A very good morning to you all.

I find myself asked to speak about women in policing. It will be self-evident to you that I am neither a women, nor a Police Officer, which makes what I have to say a little more challenging. The risks of being patronising, clumsy or simply irrelevant seem to me to be pretty high.

So let me start on safe ground. Given I rarely get to address such a large audience, of all ranks, what I can say – with complete confidence – is three important ‘thank yous’ to both female and male Police Officers.

The first is the way you all policed the pandemic. When Governor’s and Governments have emergency powers, when laws are being brought into play at pace, when a population is, at least initially, very fearful, when curfews are imposed and normal personal liberties suspended, any Police Force, anywhere in the world, could get the balance between policing with consent, and policing through coercion wrong – and some Forces did.

You – the RTCIPF – did not – and as a result you burnished rather than tarnished this Force’s reputation during that difficult time. I think you will see a longer term benefit to this as you roll out community policing. There are certainly important stakeholders in a variety of different communities who reference this period to me as a very positive example of measured policing.

Second, my thanks to you for what you do – day in, day out. I receive the emails from 911 that report serious crime, as it is ongoing, and as a result have a very good understanding of the intense tempo of work you and your male colleges tackle – on both land and at sea.

Sitting in the Cabinet room yesterday to hear a long burst of rapid gunfire linked to the incident at CIBC took me back to a different time, place and career. Please have no doubt that I do understand the courage you display daily – courage the public expect you to display and which I think they may rather take for granted. I do not take it for granted. That you run towards trouble, as others run away, is not lost on me.

The third thank you is one I give in advance. There’s little more we can do to prepare locally for hurricane season – each year there’s incremental improvement – but this year a post pandemic hurricane strike, as we bounce out of the difficult period of the last two years, stronger economically than we entered it, would be beyond unfortunate.

So much got put on hold because of the pandemic – Government’s bandwidth, indeed my own bandwidth, was all but overwhelmed in terms of controlling COVID while reigniting the economy and what we all want now is a clear run at delivering a whole range of changes that were delayed, and which the Territory needs.

However, if that calamity does occur then you – and the other uniformed services – come into your own. You did an amazing job in 2017 and I know the sacrifices you made – and the discipline you showed – in terms of prioritising the needs of a broken Territory, over and above the devastation in some of your personal lives – was remarkable. As I go into this hurricane season I can’t tell you what a reassurance it is knowing I have the RTCIPF, who have been tested on this recently, and not found wanting, stood alongside myself and the Premier and others who will be co-ordinating our response.

Now to the reason we are here. I’d been in the role of Governor for, I think, less than a month when I attended a ceremony to mark the departure of Commissioner James Smith and the promotion to Commissioner, of Mr Trevor Botting. My predecessor, Governor Freeman, had run the appointment process so this was the first time I was to hear the new Commissioner speak, let alone hear about his priorities. I knew I’d be interested because, being promoted from Deputy Commissioner, he would have seen the Force from a perspective where he was well informed.

I admit to being surprised, on two fronts. The first was that, of the three or so priorities he identified, one was to support women in the Force achieve their full potential. The second was that this was the one moment where there was spontaneous applause from the floor. There was clearly both a significant issue that could be seen from near the top of the Force, and experienced throughout the Force.

It made me think of a conversation I’d had some years earlier with a woman in my team – who I’d just given an outstanding appraisal to and we went on to talk about what was holding her back from going- eventually – for one of the top jobs in the organisation. Because to my mind that was a very straight-forward career path for her, from where she was.

She asked me to imagine how I would feel if every Line Manager I had, between myself (as a man) and the very top of the organisation – were occupied by women? What if every photograph on the wall, of every person who had led the organisation, was a woman. How would it feel – to me as a man – if the objectives of the organisation, determined in a previous century, had been seen as traditional roles that women delivered? And what, if as a result of these three things, the culture that had developed in the organisation was essentially a female culture.

In this situation – and bear in mind nothing I’ve so far said suggests any individual behaving in a way that was or is inappropriate – how would I see myself in terms of my own freedom of expression, my own ability to bring my whole self to work and most importantly how could I imagine myself at the top – or near the top – of that organisation as compared, say, to a female colleague who was joining alongside me and seemed to be immediately surrounded by leaders and organisational heroes wo looked like her.

My answer was – of course – that in those circumstances I would have found it very difficult. As a result of that conversation I do recognise – as I almost certainly didn’t recognise at the start of my career – how many advantages I had, that were not because of any talent or work ethic, but bestowed on me because the culture I had joined was a culture that was very much in the image that I saw myself.

So I think the first thing this network is, is a statement that the Force recognises there is this challenge and that for women in the Force to reach their full potential many things have to change but there certainly has to be a cultural shift. Culture does not change quickly, and embedded cultures – which organisations such as the RTCIPF has – frankly risk changing glacially – unless there is some form of forcing mechanism.

There will be pioneers within you who have already pushed hard on this agenda, or managed to navigate the present culture, but there’s a saying I rather like – because I‘ve experienced it – which is that it’s ‘the pioneers that take the arrows and the settlers that take the land’.

In other words a small number of pioneers are almost essential for any serious change to occur but if you want to embed that change you need ‘mass’. You need numbers. You need to grind the problem down, not just seek a rapid individual route through it thinking that you alone can change the overall culture.

Some of you in this group will relish being pioneers and I applaud you for it – you are more than necessary – and I’m assuming you have taken some arrows on the way – but if this is to work you need, I think, to move forward as a group – steadily and in your own way as an unstoppable force.

If it helps I’ve seen this work in other organisations and I could use my own as one. When I was appointed in 2019 every single Governor of every Overseas Territory was a man – in fact a white man. Today, 50% of our Governors are women, including one Black woman and one Asian woman. Change came incredibly slowly but it reached a moment where there was a tipping point and then it came quickly.

Beyond that our Ambassadors in Washington, Canada, Australia, the United Nations, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing and Ukraine are all women. Just a few years ago that list would have been almost exclusively male.

So if we get this right, if you get this right, change is going to occur. I am confident that in this audience there has to be a future Commissioner of the RTCIPF. If you don’t believe that – if you don’t believe in yourself – no one else can, so please use this network to reaffirm to yourself that your ability and handwork will indeed get you there.

But this isn’t just about developing potential leadership. I want us to imagine a future – for a moment – where that change has happened. Let’s imagine a meeting where 50% of the leadership of the Force, say from ASP upwards, are women. In this case would a women’s network be necessary?

I think it probably would, and let me explain why. To the great credit of TCI, women are in the top roles of Government. When I arrived there was of course a female Premier. The Deputy Governor, the Attorney General, the Chief Justice – who are the people the Territory most relies on – are all women. The Cabinet is 50% women. Most of the Permanent Secretaries are women, including one all of Government relies on – PS Finance – plus the PS’s who have had a particularly high profile during the pandemic: Health, Tourism and Immigration. In fact women do so well at the top of Government that the BBC ran an article on this rather remarkable position we are in.

But because I work closely with them – and I have my own family – I know there is a whole set of societal and cultural expectations on them that are not – for example – on me. When our children hit an emotional low point it’s Mandy that gets the text or the call, not me – I get the good news, she gets the bad news. When the AG goes home – almost always late – and walks through her front door she stops being the Honourable Rhondalee Braithwaite-Knowles, OBE, QC, and becomes a wife and mother with all the expectations that brings. I could go on – some of the PS’s are single parents for example – but I think you get the point, because many of you live the point.

However fast gender stereotypes shift they aren’t going to have shifted fast enough for you – during your working lives – to not have to manage a whole set of competing priorities that many of your male counterparts do not have to face so – to answer my own question – I do think this type of support network is not only important in terms of helping change a culture within the Force, but also support those in the Force from the extra pressures that other aspects of wider culture bring with it.

I suspect a significant challenge you have already discussed, or will have thought about, is how this network, in trying to solve one set of issues doesn’t generate a different set. There is enough division in this Territory without us actively causing more. There will be some male officers who see the formation of this group as a threat. If it allows you to have the confidence to callout and illuminate unacceptable behaviours, that allows disciplinary action to occur, then there is frankly a small group who should feel threatened by this initiative.

But again I suspect one of the most important things you can do is to not allow this group to cement division, but instead use this group to educate and recruit male allies. There may be more than you suspect not least because there is something in this for many of them. Once stereotypes are broken down, as to who is, and who is not successful in an organisation, it’s not just – in this particular case – women who will benefit, but also men who do not fit a traditional stereotype of what a senior Police Officer should look like, or indeed how such a person should think or behave.

Beyond the case of ‘fairness’, and being treated with respect at work – and you can make the case on only those grounds – the organisational business case sits squarely around the benefits that diversity of thought brings. If I hadn’t completely absorbed this point before taking on this role – I have now. There is not a paper that has been brought to Cabinet that is not better for having been discussed and contributed to by every member of Cabinet. I think we made some smart collective decisions during the pandemic but none of those would have been made without the contribution of all.

And we need to be clear when we talk about this sort of diversity that I, for one, am not particularly interested in teams that might increasingly look physically different but all think the same way. So as this network starts to deliver, I’m reasonably confident that – in the wake of your work – a group of men will prosper in the Force, who once might not have prospered.

That is because, what this group will do is help build a genuine understanding in the Force that ‘diversity of thought, and experience, and inclusion of all staff’ makes the organisation far stronger rather than a Force that is homogenous in its thinking, and a Force where many are excluded. Such a force builds brittleness and weakness. I know which type of Force I want, and the type of Force the Public needs – and I know you do to.

So I wish this network well. I look forward to tracking progress. It’s important in that regard that you have the four clear objectives that you do, and at some future point I’d be interested in seeing how we measure progress against each.

You will, I know, forget much I have said but if I can leave you with just one thought it would be to hold in your head the image of a leadership team where 50% or more of those present in the room are women.

If you can see and hold that image – and support each other towards that sort of future – I believe you will find it is achievable. Sustainable change tends to happen very slowly to start with, and very quickly once a tipping point is reached. I am very confident that you are the people, in this Forces long 220 year history, that are going to be remembered as the generation that made that happen. And if I can support you in that endeavour, I most certainly will.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, with permission, I’d like to make a statement on our support for urgent and emergency care.

I know that this is an issue that has been of great concern to Honourable Members and I wanted to update the House – at the earliest opportunity – on the work that we’ve been doing over the summer.

Bed occupancy rates have broadly remained at winter-type levels with Covid cases in July still high, at 1 in 25 testing positive – that compares with 1 in 60 currently.

This is without the decrease in occupancy that we would normally see after winter ends and ambulance wait times have also continued to reflect the pressures of last winter, although I am pleased, Mr Deputy Speaker to see recent improvements for example the West Midlands today is meeting their Category 2 time of less than 18 minutes.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, I’d like to update the House on the nationwide package of measures that we are putting in place to improve the experience for patients and colleagues alike.

First, Mr. Deputy Speaker, we have boosted the resources available to those on the frontline.

We’ve put in an extra £150 million of funding to help Trusts deal with ambulance pressures this year and on top of this, we’ve agreed a £30 million contract with St John Ambulance so that they can provide national surge capacity of at least 5,000 hours per month.

We’re also increasing the numbers of colleagues on the frontline.

We’ve boosted national 999 call handler numbers to nearly 2,300, about 350 more than September last year and we have plans to increase this number further to 2,500 by December, supported by a major national recruitment campaign.

By the end of the year, we’ll have also increased 111 call handler numbers to 4,800.

As well as this, we have a plan to train and deploy even more paramedics and Health Education England has been mandated to train 3,000 paramedic graduates nationally each year – double the number of graduates that were accepted in 2016.

Second, Mr. Deputy Speaker, we are putting an intense focus on the issue of delayed discharge – which is the cause of so many of the problems that we have seen in urgent and emergency care, and I think that’s recognised across the House.

This is where patients are medically fit to be discharged but remain in hospital, taking up beds that could otherwise be used for those being admitted.

Delayed discharge means longer waits in A&E, lengthier ambulance handover times and the risk of patients deteriorating if they remain in hospital beds too long – particularly the frail elderly.

The most recent figures, from the end of July, show that the number of these patients is just over 13,000 similar numbers to the winter months.

We’ve been working closely with trusts where delayed discharge rates are highest, putting in place intensive on-the-ground support.

More broadly, our National Discharge Taskforce is looking across the whole of health and social care to see where we can put in place best practice and improve patient flow through our hospitals. And as part of that of work, we’ve also selected Discharge Frontrunners who will be tasked with testing radical solutions to improve hospital discharge – and we’re looking at which of these proposals we can roll out across the wider system and launch at speed.

This, of course, is not just an issue for the NHS.

We have an integrated system for health and care and must look at the system in the round, and all the opportunities where we can make a difference.

For instance, patients can be delayed as they are waiting for social care to become available and here too, we have taken additional steps over the summer.

We have launched an International Recruitment Taskforce to boost the care workforce and address issues in capacity.

And on top of this, we’ll be focusing the Better Care Fund, which allows Integrated Care Boards and local authorities to pool budgets, to reduce delayed discharge.

And in addition, we are looking at how we can draw on the huge advances in technology that we’ve seen during the pandemic and unlock the value of the data that we hold in health and care and that includes through the Federated Data Platform.

Finally, Mr Deputy Speaker, we know from experience that the winter will be a time of intense pressure for urgent and emergency care.

The NHS has set out its plans to add the equivalent of 7,000 additional beds this winter, through a combination of extra physical beds and the virtual wards which played such an important role in our fight against Covid-19.
Another powerful weapon this winter will be our vaccination programmes.

Last winter, we saw the impact that booster programmes can have on hospital admissions, if people come forward when they get the call.

This year’s programmes gives us another chance to protect the most vulnerable and reduce demands on the NHS.

Our autumn booster programmes for Covid-19 and flu are now getting under way and will be offered to a wider cohort of the population, including those over 50 with the first jabs going in arms this week, as care home residents, staff and the housebound become the first to receive their Covid-19 jabs. And over the summer, we became the first country in the world to approve a dual-strain Covid-19 vaccine, that targets both the original strain of the virus and the Omicron variant.

And indeed this weekend, the MHRA approved another dual-strain vaccine, from Pfizer, and I’m pleased to confirm that we will be deploying that as well, along with the Moderna dual-strain vaccine as part of our Covid-19 vaccination programme, and in line with the advice of the independent experts at the JCVI.

Whether it’s for Covid-19 or flu, I’d urge anyone who’s eligible to get protected as soon as you are invited by the NHS, not just to protect yourself and those around you but to ease the pressure on the NHS this winter.

Today, I have also laid before the House a Written Ministerial Statement on the work that we’ve been doing over the summer and I just wanted to draw the House’s attention to one particular feature within that written ministerial statement that has garnered interest in the House in the past. In November 2021 the government announced that it would make £50 million available in funding for research into motor neurone disease over five years. Following work over the summer between the Department of Health and Social Care and BEIS, through the National Institute for Health Research and UKRI, to support researchers to access funding in a streamlined and coordinated way, we’re pleased to confirm that this funding has now been ringfenced. The Department of Health and Social Care and BEIS welcome the opportunity MND scientific community of researchers as they come together through a network and link through a virtual institute.

I commend this statement to the House.

Patrick, thank you very much.

Presidents, your excellencies, sisters and brothers, if I may: I want to thank everyone for all the inspiring words we’ve heard, and indeed the pragmatic suggestions, as that’s what actually matters, Patrick, as you’ve said.

And I want to thank you, Patrick, you and your team at the Global Centre on Adaptation for putting this together, together with the African Union, with Akin and the African Development Bank.

This is a critical summit. I want to start by saying that, unlike Kristalina, I have no original jokes to offer. But I’ve noted the joke you made, and I’ll be using it – like a good politician, I’ll be repeating it and claiming it as my own at future events!

Friends, we are ten months since COP26. And, as I think we’ve heard, that was an important milestone on adaptation and the work that we do around this.

We have the Glasgow/Sharm-El-Sheik Work Programme, which has got going on the global goal on Adaptation.

And in Glasgow we also had the event – that I was very pleased to be part of – on launching the African Adaptation Acceleration Program. And Akin, you talked about the £20 million of UK funding for the program.

This is all about making sure that we are driving policy and project support to those working to design and implement transformational adaptation interventions.

And so whether that’s in agriculture or infrastructure, or innovative finance, as Ngozi said (and others have commented): at the end of the day, we have to see tackling climate change also as a growth opportunity. For jobs, for the economy.

And I think unless we encourage everyone to do that, we will not make the progress that we need to make.

Ban and other leaders have referenced the commitment that we got at COP of developed countries at least doubling their collective provision on adaptation finance for developing nations by 2025.

I can tell you that this wasn’t an easy process, but we got there. And the reality now is that countries have to deliver.

You will all have seen the OECD figures that have come out for 2020 on the $100bn goal. We are moving in the right direction when it comes to adaptation, but the reality is we are going to have to quicken that pace.

Patrick, you said not to talk about all the things that have been going wrong in the world when it comes to climate, so let me just say this: the one thing I think every single one of us can say, just looking in our own countries, our continents, is that the chronic threat of climate change has got worse since COP26.

Things aren’t getting better.

I could give you all the examples of Africa, which I’ve got here, but I’m not going to because you know all of this.

I can tell you from a UK point of view, for the first time, we had wildfires this summer; we have droughts being declared; we have climate emergencies in terms of temperature levels being declared this summer.

Climate change does not recognise borders. And I think the sooner every world leader recognises that, the better.

We’ve got sixty-two days to COP27. Patrick, you said we want to see what is actually going to happen.

One of the things that we did agree was that there would be a progress report on the $100bn delivery plan, that is being worked on by our friends in the Canadian and German governments.

We will publish that before COP27, so we will be able to see what progress is actually being made.

And of course, this is going to require all the providers – the MDBs and others – to set out clear, ambitious adaptation finance targets when we meet in Egypt.

And I also want to acknowledge the brilliant work that Kristalina and her team have done on the RSD; that is really quite remarkable, so thank you so much for all your leadership on that.

We know that the annual adaptation costs are expected to reach at least $140bn a year by 2030, and frankly public finance is not going to be enough. We are going to need private finance. And so in a way I agree; I wish we did have more of the private finance providers around this table.

You’ve all set out very clearly the challenges we have and how we rise to those. And I want to acknowledge, firstly, the enormous support and help that I’ve got from Amina over the past years in this role; but also to make the point that, as she said, we need to make sure that when we get to COP27, we have to demonstrate that what we achieved at COP26 is starting to be delivered.

I said in Glasgow that the pulse of 1.5 is weak. And I have to say to you friends, it does remain weak right now.

On the positive side, we were able to show in Glasgow that the multilateral system, however unwieldy, can work when we all understand that it’s in our collective self interest.

And so what we do need to ensure in the coming days, weeks, and two months to COP27, is that we’re delivering on adaptation.

I want to end by what Akin said. He said: ‘you’re all doers in this room’.

So I have to say friends, now we just need to get it done.

Thank you.