Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in Development
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
Campbell, Mr Gregory (East Londonderry) (DUP)
† Connarty, Michael (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
Denham, Mr John (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)
† Featherstone, Lynne (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development)
Gillan, Mrs Cheryl (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
† Hilling, Julie (Bolton West) (Lab)
† Munn, Meg (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
† Rees-Mogg, Jacob (North East Somerset) (Con)
† Rudd, Amber (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
† Shuker, Gavin (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
† White, Chris (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
† Zahawi, Nadhim (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
Sarah Coe, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee
European Committee B
Thursday 6 March 2014
[Katy Clark in the Chair]
Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Development
11.30 am
The Chair: Does a member of the European Scrutiny Committee wish to make a explanatory statement about the decision to refer the relevant document to the Committee?
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Ms Clark.
It might be helpful to the Committee if I explain some of the background to the document and why the European Scrutiny Committee recommended the debate. The antecedents of the report go back to a 2007 Commission communication, the overarching aim of which was to promote progress in achieving equal political, civil, economic, employment, social and cultural rights for women and men, and girls and boys; equal access to and control over resources for women and men; and equal opportunities to achieve political and economic influence for women and men.
The strategy envisaged specific actions for women’s empowerment in partner countries. Priorities included ensuring that gender equality issues form part of the regular political dialogue with partner countries; integrating gender equality issues and objectives into country strategies and indicators for measuring performance and impact; and building institutional capacity within the EU and in partner countries.
The strategy was followed by the 2010 to 2015 EU Plan of Action on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Development—known as the GAP. It was regarded as sufficiently important to have been adopted by Council conclusions in 2010 on the UN millennium development goals. The GAP contains nine objectives, 37 actions and 53 indicators. The European Commission services, EU member states, the European External Action Service and EU delegations are committed to implement the GAP and to report annually on each indicator.
In submitting the third report for scrutiny, the Minister noted that the UK had been instrumental in getting the GAP established. The 2011 multilateral aid review of the Department for International Development had also identified the need to
“strengthen gender mainstreaming in practice and measurement of impact of gender work”
as a reform priority for the European Commission. The report’s conclusion, that overall progress was “extremely slow” between July 2012 and June 2013, was disappointing. A lack of understanding of gender issues among EU delegation staff meant that the main tools for achieving and monitoring gender mainstreaming were not universally implemented in EU delegations, despite being compulsory.
To ensure the credibility of the EU’s position in negotiations on the post-2015 development aid agenda, the Minister said:“it is very important that the EU delivers on its own commitments to integrate gender equality in its development programmes.”
According to the Minister, however, the December 2013 update of her Department’s 2011 multilateral aid review found that
“more attention is needed, particularly by senior management.”
“continue to press the EU to step up to the mark and meet the targets set in the GAP”,
“require stronger, more visible support from EU senior management, and improved technical capacity at a working level…Action needs to be taken both in Brussels and in EU Delegations to improve coordination and commitment to delivering results on gender.”
“to see faster and deeper progress than has been evident so far,”
“made this clear to the Commission including through senior DFID staff visits to Brussels over the last three months.”
In particular, the Minister was aiming to
“work with the EU institutions to strengthen action on the issue of violence against women and girls, an area in which the UK is a key player,”
“International Violence Against Women Champion.”
The Committee felt that, three years on, this was an unimpressive picture—not surprisingly, a mid-term review by the Commission had yet to materialise—and that the Minister’s hand should be strengthened by having the lacklustre performance so far of the Commission and the EEAS on such important matters debated in the European Committee.
The Chair: I call the Minister to make the opening statement.
4.35 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Lynne Featherstone): It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Ms Clark.
Throughout the developing world, girls and women continue to bear a disproportionate burden of poverty. It is possible, however, to take effective practical action that enables girls and women to fulfil their potential. The benefits of investing in girls and women are transformational for their own lives and for their families, communities, societies and economies. Empowering girls and women has a multiplier effect for economic growth and for achieving the millennium development goals.
The UK has long pushed for an ambitious EU approach and welcomed the EU gender action plan when it was launched in 2010. We recognised that it had some limits, but saw it as a good starting point in taking forward the EU’s commitment to improving the lives of girls and women across the world. Since 2010, important progress has been made in implementing the GAP, as the report highlights, but the unmistakeable message of the report is that overall progress is too slow.
Our own assessment of the EU’s actions on girls and women, carried out as part of the multilateral aid review as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said, has also found progress to be limited. That matters hugely, because EU aid has the potential to make a really positive difference to girls’ and women’s lives. I would therefore like to set out the steps we are taking to accelerate progress and encourage the EU and its member states to address the challenges that the report raises.
It is important to stress at the outset that EU action on girls and women is a collective action for which all EU institutions and member states share responsibility. The lack of progress on the GAP is not the responsibility of the Commission or of EU delegations alone; some member states are also failing to deliver on their commitments. In our response we need to call on all those responsible to redouble their efforts.
The UK is recognised as an international leader in driving forward the empowerment of girls and women. We have led and will continue to lead by example in the EU by supporting our partners to step up to the mark, both through discussions and negotiations in Brussels and at international high-level events. I plan to travel to Brussels later this month to meet Andris Piebalgs, the Development Commissioner, and Fernando Frutuoso de Melo, the director of DEVCO, the directorate-general for development and co-operation. I will raise my concerns about EU support for girls and women personally with them.
We have insisted that EU Ministers should underline their resolve for ambitious EU action on gender through adopting conclusions at the Foreign Affairs Council on development in May, where my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development will represent the UK. This is not simply a matter of technical implementation; it requires international leadership and commitment. We want the Council to send a strong signal that not enough progress has been made so far, and put the spotlight on the Commission and other member states to deliver on their commitments. Requiring conclusions will direct that spotlight.
There are, however, positive signs for the EU, which we should support. Last November, along with Sweden, we co-hosted a call to action to protect girls and women in emergencies, called “Keep Her Safe”. The Commission’s director general for humanitarian aid and civil protection attended that event and gave his support to the initiative. Building on that, the EU now plans to launch its own campaigns to eliminate female genital mutilation, on which the UK has clearly taken a lead, and to end early and forced marriage.
We also need the EU to have the technical skills and capacity to deliver on girls and women. It needs to get better not only at pushing forward specific programmes for girls and women but at building that focus into all its programmes. That was rightly highlighted as a weakness in the three pillars. The GAP report shows that gender issues are not yet mainstreamed across the EU institutions. We are therefore working closely with EU officials to share lessons we have learned from our work on girls and women here. We are also seconding a DFID gender expert to the DEVCO gender team, to deliver much needed support.
If the EU is to improve its performance on girls and women, it needs to be able to measure results and adapt its programmes accordingly. As the Committee knows
we have put a great deal of effort into working with the Commission on developing a new results framework. That is now coming together and we will continue to push for it to include results that are disaggregated by sex. That will mean better data on how girls and women specifically benefit from the EU’s development programmes.The coming months also present important opportunities to raise the profile of gender beyond the GAP. We will push for gender to be fully integrated in the programming of EU aid. The programming for the next seven-year cycle of funding is now in its initial stages, which is a critical opportunity for us. We will push for a major focus on girls and women in the negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda in the UN General Assembly and at the 58th Commission on the Status of Women, which the Minister for Women and Equalities and I will attend.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament elections in May and the appointment of a new college of Commissioners in October present us with opportunities to engage early and robustly with the next set of EU decision makers to ensure that girls and women remain a key priority in their minds. This year, we will also push for a more ambitious results framework to succeed the GAP after 2015.
This is not an easy agenda and we are bound to face many challenges, but EuropeAid’s substantial budget and geographic reach mean it has enormous potential to improve the lives of girls and women everywhere, and every step we take will bring us closer to unlocking that potential. Given that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone is in the room, it would be remiss of me not to remark on the International Development (Gender Equality) Bill, his private Member’s Bill that has just completed its passage through Parliament. It puts an onus on us and our successors to have regard to gender when we make our programmes. I congratulate my hon. Friend on that Bill, because with it he has succeeded in what we are trying to do in Europe.
The Chair: We now have until 12.30 pm for questions to the Minister. I remind Members that questions should be brief. It is open to a Member, subject to my discretion, to ask related supplementary questions.
11.41 am
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab): Everywhere I go, I seem to find that DFID is disappearing. I am the chair of the all-party group on Peru. The first time I went to Peru after I became chair, I saw the programmes we had there. DFID then withdrew from Peru and a number of other central American countries. I went to Cambodia during the recess to look at results and, lo and behold, DFID has disappeared from individual projects there. We are putting more and more stress on working through EU programmes and global health fund programmes, but we have a report showing that the EU is not making much progress. Can the Minister explain to my constituents why DFID, which says so much—she said so much in her speech—is withdrawing from individual programmes? We are giving other people remits, but we are not able to make them carry them out.
Lynne Featherstone: When the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), came into that role, he instituted something that we had never had—rigour in examining
value for money on the vast amounts we spend. We have a responsibility to the British taxpayer, and he instituted a bilateral aid review and a multilateral aid review.Following that, we made decisions to withdraw from several countries, and that situation is ongoing, depending on results. As we go forward, there are countries that we want ultimately to transition. That does not mean that those countries will have no problems left, but as a nation we want to concentrate and focus our aid on the poorest and the most marginalised in the world. The results of the bilateral aid review and the multilateral aid review indicated where we were going to withdraw from.
We do invest in the multilaterals, and the European Union’s development programmes came out extremely well on value for money. We are talking about the GAP plan, and the mainstreaming pillar in particular is not having the success on co-ordination that we would want. We have to work in a direction, and we will push the EU to deliver better. It is absolutely crucial that we keep on pushing, because girls and women are at the forefront of what DFID does and what we want Europe to do.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con): May I first thank the Minister—not only for her kind remarks, but for the tremendous support she gave in ensuring that my Bill went through? It had its Third Reading the day before yesterday and it will receive Royal Assent on 13 March.
I had a meeting yesterday in Westminster Hall with the representatives who are going to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and I was very much encouraged by the attitudes being adopted. Particularly given that we are approaching international women’s day, which is on Saturday, will the Government be promoting the idea of a stand-alone goal for gender equality within the European framework? We want not only to empower women to achieve the objectives, to which the Government have now committed as a legal duty on Royal Assent—that is tremendous—but to protect women from all the things that the Minister mentioned, such as FGM and violence. I would be grateful to hear about the stand-alone goal.
Lynne Featherstone: I thank my hon. Friend for that point, and for all his work. The Secretary of State and I are pushing for a stand-alone goal on gender, and I am happy to make that clear to the Committee. Such a goal is crucial, and we have been working around the world to secure sufficient support.
Next week, the Secretary of State and I will both be attending the Commission on the Status of Women, so we intend to push the idea even further. We will also push for disaggregated data, because currently we cannot see the impact of EU aid programmes, and such data will mean that no one will be able say that they have reached the goal unless everyone has crossed the finishing line. Issues concerning women would therefore be mainstreamed, as well as having a stand-alone goal. We are not there yet, however, so I encourage all Members who believe in the issue to push wherever they have the opportunity.
The Chair: Order. A number of Members have indicated that they wish to ask questions. If the Minister prefers, she can answer them collectively at the end, or she can take them one by one.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op): My question follows up on the one I asked about the Pacific yesterday at DFID questions. Quite a long time ago we decided to work with the EU on the Pacific. The international development money that we send there is channelled through the EU, and the report clearly affects that. The Minister might say that I am incorrect, but my impression is that because funds go through the EU, and have done for a long time, DFID is not paying the kind of attention to issues of gender and value for money that Parliament would like to see.
European representation in the Pacific region consists predominantly of the UK and France. I am not asking about overall frameworks—they are all well and good, but I am a little sceptical of their ability to deliver—but what specifically do DFID, Ministers and departmental staff do to examine how our money that goes through the EU funding mechanisms is used? What kind of questions are asked, meetings held and arrangements made to ensure that gender equality issues are at the heart of how our money is spent?
Lynne Featherstone: Clearly, our officials are always pushing at the EU and having discussions on the variety of development programmes that exist. I may be able to come back to the hon. Lady with more specific detail on that.
The more general issue of funding through a multilateral—the EU, the global health fund, or whatever—is that, having satisfied ourselves that we will get good value for our taxpayers’ money, we keep pushing, keep a view, have meetings, have regard to the frameworks and look at results. However, once we have examined a multilateral body that delivers aid, we do not have a forensic relationship with every single project because that would obviously not be a good use of our time.
Lynne Featherstone: The hon. Lady shakes her head, but quite frankly and realistically, we have decided that that is the best way to deliver in certain areas, on certain themes, just as the global health fund is by far the best way of delivering on malaria, TB, HIV and AIDS. The EU is better on its programmes. It has a global reach—117 delegations—that we cannot match. If went into the same detail for every place where the EU is delivering its development programme as we do for places where we have a DFID country office, we would be double-paying.
Nevertheless, I want to reassure the hon. Lady because she raised the issue yesterday and questioned whether the Pacific was receiving fair attention. I believe that my right hon. Friend offered to write to her with more details, so at this point, I think we should leave it at that.
The Chair: Does the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley wish to ask a supplementary question on that issue?
Meg Munn: My question is not about whether we are focusing on every detailed programme, but given that British representatives of the FCO are present in the Pacific, and understand that it is area of poor gender equality, which is failing on the MDG in relation to women to girls, is the Minister confident about proper engagement to ensure that those goals are taken seriously in the EU programmes? If that is not the case, frankly those programmes are not delivering the benefit that the Minister rightly described should flow from pooling our resources with those of other European countries to deliver a better programme in the Pacific. Given yesterday’s response from the Secretary of State, my impression is that there is no proper engagement, which means that we are not getting good value for money for British taxpayers.
Lynne Featherstone: The hon. Lady must understand that we are now moving to put emphasis on the GAP. That is the purpose of all the meetings of officials, and of my efforts and those of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to raise the issue in Europe, so that the GAP becomes the powerful agent for which the hon. Lady is asking. Not everything happens perfectly from the start, and we must push for delivery. We will consider the particular issues that the hon. Lady has raised, but I assure her that at official level, we are constantly pushing them, and, as I said, I intend to raise them with Andris Piebalgs.
Michael Connarty: I remind the Minister of the Committee’s conclusion, “At EU level, however, it is lamentable that against a background of fine sounding rhetoric”—which we had repeated today—“the reality is inadequate support from EU senior management; inadequate technical capacity at working level; inadequate co-ordination and commitment to delivering results on gender from both Brussels and EU delegations.”
The Committee report from the EU noted that “only 36 out of 79 reporting delegations have… 50% of agendas with gender equality as a topic”. Only 30 out of 79 have a head of mission preparing an annual report on the issue. The report goes on and on to point out that on every single criterion set by the EU, the delegations fail miserably. It is not as though we are talking about most of them—70 out of 79—meeting their goals, because it is less than half in every case. I note that the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee is very generous in his compliments, and I am glad that he has come to the aid of the Minister, because I have doubt that he has driven things forward this morning in his meeting about what is happening at UN level. However, the reality is that as DFID withdraws, and turns our FCO delegations in countries into trade missions, which is precisely what is happening, we leave the issue to other people. It is quite clear, however, that if we leave it to the EU, the levers have moved so far away from the Minister, she cannot pull them and effect change. The question is, what is she going to do about forcing the EU to deliver by 2015, because the 2010-2013 report is abysmal?
Lynne Featherstone: I thank the hon. Gentleman, because the more criticisms that are made in this Committee, the better, quite frankly. I hope that those criticisms will be read in Europe, and they will add grist to my mill. We push relentlessly on the issues, and I do not think it is
appropriate to attack the Government on their record on girls and women. We have a formidable record, and we have taken the advancement of women and girls forward across the world.In terms of pushing for more action, we will raise gender issues with senior Commission officials and Ministers of member states in our discussions in Brussels. As I said, I plan to visit to Brussels soon, when I will meet Andris Piebalgs and the director general. We will also raise this issue at high profile international events, such as the international summit on preventing sexual violence in conflict, which the Foreign Secretary will co-chair this year. We have also called for Council conclusions on the 2013 report.
Given how Europe works, things will not move forward without those conclusions. We should send a strong message of how disappointed we are about what is happening on gender and how slow the process is, so I welcome such criticism, because that helps me to criticise Europe and push the case forward.
Mr Cash: May I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that the European Scrutiny Committee’s report was produced in December, but we are now in March? Since December, when I introduced my Bill to promote these matters, which was vigorously supported by not only the Minister, but the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Prime Minister, there has been a concerted effort to deliver the duty, which shows that the United Kingdom is taking a leading position. The Minister explained that there are difficulties with some member states, and if I catch your eye a little later, Ms Clark, I shall mention some countries that are supporting the United Kingdom and others that are not. I do not dispute the general remarks made by the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk, but while the Government are struggling with the process, the fact that my Bill will receive Royal Assent shows what can be achieved.
Lynne Featherstone: We need to do much more, but I am happy to write to all members of the Committee with a list of all the things we are pushing on. I can give an example, however: we are pushing for a strong focus on girls and women in the ongoing EU funding cycle, which is important because it addresses the mainstreaming of the development programmes. We are trying to influence key players in the European Parliament elections and the EU commissioners appointments process because we need to consider the type of people who come forward. We can criticise leadership, but these things need to be driven through. Although Andris Piebalgs is doing really well, the next layer of administration does not always take things on, and many member states are hardly enthusiastic about this agenda, so the duty will be important.
We are influencing the EU’s position in international negotiations, including on the post-2015 agenda. We want the framework of the GAP’s successor to be more ambitious and results-focused that the first plan, which was process-driven. It did not have a finishing post, and as there were no disaggregated data, results could not be measured, so we are pushing for such data. We want the successor to be backed by a coherent implementation policy and we are seconding a DFID official on to this work, so I hope that the Committee accepts that we are
pushing hard on this agenda. The second iteration will be better than the first, and the worldwide momentum on girls and women is adding grist to our mill. This is like turning round a—Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op): Supertanker.
Lynne Featherstone: I thank the hon. Gentleman. We are in a position to support our EU partners. Given the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone and of DFID, we are recognised as leaders in this field. Our strategic vision gives us a robust framework through which we can focus our action to maximise impact. There is strong support for action on girls and women from all levels of our political leadership—from the Prime Minister down, and across the parties—and we showed strong international leadership through the call to action on preventing sexual violence in conflict and our work on female genital mutilation. Given that we have girls and women at the heart of our strategy, we are in a good position to say to the EU, “Look, this isn’t good enough. You need to have strong conclusions and you need to take action to drive this forward because the agenda is so important.” The next spending round is coming up, and we want the huge amount it involves to influence things in the right way.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Following on from that answer, will my hon. Friend the Minister explain what the Government can do to force the European Union to act? If we do not follow a directive, the European Union takes enforcement action against us, but she told the European Scrutiny Committee that
“gender equality assessments in Results Oriented Monitoring…are not universally implemented by staff in EU Delegations, despite being compulsory”,
so the EU is failing to do things that it is obliged to do. Can action be taken through the European Court, or are other member states willing to withhold funding from the European Union until it deals with the matter properly? While I am delighted that the Minister thinks that such debates affect the European Commission—I hope that that happens regularly following these Committees—perhaps we need a bigger stick to get it into action.
Lynne Featherstone: I might have to get back to my hon. Friend with details of the bigger stick, but individual member states have a responsibility because it is not just the European Commission driving the process. On the detail, however, there is no absolute enforcement mechanism because this is not a legal commitment, and legal action would have to be considered in default. We are talking about independent countries, and while we might decide how much we want to commit to one agenda or another, some European countries are not as advanced in their thinking about women and girls as we are. However, we hope to push that agenda forward. As I said, the momentum behind the women and girls agenda, led by the United Kingdom Government, is a force for good throughout the world. The agenda has cross-party support and we are making huge strides of advancement. To be frank, there will be countries at next week’s session of the Commission on the Status of Women that do not think that women should have the rights for which we argue. I am worried that there is a schism or even a roll-back on
women’s rights, especially regarding such issues as sexual health and reproduction. EU member states cannot be forced to do what we say, but the bigger prize is to reach as many delegations as possible and to influence the development budget, because if funds go to programmes with women and girls at their heart, we will do more good in the world than we could on our own.Jacob Rees-Mogg: Which member states are being helpful by supporting the UK’s role in leading the agenda, or is it that my hon. Friend is Horatia on the bridge?
Lynne Featherstone: I will be happy to send my hon. Friend a list of the many European states that support us and have the agenda at their heart, but others are not as keen on it. However, we are not on our own by any means. While I should not go through each country, the Nordic countries are always likeminded. We work with them as partners on this agenda and they are a force for good, but this goes beyond the Nordics. I will be happy to send lists of the goodies and the baddies.
The Chair: If there are no more questions from Back Benchers, I call Gavin Shuker.
Gavin Shuker: I am grateful, Ms Clark. I want to put on record our belief that the most important priority for next week’s session of the CSW is to secure agreement on a stand-alone goal.
The Minister said that several nations are helpful on the agenda and that others are not. Does she or the Secretary of State plan to hold bilateral meetings around the CSW with any European states that are not living up to their obligations under the GAP?
Lynne Featherstone: The hon. Gentleman is right that a stand-alone goal, and the specific targets on things such as violence against women that will sit underneath it, are crucial. The Secretary of State and I have long lists of bilateral meetings, and our strategy for influencing people, which will now be public, involves dividing countries into likeminded and non-likeminded ones.
Gavin Shuker: On that, obviously there are parallel processes under way such as the post-2015 agenda, which understandably is the focus of the CSW. On the document before us, does the Minister have any specific plans to raise concerns about reporting at EU level with any of those countries around the CSW or will that go on the back burner in order to get the post-2015 process?
Lynne Featherstone: The absolute priority at CSW is the 2015 stand-alone goal on gender. That does not mean we will not use the opportunity if it arises, but pushing it at the EU is more about my visits to Brussels and being specific on those issues. It is right to raise what we are doing about those who are showing leadership on this and those who seem to be recalcitrant.
Gavin Shuker: In the Minister’s response in these documents, she welcomes the frank nature of the report and says that it
“highlights the persisting challenges and areas where more work needs to be done.”
I took from that that the UK Government are fully compliant with the requirements of the plan that we have signed up to. Is that the case?
Lynne Featherstone: I might have to come back to the hon. Gentleman, but as far as I am aware, that is the case. We are regarded as the leaders.
Gavin Shuker: What is the Minister’s general impression about how we can improve reporting from member states that are failing to report? The European Scrutiny Committee was clearly frustrated that it could not look at the 2013 report on progress. The subtext is that if nations are not reporting, it becomes very difficult to drive the process through. There are other concerns, but does she feel that there is scope to improve reporting across the EU so that we can look at the issue properly and in the round to see what is wrong with the culture whereby the plan is not being followed?
Lynne Featherstone: The hon. Gentleman is right. If things are not reported, we do not know what countries are doing or can assume that they are not doing what they should because if they were, they might have reported it. There is a deficit in terms of the number of delegations not reporting. That issue needs to be addressed and I will address it.
We were very disappointed––and officials have expressed their disappointment–– that the mid-term evaluation has not been delivered. Although it has now been subsumed into this bigger and better piece of work, that still means that, at the appropriate time for reporting as we were going along in order to see where our impact has been, we were unable to do it. While the end date is still the same, it is inappropriate not to have proper, timely reporting, which is just professional. I strongly believe in the importance of such milestones so that we do not have to think about management and reporting because we have clear signs about whether things are on or off track. In DFID, we are absolutely focused on having those milestones so that we can see that our money is being spent or, if something is going off track, so that we know about it earlier. In essence, I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman and I will raise those issues further.
The Chair: As no more Members wish to ask questions, we will proceed to the debate.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the Committee takes note of European Union Document No. 17432/13, Commission Staff Working Paper: 2013 Report on the Implementation of the EU Plan of Action on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in Development 2010-2015; welcomes the document as a frank assessment of the EU's implementation of its Action Plan; and supports the Government's efforts in encouraging the European Commission to address the weaknesses identified in the Report in order to ensure further integration of gender equality in EU development assistance. [ 29th Report of Session 2013-14, HC 83-xxvi, Chapter I ].––(Lynne Featherstone.)
12.9 pm
Gavin Shuker: I broadly welcome the Government’s approach, in terms of the priority they have given to women, girls and gender. I commit the Opposition to taking all steps to support the Government at this stage while they continue to try to make global leadership a priority on these issues. Therefore it is good that the Minister’s response today is not a whitewash.
We see in the reports piecemeal pockets of good practice—some great practice in some places, many of which are from the Department for International
Development here in the UK—but little evidence of a commitment and the resources needed across Europe to trigger a fundamental shift in the development framework, both at the EU level and internally.In terms of good things going on, there is expansion into traditionally non-gendered areas of policy, including infrastructure, forestry, rural development and financial reform, all of which significantly impact on women’s lives and on achieving a more equal society. However, the situation is still highly skewed; just one delegation reported the inclusion of gender-sensitive indicators in their financial reform and social protection strategies, compared with 10 that included them in a more traditionally gender-focused activity: education. More examples of good practice were highlighted in the report.
Turning to key criticisms, the approach has been characterised by a lack of formalisation; neglect; insufficient training and awareness; tokenism; inaccuracy; obscurity; persistent misunderstandings; and under-investment. As I said, the Government have been good on those issues, but global and EU leadership are required to turn them around. A lack of commitment from both delegations and member states created a perfect storm of apathy. Some 79 EU delegations submitted a report—a decrease from the 93 delegations that reported in the previous period. Progress is not only stalling, but going backwards. Of the 28 member states, just 16 submitted their reports, and most of those were late. Even tools that were supposed to be compulsory, such as the gender screening checklist, were found to be subject to sporadic use. Just 20% of new proposals scored the highest levels—G1 or G2, as described in the document—meaning 80% of new proposals achieved a score of G0, which the EU defines as
“when gender equality is not targeted”.
Of course, the report has not come in a vacuum, and it would be remiss of me not to congratulate to the hon. Member for Stone in the week in which his Bill passed the House of Lords and progresses towards receiving Royal Assent. It will be a hugely welcome addition to the canon of UK law, putting an emphasis on disaggregation, which is where it should be, so that we can see what is going on with gender.
Mr Cash: I simply wish to add my thanks to the Opposition for their co-operation throughout the passage of that Bill, both in Committee and in the House of Lords.
Gavin Shuker: I am grateful for that. Opposition Members were also present in introducing the Bill, some of whom are here today. The Bill is genuine progress, because our law points towards our values and priorities.
The UK has shown genuine international leadership across a number of areas, but there is always a gap between rhetoric and action. The high-level report was a “bold first step”, but I question what more is being done to ensure that gender equality remains high on the post-2015 agenda. We know that the Commission on the Status of Women next week will provide a fantastic springboard for getting that stand-alone goal, and I hope that a clear, cross-party message will be sent out, saying that we consider that to be a key test of the post-2015 package in terms of whether it will do what
the Prime Minister has said he believes needs to be done: to leave no one behind, the vast majority of whom are women and girls.I want to add a few remarks about some of the ways in which we talk about such issues. When reading the report, it struck me that sometimes we can get lost in thinking about the role of women and girls and what they are there to do, in a sense. Gender equality is crucial not just because, as the Minister said in her letter—I think the issue is probably one of tone rather than commitment—
“investing in girls and women has a transformative impact on growth poverty reduction and the MDGs”,
which could be seen to reduce women’s role in society to being just a chattel for the wider development agenda and an instrument for poverty reduction, but because gender equality matters in its own right. Just as we measure development in terms of income targets, access to clean water, sanitation, health care and education, we should also measure it in terms of life chances from birth and whether they are determined simply on the basis of gender.
That is an important emphasis in terms of our negotiations at EU level, to ensure that EU countries speak with one voice and agree that gender inequality is one of the defining issues of our time. We live in a world where women still shoulder 66% of the work and produce 50% of the food but earn just 10% of the income and own just 1% of the property. That should offend us in this day and age. I welcome the Government’s approach in pushing other EU nations further to live up to their commitments alongside us, not least because when we attempt to express global leadership on such issues, we can easily be undermined by our immediate partners if they do not.
Some of the biggest global challenges that we face will require the empowerment, participation and achievement of all global citizens, both men and women. For example, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that equalising access to productive resources between female and male agricultural workers could raise output in developing countries by as much as 4%, which is critical considering that more than 800 million people worldwide already do not have adequate access to safe and nutritious food. In other words, whether women are empowered or held back within nations is not just a women’s issue; it is an issue of whether society in general is being held back. That is why the opportunity to debate what more can be done is hugely important at this time. We have a number of parallel processes going on, and we wish to add grist to the Minister’s mill in her efforts to secure greater progress in the European Union and further afield.
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Mr Cash: First, I would like to thank the various organisations with which I have had the pleasure of working: the Great Initiative, Plan UK and Voluntary Service Overseas, which has taken an active interest in the European dimension, as I will discuss in a moment. An excellent briefing paper has been written by Jessica Woodruff on the EU agenda and the post-2015 framework. I strongly recommend those who read Hansard to refer to it, as it makes some important remarks and observations.
It is rather strange to be No. 18 on the private Members’ ballot and then to get one’s Bill through. It surprised everyone, including me, but it was the result of a lot of co-operation from many people throughout the House. I hope that nobody will mind if I mention the fact that way back in the 19th century—
Michael Connarty: You were never here in the 19th century.
Mr Cash: I am always glad to go back to the 19th century. That is when we knew how to do things properly. One of my family—Jacob Bright, John Bright’s brother—introduced the first Bill on votes for women in 1869; it came on the back of proposals by Joseph Hume. It is an important tradition to continue to develop.
In general, the Committee’s report speaks for itself. As I said in my intervention, that was written in 2013. I am glad that since then—my Bill was only introduced in December—the Government have stepped up to the plate in relation to that duty. I am extremely grateful not only to the Minister but to the Front-Bench spokesmen for the co-operation that they have shown. It is when Parliament works together on really important questions such as gender equality that we get the best out of the national interest. I add, for example, that after all—it may seem pretty obvious to those in this room, many of whom are women—that half the world are women, and it is incredibly important that they are given opportunities to participate and be empowered to help.
I am chairman of several Committees on Africa. Just before this meeting, I met our high commissioner from Kenya, and we discussed these matters. He was very enthusiastic about this strategic approach, because in Africa, as in other parts of the world, some serious cultural questions must be tackled if one is to try to improve the gender equality agenda. It is not to be taken lightly or to be assumed that because one comes forward with proposals, they will be able to deal automatically with the cultural obstacles. I have mentioned FGM, but water and sanitation is another issue. It does not matter what sector one considers—education, health or whatever—there are so many different areas in which the proposals in the report need to be driven forward. I am extremely glad that the United Kingdom is taking a forward position on this, and even more so since our report was produced in December 2013.
A number of recommendations could be usefully put forward today. A strong common position should be adopted in the forthcoming negotiations. The fact that the Prime Minister will chair the high-level meeting about this activity is incredibly important, and he is taking a very active part in promoting the centrality of gender equality and women’s rights. The EU has been found wanting, as my colleague, the former Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk, made clear, as did my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, who is also member of that Committee. It is important that, on the one hand, we promote the idea of doing this work on a proper, co-ordinated basis, but on the other, we make it clear that individual countries should step forward and do their own stuff in their way. That is precisely what the United Kingdom is doing. It is taking a leadership role, which is incredibly important, because as the Prime Minister said to me at the recent meeting
of the Liaison Committee, the proposals in my Bill would serve as a benchmark for other countries’ legislation. If other countries were to adopt similar attitudes, and we know that some are acting very laggardly, it would improve the situation in the world at large.A twin-track approach is proposed, with a specific stand-alone goal on gender equality and women’s right, to ensure that the priority given to gender is at least as great as that within the MDG. That should be done in the context of the post-2015 situation. Furthermore, the mainstreaming of gender analysis throughout the framework, to address the impact of gender relations on the way in which society is organised beyond the identification of women and girls as a vulnerable group, and the disaggregation of data, are also built into the approach as a formula. As the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk said, we need to have better data, as outlined by the 2013 report of the high-level panel and the 2013 report of the OECD. Furthermore, we should call on all countries to develop systems to track and make public allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment, as are being developed by UN Women. That will be at the centre of the discussions to be held shortly in New York at the UN.
We should promote the policy coherence for development agenda within the context of the post-2015 framework, and we should reiterate the financial commitment to the MDG, and commit to providing increased financing specifically for gender equality and women’s rights within that framework.
There is much more that I could say, but as I said earlier, a number of countries are being very co-operative and it would be remiss of me not to mention that the United Kingdom is one of the co-chairs of the global partnership for effective development co-operation and we are also co-chairing the high-level panel on post-2015 development. We want to keep a close focus on that. We are supported in our work by Austria, Germany, Ireland and Spain. I mention those countries in particular because they were highlighted in the report.
We do not have time to go into every detail today. I strongly recommend that anyone listening to or reading this debate also looks at the important paper produced by the Department for International Development, which is now making progress under the strong leadership of the Secretary of State for International Development, the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening). Long may it continue.
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Michael Connarty: I declare an interest. I went to Cambodia, paid for by Results UK, during the recess. I will not talk too much about its programme—we ought to have debates in detail about what we found there—but it is interesting to look at where we are. It is great that the G7 meeting can work with a stand-alone goal, because I read in the report from the EU that many people have put the gender item in a general report and not given it the specific position called for by the EU. That is one thing that will be aided by that decision.
It is coming up to international women’s day, so it is appropriate that we are having this debate. I take nothing away from the Minister and her efforts—I am sure that she does as much as she can, which is probably more than most would do in her position, and that is
important—but DFID is having less of a footprint. We do not have the budget. It is great that we are sticking to the 0.7% agreed in the past, and that this Government are continuing with that, but I worry that it is not as focused.To give an example from the report before us, page 14 talks about Cambodia and the
“Swedish policy that all projects/programmes supported by Sweden must include a gender equality assessment”.
“90% of annual reports of programmes and projects implemented by Germany include assessment of gender aspects.”
It then goes on to say something complimentary to DFID, which was there when the 2013 report was written:
“Gender is mainstreamed in UK Department for International Development’s (DFID) programmes and in all reviews and evaluations of those programmes. It is also mainstreamed in the UK Embassy’s support to civil society.”
How disappointed I was to find when I went to Cambodia during the February recess that DFID had withdrawn from that country. As I said to the Minister, without that specific focus and that close lever to pull, it is unfortunate what happens in many EU projects. I compliment the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, the hon. Member for Stone, on the work that it does. I hope that I did the same in my 15 years on the Committee and in my chairmanship as well.
We try to hold the EU to account through our Departments. We have no direct ability to do so; we must do it through Ministers and colleagues—I know that the hon. Member for North East Somerset is also diligent in doing so—but it is difficult. We have tried to pull a Minister like a lever, hoping that it will affect something in the EU. She will now have to use the EU lever, which is often surrounded by lots of baggage that one sometimes cannot move. The EU creates structures that are bureaucratic and often not as focused as we find here. After three years of the programme, they are not actually fit for purpose in doing the job that we want.
On the question of what we need, it is interesting that in the other role that I play as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, we have been talking about how to achieve success in education in countries. The OECD’s analysis is that we need to get what is called resilient learners: people who come from low socio-economic backgrounds who have ability and are pushed up through the ranks so that they end up in the top quartile. That is how a country rises. Everywhere that I have gone in Africa with Results, in Peru and other situations, I have always found that it is women who are the resilient citizens. The women are empowered when the Grameen bank system works, and they can grow their enterprise. I have been to Nicaragua and El Salvador. It is the women who are the resilient citizens who can rise and draw their society through the ranks.
Mr Cash: I endorse that very strongly. I did not know that the hon. Gentleman had been going out with Results UK, as I have. It was Results UK in India that gave me the inspiration for the Bill. I saw exactly what the hon. Gentleman has just described. It was the women who were doing all the work in relation to
sanitation and water in Delhi and in Mumbai. I wrote an article in The Guardian; it was at the time of “Slumdog Millionaire”. I said, “Eat your heart out, Slumdog. I’ve been there. It’s worse than you think.”Michael Connarty: I have never been to Mumbai, but I have been to Pune. I asked to go to Mumbai, but I was told it was the malaria season and that it would not be advisable to go at that time. I compliment the hon. Gentleman for drawing on these things. Hopefully, we can draw on some of the experiences that we have had to add to the debate and the discussion.
It is clear that there is a question of gender protection. When we went to Kenya, we found people campaigning against female genital mutilation. We have a great problem there because of the way in which it is embedded in the culture. Women take their daughters to often very ill-equipped facilities to have this horrible mutilation done. There is also the question of gender equality. We have such a long way to go to get gender equality. When we think of even this country, after the first great war, when so many men were killed, it was the women who did a lot of the work. The women held the families together and generated so much, but, unfortunately, we keep slipping back, even in this country.
We had a movement in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and it looked as though we were going to get some progress. Feminism was a strong and respected part of politics, but, as some people ask, where did feminism go? Some people think that if we have one or two women in the boardroom, and the women are personally successful, it is not about the sisterhood any more. We have slipped back. I was at a very good meeting yesterday about women philosophers and economists. It was held in this room, actually. We heard about the theories of Penrose, Joan Robinson and others; it was about growth theory and the role of women.
The question is about the positive discrimination of women and empowerment. It is about more than equality; it is about putting resources in women’s hands. If women and young girls are identified as resilient citizens, we get more growth. It is not simply a matter of giving money away and some sort of support system, but about giving resources to women. Think of the Grameen bank system. When I went to Cambodia, I went into the slums in four or five locations. We found people coming round who were very smartly dressed on motorbikes. They said they were from microfinance. When we quizzed them, they were not Grameen bank people. I do not know what parlance you would use in Ayrshire, Chair, but we would say the tick man—the person from the Provident who charged 60% per annum interest on small loans. That is how I used to get my school clothes every year—from the Provident cheque. When I went to university, within about two weeks of starting to study economics, I went back home and told my mother, “If the Provi man comes down the road again, throw him out of the house, because he charges 60% interest.”
It was microfinance people we saw in Cambodia, not Grameen bank people. It was exploitation. They did not want to talk about how much interest they were charging the people in the slums. However, in such communities, if someone can put small amounts of finance into enterprise—we talked to women who had got money—they can develop and grow a small business.
Mr Cash: I have another anecdote. I observed that the women divided the slum areas of Mumbai and of Delhi into syndicated areas, and then they went out and would perhaps get only one or two rupees per family. A rupee is very little money, but when it is multiplied by millions of people and it is properly organised, the women could bring the money in and redeploy it, as the hon. Gentleman has said, to promote, for example, sanitation and water projects, and the building of lavatories and local sewerage.
Michael Connarty: I totally agree. There are so many examples. When I was in El Salvador and Nicaragua I saw women who had been given a small amount of money each, who put it all together and opened a chicken farm. They had worked out that if they did more of the production they could sell at a higher price down the line, and they were selling roasted chickens at lunch time to people in the enterprise zones outside the city. There was also a young woman who made appliqué T-shirts that were now fashion items selling in all the big offices around the city. That started from a small amount, and is the sort of thing we are talking about.
In Cambodia I found it interesting that the Education Department adviser was a British woman. She had gone there on a Voluntary Service Overseas attachment for six months in one of the most northerly cities—at the time, it took four hours to get to the nearest town because the roads were so bad. She talked about her Cambodian family. She said that in the first six months, if she could have escaped home she would have gone back to Dorset, which is where she came from, but after those six months, she was so involved and committed, and had such an understanding of the vibrancy of the women she had worked with, that she stayed. She has been there for the past 12 years. Now an adviser, as I said, to the Education Department, she is focusing on the training of women and young girls in education.
Women fall out of education much quicker there. They do not go to school as often. They are given family responsibilities earlier and are expected to give up their education ambitions to look after their families or their cows and bulls, or whatever other animals they have on their fields. That attitude has to be challenged strongly throughout the developing world or we will never get the progress that we require.
I mentioned VSO. It is very vibrant there. We saw the TB REACH project, which has done work there on tuberculosis and HIV. Again, many women are working in that field, most as volunteers. UNICEF in Cambodia is headed by a Thai woman, who is very dynamic. It is clear that if we can empower females in communities we can get tremendous progress.
I will mention a couple of examples. While I was there I bought a book in the museum to the killing fields. It is not only about the killing fields. It is called “Soul Survivors” and is the story of women and children in the community. One is the story of Ratha, a teacher who went through terrible things. She lost her whole family and her husband. She had to give birth on the road as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge drove people out of Phnom Penh. She has now come back and is a teacher there. She formed a women’s organisation called Indra Devi, which works for peace, justice and human rights. She has given back so much. Another woman, Lieng, is a medical doctor who again went through all
of the terror of that time, almost starving, and so on. Again, she went back and in fact is now a teacher at Phnom Penh university and a trained anaesthesiologist.A woman called Serey Phal has, because of her experiences, set up a women’s organisation that gives women loans and skills training to get them into enterprise—something we were discussing earlier. Another woman, Sobanna, trained as a pre-school teacher. Again, she went through hardship and the monstrous experiences of the days of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. She is now running an orphanage for children, many of whom are physically disabled or have other special needs and are often abandoned by society.
Those stories reminded me that there is no doubt that we need to focus on women and girls. Boys have problems—there is no doubt about that—but fewer opportunities fall to girls in particular, because they are seen as available for domestic work, and are often taken away from their ambitions by their families. If we can change that we can empower those countries for the future. Resilient citizens will drag their country—the males in the country in particular—with them to where they should be on future development.
The EU has let us down. As the hon. Member for North East Somerset said, it is an organisation that has a compulsory duty to deepen gender in its projects and to report specifically on gender, yet we find that we can do nothing if the EU doesn’t do that. If we do not do something that is in a directive, we are hauled off to the European Court of Justice, so it seems inappropriate that we have no options. Perhaps the Minister, in her Council meetings, will talk about how we can hold to account the directors and senior managers who are criticised in the report. Should they be hauled up in some way and either put on an improvement course or sent off to do something of which they are capable? It seems that they are not capable of doing the job we are asking of them at the moment. I hope the Minister will go back and tell them that there is a fair amount of anger on our Committee and in Parliament about their failure to deliver on gender. We want a better report by the time they come back in 2015.
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Lynne Featherstone: I thank all hon. and right hon. Members for their powerful contributions, particularly the hon. Members for Linlithgow and East Falkirk and for Luton South and my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. They have made my case for me. They have each articulated, vindicated and supported the approach of DFID and the UK Government to development, which is to put women and girls at the heart of all our strategies. In a sense, women are the answer. We have two genders and one world, but the past 21 centuries have all been in one direction. We simply cannot have development if we ignore half the population. Members have articulated that powerfully. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk succinctly made the point that the prize is great, so we must get the EU to do what is written on the tin. That is our mission. We will take the points he raised and consider how we can best push on all fronts. I thank the European Scrutiny Committee for recommending that the implementation of the EU gender action plan be debated.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone said that we should not rely on just listening to the Committee in pressing the European Union to do our bidding.
Nevertheless, every part of the scrutiny process is important. I place great value on our EU scrutiny debates, which are read in EU circles. They are not the answer to life, as they do not get everyone to do what we wish, but they are an important part of the process.This debate broadens out. As was rightly mentioned, even in the United Kingdom we do not have true equality. One in four women in this country experiences domestic violence, and two women a week are still killed by their partner or ex-partner. In my work as a global anti-violence against women champion, I see that we are on a global continuum that ranges from what we experience in the United Kingdom, and the horrors get worse and worse until, at the extreme end, there is rape as a weapon of war. I met a woman in Uganda whose husband cut her arms off and left them as stumps because she did something wrong with his food—she was cradling her baby with her stumps. We were supporting Marie Stopes at a refuge and retraining centre. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk mentioned financial empowerment and microfinance, which make a difference. That is what the centre in Uganda was doing; it was upskilling. Frankly, if someone has no ability to earn money, they have no ability to leave the partner who is brutalising them. The choices that women have are so limited across the world that they make us in the United Kingdom look good by comparison, but it is a comparison.
I am proud of DFID’s strategic aim for women and girls, which we call “voice, choice and control.” The Secretary of State penned that one, and it is so important. Women must have a voice in decision making in their household, community, country, politics, business, media and civil society through participation, leadership and collective action. That is one part of it. Women must have choice—choice to complete their education, as hon. Members have said, and to benefit from paid work. They must have opportunities to make sufficient income. They must have choice over whether, when and with whom to have sex; choice over whether, when and whom to marry; and choice over whether to have children. Early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation must be ended. Women must have control—control over their own bodies and mobility, which includes safety from violence. Women must have control over income, productive assets and other resources including food, water and energy. They must have equal legal rights and access to justice, and freedom from discriminatory social norms.
Social norms, which hon. Members have mentioned, are deeply embedded in cultures. There is no religious requirement, for example, for female genital mutilation but the 4,000-year-old practice is deep seated. So much of what we do is working out how to change behaviour. How do we begin to change those social norms? That change must come from within, which is why the campaign to end FGM supports an African-led movement. Finger-wagging is not the answer to social norms; we must work with and within communities. The same is true of attitudes to LGBT. We need voices in Africa to empower those who fight against hideous discriminatory social norms.
I will get off my soap box in a moment, but it is my soap box and I am really proud of the work that has been done. During the past two years, the Department for International Development has provided more than
14.5 million women with access to financial services, which is absolutely critical, and improved rights to land and property for 460,000 women. If someone does not own anything, cannot lay title to anything and has no rights, they are a chattel and they have no chance of escape. We have supported more than 2.8 million girls into primary school and 270,000 girls into lower secondary school. We have ensured that 1.6 million births were delivered with the help of nurses, midwives or doctors. We have supported more than 4.8 million women to use modern methods of family planning. We have helped 6.4 million girls to access security and justice. We have delivered new programmes on genital mutilation and established the ambitious £25 million violence against women and girls research and innovation fund. We do endless work with women, of which I am really proud.It is interesting to look at where we in the United Kingdom are on the spectrum. I still go out into schools to say, “Please do not tell girls to be hairdressers. Do not tell them to take the lowest-paid routes through life. Empower women to go as far as their dreams and abilities will take them. Do not confine them to a life of poverty because you believe that they are somehow less than men and their ambitions should be lower.” Careers advice still has a bit of a way to go.
In reply to the hon. Member for Luton North, discriminatory laws place an incredibly low value on girls and set parameters for what decisions, choices or behaviours are deemed acceptable. We are investing in research, and part of our work is to build an enabling environment. We try to work on all fronts, because simply sorting out one area will not solve the problem; we have to move everything in the right direction. I assure the hon. Gentleman that our top priority is to get the stand-alone goal on gender in 2015. I thank hon. Members who are here today, all of whom are passionate about the matter. The challenge is to make the EU as passionate as we are.
That the Committee takes note of European Union Document No. 17432/13, Commission Staff Working Paper: 2013 Report on the Implementation of the EU Plan of Action on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in Development 2010-2015; welcomes the document as a frank assessment of the EU's implementation of its Action Plan; and supports the Government's efforts in encouraging the European Commission to address the weaknesses identified in the Report in order to ensure further integration of gender equality in EU development assistance.