Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Hannah Bardell and Dominic Raab(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Dominic Raab)
We introduced the Bill of Rights to this House, which will limit the abuse of human rights and restore some common sense. I have regular discussions with my colleagues, particularly the Foreign Secretary, on the work that we are doing to support the International Criminal Court and end impunity for war crimes in Ukraine.
Dominic Raab
I remind the hon. Lady that this Government introduced single-sex marriage—I did so proudly, along with my colleagues—and there is nothing in our reforms that would undo the important work we have achieved.
Hannah Bardell
Given that the Joint Committee on Human Rights has said clearly that the UK Government should not pursue reform of the Human Rights Act 1998 without the consent of the devolved nations, will the Secretary of State promise right here, right now that he agrees with that and that his Government will not roll back or interfere with our human rights?
Dominic Raab
The hon. Lady will be shocked to know that I did not agree with all the contents of the JCHR report, but I refer to the statements we have made on how we have approached the devolved Administrations. I have personally been to all the nations of the United Kingdom to speak to not only politicians and Government officials, but academics and practitioners. We will continue that engagement and I am sure we will get the right thing for all people and all citizens of the UK.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Hannah Bardell and Dominic Raab(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and First Secretary of State (Dominic Raab)
The UK will spend £10 billion in official development assistance in 2021, making us the third highest bilateral humanitarian donor country based on the OECD data.
Dominic Raab
As I mentioned to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), the final figures, as has historically always been the case, come out not just through DevTracker, but in the international development statistics.
Let me give the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) the example that I think he is searching for. At the weekend, we made a £430 million contribution to the Global Partnership for Education—a 15% increase on last year that will affect many of the countries and regions that he describes. Above all, we used not just our aid spend, but our diplomatic convening power, to get others to make billions of pounds’ worth of contributions. Not only will that encourage 40 million more girls back into education, but it will help to deliver our second goal of getting 20 million more girls literate by the age of 10.
Hannah Bardell [V]
The real question is: do this Tory Government even care? At a time when the poorest nations of the world need support, humanity and compassion, this UK Tory Government are turning their back. Even one of their own Back Benchers has admitted that these cuts will kill. The other G7 countries have stepped up their aid budget; the UK is the only one to cut it. It is utterly shameful. Do you know what I really want to know, Mr Speaker? I want to know how the Foreign Secretary and his Tory Government sleep at night, knowing that they have the blood on their hands of some of the poorest people in the world.
Dominic Raab
I think that that was pretty unsavoury from the hon. Lady, but I will tell her how we sleep at night. We sleep at night because we are the third biggest ODA budget contributor in the G7. We sleep at night because we have just made the biggest global commitment on girls’ education ever, of any Government ever in the UK. We sleep at night because we are doubling the average annual spend on international climate finance. We sleep at night because we led the way with the 100 million doses that we are providing from excess surplus because of the money that we spent on the AstraZeneca vaccine: of the doses that the poorest countries have so far received via COVAX, 95% have come from AZ. In relation to humanitarian spend, bilaterally, we are the third biggest as well. We continue to be a global leader, but I think that our constituents would be asking some pretty serious questions if, at a time when we face the biggest contraction in our economy for 300 years, we were not also making or finding savings from the international as well as the domestic budget.
Courts and Tribunals Fees
Debate between Hannah Bardell and Dominic Raab(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Raab
My understanding, off the top of my head, is that it was £71 million. I will come back to the hon. Lady if I find out that that is incorrect.
The truth is that we cannot afford to duck these decisions around fees if we want to secure the long-term funding of the courts and the tribunals and deliver on the mandate on which the Government were elected. It is all very well for the Opposition to say that they want to scrap every fee that has been imposed or duck every difficult decision, but unless they can explain to the House how that will be paid for or the impact that it will have on our economy, it is not the responsible thing to do.