Conflicts: Impact on Older People
House of Commons · Westminster Hall · 9 Jul 2026 · 21 speeches · Official Report
I beg to move, That this House has considered the humanitarian impact of conflicts on older people. It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts; thank you for chairing this debate for us. I have been asking for a debate on this subject for some time. The subject is close to my heart, and not merely as a matter of policy-it is a matter of conscience, human dignity and our shared responsibility for the most vulnerable in our world. I thank hon. Members for attending. It is always a pleasure to see the Minister in his place. He is always very jovial and friendly and tries to give the answers that we hope for. I want to start by referring to a constituent named Margaret. She is 83 years old and lives in the Ards peninsula, where I live in my constituency of Strangford. She still keeps a photograph on her mantelpiece of the street where she grew up, which was not in the Ards peninsula. It was in Belfast on a street that no longer exists because it was destroyed-a casualty of the troubles that we had in Northern Ireland. Margaret speaks about the cold, the fear, and the long, painful shadow of conflict. She speaks from experience because it is her story. As an 83-year-old, she can remember it very well. Across Northern Ireland are thousands upon thousands of older people who carry with them a lived memory of trauma. My family lives with the trauma of the death of my cousin Kenneth; my aunt, uncle and family were never the same. Across Northern Ireland, many...
Order. The hon. Member should not take my views for granted in this sort of debate-he can speak for himself, I am sure.
I speak for myself, but I think you are not too far off my years, Mr Betts, although I know that I am older than you. In Sudan, the health sector has been destroyed and medicines are in short supply. Even those with manageable health conditions are at grave risk. In parts of Darfur, dozens of older people are among those who have died of hunger in recent months, after armed groups blocked food deliveries. Who cannot get to the aid centres or food centres, because of their disabilities or their particular needs? Older people. Why is that allowed to happen? It is because older people are invisible in the data. We often come back to data when it comes to debates-especially health debates, but perhaps debates on anything-because data collection and analysis fail to capture the realities of older people’s lives, with data collection often stopping before people are 60. If someone is over 60, their time in this world, according to those who collect data, is limited. Where older people’s data is included in data collection, they are often lumped together as a single group-those over 60-but that obscures diversity and hinders effective policy making. Evidence shows that age inclusion specialists can change humanitarian assistance by improving assessments, data collection, training and programme design. To give just one example, the data collection tools used by HelpAge Ethiopia showed that there were six times more older people in one region of Tigray than had been previously...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this debate. I also wish his mother a very happy birthday for next Tuesday. In many areas of deep conflict, the population rarely reaches our definition of older people. In Gaza, life expectancy has plummeted from 73 years to just 40.5 years. In Sudan, life expectancy is 66 years, and in Nigeria and Chad, it is 55 years. Compare those numbers with the UK life expectancy of 81.3 years or the life expectancy in Japan of 84.7 years. It is a privilege that our nation is safe, secure and conflict-free. Those figures show that conflict shortens lives by decades through poor access to healthcare and pharmaceuticals; disability, disruption and displacement; prevalence of disease and hastened frailty; and an environment of climate change, floods and famine. Gender-based violence scars the lives of its survivors. I am so proud that our Foreign Secretary has rightly placed tackling the prevalence of the use of gender-based violence as a weapon of war at the heart of her work. Access to healthcare, an issue that I particularly look at in my work in the House, is significantly reduced, with the targeting of health facilities and health professionals now central in many conflicts. We have seen that in Gaza and in Sudan. Health professionals working there run these risks in the work that they do and because they are targeted by weapons. That breaks the rules of...
My hon. Friend is making a powerful and important speech, particularly on women in Ukraine who have suffered sexual violence during war. Does she agree that having proper support for those women, and an ability to record what they have experienced, is important, not just to support them, but to make sure that when the war in Ukraine ends, justice, as much as it can be done, is done for those people?
I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point, as it is so important to make a catalogue of war crimes. Whether they are committed against the elderly, or they consist of any other form of violence, including sexual violence, it is crucial that we keep good records so that we can hold perpetrators to account when the opportunity arises. We know that if older people do not get the right nutrition, it has a massive impact on their ability to function. They can have greater episodes of confusion, making life much more challenging; they can become frailer; and they can rapidly lose their mobility, meaning that they have more complex needs. Good distribution of humanitarian aid is vital for the vulnerable, and we must always ensure that we factor in access to targeted support. It is not only about ensuring that people have the ability to reach that food; it must also be prepared for them in the right way. We have been talking about some of the challenges that we have seen in Sudan as of late. It is a horrendous and complex war, so I am glad that it was discussed at the NATO summit recently and remains at the forefront of our Government’s mind. It is very much a forgotten war in so many respects. Evidence has also shown that the elderly in Sudan have been in the direct line of violence. It is important that we do not forget that either. Older people-not least women-play a crucial role in the home and in the community, which often ripples out far beyond. Often, they...
We now move to the Front-Bench spokespeople. They are entitled to speak for at least 10 minutes each, but given that we are not particularly time-constrained, I will leave it with them to make a judgment on that.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this debate to shine a light on an important but often overlooked issue. It is strange that many of the voices who mourn Britain’s declining influence are the first to say that we should spend nothing on issues beyond our own shores, and that the 0.7% commitment to development spending was a national indulgence that we can no longer afford. However, our influence never relied on hard power alone. Our leverage in the world comes from working with others and leading by example. That is what internationalism means, and that is why the Liberal Democrats believe that the commitment to international aid is not merely sentimental, but fundamental and strategic. It rests on the simple principle of equality: that we help those who need help most. I will not create a league table of suffering, but some groups bear a heavier burden in humanitarian crises. Older people, especially those who are disabled, are almost always among the most affected. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, 75% of those who died were over 60, despite older people making up only 16% of the local population. When the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami struck in 2011, 56% of those who lost their lives were aged 65 or over. The world today is less stable than it has been in a generation. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found that since Russia’s...
It is a pleasure to serve once again with you in the chair, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this debate-the last debate of his that I contributed to was a few weeks ago on stoma care, when we managed to get some rather interesting entries into Hansard on the names that people give to their stomas, some of them quite inappropriate. An interesting point from that debate, which connects through to this issue, is the way conditions affect older people in different ways. Translating the very specific care needs that older people with stomas have, for example, into the context of a war zone or refugee camp gives an example of how that suffering would be greatened. As always, through referencing his constituent Margaret, the hon. Member brings to life the fact that, while we often talk in broad terms about statistics and facts in these debates, each of those represents a person with their own story to tell and their own suffering. I thank the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for her contribution and for her long-standing commitment. I have been in a number of debates where she has spoken, and while I have a different view from her on aid spending and I support the Government’s position, I recognise that she has long-standing and very sincerely held views on this subject. Debates such as this are where those views can be exchanged, and she has remained consistent in her views and advocated for them over time. I shall break...
There is no easy fix, that is for sure, but the loans are not coming from the bond markets; they are coming from British people. We are not imposing on or demanding on the bond market. That is the difference. Such bonds have been used successfully in the past.
I hold Government bonds myself-as I am sure many people do-so I should probably declare an interest. As we know, the interest rate that all bonds are generally driven by is the headline interest rate and the bond markets overall. Otherwise, the Government would just borrow from the public every single time. It is not that simple, and there are knock-on effects of doing that. There is a reason why premium bonds are capped -because they are moving people’s money out of taxable savings into non-taxable savings, which hits the Treasury somewhere else. The issue is not as straightforward as it is presented. To get to the actual subject, it is evident that we are currently living in a more dangerous world than at any time in our recent past. Humanitarian crises in Africa are exacerbated by the actions of Governments; there is war in the middle east, with the terrorist regime in Tehran hellbent on causing chaos and instability; and Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine signalled the end of the post-war peace dividend and brought the realities of war to Europe once again. Evidence shows that conflict disproportionately affects older people, as the hon. Member for Strangford has highlighted. Almost half the civilian deaths in the conflict in Ukraine are persons older than 60, despite that demographic constituting about one quarter of the population. Older people are more likely to remain in conflict zones because they have strong ties to their homes, lands and territories, or because...
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this debate. As if the House needed any more confirmation that he comes from good stock, I wish his mother a very happy birthday for next week. I think anyone reaching their 90s is a great achievement, and it is no surprise to me that the hon. Gentleman’s mum will be reaching that great milestone in age. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for her contribution. Having worked with her over many years, I know how much she cares about these issues. She has always been steadfast and utterly consistent in her views about supporting older people, not just in the UK, but internationally. As the Minister with responsibility for multilateral affairs, I often speak in international fora about peace building and conflict resolution, and I often talk about Northern Ireland. It is sometimes forgotten that we have had conflict on our own shores that lasted for decades. Much the peace building that followed was from women, and from older people who lived through the entire period of the troubles. We forget that we have much to celebrate about the work of the peace process in Northern Ireland; but we must also recognise the impact that the conflict has had and still has on many constituents and people across Northern Ireland. I pay tribute to Margaret, the constituent mentioned by the hon. Member for Strangford. I am sure that must...
I thank the Minister for his response so far. I mentioned those of an older generation who are the custodians of the community’s faith and culture. They are the ones who hold the memory of worship, tradition and identity; they are the heartbeat of the congregation and the lifeblood of the community. Can the Minister give us some reassurance in relation to those older women and men who are targeted because of their religious belief-some of them sexually as well? Will the Government help them to retain and protect their religious beliefs?
To reassure the hon. Gentleman, he knows that I have a personal commitment to working with our freedom of religion or belief envoy, my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith). He never shies away from the particular point the hon. Gentleman is raising and nor will I as Minister. On the wider point that the hon. Gentleman raises about supporting and working with older people on peacebuilding and resolution, which my hon Friend the Member for York Central also raised, I reassure him and the House that the Department has an instinctive view that locally led, inclusive peacebuilding needs to include elders-the older women and men who understand many of the challenges in the community. We need that support because they bring trust and knowledge. They are leaders in their communities, whether they are of any faith or none. It is extremely important that older people are part of that peacebuilding resolution. In many cases, where older people are engaged in peacebuilding, the process actually lasts longer. That is particularly true of women; when women take part in peacebuilding, there is much evidence to show that many years of peace follow. It is extremely important to the Government that that work continues. A number of Members mentioned Ukraine, including the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne). I reassure the House that the budgets for overseas development and for additional support through the 100-year partnership have...
I am grateful because this is such a fundamental issue that I have focused on for some time. Will the Minister say what steps the Government are taking to expedite the process, and what kind of timescale are we looking at to see that convention in place?
On the timescale, I should warn my hon. Friend that the process has been a matter of debate for some years. She probably knows far more about it than I do, so I cannot stand here and say it will be done by x date. What I can say is that we are a part of those conversations. Our contribution is to try to make sure that as the work that might lead to a convention on older people is brought together, we are not stepping away from it. We are a part of the work that is ongoing.
I am really grateful, not least because of the work done in Wales around the rights of older people and having the commission there. Will the Minister ensure that our Government take a real leadership role in moving that work forward and ensuring that other nations contribute and participate, and that we get the rights established? Ultimately, we know that it could be really transformative for establishing a rights-based system for older people across the globe.
To reassure my hon. Friend, I frequently meet other Ministers in the UN space in New York, and also in Geneva at the Human Rights Council, where the issues are discussed, and I think there is a willingness for the process to succeed. That work is very much part of the conversation and we are there in the room for much of it. I give her that reassurance. As the global population ages and as conflicts and humanitarian crises continue around the world, the number of older people affected is likely to increase. That is why the UK is working with humanitarian partners to ensure that older people are not overlooked. At the heart of the debate is a simple principle: no person should become invisible because of their age, and no society should overlook the dignity, rights and contributions of those who have spent a lifetime contributing to their communities. The United Kingdom will continue to champion the protection, inclusion and participation of older people in humanitarian action around the world.
I call Jim Shannon, who has a couple of minutes to wind up.
I thank everyone for their contributions. I thank my hon. Friend-she is my friend-the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for her contribution and the work she does on the APPG for ageing and older people. She does a lot-only in these debates do we realise just how much she does-so I thank her for that. She referred to how conflict shortens lives. She also referred to frailty, gender-based violence and the complex needs that people have. Older people are the ones who usually lose out in conflict. She referred to resilience, food, care and support and also to the sexual violence in Ukraine, and indeed across the world. She mentioned how better distribution of international aid is vital. I thank her for outlining very clearly the way forward and for all that she does. The hon. Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee) referred in an intervention to the need to have data to focus on the issue so that we can know just how many people are suffering. I thank the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) for his contribution. We do need to look at international aid; the question of where that money comes from cannot be ignored. He referred to how older people suffer more in a humanitarian crisis, and challenged the Government to address the issue of international aid. He also referred to how women and girls suffer disproportionately in many of these crises. Data is needed. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Fylde (Mr Snowden), made an incredible contribution, as he always...
Sitting suspended.