Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nickie Aiken and Elizabeth Truss

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

10. What diplomatic steps her Department is taking to help ensure sexual violence is not used as a weapon of war.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)]

The use of rape and sexual violence in conflict is a war crime. The UK is determined to tackle this scourge, which devastates lives. That is why we are campaigning for it to be a red line, on a par with the use of chemical weapons.

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is evil, and we have seen horrific sights in towns such as Bucha, where rape and sexual violence were used to terrorise women and children. The UK is leading the charge on the need to collect evidence of those crimes, and under our presidency of the United Nations Security Council we have launched the Murad code, which sets global standards for effective evidence-gathering on sexual violence.

[Nickie Aiken]

Today’s Daily Telegraph includes the testimony of Anna, a 41-year-old woman from Ukraine who says she was raped by a 19-year-old soldier. I note that the UN Secretary-General is meeting Mr Putin today to discuss humanitarian aid, and I hope he will bring up the use of rape as a weapon of war—a weapon that the Russians seem to be using. With that in mind, does my right hon. Friend agree that, as the UN charter mandate is to maintain international peace and security, perhaps it is time the international community questioned whether Russia should remain a permanent member of the Security Council?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right about the appalling reports that we have seen in the Telegraph and other newspapers of the use of rape in Ukraine. The Security Council has a role to play. Under our presidency of the Security Council, we have used it to call out Russia’s lies. We have also hosted President Zelensky, who has spoken to the Security Council. My hon. Friend is also right that we have concerns about an international security architecture that has Russia as one of the permanent members of the Security Council, where it has used its veto as a green light for barbarism. Part of our response has been working more closely with allies such as the G7 and NATO, because we simply have not seen enough taking place at a UN level.

Russia: Sanctions

Debate between Nickie Aiken and Elizabeth Truss

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I had hoped that the hon. Lady would welcome the package of tough sanctions that we are introducing today. In fact, that is what our allies across the world are saying.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for her statement. She is absolutely right that we need to widen the breadth of sanctions on Russia to reflect the reality on the ground. In my constituency those realities are very clear to see—the dirty money invested week in, week out. Can she assure me that this Government will follow through on the legislation and ensure that the financial and professional services involved will be held to account, and that we follow a “banks and tanks” strategy in fighting corruption and Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine and across Europe?

[Elizabeth Truss]

We have taken steps to deal with illicit finance and corrupt elites through the Criminal Finances Act 2017 and our anti-corruption sanctions regime. I have already talked about the commitment to introduce legislation through the economic crime Bill. Today is about showing that the UK is ready with a package of severe sanctions that can target any organisation or individual who is remotely linked or of economic significance to the Russian state, showing there will be nowhere to hide in the event of an incursion into Ukraine. This is about making sure that those economic consequences are as severe as possible. My hon. Friend makes excellent points on the broader issue, but today we are talking about deterring Vladimir Putin from an incursion into Ukraine.

Russia

Debate between Nickie Aiken and Elizabeth Truss

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My right hon. Friend is completely right about the pretext. That is exactly what is happening. Disinformation is being used and pretexts are being claimed that simply do not exist, because NATO is indeed a defensive alliance. I did meet my German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, on the margins of G7, and both the Prime Minister and I have made it very clear that we do not believe that Nord Stream 2 should go ahead.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her robust and very clear statement on Russian aggression. It is fairly clear that Putin is peddling a particular narrative to the Russian people, trying to explain that the west is anti-Russia. The Kremlin’s publication of its extraordinary demands regarding Ukraine last month was a clear move to attempt to split the west. We must not bow to such pressure. We cannot show the Kremlin an ounce of weakness. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we must stand firmly with our allies such as Ukraine and Bosnia, and with any other ally that is under the threat of Russian aggression?

International Women’s Day

Debate between Nickie Aiken and Elizabeth Truss

Thursday 5th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We have seen a huge culture change through things like the #MeToo movement. We have also seen a real recognition of the issues and challenges that women face, and they are being dealt with. This Government are very committed to dealing with those challenges.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I should like to back up what my right hon. Friend, and my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), have said. I was the leader of Westminster Council, and my predecessor and my successor are both women, which is amazing. As the mother of two teenagers, a daughter and a son, I am obviously empowering my daughter to be the person that she is, but does my right hon. Friend agree that it is equally important that we empower our boys to be feminists and to agree that we are all equal? My daughter plays football and cricket, and my son plays football and cricket. He has always been taught that girls are equally as good, if not better, at those sports.

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Rigid stereotypes about what girls should do and what boys should do also hold boys back. They do not give them the opportunities they might want in traditionally female professions, for example, and they do not allow them to express themselves in ways that can be helpful and empowering and make their lives better. This is the point that I was making at the start of my remarks. Of course I am proud to be a woman; I love being a woman. I have two daughters, and I encourage them to celebrate being female, with all the great benefits and life experiences that that brings. At the same time, however, they should not in any way feel that that defines them or places on them any expectations about the way in which they live their lives. Equality for everyone—everyone being free from those preconceptions—is good for our society. It unleashes ideas and opportunities that will benefit us all.

I want to talk about my recent experience at the African investment summit that we held here in London. I met a group of fantastic entrepreneurs called the Lionesses. They were from sub-Saharan Africa, where they are leading the way with the highest rate of women entrepreneurs on the planet. They were a fantastic group of women. I do not think it is a coincidence that women are achieving so much in business. Free enterprise and free trade do not care about someone’s gender or sexuality, or the colour of their skin. The first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, once said that

“a widget remains a widget—and it will be bought anywhere if the price and quality are right. The market is a more powerful and more reliable liberating force than government can ever be.”

That is why we are so keen as a Government to champion female entrepreneurs, to champion opportunities for women in business and to champion women in the workplace. We need to ensure that everyone can enter, get back into, and get on in the workplace. I am proud that under this Government the employment rate for women has reached a record high of 72.4%. Almost 2 million more women are in work since 2010. When I talk to women across our country, they are not interested in identity politics. They are interested in how they, their families and their communities can get on in life. That is why we as a Government are focused on tackling the barriers that hold people back and on levelling up our country.

We are investing in our railways, roads and broadband to bring opportunities to every home and business. We have doubled the free childcare available in England to eligible working parents of three and four-year-olds to 30 hours per week. We are supporting families across the UK through tax-free childcare, and we have established a new £1 billion fund to create more high quality, affordable childcare. We will extend entitlement to leave for unpaid carers, the majority of whom are women, to one week. This is the real substance of our national programme, which is inclusive to everybody. Its aim is to unite, to level up and to bring together every region and nation of our country.

As well as tackling these policy challenges, we recognise that ingrained assumptions pose barriers that make it harder for people to fulfil their potential. I vividly remember, as a 12-year-old girl, getting on a flight with KLM. My brothers were presented with junior pilot badges, but I was presented with a junior air hostess badge. That was a revelatory moment for me. I did not like being told what job I was able to do because I was a girl. I do not believe that any girl or boy should be encouraged to pursue a career or study a course because of their gender, yet between the ages of seven and 11, boys are almost twice as likely as girls to want to be scientists and four times more likely than girls to want to be engineers. This is linked to a significant lack of academic attainment for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and to their severe underrepresentation in related fields. That is why this Government have championed maths and science, benefiting girls and boys alike. There has been a 31% increase in girls’ entries to STEM A-levels in England since 2010, and the number of women in the UK accepted on to full-time STEM undergraduate courses increased by 34% between 2010 and 2019.

We recognise that championing women’s rights cannot stop at our borders, and the Government are also taking steps to empower women internationally. I find it appalling that child marriages, female genital mutilation and the denial of access to a quality education still blight our world, keeping women down and damaging the countries they live in. This is depriving us all of the ideas that they could pioneer, the vital jobs that they could be doing and the dreams that they could be pursuing.

The Government recognise that women can contribute positively to the modern world just as much as men. That is why we continue to support targeted development programmes to ensure that all girls, right around the world, receive 12 years of quality education. I strongly agree with the Prime Minister, who speaks so passionately on this subject, that all girls must be allowed to achieve their potential, whether they were born in London, Lagos, Lima or Lahore. The world must stop wilfully neglecting the enormous benefits that accrue for everyone when girls are given an education and job.

We are driving progress towards ending all forms of violence against women and girls internationally, including sexual violence in conflict, and we are promoting women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights and supporting their economic and political empowerment. We are also hosting a conference—chaired by a former Member of this House, Nick Herbert—that will ensure that LGBT people across the world are safe and free to live the lives they wish, including lesbians and bisexual women and the specific challenges that they face.