Queen’s Speech

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I declare three interests, as a trustee of the Disasters Emergency Committee, chair of Malaria No More UK and co-chair of the cross-party group Peers for the Planet.

Two important international meetings will take place this year. The first is the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali in June. Alongside CHOGM, there will be a summit on malaria and neglected tropical diseases to assess progress and stimulate action on the objective, set in 2018, to halve malaria in the Commonwealth by 2023. Achievement of that target would make a critical contribution to the bold ambition, laid out in last year’s Lancet commission report, to eliminate malaria entirely by 2050.

So I welcome the Minister’s words about the Government’s commitment to malaria. I hope that his noble friend can confirm, in winding up, that the UK will maintain its current level of investment in malaria at least until 2023 and use its final months as Chair-in-Office of the Commonwealth to persuade other countries to intensify their own efforts. I hope, too, that she will take on board the wise words of my noble friend Lord Jay of Ewelme, and others, about the importance of maintaining a strong and independent Department for International Development.

The meetings of CHOGM in Kigali and COP26 in Glasgow are far apart geographically, but the links between global health, international development and climate change are close and compelling. The WHO has warned of the risk of a 15% increase in malaria cases over 20 years because of climate change. Some of the poorest countries of the world are already experiencing the effects of droughts, floods and threat to the very existence of small island states. Extreme weather events affect rich and poor alike, as the fires in the United States and Australia demonstrate all too clearly.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford eloquently expressed the potentially catastrophic environmental, economic and social effects of the current trajectory, so I welcomed the obviously heartfelt commitment of the Minister in his speech today and Her Majesty’s Government’s commitment to the UK achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. As I said, that is also the target date for the eradication of malaria.

I would love to see both things achieved. I will be 100 in 2050, so if we could speed up the timetable a little, I would be very much in favour of that. But I have to accept that achieving net zero in the UK, even by 2050, will be both complicated and challenging. It will require action not just by government, local and national, but by businesses and academics, citizens and communities, individuals and investors, and even rock bands when they go on tour. This House will have a very important part to play in scrutinising and strengthening relevant legislation and policies.

It will also require political leadership to unite the country in a common cause, and that is the polar opposite of the political climate we have experienced over the last five years. When asked to do their bit, many query why they should even bother when what we as a country can achieve in emission reductions shrinks into insignificance when compared to huge emitters such as China and India and the obduracy of leaders such as Presidents Trump and Bolsonaro.

My response is this: that this country’s contribution will be measured not only in the quantity but in the quality of our response, the quality of our imagination and innovation—from power generation to food production, to the harnessing of pension funds to support a new green economy—and the ability, the quality, of our leadership to provide tools that can be adapted and scaled up by others across the world. In this context, I very much welcome the initiatives by the Prince of Wales and Prince William to stimulate and reward such innovation.

There are reasons for optimism as well as fear about the future, but that optimism will be justified only if we recognise the urgency and scale of the challenge and embrace the need for comprehensive, coherent and collective action.