Queen’s Speech

Lord German Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I shall address my remarks to the issue of the development assistance programme. Earlier, my noble friend Lady Northover talked about taking the long view. Taking the long view is important, because then you can reach your objectives. I want to make the case for targeting resource at education and raising the official development budget allocation for education to 15%.

As we wait for the restoration of the 0.7% of GNI for official development assistance, we have to recognise that the budget is being squeezed even more than just the reduction to 0.5%, as our GNI shrinks in real terms. This will make setting priorities difficult. Globally, even before the pandemic, 258 million children received no schooling at all, and hundreds of millions more were in school but experiencing conditions that prevented their learning. Education is every child’s right. Education has the power to protect and transform lives, and it is the foundation for sustainable development.

Last year, as G7 president, the UK hosted the replenishment of the Global Partnership for Education and made improving access in low and middle-income countries a priority, but as we emerge from the global pandemic, this laudable priority is under threat because of the huge shortage of qualified teachers. Globally, there are too few qualified teachers, and this is one of the greatest barriers to education in poor countries. UNESCO estimates that 69 million new qualified teachers must be recruited by 2030 to enable all children to have a decent education. In countries such as Djibouti, Malawi, Namibia, Senegal, South Sudan, Togo and Zimbabwe, 95% or more of the national education budget is spent on teachers’ salaries—yet teacher pay is low, and often below the poverty line.

In Zimbabwe, for example, teachers’ salaries are about $335 per month—less than the amount needed to buy food and other items to support a family of five. One deeply concerned teacher from Zimbabwe said:

“teachers feel as if they have become beggars. Morale is at its lowest. … We go to work in tattered clothes, and we are living in squalid conditions.”

Recruiting more teachers at these pay levels is going to be a very difficult task indeed.

Some 38% of primary school teachers and 55% of secondary school teachers in sub–Saharan Africa are untrained, and many are teaching classes of 70 and more pupils. I have seen two classes of 70 sitting back to back, with a teacher facing them and then moving round to the other side of the room to continue teaching the other half of a class of well over 140 children. If you believe that education is the way out of poverty and the foundation for sustainable development, providing qualified teachers must be a top priority. We have to help build a better future, and that starts with education delivered by a qualified teacher.

I would be grateful if the Minister in replying could tell the House what assessment the Government have made of the global teacher shortage, so that the global targets they set in 2021 as president of the G7 will be met. One of these targets is to get 40 million more girls into education—and that alone would mean recruiting and training 1.8 million more teachers. Do the Government recognise that teachers are one of the greatest levers in delivering global education ambitions? If so, does the Minister agree that to help tackle the teacher shortage, there is a need for an overarching UK government policy on recruiting more teachers globally? Improving and providing decent education is the route out of poverty and the pathway to prosperity.

Integrated Review: Development Aid

Lord German Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord German (LD) [V]]

I refer to my interests in the register. Today’s news that the Government’s global health priority is virtually excluding water, sanitation and hygiene projects shows the impact of the cuts to international aid. Good public health is an essential element of community resilience to disease and infection —just look at the health impact on schools with no running water, where toilet and eating activity is undertaken without any handwashing.

The sad reality is that we now have a smaller pot of money for global development, and added to that is the other reality that big international long-term commitments will take the lion’s share of this smaller pot. This means that smaller charities in the UK will be squeezed out of delivering much-valued projects that are closer to the communities they serve. These are the smaller charities that deliver better value for money than large organisations.

The latest round of Small Charities Challenge Fund and community partnership grant applications has been paused indefinitely. Without confirmation that successful grant applications would be honoured, many charities face having to make immediate decisions on staffing and resources, including redundancies.

These are projects where small charities have invested hundreds of hours in the development and preparation of projects approved by the Government but now in limbo. Pulling the plug on approved projects is costly and damaging to small charities; it is also damaging to the communities they serve in the poorest parts of the world. They now have no hope of recovering the nugatory work they have put into developing projects that the Government determined were valuable. This has devastatingly dashed the hopes of the people who were to be the beneficiaries of these projects.

What reassurance can the Minister give on the future of the Small Charities Challenge Fund and the Community Partnership grant scheme, including those projects that have received approval but no payments as yet?

Food and Drink: Waste Prevention

Lord German Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park [V]]

I am happy to echo my noble friend’s thanks and congratulations to the water sector. Defra was pleased to confirm that it will waive the usual charge to publicans—around £1,000 to £1,500—for disposing of spoiled beer. It is also taking steps to streamline the beer disposal application process and minimise the administrative burden on publicans. Those steps include allowing bulk applications from pubs and redeploying teams from elsewhere in water companies to focus solely on processing applications from pubs. She is right to identify a possible solution to the problem of the weight of these barrels, which are hard to remove by hand, but other options are being explored as well.

[Lord German (LD) [V]]

My Lords, nearly £1 a litre of duty is being lost through ullage of beer and the problem of recycling is getting up to an industrial scale, so will the Minister use the duty on beer to look at the potential for industrial-scale recycling, particularly for the land-based and energy uses such as microbial fuel or biogas?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park [V]]

The noble Lord is absolutely right to identify those as useful alternatives. There are big markets for anaerobic digestion and animal feed, so there is no reason why the repurposing of spoiled beer cannot be managed on an industrial scale. Clearly, this took us by storm almost overnight and is a problem we have not had to deal with in the past. I will absolutely take his suggestion back to my department and the Treasury, which ultimately makes these decisions, and ensure that it is properly looked at.

Yemen: Humanitarian Aid Funding

Lord German Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I have already alluded to the fact that we are working through UN agencies, and in particular the World Health Organization. However, I implore all parties, including the Houthis, who control the major part of the distribution network, to ensure that we can provide the support and aid that is required across the country.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, already the United Nations has had to suspend payments for 10,000 front-line healthcare workers and halve the food rations for 8.5 million people. What leverage does the Minister think that he and the Government have to bridge this gap, given that UK aid is the same as that given by the US and the third-largest of all the funders in the world? Surely this gives us some increased leverage. Where does he assess that that potential lies?

[The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

Can Members mute their microphones if they are not speaking? There is a lot of feedback.

Queen’s Speech

Lord German Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, before I turn to the centrepiece of the gracious Speech’s measures, I would like to say a few words about the plastic bag tax. I had the privilege of chairing the committee of inquiry in the National Assembly for Wales which looked at this issue prior to the legislation being introduced in 2011. My message to noble Lords is: do not panic. It will all work out. It will all be very successful and it will have two very valuable outcomes.

First, the plastic bag tax will change people’s behaviour. It will make people behave differently. You are just as likely now in Wales to see someone with a Tesco bag for life shopping in Waitrose with it and a person with an Asda bag for life shopping in Sainsbury’s. The fact of the matter is that people now carry their bags with them and very few people resort to buying a plastic bag.

The policy will also produce a hardened attitude towards protecting the environment so that it becomes important to people. It is a bit of a culture shock for me to come to London, where people continuously want to thrust plastic bags at me. I usually try to refuse but on occasions I am in a queue and I get a plastic bag, but I refuse to throw them away, because that is what we do not do now in Wales—you do not have them to throw away. So I now have a boxful of plastic bags that I do not quite know what to do with, so if anybody needs a bag for life I have some that I can give them for nothing. I will bring one of my biodegradable plastic bags for the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, next week, which of course are a prerequisite if you are going to dispose of food waste, which is primarily what they are used for.

I was looking for an analogy from the natural world, the environment, which fits the changes that this Government are making and have made in the area of pensions. The segue between the two is a bit tricky. After all, we have just had the announcement of two Bills this Session, following on from the new single-tier state pension and auto-enrolment the year before. It is a pretty seismic shift in the crucial and previously much underplayed sector of pensions.

My analogy from the natural world is about the experience I had with forestry in Wales. Some 12 years ago, I was the member of the Welsh Government with responsibility for forests. I introduced a major change in tree planting. I discovered that previously taxpayers in Wales had been heavily subsidising the growth of cash-crop conifers, reflecting a bygone age when pit props were needed in great numbers. But in effect the Government and taxpayers were subsidising timber for garden sheds, fencing, DIY products and the like. The change made was a presumption in favour of planting broad-leaf trees and providing natural growth so that our forests would become varied and contrasting places for recreation and leisure. Now, some 12 years later, the true value of cash-crop timber is slowly becoming apparent and conversely more forests are being opened up for public enjoyment, tourism and leisure. That was a change which had profound and significant outcomes for generations to come. That is my segue: it is the same with the pensions revolution that we are seeing.

Actions taken by this Government in their five-year term will lead to profound and significant changes that will benefit many generations to come, fulfilling an ambition for what people want from their pension: a reasonable idea of the level of pension they will eventually get; a pension that gives them best value for the contributions they have made over the years; and a pension which is as straightforward and understandable as possible. I took to heart the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. It hurts your head, he said, and it can hurt your head. Anything that we can do to make it straightforward and understandable and get people engaged with it is very important.

I pay tribute to my honourable friend Steve Webb for delivering those changes, which, taken as a whole, see more people saving for their retirement and a better provision of choice and control for the pension saver. I know that my honourable friend did not know the price of a Lamborghini before he made that statement, but he certainly did afterwards. Many people have commented on that matter today. I will certainly transmit the message to him that there are very fine motor vehicles produced within the United Kingdom which compare very favourably indeed.

In that list is a better state pension—last year’s measure—locked against the vagaries of inflation, price rises and government action, the extension of the range of pension products available and more certainty of a pension outcome. That is the benefit in just a few years. We now have more than 3 million new pension savers in this country, but there are many millions yet to join the pension-saving population. Getting the changes right is critical for all those saving for a pension. The two Bills outlined in the gracious Speech indicated by the Government as the centrepiece of the programme are part of the building blocks for the pension ambition, the ambition of which I spoke about earlier. They will need close scrutiny to ensure that, in their detail, they play a full part in meeting this ambition.

In respect of the private pensions Bill for a defined ambition pension, I welcome the Pensions Minister’s statement that the Government will not be taking an off-the-shelf product which replicates the system in the Netherlands, Denmark or even Canada, but that we will have a product which suits the United Kingdom market and the needs of United Kingdom pension savers. However, there are already some emerging and important questions to be asked. Perhaps I can tempt my noble friend to address some of them in his winding-up speech.

For example, on the Treasury’s pension tax Bill, giving people choice on the use of their pension pot raises a critical issue for the success of that new freedom: the guidance that pension holders will receive. As many noble Lords have said today, the Government’s consultation does not end until tomorrow, but there is huge time pressure to get it right. The big question is: what will be the nature of the Government’s guarantee of free, impartial and face-to-face guidance to DC pension holders, as announced by the Chancellor? What will be the degree of independence in the provision of guidance? I am sure that this House will want clarity on how the Government’s guarantee will work, how it will be funded, how it will be triggered and how savers will be dealt with both before and after the guidance has been received. The new pension products that we are talking about in the second Bill—the target pension—will help share the risk, provide stability and, crucially, more certainty, for pension savers but, once again, there are questions to be asked.

The pensions landscape will have changed with profound and significant effects for future generations after all those measures have been passed in this Parliament. I pay tribute to the Government for putting this centre stage, but we need more engagement with pension savers. Then we should get greater understanding, which is crucial. A good start would be—I believe that this is possible—a new political consensus in this Parliament to provide long-term continuity towards that goal and ambition which I believe we all share. As I said, the pursuit of greater understanding is critical. After all, the money is the savers’ money and managing their savings plays an enormous part in people’s well-being in later life.

My plea for political consensus means that we have to have all the key information and analysis available for our consideration. My noble friend has a track record of providing information in abundance, so I very much hope that he will be consistent and live up to his magnificent record of delivering papers to us in such numbers that we will have no complaints from any part of this House about not understanding the Government’s intentions or their analysis of the problems which we face.

I believe that what we see before us is a seismic shift in our pension system, which will have a profound effect for many generations to come.

Queen’s Speech

Lord German Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord German]

My Lords, I wish to address two issues that came up in the gracious Speech a few days ago: international development assistance and state pension reform. I have struggled to find a link between the two since we can speak only once, and I hope that I have found a tenuous one—noble Lords will probably spot it.

I support the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, in seeking to get a response to the request for the legislative locking in of the commitment to 0.7% of GNI. That is in the coalition agreement, which says that we will make it a legal requirement to stick to that commitment, and we need that reassurance so that not only are this Government committed to that but future Governments cannot move away from it. The Government are to be congratulated on reaching that target as we are one of only six countries in the whole world, and by far the largest of them, to have done so. We can pat ourselves on the back since we have achieved it well ahead of many other developed large economies.

I would like to suggest to Ministers some ways of spending this money slightly differently from how they are doing it at the moment. It will not come as a surprise to the Minister that I am going to talk about Lesotho. I declare my interest as honorary president of the Dolen Cymru Wales Lesotho Link; my pecuniary interest is that my wife is an employee of that charity. It is in its 27th year and it links Wales with Lesotho, a country-to-country link that brings together the third sector, the state sector and communities and third-sector organisations. In their consideration of how they will use international aid, I hope that the Government will consider the needs of this poor and ravaged country. It is the only Third World country completely surrounded by a developed-economy country—in this case, South Africa. Twenty-seven years ago Lesotho was roughly the same size, and had roughly the same population, as Wales, but it has lost one-third of its population because of HIV/AIDS, which still has a 24% incidence rate, and its average life expectancy is 40. Less than a quarter of the population has electricity. Most of the population are subsistence farmers. There has been massive soil erosion, which has made food security a critical issue. Half the population now receives help from an internationally aided feeding programme.

However, Lesotho is a Commonwealth country with a developed democracy and a multiparty system. In nine day’s time, there will be a general election. It shares the same electoral system as Wales and Scotland. Unfortunately, UK Governments have progressively backed away from this country. I know that the Welsh Government are seeking a way of building a new partnership with the UK Government to see whether they can assist in this matter. I understand why DfID is reluctant to work with relatively small pots of money when it wants to work in partnership with its funding and get a bigger return. I hope the Government will commit themselves to looking favourably upon a relationship with Wales and the Welsh Government to see whether they can lever some of the additional funding that has been announced towards this very poor country.

One of Lesotho’s primary concerns is that it has a very poor private sector. Here, I want to address microfinance. Lesotho’s economy has been built upon subsistence farming, and it has to develop. It has large water resources, nearly all of which go to South Africa. It has diamond mines, yet most are owned by companies in the West, including in the United Kingdom. It needs to build its private sector, and to do that, it has big microfinance needs. As in other countries, there is a huge demand for small-scale financing. There is apparently about $40 billion of microfinance funds around the world at the moment, but demand for them is growing by 20% to 30%, which is outstripping the core sources that we can all think about in the way that this money has arrived. There are 150 million to 200 million recipients of microfinance, but the UN suggests that that figure will grow to 1 billion. Only one fund has so far worked its way through in providing that money through the whole lifecycle. It had a 6% return. So what organisations in the United Kingdom might provide funds? Pension funds look for a long-term, steady return, and if they could get a 6% return, they might be able to come up with some of the financing to make sure that that growing demand is dealt with. I hope the Government will encourage pension funds.

That is my link to state pension reform. People in this country are living longer. One person in six now lives to the age of 100, yet fewer people are saving for retirement. Our current system also supports inequality as women, the low paid and the self-employed tend to lose out, usually having lower than average state pensions. Ultimately, a pension scheme that has been changed by means-testing and other changes has become very complex and people do not know what they should do. Consequently, they are not saving enough for their retirement. It used to be calculated that people could expect to retire on 45% of what they were earning, but by 2055 their state pension will be only 32% of their earnings during their working life. The single-tier system greatly simplifies the system. It provides a clear outline of what people can expect from the state at present and in retirement. It provides a firm foundation for saving, reinforces our commitment to auto-enrolment and balances the risks of defined contribution pension systems. People will qualify as individuals. It will provide people with a clear incentive to save. This is the citizen’s pension that many on these Benches have been campaigning for and pressing for for many years, and we are about to see it come to fruition.