Queen's Speech

My Lords, I am delighted to see the noble Lords, Lord Howell and Lord Astor, on the Front Bench. We have been friends and colleagues for a long time and it is a great pleasure to see them both on the government Front Bench. Secondly, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, for what she said about women. I am very pleased that she was appointed a special representative to look after the interests of women. I am delighted and hope she will continue to do that in her capacity as shadow Minister. I will speak also about rats and Poles, and human rights. I am not impressed by the frankly ridiculous example of these Poles eating rats. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, is not in his place. Everybody talks about human rights but they forget that half the population of developing countries have no human rights. That is what I want to make clear. Who and what are we talking about today? As far as I know, nobody has mentioned women except the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock. They are half the population of developing countries but they have no rights and no life. One woman dies in childbirth every minute of every day. Sixty-five thousand die in botched abortions. When I went to the conference in Addis Ababa—the latest of those which started with the Cairo conference—the Saudis and the Holy See refused to allow the term "women’s sexual health" into the communiqué. If men had to give birth at least once they would not have done that. Whose sexual health is important? Men do not have those problems. It is only women who have such problems with sexual health. Many women who do not die suffer all their lives from problems which arise from childbirth because they have no access to the services that we have access to. Professor Fathalla, a director of the WHO, said a long time ago that women were dying of diseases not because we could not cure them but because we do not think they are worth treating. Is it not time for men to start thinking about such women? It cannot be left to women; women cannot do it. We have been trying to tell men about these poor women for many years, but we have not been able to get their support or the power—which they have and we do not—to help us. When Gordon Brown returned from his first visit to Africa, he said that women are the agents of change. Indeed they are, but they have not been treated as such. They have not been given the opportunities to be agents of change. They are not only agents of change but at the heart of everything. They are at the heart of population increase because 41 per cent of women have no access to family planning. In 1950—60 years ago—this planet had 2.6 billion people. In 60 years the population of this planet has risen to 6.8 billion and is expected to go up by between 2 and 3 billion more by 2050. Where is the water to come from? Where is the food to come from? Nine million children already die before they reach the age of five. Another thing that Gordon Brown famously said was that if you do not save the mothers, you cannot save the children. You have to save the mothers to save the children. You have to help them to have control over their own fertility. If they do not have control over their own fertility, how can they stop having children who then die of hunger, disease and malnutrition? India has the largest number of people with malnutrition. Forty per cent of Africans go to bed hungry every night. Those are the facts you should keep in mind. Of those 40 per cent of Africans, you will find that 30 per cent are women. Seventy per cent of Africa’s agriculture is looked after by women at barely subsidence level. If somebody had the sense to go there and set up small co-operatives, they would feed Africa. Why is the money not being spent on those things? I agree that we have to have defence but we are all on the same planet. If we do not do something, we will all suffer. We talk about climate change and this, that and the other. The poor do not consume very much—that is the way it is put. The Americans consume because they have the stuff to consume. The poor do not consume because they have nothing to consume, but whatever they have, they consume. Trees are being cut and the land is being turned into—I have forgotten the word, but it does not grow anything. We have to think about those things. That is the future—children and women dying of malnutrition and diseases and nobody cares at all. We heard about South Africa where the World Cup will be held. Have you seen how many women get raped in South Africa? Most women get raped possibly at least once a week. It is just endemic. That is the world we are looking at and that we have to change. It is only 30 years since DfID—it was the ODA then—started building the gender factor into all its projects. We have to see what we can do for women because they will do the rest for all of us.