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News story
Dame Elizabeth Corley, Clarissa Farr and Paul Ruddock have been reappointed by the Prime Minister as Trustees of the British Museum for a four year period from 2 October 2020 to 1 October 2024.
Dame Elizabeth Corley has extensive experience in the financial services industry, having been CEO of Allianz Global Investors, initially for Europe then globally, from 2005 to 2016. She continued to act as an advisor to the company until the end of 2019. Previously she was at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers and Coopers & Lybrand. Elizabeth is a Non-Executive Director of BAE Systems plc, Pearson plc and Morgan Stanley Inc. She is Chair of the Impact Investing Institute; a Director of the Green Finance Institute and serves on the investment committee of the Leverhulme Trust. Elizabeth is a member of the CFA Future of Finance Advisory Council, AQR Asset Management Institute, the Committee of 200 and the 300 Club. As well as being a trustee of the British Museum, Elizabeth is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is also a published author of crime thrillers. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2019 for her services to the economy and financial services.
Clarissa Farr brings to the Museum her experience in education and leadership. She is the author of The Making of Us: Why School Matters and is a regular speaker and writer. From 2006-2017 she was High Mistress of St Paul’s Girls’ school and has since worked as a senior adviser and director of education in international schools. An advocate for the arts, she was a governor of The Royal Ballet School, chairing the Artistic and Academic Committee, until 2020. She is currently a governor of the African Science Academy, which provides a fast track to higher education for gifted African girl scientists, and a Fellow of Winchester College. Clarissa works with educational search specialists RSAcademics on the appointment of new heads and as a qualified coach, with a variety of leaders and leadership teams.
Sir Paul Ruddock graduated from Oxford University before going into finance, and working at Goldman Sachs and Schroder and Co before founding Lansdowne Partners in 1998, from which he retired as CEO in 2013. Paul has served as Trustee and Chair of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Chair of the Gilbert Trust for the Arts and a Commissioner at the National Infrastructure Commission. In addition to being a Trustee of the British Museum, he is also Chair of the Oxford University Endowment Management and Oxford University Investment Committee, and a Trustee with the Metropolitan Museum New York. Sir Paul has been awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Montblanc de la Culture Award for Cultural Patronage, and was knighted in the New Year’s Honours 2012 for services to Arts and Culture.
These roles are not remunerated. These reappointments have been made in accordance with the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code on Public Appointments, the process is regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The Government’s Governance Code requires that any significant political activity undertaken by an appointee in the last five years is declared. This is defined as holding office, public speaking, making a recordable donation or candidature for election. Sir Paul Ruddock declared that he has made a recordable donation to the Conservative and Unionist Party. Dame Elizabeth Corley and Clarissa Farr have not declared any activity.
Published 10 March 2021
Thank you Madame Chair for dedicating this Joint FSC/PC Security Dialogue to the important topic of UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Thanks also to our speakers for their excellent presentations, which serve to reinforce the importance of gender equality in achieving sustainable peace and security.
This morning we have an important opportunity to capitalise on the momentum generated at OSCE last year around the Resolution’s 20th anniversary, to recognise the remaining implementation gaps, and work together through the Forum for Security Co-operation (FSC) to promote the further implementation of this landmark Resolution.
The unanimously adopted UNSCR 1325 recognised the disproportionate impact of conflict on women and girls. It also stressed the importance of women’s equal and full participation as active agents in peace and security and highlighted the need to increase the participation and representation of women at all levels of decision-making.
Madame Chair, we have a moral imperative to act. Women’s rights are human rights, and full implementation of UNSCR 1325 and all subsequent resolutions is an essential step towards ensuring the equal rights of women and girls. We must make it our collective ambition to ensure women meaningfully participate in all aspects of decision-making. In the security sector and in peacebuilding, women must be included in all decisions that affect their lives.
But there is a practical imperative too. The full, equal and meaningful participation of women in decision-making processes leads to better decision-making and more durable solutions. The evidence is clear. Countries with high levels of gender based discrimination are more likely to experience intra- and interstate conflict. Countries which have more fair and equal access to opportunities tend to be stable and peaceful. In peace processes where women are able to exert strong influence, it is much more likely that an agreement will be reached and implemented, and the peace is 35% more likely to last for fifteen years.
The UK supports the International Civil Action Network’s Protection Framework for women peacebuilders. OSCE and participating States’ support and implementation of this Framework can help protect women peacebuilders and facilitate greater involvement of women in peace processes at all levels of leadership.
Madame Chair, it is right that we ask ourselves today what additional measures at the OSCE could further the implementation of UNSCR 1325. Happily, we have a clear menu of concrete suggestions listed in the statement supported by 52 participating States at last year’s Ministerial Council.
Some of these involve the use of mechanisms already at our disposal, including the 2019 toolkit ‘Inclusion of Women and Effective Peace Processes’, further development of National Actions Plans on WPS, and the provision of information on WPS through the Code of Conduct.
Others suggest the compilation of national practices in implementing UNSCR 1325 and sharing of best practices regarding the full, equal and meaningful participation of women in conflict prevention, conflict resolution and post-conflict rehabilitation. The remaining measures are really about ensuring the FSC’s own house is fully in order, by establishing and implementing a plan of action for the full, equal and meaningful participation of women, in all aspects of the FSC’s work, including at all levels of decision-making and leadership, and gender mainstreaming in our Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) and Stockpiles of Conventional Ammunition (SCA) work.
Madame Chair, we disagree with any suggestion that furthering UNSCR 1325 is somehow not the business of the OSCE in general or the FSC in particular. Ensuring that around 50% of the population have full, meaningful and equal participation to decisions on peace and security is everyone’s business. And as members of the world’s largest regional security organisation, it is incumbent on us all to lead the way.
The Tirana joint statement on UNSCR 1325 makes clear the overwhelming support of participating States for enhanced action in the OSCE on WPS. I would therefore like to end with a direct and respectful appeal to the five states who did not join consensus at the Tirana Ministerial Council. That appeal is to reconsider, take a careful look at the measures proposed in the joint UNSCR 1325 statement in Tirana, and join the 52 other participating States to engage constructively in OSCE fora and the FSC in particular, so that we can make 2021 a year of real progress on women, peace and security.
I know there are plenty of people who think we should be going faster out of lockdown. They look at the success of the UK vaccine rollout. They see the falling numbers of deaths and hospitalisations. They think the Government should hurry up and bring forward the timetable. To all of those who want to speed up I say, I understand your urgency. I share your desire to get back to normal.
But we must recognise that the rate of infection is still high – much higher than last summer. We can see the signs of a surge of Covid among some of our European friends, and we remember how we in the UK have tended to follow that upwards curve, if a few weeks later.
We know how fast this disease can take off, and that Monday’s successful return to school will inevitably add to the budget of risk. The overwhelming majority of people – and businesses – would prefer us to take steps that are cautious but irreversible, rather than go backwards again. They would rather trade haste for certainty.
So we will continue on the roadmap we have set out, step by step, jab by jab, until we can get absolutely everything open, at the earliest by June 21. Businesses know how much time they have to plan, and to get ready, and we in government cannot afford to waste a second of the coming weeks. Now is the time to lay the foundations of a lasting and growing recovery. We will prepare to clear the backlogs – from the NHS to the courts. We are bringing forward an ambitious education recovery programme, with a new focus on tutoring.
We are addressing the underlying productivity problems of the economy, some of which have been neglected for decades. We are continuing to deliver broadband, at breakneck speed; we are offering a new Lifetime Skills Guarantee; and we are investing massively in the clean and efficient transport projects that can make such a difference to people’s lives and which are so crucial for creating the high-wage jobs we need.
As we look at the transport network, there is a particular weakness that has become steadily more obvious in the last 20 years. We have become far too segmented in our thinking.
For far too long, we have tended to carve up the country through a devolve and forget approach. We have devised transport strategies for Scotland, for Wales, for Northern Ireland and Northern England – and yet, incredible as it may seem, we have failed to produce a UK-wide transport strategy.
We left it, bizarrely, to the EU, which had a concept called the “Trans-European Transport Network”. The UK paid handsomely for our friends to draw these lines on the map, about 420 million euros per year. We only got about ten per cent back. The result is that the sinews of pan-UK transport have atrophied, with inadequate connections, needless bottlenecks and endless delays on the vital links between one part of the UK and another.
So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer.
He lays out the scale of the challenge. Take the A1 – still a single carriageway most of the way north of Newcastle and on into Scotland, in spite of decades of promises.
Look at the delays on the M4 as it goes west into South Wales. [Political content removed]. The North Wales economy has amazing potential in aerospace and other sectors. But too little thought has been given to the links to Merseyside and Manchester, to the North Wales railway or the A55. It’s currently quicker to get a train from Cardiff to Paris than from Cardiff to Edinburgh, and why are we stopping HS2 in England? We don’t need a new line; with some bypasses, better track and signalling, as Sir Peter believes, we could run services from Glasgow to London in about 3 hours, and carry more freight too.
It seems wrong that someone flying from Belfast to London and back pays more UK tax than someone flying from Dublin to London and back. Isn’t it time to harvest that Brexit dividend and cut Air Passenger Duty to support connectivity across our Union? We will consult on choices to do that.
And there was one project that Sir Peter found to command overwhelming support – the A75 from Cairnryan in Scotland to the English border. It is a crucial route for south-west Scotland, for traffic between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and indeed the whole island of Ireland. This road connects three parts of the UK – Northern Ireland, Scotland and England. But it is a single carriageway. For 95 miles. This a long-term arteriosclerosis caused by our failure to think as one UK. As Sir Peter concludes his report, I hope he can produce the beginnings of a truly pan-UK transport strategy.
We in the UK Government look forward to working with our partners and friends in the devolved administrations, to see if we can deliver this plan together – not to supplant their own agendas, but to supplement them for the benefit of all the people of the UK.
We want to improve pan-UK transport links so as to reduce traffic and to reduce pollution, in a way that is as clean and green and efficient as possible. It is time to begin to strengthen the very sinews – the musculoskeletal structure – of the United Kingdom, so that we can recover faster and stronger together.
Enabling works for a multi-million pound flood alleviation scheme in Littleborough which will help protect around 1,000 homes are set to get underway in the coming weeks.
The first phase of the scheme involves the construction of a storage reservoir at Gale, just off Todmorden Road, and a programme of measures to improve water flow and flood defences along the River Roch and its tributaries. These measures will improve flood protection for 1,000 residential properties and 200 local businesses.
The project, part of the wider £56m Rochdale and Littleborough flood alleviation scheme, will also protect vital infrastructure, including local transport networks, schools and colleges.
These initial works, scheduled to start early April, will prepare the sites for further construction later this year with a second planning application set to be submitted in the autumn
Led by the Environment Agency, with support from Rochdale Borough Council, Network Rail, Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) and the North West Regional Flood and Coastal Committee, the Rochdale and Littleborough flood alleviation scheme will be one of the largest inland flood management projects in the north of England.
The scheme, which is also supported by the Departments of Education and Transport, is one of a number of flood alleviation measures which have taken place across the borough following the devastating Boxing Day floods of 2015.
The next phase of the project will focus on storage reservoirs and flood defence improvements between Smithy Bridge and Rochdale town centre and the whole project is expected to be completed by late 2025.
The initial enabling works at Gale will require the closure of a single lane of Todmorden Road, between Elim Terrace and Reddyshore Brow from 6 April to 30 September.
Some work on the railway line running through the Gale site is also needed and will involve a closure of the railway line during October 21. These works are being carried out by Network Rail and their contractors and further supports the partnership approach being adopted for the scheme delivery.
Nick Pearson Flood Risk Advisor with the Environment Agency said:
“This is a step closer to constructing the Rochdale and Littleborough Flood Risk Management scheme which is fantastic news as it will benefit residents, businesses, the local economy and local wildlife. The improved flood defences will play a crucial role in better protecting the wider community from the risk of flooding into the future.
“By delivering these works ahead of constructing the main flood alleviation scheme, we will be able to reduce the risk of unknown issues coming to light and keep any disruption for the local community, to a minimum. All our work will be carried out in line with the Government coronavirus guidelines and activities will continue to be reviewed so that they can be completed safely.”
Councillor Neil Emmott, Cabinet Member for Quality of Place at Rochdale Borough Council, said:
“We’ve been working with the Environment Agency and other partners over a number of years to bring this much needed investment in to help us mitigate the impact of floods, which can have such a devastating impact on communities.
“This project, one of the biggest flood alleviation schemes in the north of England, will make a huge difference to residents and businesses on the ground and I’m really pleased to see it progress.”
Rory Kingdon, senior sponsor at Network Rail, said:
“Pooling resources with the Environment Agency to tackle flooding in Rochdale and Littleborough is win-win for householders and passengers on the Calder Valley line.
“This section of track has flooded 33 times in eight years. It’s caused trains to be delayed for a combined total of 14,000 minutes – that’s more than nine and a half days of significant disruption to passengers travelling in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.”
“The £3m Department of Transport investment to build a new underbridge this October will divert floodwater away from high risk sites and increase the weather resilience of the line, which will be used as a diversionary route for passengers during the Transpennine Route Upgrade.”