The Modern Commonwealth: Opportunities and Challenges — House of Commons, 2019-03-07
Topic: International Affairs
Roberta Carol Blackman-Woods (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) for securing this debate, and for his excellent chairing of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK. As he noted, this debate is timely not only because it allows us to consider opportunities in the Commonwealth, but also because Commonwealth Day is next Monday This is a really important period for the Commonwealth and for the role that the UK might play in helping it to address the key issues of our time. The UK currently holds the position of chair-in office for two years, following the successful CHOGM in 2018. It is welcome that the Foreign Secretary stated that the UK is determined to work closely with its partners to maintain that momentum following CHOGM, and to revitalise and reform the Commonwealth for the 21st century The enormity of the task from CHOGM is perhaps best reflected in its communiqué, in which the following notable goals were agreed: to adopt the Commonwealth blue charter on sustainable development; to commit to ratify and implement the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women; to address the stigma around disability; to expand investment and boost intra-Commonwealth trade; to adopt a Commonwealth connectivity declaration; and to adopt a Commonwealth cyber declaration In the short time available, I will focus on three of the issues raised in the communiqué. The first is the commitment to ratify and implement the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, as it is incredibly important for the Commonwealth to have that as a priority. For many years, the Commonwealth Women’s Forum, the Royal Commonwealth Society and Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians have sought to address the lack of women’s representation in Parliament, and that is a key issue if women’s lives across the Commonwealth are to be improved Some of the best practice in securing greater parliamentary representation for women is found in the Commonwealth. Rwanda tops the global league table for women’s representation, at 61.3%. That is followed by Namibia, at 46%, and Uganda, at 34%. In lots of Commonwealth countries women’s representation is around 30%, including in the UK, but sadly the level is lower in a number of countries, such as Malawi, where it is 16.7%, and Botswana, with 9.5%. There is zero representation in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. Those figures demonstrate that much more needs to be done to improve the representation of women in Parliament, because without mechanisms to address that issue, women’s representation tends to stagnate at 30% or lower The mechanism most frequently used in the Commonwealth is quotas, but there are issues attached to that—most notably that women are often brought in on a top-up list and find it difficult to get re-elected. We need a culture change. The recommended benchmarks for democratic legislatures were recently updated by the CPA. That helps with this issue, as those benchmarks state that Parliaments should take issues of equality seriously and encourage the use of equality impact assessments in the development of legislation, policies and budgets. All Parliaments—including our own—would benefit from doing that. It is important that those benchmarks do not sit on the shelf, and that they inform the work of Parliaments. The work on gender is supported by the sustainable development goals. One opportunity we have is to work on universal SDGs right across the Commonwealth, and ensure we empower all women and girls to meet their full potential The second issue I want to raise is the need to address climate change. This relates to SDG 13. It is a huge issue across the Commonwealth, but particularly for Pacific countries. We need to work with our other family members in the Commonwealth to ensure that they address climate changes issues, and that we assist them in that process by the actions we take in the UK and across the Commonwealth The third issue is trade. The Commonwealth has a population of 2.3 billion, 60% of whom are aged 29 or under. Enormous opportunities exist for us to develop key services. I would pick out, given the age of Commonwealth members’ citizens, opportunities in education and economic development. We all want to improve opportunities for trade and investment for all countries In the final couple of minutes, I want to raise two omissions from the communiqué. The first, extraordinarily, is Brexit. That might be because of the countries that attended, but there are challenges with Brexit in terms of the impact that it will have on some of our overseas territories, including Gibraltar. Clearly, there are also opportunities and we need to do what we can to exploit them. The second omission from the communiqué is the absence of any measures to address the lack of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in some Commonwealth countries. I know that that is a difficult conversation to have, but it is one we need to undertake The CPA does amazing work across the Commonwealth to advocate for and provide training to achieve more inclusive and effective Parliaments. It works with clerks and public accounts committees, so that higher standards of probity exist, and campaigns to ensure that the voices of parliamentarians are not ignored by the Executive. It could, however, do so much more if its status as a UK charity was changed to that of an international parliamentary organisation. CPA has requested that change and it is currently sitting with Her Majesty’s Government. It would be great if the Minister could give us an update today on the timescale to deal with that In conclusion, we need to have vision and ambition for the Commonwealth. We need to work across both Houses of Parliament and all Parliaments across the Commonwealth to achieve that, and to build a better and more prosperous Commonwealth for all of us.