Commonwealth

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Flather (CB)]

My Lords, we have had a very interesting afternoon. We have heard a variety of speeches on a variety of issues. First, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for the comprehensive way she introduced the debate. I do not think she left anything out in her opening speech.

We almost always have a debate on the Commonwealth every year. Some of it is the same as ever because obviously the issues do not go away so we have to remind ourselves of them. I was very pleased to hear the support for the new Secretary-General, who has been a good friend to many of us. One of the newspapers said she was very greedy because she was asking for the same pay as the former Secretary-General. Is that greedy? Should she accept lower pay just because she is a woman? Somebody else said she was spending so much money doing up the flat but she says it was started beforehand. That is not in the papers. Nobody says that the works had started before she took office. These are the issues that even in our society women have to face.

That reminds me of women—not that I ever forget women. I am pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, spoke about women. She spoke more about the leadership role of women. I have noticed how many Prime Ministers and leaders who are women do not focus on the needs of their sisters. It is very sad because they have to fight their way and they have to fight all the people around them, and are not terribly well supported in their roles. Certainly, if I go back to Mrs Gandhi, she did not do anything at all for women. Mrs Thatcher did more than people know but there are many women leaders and Prime Ministers who have done nothing for women.

My focus is always on the poorest women. Yesterday the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and I were at a conference on Nigeria. I said, “The women in Nigeria do three-quarters of the work and you give them nothing. They get nothing at all for that”. The people there did not say, “No, no, they do not do three-quarters”. Actually, I could have said they do almost all the work but I thought that would be a bit over the top, but they do. They do agricultural work and all kinds of other work and there is no return for them, and they are controlled totally by the men. They do not have any money, position or status.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, said, without the women we cannot have a change in society. Women are the only way to change the nature of society and the nature of society in the developing countries of the Commonwealth is not good—and that includes India. It is amazing. People say, “Oh, but India has so much money”. Yes, India has money but it is not for the people. The money is for the individuals who have money. That is the problem. Maybe Africa has money, I do not know, but it does not go to ordinary people and certainly not to the women. If we want a proper change, we have to start thinking about how to make it possible for women to have a reasonably good life and access to some money.

I have been involved in development issues since I came to this House. Everywhere I have gone, in every project I have seen, women earn a little bit of money; they change, their children change; they send their children to school—everything changes. Their health changes. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, that health is a very important factor. What he said about nurses was extremely valuable. In India, which is a great place for health tourism, nurses are not valued at all. They are treated almost as if they are street women. So even in the professions or jobs where they are badly needed, women are not valued or treated well.

I have to say a word about Bangladesh. I do not know whether the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, will agree but I have been to Bangladesh several times and it does better than India on every tick-box. It does better on food security, health, education and family planning—in fact, very much better on family planning. I believe that is because there are so many women in paid work. We always say how dreadful these garment factories are; they are dreadful to an extent but they employ girls and women, who change once they are employed. If they get even a small amount of money, they change and when they do, everything else changes with them. In their families, they do not want to have children or to marry too early. All sorts of things happen.

I was speaking a little earlier today to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Boateng. I said how important it was to have family planning and they both said, “It’ll happen by itself—there’ll be more education and a change in their circumstances”. I do not quite know which circumstances they meant. I am sorry, but we have been saying for 50 years that everything will happen by itself and education will come. No, it is actually longer than 50 years because it was in the 1950s that we started saying, “Don’t worry, education will come and everything will change in developing countries”. Are we not still waiting?

When we have CHOGM next year it is my hope and expectation that we will be clear and straightforward, and not try to pretend that we must not say this or that. We have heard about the treatment of LGBT people. How can we tolerate that? We have to speak out about it. I say frankly that the religious and faith leaders have a real role to play in that. They have a real responsibility and should speak out openly and clearly to the faithful who follow them, but they do not. They are always a little ambivalent about it and they should not be.

We should not be ambivalent about issues which are extremely important and clear. We should not be ambivalent about the treatment of women, or about the fact that somebody like Zuma can build a huge palace for himself and it is said to be perfectly all right. It is not perfectly all right. What would Nelson Mandela say about Zuma? The value of the currency there has dropped like a stone, while he has this huge palace. There are issues in the Commonwealth which cannot be papered over as if they do not matter. We cannot paper over Mugabe. We ought to try to persuade other countries in Africa to say, “This is not the way to treat people”, when things are so bad. Zuma has now said that white farms are there to be taken. Everything seems to be going the wrong way round and they should not be doing those things.

At CHOGM, we ought to set down exactly what we want to see. It is not just about doing it for them; they have to do it for themselves but we have to help them and point out why. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, also mentioned the rule of law. Nothing can happen in a country—no human rights or anything—if there is no rule of law. You can say, “All right, we have human rights”, but how will you make them happen? You cannot, so the rule of law is very important. I hope noble Lords will make sure that next year it is big on the agenda.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Mobarik (Con)]

My Lords, can I say just how much I have enjoyed listening to today’s debate? I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. It is a reminder of the depth of interest in and support for the Commonwealth in this House. Today’s debate has really done justice to such an important subject. I add my voice to those of other noble lords in paying tribute to my noble friend Lady Anelay for her excellent work as Commonwealth Minister.

This Government are strongly supporting moves to strengthen the UK’s relationship with the Commonwealth ahead of the Commonwealth summit, which we will be hosting next year. The Commonwealth is a truly extraordinary organisation with immense potential for global influence. Its members, large and small, developed and developing, cover more than a quarter of the world’s land mass. They are home to more than 2 billion people, two-thirds of whom are under 30 years old.

Those are staggering statistics. They mean that if the Commonwealth speaks as one voice, the world should listen. This is why the Commonwealth is so important to the UK. It is not only because of our strong cultural ties from the past, which of course matter to us enormously; it is also because of its potential to influence real change in the future. That is why we are investing so much in supporting the development of our fellow member countries: it is a crucial part of our expanded role on the world stage—the Prime Minister’s vision for a truly global Britain.

The Government are intensifying our efforts to end extreme poverty and promote development. Developing Commonwealth countries benefit substantially from UK official development assistance. In 2015, 10 of the top 50 national recipients were Commonwealth countries and total official development assistance to all Commonwealth countries was more than £3.5 billion. We are investing in the future of the Commonwealth. We support the Commonwealth Youth Programme and the Commonwealth of Learning, and provide funding of £23 million to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, which allows young people from Commonwealth developing countries to study and work at UK universities. Furthermore, we have recently agreed to fund a new three-year programme worth more than £33 million for the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation, the Commonwealth Foundation and the Commonwealth of Learning. This is in addition to our assessed annual subscription of £5.4 million. The UK remains the principal contributor to the Commonwealth Secretariat. This means that the UK plays a significant part in supporting the three Commonwealth intergovernmental organisations.

We are also literally looking to the future of the Commonwealth by supporting the work of the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust to reduce avoidable blindness. Through its programmes, almost 50,000 people in Africa have had surgery to save their sight from trachoma, and more than 12 million doses of antibiotics have been distributed to people at risk. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, asked about the trust, and I welcome his recognition of it. As I say, the trust is doing important work to eliminate blindness and I am pleased to say that we are providing £50 million of match funding to deliver such impressive results.

The Commonwealth is also important because of its potential to boost trade. The Prime Minister has been clear that leaving the EU presents an opportunity for Britain to revitalise its role as a great trading nation. Trade is a force for good, one of the most dynamic and transformational in the world. It creates jobs, raises incomes and lifts millions of people out of poverty. We believe that trade and development go hand in hand. Trade is a crucial driver of development because enterprise transforms lives, not just those of individuals but whole families, in particular when it creates jobs for women. That is why development is at the heart of the UK’s approach to international trade. Helping developing countries to grow more quickly, trade more freely and break their dependence on aid, it also helps to build up our partners for the future. It shares wealth and prosperity across the Commonwealth and beyond.

That is why we want to encourage more trade between Commonwealth members. It is one of the reasons why we welcomed the decision to hold for the first time a Commonwealth Trade Ministers meeting and why we took the opportunity to co-host it here in London. This is a crucial moment to renew our partnerships with Commonwealth countries and to further strengthen those close relationships we already enjoy. We should all be making more of the comparative advantage of trading within the Commonwealth. I am delighted that there was consensus at the meeting on the need to boost trade.

In response to the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, I say that leaving the EU means that we will want to make our own decisions about how to deliver policy objectives previously targeted by EU funding. We will be consulting closely with stakeholders to ensure that any ongoing funding commitments best help the world’s poorest and deliver value for money. I agree with the noble Earl that the CDC Group, which was formerly the Commonwealth Development Corporation, is an important way of delivering tangible support to developing countries. Since 2012 the CDC Group has invested only in Asia and Africa, but its portfolio of more than £3 billion covers 1,200 companies in 70 countries, and in 2015 these companies created more than 1 million jobs.

[Baroness Flather]

My Lords, the CDC Group has paid a great deal of money to Narayana Health, a corporate health provider in India, but everything I have found out about it indicates that it is a very rich organisation. If it is creating jobs in India, that is not the way to do it. If it can help people who cannot afford healthcare, it is not doing it.

[Baroness Mobarik]

I think the noble Baroness has raised this question in a previous debate. Perhaps I should write to her to clarify our position on that issue.

My noble friends Lord Popat and Lord Sheikh rightly recognised the important role played by our trade envoys in delivering our vision for a truly global Britain, particularly in enhancing our relationships with Commonwealth partners. I commend my noble friend Lord Popat for his personal work as trade envoy to Uganda and Rwanda since January 2016. I know that he has built strong links with both countries. The Department for International Trade has recently undertaken a review of the trade envoy programme and recommendations on its future direction are now with the Prime Minister.

The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, and my noble friend Lord Goodlad raised the issue of pensions. Uprating state pensions overseas is a long-standing policy of successive Governments. This has been the case for almost 70 years and there are no plans to change the policy.

To my noble friend Lord Sheikh I say that we are proud of our long and productive relationship with Commonwealth partners and are committed to delivering a future border system which welcomes investment and promotes prosperity. The precise arrangements for controlling immigration after the UK leaves the EU have yet to be determined. Openness to international talent will remain one of the UK’s distinctive assets.

The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, mentioned the importance of embedding women’s rights in all future trade deals. I reassure the noble Baroness that the Government, through their delivery of a successful Commonwealth summit and their wider trade policy, are committed to building genuinely inclusive prosperity that benefits and provides opportunities for all. We welcome the opportunity for dialogue on human rights and good governance brought about by our close trading partnerships with countries around the world.

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Flather (CB)]

My Lords, everybody has expressed delight at the election of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, to the post of Secretary-General. I am sorry but I have to do the same. I like to think that it is good to have friends in high places. I hope that the noble and learned Baroness will be very successful.

I think that I have spoken in every Commonwealth debate that the noble Lord, Lord Luce, has initiated. It is wonderful that he keeps on bringing these debates to your Lordships’ House, thus giving us the opportunity to think about the Commonwealth more seriously than we normally do. Once again, I thank him for that.

We were so delighted that CHOGM had a women’s meeting—we should be delighted, because it was the first time. It has even been said that there should be a women’s meeting every time CHOGM takes places. Can you think, though, of a men’s meeting where women do not attend? We have a women’s meeting where the men do not attend. Who holds the power? Who holds the decision-making? It is the men, but they do not attend the women’s meeting—they do not listen to what women have to say about the issues that concern them. This bothers me greatly.

I believe it is the first time that there has been more general agreement between all the attendees that they will do something about climate change. It is really amazing that there was an agreement. When, however, do we think they will have an agreement about working on violence against women or about population and access to family planning? The Commonwealth does not have to fall in with Saudi Arabia, which is not part of the Commonwealth. Nor does the Commonwealth have to fall in only with Catholics. There are Catholics within it and they do not have to practise family planning, but it should be available to everyone else. I wonder whether it will ever happen.

On a previous occasion, I said that, without rule of law, nothing can change in a country. We have to think about that. Corruption is endemic, we all know that. It will not go away just by our waving a little piece of paper saying, “We will tackle corruption”. I am from India and, although I have lived here more years than I lived in India, I know India well because I go there every year. Corruption is endemic and I do not know what the present prime minister is doing. So far, there is no sign of anything except that people come to work on time. That is the only thing that anybody has noticed.

We have laws on the treatment of women. Somebody mentioned about making them work—they do not work, nobody bothers about the laws. Women suffer all the way through. Unless we deal with the needs of half of the population of developing countries, we cannot be called civilised.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Flather (CB)]

My Lords, I will focus on international development, but before I start I would like to say how much I enjoyed the opening given by the noble Earl, Lord Howe. It was his usual thoughtful, well-considered opening and it is good to see him in a new role. Perhaps he will not be on the Front Bench every day I come into the Chamber, as he was in the previous Session. I think he got a bit tired.

I would also like to say how much I associate myself with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Helic. I feel very much in a similar position to her, although I came to this country much earlier and not from an area that was badly damaged or treated badly. This country has been good to me. I have enjoyed living here and I cannot now imagine living anywhere else. I am glad she said that and I absolutely agree that this is a country where you can make your own life. You do not have to be given it, you can do it yourself. Another noble Baroness across the Chamber is shaking her head.

I turn now to not so pleasant things. The topic is international development, but it is really about 1 billion people—women—who are not remembered. In India and Africa, and maybe in one or two other, smaller areas, you will find that there are 1 billion women altogether. The lives they lead are really not imaginable by people who live in this country. I use the word “imaginable” advisedly, because their lives are unbelievably horrible. They have no status. They are not even treated as human beings. If they get ill, people wait for them to die because it is so much easier if they die, because then they get another woman who is stronger and younger. It is really time for us to start focusing on the situation of women. We cannot change anything through international development unless we change the lives of women.

We have allowed this to go on and we have allowed the lack of family planning to go on. The population of the world is burgeoning. Have we not noticed that? Have we not noticed the impact of that? As there is no water and very little food, nearly 8 million children die before they are five years old, and 2.4 million children die when they are just born. This is a world that we should not be accepting. Some 290,000 women die every year in childbirth and still we do not focus on family planning. It has barely made its way into everyday language. People speak about it but they are still a bit edgy or nervous; it is not a subject that you talk about. I went to my local Rotary to talk about women and their situation, and afterwards a number of people said to each other, “We do not really want to hear these things”. No, they do not. Nobody wants to hear these things. A woman in India who gets HIV is not allowed to go to the clinic because then everyone will know that she has HIV, so she is kept in until she dies, or whatever. It is not a good world for women.

With all due respect to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry, it is all right to talk about religion, but what has religion done for women? It has done nothing for them. Catholicism or Islam have positively been bad for women. If women are not allowed to have contraception, then in some areas, especially in Africa where there are so many Catholics, they may have seven, eight or nine children. Three or four of those will die of disease and hunger because the men do not bother. It is the women who have to feed them and find their food. That does not matter to anybody. It does not matter to the bishops. A bishop in Uganda recently said to all his priests, “Tell the women that they are going straight to hell if they use contraception”. This is not the kind of world that we should be living in in 2015.

In 1950, there were 2.7 billion people in the whole world. There are now about 7.25 billion in this world, and the demographics suggest that by 2050 there will be between 9 billion and 10 billion. I know that it is too late to turn the clock back, but we could at least stop it ticking on and on, forwards and forwards, and try to help especially the women who do not really have lives; they are either baby-making machines or just workers. It is said that women do three-quarters of the work but earn 10% of the wages and own 1% of the property in the world. It really is time that our attention is focused, when it comes to development work, on the women. They change very quickly if they are given the opportunity. They learn very quickly. They have nothing, so if you do anything for them they change.

On that note, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, that the garment factories are extremely important to women. Okay, they do not get paid the wages that women earn in this country, but they would have nothing without those garment factories. Please remember that that is all they have. Also, in regard to children working, a poor family cannot manage unless the children work. It is no use trying to be very moral and grand and saying, “Oh no, we do not want children working”. No, tell the companies that employ them that we will buy their goods if they let the children work for five, six or seven hours and give them a good meal. Do not say, “Don’t work”, because families cannot survive and will beg on the streets, which is no better. In fact, it is worse. So there are things happening in the world that we really do not know of.

The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, was the first person to mention women today. I told him, “You mentioned women”, and he said, “I knew that you would, but I was ahead of you”. I am often the only one who talks about women in this Chamber. I was the first person to talk about population connected to climate change. What are we doing? Okay, everything is going to change if we do not do this or do not do that, but if the number of people keeps on increasing, the climate will keep on changing. It is a self-evident fact; if you have 7 billion-plus bodies, it is not going to be the same as having 2.7 billion bodies.

Let us, therefore, start really looking at the elephant in the room and start working on population. Bill Gates, who spends the money perhaps of a small country’s GDP, says that he wants to eradicate malaria. That is wonderful, but every time he goes to eradicate malaria, there will be that big tranche of children who we will not have vaccinated. If he put his money towards family planning instead of malaria, we would see much better results than he thinks are made in respect of malaria.