Official Development Assistance

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for raising that point and in a constructive way, as he always does on these occasions, and for the experience which he brings. The initiative he describes has a lot of merit and I will look into it. He is absolutely right to point to the pivotal role of women in these situations.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, while we are on the theme of supporting women, as I travel around I find that one of the greatest impairments to young girls completing their education is that they are forced into pregnancy—sometimes by their families—at a very young age, pre leaving school. What can His Majesty’s Government do to help prevent young girls being made pregnant, usually by older men and in very difficult circumstances?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

We know that the single most significant protective factor against that is education and being in school. We work with countries to try to enable that. Separately, I think that we are now the largest contributor to the UNFPA, which distributes contraceptive devices and products. Those do not always reach the people that the right reverend Prelate talks about, of course, so the work that we do on education is incredibly significant when it comes to preventing what none of us wants to see: very young girls starting their families sometimes years before they would have finished their education.