International Development (Gender Equality) Bill
Debate between Guy Opperman and William Cash(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I am extremely grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for calling me to move the Third Reading of this Bill. As you well know, navigating a private Member’s Bill is rather like navigating between Scylla and Charybdis, those mythical sea monsters noted by Homer and experienced by Odysseus on opposite sides of the strait of Messina between Sicily and the Italian mainland. Scylla was a six-headed sea monster on the Italian side of the strait and Charybdis was a whirlpool off the coast of Sicily. I am sure that you will appreciate that in this analogy, Scylla is the Whips and Charybdis the procedural hazards of private Members’ Bills, not to mention the amendments that can scupper such a Bill. I am extremely glad to say that such amendments as were tabled were withdrawn and I am grateful to all those concerned for giving us the opportunity to debate the Bill on Third Reading.
The Bill was originally No. 18 on the list for the private Member’s Bill ballot, so I must admit that when I first proposed it I did not really believe that I would be standing here today. It all arose because—as you will know, Mr Speaker, as the former shadow Secretary of State for International Development—I have taken an active interest in matters of international development for the 27 or so years for which I have been a Member of the House.
Last year and the year before, I had the opportunity to go to India where I noted the incredible work done by women on sanitation and water. I also have the honour to be chair of the all-party group on water and sanitation in the third world, which I set up about five years ago. What struck me was the dignity of the manner in which those wonderful women, who lived on the streets as often as not, would go around and collect money—one or two rupees—from the slums of Delhi and Mumbai and aggregate that into millions of rupees that would then be used to build lavatory facilities that were not available through the municipal authorities. I had also known for many years that in Africa it is women who do much of the down-to-earth small business work in the marketplace and so on, including in the slums of Nairobi and elsewhere. I have therefore always wanted to try to help in this field.
Let me put on record my grateful thanks to the various organisations that have helped with this Bill, particularly the GREAT Initiative, Plan UK, WaterAid UK, with which I have worked very closely for many years, and Voluntary Service Overseas. The net result is that the Bill, which many would have thought had very little chance to begin with, has been greatly boosted by support, particularly from the Secretary of State for International Development who, sadly, cannot be here today. I am extremely grateful to the Minister of State who has come along today to help with the passage of the Bill.
I also want to put on record my great thanks to those on the Public Bill Committee, which went very well, and to the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), who spoke in support of the Bill. I also thank the Deputy Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and our own Prime Minister. On Tuesday, the Prime Minister appeared before a meeting of the Liaison Committee and one of the subjects raised was pertinent to the Bill. I mentioned to him:
“On the United Kingdom’s implementation of international agreements on violence against women and girls, the UN committee recommended that the Government encourage Parliament to implement its international treaty obligations and the recommendations of the UN treaty bodies.”
As he had put great emphasis on the matter during his appearance before the Committee, I asked him whether he thought that the Bill would establish
“a statutory benchmark for other countries”
particularly after 2015, when there will be important developments as regards the millennium development goals, so that
“we will be able to promote the ideas internationally”.
He replied:
“It is an absolute yes, because this is another brick in the wall of the whole argument that this should be the year when we really deliver a massive joined-up agenda on women’s empowerment and women’s equality all across the world. This helps us because the Bill will make Britain have a leading role in examining gender equality before we deploy aid and other resources”.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend accept that when half the population is effectively locked out of a country and prevented from being productive and from pursuing opportunities in education or anywhere else, there is no realistic and sustainable path to proper development?
Mr Cash
I agree that the implementation of the Bill represents a social revolution. The scope of the Bill and the statutory duties it imposes on the Secretary of State, which the Government and the Opposition have voluntarily and willingly accepted, will put more flesh on the bones of the existing policies in legislative terms. As my hon. Friend notes, half the world’s population are women. It seems an obvious thing to say, but it is true.
Let me give one or two examples of the necessity for such a Bill and the basis on which I introduced it, linked to my personal experience—including an article I wrote in The Guardian when I came back from India, in which I said “Eat your heart out, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. I have been there and it is worse than you imagine.” The women deal with the problems on the ground, but they are estimated to account for almost two thirds of the people around the globe who live in extreme poverty. Women perform two thirds of the world’s work and produce 50% of the food but earn only 10% of the income and own only 1% of the property.
At the same time, all around the world, women are not participating in public and political life on equal terms to men or in equal measure. The evidence shows that despite all the great efforts made by the Secretary of State for International Development and the Department over the years, we are still not solving the problem. Only one in five parliamentarians worldwide is a woman, women hold only 17% of ministerial positions and, at a governmental level, women account for only 13 of 193 Heads of Government. Women from poor backgrounds, from rural and indigenous communities and from minority groups are particularly marginalised in decision-making processes and institutions. This is a unique opportunity in the post-2015 process that I described earlier, and the Bill will achieve as much as the British Parliament and the British Government can achieve by imposing a duty within the legislative framework of the international development statutes to put women’s rights at the heart of the international development agenda.
Guy Opperman
My hon. Friend will know that seven colleagues from the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, including my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark), visited the Syrian-Turkish border last weekend and saw the international development assistance that this country is providing on an ongoing basis. Clearly the Bill is prospective, but will it have any retrospective impact, either in law or through the practical application of international aid?
Mr Cash
It will not have legislative retrospectivity, but it will reinforce existing policies by adding a statutory duty, which, as those of us who are familiar with administrative law will know, is what makes it bite. The fact that it will be a legal obligation enhances it beyond mere policy making. My hon. Friend mentions our hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark), who of course is one of the Bill’s sponsors, as indeed is the Chair of the International Development Committee, along with Members from both sides of the House—their names are listed on the back of the Bill. I want to express my gratitude to them for their active support in pursuing these objectives.
Mr Cash
I could not agree more. It is not a regulatory burden at all; it is an amplification by statute of existing policies. It will help to generate self-help, enterprise and productivity in the third world, because it is women who are driving forward the whole market programme and helping to create micro-economic systems of enterprise. It is precisely for that reason that generating all the advantages of enterprise through women in the third world, who do all the work in the marketplaces, in the slums and so forth, will increase all the things that my hon. Friend advocates. He knows, as I do—I certainly advocate those things—how important it is to generate enterprise in those countries, because that will effectively balance the amount of aid that is necessary. The Bill is about providing a means of promoting enterprise, not over-regulation.
Guy Opperman
On that point, it would be a bizarre day indeed if my hon. Friend, who has battled for generations to stop greater regulation, were ever accused of seeking in any way to over-regulate the state. I certainly endorse what he says. Does he agree with the philosopher Jostein Gaarder’s point:
“A state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm”?
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
It is a pleasure and a privilege to speak in this debate. I pay warm tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) for being the seasoned and veteran campaigner that he is. He has battled long and hard to bring this Bill before the House of Commons, and we all wish it Godspeed and good will during its passage here and through the House of Lords.
In preparation for the debate, I looked at an article that my hon. Friend wrote in the New Statesman some time after the visit he mentioned. I must confess that I was surprised, but also delighted, to find him writing in such a modern socialist magazine as the New Statesman.
Guy Opperman
It is often said, is it not, that we all start out as communists, develop into socialists, and ultimately turn into Conservatives?
Guy Opperman
Obviously my hon. Friends on the Front Bench started out more right wing than Genghis Khan, but some of us have had an evolution as we have progressed. It is true to say that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone has evolved, if not in his journalistic practices then certainly in his political practices. It is testament to him and to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) that they are addressing and supporting this issue in the House.
Gender equality is a basic right, and it does not need any economic justification. We can provide an economic justification for it, but we should not even need to go there. It is a harsh fact that women across the world continue to face daily abuse and seclusion for the sole reason that they are women. Any argument that promotes inequality has no place in the 21st century.
I spent last weekend with various colleagues from the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists on the Syrian-Turkish border. There are 600,000 refugees in Turkey at the moment. The British Government are providing international aid—particularly food aid, but also other types of aid that I will mention later—to the refugees, who are based in a variety of camps all across southern Turkey. I have not visited the camps in Lebanon or Jordan, where the position is genuinely different, but I can speak with some authority on the international aid being provided in this region. I was accompanied by a number of Members of Parliament, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark), who is a co-signatory to the Bill and served on its Committee and is an expert on the provision of international aid to the Syrian-Turkish border, together with my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) and my hon. Friends the Members for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe), and for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown).
Over the course of four days, we saw the impact of international development on the camp that we visited, Nizip 2, which is approximately 40 miles north of Aleppo and 20 miles north of the Syrian border. It caters for people in northern Syria who are particularly dependent on aid and who have fled towns such as Homs and Aleppo. They are of all colours, races and descriptions; it is not only the opponents of Assad and the Alawites who have fled Syria. The camp is testament to the impact of the work of international aid, and it is important to bring that to the House’s attention. There were 17,000 people there, 9,000 of whom were living in tents. In some cases, there were as many as 15 people to a tent, albeit that they were very serviceable tents. That may sound like a huge number, but the people we met and talked to felt that their situation was much better than it would have been in Syria. The camp was also a container camp where people have, in effect, turned containers into homes, exceptionally successfully.
Of the 17,000 people in the camp, well over 10,000 are children and a vast proportion are women. I was extremely pleased to see wholesale and proper education of the young women and children there. I met a young man called Suleiman who was formerly an engineer in Homs. He had been a fighter in Homs and had lost several members of his family. He had fled north of the border to Nizip. As an engineer, he knew about maths. He was teaching year 7, 6 and 5 students in a makeshift classroom—it was another container; everything there is a container—so he had three class years similar to those in this country’s primary and secondary schools. The crucial point is that all the young girls were getting an education. It was not a restrictive education that entitled them to do only certain types of projects. It was fantastic to see integration in the classroom and no difference between young girls and young boys. There was positive encouragement for young girls to become whatever they wished to be.
I did a survey of the children in the class in the Nizip camp and asked them what they wanted to be. Most of the girls wanted to be one of two things. Many wanted to be doctors and discussed how they were going to learn about medicine, including in a practical sense: there was a surgery and hospital nearby. Many of the others wanted to be engineers. When I asked these young girls, who were 11 and 12 years of age—the equivalent of years 6 and 7—why they wanted to be engineers, it was fantastic to hear them say, “Because I want to go back to rebuild my country.”
Immigration and the state of Syrian refuges, 600,000 of whom are in Turkey, is a matter of discussion. The crucial point about international aid is that, by providing a site just north of the Syria-Turkey border, the international community is able not only to preserve the lives of refugees, but, more importantly, to provide an environment in which they are able to live relatively normal, healthy lives. I met dozens of Syrian refugees and they all told me that they were desperately keen to go home to their own country when the conflict in Syria abates. If it does, those men, women and children will have a chance to go home. Such international aid is outstanding and we should be very proud of the role it plays. The important point is that the women in the camp were given particular assistance.
I believe that this Bill will help. It is important that education improves. The young girls I met were 10, 11 and 12 years of age. The question the Minister needs to answer is: what happens to those girls, who are receiving a basic education in a container in a refugee camp, when they wish to have a university education? Given that there are 600,000 refugees in Turkey and that we are providing huge amounts of international aid to the children, I hope that, by utilising this wonderful Bill, that aid will provide assistance to those children so that they can maximise their education potential and address the gender inequality that has unquestionably existed for many a generation. This Bill will address the problems those children face. Primary and secondary education can be provided, but the problem starts when someone wants to be a doctor or an engineer and to rebuild their country. The Bill will make a massive difference with regard to the quality of their education aged 14, 15, 16 and 18.
On any interpretation, for too long women have battled for equality. They have fought generations of deep-seated injustice. We could name dozens of countries where that has been the case, but it is particularly true in places such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Nepal and central America, particularly Guatemala. One in three women worldwide will experience physical or other violence or deprivation during their lifetime.
The Bill’s background is the huge amount of gender-based violence, but that is merely one part of the oppression. Marginalisation is also an issue. Anyone who reads the international aid periodicals and journalistic articles will have read about marginalisation, which sounds like such a philosophical and normal term, but it is totally abnormal and abhorrent. It represents a denial of access to land, credit and banking facilities and other simple matters. There is plentiful evidence that some female farmers are denied access to seed and fertiliser in a way that male farmers are not. That is all about marginalisation: the weird way in which women are denied a fair chance.
Mr Cash
It is not just that they are marginalised. Women are often told to leave the room when meetings are held, even though they are doing the work. In certain countries and according to certain traditions, the men expect women not only to take second place, but to do the work as well.
Guy Opperman
Certainly. Shortly before I came to this House, I travelled through Karnataka, in central India, on my way to the town Hampi and saw the impact of that exact point: the men running the society were requiring the women to do the work and forcing them to take a secondary position. We have to acknowledge that there have been problems in communities in India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. I am reminded of the words of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who said:
“There are two powers in the world; one is the sword the other is the pen. Great competition and rivalry exist between the two. But there is a third power, stronger than both, and that is women”.
The most important thing is to harness the capability of the female sex.
Mr Cash
On the question of violence against and harassment of women, my hon. Friend may know that I went to India last year with, among others, Baroness Royall and Lord Harries of Pentregarth. We visited a hostel where the woman running it had been beaten almost to death 18 times when protecting women she was looking after who had been violently abused since childhood up to the ages of about 18 to 20. People need to understand that such a situation is intolerable and that women need not only to be given a greater opportunity through empowerment, but to be protected from such abuse.
Guy Opperman
In generations to come, future Members of this House and of other Houses of Parliament and Governments will look back on the evolution of rights and equality for women and shake their heads in wonder that this was ever an issue—that we could have reached the 21st century and still be trying even partly to close the gap in some countries. The rights of women in many countries—all of which are known to those of us who take an interest in international aid—are as limited as they are non-existent, and the encouragement being given by the British and other Governments is absolutely vital.
We have often talked about India, including about the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone and me and what we have seen in our travels. I have travelled five times through India—mostly as a backpacker and looking very scruffy, I hasten to add—and one is reminded of the words of Mahatma Gandhi:
“Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex.”
I could not agree more. It is still absolutely and manifestly wrong that, particularly in countries such as India, Afghanistan, Nepal, Somalia, Guatemala and in certain central American counties, women are deprived of their economic rights, as well as in a multitude of other ways.
Guy Opperman
I do not know whether it is good or bad that my hon. Friend is the first female contributor to this debate, apart from your interventions, assistance and guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is wonderful to welcome my hon. Friend to the debate. It is good that a group of men are talking about the fact that it is manifestly wrong that inequality should be shown towards women, but I welcome her and totally endorse her point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, who is no longer in his place, said there are two elements in the Bill. The second is effectively about disaster and emergency relief, and I certainly hope that the Minister will respond on that matter. None of us wants gender inequality to impede the impact of disaster and emergency relief: everybody should fully understand the Bill’s implication that no regulation should prevent an immediate effort to sort out difficulties such as those we have seen in the Philippines, Haiti and all manner of countries to which international aid has been provided.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone will correct me if I am wrong, but for me, however, the crucial element is in clause 1(2), which states:
“Before providing development assistance under subsection (1), the Secretary of State shall have regard to the desirability of providing development assistance that is likely to contribute to reducing poverty in a way which is likely to contribute to reducing inequality between persons of different gender.”
All Members of the House—particularly, I hope, Government Members—know that the fundamental way of reducing poverty and inequality is through education. Without getting into a debate about education, which I would of course be disallowed from doing, the purpose of the reforms to the education system is to try to reduce inequality, and to promote economic and development aspiration in this country. Surely, the point about clause 1(2) is therefore that the purpose of development aid is to reduce poverty and, fundamentally, the way to do that is by providing education internationally.
Guy Opperman
I entirely endorse my hon. Friend’s point. I would have expected nothing less from him than gender equality in the preparation of the Bill. I am absolutely certain that he would not have missed such an important aspect of his own Bill.
In preparing my speech, I spoke at length to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) about the Bill and her work in Committee. She is detained on constituency business, but was very keen to be here to help navigate the Bill through. I also spoke to my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) about the Bill’s prospects and nature. I confess that I have not spoken to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), but I certainly discussed the Bill with the other two. As is always the case on Fridays, constituency business often prevents us from being in the Chamber, even though we would very much like to be here. This is only the fourth sitting Friday on which I have chosen to participate—