Afghanistan

Debate between Lord Singh of Wimbledon and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Monday 12th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am afraid that I am not going to speculate on issues like that. We strongly support efforts to energise the Afghan peace process. The Taliban have no military route to realising their political goals, so if they wish to play a political role in Afghanistan’s future, they must share the goals of stability and security for its population and engage meaningfully in the peace negotiations.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)]

My Lords, many faiths—including a thriving Sikh population of many thousands—have had to flee Afghanistan because of the hardening of extremism, resulting from repeated invasions from Britain, then Russia and, more recently, America and the West. Bombs and missiles cannot change mindsets. Would the Minister agree with the statement by former Prime Minister Theresa May that Britain should stop being the self-appointed policeman of the world? It is a policy copied by others that creates ever more refugees in a suffering world.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

There has been significant progress in human rights in Afghanistan since 2001, as I said, in connection to women’s rights, the rights of minority groups, freedom of expression and access to education. We will continue to work with the Afghan Government and international allies to protect this.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Lord Singh of Wimbledon and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I can certainly assure my noble friend that our priority is to ensure that we bear down on this. As I said, the number of people testing positive for Covid has quadrupled in the last three weeks, there are more people in hospital with Covid now than there were when we went into lockdown and, worryingly, infections among older people are rising. However, of course, part of this tiered approach is very much also to ensure that businesses such as hospitality can function in areas where the disease is perhaps not as prevalent in the community.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the Government’s overriding objective must be to reduce both the direct threat to life from Covid-19 and the indirect threat of an overwhelmed health service being unable to help those with other serious conditions. It is an affront to many that the risk to life and the hardship caused by pubs closing at 10 pm is talked about in the same breath. A short, sharp shock approach is clearly needed to reduce a rapidly rising reinfection rate to less than R1. Will the Government now urgently consider something like a two-week national lockdown to coincide with the half-term break?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

The noble Lord will be aware that these new measures came into effect only today, and we believe that they will have an impact. As I said in my initial answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, we have taken this approach because the disease is appearing at the moment more strongly in some areas and regions than others, which is a different situation from that we were in in March. That is why we have introduced this regional, tiered approach.