East Africa: Locusts

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

Will my noble friend agree to look into reports that one of the reasons for the re-emergence of massive locust plagues in this part of the world is that, under the banner of agroecology, agencies and non-governmental organisations have increasingly advised farmers not to use pesticides when that is a sensible use of technology?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, we are clear that the best way to deal with this outbreak is through pesticides. The primary method of controlling the swarms is through vehicle-mounted and aerial sprayers. That is what we will continue to advise and what the FAO, which is leading on the response, recommends as the best option.

Extinction Rebellion: Prevent Programme

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the assessment was made under the local area CT plan, which is independent of the Home Office. Obviously it came to the attention of the police and, as I said, they have accepted their error of judgment.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, notwithstanding what has been said today, is my noble friend aware of a Policy Exchange report prepared by two people—one the former head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command—called Extremism Rebellion? It argued:

“The police response to law-breaking by demonstrators must be far more proactive in enforcing the laws that relate to public protest, preventing Extinction Rebellion and other political activists from embarking on illegal tactics that cause mass disruption and significant economic damage.”

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend is right. The public order issues around these protests were significant, particularly to the people of London, Bristol and elsewhere. As he said, they caused great disruption to people’s lives.

Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords—

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry to prevent the noble Baroness asking a question, but I feel it is the turn of the Conservative Benches.

[Viscount Ridley]

My Lords, further to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, about malaria, my noble friend will be aware that malaria mortality has halved in this century, which is a remarkable achievement. Seventy per cent of that reduction was due to a surprisingly low-tech innovation—namely, the insecticide-treated bed net, although, as my noble friend said, resistance is becoming a problem. Is he aware of research that is going on to improve the efficacy of insecticide-treated bed nets, and is this something that the British Government support?

[Lord Bates]

I am aware of the research. Precisely because of the insecticide and antimicrobial resistance that I mentioned, this issue will be addressed in our antimicrobial resistance strategy, which will be refreshed next year. However, I know that my noble friend takes a close interest in this technology, and I would be grateful if he would keep us informed of any initiatives or new ventures that he is aware of.

Brexit: Economic Analysis of Various Scenarios

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The answer is, very soon.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

Is my noble friend at all concerned about what appears to be a circular argument in the analysis of the Treasury, in which it assumes its own conclusions? Essentially, it says that if there are no gains from separating from the EU, there will be net losses from that separation in proportion to the degree to which we separate.

[Lord Bates]

This is not Treasury analysis; it is government analysis. It has been drawn up in collaboration with departments such as BEIS, Defra and DExEU, which have had a significant input. We believe that the analysis supports the case for backing the deal that has been presented to us.

Green Finance

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I do not accept the picture that the noble Lord is painting. In the index that we are talking about, the City of London was ranked number one in the world for the quality of green finance offered—something that we can be proud of. It has gone down to number three in terms of penetration, but look at other financial centres: Paris was fifth, Frankfurt 21st, Tokyo 29th and New York 39th. The City of London is leading the global agenda on leveraging private finance to meet the challenges identified by the IPCC, and we should celebrate that.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, could my noble friend enlighten us on what is a green technology and what is not? It would be very easy to get green finance for projects that burn wood to make electricity but impossible to get it for projects that burn gas to do so, even though burning wood produces at least twice as much carbon dioxide as burning gas. Why?

Drugs Licensing

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord underlines precisely why we are where we are today. Clearly, for those two little boys it has had obvious benefits and—once the doctors and the clinicians who are treating them are satisfied that those benefits of the cannabis-based medicine are real and that without them they would go back to their previous suffering—that entirely underlines why this review is well worth doing.

The noble Lord is right to make the point about opium, which of course is schedule 2—which states that it has medical benefits—but is class A in terms of control. Cannabis is schedule 1 but class B. He is also right that this review is well overdue and I look forward to some of the work that will be done over the coming months. It will take time because cannabis is a complex drug and it is important that the proper process is followed and sound clinical judgments are arrived at.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, further to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and having taken a little advice from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, can I ask the Minister whether the Government will review not only the schedule but also the regulations to ensure quality standards so as to set out the conditions for which prescriptions should be made available? Does she recognise that if cannabis is widely prescribed, it could save the NHS billions of pounds? Will she also look at the report on this subject prepared for the APPG by Professor Michael Barnes which collates a great deal of evidence on this topic?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend has read out the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, very well. I knew that there was mischief going on behind me. The answer to those questions is yes.

Sierra Leone: Ebola

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and congratulate her on securing this debate and on bringing her own experience to bear on it. I will raise two issues briefly. The first is the dreadful initial response of the World Health Organization and what lessons are being learned from it, and the second is the very recent development at a British university of a rapid blood test for diagnosing Ebola.

On the first issue, I make it clear that I am not criticising all those who worked incredibly hard under very dangerous conditions to bring this terrifying epidemic under control, including those working for the World Health Organization and the UK Government. My target is what happened at an earlier stage. I will quote from a devastating report prepared by Médecins Sans Frontières a year into the 2014 outbreak. It says:

“On 31 March, MSF publicly declared the outbreak as ‘unprecedented’ due to the geographic spread of the cases … On 1 April, the World Health Organization … via its chief spokesperson in Geneva, was the first to call into question MSF’s declaration, objecting that the virus dynamics were not unlike those of past outbreaks, nor was the outbreak unprecedented … We raised the alarm publicly again on 21 June, declaring that the epidemic was out of control and that we could not respond to the large number of new cases and locations alone … It was like shouting into a desert”.


The report says that,

“members of the WHO in Guinea and Sierra Leone downplayed the epidemic’s spread, insisting it was under control and accusing MSF of causing unnecessary panic”.

At the end of June, there was a World Health Organization meeting in Geneva. Marie-Christine Ferir of MSF says:

“I remember emphasising that we had the chance to halt the epidemic in Liberia if help was sent now … It was early in the outbreak and there was still time. The call for help was heard but no action was taken”.


She said that meetings happened but action did not. It was not until 8 August, after more than 1,000 people had already died, that the WHO at last declared the outbreak a,

“public health emergency of international concern”.

The WHO Executive Board has since resolved to enact reforms for epidemic response, but very little has happened. Could the Minister tell us what pressure we in the UK are bringing to bear on the WHO, an organisation to which we pay $21 million a year, and which recently thought fit to make Robert Mugabe a good will ambassador?

The second issue is technical. During the 2014 outbreak, it took five days or more to get a result from a blood test to see whether somebody had Ebola. That was eventually reduced to between five and eight hours, but it still cost $100 a test. One of WHO’s mistakes, which puzzled people at the time, was to insist on one technology that was laboratory-bound and expensive: GeneXpert, made by Cepheid. It was hardly used, because it was simply too complicated.

Dr Sterghios Moschos at Northumbria University announced last month that in collaboration with BioGene Ltd and PHE at Porton Down he has developed a simple 70-minute diagnostic test that detects the Ebola virus reliably when spiked into cow’s blood. He has not been able to test it on people for the good reason that at the moment nobody has Ebola. But he says that,

“in the future, stockpiling instruments and tests for known high-risk diseases, such as Ebola virus disease, would make mass screening capacity available in a matter of days or even hours”.

Could the Minister say whether the British Government will look into this to see how his test could be developed and stockpiled as he suggests? Could they perhaps consider deploying it at ports of entry for protection against not just Ebola, because it is a platform that could work for Lassa, dengue, West Nile, yellow fever and Zika? I should declare a possible interest. I have no interest in Dr Moschos’s work or in BioGene but I have one in another Newcastle company, QuantuMDx, which is working on similar rapid and inexpensive tests for diseases, although not Ebola.

Brexit: United Kingdom-Africa Trade and Development

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

Those are all important points, as the noble Lord will know, which is why we want to make sure that arrangements relating to all matters covered by the EPAs continue not just until the point at which we leave but beyond. We want also to take the opportunity to discuss with our bilateral partners in Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere how we can improve on the current arrangements so that they might work better for those in poor countries.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, further to the point that my noble friend the Minister has just made, can he confirm that African exporters to Britain face the high EU external tariff and that, after Brexit, there will an opportunity to review that and therefore to increase trade between the UK and Africa?

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend is right to raise that point. The lowest-income countries are able to come in duty free and tariff free under the Everything but Arms agreement, but there is more to be done on the middle-income countries. There is now more flexibility: we are leaving the EU, but we are still embracing the world. We want to put free trade at the heart of everything that we do—that has been set out clearly. The opportunity for free trade to lift ever more people out of poverty around the world is something that we will grasp with full measure.

St Helena: Airport

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right that commercial airlines are not currently running. He asked why. We have intensive work under way to identify options to enable commercial air services to start as soon as possible. We are considering a range of potential providers. The timing of the commencement of scheduled services will, of course, depend on securing the right aircraft and regulatory approvals. But, as the noble Lord is aware, in the interim we have services going to and from St Helena.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend will be aware that many St Helenans live and work on Ascension Island, although they have no right of abode there. Given that Ascension has one of the longest runways in the world, does my noble friend consider that it is worth negotiating with the Americans to make sure that we can get commercial flights into and out of Ascension Island, which would be of great benefit to a lot of St Helenans who live there? Is it worth revisiting the issue of right of abode on Ascension Island?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, we do work closely with the Americans. My noble friend is right: we use the airport on Ascension Island. But, if we are going to uplift the economy of St Helena, it is right and proper that we continue to work to ensure that we find a solution for St Helena. I am afraid that I will have to come back to my noble friend on the issue of residency.

Health: Ebola

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

As the noble Baroness will of course be aware, it is important that during the crisis we draw on the expertise of all volunteers and experts. We were very fortunate to have volunteers from the UK go out, but we also very much drew on local communities and are now building up their local capacities.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that something that we can do from this country is harness the extraordinary strength of our scientific base, particularly with respect to tropical diseases—in particular, insect-borne diseases such as malaria and Zika, which also threaten people’s livelihoods?

[Baroness Verma]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend. As I said earlier, we are working with other partners in looking at research and the Government are investing a lot more in research to be able to tackle these tropical diseases.