Red Sea: Houthi Attacks
Lord Sandhurst Excerpts(4 weeks ago)
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Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Regarding decisions on maritime security, we have constant conversations with those responsible for shipping and give advice on security. We have not advised shipping to divert away from this route, but clearly those responsible are making decisions for themselves. We have seen a large number of vessels divert around the Cape of Good Hope, for obvious reasons.
Lord Sandhurst (Con)
I thought the question was about arming vessels, not the route they took. Can the Minister answer that, please?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
The answer I provided may not be the one that noble Lords opposite wanted to hear but, none the less, it is my answer. We work closely with those who are responsible for maritime security and for shipping. I think that is what a responsible Government would do. That is as far as I will go today.
British Indian Ocean Territory: Negotiations
Lord Sandhurst Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My noble friend is completely right. On this issue of the legalities, which I am sure will come up, we had a choice. We could wait for the legal tide to come in still further and have rulings that were binding made against us. In that situation, we would be negotiating from a position of particular weakness, we felt, so it was much better to get ahead and get this deal done before we reached that circumstance.
Lord Sandhurst (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness has not answered an important question which my noble friend asked. Does the agreement give the United Kingdom an absolute right to extend the lease at the end of the 99 years, or is it just a right to ask for renewal? That is very different. Which is it?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My Lords, the treaty will be published very soon, and we will have a chance to properly test it according to the things that are of concern to the noble Lord. I suggest that we wait for the treaty to be scrubbed and printed so that we can all satisfy ourselves about the precise nature of what has been agreed.
International Anti-Corruption Court
Lord Sandhurst Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Noble Lords will of course understand that we cannot make progress on this without a treaty on which to base it. We cannot produce that treaty ourselves; it must be done, by necessity, with international partners. We see this very much as complementing the work that has been done on international money laundering in the UK and with the British Virgin Islands and elsewhere. Should there be discussions along the lines which the noble Lord outlined, we would be happy to take part in them.
Lord Sandhurst (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister to the Front Bench. The United Kingdom’s international anti-corruption unit has been a world-leading capability since its establishment in 2017. As we heard last year, by 2023 it had
“disseminated 146 intelligence reports, identified £1.4 billion-worth of assets, and supported the freezing of £623 million-worth of assets”.—[Official Report, 6/7/23; col. 1301.]
Grand corruption is a grave issue. What further steps will the Government take to better recover stolen assets?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his remarks. We share our ambition and determination to tackle this issue in as many different ways as are necessary. I highlight the International Anti-corruption Co-ordination Centre, which is part of our NCA. It has been incredibly successful and is unique internationally in its ability to share data and investigate and pursue money that has been raised illegally elsewhere in the world. We want to build on this success.
Israel and Palestine
Lord Sandhurst Excerpts(8 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
I welcome the points that the noble Lord has made. I also recognise the statement from His Majesty’s Official Opposition about the importance of the two-state solution. I am not saying that it is not challenging—of course it is. It is, perhaps arguably, more challenging than not. What is different—I say this quite personally, having looked at it, but also politically—is that everyone is now engaged on this agenda. It is a priority not for one or two countries but for everyone. We recognise, and Israelis recognise, that stability and security for Israelis means stability and security for Palestinians. It means leadership among Israelis and the Palestinians. That is what we are focused on. On the recognition point, my noble friend has outlined a clear pathway to ensure that a political horizon is provided for the Palestinians. As the noble Lord rightly said, we can never, ever give up on hope.
International Women’s Day and Protecting the Equality of Women in the UK and Internationally
Lord Sandhurst Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Sandhurst (Con)
My Lords, I speak today from the perspective of a retired male lawyer—pale and perhaps a little stale. I shall look at where we have come from and where we have got to today because history is important.
I start with the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, under which, for the first time, men could petition the court for a divorce on the basis of their wife’s adultery. However, a wife wanting to divorce her husband had to prove not just his adultery but an aggravating factor such as rape or incest. That imbalance continued until the Matrimonial Causes Act 1923, which put husbands and wives on an equal footing, each now able to divorce the other on the grounds of simple adultery.
Women’s property rights picked up—that is, for those who had some property—when, in 1882, the Married Women’s Property Act allowed married women to own and control property in their own right for the first time. That was, for some at least, a big step forward.
Let me turn to suffrage. Things kicked off in the late 1880s when a woman who fulfilled the necessary property qualifications was permitted to vote in the new London County Council elections. I have a particular interest in this. My great-great-grandmother, the first Lady Sandhurst—by then a widow—questioned why, if she could vote, she could not be a candidate. So, in 1889, she stood in the London County Council elections—in the Liberal interest, I fear. She won the popular vote in the Brixton seat but her defeated and cross Conservative opponent challenged her election in the courts. He argued that, although the statute gave her the right to vote, it spoke only of men as elected members. That argument succeeded and she was disqualified. She was not deterred: in 1890, she was elected president of the Society for Promoting the Return of Women as County Councillors. She would have been very proud of my aunt, her great-granddaughter, who became a county councillor and, later, the chairman of Oxfordshire County Council.
Although the right to vote in general elections was given to women after the First World War, as we all know, there was still discrimination against women because they could not vote until they attained the age of 30. Only in 1928 was that limitation removed. At much the same time, in 1921, we had the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act. This enabled women to read for the Bar. Helena Florence Normanton was the first woman to take advantage of that Act and join an Inn of Court. In November 1922, she was the second woman to be called to the Bar of England and Wales, following the example of Ivy Williams in May 1922.
Progress for the women was slow at first but, after the war, it got a bit better. In 1949, Normanton and Rose Heilbron both took Silk. The next year, in 1950, Elizabeth Lane took Silk. Lane was appointed the first woman County Court judge in 1962 and, three years later, the first woman in the Family Division of the High Court. I appeared quite often before her; she was a jolly good judge. Now, we have women judges at all levels, including the very highest, even if they are still outnumbered by men.
On a personal level, when I joined my chambers of, I think, 15 or 16 men in 1973, it had no women members. There were growing numbers of women at the Bar; a contemporary of mine was Heather Hallett, now the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, will know, women undoubtedly needed even more grit and luck to start at the Bar than men—much more. In 1977, we selected the first woman member of my chambers. I recall the initial discussions well. They revolved around two things: first, the lavatory facilities; and, secondly, whether she would leave to have children.
However, we overcome that barrier. Thereafter, at least in my chambers, a candidate’s sex was never an issue. We recruited many more women, although I acknowledge that I cannot say the same throughout the Bar. We also learned, in my chambers, to treat women with respect and not to expect them to join in and enjoy so-called banter. Happily, as I speak today, my old chambers has six women as Queen’s Counsels and a substantial number of women members. Two former women members now sit on the High Court Bench. One of them, Philippa Whipple, will this afternoon be sworn in as a Lady Justice of Appeal.
So, we make progress and have come a long way. However, when I look at the wider world, there is much still to be done. Childcare is hugely expensive. In most, if not all, families, the burden of running the home still falls more heavily on women. I know; I have a working daughter. The large number of women graduates and the growth of working from home will perhaps see the balance change over time and male partners take a greater share. I certainly hope so.
However, to my mind—we have heard this from other noble Lords today—even more serious than opportunities at work are the incidents of daily life that women have to put up with. Only yesterday, the business pages on the BBC News website had as the lead item that Lloyd’s of London had fined a member firm, Atrium Underwriters, £1 million because it had
“admitted charges relating to bullying and misconduct during annual ‘boys’ nights out’ … These included initiation games, heavy drinking and making inappropriate and sexualised comments about female colleagues”.
That was yesterday, so we men have much to learn. We must all do better.
However, the worst part of this laddish culture is that, as we have heard, the disrespect for women and plain misogyny at its heart is not just unpleasant and demeaning for women but leads to violence. This is not getting better. I looked at the crime figures for London. In 2010-11, some 3,300 rape offences were recorded. Ten years later, in 2019-20, that figure had more than doubled to 7,890. As we know only too well, women are afraid to walk home at night alone. I could go on. Put simply, until we men—I am not perfect myself—treat all women with respect and decency, those numbers will not improve.
More generally, too many women are demeaned. That is why, for my part, I am sorry to see the pressure from some in the transgender debate. In arguing for rights, some advocates pour scorn on women who wish to preserve privacy and personal modesty. Women should not have to give up their hard-won rights before they have even got true, effective equality with men. We have come a long way but have a long way still to go. We can and must do better. Women must not come second.