Covid-19: International Response

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, noble Lords have focused on one aspect of the present crisis after another and, quite properly, fears have been expressed about how the poorest countries in the world will cope with the outbreak of Covid-19. How will the untold numbers in refugee camps, drought-affected and locust-ravaged Africa or war-torn nations cope?

I welcome the Minister’s reference to the Government’s commitment to a future strategy, but that of course begs the question: how do we build back better? In the Labour Party I keep hearing the words, “We must see this as another Beveridge moment”. Who could disagree? However, it also has to be another Bretton Woods moment, another United Nations, with all its agencies, moment, another Marshall plan moment and—forgive me—another Christian Aid moment. We must adamantly refuse to allow the resumption of things as they were. This has to be a moment when we overhaul and recalibrate all these systems and institutions and make them fit for the purpose of building a world order where injustice and poverty, ignorance and idleness, and squalor and disease are overcome for all peoples.

The first Beveridge moment did not occur by magic in the summer of 1945; its recommendations had been worked at seriously for a number of years. The Labour Party secured a three-day debate in our own Chamber in March 1943, in the very midst of the war. This ensured that commitments were made that gave the implementation of the report a flying start. As then, so now. We must cope with and respond to needs and trends as we find them, but we must not take our eye off the ball. The future awaits us and our best efforts to shape it creatively and for the common good must go on right now. The Beveridge report dealt with our domestic agenda. The new Beveridge moment must envisage nothing short of the common good and the survival of the planet.