International Widows Day
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(10 months, 1 week ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, at the Commission on the Status of Women in March 2019, the UK directly helped secure the first-ever UN-level recognition of the need to invest in adequate measures to protect and support widows. The UK also helped to ensure that widows’ rights were recognised in the 2022 Commission on the Status of Women’s agreed conclusions.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, we know that widows are some of the poorest and least economically empowered people in the world, particularly in developing countries. What effect has the cut in the foreign aid budget from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% had on widows specifically?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, it is difficult to work out exactly how much of the funding directed towards women and girls is focused specifically on widows. That number does not exist, and I am not sure it could exist. However, the work of women’s rights organisations and movements is critical to advancing gender equality. It was calculated that in 2021-22, just over 1% of the total global figure dedicated to gender equality—a figure of $56.5 billion—went to those women’s rights organisations and movements on the ground. That is something we are challenging in our own work bilaterally, but also through the multilateral institutions.
International Development Strategy: Volunteering
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, the Government agree with the premise of the question from the noble Baroness but take issue with the last bit on abandonment by the Government. The reality is that the ACTIVE programme will reach 2.5 million people—a really significant number—and mobilise marginalised groups, including women, young people and those with disabilities, across 18 countries. The key is that it builds on the success of the programme she just mentioned—the VSO’s FCDO-funded £70 million Volunteering for Development programme, which ended in March 2022. The noble Baroness is right to identify it as a success.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, we all acknowledge the benefits of international volunteering to our country in terms of soft power, to the countries we work with and to our volunteers. The International Citizen Service was suspended in 2020 because of the pandemic. Does the Minister agree that the time has come to resume wielding that soft power through the ICS, which enhances our influence and reputation in the world?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, the importance of volunteering is embedded and well understood in the FCDO. That has not changed; it is reflected in everything coming out of it. Specific decisions on funding are yet to be made but, adding to what I said on the previous question, we are committed to and are already establishing new centres of expertise, building on existing platforms for shared learning and with volunteering at their heart. We are doing this across the board.
Gender Pay Gap
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for that wonderful birthday present. Let me just say that auto-enrolment has been a fantastic success, and we want that to continue. On the point he raises about net pay and the pensions gap, the Government are absolutely going to rectify the anomaly. We published a call for evidence. The Government will pay a top-up to low earners, making contributions to pensions schemes using a net pay arrangement, from 2024-25 onwards.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, I wonder if the Minister has heard of the book The End of Bias: How We Change Our Minds, by Jessica Nordell, on the incremental, cumulative effect of unconscious bias. Her model found that only a 3% unconscious bias in performative evaluation resulted in 87% of men in the top jobs. It is a shocker, but it explains a lot. If the Minister has not seen it, could she have a look and consider its implications for government policy?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
I wish I had known about this before, because somebody could have bought it for me for my birthday. I will go out and find that book, and I will read it. As for changing bias and the distortions in salaries between men and women, no one needs to push our door on that—we are there. As the good man Sir Winston said, those people who can change their mind can change anything.
Biodiversity
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]
We do not dispute that protected areas, which include protected sites and landscapes and other measures, need to be better managed. The Government have been very clear on this issue. I think the RSPB accepts that the quantity target has been exceeded but clearly, more needs to be done to improve the quality of our protected areas. As I have outlined, actions are in place to do so.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD) [V]
My Lords, we have failed. Not only have we not met 17 of the 20 Aichi targets in Britain; we have gone backwards on some of them. Clearly, we cannot be trusted to save our own wildlife unless we make ourselves take the action needed. Is not now the time to get serious and set legally binding targets for our own sakes, as well as the sake of our wildlife and, ultimately, our planet?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]
It is absolutely correct to say that we have failed to meet those Aichi targets. The Government have not sought to shirk from that or to mask the research that has been produced. However, I argue that the Environment Bill, Agriculture Bill and Fisheries Bill—combined with new sources of funding such as the Nature4Climate fund, our plans for nature recovery networks and much more besides—will put us on track to meet the obligations that we signed up to internationally. In addition, we have not only doubled our international climate finance to £11.6 billion, we have committed to spending a big chunk of that uplift on nature-based solutions. We are taking that core message to the world in the run-up to the COP.
Terrorism: Sexual Violence
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I assure the noble Baroness that I understand that issue very well. Around the world, organisations such as Daesh, Boko Haram and al-Shabaab erroneously say that their actions are inspired by Islam, by religion. What religion? What humanity? We condemn them totally and unequivocally. On a practical point, I was in New York earlier this week and met the Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed. We discussed some of the steps that have been taken in Nigeria—including the very point the noble Baroness alerts us to—about working with communities and clerics on the ground to ensure that the poisonous narrative the terrorists present can be unequivocally condemned by the religious leaders who represent that faith.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, the excellent report of the Select Committee on Sexual Violence in Conflict recommended, among other things, a review of local legislation. Will the Minister update the House on the Government’s progress in implementing this? Does he agree that it is in our interests to lead the international task force recommended in the Henry Jackson Society’s report to show the international leadership that we are capable of and to help cut off funding for terrorism on the streets of Britain?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The noble Baroness raises a vital point and I agree with her totally. We also need to demonstrate local action. However, as she will be aware, such local actions are reflective of the international human trafficking that occurs. On the specific issue of preventing sexual violence, we have also led the way. She may be aware that over the past 12 months we have had 20 deployments through 10 countries. That demonstrates our commitment to building international co-operation on tackling not only sexual violence but what leads to human trafficking in that respect.
China: Market Economy Status
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, you need to help me out when this happens. I suggest that we hear briefly from the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, and then go back to the Conservative Benches.
Lord Price
The noble Lord is of course right. Being a member of the EU gives us the opportunity to take part in all kinds of discussions around the world on a whole range of topics.
Baroness Burt of Solihull
My Lords, I, too, welcome the Minister to his new position. There would be concern on all sides of the House if we allowed market economy status to China, until and unless the state stops interfering in market pricing. Does the Minister agree that we need the negotiating power of being part of the largest market in the world to get a better deal for Britain from China and other economies, too?
Lord Price
The noble Baroness is right that being part of the EU gives us considerable weight when it comes to negotiations. On the MES point, we can certainly do a number of things. We need to look at the legal position in Europe and we will have a part to play in that. We also need to make sure that any mitigations we put in place—we are currently considering four—will have the desired impact. Where tariffs have been imposed, led by this Government, they have been successful in reducing imports, particularly in steel, which I know is of great concern to the House. Where that has been done, we have reduced imports by 90% and that has had the desired effect.