International Women’s Day and Protecting the Equality of Women in the UK and Internationally

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, it is my pleasure to speak in today’s debate and to follow the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed. Like him, I will begin by focusing on international issues. I did put the word around to see if any of my female colleagues were available, because they are more qualified to speak than me, but none of them were today so you have to put up with me. I am glad to have this opportunity.

First, there is much I want to celebrate. As part of my brief, I take special interest in two of the poorest nations on earth, Burundi and Lesotho—one of the others is South Sudan. These nations are making great progress on women’s equality. It has been my privilege to visit Lesotho a couple of times and Burundi very many times. I would like to share some examples.

This month, the Women’s Investment and Development Bank has been introduced in Burundi. This has been praised by the UN as a step towards women’s economic empowerment in that nation. The bank will grant low-interest loans to women’s collectives and their development projects, and will provide training on profitable business.

No one will be surprised that another of my particular interests is how the Church operates in these countries. Today, I want to recognise the incredible work of the Mothers’ Union worldwide—one branch works tirelessly on this front in Burundi—in campaigning for equality for women and girls all over the world. I also mention the national leader of the Mothers’ Union in Burundi, Mrs Claudette Kigeme. She co-ordinates its work and also works with the Five Talents agency, which sets up savings-led rural community groups to train people in growing small businesses.

It has been my and my wife’s privilege to visit a number of those small financial units and hear testimonies from, interestingly, sometimes men as well as women of the impact that microfinance has had on their lives and developing their savings groups. It has utterly transformed their lives and empowered the women. Often, alongside the microfinance, they do literacy and business training because they recognise that the best businesspeople in Burundi are the women. They are much more entrepreneurial and much more reliable in running their businesses well. That is where the testimony of the men sometimes comes in. I have stood in those groups and men have stood up in front of me saying, “My life has been transformed by the way my wife has been empowered—that has developed and changed our whole lives.” Mrs Claudette Kigeme was recently honoured for her work by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, being given the Langton Award.

The second of my friends in Burundi is Mathilde Nkwirikiye. She has led the way in many aspects of fighting for gender justice and equality for women in Burundi. One issue on which she and others are currently working is the right of women to have access to land. Sadly, the law of that land does not currently allow women to inherit land. When you live in an agriculturally based economy, this is a massive injustice which needs to be corrected. Mathilde is one of the women leading the way to see that law changed. Mathilde has championed women’s rights, led work against gender-based violence and engaged in international peacemaking. These two women are utterly remarkable. Meeting them, and seeing them at work, has changed my life and I want to honour them.

I turn to Lesotho and the new Bishop of Lesotho, the right reverend Dr Vicentia Kgabe, who was appointed at the end of last year. She is the first woman Bishop of Lesotho, and the third in the Anglican province of Southern Africa. I contacted her about this debate and asked what she would want to say about the situation in Lesotho and southern Africa. She pointed out that she is a leader in a country which is still patriarchal, where top leadership positions remain a male domain. She notes that education remains male-oriented and that exposure, mentoring and support structures necessitated her to work harder than any of the men to counter this. She is a leader of steady and intentional progress on narrowing the gender gap in Lesotho, and stands as a great figure of reconciliation. Sadly, in recent years the story of the Anglican church in Lesotho has been riven with disputes. One reason why Dr Kgabe was appointed as the bishop from outside Lesotho—she was previously in South Africa—was the recognition that a woman leader, at this point, was the most likely person to bring reconciliation in conflict.

After presenting these examples, I have a couple of questions for the Minister. Will she affirm the leading role played by civil society and the Church—as well as other faith organisations—in addressing gender-based violence and working for equality in many poorer nations? Will she confirm the commitment of Her Majesty’s Government in using overseas aid and development spending to assist this work? Following the question of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, will she please tell us when we will return to 0.7%?

There are many more celebrations than challenges, but I turn to the latter. I noted the Minister detailing ways in which the Government are encouraging women here with work incentives and childcare programmes. These are welcome. However, the reality is that the gender gap is arguably at its worst for women with young children. This is especially so where they have a larger family. Noble Lords, noble Baronesses and the Minister know this, and they know my passion for this issue.

The two-child limit is a policy against which I have campaigned since its outset, for a range of reasons, but one reason pertinent to today’s debate is its disproportionate effect on women. The Child Poverty Action Group estimates that 29% of households affected by the policy are single-parent families headed by women, compared with only 1% of single-parent families headed by men. The Pregnancy Advisory Service reported that, during the pandemic, respondents to its survey described being

“‘forced’ by their financial circumstances into ending a pregnancy”

that they otherwise “would have wanted”. Has the Minister carried out any assessment of the specific impact of the two-child limit policy on women, and the poverty of women with more than two children? I hope that she will consider undertaking one if she has not. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s responses, both to the international questions and to this specific question about the two-child limit, in due course.

Global Refugee Forum

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that there have been serious capacity issues. We have just sent a group of UK experts to bolster the UK’s support to countries surrounding Ukraine, to receive and support the increasing flow of refugees fleeing that country. For example, a four-person team has arrived in Poland to support the regional response, providing logistics advice, analysis of needs on the ground and so on. We are also deploying additional experts right across the region in the coming days, including to Moldova where we have humanitarian experts already stationed.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, it was my privilege to speak at the resettlement conference that happened before the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva in 2019. One of the key lessons that came out of both events was to listen to the voices of refugees in helping to create the system, so that it is more effective. Could the Minister tell us how the voices of refugees in this country are being listened to in order to make the Ukraine system as effective as possible?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The teams are designing an entirely new scheme for an entirely new situation as quickly as possible. That is reflected in the numbers that have so far been reported. But from everything we have heard today— from the Foreign Secretary and the relevant Minister—we are up and running and we are ready now to absorb larger numbers of refugees from Ukraine.

DWP: Support for Larger Families

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the adequacy of support offered by the Department for Work and Pensions to larger families.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)]

No assessment has been made as every household has different requirements. While there is no objective way of deciding what an adequate level of support should be, the department will spend more than £110 billion this year—4.8% of GDP—on working-age benefits. Additionally, the Government offer a wide range of support to families with children depending on their circumstances, including free school meals, childcare, Healthy Start vouchers and the household support fund.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

I thank the Minister for her response. According to the benefit changes and large families research carried out by the Child Poverty Action Group with the Universities of York and Oxford and the LSE, the increase in child poverty since 2012-13 has been sharpest among families with three or more children at 47%, compared with 24% for families with one or two children. These families are deeply affected by the two-child limit. They have been severely affected by the £20 cut to universal credit last September and they are less able to increase their working hours due to childcare demands. What are the Government planning to do to address the levels of poverty among larger families while the cost of living is rising steeply?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate is always consistent in raising these important points. To start with, let me say that I quite understand, as do others, the issue of childcare. We must do what we can to try to improve opportunity and facility. The right reverend Prelate asked me what we plan to do. Let me say what we have done. We continue to take action to support living standards by increasing the national living wage and reducing the universal credit taper rate, which has more than compensated for the £20 uplift in UC. We also recognise that some people will need extra help this winter as the economy recovers, so we have made £500 million of funding available across the UK to help. Rather than read out a whole list of things that we have done, let me say that I am sure the Government are doing everything they can to help people in these circumstances.

Covid-19: Vaccine Donations

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, the UK donated 130,000 Covid vaccines to Nepal in August, recognising the historic link between our two countries. Since the beginning of the pandemic, our embassy in Kathmandu has reprioritised more than £40 million of development aid to help address the medical and socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic. In response to Nepal’s second wave of infections, the UK has delivered an additional package of support, including donating 260 ventilator machines, thousands of pieces of personal protective equipment and constructing an oxygen plant in Kathmandu.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

In the light of the new omicron variant that has dominated the news over the weekend, my colleague Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Cape Town urged those of us in rich countries to do better at narrowing inequality of vaccination rates, which are 7% in Africa and 70% in Europe. We must acknowledge that this virus knows no national boundaries and will spread, mutate and return to us in the way that we are seeing, so we need a global approach, not simply a bilateral approach. Will Her Majesty’s Government’s commit to redoubling efforts to seek a truly global approach to vaccine donation to ensure that people in all nations are safer?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, the Government strongly agree and we are committed to supporting rapid, equitable access to safe and effective vaccines through multilateral co-operation to end the acute phase of this pandemic. That is why the UK supports the COVAX facility and was one of the first countries to do so. It is, as the right reverend Prelate knows, a multilateral mechanism that supports access by pooling resources to accelerate the development, manufacture and delivery of vaccines. More than 537 million vaccines have so far been delivered globally through that scheme.

Child Poverty: Nuffield Foundation Review

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the Nuffield Foundation’s review Changing patterns of poverty in early childhood, published on 14 September; and what steps they intend to take as a result, including in relation to the two-child limit for welfare benefits.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)]

I am pleased to say we have read and analysed the report and note its recommendations. The Government are committed to supporting low-income families and having parents in work, particularly full-time, because we believe that this is the best way to tackle child poverty. In 2019-20, 14% of children under five in working households were in absolute poverty before housing costs, compared with 52% in workless households. That is why our focus is on the Plan for Jobs, and we have no current plans to change the policy of providing support for a maximum of two children.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

I thank the Minister for her response, and for how she engages with us regularly on this, but ever since the two-child limit was introduced, successive DWP Secretaries of State have said to us and many others, “Give us the evidence that the two-child limit is increasing poverty.” The Nuffield report is the latest in what is now a long list of reports stating such evidence, so when will Her Majesty’s Government admit that this is now the biggest cause of the growth in child poverty in this country, that it is a failed policy and that it needs to be reformed?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

No admissions or confessions today, my Lords. When I read the report, I did not get from it the specific point that the right reverend Prelate made, and I think the best way, as we had such a great engagement meeting last week, is for us to sit down and go through it again so that he can make absolutely sure that I understand that point.

Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 13th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, when I read the title of the Bill I thought, “Good: we will have before us a measure that covers the wide issues of the uprating of the wide range of social security benefits we have, most notably pensions, universal credit and perhaps the question of legacy benefits.” So I was very disappointed to discover that, actually, the scope of the content was purely to do with pensions.

In relation to pensions, I have sympathy with the proposals tackling a specific issue that appears to have emerged as something of an anomaly, given our recent experience of the pandemic. I think the triple lock was probably the right move when it was introduced and it has served pensioners well. However, I now have questions as to whether having such a lock in one part of the social security system actually prevents both the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions from truly looking at the system and its funding as a rounded whole—although I note with care the comprehensive and careful input of the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, just now on the double lock. But this is an uprating Bill for the system, it is not about changing the system, so with some reluctance I accept the proposals in the Bill.

However, I now turn to my deep disappointment with the Bill. I join many noble Lords in raising a concern that the Bill does not address the universal credit uplift cut. I recall the debate in this Chamber back in February, in which many Peers expressed their concern that a Bill would not address what is historically one of the most significant cuts to social security benefits. The letter sent by the Minister outlining the content of this Bill began by stating:

“Every year, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is required to undertake a review of social security rates to consider whether benefits have kept pace with inflation or earnings increases.”


When we are considering a Bill that is so conscious of inflation and the broad economic environment, my question to the Minister is: why is this argument not being applied across the board? Why, since the Government are so consciously accounting for the economic environment for pensioners, are they not doing the same for benefit claimants, which they have stated in their letter they are obliged to do? The removal of the £20 uplift in universal credit and the quiet 0.5% increase in universal credit are tiptoeing around a serious issue affecting hundreds of thousands of lives and pushing many—including an estimated 290,000 children—back into poverty.

I have to say to the Minister that I have lost count of how many people have thanked me for speaking out on the universal credit cut. I was not going to speak in this debate; it was that public pressure that made me do so. Hence, if this House can legitimately find a way of ensuring that, through this Bill, the other place is given the opportunity to properly debate the £20 cut, I would support that. If there is no such mechanism, we might have highlighted a deficit in our polity. I also support the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, on the earnings taper in universal credit.

I support what is in the Bill—slightly reluctantly, as I have said—but I am deeply concerned at its massive omissions. These mean that hundreds and thousands will not be adequately supported through our social security system this winter and into the year ahead.