UN Women

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jo Swinson]

We need to do both. We need to make clear our commitment and offer every possible assistance in the swift development of the strategic plan. One of the challenges facing UN Women is to create a range of indicators that can monitor properly what progress is being made on women, peace and security goals. Under the current structure, that will take two years, but that is too long. I know that DFID Ministers have agreed with that, so anything that the Government can do to assist in driving this forward more quickly would be helpful. This is money well spent. Last year’s World Economic Forum global gender report draws a clear correlation: countries with greater gender equality have more competitive economies that grow faster. We need to be very robust about that.

We have moved away from a situation in which war and conflict were about engagement between two sets of armed forces fighting on a particular location. Wars today are characterised by violence directed against citizens and innocent people, particularly women and girls, who get caught up in fighting and unrest. It is important to recognise the role of women not only as victims within conflict, but in reaching across battle lines to call for peace. Africa’s first female head of state, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, commented:

“Women’s contribution to the search for durable peace is remarkable, unparalleled, but most often overlooked”.

In the past 25 years, only one in 40 peace agreement signatories was a woman. UN Security Council resolution 1325, in 2000, captured the essence of women’s contribution to peace. It calls on the international community to live up to its responsibility to include women in conflict prevention, peacebuilding and reconstruction, while protecting human rights during conflict and preventing gender-based violence. As a result of its sister resolution, 1888, we welcome the appointment of the first special representative on sexual violence in armed conflict, Margot Wallstrom, and I understand that she was recently in Parliament and that many Members were able to meet her. She is now leading the investigation into the shocking sexual violence that took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Widespread violence against women and girls continues to fuel conflict and insecurity. It is often framed as unrelated to gender-based violence during peacetime, as if war happens and suddenly this violence erupts. Actually, however, the only difference is the degree to which perpetrators can act with impunity during war owing to the absence of the rule of law. All too often, this violence has been bubbling under the surface during the apparent peace. A shocking statistic is that 87% of Afghan women experience domestic violence and live with that constant insecurity. That only extends the cycle of conflict, violence and marginalisation, so it is important to deal with violence against women not only in conflict, but in apparent peacetime.

The UK was one of the first countries to develop a national action plan on implementing resolution 1325, but we still need to ensure that we have a coherent national plan and policy looking at the issues of women, peace and security.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I am in full agreement with everything that the hon. Lady says. Does she agree that one of the worst forms of violence against women is trafficking, the majority of victims of which are women being trafficked into sex slavery? Does she think that it would be a good idea to sign the EU directive against trafficking?

[Jo Swinson]

There was an exchange about that during Women and Equalities questions. When in opposition, I was one of those arguing strongly for the previous Government to sign the directive, so I would welcome it if this Government could do so, and I look forward to their announcement on the matter with great interest.

Trafficking is clearly a very important issue. However, I would not say that it is one of the worst examples of violence against women. I think that day-to-day violence against women, particularly by partners and husbands, which affects women not just internationally but in this country, is often ignored or swept under the carpet, so I welcome the Government’s plan to raise, and campaign on, sexual consent issues in order to deal with those problems, particularly among teenagers. The role of the education system cannot be overestimated. In particular, I know that there is a move within the Government not to require schools to adopt as mandatory any parts of the curriculum that are not absolutely necessary. I would argue that sex and relationships education, particularly emphasising the importance of sexual consent, is vital and should be in the education system.

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[Mr MacShane]

I am following my hon. Friend’s argument closely. This is not just about fair trade. Some 30 years ago, I was working in Malaysia and visited the factories of multinationals including Bosch and Motorola, all of which were full of women making products such as car radios. Actually, those women were being liberated from the patriarchal oppression of village peasant existence, but many of the liberal and left community around the world say, “Oh no, they’re being exploited.” Does my hon. Friend agree with Joan Robinson of the London School of Economics, who said there’s only one thing worse for a woman than being exploited by a multinational, and that is not being exploited by a multinational?

[Kate Green]

I am sure my right hon. Friend would not wish to suggest that there is a continuum of exploitation and a point on that continuum at which women—or, indeed, men—ought to be satisfied to find themselves located. He raises an important issue about the relative roles women perform in paid work and the domestic sphere.

The economic justice questions that we are discussing are not just challenges for developing economies; they are a challenge for us here in the UK too. As we know, here in the UK women struggle to balance caring responsibilities with paid employment. The majority of child care is still undertaken by women, and although many men fulfil caring roles, it is women who are most likely to drop out of paid employment when they start to have caring responsibilities. Many male carers perform their caring responsibility alongside paid work however, and as a result do not suffer the same degree of economic disadvantage.

In recent years, the debate about the appropriate balance and recognition we should give to paid work, domestic responsibilities and caring responsibilities has become distorted, and we need to revisit that. That is not in order to trap women back in the domestic sphere, but to open up a debate about the value we should give to the caring role, and to make sure our societal structures properly recognise that role and offer both women and men a genuine choice about participating in paid work and wanting, and needing, to take time to fulfil domestic responsibilities. That is not an argument that, when I was as a young feminist in the 1980s, I would have believed I would have heard myself making. However, as I have watched that choice for women squeezed out by successive male-led Governments of both the left and the right, I have to say that a gender issue is a choice issue, and choice and economic independence go hand in hand.

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[Nicola Blackwood]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and I share her deep concern that women’s rights in Afghanistan may be seen as a cost that can be taken on board in order to achieve peace. I also share her belief that such peace would be unsustainable and would lead to a descent back into conflict.

Everything I have been describing means that the fact that the new head of UN Women, Michelle Bachelet, has named women, peace and security as one of her focus areas is highly significant. UNIFEM never had the status or the budget to keep the issue effectively on the UN agenda. The role that Michelle Bachelet manages to carve out for UN Women will, therefore, make or break the future of women’s participation in peacebuilding. The challenges she faces are manifold: she has to attract sufficient funding; she must navigate her way through the impenetrable UN bureaucracy; she must negotiate the web of inter-agency allegiances and territorial claims; and, perhaps most importantly, she must prove herself, through sheer force of personality, as a leader to be reckoned with in the constellation of UN actors.

[Mr MacShane]

Is the hon. Lady aware that, according to a parliamentary answer I received this morning, we will give more than £1 billion to India in the next four years under our development aid heading, despite India having more millionaires and billionaires than we have? I am not against India in any way, but it is rather odd that our allocation of money for international work has so far excluded any UK funding for the very agency that the hon. Lady is so rightly praising.

[Nicola Blackwood]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I shall move on to funding issues soon.

If Under-Secretary-General Bachelet and UN Women cannot achieve the formation of the role that is needed for the organisation, and cannot do so quickly, they will have no hope of beginning to challenge the entrenched gender inequalities that are so prevalent in conflict and post-conflict scenarios. Women’s participation in countries that are now hanging in the balance, such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia—to name an obvious few—will fall back off the agenda at the Security Council and elsewhere. UN Women will have proved to be a useful panacea—a rhetorical device that represents the form of action without the power or the outcomes. On the other hand, if UN Women achieves the formation of that role—there is every hope that it will do so—that might prove to be a turning point and a crucial advance in the argument that peacebuilding and conflict-prevention policies that do not involve women at all levels are fatally weakened and undermine the progress on global stability objectives.

As a historical leader on women, peace and security issues on the international stage, the UK is of course pivotal in whether UN Women sinks or swims. I am glad to see that the coalition Government have signalled in action as well as words their continuing commitment to the resolution 1325 agenda. Central to that commitment are the appointment of the Minister for Equalities as a 1325 champion and the Government’s national action plan to implement 1325, published in November. That plan is a significantly more sophisticated document than its predecessor and includes a robust monitoring mechanism that includes a formal process for reporting to Parliament. That is welcome. I look forward to playing my part in the all-party group in holding the Government to account on their delivery of that plan and its adaptation to developing international situations.

The UK has further opportunities to offer the international leadership necessary to ensure that UN Women lives up to its potential. I shall mention just two. First, the Government’s building stability overseas strategy is being formulated by the FCO and DFID and is intended to set out the Government’s plans for addressing overseas conflict in the future. Given events in Libya, I would say that it is becoming ever more urgent that women, peace and security perspectives should be embedded in that plan, not as an afterthought or box-ticking exercise but as an integral part of the Government’s approach to conflict prevention and resolution.

Secondly, in order for UN Women to achieve its stated aims, which dovetail perfectly with UK foreign and international development policy, it needs UK funding. It is reasonable to wait for the strategic results plan in June before committing a specific amount, but I would like to make a couple of general points on that. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department for International Development, has said that DFID requires

“a strategic plan that sets out a clear results framework outlining targets and expected impact.”—[Official Report, 3 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 596W.]

Will the Minister tell me whether DFID is working with the team that is developing the strategic results plan at UN Women to ensure that it is aware of DFID’s priorities and the criteria for funding?

The amount needs to be appropriate to UN Women’s remit. The United Nations Development Programme’s 2010 budget was $5 billion; UNICEF’s was $3 billion. To play in that ballpark, UN Women needs a budget of at least $1 billion. This is not just about status, although that does matter in setting UN-wide priorities; it is about capacity. DFID’s review of multilateral aid, published last week, stated explicitly that UNIFEM had failed adequately to address gender inequality issues specifically due to “constrained resources”. If UN Women is to have the impact necessary to challenge entrenched gender abuses and inequalities, it needs a reach similar to that of UNICEF.

The UN has set a minimum funding target of $500 million for UN Women, but so far only $55 million has been pledged. The UK has the opportunity to lead the way in funding UN Women. Given the exact correlation between the coalition Government’s stated foreign and international development policy goals and the strategy set out so far by Under-Secretary-General Bachelet, that seems to me like a win-win situation.

In the words of the Nigerian permanent representative to the UN and president of the UN Women executive board,

“no one can run fast on one foot.”

A security agenda that thinks it can do without women’s participation has been a limping beast. Let us hope that UN Women can start being part of the remedy. Let us hope that we can begin to meet our commitments on protection and participation of women in conflict. Let us agree once and for all that these women are far from simply passive victims. They are in fact powerful agents of change and no less than the missing link in our peacekeeping policy.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Three or four years ago, I was at a NATO parliamentary conference where they had the usual list of speakers. The Foreign Minister from Georgia made a Government speech that was fairly moderate and not very exciting or controversial. The next speaker was the leader of the Russian delegation, who said, “In my country, we have a saying that there are two things you cannot have a discussion or a debate with: a woman and a radio set.” That kind of approach might still be prevalent. In this debate, if I may say so—this is in no way meant to be patronising—the quality of the speeches from all the new Members who were elected in May and who sit on both sides of the House has been absolutely outstanding. I hope that those speeches are career-enhancing interventions, urging former bosses to spend a little more on UN Women’s work. I wish well all the hon. Members who have spoken.

I want to comment briefly on one issue of women’s rights: the question of trafficking. We have focused a lot on what the UN should do and what we might do in Afghanistan and the Congo, and I support all that, but supporting women can also begin at home. There is a major trafficking problem in this country, as there is internationally.

The figures are difficult to get hold of at times. I got into terrible trouble a year or so ago, because in a debate during the last Session I quoted the Daily Mirror, which in turn was quoting a Home Office research study, saying that up to 25,000 women had been trafficked into the UK. That was pounced on by those great defenders of women’s rights, the BBC’s “Newsnight” programme and The Guardian. Articles were run and there were debate sessions on “Newsnight” in which Jeremy Paxman attacked me as if I were some wretched Government Minister, and it was said that all those figures were invented and that there was no problem with trafficked women. A lady from the English Collective of Prostitutes said that all prostituted women were happily working without any obligation. That kind of blind refusal by the liberal left of our community is matched by the fact that too many of our officials—it was as bad under the previous Government as it is under the coalition Government—refuse to accept the need for effective policing and intervention on the issue of trafficking.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

In the light of some of the earlier discussion about domestic violence, does my right hon. Friend agree about the importance of using law and enforcement in trafficking, as we have done in domestic violence? That provides clarity about what is right and wrong. When I was first involved in work on domestic violence, I found that people did not treat it as a crime, so there were not many prosecutions.

[Mr MacShane]

I entirely agree. There was a very good three-part series on trafficking on Channel 4 last autumn, narrated by Helen Mirren. It was interesting to see that not a single male using the services of trafficked sex slaves was held, questioned or even put in front of some minor magistrate’s court by the police. As was the case with domestic violence, we need the moral exemplary publicity provided by convictions or court cases. Until men have to face their responsibilities for the use of trafficked women, we will not make real progress.

[Naomi Long]

I take heed of the right hon. Gentleman’s warning about statistics, but the Home Office currently estimates that about 4,000 women have been trafficked into the UK and the sex industry. We have talked about wanting the Government to sign up to the EU directive on human trafficking and I add my voice to that call. Does he agree that it would help if the Government, when dealing with the sexual enslavement of women, were willing to tackle demand by criminalising the purchase of sexual services, which would protect trafficked women and others?

[Mr MacShane]

I agree with the hon. Lady. That figure of 4,000 was produced by one report last autumn and has been fairly comprehensively rubbished by many experts in the field. We do not know the figures. Our former colleague, Anthony Steen, the chairman of the Human Trafficking Centre, has said that he has spoken to senior police officers who know of 2,300 brothels in London. He said:

“They reckoned that 80 per cent of those working there were from abroad, and they estimated that 4,000 were trafficked. And that was just in London. My view is that the national figure is probably in excess of 10,000.”

After a long campaign for which I pay tribute to a collection of women Ministers, including the then Home Secretary and Attorney-General, some of whom are still with us and some of whom are now outside the House, the previous Government made a small amendment to criminal legislation saying that it is a crime to pay for sex with a woman who has been trafficked or coerced. To my knowledge, however, there has not been a single prosecution for that crime so far. We have been able to curtail kerb crawling by taking photographs of kerb crawlers’ cars, publishing their registration numbers and in some cases putting them in front of magistrates. That is the only language that abusers of sex slave trafficked women understand.

Some of our newspapers have adverts in the back for massage parlours and brothels.

[Mrs Grant]

rose—

[Mr MacShane]

I was not going to take another intervention because of this funny rule we have, but the hon. Lady made such a wonderful speech, so how could I refuse?

[Mrs Grant]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman and will keep my intervention short. Will he say a little more about the fact that many of those who are trafficked are very young children and that young women leaving the care system are also involved—not just immigrants?

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[Mr MacShane]

Had I more time, I would love to go into those issues. The official body in charge of these issues has noted that a large number of Asian girls and, sadly, a surge of Vietnamese girls are being trafficked into the UK, and that several dozen leave and disappear from care, particularly local authority care. That is one of the themes that I shall be pursuing in my parliamentary work this Session.

I earnestly appeal to Ministers—we have two outstanding Ministers on the Front Bench, who really care about this issue—to send us some hope and allow a little ray of sunshine to penetrate the gloomy clouds of South Yorkshire, whence I must return shortly, and to shine upon the Liberal Democrats’ conference in Sheffield, so that their leader can rise to his feet and say from the platform tomorrow, “I may be known locally as the Sheffield fraudmaster, but I persuaded the Prime Minister to change our policy on the EU trafficking directive and I can announce that Britain will be signing it.” Then some of us might be prepared to forgive the Liberal Democrats for many of their current sins.

I should like to quote the Archbishop of York. In a powerful intervention late last year, he said:

“Sex trafficking is nothing more than modern-day slavery. This is women being exploited, degraded and subjected to horrific risks solely for the gratification and economic greed of others. I am therefore stunned to learn that the Government are opting out of an EU directive designed to tackle sex trafficking.”

I get down on my knees to the Archbishop of York.

In considering the treatment of women around the world, there is a big problem with whether we are prepared to be brave enough to say that some of the classic religions of the world and their political expressions are deeply inimical to women’s rights. I shall put it no more strongly than that, but I refer to practices such as forced marriage and the fact that we have just had a terrible riot in Egypt in which a Christian Coptic church was burned down. Why? It was because a Christian boy fell in love with a Muslim girl, whose parents felt that her honour had been abused and so they had the right to go and kill someone. Then they were killed and the reaction was to burn down a church that had been there for hundreds of years and insist that a mosque be built in its place. Unless we say, within our communities to our Muslim friends in Britain, that we have to consider the role of religion today in oppressing women, we will not make much progress.

Finally, I want us to look again at the degradation of women, their commodification into sex objects and the fact that men and young boys now think it quite normal to fly to Baltic states or to east Europe for a weekend of going from one sex parlour to another. The situation has changed utterly and this kind of new approach from young men has arrived in recent years. There is a notion that legalising prostitution would somehow make things better, but where that exists in Nevada, university students say that one cannot rape a prostitute. These are difficult areas that go to the heart of masculine and male concepts of women and their rights. Unless we are prepared to tackle those concepts—and I strongly welcome the tone of the contributions to the debate—I fear that in three or four years’ time we will not have made the progress that the House wishes to make.

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[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

As one of those who made the pitch to the Backbench Business Committee for this debate, I am grateful to the Committee for agreeing to hold it in the Chamber. The fact that there was some resistance to the proposal reminds us that we have to be ever-vigilant and ever alert in fighting for women’s equality. We should not take things for granted. We have won a great deal. Compared with our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, our lives have been transformed. Nevertheless, we need to be careful; we should not sit back and assume that everything will carry on smoothly.

The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) spoke of the need to encourage women to take up representative roles. It is not always enough simply to set up mechanisms.

[Mr MacShane]

Is my hon. Friend aware that two weeks ago my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) spoke at the Newcastle university international development conference, where the majority of participants were women? There were fabulous workshops on how we can help women overseas and I am glad to report that all the members of the organising committee were women—I must confess an interest; one of them was my daughter.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. Women have obviously proved that they can organise things and be very effective.

The party organisation in my city recently held a training event for people it wanted to encourage to stand as council candidates. Those who came, both men and women, were given information on what being a councillor involves. At the end of the meeting, a number of women came up to the organiser and said how daunted they were and that they doubted whether they would be able to do the job, but virtually all the men went away thinking that they could do the job easily.

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[Jane Ellison]

I certainly do agree, because this is happening not only in the developing world but here in our country—in this city and in my constituency.

In the developing world, trying to ensure that girls are able to take educational and economic opportunities is absolutely vital, and challenging social norms by having locally led solutions is proving more effective. One of the findings has been that more educated and less poor girls will grow up to be women who are less likely to subject their own daughters to this procedure.

My hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) drew our attention to the fact that this terrible practice is a problem not just in the developing world, but that it is also a problem for many countries in the developed world. Here in London, the number of reported cases of FGM has risen in recent years. These awful procedures are happening in this city, and in other UK cities as well. A clinic at a major London teaching hospital sees about 350 such women and girls a year, often with horrible complications. The Metropolitan police have intervened in more than 120 cases since 2008, but despite this practice having been illegal for many years, as we have heard, there has been not one prosecution. The police often put this down to the problems of trying to get people to give evidence in very difficult situations and not being sure that they can secure such a prosecution if they bring it to court.

While refraining from judgment may be more likely to effect change in the developing world, we cannot refrain from judgment when such mutilation is happening in our own country. We have to be clear and robust in saying that it is a crime in our country, and that no excuses can be offered. The Met have been very clear about this.

[Mr MacShane]

May I put it to the hon. Lady, first, that the police are sincere in these investigations, but are hampered by other priorities and other areas where they feel they have to work? Secondly, if the police, the authorities and the doctors know that this crime is happening, perhaps we need to look at the court and evidence system, which prevents any sanction or any message going out into the community, at least in Britain, to say: “You should not be doing this.” I am thinking of a version for sexual crimes, including rape, of the Diplock courts that we set up in Northern Ireland. That may sound illiberal, but we really need to tackle this with convictions that can then be publicised in the newspapers, sending a signal to these communities that it has got to stop.

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[Mr O’Brien]

I am aware of that problem. We are talking to a series of international partners very urgently; indeed, one of my ministerial colleagues is not far from the region at the moment, and I know that he is seized of the issue. As the right hon. Lady has intervened, I add that I thought her comments on the position of women and girls in Egypt were very powerful. She talked about working through partners throughout the middle east and north Africa, as well as the importance of constitutionality in underpinning rights. Her reference to the testimony of Nawal El Saadawi made a deep impact on the House.

Speaking of impacts on the House, I turn now to the tremendous speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant). It was truly moving. I think we all felt that she not only fully understands domestic violence but is able to try to see round the corner as to how we can truly tackle it in all its abhorrence and inexcusability. In the course of her inspiring speech, I was particularly touched by her reference to the first women’s refuge being set up in Carlisle. By complete coincidence, I am familiar with that because my own mother has had an involvement in helping and assisting it through the nursing profession. I pay tribute to that wonderful institution, which my hon. Friend’s mother was so instrumental in founding.

My hon. Friend was right to show how important it is to understand the connection with education in affecting the attitudes and behaviours of boys and girls alike in being able to make progress. I felt—as, I am sure, did the whole House—that in speaking about women and girls in the United Kingdom, she spoke for girls and women around the world.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) and the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) spoke with a background in VSO, which has been terribly instrumental for many people who have had the opportunity to work abroad. They made some important points about leadership and ensuring that we allow testimony to inform policy and follow recommendations, whether from the Conservative Human Rights Commission or the Godmothers campaign.

The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow said that she had been born abroad. I share that experience, having also been born abroad. These things give one an insight, whatever the circumstances, into some of the issues that take us a long way from our own setting and our own experience, and that can only be useful, we hope. I will of course return to the resourcing of UN Women, which has been a feature of many of the speeches.

The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) made a very powerful and deeply passionate and committed speech. I respect her for her views and her experience in raising these issues. She talked about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and about her wish to see how we can drive forward this agenda—how we hold people’s feet to the fire and really influence things. That is what lay behind her amendment. I promise to cover that properly when I get to the substance of my prepared remarks.

The hon. Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran) made an important point about access to education, which is so restricted at the moment in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) illuminated the issue with an enjoyable, anecdotal speech. Above all, she made the significant point that girls must be encouraged to have the confidence, as early as possible, to speak up. That will so often carry them through in later years to break through many of the ceilings and barriers that have been put in their way, and further the cause.

The right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) made an important contribution on trafficking and made a number of interventions. Above all, he asked how we can monitor the progress of the new law to ensure that it has the desired effect. He said that there is some evidence that the very nature of prosecution could lead to some people not presenting the problem in the first place. That evidence is still very uncertain, which is why it is important that we keep a close eye on how it can be monitored. However, the cause is unarguable.

The testimony of the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) made it clear that when women are given a full chance, they surface everywhere on merit. It is vital to recognise above all that it is only false barriers and discrimination that keep people back.

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) drew the important conclusion that we should be vigilant in ensuring not only that people have access to paid work, but that the caring role has a value, particularly in relation to children. That point was picked up by my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) in his passionate speech and his testimony of what he saw on the front line as a soldier. It is vital that the role of carers and lone parents is central in this argument.

My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) touched on an issue that is always difficult to raise in this House, but that it is vital we give a proper hearing to, and that is the absolute abomination of female genital mutilation. I witnessed this issue last year when I visited the hospital in Bo in Sierra Leone. About 82% of the women in Sierra Leone have suffered genital mutilation. It is important to find champions in the older generation of women to help to ensure that younger girls are not subjected to it and to break the cultural expectation, which is driven by the totality of the family, rather than just the men. There are also serious cases of women dying of fistula, which is part of the problem. Going to the fistula clinic in Bo is obviously harrowing, but equally, it is an inspiration for all who are passionate about making the right decisions for development and about driving for results that will make a difference.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) for raising the work of the Marlborough Brandt Group in Gunjur in south-eastern Gambia. Although she credited the Department for International Development with funding it, I had yet to become familiar with it. She said it was important to root our efforts to empower women in the recognition that we must focus on women and young girls.

The next in this series of outstanding speeches that I will react to is that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), who gave a balanced speech, despite saying at one point that men were untrainable. She talked about the Barefoot college, which trains women in solar electrification systems that can supply villages with electricity off-grid, and said that 97 villages had trained their own women. I must confess that solar electrification is an area in which I am certainly an untrainable man. That said, it was a powerful example of precisely how we should be thinking.

My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) raised the difficult but important issue of how it can be acceptable for the Olympic games to have a culture whereby women from Saudi Arabia are not eligible to take part. I undertake to have discussions with the Minister for Sport and the Olympics and to ensure that we come back with a considered response on that important issue, which is about the fundamental right of women not only to enjoy and participate in sport, but to be able to participate in all competitions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) encouraged us to sign up wholeheartedly to all the UN initiatives and to what UN Women is doing, and he rightly encouraged us to have more women in Parliament. He also focused on how to deliver results, which is totally consonant with the approach that DFID has taken in the reviews of our bilateral and multilateral programmes. The results of Lord Ashdown’s humanitarian and emergency response review will be announced shortly, when he has concluded it.

We also heard from the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil)—I think I have pronounced that more or less correctly. I had to go on holiday to South Uist last summer to ensure that I had mastered the constituency’s name.

[Mr MacShane]

Say it again.

[Mr O'Brien]

Na h-Eileanan an Iar, I think it is. I will have to take a sip after that.

[Mr MacShane]

I hope that’s water.