Ebola

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Lords Chamber

Question

11:41

Asked by

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the potential to mobilise NATO resources against the Ebola epidemic.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, NATO has not formally discussed deploying resources against Ebola but is keeping the situation under review. NATO continues to support bilateral contributions by allies and wider international efforts. The UK is focused on working with the UN, the EU and other international partners to mobilise resources against the epidemic in west Africa. The Prime Minister will use this week’s European Council, which begins today, to agree a significant uplift in the efforts of the EU and member states as part of the UN co-ordinated response.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

I thank my noble friend for that reply. I had the privilege two weeks ago of hearing the Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, Mr Andrew Weber, who is also the chief adviser to the President on the Ebola issue, pointing out that the Ebola incidence was now increasing at a rate where it was doubling every quarter. In that case he said that the absolutely essential element was speed. The only organisation with the speed, the resources and the manpower to act as quickly as may be required is NATO. I therefore ask my noble friend whether the Prime Minister will consider speed as all-important and might therefore reach the conclusion that NATO should be more closely involved.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Speed is certainly important. That is why the United States has taken the lead in Liberia, the United Kingdom in Sierra Leone and France in Guinea. We have lead countries. We are now working with others—the Norwegians are being particularly helpful, for example, as well as the other Nordic states—and discussing within the EU, last weekend and today, how others will feed their efforts and contributions in terms of money and people into what the lead nations are doing.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, makes a very powerful point. Clearly what is needed is urgent work on the assets that NATO might bring to this crisis. My question for the Minister is: if not NATO, what other international body do Her Majesty’s Government believe could do the job?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have already said twice that the United Kingdom Government raised the question at the Foreign Affairs Council of the European Union last weekend, and that the Prime Minister will be discussing it with our European partners today and tomorrow. There has been an informal arrangement between NATO and the European Union in recent years that NATO is the security organisation which deals with major security issues and that the European Union is the forum through which we work on humanitarian issues, particularly in Africa. For this, I think the European Union is the right framework—and I hope I do not upset too many noble Lords by saying that.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, is it not a mathematical certainty that insufficient resources are currently being devoted to bringing the outbreak under control?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Noble Lords may be aware that Nigeria and Senegal were last weekend declared free of the virus. It is very encouraging news that part of what helped the Nigerians to get the virus under control was an extremely effective Twitter campaign to inform people about the precautions they needed to take. We ourselves are putting in a great deal of money and personnel—mainly military personnel—and we have offers of additional personnel from countries as far apart as Cuba and the Philippines. We are certainly doing our utmost to get up to speed but, of course, it takes a great deal of effort and, unavoidably, time to cope with something so complex.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, while endorsing the need for speed in the international response and the direct treatment and ending of transmission of the disease, does the Minister agree that the humanitarian consequences of Ebola go far wider than simply the medical problem? The economy is being disrupted; children are being orphaned; crops are not being gathered in; and normal medical services and immunisation programmes are being disrupted. Will the Minister recognise that international development agencies from this country are on the ground, tackling that whole range of humanitarian needs, and will he pay tribute to their courage and commitment?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, a close relative of mine works for Save the Children, which I note will take over the administration of the hospital that the UK Government are currently building in Sierra Leone. We have to understand just how difficult it is to cope in-country with what is going on. Sierra Leone has fewer than 200 doctors. Communications are not easy; there are several languages. We are upping what we do and encouraging others to raise their level of effort. The Germans have just promised to help with medical evacuation, for example, and we very much hope that they, like the Norwegians, will do a great deal more. We are working with others as fast as we can.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister recognises that this is not just a humanitarian crisis. These three countries in west Africa are all fragile states, and Sierra Leone, in particular, is emerging from conflict. It has now had several stable elections, but all of that will be under threat unless we get on top of the health crisis. We must recognise the support that will be needed financially for that country to re-establish the settlement between the population and the Government. Indeed, the last thing we would want is for Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to go back into conflict, civil war, and so on. The Government need to recognise that it is a security as well as a health issue.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we do recognise that. The last strategic defence and security review in 2010 marked international epidemics as one of the biggest problems that this country faces from elsewhere. We all recognise that the investment that this Government make by providing a large development budget is part of a contribution to our own security as well as the security of those other countries. Perhaps I might say that the pitch that we are currently making to the Germans is that Germany, like Norway, is a country with a fiscal and a trade surplus, so it ought to be able to make a very generous contribution to the broader issue of European security, which is threatened by epidemics spreading from fragile states, particularly in Africa.