Global Fund: AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, for securing this debate and for introducing it so well. Since he has provided a large number of relevant statistics, I am spared the trouble of having to rehearse them.

I think that the Global Fund has been doing excellent work, largely because of its overall strategy. It is innovative and engages in demand-driven financing. Its funding is based on performance, it engages local communities, and it receives contributions from the private sector as well as voluntary organisations and the Government. All that gives it a certain strength. As it is in the process of revising its strategy for the next few years, I want to propose three or four important ideas that it might like to consider.

First, the fund used to do a little more than it has done so far to negotiate with manufacturers to reduce drug prices, which eat into its funding and limit its capacity to help the 150-odd countries that are its members. Secondly, it needs to concentrate a little more than it has done on strengthening health systems. Currently it allocates about 36% of its investment to that. I feel that it needs to do a little more in this area and to reconsider its priorities. In terms of strengthening health systems it needs to pay more attention to raising public awareness of the three major pandemics with which it is concerned, concentrating as much on prevention as on cure, making sure that the nursing staff and others are well trained and that there is an international exchange of experts from developed countries to the poorer countries. It has almost completely ignored that area and my experience is that there are a lot of people who could be persuaded to go to developing countries and help to train staff.

Thirdly, regional results are uneven. Grants for TB were achieving between 82% and 100% of their targets, but for malaria the figure fell to between 59% and 82%. Why are the malaria-related grants performing less well than those for TB? One could say that in some parts of the world there has been a growth of parasites that are resistant to artemisinin—for example, in south-west Asia. That by itself would not explain it and one would like to see some monitoring of those uneven results. Finally, although the Global Fund has been involving civil society organisations, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, pointed out, perhaps there is scope for greater civil society intervention in terms of planning strategy, putting pressure on Governments and monitoring the harmful industrial activities that resulted in these three pandemics in the first instance. That kind of work can be done only by civil society organisations, because the Global Fund by itself is seen as an external body and cannot be seen to be interfering in the internal politics and activities of the receiving countries.

Universities: Impact of Government Policy

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, for securing this debate and introducing it with the insight and wisdom that we have come to expect of him. When we discuss education policy, we need to ask ourselves by what criteria are we judging it. In the context of this country, two criteria are absolutely relevant. First, is the government policy likely to safeguard the high quality of our university education and research? As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has already reminded us, we are not just second in the international league, but, allowing for the all the variables, we might come top.

The second criterion that we need to take into account is whether the policy makes this high quality of education and research available to whoever is capable of benefiting from it and maximises the use of talent available in the country? These are the two criteria: does the policy maintain and safeguard the high quality of our education and research and does it make it available to all?

Noble Lords have so far concentrated by and large on the first. I want to concentrate on the second because it is in danger of getting neglected. Fifty per cent of the British population belong to a lower socio-economic background. However, they represent just 26 per cent of university students. Obviously, much work needs to be done at the school level. However, financial considerations also play an important part. If fees are to be paid—and fees are fairly high—they act as a deterrent. As well as introducing high fees, the Government are trying to support people from lower socio-economic backgrounds through the scheme of bursaries. A bursary in a Russell group university comes to something like £1,764. In a million+ universities, it comes to be about £714. These amounts are hardly enough to encourage people from lower socio-economic backgrounds to enter university. Either, therefore, they will not enter the university or they will have to do part-time work in order to maintain themselves, which would badly affect their academic achievement.

I am particularly worried about the national scholarship scheme. The Government have set aside £155 million for helping people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. The amount is too small. If the fees are £9,000 a year, the amount will only be able to maintain about 5,500 students. If the fees average at about £7,200, the £155 million would only take care of just under 7,000 students. Contrast this with the fact that last year alone 10,670 students were in receipt of free school meals. The amount of £155 million therefore is not good enough and at best can only guarantee a free first year. I am particularly worried about the impact of this on ethnic minorities, especially Afro-Caribbeans and Pakistanis, because by and large Indians are in a position to take care of themselves.

Huge sums of money have to be repaid as the fees range between £7,000 and £8,000 a year, which comes to around £25,000 for a three-year course. The hope of getting a job and earning around £25,000 a year in order to start repaying the loan is slim in a situation like ours. There is also a great danger that students from the Afro-Caribbean and Pakistani communities might stay away from courses of a longer duration, such as medicine and management. Unwittingly, we may create a situation of occupational apartheid, in that on certain courses you will not see a black face, a face from Pakistan or a Muslim face; that would be extremely dangerous. If we are really concerned to make education available to all and to create a genuine sense of community in our country, those from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds should not have to pay fees at all. If they do have to pay fees, the value of bursaries should be increased, on a rough calculation, to something like £475 million from the proposed £155 million.

As other noble Lords have pointed out, we must recognise that education is a public good. It benefits not only the individual, but also the community at large by raising the quality of life and its consequences in almost all spheres, including which newspapers you read and the television programmes you watch. It is also a prized good in the sense that those who are deprived of it build up resentment and anger, as we have seen from time to time in the kinds of turmoil that have taken place. If it is regarded as a public good and not just as an individual good, and if we see people not just as consumers but as citizens, the public contribution has to be much higher than is currently the case. In the mid-1990s the public contribution to higher education was in the vicinity of 40 per cent to 42 per cent. It began to go down and stands today at somewhere around 32 per cent. If the Government’s policy is carried out, we are told that by 2014-15, the teaching grant to universities will decrease by 60 per cent. That simply cannot be right. If we really value education as we should, the Government contribution must be better than it is.

Female Genital Mutilation

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell of Babergh, for introducing this debate and for pursuing this issue for as long as I can remember—for as long as I have been in your Lordships’ House.

We all know that female genital mutilation is a horrendous practice. In this country I am told that at the moment there are 74,000 first-generation immigrant African women who have undergone it. A research paper published a few years ago tells us that in any given year between 3,000 and 4,000 girls are subjected to FGM. Obviously, it is a cultural practice and, like all cultural practices, it is sustained by a personal belief that it is right and by social pressure. How do you tackle a practice based on deeply held personal belief and constantly reinforced by the pressures of others? I want to emphasise this point because, although the law is important, we should bear in mind how deeply seated in the consciousness of this community this practice is.

Some years ago when I was writing about this, I spoke on the subject at a conference. A fairly distinguished academic from Nigeria came up to me and said, “Don’t sound off. I have undergone this practice recently, after the birth of my last child”. I asked why, at the age of 35, she had done it. She said, “To remind myself that from now onwards I am a mother and not a woman”. When I asked whether this was common, she said it was fairly common in certain circles. In certain parts of Africa it is not uncommon for widows to go through this voluntarily and it happens in many groups of immigrants in Europe and the United States as well.

It horrifies us to think that adult, highly intelligent, university professors and doctors want to go through this, but they do. I want us to recognise that ordinary men and women from these communities have got into the habit of pursuing this practice on their children. The question is how we put an end to it. I want to suggest some things based on my own research and experience in dealing with practices of this kind—although not exactly this—in India and other parts of the world.

Law is important because it sets the tone of society, but there have to be strong and rigorously pursued prosecutions. I am really disappointed that there have been no prosecutions of the same kind that we had in relation to honour killings or forced marriages. We need to take communities into confidence. There are many men and women in those communities who are appalled by this and they ought to be involved in suggesting ways for it to be tackled. It is also important that social pressure is exerted because everyone thinks other people are doing it. Communities should be collectively persuaded to pass resolutions and to say openly why they would not do this and why they would not allow this.

It is also important to bear in mind that we should not be concentrating only on women. This practice takes place because it is part of the patriarchal system and, more importantly, men want it. I do not have the time to go through all this but if you were to ask in whose interest this is being done—women obviously do not enjoy it—I am told that men enjoy it and it is their way of regulating women’s sexuality and behaviour. Therefore, unless we persuade men and boys to recognise that this does not deliver what they think it does, we will not be able to get very far.

It is also important to be able to identify girls at risk fairly well in advance. We know generally that nearly 70 per cent of the girls are between the ages of five and eight and we ought to be able to indentify them and make sure that they are well protected.

Women in Society

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Giddens, who has brought an unusual perspective to our debate today and showed the subtle and elusive forms that patriarchy takes in our society and how it perpetuates itself. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, on her wonderful maiden speech and the very considerable insights and passions that she has brought to the subject. We look forward to her contribution in years to come.

If one looks at the question of women’s development and representation in Britain, one is struck by the fact that very considerable progress has been made in most areas and some progress in other areas. The number of women MPs, for example, has doubled between 1992 and 2009. The same thing has happened in your Lordships’ House. The number of women Ministers has risen from 18 per cent in 1992 to 30 per cent in 2005. The percentage of women in senior grades in the Civil Service has gone up from 8 per cent in 1990 to 25 per cent in 2010. In 1999, there were no women to be seen in the Lords of Appeal; today they constitute 8.3 per cent of the Lords of Appeal. In the National Health Service, the percentage of women GPs was 29 per cent in 1995 and it has gone up to 42 per cent. As for consultants, the percentage was 18 per cent in 1995 and has gone up to 27 per cent in 2009. In my own profession, in academia, the percentage of female professors has gone up from 7 per cent in 1995 to 14 per cent in 2009. The percentage of female senior lecturers and researchers has gone up from 18 per cent in 1995 to 35 per cent in 2006.

I give these figures to indicate that considerable progress has been made in some areas, but not enough in many others. I want to ask a simple question. How has this progress been possible? What factors have played an important part? I ask this so that we can concentrate on those factors, consolidate them and make sure that this trend continues.

Another point worth bearing in mind is that, in the area of gender equality as in other areas, the progress is never unilineal; it is never inexorable. It goes up to a point and then stabilises itself. That point of stability is quite important. It may not go much further but it also does not tend to go much below, either. Therefore there is a tendency for it to swing around a certain percentage.

In looking at what factors have played a part in achieving this kind of progress during the past 15 or 20 years, I have identified seven, and I want to say something briefly about each of them. The first factor is raising the level of public awareness. All these achievements have been made possible because people have been made to realise that gender inequality is wrong, that it is not natural but manmade in both senses of the term, and that it can be changed by getting people to appreciate the contingency of the inequality that exists in our society.

The second factor that has played an important part has to do with political pressure exerted constantly and relentlessly by women’s groups and others at the local level, at the level of firms, local authorities, universities and others, at the national level and at the international level in terms of all kinds of treaties and covenants. That pressure becomes quite important at another level. Very often, when women get promoted, they tend not to think very much about the constituents they have left behind. It is therefore very important that pressure continues to be exerted on those who have been able to break through the glass ceiling.

The third factor that has played an important part is leadership at the top. In each of the major organisations, it is the leadership that is the driving force. It demands results and wants to know why those results are not achieved.

The fourth factor has to do with the internal audit of the organisation and finding out what the bottlenecks are. Why in some organisations is the proportion of women not as high as it should be? It could be direct discrimination, in which case that should be eliminated. It could be indirect discrimination, in which case one needs to find out how that discrimination articulates itself. It may also have something to do with the culture of the organisation. It may be that women are simply not attracted to that particular organisation or profession or, if attracted, do not stay long. Sometimes the organisational culture is not deliberately intended to keep women out; it simply creeps up within an organisation, almost unwittingly or unthinkingly, so that it has a built-in masculine bias without wanting to exclude women. This is the point that many women MPs have made about the House of Commons: it has a certain macho culture, not because people want to keep women out but because, having been dominated by men for all those centuries, it has acquired a certain ethos or ambiance that alienates and puts off women.

The fifth factor that has played an important part in the progress is education. In the field of primary and secondary education, we have made considerable progress and women achieve more or less the same level as men. However, when it comes to higher education and professional and technological faculties, there is still a long way to go.

The sixth factor that has played an important part is conditions of work. Women often have to maintain a balance between work and family. That requires that they should have flexible hours of work and arrangements at work where children can be looked after, or state-supported nurseries. Unless those conditions of work are congenial, women will not be able to take advantage of whatever qualifications they might have.

The seventh factor that has played a part—not always in all areas, but in some—is the state-induced or state-imposed quota. That has happened in India, where a Women’s Reservation Bill is going through Parliament so that a third of the positions in it will be reserved for women. This has also happened in Norway, an example that has been cited, where 40 per cent of seats in parliament are reserved for women. I gather that in our own country, whenever John Major received a list of nominees for public bodies, he would send it back if half the people on the list were not women. That is not a state-imposed quota, but it was a government-encouraged or government-induced quota.

One needs to be very careful in going down that route. In exceptional circumstances, when no progress of any kind is made, it may become necessary to have a quota of one kind or another but, by and large, it can be counterproductive, because if one group can ask for it so can others. If one were to say that women should be entitled to 50 per cent of seats in different walks of life, one might say the same about ethnic minorities or the disabled, and the problem has no limit. The quota can also be rather rigid and mechanical, and it can work in some areas but cannot conceivably work in others—for example, for admissions to universities or when appointing people as professors. You cannot have a quota here because so much would depend on merit and lots of other considerations. Although this is not the way we want to go, I can nevertheless imagine circumstances where the problem is so acute and the willingness to change is so scarce that we might need to go along that route.