Covid-19: International Response

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, Covid-19 is no respecter of persons. It affects equally the villager in the Amazon and the Prime Minister of the UK. However, the effects of Covid-19 are not experienced equally. The poorest in our world are being hit hardest. Many Christians across the world are working together to mitigate the impact of Covid-19. For example, Christian Aid, the Anglican Community Fund and many other aid agencies have stepped up their charitable efforts in response to the pandemic.

Will Her Majesty’s Government ensure that government initiatives link with the voluntary sector to co-ordinate our response? In places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the churches are running hospitals and public health information campaigns to confront the Ebola outbreak. Indeed, in war zones, where NGOs have had to withdraw their staff because it is too dangerous or where Governments are not functioning, it is often local church leaders who are able to run health education programmes and change behaviours. Will Her Majesty’s Government ensure that local community leaders in those places, including church leaders, are consulted and trained, as in some areas it is the most effective way to prevent further deaths?

Displaced people, such as Syrians in refugee camps and the Rohingya sheltering in Bangladesh, are especially vulnerable. Without decisive action and medical aid, Covid-19 is likely to sweep through those camps rapidly. Will the Minister tell your Lordships’ House what is being done to provide emergency medical aid to the most vulnerable refugee communities?

East Africa: Locusts

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of (1) food security, and (2) food scarcity, in areas affected by locusts in East Africa.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Sugg) (Con)]

My Lords, we are deeply concerned about the devastating locust outbreak in east Africa. It is destroying crops, livelihoods and essential food supplies. Millions of people already face food insecurity and acute malnutrition caused by humanitarian disasters in the region, and more are displaced by conflict. An outbreak exacerbates these challenges. Anticipatory action is needed to reduce the risks to the upcoming agricultural seasons; UK aid is supporting the UN in controlling the outbreak. We are monitoring the situation closely and stand ready to help further.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

I thank the noble Baroness for her reply. It is perhaps appropriate that a Member on these Benches is raising issues about plagues of locusts, but a humanitarian crisis is unravelling in front of us. In some parts of Ethiopia, 90% of the crops have already gone and 20 million people face no food. Last Thursday, the UN said that we need $76 million now to begin to address the problems. What are Her Majesty’s Government doing to ensure immediate food aid if it is required and, in the longer term, that there is seed for next year’s crops so that people have security?

[Baroness Sugg]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for highlighting this issue and the outbreak in his Question. He is quite right to explain its devastating impact. He asked about DfID’s work. Our existing humanitarian development programme works in the region to address food insecurity and poverty challenges. We are ready to flex in response to this crisis. He also spoke about the $76 million appeal to curb the spread of desert locusts. There is still a gap of around £40 million in that fund despite recent contributions from Germany, ECHO and others. UK aid is helping to tackle the outbreak through our funding for the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, but we are considering the case for additional support.

Ebola

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to help those areas affected by the latest outbreak of Ebola which has been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Sugg) (Con)]

My Lords, last week the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in the DRC a public health emergency of international concern. This is a wake-up call to the international community that Ebola is a problem that cannot be ignored. We recognise the gravity of the situation, and that is why, two days before the WHO declaration, the UK announced an additional £50 million of funding for the response in DRC. Now others must follow suit.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her Answer and, indeed, for the money that has been made available. One of the most effective ways of rolling out preventative health education is to use local indigenous leadership. In 2015, Christian Aid and other charities recommended that NGOs should engage with local faith leaders for this purpose. Are Her Majesty’s Government following this advice? Secondly, with daily flights between DRC and Europe, given the highly infectious nature of this disease, will she explain to the House the steps that are being taken for our own domestic preparedness?

[Baroness Sugg]

I agree with the right reverend Prelate on the importance of getting education on this out, and community engagement remains one of the most important factors that will help in any outbreak. Strengthening this aspect of the response is a key part of the ongoing reset which the UK and other partners have pushed for. The response is increasingly working with religious leaders to help foster community trust and ownership and, on top of our wider support, we are funding anthropological research into community dynamics, which is working with faith leaders.

On the right reverend Prelate’s second question, we do of course have screening at the airports in the affected areas, but the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in the Cabinet Office is co-ordinating the UK’s preparedness, working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Transport and UK Border Force. We manage a returning workers scheme: people who have travelled to the area register, and we monitor their health. We have the expertise to handle a case of Ebola in the UK, with two high-level isolation units. We undertake a risk assessment every two weeks and monitor the situation daily. The current assessment is that the risk to the UK is negligible to very low.

Immigration: Children

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Baroness will know that the no recourse to public funds condition has been set by successive Governments—it is not new. There are obviously exceptions for refugees relating to humanitarian protection and there are certainly discretionary leave cases. We also recognise the need for exceptions where the right to family or private life is involved under the Immigration Rules. We therefore allow for applicants to seek leave on family life grounds or to request that the no recourse to public funds provision is lifted or not imposed at all. Local authorities have seen real-terms increases and will do so up to the spending review. They should be well placed in addition to the extra £410 million allocated to them in 2019-20 to invest in adult and children’s social care services.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, research by the Children’s Society shows that this particular group of children is more likely to experience absolute poverty, homelessness and greater levels of domestic violence. Despite the significant evidence about the damage that poverty, destitution and abuse can have on children’s outcomes, the Home Office has not yet made public how many children are subject to these NRPF conditions on their families’ leave to remain. Will the Minister commit to making these figures publicly available?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am not in a position to make the figures publicly available. However, where children are involved, families may qualify for support from local authorities under Section 17 of the Children Act. It is very difficult to substantiate some of the claims made in the report without knowing the cases. I do not decry what the right reverend Prelate says: we have an absolute duty to children in our care and our communities.

Knife Crime

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for obtaining this debate and for his excellent analysis of some of the causes and, indeed, the work that has been done on how we might address them, which is a holistic approach. I am also delighted that a number of experts in policing are speaking in this debate. I come to this with little knowledge of that, but I have knowledge through the 136 schools in my diocese—I have been to two this week—and in many of the urban areas across Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, which seek to bring together groups of young people to reflect on how this can be addressed.

This debate looks at the impact of government policies on serious youth violence. As the causes are many and varied, we need to look at a wide range of different issues. We are all aware that access to lethal weapons has escalated and intensified conflict. Demonstrably, when the year to March 2018 represented the highest number of knife homicides in England and Wales since 1946, it is all too clear to us that it is too easy to obtain weapons, notwithstanding the Offensive Weapons Act 2019. Indeed, from previous problems, for example acid attacks, we are aware that simply removing one way of attacking other people does not necessarily immediately solve a problem. I am therefore delighted that government action in reducing weapon accessibility has had some success, with Operation Sceptre taking some 10,000 knives off the streets. Yet piecemeal approaches will never be enough.

Other speakers have raised our approach to the stop and search policy. We need to hear, and I hope the Minister will be able to comment on, the latest evidence on how this policy is being implemented and where it is achieving the aims we want it to. Assessing government policy’s impact requires an appreciation of the complex and interlinked factors that drive young people into violence. As Centrepoint has said, there are many factors driving youth violence, whether poverty, exclusion, disadvantage or other situations. It is nevertheless significant that 21% of young people convicted of possessing a knife had been excluded from school. The lack of children’s support generally, whether due to the cut of 62% in council early years services spending since 2010, the loss of more than 1,000 Sure Start centres or the rise in school exclusions are all contributing factors to serious youth violence.

If we do not provide children with support in their lives, whether in their communities or schools, we risk alienating them from participation in wider society. I therefore welcome the Home Office working with Ofsted and the Department for Education in focusing on the risks surrounding crime and exclusions. All children deserve education, opportunities and support, as they will have the potential to contribute to the good of society. If young people are to play a full part, it certainly means that they must have access to employment. That is why we must consider the impact of government policies on tackling unemployment. I am shocked, like, I am sure, many other Members of this House, that young people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds are almost twice as likely to be unemployed as their white counterparts. Can the Minister explain to the House what impact government policy is having on addressing this specific issue?

Communities have a significant influence on the people in them. I note the views of the Children’s Society, which produced one of these briefing papers:

“Children carrying weapons should be seen as a child protection issue which needs a safeguarding response. A whole-system approach must include all government departments. Young people thrive best when their lives are given validity through positive community affirmation, yet when young people feel they have fallen short of being worthy of affirmation, the power of society as a redemptive force is crucial”.


With a presence in every community, we in the Churches and on these Benches want to play our part in combating serious youth violence. In a couple of weeks’ time, the General Synod of the Church of England will hold a debate on this subject during which the Reverend Canon Dr Rosemarie Mallett, a prominent campaigner and a parish priest in an area that has seen a great deal of serious youth violence, will call on parishes to open the doors of our churches after school hours to make safe places.

This type of community-led action is about providing safe spaces for the young, who can sometimes view the church or other religious premises as a neutral group. Perhaps this is why the capital city’s busiest knife amnesty bin is in the church in St John’s, Hoxton. We want to explore how we can play our part to help with that. We are not blind to violence: we see its impact on our streets in our parishes in many urban areas. It has been widely reported in the press in the past week that some churches in the centre of Luton in my diocese, inspired by the words of the prophet Isaiah—

“they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks”—

have been reclaiming knives delivered through a knife amnesty and made a striking sculpture of a phoenix rising from the ashes. Just like the phoenix, communities can rise together. This is much bigger than just unemployment or policing. We need to engage everyone we possibly can at the grass roots for a much wider debate and much wider ownership by society if we are to address this problem, which is causing devastation to so many individuals and families across our nation.

Female Genital Mutilation

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I certainly have heard of the spoon campaign—I heard the lady who initiated it speaking in Manchester the other week. It prevents not only FGM but forced marriage, which is another benefit. It is such a wonderful, simple campaign, and I commend it.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, the Government are to be congratulated on the various pieces of legislation that have been taken through. However, this is much more complex and is not simply a legal issue, as we have heard. That does not seem to solve the problem; it is clearly a cultural issue. The Minister has already referred to some of the attempts that have been made to change culture. What efforts are being made to talk to community leaders, who are some of the key people in those more traditional and sometimes hierarchical communities, to try to get the cultural change, so that this becomes an unacceptable practice and something which we really can see addressed?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The right reverend Prelate goes to the nub of the problem: it cannot be solved by legislation alone. Certainly, we are doing some work around the world in giving UK aid. At home, we need to get to the point where those community leaders not only see that this is wrong but articulate that to members of their community, explaining that this is not only unacceptable and illegal but that it maims girls for life.

Gender Pay Gap

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I agree with the presumption of the noble Baroness’s question. She is absolutely right about better-quality data coming forward: it is what both employers and employees want. I know that the GEO has been running a series of interactive sessions with employers to try to help them develop their action plans. I also know that the Government have provided two further pieces of guidance for employers and employees as they develop action plans to address the gender pay gap.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, this week the Church Investors Group, which has assets of £21 billion, will vote against the chairs of boards of big firms that have poor policies on tax and climate change. From now on, the 67-member group will put pressure on companies that have no women directors. Does the Minister agree with that approach? Does she also agree that it is a welcome step that companies can no longer get away with such dire records of female representation in management positions?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I certainly agree with the right reverend Prelate. He will recall that we had a real push to increase women’s representation on boards under the Davies review. When we started off, that representation was something like 12% and it has now risen to over 30%—I think that that is where we are now, or maybe it is just short of 30%—so we have made huge strides. I do not think that companies any longer want all-male, white boards, because that really does not give the diversity or balance that is representative of society.

Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 18th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I thank Tim Loughton MP and the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, for bringing this Bill forward in the Chamber today. It is a complex Bill because it brings together a number of different issues and therefore the danger is that it could fall because a group of people does not like one particular bit of it. I know just how hard it has been working on just the focused registration of marriage part of it, let alone the other focuses. For that reason, I will resist the temptation to widen the debate beyond the scope of the Bill; for example, to explore the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury. I do so because I want us to focus absolutely on what we are trying to deliver. That does not preclude us from having other debates on the points he has made but I do not believe that they are relevant today. Indeed, the danger is that it will confuse matters if we go beyond the scope of what we are trying to do.

As has already been spelled out, the proposals in Clause 1 reflect almost exactly my own Registration of Marriage Bill, which passed through this House with support from your Lordships. Perhaps I may say how grateful I am to the considerable number of people who were immensely helpful. It was only my second attempt to get a Private Member’s Bill through. I am a complete novice at this and I discovered just how complex it is to move a Bill on. I was therefore delighted to have the huge help of so many Members of your Lordships’ House. As has also been mentioned, we decided to do something which I am told is very unusual. We developed a pincer movement with Dame Caroline Spelman MP introducing a Private Member’s Bill with almost exactly the same words in the other place, because we were so determined to move this very focused piece of legislation on and try to get it into law.

The Bill before us today originated in the other place but both the respective Bills have passed through one of the two Houses and both share a core belief that marriage registration needs to be updated and modernised. Clause 1 would correct a clear and historic injustice. When a couple is married and the marriage is registered, currently there is provision only for the fathers’ names to be recorded. It is an archaic practice, unchanged since Victorian times, when children were seen as the father’s property and little consideration was given to the role of the mother, in particular any sense of them having joint responsibility.

In England and Wales the law currently requires all marriages to be registered once they have taken place. Following the marriage ceremony, the person responsible for registering the marriage, such as a registrar or a member of the clergy of the Church of England, registers the marriage in a marriage register book and handwrites the marriage certificate. I have done that myself many times. Another aspect which features in both my Bill and this Bill is the modernisation of the system of marriage registration. For too long the system has been solely paper-based. Certificates are an exact copy of the register entry, with the prescribed particulars registered for marriages including details only of the fathers but not the mothers of the couple.

Leaving aside the obvious benefits of digitalisation, which is already available to couples in Scotland and Northern Ireland, there have been calls from both within and outside Parliament for the mother’s details to be included in marriage registration. For my own Bill, the Church consulted internally and won support from senior clergy across the Church. It has also worked for many years with the Home Office and the General Register Office on the finer points of its implementation.

Incidentally, I have been surprised by the unexpected support of groups of people who would not normally spend time engaging with the minutiae of parliamentary legislation. Genealogists, for example, have reacted with a huge sense of relief. I have received quite a number of letters from genealogists saying, “It is about time because it is so much harder to trace families back in this country where the mother’s name is not recorded at this key point”. Elsewhere, I have been glad to amplify the voices of feminists and women’s groups on this important issue.

Last year we marked the centenary of women’s suffrage, so surely it is time to bring the registration of marriage into the present age. I hope that we will all support the Bill.

Yemen: Humanitarian Situation

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The way to do that is by seizing on every element of hope. Hope was represented in the outcome of Stockholm. That was then consolidated into a UN Security Council resolution that was not blocked by other P5 members. We have international agreement. There is reason for hope. We must put all efforts behind trying to secure it.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, as well as the huge famine—I congratulate Her Majesty’s Government on what they are doing to respond to it—we are also seeing unfold before our eyes a huge medical crisis, with possibly the largest cholera epidemic in recorded history. Will the Minister update us on what plans and action are being taken with our partners to bring in medical help urgently to try to address this unparalleled, Dickensian level of preventable disease?

[Lord Bates]

The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right that this is the largest cholera epidemic. Again, one small, cautious reason for hope is that, from its peak, that outbreak has begun to reduce due to heroic and selfless actions by humanitarian workers on the ground and by organisations such as the World Health Organization and UNICEF, funded in part by the United Kingdom.

Yemen

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to provide humanitarian relief to Yemen following the agreement of the ceasefire in Hodeidah.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, following the positive outcomes of the Stockholm consultations, it is imperative that the parties act in good faith to implement the agreements. Any escalation of military activity must be avoided, and the ports of Hodeidah and Saleef and onward supply routes must be kept open. We continue to address the deteriorating humanitarian situation through our £170 million response this year. The UK is also discussing how best to support the ceasefire agreement with partners.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

I thank the Minister for his response. I am glad that we are able to make a significant contribution but this humanitarian disaster is horrific in scale: 85,000 people have already starved to death, 420,000 children are being treated for malnutrition and we have seen the worst cholera epidemic in the past decade. What are Her Majesty’s Government doing to consider whether we can provide additional help? In particular, what representations are they making to other countries to step up to the plate and address the shortfall so that we can try to resolve this humanitarian crisis?

[Lord Bates]

The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right to point out that this humanitarian crisis is without precedent. It is not going too far to repeat the words of the Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, who said that this could be a famine on a scale that we have not seen for 100 years. The response needs to match that statement in its urgency. So far, the response to this year’s $3 billion appeal is around 80%; the UK’s contribution has been £170 million. We are the fifth-largest contributor behind Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and the United States. Next year, the appeal will be set at $4 billion. There will be a pledging conference in Geneva on 26 February. The world must step up to address the humanitarian crisis and seize this window of opportunity with the ceasefire to address the desperate needs of the people of Yemen.