Creative and Cultural Sector: Social Mobility
Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Boateng
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Absolutely, and I am very happy to bang those heads. One of the key aims of the cultural education plan is to tackle disparities in opportunity and outcome, and to identify schools across the state and private sectors that are doing good work, while ensuring that everybody, wherever they live, has the life-changing opportunity to take part in arts and culture.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, while the Minister is banging heads and meeting his right honourable friend the Schools Minister tomorrow, will he please raise the issue of musical education in schools? It is harder now for schoolchildren in inner-city schools and state schools to access musical instruments than it was 50 years ago when I was at a grammar school on a council estate in Hertfordshire. That really is a scandal.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I will, but my right honourable friend the Schools Minister and I would both point to the £25 million of capital investment that accompanied the national plan for music education, informed by my noble friend Lady Fleet and others, and that ensured greater provision of musical instruments, particularly adaptable instruments for pupils with special educational needs. We wanted to make sure that every barrier to participation in arts, music and culture was removed.
British Museum: Ethiopian Sacred Altar Tablets
Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Boateng(2 years ago)
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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the museum is independent of the Government; it is up to the trustees. The Government support the trustees in their earnest work and the discussions they are having on these sensitive issues with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and others.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, these items, which are of huge religious significance, were looted. They were stolen after a brutal, punitive expedition—that is the reality. Given that reality and given the fact that they are not able to be seen, venerated or studied by anybody, would it not be the right thing to do—the moral thing to do—and would it not enhance the moral position of the trustees and the British Government in their discussions with the Ethiopian Government about human rights, if they were to be returned without delay?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the items have a complicated provenance. They were indeed taken by British troops after the expedition, but some of the items in the collection were themselves stolen by Tewodros II to assemble the collection in the first place. Some of the items have been given back, including by Her Majesty the Queen in 1965 to Emperor Haile Selassie. The British Museum is looking at the complexity of this issue, talking sensitively to the Ethiopian Church and others to decide the best way of caring for them and reflecting that complex past.
Authors, Booksellers and Libraries: Economic Recovery
Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Boateng(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The Government provided some money just before Christmas to help freelancers working across the creative industries and the cultural sectors who were affected by the omicron wave of coronavirus. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, who I saw was making sure that that message was getting out to freelancers. I would certainly be happy to discuss with freelancers and their representatives the challenges that remain as we continue to face the pandemic.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister’s warm words in support of libraries are welcome, but since 2010 more than 800 public libraries have closed and the number of qualified librarians employed by local authorities has decreased from more than 18,000 to just over 15,000. Warm words are all well and good, but what more practically can be done to support local authorities to keep libraries open and, where that fails, to support local communities themselves to keep libraries open?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I do not recognise the figure the noble Lord cites. The dataset published by Arts Council England in August last year indicated that there have been around 200 permanent closures of static libraries in England over the decade ending December 2019. New data covering the period up to the end of December last year will be published in the coming months. The statutory duty is on local authorities to deliver a comprehensive system. The Secretary of State has a role to step in and encourage a public inquiry if that duty is not being met. The Government provide not just warm words but significant taxpayer funding to local authorities to deliver that statutory obligation and additional funding through the DCMS such as the library improvement fund and through Arts Council England, as I have mentioned.
Sub-Saharan Africa (Report from the International Relations and Defence Committee)
Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Boateng(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I was saying in response to the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, that the nine agreements we have signed with 16 countries in Africa represent bilateral trade worth £21.7 billion in 2019. There are also 12 trade envoys to Africa covering 15 countries, four of them Members of your Lordships’ House.
A number of noble Lords raised visas. We have designed our new visa system to support our business and trade ties with Africa. It treats people from every part of the world equally, welcoming them based not on the continent they come from but on their skills and the contribution they can make to the United Kingdom. I know that my honourable friend the Minister for Africa has had correspondence with your Lordships’ committee on this, including giving the reassurance that he raised many of the issues highlighted in your Lordships’ report with Ministers at the Home Office, but this is a new system. As we build it, we will of course keep reviewing it and ways that it could be improved to ensure it has the confidence of those we want to welcome to the UK. We would welcome continued feedback from your Lordships’ committee on this issue as we do that.
For growth to be sustainable, we must address security threats that could undermine it and harm our interests and those of our African partners. There remain pockets of violent conflict across Africa, and our second priority is to tackle them, working with affected countries, the African Union and the UN Security Council. We have expanded our diplomatic presence across the Sahel, one of the poorest regions on the planet and one suffering from growing insecurity and violent extremism. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, asked about that, particularly whether we have changed our shift to the Sahel in the light of recent events. Since 2018, we have significantly expanded our presence in the region, with resident ambassadors in Mauritania, Niger and Chad for the first time, and an increase in the size of our embassy in Mali. We have also increased staffing in London, set up an advisory hub in Dakar and appointed an envoy. We are playing a prominent role in the Sahel Coalition and the Sahel Alliance.
The noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, and others raised peacekeeping. We provide 300 troops to MINUSMA, the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Mali, and four Chinook helicopters to the French counter-terrorism Operation Barkhane, as the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, noted. We also use our £12 million Conflict, Stability and Security Fund programme to build stability and bolster conflict resolution in Mali and the wider Sahel.
We are working to tackle terrorism in west Africa and the Lake Chad basin through a £12.6 million support package to counter Daesh in the region. We continue to support conflict resolution in Somalia and Sudan, and their transitions to democracy. In addition to pressing Somalia to hold rapid and credible elections, we are using our £24 million CSSF programme to seek to reduce current and future threats by focusing on building and delivering capability in its security sector, supporting stabilisation efforts and our efforts to counter al-Shabaab.
We are working with our partners and through the UN Security Council to end hostilities in Tigray. We have used our G7 presidency to amplify our calls for unfettered humanitarian access, a dialogue to resolve the conflict and accountability for atrocities. My noble friend Lady Helic mentioned some of these. Thanks in large part to her work in government, the UK is a global leader on tackling sexual violence in conflict. We have deployed the UK team of experts more than 90 times since 2012 to build the capacity of Governments, the UN and NGOs, including most recently in Tigray, to investigate crimes of conflict-related sexual violence and to hold perpetrators to account. This year, the UK will publish the three-year PSVI strategy, which will focus UK efforts on strengthening pathways to justice for all survivors and enhancing the support available to them, including tackling stigma.
Our third priority is to nurture open societies. That means supporting human rights and democratic values and supporting civil society groups to provide African-led solutions to the continent’s challenges. It means building institutions that can stave off authoritarianism and corruption, and it means supporting democratic values and institutions through diplomacy. In Kenya, for instance, we have supported the reform of the police and strengthened independent institutions such as the judiciary and elections commission. It also means holding those who violate human rights to account, including through our sanctions regimes. In Zimbabwe, we used our new autonomous sanctions regime to hold to account four security officials who were responsible for some of Zimbabwe’s worst human rights violations under the Mnangagwa Government.
Providing developmental support is our fourth priority. We are determined to end preventable deaths, improve sexual and reproductive health, and help more girls to receive 12 years of quality education. Between 2015 and 2020, more than 37 million young children, women and adolescent girls in Africa were reached through our nutrition programmes, and we supported more than 26 million people in Africa to gain access to clean water or better sanitation. Over the same period, we enabled an average of 25 million women and girls each year to access modern methods of family planning, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
We will continue to invest in stronger health systems towards saving the lives of mothers and children, including bilateral programmes in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, the DRC, Malawi, Uganda and Mozambique. Our bilateral programmes will be enhanced by multilateral investment and partnerships. The UK will continue to support the large-scale delivery of vaccines to children through GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and scale up the prevention and treatment of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria through the Global Fund.
A number of noble Lords made points relating to Covid and the provision of vaccines. I am mindful that the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, has secured a debate on that very subject in your Lordships’ House tomorrow so I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I go into only some detail on it now; I will be responding to that debate and will be able to go into further detail with the extra time allowed there. We continue to support the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines in Africa, where we have contributed £548 million to COVAX. Forty-two African countries have received a total of 31 million doses through the initiative. Furthermore, the Prime Minister has announced that the UK will share 100 million vaccine doses by June next year. However, I will take back the point made by my friend Lady Fall about further discussions at UNGA and discuss it with colleagues.
In July, we hosted the Global Education Summit in partnership with Kenya, advancing our commitment to 12 years of quality education for all girls by 2030 and supporting education across Africa. This was an extraordinary demonstration of global solidarity, raising more than $4 billion to help the world’s most vulnerable children. The UK made our largest-ever pledge of £430 million to the Global Partnership for Education fund, maintaining our position as its top bilateral donor. However, we must acknowledge some of the difficult decisions that have been taken because of the economic impact of the pandemic.
Many noble Lords raised—as we have debated many times before—the need temporarily to reduce our development spending from 0.7% to 0.5% of GNI. This was a difficult decision, and the Prime Minister has committed to returning to 0.7% as soon as possible. However, we will still spend more than £10 billion around the world this year to fight poverty, tackle climate change and improve global health. We remain the third-largest G7 donor and will spend close to half our bilateral aid budget this year in Africa. We are targeting our support where human suffering is most acute. Our focus is on preventing deaths, getting girls into school, boosting science and technology and tackling climate change.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, asked some questions about VSO in the light of that. We have agreed funding with VSO for the V4D programme until the end of this financial year, and officials have started discussions with VSO on our future relationship.
A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lady Anelay, the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and the noble Lords, Lord Grocott, Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Collins of Highbury, raised the issue of remittances. The Government recognise the importance of remittances sent from the UK to low and middle-income countries. We are committed to achieving G20 and SDG targets, seeking to reduce the average cost of remittances to 3% of the total being sent and with no send costs in excess of 5%. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, asked about the decline in remittances. They declined by 1.6% globally in 2020, which is a fall but a lot less than was predicted earlier by the World Bank and others.
Our fifth priority is to help African countries to become low-carbon economies and shield them from the worst impacts of climate change. We are working with countries and the African Union to prioritise climate, nature and a green recovery from Covid-19, including through the African Union’s Green Recovery Action Plan, which was launched in July this year. We will use the COP 26 summit to address the disproportionate impact of climate change on Africa and turbocharge global action. We are pressing donor countries to live up to the $100 billion climate finance commitment made at the Paris climate summit. For our part, we have committed to doubling our climate finance to £11.6 billion. This is helping developing countries to pursue sustainable low-carbon futures.
Like my noble friends Lord Lilley and Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, we recognise the importance of reliable, affordable and clean energy to African nations’ development. Low levels of access to electricity present a major barrier to development and an opportunity to leap-frog to low-carbon economies, driven by renewable energy. That is why the UK launched the COP 26 Energy Transition Council, which will help to accelerate the transition from coal to clean energy across Africa. It will bring together the global political, financial and technical leadership in the power sector to seek to improve the international offer in support of an equitable transition from coal.
In the time available, I have given just a glimpse of the work we are doing across Africa. We have one of the largest diplomatic networks—
Lord Boateng (Lab)
Before the Minister sits down, I hope he is going to address Cameroon.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I am indeed. I was not yet winding up, simply saying that I have been able to give but a glimpse of the soft power work that we are doing across Africa. We have one of the largest diplomatic networks across the continent, strengthening partnerships with African countries and creating further people-to-people links. In working towards our goals, we will make the most of our considerable soft power assets, which were noted in your Lordships’ report and its recommendations. We have a rich array of creative, cultural and sporting links to build on, whether through scientific collaborations, tech start-ups, Africa Fashion Week London or BBC Africa.
The education sector is another vital link in this area. More than 30,000 African students are studying here in the UK. The British Council supports better knowledge of the English language through a number of programmes, including English Connects, which engaged with more than 1.3 million 18 to 35 year-olds through digital resources in the last academic year. Our Chevening programme, which was mentioned, has an extraordinary record of accomplishment in helping to educate future and current African leaders. We have increased funding for the programme and the 2019 intake of 1,100 was the largest ever.
A number of noble Lords talked about the importance of the diaspora communities here in the UK. We are looking to make better use of the knowledge and expertise of our African diaspora communities in strengthening our partnerships. Already, this approach has helped to identify trade and investment opportunities in countries such as Ghana and Nigeria. There are important ways in which the diaspora communities can build bridges with civil society and communities in their countries of descent to support action on priorities such as open societies and climate change. The noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, mentioned COP 26, and of course we want everybody in the United Kingdom to be engaged with that important summit.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, and my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford both raised China. As the Government’s response to your Lordships’ report made clear, the committee’s recommendations reflect the Government’s current approach. China is an important source of aid, trade and investment for many African nations. However, we are clear-eyed about the potential risks that this poses vis-à-vis issues such as debt sustainability and China’s economic and political influence. We take a nuanced and differentiated approach. We seek to maximise the positive impacts that China might have, especially in multilateral fora, while working to mitigate any risks. We distinguish carefully between the threats and opportunities China poses in Africa, and proactively engage where doing so is in the national interest and supports our Africa objectives.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, also raised the case of Leah Sharibu. We remain deeply concerned about Leah’s welfare. Our officials in Abuja raised her case with the Nigerian Government in March this year. The Nigerian Government have provided assurances that they are doing all they can to secure her release, and the release of all those still held in captivity.
Cameroon was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and others. The Government remain deeply concerned about the situation in the northwest and southwest regions of Cameroon. We are aware of reports of human rights abuses in those regions and have made representations to the authorities about the importance of timely and transparent investigations into such reports. Indeed, we regularly raise our concerns about the crisis with the Government of Cameroon at the highest levels. The Minister for Africa visited Cameroon in March this year, met both President Biya and Prime Minister Ngute and set out the UK’s commitment to supporting a peaceful resolution.
The UK has also shared our experience of conflict resolution with the Government of Cameroon, and we work in conjunction with international partners, including France, as the noble Lord said, to raise the crisis in multilateral fora. During my honourable friend’s visit in March, he met the American, French and Swiss representatives to share assessments of the crisis. We also welcome the active conflict resolution role that can be played by faith leaders, both locally and globally, and welcomed the visit by the Vatican’s Foreign Minister, Cardinal Parolin, in June.
The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, asked about trade in the light of all this. The UK-Cameroon economic partnership agreement ensures continuity of our trading arrangements, but the Government’s approach is clear: using trade to support development is not mutually exclusive to the rule of law, protecting human rights and democratic principles. We continue to press the Government of Cameroon to uphold these important principles, which underpin the economic partnership agreement.
I am now, however, running out of time, and must conclude—
Queen’s Speech
Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Boateng(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Boateng (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in welcoming to the House and commending the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister. His speech was particularly welcome in its focus on the importance—while recognising the Indo-Pacific tilt of the integrated review—of being active in Africa. He will find a ready echo of that sentiment on all sides of this House. I declare an interest at the outset as an ambassador for the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation and chair of Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor.
Global co-operation and solidarity are vital to effectively responding to and mitigating the health and socioeconomic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The measures in the gracious Speech fall to be delivered at a time in which there is, globally, an increase in inequality, a threat to livelihoods and an increasing threat to peace and security and in which environmental sustainability and a capacity to respond effectively to natural disasters are threatened by the impact of the pandemic.
The challenge the virus presents to global diplomacy, to the work of effective multilateral organisations and to the effectiveness of a developmental response to the global crisis requires us, as a nation, to have an effective response to the pandemic and the health of the developing world, which is absolutely essential to our own continued health, and indeed to our security as a nation. The World Bank has rightly drawn attention to the need to ramp-up vaccine production to overcome current shortages in the world, and to develop partnerships across sectors to that effect. As such, it supports licensing deals and technology transfers to developing countries to increase supply and local production in different parts of the world, especially sub-Saharan Africa.
That raises the question, which I hope the Minister will address when winding up, of what position the United Kingdom will take in response to the United States’s very welcome acceptance of the need to address the issue of intellectual property and to bring about the changes in the WTO that will permit the manufacture and license of vaccines in countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and Senegal, which have the capacity, with some support, to manufacture vaccines. What will be the United Kingdom’s response to the US’s welcome initiative? We know that the EU has been lukewarm, to put it mildly, in its response. This is an opportunity for us to exercise our much-vaunted new post-Brexit freedoms outside the European Union, and come behind the United States to adopt a position in the WTO—with its welcome new, and very effective, leadership—to enable Africa and the developing world to develop their own pharmaceutical industries, and indeed to manufacture vaccines.
In the short term, there will clearly be a need for greater distribution of vaccines in the world. I have something to say briefly in response to the Minister’s quite correct assertion that we are now living much more in a time of competition in this regard. China has already provided vaccine assistance to 53 developing countries and has exported vaccines to 22 countries. China has exported 115 million doses of Chinese vaccines and India has exported 63 million. How many million doses have we exported? The answer is none. What are we doing, not just to support COVAX but to address this very real need, which exists throughout the developing world but particularly acutely where there are conflicts? What are we doing in Tigray and Cameroon to ensure that vaccines are distributed more effectively and provided in those war-torn areas? What are we doing to help bring those conflicts to an end?
Likewise—and I end my remarks on this—what are we doing in response to natural disasters, such as in St Vincent and the Grenadines? Will we deploy our ship in the region to help with the clear-up? How will we assist the country to respond to the very real need that exists there, at the moment, as we speak, for vaccines, because Covid has a hold in that country? These are questions that the Minister needs to answer, and answer in a spirit that we all understand and appreciate that we need a response—
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I remind noble Lords of the advisory five-minute limit.
Lord Boateng (Lab) [V]
Indeed. I end on this note, with this challenge to the Minister. We are rightly thinking about the Middle East at this time. There was a great teacher by the name of Hillel in the Middle East, who lived at the time of our Lord. He said:
“If I am not for me, who will be for me?”
Yes, it is important to recognise our national self-interest, but he added:
“If I am only for me, what am I?”
We share a common humanity. He also asked: “If not now, when?” We need focus, we need resources and we need to act now.
University Students: Compensation for Lost Teaching and Rent
Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Boateng
Lord Boateng (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I declare my interest as chancellor of the University of Greenwich. Covid has meant additional costs for universities and students; they are out of pocket. Will the Minister assure us that his department will take that into account in future funding decisions for both universities and students, and will he please bear in mind, particularly for those universities either in London or working with particularly disadvantaged students, the additional costs of living and working in London, which KPMG estimates at some 14% additional cost? Will he make sure that those factors are taken into account in university funding, particularly in relation to the current consultation on London weighting?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, we understand the difficulty that students have faced throughout the pandemic, in London and elsewhere. That is why the Government announced last week a further £15 million of student hardship funding, meaning that, in total, we have made an additional £85 million of funding available for student hardship this year, on top of the £256 million of taxpayer-funded student premium funding which is already available to providers in London and more widely to draw on towards student hardship funds for this academic year.
Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration: Site Visits
Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Boateng
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, as I said, this is an interim report from the independent chief inspector, which made important findings that we are of course acting on. We look forward to seeing his report in full, once it is complete. It is important to remember the context in which we are operating—the additional pressures that the Covid-19 pandemic has put on the asylum accommodation estate. Establishing extra sites to react to that has been challenging. We recognise that there is room for improvement and we look forward to seeing the full report so that we can continue to improve.
Lord Boateng (Lab) [V]
My Lords, this latest, albeit interim, report reveals that the health of all the residents at Napier barracks is at risk. A third are reported to be suicidal. Although the report is interim, it joins the reports of the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate and Public Health England in presenting a damning picture of the place. At Christmas, I attended church with residents of Napier barracks. It shames us all. We know that it is not easy to be a Home Office Minister but what more does the Minister require before the Home Office stops placing people in the barracks and decants those who are there, before we see loss of life and still further damage to the United Kingdom’s international reputation for human rights?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the Home Office has been working with Public Health England and Public Health Wales, as well as the Crown fire inspectorate, in respect of Penally to make sure that the temporary accommodation that we have had to set up in light of the pandemic is safe and in line with their recommendations. As of last Friday, 12 March, there are 48 people at Napier and 55 at Penally. This is temporary accommodation and we are working to make sure that it is indeed that.
Support for University Students: Covid-19
Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Boateng
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The right reverend Prelate is right; this has been a challenge. From taking A-levels, to being at university, to graduating: as he says, these are difficult times. The Government are providing support to people going into employment as well as to students currently completing their studies. We want to make sure that we look after people at every stage of that journey.
Lord Boateng (Lab) [V]
Additional funding is welcome, but the University of Greenwich, of which I happen to be chancellor, is experiencing what many other universities are experiencing in London: the removal of the London-weighting element of the teaching grant funding allocation. This is having a very adverse effect on our financial viability, costing us some £2.5 million per year. We put disadvantaged children and children and young people from minority ethnic backgrounds at the very forefront of our concerns in the first part of the Government’s levelling-up agenda. We are finding it very difficult to do this in the face of this cut in our funding allocation. Will the Government reconsider their decisions in that regard to enable us to do that much more for these needy students?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The noble Lord is right to point to the impact the pandemic has had on institutions as well as the students studying at them; I commend the work that they do. The Government have already provided significant support for the higher education sector, bringing forward £2 billion of tuition fee payments, providing £280 million of grant funding for research and establishing a loan scheme to cover up to 80% of a university’s income losses from international students. That, of course, is on top of the generous package of support that my right honourable friend the Chancellor provided for businesses, so we certainly are providing the assistance that institutions need.
Her Majesty the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee
Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Boateng
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The noble Baroness is right, and of course the 54 nations of the Commonwealth will want to make their own plans to celebrate the jubilee in their own ways. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office is liaising with them as they prepare to do so.
Lord Boateng (Lab) [V]
My Lords, the Queen is patron of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and of the English-Speaking Union, of which I am the immediate past chair. As such, she has championed effective communication and friendship between peoples and parliaments. So long has been her reign that, both as a child and as a Minister, I have witnessed her addressing the Parliament of Ghana. Will the Minister assure us that his department will consult with Commonwealth associations based in the UK, including the CPA and the English-Speaking Union, to ensure that this aspect of Her Majesty’s long and glorious reign is reflected in this jubilee year?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
That is a very important aspect of Her Majesty’s reign. The Commonwealth Games give us an opportunity to reflect that, but as the noble Lord points out, the Commonwealth is so much more than those sporting endeavours that we will be celebrating through that event. We will ensure that, through the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, we are speaking to all the Commonwealth nations in the run-up to the platinum jubilee.