Women, Peace and Security Bill [HL]

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Lord, who spoke so clearly on that issue. I declare that I am a volunteer chair of the UK board of the peacebuilding charity Search For Common Ground, which works in this area, and for two years I have supported a project that supports women peace activists and those seeking to be political actors in Lebanon. The project particularly supports the very brave women in the Bekaa Valley who have sought to throw off the yoke of Hezbollah authority and whose facilities in the area have now been bombed by the IDF, contrary to international humanitarian law.

This is a bittersweet debate, because I was introduced in this House on the same day as the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson. She should not need to be campaigning so powerfully on this issue over 11 years, but we are very glad that she is still doing so and maintaining the pressure on the Government and on Parliament.

It is also bittersweet because I have a degree of sympathy with the comment by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, about what we are legislating. I hold that view because of my experience of the legislation I played a small part in taking through in 2015, which has now been disregarded by two Governments. Not only has that 2015 legislation on official development assistance been disregarded by two successive Governments; the 2002 Act on official development assistance has now been reneged on. So I hope both that this Bill will go through and that it will be honoured.

Therefore, while not being defeatist, and although the advice provided to the Minister is doubtless as the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, predicted, I believe that it is parliamentarians and Ministers who decide and are ultimately responsible, not the officials, who advise. I believe that this Bill should not only pass this House but have government time. The Minister can also commit not necessarily to supporting the Bill but to ensuring that there will be time for it to be debated in the House of Commons. That is the very least the Government can do.

This is also an opportunity for the Minister to clarify the Government’s structure, intent and funding for peace and security. As a result of the Budget and the appointment of Ministers, there has been a degree of uncertainty as to where peace and security, and peacebuilding funding against conflict, lie. Are they still with the Cabinet Office? Are they now fully within the FCDO? Where do they lie and what funding is being given to them? I hope the Minister will be able to provide that answer.

The Minister can also state, I believe categorically, that the Government will no longer carry out the previous Administration’s budget reductions for gender-based programmes without gender-focused impact assessments. I have not been able to determine whether the latest round of ODA cuts announced in the Budget were informed by an impact assessment with a gender lens and focus. I hope the Minister can confirm that that has indeed been carried out and will be published.

I also understand that this is the fifth iteration of the national action plan and that it is joint owned by the MoD. I could see no reference to women, peace and security in the terms of reference for the strategic defence review. If the Government are implementing what they clearly state is the commitment to the national action plan, then surely, if it is joint owned by the MoD, the fundamental review of the MoD now being carried out should include women, peace and security. It is not too late for that to be included. I trust the officials are listening to that too.

This is important now because seeking peace that can be sustained into a way of governance is even harder in the 21st century than it was in the 20th century. There is an increasing insidious level of male economic interest in conflict, either by belligerents themselves, by those who finance conflict, or by those in enabling and neighbouring countries who increasingly see state capture of technology and military industrial complexes in conflict economics. This is harder to extract, even after there has been a cessation of hostilities or a so-called peace settlement, which often simply freezes a conflict rather than resolving it. Indeed, such settlements do not remove the controlling interests of many of the belligerents, who swap quasi-military uniforms for sharp suits but still have their own interests at stake and still exclude women from future governance. There has been collective failure to ensure inclusive security sector reforms and transitional justice. Depressingly, we can add to the terrible statistic that 70% of peace settlements have excluded women, as given by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson; SSR reform processes and transitional justice processes have also systematically disregarded Security Council Resolution 1325.

Another reason why the Bill is necessary is that since the noble Baroness introduced the first version of it, we have seen the terrible situations in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories and, more recently, in Sudan. I wish to ask the Minister a couple of questions about those areas. I hope the national action plan, notwithstanding my noble friend Lady Miller’s comments regarding Colombia, will now actively include the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Sudan as priority countries. If it does not, there will be a substantial problem with an action plan that will run to 2027 and that cannot adapt to what is currently the world’s worst manmade humanitarian crisis, which disproportionately affects women and girls. I hope the Minister can respond to that.

The UK is the penholder for Sudan and it will have the presidency of the Security Council, but we have seen the failed attempts of the Jeddah process, the Manama process, the Geneva process and the UN ALPS process. We have also seen IGAD and the African Union actively exclude women from these processes. These processes are happening now and the UK is the penholder, so what leverage is the UK using to ensure that any processes do not actively exclude women?

The UK is supporting the civilians. The Minister has met and supports the Tagadum civilian network. I declare an interest, in that I too have been supporting the Tagadum process. It is welcome that the Government are doing that, but women are currently being excluded from the structured processes of seeking a ceasefire and an end to the fighting. That means there is now a danger, as the noble Baroness and others have said, that unless there is an inclusive process for Sudan—as we will need to see for Gaza—the male belligerents will simply hold the next process hostage and inclusive governance will not be possible. That is why political dialogue has to be a process alongside those looking for ceasefires.

Finally, I return to what the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, and the noble Baroness said about quoting back to the Minister what he said in opposition. Perhaps we on these Benches can be observers of this slightly topsy-turvy process whereby only those in the Official Opposition, be they Labour or Conservative, support such a Bill. Let us turn that around and allow the Minister perhaps to say today that time will be given for this Bill, and that commitments will be given in principle to support it moving to the next stage. We can then engage in cross-party, all-party dialogue to ensure that there is at least a chance that time will be found in the House of Commons to allow the Bill to get on to the statute book, because, as we all know, it is desperately needed now.