth point relates to providing a safe and guaranteed refuge. It is very disturbing that quite a lot of women who ran away from home in a state of emergency were turned away by the local council. It is very important that there should be a statutory obligation on local authorities to provide emergency refuge services. It is also crucial that these refuges have trained staff. When a woman runs away, the husband may know where she is or wants to find out, so he goes to the refuge and asks all kinds of questions. Unless staff are properly trained, they are either rude to the husband or they try to provide the kind of information which ought not to be provided. I say this from experience—not personal experience—as I have heard about people asking refuges where their wives are and then acting on that information.

Fifthly, as the 15th recommendation of the Home Affairs Select Committee report states, it is important that there should be,

“‘by and for’ BAME domestic abuse services”.

BAME victims of abuse have special requirements and circumstances. In a multicultural society, you cannot simply treat everyone using the same norms. People from BAME backgrounds have different problems, different cultural sensitivities and count different circumstances as duress. What constitutes violence? There is a general definition, but beyond a certain point, it varies from community to community. What constitutes harassment, or an apology? It is therefore quite important that we ought to provide services certainly “for” ethnic minorities. I would not go with the report and say “by” them, because there is no reason why they cannot be provided by British people, but the important thing is that there should be a special category of services for them.

The last point I want to make is that, in the data that has been circulated to us, we do not get detailed analysis of when domestic violence occurs, why, in what circumstances and by whom. Some research indicates that, for example, it tends to occur at weekends, during a woman’s pregnancy—not for obvious reasons—or among people between the ages of 26 and 30. If we can begin to build up a picture through statistical analysis such as this, we will be able to anticipate where the problem will occur and what can be done about it. I strongly suggest that we should have a full statistical analysis of whether the husband is in employment, and of what kind, whether he has been out of employment, whether he has been thrown out of it and what his circumstances are. Unless we can get a full account of all this, we will not be able to tackle domestic violence pre-emptively.

Immigration: Hostile Environment

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank and congratulate my noble friend Lord Bassam on securing this debate and introducing it so well. I will concentrate on a slightly different aspect of this whole thing, namely, the hostile environment: why did it get created and who created it? In so doing, I will look at the assumptions and attitudes we have brought to bear on this question of immigration.

The “Empire Windrush” story is not new. Some of the things that are now coming out had been known to us for quite a while. When I was deputy chair of the Commission for Racial Equality one heard these stories. We made some small inquiries. Nothing happened. Things moved on and went on. We hear stories of people who owed HMRC only £1 or £2 who have been deported or threatened with deportation.

Why is there this kind of attitude? Where does it spring from? From what soil does this kind of attitude to our fellow human beings, now labelled as illegal immigrants, spring? That is the question I want to address. In the course of doing so I will certainly talk about a few of the contemporary situations.

I think we will all agree that, unless there are reasons to the contrary, unlawful immigrants should not be here. They should go. The question is, how far are we prepared to go in making them go? Is there no point at which we will stop? In any liberal society there are certain human rights and basic values. Any attempt to get rid of an evil has to be balanced against those values and rights. Why, then, do we give so much importance to the evil we want to get rid of and ignore the values to which we are committed?

A very particular attitude springs up in Britain from time to time. I have been here for nearly 60 years and I have seen this happen. A kind of obsession grips the nation. Then a kind of psychosis comes and overtakes the country. That becomes such a dominant passion that everything that serves that cause is to be tolerated and encouraged. That is what we have allowed to happen in the case of unlawful immigration. We convince ourselves that these illegal immigrants are a national threat, a danger to the country, an enemy within—people coming from outside taking over our country. Unless we get rid of them we will not be able to maintain our identity. How do we get rid of them? It does not matter: all ways are fair.

This needs to be looked at very carefully. This attitude that all means are fair—that all the powers that the Government and the Home Office need to secure those results are acceptable—is all part of our history over the last 30 to 40 years. If one looks at, for example, the Immigration Acts of 2014 and 2016, they give draconian powers to the Home Office that in ordinary circumstances would be unthinkable. We cannot simply talk about the “Empire Windrush” unless we are also prepared to talk about those powers of the Government.

In the course of exercising those powers there have been high-profile enforcement campaigns. Remember those boards on the buses saying “Go home or face arrest”? In the course of exercising those powers we have used schools to provide the data. We have gone to workplaces to find out what happened. The benefit system has been capped to find out illegal immigrants. Access to services, hospital doctors—at any conceivable point where we can catch them we have been trying to do so. We have set targets, although those became the subject of some controversy, and put them ahead of people. We threaten people with deportation and detention. We look at their bank accounts to see whether any illegal transactions are taking place.

In the course of using those powers to try to achieve this kind of goal, inevitably mistakes are made—they are bound to be. The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration said that 10% of the cases have been wrongly identified. Not only that but small derelictions become very large—they get magnified in our views and become subjects for deportation. As I said earlier, one has read cases of people owing Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs £1 or £2. Small mistakes are made, different papers presented and someone is ready to be deported or detained. This is particularly evident in the case of the “Empire Windrush” and I want to look at what happened in that context. I do not want to sound too professorial here—although that is, or has been, my job—but it is very striking that the “Empire Windrush” was not the first ship bringing West Indians here, nor was it the largest. Why has it then become so iconic? That is a story I shall have to wait for another opportunity to tell.

Something else is striking. I welcome what my noble friend Lord Bassam said about the Labour Party’s attitude; and please forgive me if I do not entirely exonerate my own party for what it did in the case of the “Empire Windrush”. When the “Empire Windrush” was ready to leave Jamaica, sadly, the British Government of Prime Minister Attlee sent a message asking whether there was any way of preventing it sailing. A few days later a message was sent asking if it should be diverted to east Africa, which was part of our empire, where all those on the boat could be given jobs. After it landed, sadly, about 10 Labour MPs approached the Government saying “it was not a good thing for Britain to have too many blacks”, because it might damage race relations. Now, despite this dark chapter, throughout the last 40 or 50 years Labour has been very sensitive to any kind of racism, occasional mistakes apart. The Labour Party came around and followed a policy of controlling immigration and anti-racist legislation.

I should not go on too long. Let us agree that with regard to the “Empire Windrush” and other cases, we have resorted to a policy of catching illegal immigrants. The way in which we have done so has caught some illegal immigrants, but what have been the larger consequences? First, some legal immigrants have been identified and punished. Secondly, the country’s sensibility has become very coarse, such that if a man is branded as illegal, anything goes, anything can be done to him. Thirdly, because we talk about illegal immigrants, all immigrants get marked in this way and that accounts for the populist reaction that we have been witnessing, not only in Britain but everywhere else. Where people feel so possessive about the country, then the figure of the immigrant, not just the illegal immigrant, becomes a dangerous one, something to watch against. As soon as someone is identified as an immigrant, people will say, “Oh, my God, lock him up, send him away”. The psychology behind the politics has not developed in a vacuum. It has developed slowly, each step being sensible in its own right, but all collectively leading to disaster.

It is also the case that it has tarnished Britain’s reputation. Those of us who read newspapers in other countries feel deeply saddened that a country we love should be represented in this way as a country which is prepared to denigrate its own citizens, deport them and detain them. This is not the way a civilised country should behave.

What, then, should we be doing? I do not want to talk about compassion. I do not think the Conservative Party is particularly keen on compassion, so I will not say let us take a compassionate attitude to immigration; instead, let us take a realistic attitude to illegal immigration. What would a realistic attitude to illegal immigration be? First, let us recognise that it is bound to occur. Desperate people in desperate parts of the world are going to struggle to come to us. Secondly, they come here because we were there. How did we break open their societies? Did we behave? I can give accounts of what Lord Clive and others did in my own country. Did we behave more sensibly? Did we live up to the standard that we are now expecting them to conform to? Oh, come on!

The other important thing is that they come here because we have messed up their countries through our foreign policy and they are in a situation where their lives are unliveable. When I read horrible stories about Syria and Afghanistan and elsewhere, and people coming here, I ask myself why are they coming so late? I should have expected them to come before. They come illegally because they would like to come legally but we have closed the legal door. Illegal immigration takes place because legal immigration has been blocked. So I do not think we should simply blame the villain out there, in the form of an illegal immigrant; we should also look at ourselves and our policies with some degree of modesty and humility and ask ourselves whether we are responsible for what is going on. I do not think the Minister would want to say that we have no responsibility of any kind for the illegal immigration that is taking place.

I want to alert noble Lords to something. The “Empire Windrush” story is only one, and that has resulted in so many cases. A friend came to see me the other day and I am told there are similar stories waiting to break. This man told me his life story. He cannot bring the wife he married in the Dominican Republic here and cannot bring his daughter. His mother is dying and is desperately anxious to see them. Why is a long story, but the important thing is that there are cases waiting to break and I think it is about time that the Government became proactive and seized themselves of the situation.

Equality and Human Rights Commission: Disability Commissioner

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to participate in this debate, not only because it deals with an important question but because the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, was once upon a time a student of mine and this is the first time that I have had the opportunity to participate in a debate led by an ex-student.

I shall follow on from what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, was saying, but I want to talk about not the individuals involved but the principle at stake, which is whether the Equality and Human Rights Commission treats disability fairly and equitably. In this country, we started with dedicated commissions—the Commission for Racial Equality, of which I was privileged to be deputy chair, the Equal Opportunities Commission, and so on. Those dedicated commissions did a lot of valuable work, but as protected characteristics, as they are called, began to multiply—we now have nine—it was not possible to have separate commissions for each of them and we embarked on the path of a single Equality and Human Rights Commission. This raises an important question: is a single commission capable of doing the work of nine commissions? If so, is it able to do so with equal impartiality, justice and fairness? This is why what we are debating today is of great interest.

In the history of our country we have played with three different models for constituting a human rights commission. One would be to have each of the commissioners selected on merit—not for representing a particular disadvantaged group but simply because of their public eminence. Secondly, they might be nominated because of their capacity to represent particular groups, such as women, the disabled, or whatever. Thirdly, they might be appointed for general purposes and then be asked to concentrate on a particular area, such as women, the disabled or race.

In recent years, the Equality and Human Rights Commission seems to have opted for the first model, which seeks in the name of mainstreaming to abolish the commissioner in charge of the disabled. That is a mistaken approach because, as noble Baroness, Lady Deech, pointed out, the question is how do you mainstream something? Is the only way to mainstream through abolishing the commissioner in charge of a particular issue? Representatives of different groups ensure that their concerns and disadvantages are noticed and, therefore, recognising differences is not a way of avoiding mainstreaming. Expecting every commissioner to be concerned with all groups equally is inherently implausible and impracticable. The commission needs representatives of the diverse groups in our society for a variety of reasons.

Such a commission reflects society at large and has a great symbolic value. It also ensures that relevant groups have their own spokesmen and they feel reassured. It ensures necessary sensitivity and expertise and gives the concerns of particular groups a clear focus. This is why the absence of women or ethnic minorities, for example, on the Equality and Human Rights Commission seems extremely odd. The same applies to the disabled, whose presence on the commission is as vital as the presence of women or anyone else. Others can certainly speak for them—as, obviously, anyone could speak about race—but can they speak with the same authority, authenticity and intuitive grasp of the issues involved? They cannot. A commission in charge of human rights ought to include a diversity of groups and, therefore, a diversity of commissioners.

BBC World Service and British Council

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on securing this debate. I shall introduce three reservations about the discussion that we have had. First, I do not think that it is a good idea to couple the BBC with the British Council. We should not lump them together because they play different roles in our policies. The British Council is expected to promote Britain abroad in a way that the BBC is not; the latter is an independent organisation and expected to be a voice of impartiality and objectivity.

Secondly, although both are asked to promote British values and interests, we are not entirely sure what British values are specifically in mind, especially in relation to other countries that share almost all our values. When we talk about British interests, we also need to bear in mind that there can be genuine disagreement between two political parties, or between the British Council and the BBC itself, about what British interests are. We should therefore allow for a divergence of views.

The third thing that slightly worries me is the notion of soft power. I have always felt uneasy about it because it seems to be an oxymoron; if it is too soft then it cannot be power, and if it is power then it cannot be too soft. I generally find that if everything is geared to the mobilisation of power, we are in danger of corrupting almost everything that we value because it then becomes an instrument of mobilising power. I want to stay away from the language of “hard power” or “soft power”, whatever “soft power” may mean, and talk instead in terms of moral authority. We as a country want to be trusted and respected; our intentions should be recognised as honourable and other people should want to listen to us. When we express an opinion, people should say, “That’s a mature society reflecting a view. We’d better hear it”. This is not the same as soft power because it is simply us being ourselves, living up to our own ideals and, in the process, exerting a silent influence on others, not deliberately but through people recognising that we have something to say and respecting our moral stature.

Having got rid of these three general points, in the minute that I have left I want to turn to three questions that I have for the Minister.

First, so far as the BBC is concerned, people are simply amazed that we in this country should have an organisation which we fund and over which we can exercise control and yet we restrain ourselves and allow it to speak freely, including criticising the country. The BBC already exemplifies an extremely important value. That means that we should keep a distance between the BBC and the FCO.

Secondly, we are not entirely clear about the role that ethnic minorities can play in projecting Britain abroad. They are our ambassadors and they should be invited to play an important role in the thinking of the BBC and the British Council. I am thinking, for example, of the fact that the Foreign Secretary has announced that we will be having a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square. That is one thing in which the Indian community here could be more effectively involved—certainly, the Gandhi Foundation, of which I happen to be the president. The Gandhi Foundation and other bodies have views on what kind of statue to have and how it should be organised and so on, and I recommend that they should be involved.

Lastly, while the British Council has an important role to play in projecting Britain abroad, I am not entirely sure that it has always been as imaginative and inventive as it could be. Great changes are taking place in the world at large—in India, for example. The British Council could play a major role in bringing the debates that are taking place in India to Britain. Likewise great change is taking place in Britain and those debates could be projected to India so that people can become familiar with how profoundly Britain is changing. I hope I have made some of the points I wanted to make and I would welcome a response from the Minister.

Development: Post-2015 Agenda

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Flather. I cannot promise to measure up to her formidable indictment of the male half of the human species and her fervent call to women to unite using almost Marxian language: “Women of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains”.

I want to begin by thanking my noble friend Lady Kinnock of Holyhead for introducing this debate with such passion and eloquence. We know of her record in this area. She has done wonderful work over the years promoting the causes not only of the poor in our own society but also in developing countries in general. I would like to use this occasion to celebrate her work.

I welcome the United Nations System Task Team report to the Secretary-General of June 2012, and the Secretary-General’s own report entitled, A Life of Dignity for All. However, both of the reports have one big lacuna: they talk about sustainable development, which they define in terms of economic development, social inclusion and environmental sustainability, but there is no provision for equality or for the reduction of inequality.

I do not want to take up the time of noble Lords trying to rehearse all the facts of inequality that we know about; rather, I want to ask two questions which have not been discussed so far. First, why is inequality a bad thing? Only a few years ago a senior member of Tony Blair’s Cabinet told us that he was completely complacent and undisturbed about people becoming filthy rich. There are many who ask why equality is of any value at all, and if not equality per se, the value in the reduction of inequality. Why is it important? Is it just that some people are better off while others are poor? What is wrong with that? It is part of human nature, part of human history, and part of our circumstances. So I want to take some time as an academic answering the first question. Secondly, if I can persuade noble Lords to my view that inequality is a bad thing, what is it that we should be doing in developing countries? Let me take the two questions in order.

Inequality is a bad thing for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is unacceptable because it is unjust. If some are poor while others are rich, it is not because some people work less and others work more. It is due entirely to circumstances beyond their control. Certain handicaps acquired in one generation are accumulated over several, so that the poor man of yesterday is in that particular predicament because of circumstances that he could do nothing to overcome. The first reason why inequality is a bad thing is because it is unjust, and justice requires that inequality should be reduced, and ideally eliminated.

The second reason why inequality is a bad thing is that it divides human societies into two different species, the privileged and the underprivileged, and there is no common life between the two. In the absence of a common life you cannot have any kind of community. The rich, if they have no sympathy for or do not share any kind of common life with the poor, are not going to pay higher taxes. This is what people have found in lots of developing countries but not just there—even in our own society the rich will not part with money, simply because they do not have the same degree of sympathy for the poor or share a common life with them.

The third reason why we can press the case against inequality is the amount of wastage of human resources. An enormous amount of talent goes to waste, which leads to distress. It is crushed. The noble Baroness, Lady Flather, talked about one half of the human species, women. I would say: what about 99% of the poor and underprivileged, and many others, who would be able to contribute so much and yet cannot because they have no opportunity to do so? This is one of the greatest indictments of inequality—it violates human dignity and human essence and creates a situation of enormous frustration and distress.

Another reason why inequality is unacceptable is that it leads almost inevitably to public disorder and conflict, because the poor do not simply accept their predicament as God given. They are bound to protest, in small and large ways. If you cannot openly undertake a revolution, you can subvert the system in small ways here or there, and as a result social order is vitally disturbed. I could go on answering this particular question because I think it is very important. Lots of people I have spoken to, in government and elsewhere, simply do not understand why inequality is a bad thing—they say either it is natural or it is a result of contingency and factors we cannot control—so I have spent about four minutes trying to explain why it is a bad thing.

If we are right that it is a bad thing, what should we be doing? I want to put half a dozen important ideas on the agenda and I hope that the Minister will have the time to address at least one or two of them. The first thing is the abolition of tax havens, which destroy not only developed societies but the large developing societies, because the rich find it very easy, quietly and conveniently, to stack away huge amounts of money. India, for example, must have lost billions of dollars through people passing money into offshore accounts. The first thing we need to do is tackle tax havens.

The second thing we need to think about is stronger regulation of global finance. The international financial institutions privilege the rich and the developed countries and make it very difficult to create conditions in which the developing countries can flourish. That is also closely tied up with the idea of a regulatory regime for corporations, because many of these corporations, as we know in the case of raw materials in Africa and Latin America, plunder the developing countries and simply do not allow them to function, because they do not have any resources left.

We should also take a close look at intellectual property laws, which make it very difficult to ensure that developing countries have access to essential medicines, which, thanks to intellectual property laws, are frightfully expensive. Lots of diseases in developing countries that could otherwise be tackled are simply not tackled.

Finally, we also ought to be thinking in terms of improving access to western markets for developing countries. Here, I think we have gone fundamentally wrong by developing a growth strategy which is basically skewed. When we talk about economic growth or economic development, we are simply thinking in terms of total GDP or per capita income. We should be encouraging the view that economic growth should be people based, it should be job friendly and it should value equality or at least a reduction in inequality.

In India, for example, after liberalisation a small number of people have become enormously rich and lead a kind of life that westerners would find deeply distasteful, and a large number of people—at a rough calculation, between 30% and 65% of the population—are poorer than they were. That is because the growth strategy, largely based on global demand for IT, produces a lot of wealth for a small number of people but there is no manufacturing where jobs can be given to people. Developed countries have an obligation to encourage the correct kind of growth model, especially one in which people are able to make their own input.

Female Genital Mutilation

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow my noble friend Lord Patel. I begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, on securing this debate. In the three minutes that I have at my disposal, I want to make five very quick points. First, I think that prosecution has to be far more vigorous than it has been. In order that that can happen, we need to do two things: medical professionals and care workers ought to be more forthcoming in providing evidence; and the Crown Prosecution Service should restructure its criteria of proof and responsibility.

Secondly, since we have only limited resources and energy, we should concentrate on those groups where this is far more prevalent, rather than talk about all ethnic minorities or all Muslims or whatever. For example, in Somalia, it is 98% prevalent; among the Egyptians, it is about 91%; it is 74% among Ethiopians; but when you come to Ghana or Uganda, it is barely 1%. It is important to select groups and concentrate on them.

Thirdly, we should be increasing awareness of the consequences of female genital mutilation, not that women do not know. After all, many of those who perpetrate this have already suffered: they know the consequences. I have in mind the young girls within the family—trying to educate them on what this involves, and getting them to put pressure on their own parents and peers and others within their own communities. In dealing with many ugly practices, getting young people to organise and mobilise in this way is generally very effective.

Fourthly, we must find some way of de-legitimising this practice in the eyes of those who engage in it. They engage in it not because they want to harm their children; they know it is bad. They do it not just under social pressure—they do it because they think they are doing what is right. They think it is right because they think that it disciplines their sexuality and so on. We need to involve religious leaders and cultural leaders, and get them to convince the people involved that this is not the way that the practice can ever be justified. Here it is important to talk in idioms that people can understand, rather than talk about human rights and why women are being deprived of sexual pleasure. That is not the language in which you can communicate with people who do not place much value either on human rights or on sexual pleasure. One has to talk in terms of idioms and arguments which make sense to these people.

Finally, it is quite important to bear in mind that we are not objecting to female genital mutilation per se. Whenever I have talked to these women, they have said that they know that some nuns undergo the practice voluntarily. They know that some adult African women have undergone the practice voluntarily after the birth of their first child in order to convince themselves that they are mothers and not just wives. They also know that, for all kinds of reasons, every year 200 to 300 adult women undergo it in our own society for all kinds of reasons. It is therefore important to bear in mind that we are objecting to this practice because it involves small children, and we ought not to lose sight of that particular focus.

Human Rights

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on securing this debate and thank him for introducing it with such passion and wisdom. We are right to concentrate on the promotion of human rights rather than on the promotion of democracy, which has been in the air for quite some time. The rights are easy to identify and monitor, and there is greater international agreement on what rights are worth preserving and what rights are human rights. There is also greater international pressure for implementing those rights as opposed to the promotion of democracy, because democracy can mean many different things in many different contexts. Therefore, I particularly welcome our discussion of violation of human rights rather than violation of democratic norms.

It is also right to point out that we cannot deal with violations of human rights in the whole world; we have to be selective. In that context, it is important for us to concentrate on those countries with which we have close ties, and where we can make an impact. In that context I particularly thank the Prime Minister for the stand he took at CHOGM in Sri Lanka. He was right to go. I think that the Prime Minister of India was not right not to go. Our Prime Minister was right to visit Jaffna, commiserate with the Tamils, condemn the army operations which killed thousands of Tamils, demand an investigation into what actually happened during the war and afterwards, and meet the representatives of the Tamil group.

An equally sensible attitude is increasingly being taken with reference to Gujarat, the Indian state from which I come, where genocide took place in February 2002, when a large number of Muslims were killed with the complicity of the state. The American Government denied a visa to the Chief Minister but the British Government took a very sensible view and said nothing. Increasingly, the British Government began to recognise that we had no conclusive evidence that the Chief Minister had been directly and actively involved in what had gone on; after all, he had been in power for only four months. Nor did we ignore the fact that this sort of thing had happened in other parts of India, and therefore we could not single out one state alone. About 18 months ago, or perhaps a little less, the British Government asked the British high commissioner to India, Sir James Bevan, to visit Mr Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat. More recently, the Foreign Office Minister, Mr Hugo Swire, visited the place. In Kolkata recently, the Prime Minister said that he would be more than happy to meet any elected leader. This is not to exonerate the leader of his responsibility but simply to indicate that not talking to people is not the answer.

I wish to make three general points. First, as we cannot promote all kinds of human rights we obviously have to prioritise. Of the six priorities listed by the Government there is not much reference to the rights of trade unions, which in my view have played, and continue to play, an extremely important role. Business rights are fine but they are not supposed to include trade union rights. During the Arab spring, trade unions were the vehicle through which important radical change was achieved. Minority rights are also important. Generally, the standard definition of human rights concentrates on individual rights and tends to ignore minority rights.

Secondly, while we are right to condemn violations of human rights, we sometimes tend to ignore our own complicity in these violations. Large corporations based in our country sometimes engage in practices abroad that violate human rights or lead indirectly to violations of human rights. We ought to tighten up the monitoring of our corporations. Many violations take place during civil wars. We are sometimes complicit in instigating or tolerating civil wars in other countries, which can result in gross violations of human rights.

Thirdly, we tend to be selective about where we condemn violations of human rights and where we do not. Violations of human rights in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia are by and large ignored, whereas we tend to concentrate on them in countries such as China. This sometimes gives the impression that we are unprincipled and that we are using human rights discourse or issues to promote a particular political agenda. We need to ensure that we are principled when we condemn violations of human rights.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, I gently remind noble Lords that this is a time-limited debate. When the Clock hits five, speakers have had their five minutes. We want to ensure that we have enough time for our maiden speeches, the Minister’s winding-up speech and for the noble Lord, Lord Alton, to respond at the end.

Women: Developing Countries

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, on securing this debate. It is important to bear in mind, when we talk about developing societies and developed societies, that the picture is quite complex. It is never the case that developed societies have been able to achieve equality for women or that the women’s status in all areas is necessarily better. After all, it is striking that, for example, the first woman Prime Minister was in a developing country and not in ours; and that at one time India had far more women ambassadors than we had.

It is also very striking that, if you look at religion, in many developing societies the tribal religions based on fertility cults tend to be far more sympathetic to women than many of the organised religions in developed countries. It is also very striking that when Christianity and other great religions travelled to developing countries, they were suitably interpreted so as to support the position of women. I say this simply to make it clear that not all developing societies are necessarily places where women are always in an inferior position; nor are developed countries necessarily free from the problems that women face.

Having said that just as a point of clarification and qualification, I move on to developing countries, because they are the main subject of our debate. The question is: what are the major challenges that women face in those countries? I want to highlight five. The first challenge is the question of personal insecurity. In developing countries, women generally tend not to enjoy the same degree of physical security, at home or outside, as do men. Rape and sexual harassment are fairly common, and this tends to be particularly acute during situations of civil war. For example, in the Bosnian war, between 20,000 and 50,000 women were raped, and some 400,000 women were raped during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. It is not just a question of rape and the brutality; violence and humiliation also go with it. Rape also becomes a political weapon, forcing women indoors, making sure that they do not come out into the street or the public square and making them suffer from acute isolation and depression.

The second challenge has to do with education. In many developing societies, the literacy rate among women is rather poor. Among men, it generally tends to be around 60%; for women it tends to be between 30% and 45%. Although it is widely realised that better education for women generally means faster economic development, less sexual violence, later marriages, fewer children and better health, education for women is by and large neglected in many developing countries. In order to deal with this situation, sometimes female education is made compulsory—and rightly so—and this is imposed by law. However, some countries have tried an experiment that has been extremely successful and is worth thinking about: cash transfer, conditional on school attendance. This has been tried very successfully in Mexico, Turkey and Pakistan, and has delivered very good results.

The third challenge facing women in developing societies has to do with the economy. A large number of them are not allowed to go out to work or, when they do, they are subject to discrimination, and promotion prospects for many of them are inevitably limited. Very few of them engage in independent business. It is striking, for example, that, in developing countries as a whole, only between 2% and 4% of the women are in independent business and function as employers. Furthermore, they have no control over household resources, although it is generally known that, when women do have control over household resources, they tend to spend the money much more sensibly than men, especially on the health and education of their children.

The fourth challenge has to do with their lack of power, not just in politics, with the qualification that I mentioned earlier. Women are not very widely represented in Parliament or in positions of power. It is also very striking that in many of the senior positions in civil society and elsewhere female representation tends to be rather poor. One way to deal with that has been to guarantee not so much a quota system but some kind of positive action, to ensure that a certain percentage of positions are filled by women. It is such positive action that partly explains why Rwanda, for example, a country where one would not have expected an excellent record, has more female MPs than we have. Sweden also has a better record in women’s representation than some other countries because it has followed a policy of positive action.

The fifth challenge goes much deeper. It is not institutional, and it has to do with the prevalence and domination of patriarchal culture. Women are treated as inferior. They are sexualised and largely treated as objects of sexual gratification, and are sometimes expected to meet impossible standards of beauty and therefore suffer from all kinds of physical ill health. They lack autonomy and control over their lives, which very often results in forced marriages. Female foeticide tends to be quite common, which partly creates a certain amount of stigma associated with the female gender. All this results in poor ambition in women, living not their lives but somebody else’s and modelling themselves, not according to their norms but on somebody else’s. It is important to bear in mind that in all developing societies there is an important sociological tension, which aggravates the situation in the short term, although it improves it in the long run. The tension is that there is a still residual patriarchal culture—even more than residual—but at the same time there is a greater awareness of rights for women and a greater assertion of equality. What you therefore have is a legacy of patriarchal culture, confronted by women asserting their equality, which men are not ready to accept, with the result that men strike out in whatever ways they can. Therefore, in the transitional period, you see more domestic violence than you did before. You also see more cases of rape, as a kind of punishment for women’s insubordination or getting too big for their boots.

It is not just in developing countries that this happens. Many sociologists have pointed out that this also tends to happen in developed countries, where there is still a patriarchal culture, although much attenuated, and on the other hand there are men who are used to thinking of themselves and of women in a certain way being confronted by women who have a great sense of their own dignity and equality. That confrontation results in men not wanting to give up their power, and therefore results in acts of rape, domestic violence and other situations.

These are some of the challenges that women face in developing countries. If we are content not just to debate but to do something about it, we will have to think not merely in terms of new ideas and policies, but also about perhaps being more generous with the aid that we give to those countries for specific women and children-related projects.

Foreign Affairs: Global Role, Emerging Powers and New Markets

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, for securing this debate. It was really nice to see him shed the constraints of office and reflect creatively and independently on some of the larger issues of the world today. As he rightly pointed out, the international landscape is undergoing profound changes. It is undergoing profound changes at a superficial level in the sense that there are more economic, political and military players than there used to be—China, India, Brazil, possibly Indonesia and Turkey, and a few others. I would suggest that, although this is an important change, it is not a decisive one. A really decisive change is taking place at a different level; not just increasing the number of players in the game of international politics, but the way in which the game is going to be played. In other words, the real change is taking place not simply in terms of how many players there are, but how power is acquired and maintained and what is the nature of that power. I want to say something about it because the subject has been largely neglected.

All over the world there is a very profound change taking place in the sense that people are extremely suspicious of the political class and the way it has dominated and tried to monopolise political life. People want to make their own decisions and to assert themselves. The Arab spring is only a tiny footnote to history; there are lots of things like this, even in China. Through the Communist Party and through independent sources, hundreds of protests are taking place every week in China, with people wanting to assert themselves and questioning the official line on a number of issues. All this seems to indicate a groundswell of enormous, popular, raw political energy, wanting to take control of the world. They do not trust the political class, they are tired of the way in which the political class has made a complete mess of the world around them, they want to form their own opinions and, having formed their opinions, they want to make their impact felt. They have formed these opinions on the basis of a variety of sources, thanks to the internet, thanks to global connectedness, thanks to the fact that they are able to link up with powerful forces all over the world and form a global opinion within a local context. That is a profound change.

This means that if we really want to acquire power, we will have to influence how people think and how their opinions are formed. In other words, political power today does not lie in military weaponry, although that is important in times of crisis. If it were that important, Syria would not have got out of control and Iraq would have been brought under control a long time ago. Economic strength by itself does not take us very far either. I suggest that power is changing in a profound way because, once people begin to want to take control of themselves, power really consists in our ability to shape their thinking.

This is sometimes called soft power. The inventor of soft power, Joseph Nye, is a friend and I have debated this concept with him. I told him that I think it is a hazy concept. Soft power is simply a softer version of hard power and that is how it has sometimes been understood, the assumption being that what military weaponry has obtained, we will now obtain by softer means. Soft power is no longer soft, because once you are able to grip people’s imagination and shape their thinking, your hold is far firmer than military weaponry would give you. I would rather talk in the language of moral authority.

A country is able to shape other people’s thinking if it carries a measure of moral authority in the eyes of the world. Moral authority comes from two sources: the belief on the part of others that this country is forming its views independently; and that it is a country which is worth emulating and admiring. In other words, moral authority comes from intellectual and moral sources and that is what our foreign policy should be aiming at. Unfortunately, if we look at all the documents from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the emphasis is almost entirely on commerce and trade. Important as these are, I do not think that the Foreign Secretary was right to say that he should turn the FCO into “a commercially focused” organisation. I think the Economist rightly called it a form of zealous mercantilism. We should rather be thinking in terms of acquiring the kind of moral authority that I am talking about. We once had it, but we lost it—or at least weakened it—partly because of the second war on Iraq, partly because of the way we behaved in Libya, saying one thing and misrepresenting what the UN resolution was about, and partly because of actions such as abstention in the recent United Nations vote on the Palestinian demand for observer status.

If we really want to acquire moral authority and influence the way the world thinks about us we will need to do a number of things. I want to mention, in the minute I have left, four important points. First, our foreign policy will have to be principled and value driven. I am not talking about an “ethical foreign policy”—we know how we got into trouble—I am talking about a foreign policy which is seen by the world as giving voice to sanity and justice and representing independence and impartiality. Secondly, we need to be more hospitable to students coming from the rest of the world. These are the people who will go back to their country and shape their part of the world. Remember, this is how the United States acquires its power. It is very striking that 73 current and former prime ministers and presidents in the rest of the world were educated in American universities.

Thirdly, we will have to think of the BBC as a central vehicle through which our views are circulated. Although cuts might have been necessary, we need to be careful that it is not required to cut down its audience or its programmes. Finally, we need to play to our strength. We have succeeded in this country in building a fairly cohesive multicultural society. The rest of the world is moving in that direction and we have something to tell it. We appear to be very resentful about our multicultural society. We appear to be carping in our criticism. It is very important that we present a profile to the world such that we are seen as a society at ease with itself. This will mean more senior diplomatic staff drawn from ethnic minorities. As of now, I do not think that this numbers more than 1.5% to 2%. It also means that we should be saying more about how different religious and cultural groups can live together and what lessons can be drawn from our experience.