Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2016-05-23
Topic: International Affairs
Shreela Flather (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, how does one follow that? I had not intended to say anything about the referendum, but how can I avoid it, as so many noble Lords have started with the referendum? I have my own problems with it. I spent three years as a delegate to the Economic and Social Committee before I came to your Lordships’ House. At that time, the EU was a wonderful institution, because it was made up of countries which understood each other and had similar attitudes. I thought that that was a good thing. Now we have a huge number of countries, and it is the biggest translating machine the world has ever known or will ever know. The Parliament goes from one town to another, moving out twice a month. Can your Lordships imagine how much money and time that wastes? The budget has not been signed off for 25 years. Would we accept that from any other institution? The Commission is a small bureaucracy, which is not overseen by anybody, as far as I know. The CAP keeps the French countryside and French agriculture going: without it, both of them would collapse. There are a lot of things which are not right Moving on to what I wanted to say today, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for touching on two things which no one else has, as far as I know—although maybe they did when I was not in the Chamber—women and population. We go through life and do not focus on those two issues. I am hoping for enlightenment one day and that people will start connecting population with climate change. It is just amazing to me that nobody wants to do that. I was the first Member of your Lordships’ House who spoke in a climate change debate on population. In 1950, we were 2.7 billion. How many are we today—7.2 billion? So there is a difference and it will not remain unnoticed. The climate is going to change because, apart from anything else, there are so many people There are more than 1 billion women in India and Africa put together, and they have the kinds of lives that we cannot even imagine, sitting here. It is unbelievable. I will just give a few little stories, because stories fix things in one’s mind. In Haryana there is a difference of 11% between the number of girls and of boys, because the girls have been aborted or killed. There are two reasons for that: one is dowry, which is horrible, and the other is inheritance, because the laws allow girls to inherit. The unforeseen consequence of that is that the girls are killed so that they will not inherit anything. Especially in agricultural communities, they really worry about that Two girls were raped, killed and hanged from a tree in India. The police said, "Oh, they are only low caste". A girl and a boy wanted to get married and were asked to pay £240 each to be allowed to go on living. The boy paid, but the girl could not and was raped by 17 men in the village. When you hear those things, you do not think they can be true, but they are. With honour killings, you hear the word "honour", but whose honour are we talking about? Usually what happens is that a boy in one family does something to a girl in another family, and they then rape or kill the sister of that boy. So you kill somebody who has not done anything. In Pakistan, quite often, if you can prove that it is an honour killing, they do not bring any murder charges. A girl and boy were hanged by their parents in their living room because they wanted to get married. Some run away to Delhi, but Delhi and Bombay have agents who find these young people and bring them back. In Kenya, a woman went to work in the local town and was then not allowed back into the village and to see her family. Amazing things take place. Women are used and abused, and if we cannot do anything for them, we do not achieve anything I know that my time has almost run out but I must say one quick thing about the Commonwealth Development Corporation, which can now undertake development wherever there is need. Two watchdogs have said that it is not focused and does not do things which will bring down poverty or create more jobs. It says it has created 1.3 million jobs, but nobody has checked to see whether this is true or not. You can say anything. I can say to your Lordships that I created 10 jobs—I probably have, but your Lordships do not know that. It has been given £735 million of our money by DfID this year, and it is right and proper that every penny of that money should be looked at. We should be told what it does with that money, because all the things it has invested in involve fees—fee-paying schools, private hospitals and all those sort of things—and nothing which would help the poor.