Niger

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord is right that the humanitarian emergency response review made some extremely important recommendations for the anticipation of disasters and building resilience to them. That is being taken forward at the moment. DfID is in the process of developing a humanitarian framework for Africa and a Sahel resilience strategy which will help the UK anticipate and respond strategically to crises across the continent. The building stability overseas unit normally focuses on resilience against conflict issues rather than natural disasters. Nevertheless, the two feed on each other, so there is action that that unit can take as well.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, has the Minister seen the reports this week that Boko Haram, the radical Islamist group in Nigeria, has been responsible for a large number of people escaping from the violence there into neighbouring areas in Niger, and that this is both leading to an exodus of refugees, compounding the existing problems in Niger, and preventing food being transported from Nigeria into Niger? Did she see the warning from the European Union earlier this week from Kristalina Georgieva, the commissioner for human aid, that it is a race against time to safeguard the lives of the 5.5 million people who are currently at risk?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord is right to flag up the problems in the area generally. Indeed, the knock-on effects from the problems in Nigeria are having an effect. So, too, are the returning mercenaries from Libya who instead of sending back remittances now need to be supported in that area. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State today spoke to the Commissioner about the situation in the area and the EU has just doubled its contribution. We are acutely aware of the difficulties of working in this area as it is very unstable.

Abyei

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the implications of the occupation of Abyei by Northern Sudanese forces.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, we condemn the recent attack on Abyei town by the Sudanese armed forces on 21 May and the attack by the SPLA on a joint Sudanese armed forces and UN convoy on 19 May. These incidents violate the comprehensive peace agreement and cannot be justified. We urge the parties to make good use of the good offices of President Mbeki’s African Union High-Level Implementation Panel and to negotiate a peaceful and durable resolution of all outstanding issues.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, has the noble Baroness had a chance to study today’s BBC reports, which quote the United States ambassador to the United Nations talking about horrific reports of looting and burning in Abyei? Does this not point to the need to use Chapter VII powers in order to get UNMIS to put a peacekeeping force into Abyei in the short term, but also in the long term to deal with the up to 60 outstanding questions in the comprehensive peace agreement? Thinking back both to the civil war over border disputes between Eritrea and Ethiopia and to the civil war in Sudan itself, which led to the deaths of some 2 million people, as we look forward to the independence of Southern Sudan on 9 July, is there not a real danger that what is happening in Abyei, in Southern Kordofan and indeed on the Blue Nile could lead to a repetition of history?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, the noble Lord raises some very serious concerns about yesterday’s incident, which, of course, was not helpful to the process of independence on 9 July, but we want to ensure that we do not lose sight of those negotiations. We will continue to urge both sides towards peaceful means. We have Chapter VII already in place and the noble Lord will be reassured that we are looking at the situation very carefully. It is on the Richter scale of the entire international community.

Children: Parenting for Success in School

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, the fact that four noble Lords have chosen to make their excellent maiden speeches today during this debate in your Lordships’ House underlines how well chosen is the Motion that my noble friend Lord Northbourne has laid before us. I join others in offering him plaudits for the way in which he has, during my 12 years here, persistently raised this question again and again and kept this important issue before us. Like some of the noble Lords who spoke before me, I shall focus my remarks on the important report of the right honourable Member for Birkenhead, Frank Field, entitled, The Foundation Years: preventing poor children becoming poor adults.

A rabbi once said, “God was too busy—so He invented mothers”. Perhaps I may be allowed, as a father of four children, to add that He also invented fathers, and that the absence of fathers in the lives of their children has become one of the major factors in the disaggregation of our communities and in the shaping of the next generation of adults. It is estimated that around three-quarters of a million children in Britain today have no contact with their fathers.

In 2002, in a report entitled Experiments in Living: The Fatherless Family, Civitas spelt out the consequences for children who are brought up without a father. It found that these children are more likely to live in poverty and deprivation, to have emotional or mental problems, to have trouble at school, to have trouble getting along with others, to have a higher risk of health problems, and that they are more likely to run away from home and be at greater risk of suffering physical, emotional or sexual abuse.

Mr Field reflects on the rejection of children by their parents:

“Since 1969 I have witnessed a growing indifference from some parents to meeting the most basic needs of children, and particularly younger children, those who are least able to fend for themselves”.

His view is supported by the Millennium Cohort Study undertaken at Bristol University, which showed that the key drivers in determining a child's life chances, measured at the age of three, are: positive and authoritative parenting, the home learning environment and other home and family-related factors. These factors, which Mr Field recommends should be used in the life chance indicators proposed in his report, are predictive of children's readiness for school and of later life outcomes.

These indicators and the foundation years strategy—which other noble Lords have referred to, and which would be the first pillar of a new tripartite education system—may not immediately end income poverty but they can break the intergenerational cycle of disadvantage. Research commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions bears this out. The simple involvement of a mother or father who is interested in their children's education increases a child's chance of moving out of poverty as an adult by 25 per cent.

Self-evidently the teaching of parenting and life skills should become a greater priority. The extension of initiatives such as Mumsnet, the kitemarking of beneficial television programmes—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin—and a reassessment of the relentless and corrosive advertising aimed at children, also have their place. Sure Start children's centres can help parents put elementary parameters, essential for later progress, into place—basic things such as getting parents to teach their children how to sit still and listen, how to be aware of others, to understand words like “no” and “stop”, to master basic hygiene, and so on.

Mr Field has in no way changed his view about the importance of tackling poverty but believes, as I do, that a strategy that depends solely on income transfer to remedy child poverty is doomed to fail. My own parents left school at 14 and came from backgrounds of acute poverty—my mother was an immigrant whose first language was Irish, not English—but both knew that a positive approach to learning at home, to encouraging the education of their children and to improving their own qualifications was critical; and that despite the vicissitudes of living in poor housing and in a flat on an overspill council estate, money alone was not the key to transforming the life chances of the next generation. I saw this trump card used by many families in the inner-city neighbourhoods of Liverpool that I represented for 25 years either as a city councillor or Member of Parliament. As Frank Field remarks:

“I have increasingly come to view poverty as a much more subtle enemy than purely lack of money, and I have similarly become increasingly concerned about how the poverty that parents endure is all too often visited on their children”.

Mr Field's report reminds us that it would require £37 billion of further tax transfers per annum to cut child poverty to 5 per cent of all children by 2020. We should take his important report—which points to the need for life chance indicators in foundation years—very seriously, and I look forward to the Minister’s response to his recommendations.