Gaza: Humanitarian Situation

Lord Stone of Blackheath Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stone of Blackheath (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, many noble Lords taking part in this debate have said that in this war, one side is right and the other side is wrong and there should be no compromise. Both Israel and Palestine have right on their side, yet they cannot see the right on the other side. At heart, their actions come from a place of humanity, but only from one side. So, to try to help them move to a consciousness of shared understanding and love, and to help them decide to collaborate with the opposing people and together, find the right way to proceed, I have invited to the House of Lords 40 individuals who lead organisations on the ground in both Palestine and Israel and who are ready to work in union across the divide, supporting each other. They will come here for three days at the beginning of June to discuss how they would use their experience, compassion and friendships to work out which way to go to find a way of living together that benefits us all. When we have summarised their combined wisdom, I will wish to share it with the Minister and the whole House.

Israel and Palestine

Lord Stone of Blackheath Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stone of Blackheath]

My Lords, elected leaders everywhere are politically limited. Consequently, they refrain from taking brave initiatives and yes, it is the role of responsible civil societies to engage with like-minded people across the region—to present new ideas, to develop worthwhile collaborative projects, to educate and together create hope for the next generation.

I want to use my time by listing briefly more civil society projects that are showing the way and in so doing I declare my interest in them, which is all non-financial. The first aims to press Governments to break the impasse and to agree a peace deal. As the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, mentioned, Koby Huberman came here from the region to present the Israeli Peace Initiative—the IPI—to a cross-party group. The IPI was developed through an apolitical movement of prominent Israelis in response to, and based on, the Arab Peace Initiative—the API. The IPI’s mission is twofold—to encourage the Israeli leaders to present an official response to the API and to communicate with civil societies in the Arab world to promote regional solutions jointly.

During the past 10 years, no less than 17 peace plans have been submitted but politicians on both sides have failed to listen to the voice of the majority of their citizens who want to live in peace in a two-state solution. Can we in your Lordships’ House help the IPI team to link with its Arab counterparts to get these two plans to become one?

On the ground, in the region, at OneVoice, which was mentioned earlier, John Lyndon and his team are now also looking at using civic, economic and media milestones as part of an ambitious programme called the Peoples’ Blueprint. They are persuading manufacturers, businesses, infrastructure and property developers, hospitals and universities to pledge that they will invest across the region once certain steps towards a peace deal are in place. Your Lordships may know others who might like to make similar pledges.

On food, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Judd, Moon Valley has been helping Palestinian farmers to improve quality standards and efficiency to enable them to export their goods. Now master chef Yotam Ottolenghi and his team are helping us develop a wider range of traditional foods: freekeh, maftoul, grape molasses and olive tapenades. We will set up a factory in Jordan in partnership with Olives et Al, a UK-based fine-food manufacturer, and we are working in Lebanon with several women’s co-operatives. In the West Bank, to ensure that the Palestinian farmers themselves benefit we will embed our technical manager, Yamin Younis, inside a collection of co-operatives there called the New Farm Company. We are about to start selling these delicious Palestinian goods for them in the Gulf States as well. This is a true social enterprise and again we could do with more support.

This brings me to water, recognised by the World Economic Forum as the second most important risk factor in the world and again mentioned by my noble friend Lord Judd. This week Julie Arts spoke to me from Amman, where future leaders from Arab and European cities have been taking part in an itijah—which means “direction”. That was a four-day venture run by an international leadership organisation, Common Purpose, tackling this common challenge. During the four days, the group met with organisations such as the Red Sea-Dead Sea project, USAID and UNRWA, with the aim of producing innovative new solutions for the region’s water. The cross-region group came from 10 different cities including Benghazi, Alexandria, Istanbul, Amsterdam and London, and represented organisations as diverse as the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, the Institute of Islamic Banking & Finance, the Libyan Centre for Consultancy and Human Development and Coca-Cola.

Included in civil society are the media and press. They can be responsible for stirring up war-like emotions and presenting biased sensation, or they can choose to report factually and mindfully. In this context perhaps one of the most heartening events is the International Media Awards, held annually here in London under the auspices of the Next Century Foundation. The awards bring journalists from Israel and the West Bank, Gaza and the wider Middle-East together with their counterparts from the West, who all enjoy each other’s company. I believe the media have a responsibility to promote peace, if only through honest and constructive journalism. It is a singular privilege to host these awards each spring. Noble Lords who are interested are invited to come to them.

I mention these civil society projects that thousands of earnest and well meaning citizens are engaged in because they need our support. They show the way to those politicians in the region who should be there to change the world for the better, rather than just playing out strategies to hold together their precarious, dubious and politically convenient coalitions. I ask noble Lords and Her Majesty’s Government to give support to these types of initiatives.

Voluntary Sector and Social Enterprise

Lord Stone of Blackheath Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stone of Blackheath]

My Lords, I declare a specific interest in this field. I chair DIPEx, an Oxford-based charity. We are currently internationalising ourselves and I will cite this as an example later.

I propose to Her Majesty's Government that they may wish to create a hub in the United Kingdom that would encourage and support other established British charities and social enterprises to internationalise themselves. For decades, through the British Council, with a budget of £600 million, Britain has promoted language and education and our arts and culture. That is good for Britain and good for the world. Many excellent charities and voluntary organisations have already successfully internationalised themselves, but others are struggling to create organisations that spread worldwide with the right disciplines and standards, and many as yet have not realised the vast potential and advantage to be had by becoming international.

Imagine if we were to encourage British charities and social enterprises—large, medium and small—to consider researching other countries with the same issues that they are addressing here, and linking with organisations in those countries to form international organisations. I envision that to be taken on by either a government ministry or the British Council—or even the City of London; it was hitherto the centre for the finance industry but could become a centre for world philanthropy, possibly using the City Bridge Trust, which was mentioned earlier.

To start with, if perhaps 100 charities came forward to internationalise themselves, the hub would create for them access to international legal structures, the ability to set global standards and access to branding, marketing and website publishing. Even if it were to cost an average of £50,000 for each of those organisations, the total cost to make Britain the hub for 100 international such organisations would be £5 million.

Let me cite DIPEx as an example. I am not asking for help: we are going to internationalise ourselves using our own resources. This is what we decided to do. The DIPEx charity has worked closely with the University of Oxford, and with the support of the Department of Health—it has funded us so far with £2 million of the almost £10 million we have raised—to create www.healthtalkonline.org, a unique online resource. It publishes people’s personal experience of health conditions.

So far, we have covered 70 health conditions, including 10 types of cancer, heart diseases, neurological conditions and diabetes, and life issues such as bereavement, pregnancy and the menopause. The website includes not only the experiences of patients but those of carers, families and friends. On our website, we receive 1 million hits a week and 3 million unique visitors a year. We now know that watching and listening to the experiences of others can have a major impact on a person’s ability to deal with their health challenges through personal empowerment, being better informed and a reduced sense of isolation.

Based on training and support from DIPEx UK, organisations in other countries want us to help them set up parallel projects in their countries. Universities and hospitals in Spain, Germany, Holland, Japan, South Korea, China, Israel, Palestine, Canada and Australia are involved. Together, we will establish DIPEx International as an umbrella organisation to co-ordinate the activities of the group, to collect and publish health experiences worldwide and combinedly to help with fundraising. We have decided to use £50,000 of the DIPEx charitable reserves for this. Oxford would then become an international centre for the highest-quality worldwide health charity. Already as a result of our activity Green Templeton College in Oxford, where we are based, now plans to create HEXI, the Health Experiences Institute, a centre for research into patients’ health experiences worldwide. DIPEx is just one example of a charity doing this.

The International Centre for Social Franchising sees numerous social enterprises whose success has been evaluated and proven; yet, frustratingly, its wheel is constantly being reinvented. These organisations should be replicated in other areas and other countries. The core idea and the accumulated experience should be the starting point for designing and delivering solutions elsewhere.

Today, I merely suggest to the Minister that he asks the appropriate ministry to arrange a conversation with the people involved, to see whether this programme might help the charity and social enterprise field from Britain to make valuable connections and to create new ways to spread aid and services to countries with which we wish to have relations. I propose that the Minister suggests to his colleagues in government that we perhaps arrange a two-day conference where we invite 30 or 40 people from this field who would be interested in helping to take this idea forward. The participants could include, say, five charities; five social enterprises—small, medium and large—the Social Enterprise Coalition; an international consultant in this field such as the Social Investment Consultancy; the Enterprise Bank; Prism the Gift Fund, with which I am also involved; some experienced lawyers in this field; some big UK-based international businesses to help with advice on internationalisation and perhaps funding; the City Bridge Trust; the International Centre for Social Franchising; the Charities Commission; and, perhaps, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, who promoted this interesting debate. I am sorry that I do not have the resources to research this more deeply. It is merely a suggestion but perhaps noble Lords will feel that it merits further research, discussion and action.