International Development: Universal Primary Education

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

15:29

Moved by

[Baroness Verma]

That this House takes note of progress towards meeting the millennium development goal on universal primary education.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I am delighted to address the House on such an important issue that affects the lives of millions of young people across the world. At the dawn of the 21st century, in September 2000, world leaders came together at the United Nations headquarters in New York to adopt the United Nations Millennium Declaration. In doing so, they committed their countries to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty, and they set out a series of goals that have become known as the millennium development goals. The stated aim of the second of those goals was to:

“Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling”.

That goal forms the focus of today’s debate.

We who have benefited from education know of its crucial importance, not purely in our personal development but in helping us to realise our full potential. Education is not only a basic human right; it is an investment in people and in future generations. For the millions of girls living in the world’s poorest countries, that investment is particularly important.

Education provides the skills and knowledge that allow people to help themselves. It stimulates growth within communities and contributes to a better future for all. It helps create more stable and prosperous nations, which are then better able to respond to global threats such as climate change. Education encourages peace, democracy, good government and international security, as well as providing the key to unlocking the potential within each and every child.

It is therefore clear that we and others must work together towards the attainment of the critical goal of universal primary education. In doing so, we will help to achieve the other millennium development goals. The multiplier effect of education is that it leads to better health and nutrition, social stability and lower rates of fertility.

To achieve universal primary education by 2015 was always going to be a challenge. Good progress has been made globally over the past decade, with some 47 million more children enrolled in primary schools. During this period, the number of primary-aged children out of school has fallen from 103 million to 72 million, and within these figures the proportion of girls out of school has fallen from 58 per cent to 54 per cent.

However, of those out of school, seven out of 10 live in sub-Saharan Africa or in south and west Asia. In addition, the global trend shows that we are currently not on track to get every child into school by 2015. As reported by the Education for All global monitoring report earlier this year, if we continue with business as usual there will still be an estimated 56 million primary-aged children out of education by 2015.

On current predictions, it is also estimated that 105 million 15 to 24 year-olds will lack basic literacy in 2015 and that, if we are to achieve universal primary education, 10 million more teachers globally are needed by 2015. Many of the 72 million children who remain excluded from school are, by definition, some of the hardest to reach. They include children living in rural areas, children with disabilities, children from minority- ethnic groups, children who live in fragile and conflict-affected states, and, of course, girls from all walks of life. The persistence of conflict continues to keep children out of school. About 40 million out-of-school children live in fragile and conflict-affected countries. Educating children in these states can help reduce tension, promote peace and rebuild lives and communities.

To get the hardest to reach children into school, we need a renewed effort by national Governments and donors, international organisations, the private sector, civil society and faith groups. Later this year, the international community will have the chance to reinvigorate action on this goal. In September, the United Nations will host a summit on the millennium development goals in New York. The coalition Government are committed to playing their part in the international effort to achieve the MDGs and will call for an action plan to re-energise efforts towards meeting those goals. We expect the summit to include a side event on education.

Some, both in developing and developed countries, might argue that we cannot afford to invest in universal education at a time of financial constraints at home. This Government disagree. We believe an investment in education for all will help to assure our common prosperity and security. A global economy such as ours needs the knowledge and skills that can come only from a solid base of education. Evidence from past recessions clearly demonstrates that maintaining investment in education helps to ensure rapid recovery. The amount of aid that we put into education in developing countries supports roughly the same number of children going to primary school as those who go to school in Britain, yet the cost is only 2.5 per cent of what we spend here.

DfID funds have supported some 5 million children in school, trained 100,000 teachers and built 12,000 classrooms. These are strong results, but we also want to ensure that they represent the best value for money. We are determined to spend British taxpayers’ money wisely, so we will focus rigorously on results and outcomes. We are also clear that we want demonstrable evidence of the impact that DfID’s work is having on education in poor countries: clear, hard evidence of real improvements being made on the ground to help get children into school. For this purpose, we want the new independent aid watchdog, which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development announced on 3 June, to lead to greater value for money and to ensure more transparency. Similarly, the UKaid Transparency Guarantee will ensure that information on all DfID’s spending is published on the DfID website, allowing British taxpayers the opportunity to see where our support for education is going.

The goal of universal primary education applies to girls and boys alike. Additionally, the third millennium development goal is specifically focused on gender equality and includes the target of eliminating gender disparity at all levels of education by 2015. For girls in particular, education beyond the primary level is extremely important in improving their life chances, in delaying early motherhood, in avoiding HIV/AIDS and in ensuring that in motherhood their own children are healthier and better nourished.

In discussing universal primary education, we must recognise that its achievement is supported by investment in the whole education sector. While our main focus is on supporting Governments in their efforts to provide all children with a good-quality basic education, we are also supporting and working with them and other partners to support the whole education sector. However, we want to be ambitious. Primary education itself is not enough. We need to raise our aspirations and to work towards the delivery of basic education, including junior secondary education for young adolescents. This is where the real benefits, such as to reproductive health, accrue. Just as the MDGs cannot be reached without adequate investment in higher-level knowledge and skills, neither can universal primary education be achieved without well trained teachers. Higher education is vital to train skilled professionals such as public sector managers, business leaders and health and education workers.

I am keen to hear noble Lords’ learned views on this subject. The coalition Government recognise the great depth and breadth of knowledge and experience of those in this House and want to listen carefully to noble Lords who can offer advice on this subject. Ultimately, it is the quality of learning, more so than the number of years a child spends in school, that matters. Good-quality learning will reduce drop-out rates and enable more children to complete their education—an important aspect of the education goal.

While we seek to ensure that the disadvantaged are given the opportunity to go to school, we must not lose sight of the need to see them receive an education that provides them with the skills to take them through to secondary level and beyond. Currently, many children who attend are failing to master basic literacy and numeracy skills, even when they complete a full cycle of primary education. That is not good enough. We are working with development partners to raise the quality of teaching and learning, particularly for basic literacy and basic numeracy. We will look to the UN summit in September not only to re-energise international efforts towards ensuring that all children complete their primary education but to ensure that schools and teachers improve the quality of learning.

This debate is timely and relevant and I look forward to noble Lords’ valuable contributions.

15:39

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I welcome my noble friend Lady Verma to the Dispatch Box and thank her for the opportunity to discuss this issue.

On a day when we have learnt of the gravity of the economic situation facing our country it would be too easy to concentrate on matters at home and the consequences for families up and down this country. However, it is a mark of a civilised people to recognise the bonds of a common humanity which transcends national borders to reach out to people in distant places. Looking at the challenges those people face in attaining fulfilment of their most basic rights is sobering indeed and will bring balance to our deliberations today. It is a brave and morally upright position for this Government to have maintained their commitment to meeting the UN target when so many other rich countries have not. It is a measure of this country’s intrinsic liberal internationalism that we do not forget those further away from our shores.

It is, of course, also a tribute to the previous Labour Government that we have achieved so much in lifting others out of poverty and made such a significant contribution towards the millennium development goals. There has been substantial progress across the board in the early years but the global economic crisis imperils many of the objectives in the period that we have now entered.

Before I move to that scenario, I want to concentrate on what has been achieved in the all-important area of primary education. In determining this goal in 2000, Governments were clear about the overlapping benefits to accrue from education overall. In countries which live in peace and security, it is an essential component of development. It undoubtedly lifts individuals out of poverty and increases their life chances. For girls, it increases their economic participation, improves their own and their children’s health outcomes and reduces their family size based on informed choices and consent. They are, quite simply, empowered individuals because of access to literacy and, hence, information. Education results in true sustainability as future generations will benefit from today’s investment.

In the developed world, universal and compulsory primary education has laid the foundations for secondary and tertiary education, which is now taken for granted by 40 per cent to 50 per cent of young adults. It is a legacy that has been built on by successive generations for more than 100 years. However, there are still large sections of the globe where it is only recently that children have had near-universal access to primary education. According to the latest UN MDG report in 2009, in developing countries overall enrolment had reached 88 per cent by 2007. Improvements were most striking in sub-Saharan Africa, where enrolment rose by 15 per cent in the period since 2000, and in southern Asia by 11 per cent. Hence the number of children of primary school age who are out of school has dropped by 33 million since 1999.

Nevertheless, despite these gains, statistics can tell the other side of the story as well. It now appears that challenges remain whereby we will not be able to meet the target of ensuring that by 2015 children are able to complete a full course of primary schooling. Even in 2007, 72 million children were denied the right to education, of whom nearly half live in sub-Saharan Africa and 18 million in southern Asia. UNESCO figures show that 29 million children will still be out of school in 2015—29 million too many.

The factors leading to this are several, and I will touch on just three: the reduction in donor support in the period ahead, the gender gap in education and the situation in the poorest conflict-affected fragile states. Financial support for attaining this MDG was always viewed as insufficient for the scale of the problem. Not only did it require investment in infrastructure for the poorest rural areas, where schools simply do not exist, it also required capacity-building in terms of teachers trained to adequate levels with adequate teaching aids and resources. Furthermore, the greatest barrier, that of school fees and other indirect costs, reduces enrolment. In some less-developed countries, children in the poorest 20 per cent of the population are three times less likely to be enrolled in primary school than children from the wealthiest 20 per cent.

Several countries have made progress in eliminating school fees, most notably India last year, which passed legislation to provide free and compulsory education for six to 14 year-olds, thereby aiming to lift millions of children out of illiteracy in the next decade alone. Among sub-Saharan countries going down a similar route, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia have also moved to provide free education at primary level and there are others still in the pipeline. Nevertheless, the situation in conflict-affected fragile states is still dire and several streams of donor funding are simply unavailable to these countries due to their fragile governance arrangements. It becomes, therefore, a Catch-22 situation. The greatest need requires greater risk-taking on the part of donors and their accountability mechanisms militate against taking risks.

The impact of the global economic crisis should also not be underestimated in the period going forward. We know from UNDP figures that when oil prices increased in 2007-08 that was accompanied by higher food prices due to increased consumption in the more affluent parts of still developing countries such as China and India. The combination of the price of oil and food had an indirect impact on accessing primary education. With fiscal consolidation and reductions in the economic growth, it is inevitable that even in those countries aiming to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of GNI the figure will fall in absolute terms as their economies shrink. The cake, in effect, will become smaller still. Does DfID have contingency reserves specifically dedicated to this possibility and will it be able to plug the gap in any meaningful way?

Gender inequality in south Asia and the Middle East is also of great concern. At the midway point in measuring progress toward this MDG in 2007, it was found that the target to reduce gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005 had already been missed. Several aspects affect the completion of primary education. In the case of girls, culture has a significant impact as well as geographical location, and rural communities have greater disparities than urban areas. It is also the case that social and economic constraints impact on girls disproportionately and that families and societies give a lower priority to girls’ education. This is when the importance of making primary education not just free but compulsory comes in. In Muslim countries, where this problem is particularly acute, waiting for cultural change will take too long and is of itself a by-product of education. One cannot come until we have achieved the other. This is when compulsion becomes necessary. We should welcome India’s move to make free education additionally compulsory so that all parents have to comply with the law irrespective of religion or values. Implementing that will be expensive; the estimates for India are $40 billion alone for the first tranche of children to go through school.

While the gender disparity figures for enrolment are improving slowly, the staying on and completion rates are not promising and the drop-out rates for girls, which is significantly higher than for boys, is worrying, with the resultant impact on secondary education as well. In sub-Saharan Africa, the ratio of girls’ to boys’ enrolment in secondary education actually fell from 82 per cent in 1999 to 79 per cent in 2007. Overall, only 60 per cent of countries have achieved gender parity in primary education, with a mere 30 per cent achieving it for secondary education. This gender gap is replicated through tertiary education, in stark contrast to the developed world, where women outnumber men in higher education.

I turn to the situation in conflict-afflicted, fragile states. Displacement is a major factor, with the average period in a conflict calculated to be some 10 years—in other words, potentially the entire period that a girl or a boy would spend in education. Hence millions of these children do not even have basic literacy. Therefore, there is a pressing need for the donor countries’ humanitarian aid policy to be revisited. Currently, the 2008 humanitarian consensus action plan does not even mention education, which is seen primarily as a development activity. What priority are this Government likely to give to education in conflict situations? We have amassed some considerable skill in this area in Afghanistan, and perhaps we need to build on this best practice to replicate elsewhere.

Finally, I draw the House’s attention to the critical recent report of the National Audit Office, which found that since 2001 funds spent by DfID have meant a positive contribution towards achieving this MDG, but it has not improved the quality of education or reduced drop-out rates. Its report recommends that funding should be better targeted towards improving people attendance and attainment—in other words, to deliver a more sustainable educational outcome.

We welcome the DfID review recently announced of bilateral aid. In seeking value for money, considering countries such as China for partnership agreements in this area may need revisiting. Such countries have growth rates and the ability to lift their people so dramatically out of poverty at a very different scale to those poorest and fragile states in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

This is a critical time for the world economy. The resilience of the developed world has been tested in the past three years and it has, on the whole, risen to that challenge. It has had the human capital and resources to do so. However, the poorest countries in the developing world do not have these levels of resilience, as we have seen from the rise in small-state conflicts. It is imperative that this country, the European Union and other developed countries rise to the challenge of international solidarity by meeting in full their obligations for these MDGs.

15:53

[The Lord Bishop of Liverpool]

My Lords, whatever reasons lie behind the scheduling of today’s debate, it is fitting that in these Houses of Parliament, while the other place is wrestling with the state of our finances and debating the Budget, this House should be addressing the millennium development goals. Whatever our straitened economic circumstances, in the context of the global picture and the parable of Dives and Lazarus, we are the rich, and we live under a moral imperative to consider the poor.

Therefore, I thank the noble Baroness for tabling this important debate. On behalf of these Benches, I welcome her to her post and look forward to working closely with her. I agree entirely with the analysis that she has offered your Lordships’ House this afternoon. I also pay tribute to DfID’s achievement in working towards the millennium development goals, in particular on primary education. I know that DfID has worked closely with many of the faith community NGOs. We welcome that partnership, too.

As we have heard, we have five years in which to achieve the aim of eradicating global poverty. The meeting of the G8 this week and the MDG summit in September are critical to this purpose, as the global community agrees what needs to be done in order to achieve the millennium development goals within the next five years. Millions of children are still living in poverty—a level of poverty that we in the developed world would struggle to imagine. Every day they face illness, hunger, violence and death as a result of this poverty. Nine hundred million people still go hungry every day in this world. That is surely a scandal of injustice.

Therefore, it is encouraging to hear of success stories as a result of the investment in the MDGs. We must remember that these stories take place locally, child by child and community by community—that is how they are experienced. As we have heard, the number of children in primary education has increased by 30 million since 1999. That is a great achievement. The number of people with access to treatment of HIV/AIDS has increased from 100,000 to over 4 million. That, too, is a great achievement. Figures also show us that the proportion of the world’s population living in poverty has fallen from a third to a quarter. That is another great achievement.

However, we cannot be complacent. At the current rate, as we have heard, many of the goals will simply not be reached by 2015, especially in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa. The UN recently reported that the 58 countries that still have not reached universal primary education are not likely to achieve it by 2015 given the current rate of activity and investment.

Therefore, it was good yesterday to hear in the Prime Minister’s Statement on the European Council the Council’s commitment to the millennium development goals. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, pointed out that many of our European partners are reneging on their commitment to give 0.7 per cent of GDP, so it was encouraging to hear from our Prime Minister of the Government’s insistence that these goals be monitored annually.

As we know, we live in an interdependent world, with all these issues impacting on one another. The recent global financial crisis has shown how intertwined our economies and markets really are. Just as our world is interrelated, so, too, the millennium goals are interrelated. We turn our attention in this debate to primary education, but in so doing we cannot ignore the other goals.

This last week, I was at a conference at Liverpool Hope University sponsored by the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa. It was led by the wife of the Archbishop of West Africa, who is herself a consultant anaesthetist. The members were all women in leadership in health, education and public service. Their unanimous view, which was expressed to me cogently, was that the empowerment of women in Africa is key to delivering the goal of universal primary education. Like pick-a-sticks, all these goals are interlaid. We could be tempted to duck our responsibilities. It has been encouraging to hear from the coalition Government that this nation will keep to its commitment of 0.7 per cent of GDP.

With regard to growth in primary education, significant progress has been made. For example, in many countries in Africa the children’s enrolment fee is paid through aid, making education free at the point of use. As a result, many more children now attend primary school, but there are still issues of sustainability and quality. Some countries struggle to find sufficient school buildings and teachers. In Ethiopia, one in five children leaves school in the first year. The children most likely to drop out of school are girls, who are responsible in that culture for collecting water, household chores and the care of family members who are ill. The standards of literacy and numeracy remain low, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where more children of secondary school age are in primary education.

There is still so much more to do to achieve the goal of universal primary education by 2015. The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, has already referred to the National Audit Office, noting the importance of concentrating not on spending but on results and output. Instead of measuring the amount of spending, we should assess the quality of the teaching and the recruiting and retaining of professional teachers. The United Nations recommends the elimination of school fees, particularly for the poorest families. It recommends provision of transport to school, particularly for the rural poor. It recommends free school meals and basic health services being made available in schools, and recognises the importance of adequate teaching materials and the distribution of free textbooks. It is a source of pride that investment in education has increased from $1.6 billion in 1999 to $5 billion in 2006, but the United Nations estimates that what is really required annually is a budget of $11 billion. That is why we need to monitor this annually, as the Government have proposed.

At the United Nations millennium development goals summit this September, it is vital that there is an agreement of a five-year plan to achieve all the goals by 2015. Accountability will be essential—accountability for the developed nations to ensure that they give the money to which they have publicly committed; and accountability for the developing nations, so that they are held to account for the way that money is spent and the outcome of the spending. Innovation is also essential. There must be much more sharing across nations and communities. Progress with each goal must be sustainable. Achieving those goals for 2015, but losing progress by 2020, would not be a success.

The Prime Minister has rightly made much of the big society. This is a vision that should be applied not just to these shores but to global issues. We cannot solve the problems that give rise to the millennium development goals by government alone. We need to activate the whole of civil society internationally. This is happening through the faith sector, NGOs and Comic Relief and other media ventures, but more people need to be mobilised. For example, what about the new academies and free schools? Should they not be encouraged to twin with villages in challenging parts of the world? There should be mutual relationships and parity of giving and receiving. Some of the schools in my diocese of Liverpool do this. Whereas we share resources, science and technology, we receive from the other schools supreme examples of motivation, music and rhythm, and lives lived closer to the earth and the realities of the changing climate. The developing world needs educating but so does the developed world. It needs educating in the realities of what is being called “one world living”.

As I close, I call on the Prime Minister, through the Minister, to attend the summit himself in September, and convey to that meeting the priority that he and the British Government place on achieving the millennium development goals and lifting millions of people across the world out of poverty. The Prime Minister’s own leadership on the international stage is important as developed nations are called on to redouble their investments and efforts over the next five years.

16:04

[Baroness Goudie]

My Lords, talent is universal but opportunity is not. I welcome the Minister’s statement that the coalition Government will continue to support the millennium goals. The coalition Government and the opposition need to put pressure on Governments, as did our former Prime Ministers, Mr Blair and Mr Brown. We need to have the political will to do this. Our political will and that of the countries we are trying to assist is important in this regard. We have to put pressure on those countries in many ways.

I will not go through the disgraceful World Bank statistics on sub-Saharan Africa, which I have seen many times, but I was disappointed when I looked at them earlier this week. Those countries could assist the girls in their populations if they wished to do so, but they do not. We have to put pressure on them in every way that we can.

I wish to tell noble Lords a story. A friend of mine, Wenchie Yu Perkins, works for the American State Department. Before that, she was a colleague of mine in Vital Voices Global Partnership. She visited a 12 year-old girl in Nepal involved in a Room to Read project who had a scholarship at an elementary school. Her mother is illiterate and makes less than $2 a day. Her father is a migrant worker in Qatar. However, he never sends money home because he is still repaying the fee to the agency and to his employer, who has his passport. The girl lives in a hut—I was sent photos—filled with chickens, goats and small mountains of potatoes. She dreams of becoming a doctor and improving her family’s situation. My friend told her to study very hard to become a doctor so that she could make her mother proud. However, as Wenchie says, and as I know, the real problem is whether the girl can finish secondary school before she is married off or sold off to pay for a new roof for the hut. We know that these girls are sold for all sorts of reasons.

I welcome the coalition, but between now and the meeting in September and the other G8 and G20 meetings, I ask it to get our people who work behind the scenes to put together an agenda that can bring about change. This change involves money, auditing that money and getting civil society and Governments to work together, but more importantly it should aim to bring on board the corporate sector working in these countries. That sector is taking away minerals and other products from them but is not giving anything back. It gives back a small proportion of its profits, but not much more than that. I have gone through the CSR reports of companies working in these countries. Pressure must be put on China to give back. We know that some oil refineries in Nigeria and Chad are owned by China. I am not attacking China, I am just saying that we need to put pressure on China. We also need to put pressure on American companies that have taken huge stakes in sub-Saharan Africa but pay small lip service to CSR.

India has been mentioned. Many charities are working in India, putting their money into the Government and civil society. They are educating children before they go to work. We know that, unfortunately, children in rural areas have to work. The charities run a number of schemes through the CAP Foundation which can educate children for £89 a year and can keep a child in school in the mornings. These projects are there. Although the money we send is very important, it is not just about money. Increasingly, we have to audit it, put it through NGOs and other organisations, and see where it is going. Just giving money in flat donations from country to country is not working. The United Nations is full of talk, but it does not actually deliver, because it is not on the ground.

The work of Prime Ministers Blair and Brown should be continued by this new coalition Government—and I am pleased that they are doing so. They should work behind the scenes to get real results and value for money, because I can give many examples of where money is wasted and not used properly.

16:10

[Lord Freeman]

My Lords, I and my colleagues on these Benches warmly welcome my noble friend Lady Verma to her new position. We wish her well. I am sure that all your Lordships will agree that her speech was full of assurance, with a comprehensive and attractive style.

I want to concentrate on the benefits of primary education, particularly in Africa, and the consequences for health. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool put his finger on one of the most important issues in education in Africa—reaching women, girls and, in particular, mothers, because they provide the leadership and encouragement for children to learn the importance of health and proper nutrition. In rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa, there remains a major problem with the supply of clean water. Unclean water can lead to not only high child mortality but a sense of depression—a circular depression—in terms of trying to improve the living standards of the communities.

I declare an interest; for the past 10 years, I have been chairman of a Christian charity, the Busoga Trust, which operates principally in Uganda, but offers advice in Kenya and Tanzania. It was the Bishop of Busoga, when he came to preach to a rather affluent community in one of the Kensington churches 25 years ago, who called for a more coherent effort in dealing with sanitation and water supply in Africa. It is a great tribute to him that 25 years later we have built more than 1,000 wells, principally in Uganda. We teach to women and children the importance of using clean water.

Perhaps I may paint a pen picture for your Lordships. In northern Uganda, next to the border with Sudan and the Congo, in many rural areas where there are no towns but small villages, children are still walking between three and five miles a day with jerry cans on their heads to collect impure water. The problem with impure water, when it comes from a well used by cattle, is that you get malaria from mosquitoes, and many other diseases that are often fatal. Child mortality falls where clean water has been introduced as a result of building a well and by providing education about proper sanitation and the use of that clean water. Typically, compared with the situation 10 years ago in the north of Uganda, when a clean well is constructed, the mortality rate falls; the women need to produce fewer children because more of them survive. It is as brutal as that.

I am glad that there is all-party support for what my noble friend outlined in terms of the importance of education. I must say also that there is all-party support for the 0.7 per cent target for international aid. It took some courage from both the previous Administration and the coalition to stick to that, because all the opinion polls were telling us that that was one departmental budget that should not be sacred. I am glad that it is.

I sense that there is all-party support, so I am sure that noble Lords will allow me to compliment colleagues in my party on an excellent document, One World Conservatism, which is available in the Library. It is not a party-political document. On page 38, it states that,

“60 per cent of Africans do not have proper access to sanitation … Moreover, safe drinking water is the development priority of poor people”.

This is bound up with what my noble friend on the Front Bench talked about, namely better primary education.

The coalition document, which noble Lords will have read, is also impressive. Page 22 deals with international development. The first of the two paragraphs that I will quote states:

“We will support actions to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. In particular, we will prioritise aid spending on programmes to ensure that everyone has access to clean water, sanitation, health care and education; to reduce maternal and infant mortality; and to restrict the spread of major diseases like HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria”.

We all support those aims. The document goes on to state:

“We will support innovative and effective smaller British non-governmental organisations that are committed to tackling poverty”.

Perhaps I might conclude by making a special plea to the Minister to convey to her colleague the Secretary of State the wisdom of turning back the clock. I make no criticism of the previous Labour Administration for the amount of aid that was distributed. However, there is one small aspect of policy that we need to change. Clare Short in her wisdom decided to withdraw the direct grant to non-governmental organisations, principally charities, of 5 per cent of total aid spent, and to spend 100 per cent through the Government. That may seem a modest change, but it had a dramatic effect on charities such as the Busoga Trust. The aim of the coalition to support innovative and effective smaller British NGOs is wise because it can be cost-effective. I very much support auditing how aid is spent. The coalition document and my noble friend on the Front Bench are absolutely right: we must have value for money. That means checking that money is spent correctly, without corruption and in the most effective fashion.

I conclude by paying tribute to DfID staff. Many noble Lords who travel, principally in Africa, have met many of them. It is often a very hard and unrewarding job that is not fully appreciated by politicians who travel from the United Kingdom. DfID staff are at the sharp end and I am sure that all noble Lords will join me in thanking them, and all Ministers, for their hard work.

16:17

[Lord Brett]

My Lords, I begin by joining noble Lords who have congratulated the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, on her appointment. She is already an impressive Dispatch Box performer. She has great commitment to international development and I am sure that she will bring great distinction to her role. I also compliment the coalition Government on retaining the 0.7 per cent aid target, and will compound that by congratulating them on ring-fencing the DfID budget. Of course, three compliments in a row in your Lordships' House are usually followed by a “but” or a “however”, and I will provide both.

This is the wrong debate at the right time. It is wrong only because it is far too narrow. The case for primary education is powerful; I know that because I sought to widen the agenda and was told that it was set because primary education feeds into other areas. However, there are eight millennium development goals. We could have had a debate on health that would have included child mortality, improved maternal health and combating AIDS. Each year, two million people die on the day they are born, 500,000 women die in childbirth and 72 million children miss out on education as a result. Those facts are connected to international aid, but these are powerful health issues in their own right.

We could have discussed the new threats to development from the global downturn, including the recession, which is forcing 90 million people back into poverty, and perhaps the fact that investment in developing countries is predicted to fall by 80 per cent over the next few years. I am quoting from a fascinating document that has already been complimented in this Chamber—namely, One World Conservatism. I part company with the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, in his argument that it is not a party document, given that it lends two pages to what it calls “Labour’s mistakes”. That, to me, suggests that it may well be just a party document. It says:

“Internationally, Labour’s failure to focus on outputs and outcomes means that our aid has not achieved all it could”.

I am more than happy to accept that we can always do better, that aid can be better spent and that we have to learn the necessary lessons, but essentially I believe that we should have had a debate today not on a single millennium development goal but on the task of achieving the MDGs by 2015.

I note that every speaker in the debate other than the Minister has gone beyond the subject of primary education. I do not disagree with a word that the Minister said, or indeed with what others have said, but the matter that I have to deal with goes beyond primary education. Although we have heard about the funding, my question is: what are the Government’s intentions on the broader front?

We also heard—I think that it was in the Conservative manifesto—that there would be a legally binding commitment on the figure of 0.7 per cent within the first Session of Parliament. A draft Bill was certainly produced by the previous Government, and the Prime Minister said yesterday:

“As for making it legally binding, we agree with that, and will produce plans to make it happen”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/6/10; col. 39.]

The coalition document talks about a parliamentary resolution. I therefore ask the Minister—I did not give her notice of this question, for which I apologise, although I gave her notice of a whole raft of questions to come—how and when the Government intend to make that legally binding declaration, through an Act of Parliament or whatever.

The subject of education will be coming up very soon, on 7 July, at an education summit in South Africa. Another question that I wish to ask the Minister is: who will represent the UK Government at that meeting? Will it be someone at Secretary of State level—the Secretary of State for International Development or the Secretary of State for Education?

I also want to refer to the two major reviews that are taking place. Again, that tells me that this is the wrong debate at the right time. This would have been a great opportunity to have some input into those reviews. We have a whole day for an international development debate—a luxury that we have rarely had before. There are six speakers and we will have finished by five o’clock. That does not do justice to a question on the MDGs. However, it is not the fault of the Minister or of noble Lords; it is simply that we had a very narrow agenda and a very short period of notice. Because we are not discussing the broader church of the MDGs, it is a bit like Hamlet without the prince, or perhaps I should say that it is a debate on international development without the earl—the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, who brings major expertise to our debates. I think also of the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, and, on my Benches, my noble friend Lord Judd. In addition, from the Bishops’ Benches several right reverend Prelates have given us very wise counsel. All those people could have taken part in a debate leading into, and assisting the Government in, the two reviews that they are seeking.

One of those reviews—on bilateral aid—was always going to take place; the previous Government had planned that. A more recent element is looking at the money that we invest in the international community via the United Nations and the EU. Here I take some issue with the development matters set out in One World Conservatism, which I quoted earlier, and I declare an interest. For four years, I was director of the London office of the International Labour Organization, which covered the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Before that, I was vice-chairman of the governing body for nine years, and latterly I was chair of the ILO.

During that decade it was very clear that the Government who put the greatest pressure on reforming United Nations agencies’ efficiency was the UK Government. DfID was very helpful in that; it developed the partnership arrangement. That was not just signing cheques and nothing more; it was a very interrogative process, where, over the lifetime of the project, you would have to show not only that it fits in with the core mandate of the UN agency and that there is no overlap but that you can achieve milestones. Money is not paid up front or at the end but on the basis of achievement. In that sense, one of the weaknesses in the document that concerns me is the idea that you will pay at the end for the number of people put into a school, so you pay a Government a fee if they have 20,000 more children in school. That gives rise to three questions. Where do the schools come from in the first place? Who is training the teachers? Where do the teachers come from? An investment is required up front, and it is not simply a payment-by-results system. I think that the DfID partnership arrangements, which were anything but a signing-of-cheques-without-questions system, was a very good approach and one that I hope will not be abandoned. Clearly, it is right that the Secretary of State, in saying that we are ring-fencing the money, can also say that we have to examine the value. I am sure that greater clarity and perhaps greater purpose will come out of that.

I have declared my interest but I should also regale the House with what it is like to be a director of a United Nations agency’s office. I was tasked by my director-general with reducing the budget of the office in London, which had about eight staff. I finished up recommending that we should close the office as I believed that, in relation to Europe, the money could be better spent in eastern and central Europe or, in relation to the rest of the world, in sub-Saharan Africa than in London. In that task, I was aided by the fact that the partnership arrangements that we had with DfID meant that we could pair DfID’s technical departments in Scotland with our technical departments in Geneva, and that could be done more efficiently than going through the conduit of what you might call an embassy in London. That would not necessarily apply in other parts of the world, but it shows that within the UN system we are not wedded to simply maintaining offices for reasons of prestige or for anything else.

This interesting document—One World Conservatism —fails the test of the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, for not being totally independent. Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York said:

“You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose”.

Parts of this document relating to DfID lead me to think that we should change that to, “You campaign in fiction but govern in fact”. I hope that the reviews will be evidence-based and not based on prejudice or the ideology of authors of any political party’s campaign propaganda before an election.

I have given the Minister notice of a few questions. I do not expect that she will be able to answer them all today, but perhaps we may have answers in writing. They touch on some points made by other speakers in the debate. Looking at the review of DfID spend in international organisations, what consultation will take place with EU partner Governments? The EU is an important component; sometimes it is criticised and sometimes applauded. What about the non-governmental actors—a question that was asked by the right reverend Prelate? Some non-governmental actors hold formal governance positions. The ILO, the CBI and the TUC have elected members of the governing council. What plans do the Government have to ensure interaction with other government departments that deal with the UN agencies, the FCO, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Education and so on? What about consultation within the wider NGO community? The faith groups are very important, as are the agencies, many of whom are based in this country, from Oxfam to War on Want and Feed the Children? They can all tell you what it is like dealing with UN agencies on the ground. Furthermore, what consultation is there on the bilateral spend within Whitehall and with the wider NGO community comprising faith groups, trade unions and charities?

I have been privately somewhat critical of DfID because I do not think that it has understood or taken on board sufficiently the role of the private sector in development. Not all the multinationals in Africa lack a sense of conscience. In many cases, and if given an opportunity that makes economic and social sense, they are prepared to assist. Therefore, what consultations are we going to have with those groups?

I suggest that it might be useful for the Government to consider a consultative conference with those NGOs to get their input while the review is taking place and to get an interactive response. If I give your Lordships my view on the situation in Tanzania, I may give it from the Facebook point of view, the trade union point of view or a charity point of view, but if we are in the same room we can interact, and that can be very helpful indeed.

I also seek a couple of assurances in relation to fears that have been raised with me, some of which I share. Will the Minister reassure us that the Government remain committed to ring-fencing 0.7 per cent of gross national income and that that money will be spent on poverty alleviation? Will she assure us that it will not be transferred to other budget heads required for dealing with other important issues such as climate change? There were proposals to increase spending on that, but I hope that it will not be at the expense of poverty eradication. I do not expect all those questions to be answered today.

Finally, I draw the Minister’s attention to a point made by the right reverend Prelate. There are five years in which to seek to move towards meeting the millennium development goals and I echo the question: who will represent us at the major summit in September? I, too, believe that it should be the Prime Minister. On 17 June, the UNDP produced a report, having taken evidence from 50 countries, that makes several proposals. It looks at what has in their view been successful and what needs to be done. This is therefore an important document, but I do not expect that the Minister has yet read it or that DfID officials have yet given it all their forensic examination. However, what is the Government’s intention in taking that report on board, and how will they prepare for and deliver a view at the summit in September?

16:33

[Baroness Verma]

I thank noble Lords for all their thoughtful and helpful contributions to the debate, and for their warm welcome and kind words. As I set out in my opening remarks, the new coalition Government recognise their responsibility to ensure that every aspect of our UK aid budget both delivers and demonstrates value for money. Programmes supporting access to education, among other key services in developing countries, will be prioritised in aid spending. We will do so in ways that are appropriate to the country context and in ways that will deliver results, whether it is through state or non-state providers, or, indeed, through a combination of both. Our approach to supporting education will be based on what is best for the children in developing countries and one which ensures that the British taxpayers’ money is well spent.

Before responding to points raised in the debate, I want to make some additional points about access and quality. A good school is one that is accessible to every child in the locality; distance and cost should not prevent children from attending regularly year on year. Classrooms should be well equipped places, safe and free from harassment or discrimination.

Girls and boys should have equal rights. The same goes for those children living with disability or HIV/AIDS. Each classroom should have a well trained and committed teacher. Learning materials should be made available. The school should be well led, managed and governed, supported by an efficient education system that strives for education excellence at all levels, assures standards and is responsive and accountable to the public. Children should be supported to reach their full potential. We expect this for our children here in the UK. We should expect no less for children everywhere.

The National Audit Office’s report on DfID’s bilateral support to primary education, published on 18 June 2010, showed that in DfID’s 22 priority countries for education, there has been significant progress on enrolment, improving the balance between boys and girls. The same report also acknowledged that DfID policy advice and financial support has been instrumental in helping partner Governments to boost enrolment. The report states that 14 of those 22 priority countries are on track to achieve the enrolment goal by 2015. It also records that progress on gender parity has been good, with eight of the 22 having already achieved the goal.

Although such progress is not exclusively due to DfID, the report recognised the importance of the role that the Government have played in facilitating change. It has done that by giving prominent advisory support to Governments, by linking its budget support to those aims and by soliciting further support from other donors, typically leveraging funding at levels of two to three times that of the department’s investment.

Governments have also responded with increased national funding. It is this partnership with developing country Governments, together with other donors, civil society, faith groups, the private sector and foundations, that will meet the challenge of delivering universal primary education. The NAO report shows that progress is being made, but it also shows why the Government are right to focus on results: concentrating on outputs and outcomes, not just inputs.

The high cost of education is the biggest deterrent to poor families educating their children, particularly girls. Support to poor and marginalised children to have access to basic services needs to be part of a comprehensive programme, combining system reform and quality improvement. However, we must recognise that in some countries, managing and sustaining increased enrolment can be difficult. That is particularly true where schools have been ill prepared for sudden class size rises and have found themselves without enough teachers, infrastructure or learning materials. There is also an issue of affordability of expanding access to secondary education. The response may involve partnerships with the private sector and targeted subsidies for girls and poor families.

Poor health and nutrition can also seriously undermine school attendance and achievement. Evidence from India and Vietnam indicates that children who are stunted at the age of one will have a lower cognitive ability at the age of five than that of their peers, regardless of their socio-economic background or their parents’ levels of education. While education outcomes support other development outcomes, investments in nutrition and health likewise improve education outcomes. The work that DfID is doing in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, Nigeria and Zimbabwe to improve the nutrition of at least 12 million children over the next five years amounts to 10 per cent of all undernourished children around the world. That is vital. It will help to ensure that when they start their primary education, their cognitive ability is not already impaired.

The millennium development goals cannot be reached without adequate investment in higher education and skills. Good quality universities and further education colleges are needed to train skilled professionals, the public sector managers, business leaders, and health and education workers of tomorrow. Investment in higher education also drives the science and innovation necessary for economic growth. In sub-Saharan Africa, a student who spends one extra year in higher education has been found on average to increase average annual growth by 0.39 per cent. Through the Development Partnerships in Higher Education programme, we are working with the British Council to support up to 200 partnerships between higher education institutions, and we are supporting education research through three consortia looking at education access, quality and outcomes.

The new Government are reviewing the aid programme to ensure that we target UK aid where it is needed most and where it will make the most significant impact on poverty reduction. We are determined to ensure that the aid budget is used effectively and delivers value for money for the world’s poorest people.

I now turn to questions raised by noble Lords. I will endeavour to answer as many of them as I can, and where I cannot I will provide a written answer. My noble friend Lady Falkner talked about gender inequality. While we all agree with her desire to see the disparity in access to education between boys and girls removed, it is crucial that we work in ways that encourage states to engage with achieving the MDGs. That is why we are carrying out these reviews to see what works and what does not. We owe it to the poorest and to those who give funds that we can guarantee the best value and best outcomes for all those whom we try to reach. The noble Baroness asked about the impact of food prices on education. DfID has provision for contingency funds to meet unexpected needs and has specific provision for humanitarian support.

I agreed with almost everything that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool said. The empowerment of women is key. That is why maternal and child health will be one of our key priorities and why we want to ensure that we look not just at the outcomes for those who are enrolled in the programmes for education but at the quality of the education. I completely agree that the big society should not be constrained to these shores and that we should see ourselves as part of a global big society. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State spoke eloquently in a speech to Oxfam on 3 June when he said that we are part of a much bigger picture. That is why I agree that our duty is not just to young children here but to all children across the globe.

The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, raised a number of important points about China. In developing global partnerships with China, we can make progress in achieving positive outcomes. Noble Lords all agree that we need to have better audit trails, so that is why we are carrying out reviews of all programmes funded or supported by DfID. We will bring the China aid programme to a conclusion as soon as practicable, but in the mean time we will look at other ways in which we can work more closely with China in the work that China is doing in Africa.

I thank my noble friend Lord Freeman for his kind, warm words. The coalition programme states that we will use the aid budget to support the development of local democratic institutions, civil society groups, the media and enterprise. We must support efforts to tackle corruption. My noble friend highlighted the document to which the noble Lord, Lord Brett, referred. I agree with my noble friend—I do not think that it is a political document. It highlights some of the excellent work being done, and some of the work that needs to be looked at again and, perhaps, be done better. Where there have been problems, we sometimes need to be big enough to say that mistakes were made so that we can reconcile that with improvements and better outcomes.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Brett, for his kind welcoming words. However, I was waiting for the but, and I got it. I know he agrees that this debate unites the House. I do not agree with him that the narrowness of the debate is the reason why there are so few speakers today. As he will be fully aware, the reason for the number speaking in this debate is the short notice for it rather than the narrowness of its focus.

[Lord Brett]

I recognise the short notice of the debate. One of my sub-questions was whether we will have an opportunity for that wider debate at a later stage.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, as the noble Lord is aware, I do not schedule debates. That will be for the usual channels and I am sure that the noble Lord will have his influences there.

As regards the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Brett, we routinely meet EU partner Governments in a variety of fora to discuss development issues and we use these discussions to raise the multilateral aid review. We are committed to being open and transparent about how British taxpayers’ money is spent in the developing world. DfID is considering how best to most effectively engage the public in this process.

On interacting with the UN and other agencies, we have already informed our counterparts in other government departments of the purpose of the review. When we make our assessments of the relevant agencies we will do so in close co-operation with those departments with which we are working on funding and policy. We will of course consult widely with other government departments as we take the bilateral aid review forward.

The Government want to engage and involve the whole country in the difficult decisions ahead. The spending review framework published by the Treasury sets out how we will do this across government. This includes a series of events over the summer where a range of groups will discuss various aspects of public spending. DfID is considering how to most effectively engage the public in this process.

The Government are committed to honouring the 0.7 per cent commitment on overseas aid from 2013. We will enshrine this commitment in law. We are committed to keeping both Houses informed and to consulting fully with both Houses. The views of your Lordships’ House are of great interest to the consultation and it is crucial that noble Lords take the opportunity to be part of the consultation process.

The UK’s £1.5 billion commitment to fast-start funding for climate change between 2010 and 2012 is drawn from the UK’s aid budget. We have reaffirmed the UK’s commitment to giving 0.7 per cent of GNI as ODA and are on track to get to 0.7 per cent by 2013. I will have to write to the noble Lord on a number of his questions because I do not have the answers at hand.

I should like to return to what children learn. Improving the quality of education is complex and multidimensional, but we have a good idea of what works. Key strategies associated with success include more and better trained teachers; increasing time on tasks for teachers and children in school; effective leadership in schools; establishing and measuring standards; having structures that empower people and hold them to account; challenging inequity in access; and rigorously monitoring outcomes.

To achieve the goal of universal primary education, the international community needs to address equity, put teaching and learning at the heart of policy and practice, invest in good quality education, and inspire collective action. The United Nations millennium development goals summit in September is the moment for the international community to show that universal primary education by 2015 is a challenge that it will not abandon and to make clear that to achieve that goal we need even greater collective action.

I can assure the House that this Government will give their support to more concentrated action by developed and developing countries, so that those children who are missing out on education—both today’s generation and tomorrow’s—finally get the education that is their right.

I conclude by repeating the five key points made in a speech at the Royal Society on 3 June by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development: first, that global poverty both affronts our moral conscience and is a direct threat to Britain’s vital national interests; secondly, that well spent UK aid is among the most effective of the instruments we can use, but that radical steps must be taken to ensure that our aid achieves all it can; thirdly, that transparency, accountability, responsibility, fairness and empowerment will be our watchwords; fourthly, that two new concrete steps have been announced to achieve this—the creation of the independent aid watchdog and our commitment to a UK aid transparency guarantee; and, fifthly and finally, although aid is important for development, we must use the whole of the British Government’s policy spectrum to tackle global poverty.

Motion agreed.