International Women’s Day

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to celebrate the achievements of women and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Shields, for her part in this. Today, I shall talk about sportswomen in the UK who, through their determination, skill and personality have blazed a trail of success and equality, nationally and internationally, and have empowered girls and women in doing so. Sport used to be a much more male-dominated activity. This has improved due to women themselves, to the encouragement of Governments and organisations set up to encourage women to do sport, and to specific initiatives. I shall discuss some of these today. Even some sports which were once dominated totally by men have become female orientated, such as rugby and boxing. We are not totally successful in providing examples of good practice but the drive is there.

Before I go on I want, like the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, to pay tribute to my friend and cricketing comrade Lady Heyhoe Flint. I had the honour of welcoming her into your Lordships’ House after her maiden speech. We were on opposite sides, both in cricket and politically. We got on, we had jokes and we respected each other. Rachel was an example of providing global inspiration through her sports and also through her enterprising leadership in boardrooms. Her record was quite extraordinary: an England international in both cricket and hockey and honorary life member of the MCC, that male bastion. As captain of England between 1966 and 1976, she never lost a match. She had a magnificent test batting average.

She was not only a great sportswoman but a great charity fundraiser: president of the Lady Taverners, of which I am a member, and which raises funds to enable young disabled people to play sport. She was, remarkably, a director of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club and a board member of the England and Wales Cricket Board, one of the first two women to be so. In the House of Lords as a Conservative Peer, she was influential in regulating ticketing, among other things. She was very funny, a great after-dinner speaker and not always, I am glad to say, terribly well behaved. Rachel was a phenomenon whose legacy is not only her influence on girls in sport but in encouraging women to continue their careers working with sporting institutions. She would be sad to know that a recent report by Women in Sport shows that the FA, the RFU and the England and Wales Cricket Board are at risk of losing government support because they do not employ enough women in senior positions.

This is not just about statistics or meeting targets, it is about understanding that women contribute positively to boards in all fields—in industry, business, charities, sport and so on. I think that it is essential to have women on boards, as has been proved by research. More than 7.2 million women now play sport and do regular physical activity. The campaign by Sport England called This Girl Can has enabled the gender gap, which once stood at more than 2 million, to narrow to 1.55 million. Yet there is more work to do. When asked, 13 million women said they would like to participate more in sport, yet just over 6 million of them are not currently active. The organisation Women in Sport champions the right of women and girls to participate in sport from the field of play to the boardroom.

The Women’s Sports Trust focuses on using the power of sport to accelerate gender equality and stimulate social change. The Muslim Women’s Sports Foundation works with the Government, sports bodies and the sports industry to increase the involvement of Muslim women in sport, highlighting role models and increasing participation.

Many organisations encourage women in sport. The England Cricket Board’s Chance to Shine is a hugely successful initiative to encourage children in inner-city schools to play cricket in a quick and interesting way. Since 2005, around 1.5 million girls in state schools have taken up cricket. Women’s cricket has blossomed since England played their first test match in 1934, where they beat Australia 2-0. We are now ranked second in the world. The success of the England women’s team has often been the envy of the men. This year, we hold the World Cup, where we will have such splendid teams as India and Australia.

The 2016 Olympic Games saw Team GB’s best ever performance, with 67 medals. Women won more medals in total than men in the case of 29 countries. There were outstanding performances by women in many areas. In hockey, British women won the first ever gold, were unbeaten in all their games and beat the favourites, Holland, in the final. Did anyone see that marvellous game? It was splendid. I do not have time to go on to talk about athletics, rowing, sailing, equestrian events, gymnastics, boxing and other sports where women thrived. In the Paralympics, Team GB won 147 medals, 85 for women, including a remarkable 40 golds.

Magnificent sporting achievements in Britain and elsewhere have an impact globally on women. They are tokens of courage and persistence—of “I can do it”—for women all over the world. To overcome gender inequality, women need confidence, self-esteem and high goals. I think that success in sport, in physical activity, can help boost that confidence and self-esteem and develop ambition. Many girls and women will be proud of those women achievers and proud of their own achievements. Women’s sport has developed and will continue to develop, helping girls and women to achieve the best they can in all aspects of life. I hope that this Government will continue to back sport for women and girls and back gender equality in senior positions to create a new generation of women who aspire and succeed.

Istanbul Convention

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Baroness points to something that both she and the Government would ultimately like to see. I repeat what I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece: we will seek to legislate when the approach to implementing the extraterritorial jurisdiction requirements in England and Wales is agreed and parliamentary time allows.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, as a Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, could I ask the Minister how many conventions of the Council of Europe have been signed but not ratified—I am not asking for details of them—and why not?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I literally cannot answer that at this point because I do not have the figures before me. I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, because I forgot to welcome her to the Front Bench.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, may I push the Minister on similar point to the one that I raised? I asked how many conventions had been signed but not ratified. Will the Minister investigate this and write to me?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I most certainly will. Indeed, on any of the specific questions on this matter that I have not been able to answer, I will write to noble Lords.

EU: Unaccompanied Migrant Children (EUC Report)

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, I was delighted to be part of the excellent Home Affairs Sub-Committee, which conducted this inquiry into unaccompanied migrant children. I pay tribute to the skill and dedication of the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, who chaired the committee. Like her and others, I have not had time to study the government response, which arrived on email at about 5 pm.

Reference has been made to the quality of the evidence we received and to the excellent contributions made by our secretariat and our adviser, Helen Stalford from Liverpool University. It was apparent that many NGOs and other agencies are striving mightily, not only in working with children on the ground, but in publicising the situations that those children face. But as we point out in the report in paragraph 340:

“The admirable work of non-governmental organisations is not a substitute for effective Member State action. The individual Member States should remain ultimately responsible for meeting the needs of unaccompanied migrant children”.

I shall return to this issue later. Much of the evidence we received was disturbing, particularly when we interviewed four young unaccompanied migrants and heard of their experiences. One was clearly still traumatised. During the inquiry and again after our report was published, I looked back on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, with its 54 articles, which of course came into UK law in 1992. I remain shocked that so many of those articles have been contravened during the migrant crisis. The general principles say it all: children should have the right to non-discrimination, the right to be treated in their best interests, the right to life, survival and development, and the right to be heard.

The recent demolition of the Calais camp provides evidence of the continuing disrespect for the rights of the child. As UNICEF and other agencies working on the ground have recently pointed out, a number of children have been forced to sleep rough. After queuing for days, dozens of children seemingly were unable to register and get their official wristbands before registration closed. Children have been left in dangerous situations, vulnerable to smugglers and traffickers.

A question to the Minister today is: what happens now to these children who travel to the UK? The Home Office is to be commended for its efforts but there is much safeguarding to be done. I refer particularly to the guardianship situation, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and others. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has recommended that all unaccompanied and separated children in the UK should have statutory independent guardians, as in Scotland and Northern Ireland. I know that England has trial programmes for trafficked children at three sites, and such a scheme should be rolled out—it has been well evaluated—as soon as possible. Children desperately need this kind of help. Our inquiry discussed the issue of guardianship on many occasions and the children’s agencies that we spoke to were unanimous in their support of it.

I also ask the Minister whether we are ensuring that there are sufficient facilities, such as those for education and health, to cope with the migrant children who will need extra language tuition and extra help with socialising. How will they be helped to integrate? When we asked one young man from Afghanistan who had entered Britain as an unaccompanied migrant what had helped him to integrate, I was surprised when he answered, “Cricket”. I am glad that cricket is so popular in Afghanistan. This chap is a spin bowler—we may need him. The story illustrates that school and community activities can be good facilitators of integration. We need more of them.

Many contentious issues are discussed in the report. Family reunification is a particularly troubling issue across EU member states. In Greece and Italy, for example, children are being denied access to rights and protection. In the UK, we need reassurances about how the children from Calais will be able to access the right to family reunification.

We have seen headlines in much of our press in the last few months about the lack of co-ordinated effort in member states of the EU, and our committee heard similar criticisms from witnesses. I consider this lack of co-ordination to be a serious flaw in dealing with migrants and, in particular, unaccompanied migrant children. Our report makes it clear, at paragraph 334, that the,

“lack of clear structures for involvement by civil society and international organisations at EU and national level risks further diffusing Member States’ responsibility for unaccompanied migrant children”.

We heard from witnesses and read reports of children travelling alone, with the threat of trafficking and abuse. We heard about the squalid conditions they had faced, about them losing siblings on harsh journeys, and about the dreadful conditions they often had to live in, with poor health resources and no education. Some had particular health issues, such as sexually transmitted infections. These children then had to deal with complex legal processes, with challenges to their age, and with uncertainty about their future as they approached 18. Some, not surprisingly, go missing—Europol estimates the figure to be around 10,000; it is probably higher.

The committee was concerned that in the current refugee crisis the Commission and member states seemed to have lost sight of unaccompanied migrant children. These children are somebody’s child or grandchild, and somebody’s brother or sister. They are children and should be treated as such. I hope that this report by the Home Affairs EU Sub-Committee will serve as a call to action. It received a good deal of press coverage and was discussed in media interviews. We raised issues to which all answers have not yet been forthcoming. Maybe they are in the government response, which I look forward to reading. I hope that the concerns expressed by our witnesses and set out in the report will be monitored for action by government and EU member states. This is an enormous EU problem with great challenges. Unless we face those challenges and look for solutions together, across all our nations, we shall let down a generation of children and fail the test of humanitarian concern.

Violence Against Women

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

That is very true. In answer to a question yesterday on stalking, I spoke about the charity which is working with us on that. Furthermore, I had the occasion to visit a team working in the Foreign Office—the Forced Marriage Unit—which is offering advice to those in fear of forced marriage. It is doing excellent work in this area and is very sensitive to the communities to which it is speaking.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

The End Violence Against Women Coalition suggests that children could be encouraged to protest and cope with abuse from peers, adults or the media. Does the Minister agree that schools could play a part in this by developing and delivering programmes that encourage children to develop resilience, self-confidence and knowledge about this issue? Why do the Government not make such programmes statutory in schools?

[Lord Bates]

We have been very clear that we expect sex and relationships education to be taught in all schools. In fact, it is inspected by Ofsted as such. We help the PHSE Association to develop materials for use in the classroom in this area. Of course, there is more that can be done, but it is particularly important that people in schools, who might be the first to hear of instances of domestic violence, have the confidence to know what it is and to report it.