Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Countess of Mar) (CB)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Sustainable Development Goals
(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Sugg
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Sugg) (Con)
My Lords, it is with pleasure that I open this debate on the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, also known as the global goals. The 2030 agenda for sustainable development was adopted by every United Nations member state in 2015. It offers a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for all people and the planet, through partnerships, centred around the 17 global goals.
The agenda built on a vast legacy of work to improve the lives of people around the world, particularly through the millennium development goals from 2000 to 2015, but 2015 raised the bar, aiming to finish the job of the MDGs. Critically, the new framework went much further, transforming an agenda aimed at developing countries to one that was not only comprehensive but universal—because we all have challenges we face. This universal approach covers all countries, looks beyond aid and aims to leave no one behind.
The UK, led by the then Prime Minister David Cameron, was instrumental in the development of the SDGs, co-chairing the high-level panel with Liberia and Indonesia that led to the eventual adoption of the goals. There has been criticism of the goals by some: that they are too simplistic given the complex policy issues to which they relate or that there are too many of them, but both the UK Government and I are strong advocates for the goals. Their interconnected nature provides an important framework for all countries to view their challenges and progress.
The 2030 agenda is about ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, reducing inequality, catalysing economic growth, addressing climate change, and preserving our oceans and forests. This is a huge ambition; put simply, it is to make the world a better place for everyone.
One of the commitments of the SDGs was for every member state to produce a voluntary national review, or VNR. The UK has now produced its own VNR, four years on from the adoption of the goals. This has been a significant undertaking that has involved the whole of Whitehall, the devolved Administrations, civil society, business and the wider public. All of them have made invaluable contributions to our VNR.
The Secretary of State for International Development will present the UK’s VNR to the UN high-level political forum in New York on 16 July. The VNR reflects our commitment to transparency and honesty. The Secretary of State will present it with a mixture of pride in what we have achieved but also humility, reflecting the areas in which we must do better as well as the scale of the challenge that still lies before us. He will offer to share the lessons we have learned in the process, in the hope that these might help other countries, many of which have less capacity than we do, as they approach similar challenges.
This review of the UK’s progress in meeting the goals has been informed by some 350 organisations, participation in more than 35 events, 270 case studies and debates in both Houses of Parliament. I am tempted to say that the VNR is the culmination of that huge effort, but of course it is not a culmination at all. In some respects, the VNR offers a baseline, a first thorough stocktake of how we are doing against the ambitions of the global goals, but it is also just a stepping stone en route to 2030.
While we are pleased with the final detailed and comprehensive product, we acknowledge that, as with any undertaking of this scope, there are things that we need to reflect on and learn from. Compiling the review has taught us a lot. For example, we need to do more further to raise public awareness of the goals and to articulate more clearly how government departments will co-operate to deliver them and create the environment that enables them. I acknowledge that co-ordinated delivery of the goals within government needs further effort
Each of the 17 global goals is important, and the VNR goes into careful detail about how we are delivering each of them. We have a wealth of data from which to draw our conclusions. The goals fit neatly into the five Ps: people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership. I will present an overview of the report in that way.
In the people category, we have seen substantial advances in healthcare in the last few years. Since 2010, stillbirths have reduced by almost 19%. Meanwhile, the NHS—free at the point of use, of course—has long provided the sort of care that bankrupts people in other countries. That said, much greater progress is needed in tackling cancer, obesity, heart attacks and strokes. In education, in 2017, 40% of the working-age UK population were graduates, around two-thirds higher than the proportion in 2002. However, robotics and artificial intelligence show that we cannot be complacent: they hold huge promise but mean that the nature of work in the future will look different from how it does today. Some 85% of schools in England are rated good or outstanding, but we are not where we need to be on basic numeracy and literacy. We can also do much better on technical education. Nobody can seriously doubt that we need to do much more on equality. The Secretary of State has rightly identified adult social care as one of the biggest challenges facing this country.
The second P is planet, and nothing serves as a more intense reminder of the interconnectedness of our planet than climate change. The UK needs to do even more on technology and research and development. Emerging economies will feel less inclined to build coal-fired power stations if we can develop technologies like solar and light spectrum and help to drive down marginal costs. We face a climate crisis and our Secretary of State has confirmed his commitment to double the amount that DfID spends on climate and the environment. Every one of the 17 goals is at the mercy of our planet continuing to be habitable.
In terms of prosperity, some of our sectors are thriving to an unparalleled extent, especially financial services and technology. The story is much more mixed in terms of productivity, however. Significant infrastructure improvements are needed, particularly to further unlock northern England’s huge potential. The gender pay gap has reduced a little, but not enough. Employment is at record levels, however, and 700,000 more people with disabilities are employed than was the case in 2015. The economy is growing, and did so faster in 2018 than expected, but people are still being left behind. Although we are pleased to see record employment, we know that some families are struggling, even when in work.
Peace is the fourth measure, and the UK played a key role in securing goal 16—peace, justice and strong institutions—when the goals were negotiated. At the UN, the UK continues to play an active role and has long supported progress around the world towards more peaceful, just and inclusive societies. In 2015, the UK kept the international spotlight on the Rohingya crisis in Burma, actively supporting UN-led efforts to find a political solution. The UK is also pursuing a peaceful end to conflict in Yemen, Syria, Libya and Somalia. At home, crime as a whole has been falling, but there has been a concerning increase in knife crime. We can learn a lot from Glasgow’s success in taking a public health approach to knife crime—bringing key agencies together to identify risk factors early, to help prevent those crimes from occurring in the first place.
Finally, partnership is key to the goals and a word we should all hear and use more often when it comes to them. The UK has a quite incredible voluntary sector and civil society. The Secretary of State has spoken of the need to improve the way in which we in government harness it. The energy and insight of volunteers and the efficacy of community schemes for broadband, planning and land trusts should not simply inspire us; they show the great convening power of the voluntary sector and its roles as champion and enabler.
The VNR is 234 pages long which, together with a 76-page statistical annexe, goes into far more granular detail than I could hope to at the Dispatch Box. I wanted to offer your Lordships an overview of the report, but above all I am keen to hear the opinion of noble Lords on the VNR and the global goals in general. I think we will all agree that we have some way to go if we are to achieve the goals by 2030, both here in the UK and around the world. I beg to move.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests listed in the register, some of which impact on my work on the global goals. I am grateful that the voluntary national review mentions the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development that we set up in 2015, which I think was the first such group in the world to be established in a parliamentary setting.
The UN global goals for sustainable development are the most ambitious set of commitments ever agreed by the international community. We know that the gender inequalities that exist pretty much everywhere but at a very extensive level in many countries, the lack of rights and the lack of education are all interlinked. We know that poor health, poor sanitation and hunger—lack of access to food—can all be very closely linked. We know that conflict, climate change and economic underdevelopment are combined key drivers of migration and of some of the problems created around the world for individuals, families and countries by that. We know that all those problems are complex, and therefore the solutions have to be comprehensive.
That is where the strategy adopted by the United Nations in 2015 to develop those comprehensive goals in a strategic sense has been absolutely right. We also know that in developing the millennium development goals, there was a lack of attention on the causes of underdevelopment and poverty, as opposed to some of the remedies. As a result, no conflict-affected or fragile state anywhere in the world achieved even one of the MDGs. Throughout the period of the MDGs and since, natural disasters have destroyed years of development in a matter of minutes or hours. We know that where there is a lack of access to justice, democratic institutions and peace, all development that takes place is at risk. Therefore, the fundamentals of a democratic and just society must be in place if we are truly to end poverty and meet the other global goals.
The global goals provide answers to complex problems, and they are important also because of the strategic overview they give of how we should approach our global relations. The UN said, first, that the goals would be universal, that no one would be left behind, and that it was not just a case of the rich world contributing more to the poor world—the goals would apply everywhere to everybody. Secondly, the goals tried to address the key causes of underdevelopment, poverty and conflict around the world, but had a system of accountability built into them. That system revolves around Governments—countries as a whole, preferably—having national strategies. Those national strategies then develop into three or four-yearly reports to the United Nations through the voluntary national review process, and that process should include Parliaments, parliamentary debates and decision-making.
My starting point is therefore to thank and congratulate the Minister on securing this debate today. It is very important that we have a debate in advance of the VNR being presented to Parliament, although I must say that I seriously doubt the wisdom of the judgment by the Whips on all sides to move this debate to the Grand Committee, away from the main Chamber, to make way for a debate on public toilets. That perhaps says a lot about the state of British politics today.
The VNR is a distinct improvement on where we were about 12 or 18 months ago. If we are being honest, the UK was slow off the mark. Having been intimately involved with decision-making on the global goals prior to 2015—the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, was one of the many Ministers involved in that—we took our foot off the pedal. We did not have the clarity of national strategy and co-ordinated action across the Cabinet that should have been taking place. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, the Secretary of State, Rory Stewart, and their two predecessors—in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, and Penny Mordaunt MP—have ensured that over the past 12 to 18 months the goals have become much more central to the work of DfID and perhaps occasionally other government departments, and that is welcome.
However, although the VNR has many positives, it has unfortunately been a bit of an opportunity missed, due to the political circumstances of the moment. On the positive side, we are perhaps showing other countries around the world how to produce objective data properly by using the Office for National Statistics and objective data that may not all be comfortable for the Government, it having been published and given to the UN back in May.
In our VNR we quite rightly comment on both the UK and the global picture—there is a balance between the two—emphasising the universal nature of the goals. While the commentary is largely positive, it is not all positive. I think the Government have tried, occasionally, to be humble and reflect that there are negatives as well. That is welcome and something we need to build on. It reflects the role of the devolved Governments, local government, business and civic society. That is all positive. Being honest, we are four years into a 15-year challenge—the biggest challenge the world has ever set itself—and we have to admit there is some way to go.
I shall briefly emphasise the areas where there needs to be urgent attention between the presentation of the VNR to the UN next week by the Secretary of State—I hope I should not say the outgoing Secretary of State—and the important SDG summit on 24 and 25 September that will take place as part of the UN General Assembly weeks. There are areas where we in the UK—I emphasise “we” because, yes, it is the Government’s responsibility, but these goals are everybody’s responsibility, so we all have a part to play—need to strengthen our resolve and make some firm decisions. The first is that the responsibility for these goals, under any new Cabinet or Prime Minister, needs to move from DfID to either the Prime Minister’s Office or the Cabinet Office. There needs to be a proper cross-department, cross-government committee responsible for implementing the goals at home and abroad. That is also true in relation to our overseas development assistance because so much of that is now spent by other departments.
Secondly, we need a proper stakeholder body—there is a reference to this in the report—that brings together business, civic society and others in the UK to build a proper partnership inside the UK that can drive action on the goals over the next 11 years. Thirdly, we need to take the initiative in the UK; because of our role in global business and because of the key role that business can play in delivering these goals around the world and transforming people lives, there should be a specific initiative to try to establish more momentum in the UK in every sector, particularly in global businesses, to ensure that the way they treat their employees and customers, source products and invest around the world is in line with these goals. The UK Government could take a greater role in that. Fourthly, we need to establish some kind of independent mechanism for reporting to Parliament that would ensure that the responsibility beyond government is recognised and that we have a very honest and clear reporting mechanism that allows us to debate these goals on an annual basis.
The UK had a key role in leadership in advance of 2015. We need to recapture that role. We have an opportunity to do that this September. It is intolerable that in 2019 we live in a world where hundreds of millions of girls do not go to secondary school and lose out on all the opportunities in life that result from it. We know that there are countries around the world where people do not have basic rights and democratic choices. We know the craziness of the world today where there are more mobile phones than domestic toilets. This is an intolerable situation in 2019, one-fifth of the way into a new century. The UK could and should take a greater lead to step up action on the goals globally, not just within our own borders. We could do that, particularly on goal 16 on peace and justice and democratic institutions to which we direct a high level of our aid spending, but we have a role on the Security Council and elsewhere on conflict prevention and peace-building. We should do it more in relation to our overseas development assistance by linking it directly to the goals and insisting that there is a link between implementation of the goals nationally elsewhere in the world and our aid.
Finally, we need to ensure that through the UN Assembly in September there is an agreement for a big push in 2020, the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, to say that in the final 10 years of this programme of delivery on the goals we are really going to make a difference and leave no one behind.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, it is very often frustrating following the noble Lord in these debates, because I agree with everything that he says and he says it much better. That includes the observation that, in the Chamber now, noble Lords are considering the minutiae of public lavatories. One of the global sustainable development goals for humanity focuses on the lack of toilets in public buildings in the least developed countries, and especially toilets and facilities in schools for girls. It should be the focus of all of us in the House to make sure that the UK is pushing that. A reverse of the situation would have been far more appropriate today.
That being said, I commend the Minister on securing this debate and on the very open way in which she introduced it. In many respects, she was very frank about the need for government to better co-ordinate on the domestic element of the VNR. However, I wish to approach a different subject and look at what I think will be critical to the last decade of the global goals: finance for development and the need for a new British approach.
Three weeks ago, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact published a synthesis of its findings on the current state of UK aid from 2015 to 2019. Its conclusion was stark:
“The government has clearly signalled its intention to use the aid programme to pursue direct UK national interests, in particular, by helping to position the UK as a key trade and investment partner with frontier economies. While the pursuit of mutual prosperity is not necessarily in conflict with good development practice, the focus needs to remain on building long-term opportunities, rather than securing short-term advantage”.
I agree with this recommendation and hope that the Minister does too; I hope that the Government are reflecting on it.
The current UK aid strategy dates from 2015 and has a similar timeframe to the global goals, as the Minister said. Introduced under Justine Greening and George Osborne, it heralded a “fundamental shift” towards national interest. This strategy is now almost four years old and, in a few weeks, we are likely to be on our fifth Secretary of State, which means that they have averaged just nine months in office during this period. As the ODI put it, the strategy is part of an unwelcome trend to define ODA as primarily within the national interest, as an element of the rising tide of political populism. The idea that aid should serve the national interest is gaining currency, but it is contrary to the founding principles of the goals and to why the UK took the lead on securing a 0.7% commitment. As the ODI itself has shown, there is little explicit recognition that aid orientated towards securing domestic interests is not always the most efficient or effective way of maximising global development ambitions.
The ODI’s new principled aid index ranks bilateral development assistance committee donors by how they use their official development assistance to pursue the long-term national interest but in a safer, sustainable and more prosperous world. A principled aid allocation strategy, while not excluding national interest, has lower scores for countries that have this as a stated principle or major aim. That is for good reason: too many developed countries, either formally or informally, still have tied aid, aid for arms or informal conditionality, or link aid decisions to votes in rule-making bodies such as the UN and the WTO. The UK has been a superb example of not doing that. If that is put at risk, it would be detrimental to our standing in the world. The principled aid index is therefore a superb means by which we can begin to open up this argument and have a finance framework for development for the remaining decades of the goals.
In spite of this, as the Minister said, we have seen UK leadership making major improvements and development around the world, pegged to the ambitions of the global goals. We are second on the principled aid index of all OECD countries. We fail to be top because of the national interest bias that I have outlined. Having an approach that may pander to some in the press is in fact likely to be a less effective and less efficient means of spending public money, which they claim is their concern when the pandering starts. It is an unvirtuous circle that we need to make sure is broken.
We should be proud of what we have already achieved—here I agree with the Minister’s comments. The past few decades have seen a dramatic fall in global poverty, with more than a billion people lifted out of poverty since 1990. It is estimated that around 650 million now live in extreme poverty, which is down from 1.85 billion in 1990. This trend has slowed. The rate of extreme poverty reduction is slowing dramatically. According to the World Poverty Clock, 40,000 people will be lifted out of poverty today but 13,000 will fall into it. The absolute number of people living in extreme poverty is still rising in 14 countries, primarily as a result of high population growth. Because of this and some other indicators, we are on course to miss a substantial number of goals. Aid flows are not progressing at the pace that we had expected and the UN needs. For example, there was $144 billion in development investment in 2017, but the need in that period was $2.5 trillion. We have to be open: the billions to trillions narrative is not materialising.
To attempt to address this, there will be a high-level dialogue on financing for development under the aegis of the UN General Assembly—after the dialogue that the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, mentioned—on 26 September this year. It follows the high-level political forum on sustainable development. The president of the General Assembly said that this was necessary because of the slow pace. Can the Minister ensure—maybe she cannot ensure, but certainly request—that whoever our Prime Minister is attends this dialogue on financing for development, consistent with the approach that David Cameron took when he was in office? If our Head of Government will be there, will he announce a refreshed and renewed international strategy for how we will mobilise a new coalition of the willing in the EU and the OECD based on the principled aid index? Will he also commit to an accelerated increase of flows?
We should consider a UK conference with the aim of mapping the remainder of the decade to match our long-term commitment. One reason why we in particular can lever this international leadership is that, over the next decade of the global goals, even if our economy remains stagnant, we are committed by law to provide £140 billion of international assistance. Over this decade, because we are committed to that fund, we can use this like no other country. A UN initiative to be convened in early 2020 as a result of the UN dialogue would be the best means of starting a decade of development to meet the goals.
Finally, if global Britain means anything, it is that our aid should be global in perspective and principled in execution. It should be our ambition to be at the top of the principled aid index and do everything in our power around the world to ensure that other countries reach the highest they can in that index too.
Lord Bird (CB)
I welcome the opportunity to talk in this debate, but I am sorry to say that I come as a sheep in wolf’s clothing. I am very much here to promote the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. I have been itching to mention my interest in this Act at every opportunity.
I am very pleased to see in the voluntary national review of progress towards the sustainable development goals published by the Government that the Welsh Act,
“provides a robust legal framework for policy coherence on sustainable development”.
The report says this on 15 occasions about the Act. I would like to see it become available to the rest of the United Kingdom. I am very pleased that the Government recognised on 15 occasions in the report that the Welsh are doing something very clever in bringing together the ideas on the environment, education, and the fight against poverty and for social justice. Next year, after its fifth year, we will see how well it has done. The proof of the pudding is still in the eating.
I am inspired to promote much of the work that Wales has done. There are 17 sustainable goals—we all know them—but we could get rid of 16 of them immediately. We could throw them away because we really need only one. Goal 1 is poverty, and would it not be wonderful if we got rid of poverty, because we would be getting rid of poverty of spirit, poverty of mind, poverty of delivery and poverty itself? We do not need the other 16, because they are variations on the fact that we have not put our time and effort into getting rid of poverty.
We have not dismantled poverty. Much of the work that is done in and around poverty is a kind of handholding. It is about getting people through the day, the week, the month and the year: it is not about dismantling poverty. Eighty per cent of all the social intervention money spent in the world is spent in and around emergencies and coping, and very little in prevention and cure.
I look at this issue differently. I would like us to kick a hole in poverty because, by doing that, we could take on all the questions that have come about because of the poverty of spirit that dominates many of our political debates and the other things that we do. I keep saying—I will say it until the day I leave this place—that this House and the other place spend about 70% of our time on the problems that are thrown up by poverty. We fail 33% of our children at school and 30% of many other areas in the world. About a third of the world’s population have problems in and around poverty, which leads to despoliation.
In the poorest countries people are living in trash. I have worked in Africa, India and the Far East and have seen the relationship between poverty and the poverty of spirit. If you are in poverty, you can never lift your eyes above the horizon. You are like a meerkat, waking up every day, looking around and saying, “How can I feed my children? What do I do? Do I have to prostitute myself? I’ll have to do anything”. If we want to achieve these 17 goals, let us put more effort into dismantling poverty rather than just making the poor comfortable and putting it off until another time.
I started with Wales—trying to make the UK Welsh is my big thing—because I have never seen legislation that so uniquely covers all the considerations, especially around the SDGs, in a way that enables us to say at last that we can put behind us all the rather nasty, limited political debates we have had; all the short-termism that is dominant in this House and the other House and in many of our discussions, the handholding of the poor and not getting people out of poverty.
I will come forward again and again until I get a Bill through the House. I am pleased that the VNR report praises the work of a Future Generations Commission. I hope that the Government and the Opposition will take up this issue so that we can all look forward to the day when we can put aside all the stop-gapism, tokenism and box ticking and concentrate on destroying poverty. Poverty destroys lives. It makes us cheap and makes the lives of the poor the cheapest.
Baroness Manzoor (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her excellent opening speech and for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. It is always difficult to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bird, because he is so passionate and enthusiastic, but I will do my best.
I will focus my remarks on nutrition, which underpins the success of the SDGs as a whole. Good nutrition is the foundation of good health and human capital. It is essential for the development of a strong immune system, without which the efficacy of all other health interventions is dramatically reduced. I begin by acknowledging the Government’s leadership on nutrition. The UK Government held the first ever Nutrition for Growth summit here in London in 2013. The summit raised $24 billion over seven years to help end malnutrition. The commitments made have saved and transformed the lives of millions, but those commitments expire next year when the next summit takes place in Tokyo. The Tokyo summit is a huge opportunity. To reflect its importance, we have set up an APPG on Nutrition for Growth, which I co-chair with the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, to buoy the Government’s leadership as the summit approaches. At our recent launch event, DfID’s director-general for policy, Richard Clarke, acknowledged nutrition as one of DfID’s “best buys”. He is patently correct, and that is the reason I am so supportive of investing in nutrition.
Let us take the case of Fatima Babanne as an example. Fatima is from a remote and fragile part of northern Nigeria. She has three children and another on the way. With limited local employment opportunities, she struggles to afford the healthy diet that she and her family need. Following an assessment, Fatima has enrolled on to DfID’s child development grant programme, which gives her a monthly cash income of 4,000 Nigerian naira—approximately £8—and a place on an education course about health and nutrition. Fatima uses her grant to buy healthy food and saves a small amount each month to start a millet-grinding business, which now generates 10,000 naira—£21—profit per month.
As a result of DfID’s small intervention, Fatima has been economically empowered and her children will develop healthy immune systems, so vaccines and other health measures will be as effective as possible. Good health will improve these children’s chances of getting a good education and gaining meaningful employment as adults. This in turn will strengthen the Nigerian economy, promote stability and help the country become a valued trading partner and ally with Britain on the global stage.
Nutrition cuts across all aspects of sustainable development. With that in mind, I will finish with three recommendations, which have nutrition at their core but would improve the impact of UK aid overall. First, this debate comes at the beginning of a year-long period of health-financing moments. Last week, the Government announced significant support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Replenishment of both Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative will follow soon, and the Nutrition for Growth summit will take place next summer. Each of these moments represents an opportunity to accelerate progress on global health but only if each moment is supported and considered part of a single structure, built brick by brick. Failing to fully support any one brick compromises the overall structure. The UK should invest ambitiously and equitably at every moment, certainly at Nutrition for Growth, to get maximum impact from each investment.
Secondly, nutrition needs to be more effectively integrated across all aspects of DfID’s work. Food and agricultural systems and climate resilience programmes are all needed to ensure that nutritious food can grow and reach the people who need it. Education programmes about nutrition are important so that people are aware of what constitutes a diverse, healthy diet. We have seen recent issues regarding diet in the UK, obesity and its effect on cancer. Economic growth programmes are important so that people can afford that diet. All the teams within DfID need knowledge of nutrition and its impact and should work closely and harmoniously with its nutrition team.
Lastly, I started my contribution to this debate by congratulating the Minister on her department’s leadership on nutrition, and I shall finish by encouraging her department to maintain that leadership and utilise it. It is important to improve global collaboration and country ownership of nutrition. The World Bank estimates that an additional $7 billion per year is needed to meet global targets on stunting and wasting. The UK cannot plug this alone—it should not seek to—but it can encourage other Governments, particularly those with high burdens of malnutrition, to do more. One way of doing this would be by making their support for Nutrition for Growth known as early as possible to indicate to others that this initiative is worth supporting.
I congratulate the Minister on her department’s work and encourage her to ensure that it is maintained. I look forward to hearing how she intends to do that. She will certainly have my support in all her endeavours.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the fact that in her Written Statement on the VNR the Minister underlined that the goals apply to all people in all countries, including here in the UK, so there is a focus on the domestic in the review. It will perhaps not surprise noble Lords that that will be my focus as well.
Earlier this year, the Environmental Audit Committee identified a doughnut-shaped hole in domestic implementation of the SDGs despite the Government’s fine words, and I am afraid I do not think much has changed since then, the VNR notwithstanding. The committee used SDG 2—zero hunger—as a case study through which to examine the domestic focus. It concluded that the Government continue to see hunger and food insecurity as overseas issues, with DfID the only department to include them in its single departmental plan, and lamented the blind eye to UK hunger. It cited UNICEF data provided by the Food Foundation which indicates that a higher proportion of children live in severely food-insecure households than in any other EU nation. The UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development rated the UK only amber or red on nutrition-related targets under SDG 2. While the decision to start measuring food insecurity is welcome, it must be only a first step.
Food insecurity is a helpful concept, but it can serve to sanitise the fact that in some cases we are talking about hunger. Let us not forget that the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which was ratified by the UK, places a duty on government to ensure the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger. According to Human Rights Watch, the UK Government are failing in that duty, as its research revealed families of children going hungry in a country with ample resources to make sure that that does not happen. This is borne out by countless other studies.
A particular issue which integrates the domestic and global dimensions of the SDGs concerns migrant families with no recourse to public funds, which was debated yesterday evening. Children go hungry because they are excluded from free school meals because of the rule. Will the Minister undertake to take this up with relevant colleagues in the context of the SDGs?
The implications of hunger for children’s education has been brought home to us by numerous surveys of teachers noted in recent months in this House. Recently, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders reported a conversation he had had with a group of head teachers. When asked what was the biggest issue facing them, the answer was, “Hungry children … It’s shaming”.
The NVR document makes no mention of this shaming hunger. However, it cites investment in a national school breakfast programme as an example of action taken in the UK to deliver food security. This investment is welcome. I met recently with the leaders of the two organisations spearheading the programme and was impressed by what they have achieved in just a year. They are driven by the knowledge that “some children are too hungry to learn”.
In just a year the programme is delivering a nutritious breakfast to an estimated 280,000 children. The benefits reported by schools include improved behaviour, attendance and attainment. The Government’s contribution to the costs, at least half of which are met by schools themselves, is a mere £26 million over two years funded from the soft drinks industry levy, which raised £240 million in just one year. I challenge the Minister to come up with a more cost-effective programme to further the aims of SDG 2 domestically. Its leaders are sick with worry because the Government are refusing to give an assurance that the programme will continue beyond March next year.
A Parliamentary Question eventually elicited the response that,
“decisions about any funding beyond March 2020 will be taken as part of the upcoming Spending Review”.
However, who now knows when that will be, given the current uncertainties? In the meantime it is impossible for them to plan for the future, yet schools need to know what will happen for the new school year. Given that this comes within the purview of the SDGs, I urge the Minister to take this back to the Department for Education and seek an assurance that at the very least a year’s extension will be granted without further delay, leaving longer-term decisions for the spending review. Given that the Government’s contribution is a mere fraction of the soft drinks levy, there is no excuse not to do so.
As the UKSSD report notes,
“poverty and inequalities are major underlying factors in the nutrition targets of SDG2”.
I turn therefore now to SDG 1, “no poverty”. Here the UKSSD’s domestic scores are one green, three amber and one red. It concludes:
“Unless the UK takes a different tack, everyday life for its most financially challenged will continue to become more stressed and the prospect of achieving SDG1—conceived as a national indicator of income poverty—is a remote possibility”.
That is not exactly a vote of confidence. However, it tallies more with the evidence presented by the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, deemed “factually correct” by the lead official, than with the complacent picture painted in the VNR report.
Responsibility for SDG 1 lies with the DWP. According to the VNR report, each UK government department has embedded the goals in its single departmental plan; and each plan outlines how planned activity will support delivery of the goals. I therefore turn now to the DWP plan. The goals are so well embedded they are virtually invisible. There is not a single explicit reference to them in “our objectives”. Indeed, those objectives do not even mention tackling poverty, which I find extraordinary. There are no UK-wide poverty targets as one would expect if SDG 1.1 and 1.2 were genuinely integrated into the plan. The Scottish Government seem to be making a more serious effort to integrate the SDGs in their anti-poverty strategy and have retained the child poverty targets abandoned by the UK Government.
The plan reads as though it were drawn up without reference to the SDGs and then officials went through it, adding in parenthesis where they thought an action could be presented as contributing to them. That is not what I call embedded. Nor is there any evidence of a delivery strategy for SDG 1. The same is true of the DWP annual report, which makes but brief mention of its responsibility for SDG 1 and tells us nothing about progress in meeting it. In a recent analysis of domestic progress on SDG 1 in the journal Poverty, Fran Bennett observes that the contrast with DfID’s departmental plan,
“may suggest the Government is taking its external responsibilities relating to poverty more seriously than the equivalent domestic agenda”.
She notes:
“There has been some recent acknowledgement of the UK government’s less than stellar performance to date … especially target 1.2 relating to poverty at home”.
According to the VNR document, the International Development Secretary has overall leadership and policy oversight for the goals, with the Minister for Implementation in the Cabinet Office helping to ensure a co-ordinated cross-government approach to delivery. The Minister has acknowledged that more needs to be done on co-ordination. What co-ordination has there been between DfID/the Cabinet Office and individual departments in drawing up their single departmental plans? If the DWP’s plan, with its scant reference to the SDGs, has been deemed adequate to the task, does it not support the contention that the Government are not taking the domestic SDG agenda seriously and that the institutional mechanisms for pursuing that agenda need reviewing, as my noble friend Lord McConnell spelled out so clearly?
While target 1.2—reducing poverty in all its dimensions—is key for the UK, it would be wrong to assume that target 1.1 on eradicating extreme poverty is irrelevant. I have already spoken about hunger, which one might consider an indicator of extreme poverty, but more generally there is growing concern about destitution in our midst, to the extent that a Joseph Rowntree Foundation study developed a measure of destitution appropriate for a wealthy country such as the UK, and on that basis estimated that 1.5 million people, including 365,000 children, were destitute at some point during 2017. They could not afford to buy the bare essentials that we all need to eat, stay warm and dry and keep clean.
I fear the numbers will be even worse by now as the benefits freeze and other cuts have taken their toll, pushing many already in poverty further below the poverty line. There are particular concerns in this context about asylum seekers and newly recognised refugees, who are totally invisible in the VNR report, yet refugees have been identified by UN member states as a key group in pursuing the SDGs, as the International Rescue Committee pointed out. Will the Minister take note of the IRC’s call on the UK Government to support the inclusion of refugees in the political declaration at the upcoming high-level political forum? Will she ask colleagues to ensure that they specifically include them in their departmental plans?
Fran Bennett concludes:
“The potential of Goal 1 as a powerful instrument for driving forward positive and co-ordinated action to ensure that by 2030 in the UK extreme poverty (and destitution) (target 1.1) are eradicated, and poverty in all its dimensions (target 1.2) is cut by half, has certainly not been realised to date”.
So, when in his foreword to the VNR report the Secretary of State states,
“We are proud of what we have achieved but humbled by what we haven’t”,
I humbly suggest that the Government have little to be proud of when it comes to their domestic poverty agenda. Instead, the growing evidence of suffering as a consequence of the Government’s own actions—I reference in particular the recent study by the Church of England Child Poverty Action Group, of which I am honorary president, which details the devastating impact of the two-child limit on family life—suggests they are impeding rather than making significant strides towards the achievement of SDG 1 and related SDGs, as claimed by the Secretary of State.
Lord Loomba (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, for initiating this debate at a time when the SDGs are becoming an ever-important response to global issues.
We are all aware that there 17 SDGs, 169 targets and a further 232 indicators. These are big, bold aims to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. They are underpinned by the principle of “leave no one behind”.
Today, I will concentrate primarily on the first goal: no poverty. I agree 100% with the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, that this goal is the most important. Ending poverty in all its forms everywhere is the most urgent goal, and one we must get right for so many millions of people across the world. It is one of the main goals that achieving many of the others relies on. With entrenched poverty, many of the other goals cannot be achieved and we will not reach the targets by 2030. If you live in extreme poverty, or even relative poverty, it is very hard to think of paying for an education, improving your nutritional well-being or worrying whether you are contributing to climate change.
If we are to succeed in eradicating poverty, we need to understand its drivers and how best to tackle them. Often, the root causes are war, conflict, drought and disease. On their own, these things do not necessarily create poverty, but displaced people, those who are ill and those who cannot grow crops cannot provide for themselves. If they cannot provide for themselves, inevitably poverty will rear its ugly head.
A 2018 UN report on the goals shows that the rate of extreme poverty has fallen rapidly and that many fewer people are living on less than $1.90 per day than in 1990. The World Bank figures for 2015 show the level of extreme poverty as 10%, down from 11% in 2013. Goal 2 is to end hunger. Achieving food security is closely linked to goal 1. Conversely, the UN states that world hunger appears to be on the rise again.
It is now almost four years since the UN adopted the SDG resolution in September 2015 and established a global agenda for Governments to tackle these issues head-on, not only in the developing world but in their own countries. Four years later, as I stated, we have seen some progress on poverty internationally. The target for goal 1 is to reduce by at least half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty, in all its dimensions according to national definitions, by 2030. This target aims to address the issue in all countries, regardless of how poverty is measured.
As we know, it is not difficult to see how some people may not be defined as living in poverty or even relative poverty, but at the same time are struggling to feed and clothe themselves and their family. We are the fifth largest economy in the world by GDP, and yet in our own country homelessness is rising, year on year. Reliance on food banks is becoming the norm rather than the exception. Measured against the SDGs, progress in our own country is sadly inadequate. It is obvious that anyone without a home is living in extreme poverty.
We have had a damning report from the UN rapporteur, Philip Alston, on the issues that people in this country face. The Government have reluctantly agreed that the report is factually correct. The irony is that, as we improve the existence of some of the world’s poorest and most disadvantaged through our aid programme, our own country is falling behind.
The Government cite free school meals as an example of leaving no one behind, but free school meals do not cover the school holidays, nor the parents or carers of the children involved. Many people in the UK find themselves in work but still living in poverty. Barnardo’s—of which I declare an interest as vice-president—does a lot of work supporting vulnerable children and youths, especially in the care system. Children in care have a higher representation in the criminal courts and suffer more. For them, establishing themselves as independent adults is fraught with problems. Vulnerable children and youths such as these should be at the heart of what we do to prevent people falling into poverty.
Has austerity gone too far? Should we consider moving some international aid to this country to solve our problems at home? Can we be sure that we are not leaving anyone behind? What are the Government doing to solve the crisis in our own country?
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for opening this debate and for all the work she and the department are doing to ensure that we remain a lead voice in this critical area.
I have the privilege of being chair of UN Women UK, a role that I took on last October. All noble Lords speaking in this important debate today recognise that the commitments made in 2015 by world leaders in New York to the 2030 SDGs must be delivered. Critical to that is how we measure outcomes. However, the fact that we lack data for over half of the SDG indicators means that we cannot manage or measure what we do not know.
As part of our global programme, UN Women UK will be working on critical diagnostic phases to measure what gender inequality looks like across the UK. Using new digital technologies and crowdsourced reporting, we will focus on ending violence against women and girls. These issues remain prevalent here in the UK. The difference here is that our voices can shift the dial, because we currently have a Government committed to supporting the ending of the inequalities that women and girls face. The worry, however, is that the numbers are not shifting. One in four women still suffer some form of violence and two women are murdered each week. The incoming Prime Minister must show the same commitment and ensure that equality in all its forms is threaded through the work of all government departments and institutions, and that of all publicly funded bodies. We cannot have expectations of others if our own house is not in order.
A number of noble Lords have mentioned that the debate in the main Chamber is on toilets. While the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, was speaking, I was reminded of the massive programme that Prime Minister Modi has undertaken in India to ensure access to toilets for everyone in schools and colleges, particularly girls. It surprises me that such a big debate as this is taking place in the Moses Room today, when it should be on the main Floor.
Next year, 2020, will be an opportunity to have a good look in the mirror, as it is the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and we will be five years into the SDGs. Does the Minister believe that we are moving quickly enough to deliver the SDGs? Will we be on the right side of history? What does she think the UK can do to drive change much more quickly?
We must be better at working on multi-stakeholder delivery plans, as a number of noble Lords have mentioned today. As a former DfID Minister, I have pushed hard for civil society, government and the private sector to work much more collaboratively. It is in all our interests to shift the dial in the right direction. It makes sense on all levels: political, economical and societal.
The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, mentioned that partnership working should be embedded in every department. I am afraid to say that, like him, I do not believe this is currently the case. UN Women UK is an ideally placed partner. In a number of countries, we are already demonstrating a joined-up approach with the private sector. UN Women national committees are also working to support the work of their Governments and, in turn, their Governments are supporting them. Unfortunately, we do not yet have that relationship in the UK. Will the Minister meet with me and my team to see whether there are areas where we could work together to help deliver SDGs nationally and internationally?
The approach to development is changing. Governments are seeing the value of supporting economic growth in developing economies. It is critical that, along with interventions that provide short-term outcomes, we work to ensure that sustainable solutions work. Institutions must therefore be strengthened and, crucially, people must be supported in their local contexts with education and training to deliver and grow the communities in which they live and work. For far too long, we have excluded the voices of the people most impacted by our actions. It is vital that they and their Governments are at the heart of the programmes and plans that we support.
I am a strong advocate of the cleaner, greener sector; the natural resources of developing countries can help them grow their economies and secure wealthier communities. The SDGs offered the world great hope that, within 15 years, we would see positive changes. Sadly, that may not happen; not if major economies start retracting by dismissing climate change, continuing fast and hard to pollute the world, drawing up bridges and closing borders, while expecting those in struggling nations to manage desperation and hopelessness as they take themselves on dangerous journeys. Will the Minister assure the Committee that the UK will remain committed to 0.7% and to raising the voices of women and girls through all our programmes, whether national or international?
My great fear is that while we are preoccupied with Brexit, we have moved far away from important issues here in our own country and, more importantly, where Governments are not supportive of their local citizens and their voices are being squeezed out. We have taken our foot off the pedal; we need to put it back on. An opportunity will arise in a few days’ time, as well as in September. I hope that the Minister, who is such an advocate for this department, will remain and will continue to push hard on this agenda.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, has introduced this debate on SDGs. They are not exactly a household topic but are of extreme importance to us all, as well as for the future of our varied societies—indeed, for our planet. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord McConnell who has inspired an all-party group on SDGs and consistently pursued discussions at all levels, from young people to Ministers, on how we as a nation can contribute to these goals and targets.
I want to talk about some of the issues affecting children and young people, and how the SDGs must both protect and empower them. Any global or national goal needs to be broken down and focused on communities, including children, so that any impact can be measured—and felt. Children and young people should be at the heart of any initiative inspired by the SDGs. They are terribly important; they should be allowed to add their influence. Let us give them their voices and their rights. I wish every nation had a strategy for children and young people. We have heard powerful speeches today about poverty. Foremost in any strategy on children should be child poverty: we are not cracking this and we must.
Certain targets, of course, focus on children and young people. These include goals 3 and 4, target 5.3 and other gender-related targets such as those on female genital mutilation, child, early and forced marriage, and comprehensive sexual health education. I want to raise other targets which are concerned with abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against children, including targets 16.2 and 8.7, which call for immediate efforts to,
“eradicate forced labour … modern slavery and human trafficking, and secure the … elimination of the worst forms of child labour … and, by 2025, end child labour in all its forms”.
I should declare an interest as a member of the British delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. I have written a report entitled Ending Violence Against Children: A Council of Europe Contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals—particularly target 16.2 on abuse. This report was endorsed by the Parliamentary Assembly two weeks ago and I shall present it at the high-level policy forum in New York next week. My association with the Council of Europe has shown how important it is to work internationally and then focus on our national issues and local issues in communities.
On sexual and reproductive health in young people, I am grateful to the UK Network on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for its comments on the DfID strategy for sexual and reproductive health. I want to be assured that the Government will continue to recognise and support DfID programmes on the subject. DfID asserts that it is “a global leader” on sexual and reproductive health, and so it is. It has done some magnificent and brave work and committed a great deal of money to programmes on it, sometimes in the face of controversy and opposition. It has funded and supported programmes on family planning and contraception, AIDS, maternal and newborn health, female genital mutilation and education.
Adolescents and young people are a key group. Their health and social development are sometimes neglected or ignored because we think they are all healthy, yet an estimated 21 million adolescent girls become pregnant each year in developing areas. About half those pregnancies are unintended and end in abortion. The abortions may be carried out under dangerous conditions and many young girls die. Comprehensive sexuality education is a key intervention in ensuring that young people have the knowledge and skills to avoid unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.
Resources for sexual health are essential. Data collection, sometimes lacking, is also essential. The UK Network on Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights makes the important point that programmes should be integrated and comprehensive. Sexual health involves promoting choices across a number of areas; for example, gender-based rights and family planning. Sexual and reproductive health should also integrate with areas such as population, climate change consequences, and vulnerability to depletion of natural resources and natural disasters.
A focus on young people is essential if we are to make the world a safer, happier place. A focus on their health and well-being is also bound to save money in the long run. I hope that the Minister agrees on importance of the rights of young people in all that we do and of consulting them on what issues they think matter.
I am proud that the Council of Europe and other international bodies have actively engaged with ending violence against children and striven to make it a political priority. The UK is of course a member of the Council of Europe and will remain so despite Brexit. This is of mutual benefit and we should use that lever to support both the Council of Europe and ourselves because in the UK we have developed strategies and focused resources on the terrible scourge of child abuse. However, it is difficult to tackle. It is often unspoken; it is often hidden. The Council of Europe Strategy for the Rights of the Child contributes to implementation of the agenda for sustainable development and refers to:
“Building a Europe for and with children”.
It promotes an integrated approach to the elimination of all forms of violence against children, such as sexual exploitation and abuse online and offline, trafficking, corporal punishment, bullying—including cyberbullying —and gender-based violence. The programme also promotes positive parenting, child-friendly justice, good health and social services.
We know that violence against children exists in many contexts: the family, the peer group, schools, and sport and other activities. It is common in conflict situations, in youth justice, and with migrants and refugees. Ending violence against children is one of the most important goals and a precondition to achieving many of the others. Violence against children has horrific emotional, physical and psychological consequences. We can share good practice across nations in tackling this abuse.
There are challenges to delivering any of the goals we are talking about today, and certainly in combating violence against children and safeguarding sexual and reproductive health. Such challenges include a lack of data and the inability to draw conclusions from data, and co-ordination and developing priorities. Nationally, these priorities need to be decided with the involvement of stakeholders, such as local communities and children themselves, and should not make assumptions about what the needs are. Priorities must also be monitored, to ensure that we are on the right track. Another challenge is our attitude towards children themselves. Children have rights and responsibilities and they deserve to be heard in order to express their concerns.
How do we prioritise goals and targets? Government departments have many, sometimes conflicting, objectives, and sometimes they do not even talk to each other about priorities. The Council of Europe and the UN have much to offer in the area of prioritisation. For over a decade, the council has talked about the fight to end violence against children and has developed standards, guidance, support, capacity building, monitoring, the exchange of good practice, co-operation, data collection and awareness-raising campaigns. It has liaised with NGOs and other influential organisations at both national and international levels to address common areas of concern. As others have said, we in the UK have much to offer and to be proud of in all these areas. We also have much to learn.
I am delighted that the SDGs are being monitored; we are in the process of monitoring them now. As a result of this, will we be able to share good practice, develop integrated programmes and support each other to provide a better world for current and future generations? Can the Minister reassure me that young people will be at the forefront of our concerns, perhaps even with a strategy for children?
Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)
My Lords, it is good that this debate has focused both on what the UK itself is doing to remedy the shameful inadequacies within its own border with regard to justice and poverty and the even more challenging global issues confronting less-developed nations. The local and the global aims are emphatically not misaligned with each other. I would like to highlight some measures that we should take in our own national interest which are also highly cost-effective ways to help developing nations. I will then make a few remarks in the context of Africa.
The phrase “sustainable development” gained currency in 1987, when the Brundtland commission on environment and development defined it as,
“development that meets the needs of the present”—
especially the poor—
“without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
We all surely want to sign up to this and aspire that by 2030—and even more so by 2050—there will be a narrower gap between not only the rich and poor within countries such as ours but, more important and challenging, between the lifestyle that privileged countries enjoy and what is available to the rest of the world.
There is a depressing gap between what could be done and what is actually happening. Offering more aid is not in itself enough, because stability, good governance and effective infrastructure are needed if these benefits are to permeate the parts of the developing world where they are most often needed.
Developing countries need to leapfrog directly to a more efficient and less wasteful mode of life than ours, not mimic the path to industrialisation that Europe and North America followed. For example, they can leapfrog directly on to mobile phones without ever having had landlines. New technology will be needed, but it must be well directed and well motivated. It will involve a great deal of innovation to meet the actual challenges.
Even more than the other goals, goal 13—to control the rate of CO2 emissions—requires a concerted effort by all nations, developed and less developed, to avoid the risk of tipping points that could lead to runaway changes with disastrous consequences for us all. I emphasise that this offers a special opportunity for a nation such as the UK, as well as a special obligation. It is a challenge for us in the UK to meet the goal of cutting CO2 emissions ourselves—and especially to meet the very stringent target we have set ourselves for 2050. In our own national interest, we need to accelerate the development and deployment of all forms of low-carbon energy, as well as other technologies where parallel progress is crucial, especially storage and smart grids.
However, technical progress of this kind is even higher in priority for countries such as India, where more generating capacity is urgently needed; where the health of the poor is jeopardised by smoky stoves burning wood and dung in their homes; and where there is therefore pressure to build coal-fired power stations as the cheapest option. The faster the alternative clean technologies advance, the sooner their prices will fall. They will become affordable to developing countries, which can then leapfrog to clean energy.
That is why an encouraging outcome of the 2015 Paris conference on climate change was an initiative from Sir David King and others in this country called Mission Innovation. It was launched by President Obama and the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and was endorsed by the countries of the G7 plus India, China, and 11 other nations. It was hoped that they would pledge to double their publicly funded R&D into clean energy by 2020 and to co-ordinate their efforts. This is a modest target. Presently, only 2% of publicly funded R&D is devoted to these challenges. Why should the percentage not rise closer to spending on medical or defence research? Incidentally, Bill Gates and other private philanthropists have pledged a parallel commitment.
This is a win-win strategy for the UK. We contribute only 1% of global CO2 emissions. However—historically at least—we have contributed far more than 1% of the world’s innovations. If we can indeed pioneer new and improved clean energy technologies, it would amplify and leverage our national contribution to tackling global climate change. We need not just better ways of harnessing solar and wind energy but complementary storage technologies such as batteries and hydrogen, as well as—in my view—fourth-generation nuclear and even fusion, where we have special expertise and potential.
I have focused on energy, but there are other sustainability goals where UK expertise can help not only our own country but can offer a substantial boost to much larger populations in the developing world, helping them to meet the same goals. We should be evangelists for new technologies in those other sectors, especially biotech, to provide better health, more intensive agriculture and engineering innovations.
The need is aggravated because of the world’s expanding and more demanding population. Fifty years ago, the world population was about 3.5 billion. It is now about 7.6 billion. The growth has been mainly in Asia, and it is now fastest in Africa. The number of births per year is now going down in most countries. None the less, the world population is forecast to rise to around 9 billion by mid-century. That is partly because most people in the developing world are young, are yet to have children and will live longer. Doom-laden forecasts made 50 years ago by, for instance, the Club of Rome, proved off the mark. As it has turned out, food production has more or less kept pace with rising population. Famines still occur, but they are due to conflict or maldistribution, not overall scarcity. To feed 9 billion will require further improved agriculture with low-till, water-conservation and GM crops and perhaps dietary innovations, such as converting insects, which are highly nutritious and rich in proteins, into palatable food and eating artificial meat not beef.
Demographers predict continuing urbanisation, with 70% of people living in cities by 2050. Even before then, Lagos, Sao Paulo, and Delhi will have populations greater than 30 million. Preventing megacities becoming turbulent dystopias will be a major challenge to governance and, of course, an engineering challenge for infrastructure. Demographics beyond 2050 are uncertain. It is not even clear whether there will be a global rise or a fall. Declining infant mortality, urbanisation and women’s education trigger the transition towards lower birth rates, but there could be countervailing cultural influences. If, for whatever reason, families in Africa remain large, then that continent’s population could, according to a UN projection, double again by 2100 to 4 billion. Nigeria alone would then have as big a population as Europe and North America combined.
Optimists say that each extra mouth brings two hands and a brain, but the geopolitical stresses are surely worrying. Those in poor countries now know, via the internet et cetera, what they are missing. They are less fatalistic about the injustice of their fate, and migration is easier. Moreover, the advent of robots and the reshoring of manufacturing mean that still-poor countries will not be able to grow their economies by offering cheap skilled labour, as the Asian tiger states did. It is a portent for disaffection and instability. Wealthy nations, especially those in Europe, should urgently promote prosperity in Africa, and not just for altruistic reasons. It is not only a moral imperative but a matter of self-interest for fortunate nations to promote greater equality by direct financial aid and ceasing the current exploitative extraction of raw materials, and by investing in infrastructure and manufacturing in countries where there are displaced refugees, and where there will be huge numbers of climate refugees in future, so that they are under less pressure to migrate to find work.
If the benefits of technology are to be spread worldwide, there will need to be lifestyle changes for us all, but they need not signal hardship. Indeed, all can, by 2050, have a quality of life that is at least as good as profligate westerners enjoy today, provided that technology is developed appropriately and deployed wisely. Gandhi proclaimed the mantra, “There is enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed”. This need not be a call for austerity; rather, it is a call for economic growth driven by innovations that are sparing of natural resources and energy.
Baroness Stroud (Con)
My Lords, I add my thanks to the Minister for securing this timely debate ahead of the Goalkeepers summit in New York this September and the presentation of the UK’s voluntary national review later this month.
When the SDGs were created, they were a bold challenge to the global community to tackle the greatest inequalities of this generation and build a better world for the future. Unlike their predecessors, they were a significant call to action for all, to improve the lives of people in every country regardless of overall national prosperity. When created in 2015, they were backed by genuine debate and ownership from each nation, with a comprehensive implementation plan. The system of national reviews—which we have talked about this afternoon—and national strategies mean that the goals are not just a disparate way of tracking progress that may already be happening but an opportunity for countries to remain focused and accountable for achieving these goals.
The SDGs also correctly recognise that economic growth provides the opportunity to build a nation’s social well-being, leading to holistic prosperity. Prosperity is about much more than wealth and economic growth. It reaches beyond the financial into the political, the judicial, and the well-being and character of a nation. It is about creating an environment where each generation can reach its full potential and the generations that follow are afforded the same opportunity. The evidence shows that the well-being of a nation’s people is more closely linked to movements in this holistic measure of prosperity than to GDP. A rise or fall in prosperity correlates with a rise or fall in well-being, but a rise in GDP per capita does not necessarily produce such a correlation. To create lasting change, we must create mutually reinforcing prosperity across economic, institutional and social dimensions; the SDGs can point the way.
Through their creation, the SDGs have already driven significant global collaboration and broad consensus from Governments, civil society, business, NGOs, foundations and others. Norman Vincent Peale is often over-quoted as having said:
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars”.
If we aim for something ambitious, we are likely to achieve ambitious goals; if we aim for a maintenance culture, we will just get more of the same.
We still have a way to go to meet the goals, but there is some initial cause for optimism. By the end of last year, 111 voluntary national reviews had been conducted by 102 countries, with 47 countries presenting this year—some for the second time. Businesses are increasingly taking the goals on board in their strategies: 71% of business leaders across North America and Europe were using the SDGs as their strategic North Star in setting their sustainable business agenda, which is an almost 20% increase on 2016. In the last five years, as the SDGs have been activated, 113 countries have improved their prosperity according to the Legatum prosperity index—and here I refer Members to my interests in the register.
Globally, the world’s business environment has improved year on year, particularly since 2015, making it easier for people to start businesses in many areas, particularly in eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. There is more equal representation of women in national Parliaments now than ever before, and this is steadily becoming more equal in every region of the world. Absolute poverty rates have fallen; the proportion of families living on less than $1.90 a day has more than halved since 2000, and this proportion continues to fall. Living conditions, education, health and natural environment indicators have all shown improvements. For example, maternal mortality has reduced dramatically, by 37% since 2000, and continues to fall.
In our drive to deliver the SDGs, it is important that we understand what moves people out of poverty and the sequencing required to create lasting foundations for prosperity. The prosperity index has shown that the greatest threat to prosperity is from declining safety and security, as has already been alluded to today. We can see a clear trend of rising insecurity caused by increases in war, conflict, hunger and lack of shelter. The number of deaths caused directly by war has increased by 58% in the last 10 years, to nearly 45,000 in 2018.
Conflict and instability play a significant role in the displacement of 66 million people from their homes around the world and in the number of registered refugees reaching a record high. If we are serious about achieving the SDGs, we should be serious about creating a safe and secure environment for citizens. All 17 of the sustainable development goals are important, but creating safety and security is the cornerstone of the success of all the others. When you consider that 62% of those in extreme poverty are likely to be living in countries at risk from high levels of violence by 2030, it is clear that violence poses a risk of hampering the ability to meet the other sustainable development goals. This means that goal 16—to create peace, justice, and strong institutions—is crucial.
As important as the goals is a real understanding of how they can be met. What was it that lifted the last 2 billion people out of acute poverty around the world and what do we need to do to strengthen the thinking that led to that extraordinary achievement so that we can see the next billion lifted out too? We must not forget that the greatest anti-poverty achievement in the history of mankind happened in our lifetime. Mainstream economists on the left, the right and in the centre agree on the central role that free trade, property rights, the rule of law and entrepreneurship have played.
In a UK context, our voluntary national review has thrown light on the fact that the SDGs are universal, and we have made a commitment not only to contribute to them internationally but to deliver on them in the UK. UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development said last year that of the 143 domestic targets the UK has committed to meet, it is performing well on only 24% of them. This shows that we have a way to go to ensure that we are effectively tackling our own challenges in this nation.
The Social Metrics Commission has shown the importance of accurate measurement in helping to understand who is really in poverty and ensuring that policies are genuinely targeting the right people. It is an excellent means of tracking our progress in meeting the goals by providing a metric which offers a comprehensive and holistic picture of poverty in the UK. The measure shows that there are far fewer pensioners in poverty than previously thought, but it clearly highlights the enormous impact of disability on poverty. Almost half of the 14.2 million people who are in poverty at a given moment in time are living in families with a disabled person. In 2015, I was a special adviser in DWP when the sustainable development goals were being introduced, but I cannot remember one conversation about them or about them being embedded in the department. We need to effectively measure and tackle poverty at home as well as abroad. With this in mind, I am delighted that the Government have opted to start the process of taking up this measure as an official measure, and would be delighted to see the department use it to help us meet our sustainable development goal targets.
As we look forward this year, and leaders at the highest level come back together again for the first time since 2015, we must not forget the spirit in which these goals were created. Our response to the SDGs should not just be to highlight everything that we are currently doing anyway—a write-around of what they are already doing tends to be the way that Governments create strategies—but to look higher. We have the knowledge and the tools. The ambition within these goals should cause us to reach further, to think better and to be more ambitious than ever before.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud. I shall have to read carefully what she said because it was so well constructed. I am feeling a little shaken by my noble friend Lord Rees, as I hope everyone else is, because he has so much experience.
It is no surprise that many people are homing in on climate change although it is listed as number 13. Previously it was seen as one of the supporting development goals, like environment, as an add on to the more urgent issues of poverty and ill health. However, times have changed, as has our understanding of the two priorities. With our Government, dragged along by campaigners and NGOs, now genuinely determined to lead the way internationally towards the 2050 target, we are all more aware than before of the need to save the planet. We are told that it is not too late to do it, but we need to do it now before the ice block sculpture melts outside Tate Modern. Environmentalists say with some reason that there is no planet B.
My noble friend Lord Rees referred to specific policies, which the Government will have heard, but our children and grandchildren need no convincing—they now demand it. At Christian Aid years ago we produced a successful poster with the globe in a bag which said, “Handle with Care—Please Follow Maker’s Instructions”. It was a sell-out. It was revolutionary in its way because it coincided with a general attack on capitalism. A series of reports at the time of the 1973 oil crisis, mentioned by my noble friend, had warned us of the limits of growth, and radicals called for urgent solutions.
MDGs were not by then invented but our supporters and beneficiaries of aid were at that time already well aware of the small but vital things that must be done: saving water, growing food, planting trees, improving sanitation and making solar panels and energy-saving stoves. We were confident that lives could be saved even if the planet was on a dangerous course. Politically only NGOs and a minority of environmentalists at that time really appreciated the urgency of reaching international solutions.
This month sees the 75th anniversary of the Bretton Woods institutions. I strongly recommend Martin Wolf’s analysis in the FT this week showing how the original purposes of 1944—chiefly international co-operation—are being undermined by nationalism and attacks on the international economic order at the highest level. Today, with sea levels rising and more appalling emergencies and forest fires, we have begun to appreciate the particular threat to the poorest countries. Yet we are so turned in on ourselves in the UK at the present time that we are not taking enough notice of the outside world.
The UK also has to reach its own SDGs. I salute the efforts and personal commitment of DfID Ministers, the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, and others to undertake the UK’s own self-assessment in the VNR. The Minister was frank in admitting that we had not reached goals in areas such as literacy and the environment.
There is an undercurrent of opinion around Westminster—some years old but rekindled during the Tory leadership election—which suggests that our future lies in increased defence spending and the spreading of the aid budget into new forms of soft power and other foreign and defence priorities. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, shared concerns about aid finance and effectiveness and Bond, on behalf of the development NGOs, says in relation to today’s debate that spending aid through government departments other than DfID has shifted UK ODA’s focus away from its primary purpose of poverty eradication. Will the Minister please deny that there is any such interdepartmental fungibility in the aid budget and that approaches from other departments are being firmly rejected? Will the Government also rule out any merging of the FCO and DfID, at least in the lifetime of this Parliament?
Poverty eradication is still the hallmark of the development agencies, including DfID. With China’s help the global figures have improved considerably, some have said, but Oxfam recently reminded us that while goal 1 is about ending poverty, SDG 10, on reducing inequality within and between nations, remains the key poverty target. It says that there are still 3.4 billion people worldwide subsisting on less than $5.50 a day. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, reminded us not to forget refugees, who the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, also touched on. The noble Lord, Lord Bird, reminds us that hand-holding is not enough when you are trying to eradicate poverty.
Goal 5 is gender equality, another critical goal, girls having much less access to education and women spending three times as long as men in domestic work. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, touched on this. However, the percentage of women in Parliaments has generally increased, as is evidenced in this room. The fair trade movement has shown that women entrepreneurs need more encouragement, and the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, gave us the example of Fatima. I know from my experience in India that women’s ability to invest in small businesses using loan schemes can be an example to others and an impressive route out of poverty.
I want to add to the comment of the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, about the debate going on in the Chamber. I visit Nepal regularly, where sanitation is a great concern, as the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, and I found when we joined the women’s demonstration in Kathmandu.
Finally, while I understand the appetite of incoming Prime Ministers to start afresh and make new appointments, I do not recommend moving this Secretary of State. Over many years, he has demonstrated as a practitioner his knowledge of development on the ground. As I know the Minister here will agree, it would be a great mistake to replace him.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for securing this debate. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, with whom I always—I think—agree. No one can accuse the sustainable development goals of lacking ambition. The 17 SDGs, with their attendant 169 targets measured by 232 indicators, are by design all-encompassing, cover every dimension of human existence and do not neglect the planet that nourishes and sustains each and every living thing. They are indeed universal.
The debate is timely. Even as we speak, the UN high-level political forum on sustainable development is taking place, culminating in a three-day ministerial forum from 16 July to 18 July. I will therefore concentrate my comments primarily on our Government’s contribution to the high-level panel as we present our voluntary national review, among the 47 other VNRs that will be presented.
VNRs are one of the key requirements of the UN’s document, Transforming Our World, which framed the SDGs. Essentially, they report a county’s progress in implementing the SDGs on the domestic front. The document states that the reviews will be voluntary, state-led and involve ministerial and other relevant high-level participants, and will provide a platform for partnerships through the participation of major groups and stakeholders. In the UK, our Government have said that they intend to implement the SDGs and measure progress in delivery through the single departmental plans.
Are the single departmental plans effectively monitoring delivery of the SDGs on the domestic front? UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development, or UKSSD, is a cross-sector network of organisations which work together to drive action on the UN sustainable development goals in the UK. Its members say no, in a comprehensive report published in 2018, Measuring Up. Published only a few short months ago, in January 2019, the Environment Audit Committee’s report on the SDGs concludes that:
“In their present format, Single Departmental Plans are … inadequate as a means of delivering the SDGs in the UK”.
It does not help that the Government have failed to ensure that all SDG targets are embedded in single departmental plans and there are significant gaps in plans and accountability. What will the Government do about that?
The Department for International Development has been tasked with exercising overall control of cross-departmental delivery of the goals domestically. I have great respect for the work that DfID carries out in delivering the 0.7% ODA target in the international arena, but its record in keeping tabs on ODA spend by other government departments does not bode well for DfID’s role in monitoring delivery of the SDGs across all government departments. Can the Minister comment on the Environmental Audit Committee’s call for an independent body modelled on the Committee on Climate Change to review critically the UK’s progress on achieving the SDGs? I would welcome her opinion on that.
As mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, 111 countries have already presented their VNRs to the UN. The countries often cited as exemplars are those which deployed responsibility from the very top. In Germany, oversight for delivery of the SDGs lies with the office of the Chancellor and in Japan it is with the Prime Minister’s office. They have led from the front and ensured that both private and public sectors are included.
In Germany, the State Secretaries’ Committee for Sustainable Development steers implementation of the sustainable development strategy, and the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development monitors the German Government’s national sustainable development strategy. The German Council for Sustainable Development, an independent advisory council consisting of 15 high-profile public figures, represents the economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainable development in national and international dimensions. In presenting its VNR, Germany ticked all the boxes.
The leadership to deliver this agenda in the UK patently does not come from the very top. Secretaries of State are not taking full responsibility for their departments’ performance against relevant SDG targets, let alone the Prime Minister. When will a satisfactory framework to monitor, assess and incentivise action be put in place? How will we engage our civil society partners in a high-level advisory capacity to represent economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainable development, as requested by the UKSSD?
In this year’s high-level political panel on sustainability, the set of goals to be reviewed in depth includes goal 13: to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Here, I pay tribute to the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and the noble Lord, Lord Rees of Ludlow, who both eloquently expressed their concerns on climate change.
Only a few weeks ago, our Parliament approved a Motion to declare an environment and climate emergency, and the Government have announced a legally- binding target of net zero emissions by 2050. However, in the Environmental Audit Committee’s investigation of the scale and impact of UK Export Finance’s support of fossil fuels in developing countries, the conclusion was that the UK is sabotaging its climate credentials by paying out “unacceptably high” fossil fuel subsidies to developing nations, while claiming to lead the world in tackling the climate crisis.
It is invidious to make money out of locking developing countries into soon-to-be- defunct infrastructure, especially when there are plenty of opportunities in clean, non-fossil fuel investment. The noble Lord, Lord Rees, mentioned “leapfrog” technology.
That is where we should be putting our money in developing countries. Will the Government change their policy and stop sending billions of pounds in subsidies to help build fossil-fuel power plants? Gas and diesel are no longer acceptable as a response. They will not bridge technologies; we are beyond them. We have to move to fossil-fuel-free means of generating energy.
Before I finish, I will say a few words about poverty and despair in the UK. I commend the speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and—as I hope I can still refer to him—my noble friend Lord Loomba. As the fifth richest nation, with an aspiration to cement the “global Britain” brand on the international stage, we must lead by example and fix our fault lines at home. The EU referendum exposed those fault lines in dramatic fashion, as was starkly highlighted in the report of the UN special rapporteur on poverty, Professor Philip Alston. His damning report included the words:
“Changes to taxes and benefits have taken the highest toll on those least able to bear it”.
I am glad that the noble Lords I mentioned covered this in great depth.
To conclude, on 24 and 25 September this year, heads of state and of government will gather in New York to follow up and comprehensively review progress on the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. The event is the first UN summit on the SDGs since the adoption of the 2030 agenda in September 2015; it will be a defining moment on whether the SDGs’ ambition to transform our world will be realised by 2030. Our contribution will be key. We were instrumental to the universal acceptance of the SDG framework. All eyes will be on us to see whether we still have the appetite to play a central, transformative role or whether Brexit has sapped our energy and distorted our identity as a global player of standing. I hope that our Government will step up to the mark and demonstrate determination to meet the 2030 SDG ambitions.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for introducing this afternoon’s debate. It has been fascinating and I am sure we will take this issue forward over the coming months and years. The two key differences, to which noble Lords have alluded, between the 2030 agenda and the millennium development goals is that the goals have become universal: all countries, including the wealthiest nations, are required to meet them; and, of course, we should leave no one behind.
Like my noble friend Lord McConnell and other noble Lords, I believe that the voluntary national review has been a missed opportunity; I will be a little critical as I go through my speech. The most important element of this agenda is how we raise awareness. How do we get the public engaged in this agenda? I am afraid I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bird, that everyone is familiar with the SDGs. As my noble friend Lady Massey said, they are not a household topic—far from it. This process has been a missed opportunity, but it also reflects that the SDGs have not been prioritised by the United Kingdom Government. As my noble friend Lord McConnell also said, the UK had an early leadership role in the SDGs. It is disappointing that no action plan is yet in place for delivering them, and that there is now little sign of political commitment or high-level leadership.
Nor is it clear that the UK Government intend to implement “leave no one behind” in practice. In general, the overarching principle must be made clearer and involve leadership from the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State. We are told that instead of the action plan, all government departments have embedded the SDGs in their single departmental plans and that they have been asked to nominate an SDG champion at director level whose responsibility is to promote SDGs in their department. My noble friend Lady Lister highlighted very well what that means in reality: basically, not much. They do not represent the proactive approach to delivering the agenda in practice or help review whether government actions are genuinely delivering a more sustainable society or a more sustainable world. Many of the departments responsible for achieving the SDGs domestically have pushed the responsibility to DfID. Somehow it is DfID’s responsibility, but the department that does not have the necessary influence or network domestically. It also means that those resources specifically set aside to address poverty and inequality around the world have been diverted to what is supposed to be a UK domestic process. That is wrong. The Commons International Development Committee had an inquiry on this, which other noble Lords mentioned. Its conclusion was that cross-government engagement with the SDGs, up to the point of the initial consultation, had been woefully insufficient:
“Outside of DFID there is still very limited knowledge of the Goals among Whitehall officials”.
I suspect not much has changed since that report was published.
As we have heard in this debate, the goals are interconnected. They exist as a comprehensive framework. Unless they are considered together, progress on one goal is more likely to undermine progress against another or risk leaving particular countries, communities and groups behind. The delivery of the SDGs is also intrinsically connected to the delivery of other international commitments, which often address issues touched by the SDGs, for example, UK commitments to climate and environment agreements, international human rights and international labour standards. That is why it is so important that this debate is not seen as simply a failure of a matter for government action. It is most definitely about the business community, trade unions and worker representatives all adopting the agenda and seeing how that can impact on their objectives domestically and internationally. That is why the voluntary national review process is so important to raise awareness.
The issue is not just about cross-departmental work that requires an interconnected response, as the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor said. I am also co-chair of the APPG on Nutrition for Growth. I echo the point she made about integrating nutrition across DfID’s portfolio. Nutrition interventions that have the most long-term, sustained impact are not nutrition-specific interventions, such as the delivery of food packages, but interventions that ensure that nutritious food can grow and reach the people who need it most and that ensure that those people have the means and the knowledge to buy and prepare it. That interconnected approach is so vital. What steps will the Minister take to ensure DfID is more effective in integrating nutrition across its portfolio?
A key requirement of the United Nations’ 2030 agenda is the national progress reports. All member states are expected to review their progress at least once in the period up to 2030. As I have said, it should have been the opportunity to engage diverse communities and stakeholders across the country to develop a positive vision for the United Kingdom in response to the serious social, environmental and economic challenges we face. I have referred to the process of the initial stage of drafting this VNR. Bond—the collective organisation—summed it up fairly accurately when it said that the overall main message lacked detail, particularly compared to other countries, and that it should serve to increase attention on the full VNR. I think that the Government heard that message. Certainly they appeared to try to go out to raise awareness but it was too little, too late. We should have done more, certainly in meeting the timelines.
I want to focus on a number of questions to the Minister, particularly about the engagements that have taken place. How have parliamentary, civil society, community and other types of input been taken on board or helped to shift the Government’s approach? How do the Government intend to continue engagement and consultation to step up action on the SDGs?
I recently attended the annual review process of the CDC. I am glad it does it and involves all stakeholders. However, we still very much need to focus on how everything the CDC does is delivering against the 2030 agenda. If it is promoting investments, how do they continue to activate change? It is not just a one-off thing. How do we improve not just the number but the quality of jobs so that those investments deliver? That is the sort of approach we need to see.
I do not want to focus too much on the domestic agenda as other noble Lords have done that. However, we could say that the SDGs are not solely a responsibility of the Government. In fact, one of the things that the national review indicated was that 65% of the 169 targets set out by the SDGs need local stakeholders to be involved in their creation and delivery. The review singled out climate change and a sustainable approach to adult social care as particularly urgent issues for local focus. How will we do that? There have been some positive initiatives at local government level, particularly in Birmingham. However, it is incredibly short-sighted to demand more of local government in delivering on the SDGs while cutting the resources it needs to do so. If we do that, this country will not meet its goals.
Is the Minister aware of whether there will be plans to develop a comprehensive SDG delivery plan? Will we learn from and be able to respond to the lessons that this review has given us?
Noble Lords have alluded to the fact that we are presenting the results of our report on the voluntary national review to the UN high-level political forum in New York, which is basically starting this week. The focus of the forum is on empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality. It will certainly look at goal 4 on equality, education, decent work, economic growth and reduced inequality. As the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, said, reducing inequality is vital to tackling poverty and achieving most of the SDGs. In fact, the World Bank projection shows that at the current rate of economic growth, extreme poverty will not be eradicated by 2030 unless inequality is addressed.
One way to address inequality is through the tax system. Implementing tax reforms that would contribute to fairer and more sustainable tax systems globally is really important. Will that include implementing the measures in the Finance Act 2016 introducing public country-by-country reporting requirements for multinational companies and ensuring that we fully implement the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act in terms of public registers of beneficial ownership in UK Overseas Territories? Ensuring that countries can raise the revenue necessary in their own country to make global change is so important in the delivery of the SDGs.
I am sorry that I have banged on for a bit, but I want to conclude on a positive note, because I think there is something we can learn from this voluntary national review process, which is about the importance of how we engage civil society. I do not mean just NGOs engaged in development, although they are incredibly important; I mean faith groups, trade unions and the CBI. We should be much more focused on ensuring that we get that positive response from them too.
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this interesting and thought-provoking debate. It reflects the capacity of the SDGs to inspire us and their central importance to us all. The goals have given us a way of talking about a wide range of urgent—sometimes even existential— issues and a framework to address them. Obviously, accomplishing all the goals by 2030 will require a monumental effort. They are complex and evolving issues, and we must use every lever at our disposal.
The UK’s VNR covers our domestic and international work, both of which have been touched on today. It has a particular focus on the domestic, as suggested by the UN guidelines, but each country reporting where it stands on the goals is the best way to build an accurate global picture. It would be extremely arrogant for us to opine on the state of the world outside our borders without fully acknowledging that there are areas where we most definitely fall short as a country. We need to work harder both at home and abroad to ensure that no one is left behind. The country needs to become healthier, safer, better educated, cleaner and greener. We need to take further strides on gender equality. We need to see greater prosperity and sustainable development. But we should also celebrate the successes we have seen in the VNR. That is not merely an exercise in self-congratulation: we hope that recording proven success will serve as an inspiration for greater efforts and allow us to share best practice with other countries.
A wide range of issues was addressed in the debate, in both the international and domestic sphere. As I said, I shall aim to get through them. To the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, I apologise for forgetting to mention the global goals APPG in my opening remarks. It does excellent work and I look forward to working with it as we take the next steps on the road to 2030. As we tease out how we move forward, from a cross-government perspective and with stakeholders, I entirely agree with his positive view of the goals: that they are comprehensive and attempt to address the causes of underdevelopment and poverty. I also agree on the importance of countries’ accountability through the VNR process.
I also agree with some of the noble Lord’s criticism of how we have dealt with the goals since 2015. I can reassure him of the support that the goals have from me and the Secretary of State. He mentioned the current political situation. I shall not attempt to predict what is going to happen in the future or in the next couple of weeks, but I agree that the UK should play a leading role, as we did at the outset. I shall certainly do my best to facilitate that. The VNR has been a learning process—I shall probably say that quite a lot today—both in how we deal with the implementation of the goals within the country and how we work across government. There is a great opportunity ahead of the UN General Assembly with the SDG summit. We will have a new Prime Minister, which will gather everybody together. We need to see stops on the road to which we can all work to help raise further awareness.
I also strongly agree with the noble Lord on the importance of goal 16. As I said in opening, the UK fought for that from the outset. I am attending a UK-run side event on goal 16 at the UN next week which will underline our commitment to that goal and encourage further action on it from others.
Many questions were asked on how government will continue to oversee the delivery of the goals, including by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. We are taking a co-ordinated approach across Whitehall to implementing the goals. There are a number of existing mechanisms to facilitate interdepartmental ministerial discussions on the importance of the goals, including in the Cabinet, at Permanent Secretary-level meetings and at other official-level meetings covering specific policy areas. However, the noble Lord’s criticism and that of others is fair. The national review commits us to a proper review of ministerial and official-level structures to support further domestic implementation. We will work on that once we have presented to the UN.
Engaging stakeholders, be they NGOs, faith groups or parliamentarians—
Baroness Sugg
I am coming on to trade unions, because we have consulted them. The Government will not achieve the global goals alone. We need to make sure that every level of society, from the individual through to the biggest company and the trade unions, is involved. I would add local authorities to that, too. We need to do more to raise awareness. We held many events—I pointed to some of them in my opening remarks—to engage different parts of society and stakeholders. They have generated some good momentum which we need to make sure is not a flash in the pan. I acknowledge the criticism that stakeholder engagement was perhaps not perfect. We perhaps did not give as much notice as we could have given. That falls into the box of things to learn and improve on in future. However, we are trying to maintain the momentum that we have seen and take it forward. We are considering next steps in how best to design a mechanism for both stakeholder engagement groups and government. We will be working on that in coming weeks and months with the APPG, stakeholders and across parties to ensure that we get it right and improve things. The noble Lord asked how we might improve independent scrutiny. Perhaps regular independent scrutiny is important and needs to be built into the mechanism.
The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, talked about the importance of 0.7%. Our work in supporting the goals is underpinned by our continued commitment to 0.7%. I am proud to have worked for the coalition Government who put that provision on the statute book, and I pay tribute to him for sponsoring it. We are proud of that 0.7% and continue to be committed to it.
On the question of the national interest and diverting money away, we invest 0.7% of our GNI on ODA to help tackle global challenges such as disease, terrorism and conflict, and to create a safer, healthier and more prosperous world. It is in our national interest to do so and I do not agree that there is a tension between reducing poverty and spending aid in the national interest. The drivers of poverty, fragility and exclusion are broad and wide-ranging and often intersect with the UK’s prosperity and national security aims. It is therefore important that development is considered as part of the Government’s wider policy-making process. The Prime Minister set out in August of last year that development is at the heart of the UK’s international agenda.
The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, asked about other departments. There was a recent NAO report on how government departments spend ODA money and we will study it carefully. I wish I could provide the noble Earl with reassurance on the independence of DfID—of which I am strongly in favour—but, again, I cannot predict the future. I gently assert that perhaps there may be other priorities for the new Prime Minister. We must continue to make the case for 0.7% and for the work we do on international development, and the VNR is a good opportunity to highlight that work internationally.
We make sure that every pound spent of the UK budget offers value for money, and must continue to do so for those who need it most, as well as for the UK taxpayer. As I said, I do not think there is a trade-off between poverty reduction and the national interest. However, I agree with many of the noble Lord’s comments on tied aid and conditionality. As he said, the UK has a strong reputation on this and I agree that we must not put that at risk. Being number two on the principled aid index is no bad place to be. Luxembourg is above us, but we can always do better and hit the number one spot. We can also help other countries to improve, and we are doing that.
The noble Lord also mentioned development finance initiatives, an area in which work is increasing. We are doing a great deal of work within the department to consider how best to develop that going forward. There is a huge financing gap but, sadly, I cannot guarantee the new Prime Minister’s attendance at the finance for development meeting ahead of UNGA. I reassure him, however, that we are fully aware of the importance of getting it right in order to meet the gap and fully finance the delivery of the goals.
I join the noble Lord, Lord Bird, in his desire to kick a hole in poverty. He spoke compellingly of how achieving goal 1 will bring about much of what we want to see across the other goals. I would not kick the rest of the 17 goals out—they help us destroy poverty, and by addressing all of them we will move towards that aim.
The noble Lord highlighted the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, which is interesting. One of the benefits of conducting the VNR has been working closely with the devolved Administrations, which has enabled us to learn more about how different parts of the UK are progressing on this issue. In Bristol, for example, the local authority has its own delivery plan for the SDGs, and the Welsh Government is benefiting from the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act. The conclusions and the next steps will outline how we will further strengthen the implementation of the goals domestically. I am meeting the International Relations Minister of Wales next week, and I look forward to discussing it further with her. I will be happy to sit down with the noble Lord and discuss his ideas further.
My noble friend Lady Manzoor and the noble Lord, Lord Collins, highlighted the importance of nutrition. Indeed, they are co-chairing an APPG to make sure that that is high on the agenda. Nutrition underpins many of the SDGs. It is one of our best buys at DfID and it remains an important focus for us. It is a foundation for inclusive development, underpinning about 12 of the 17 SDGs, but the challenge to prevent malnutrition is getting much greater, not least because of climate change.
My noble friend quite rightly highlighted the opportunity we have ahead of the Nutrition for Growth summit in Tokyo next year. We are working very closely with the Government of Japan on the preparation for that summit to make sure that we have a high level of ambition for it, that it succeeds and that we involve Governments, the UN, civil society and the private sector so that they take action genuinely to accelerate the reductions in malnutrition that we want to see. We are also collectively building the resilience of health and food systems so that malnutrition can be prevented and treated effectively in the face of increasing climate threats.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, focused on the domestic part of goal 1 and goal 2. The challenges of food insecurity are tied in with goal 1. We are trying to shape some future evidence-based policy in this area. A review is under way on the drivers of foodbank use and it will be published before the end of the year. I am pleased the noble Baroness highlighted the breakfast programme. I agree with her that of course no child should be too hungry to learn. I take her point on confidence about funding, and I will take back her points to the DfE and perhaps come back to her on that in detail. That was goal 2. The noble Baroness also spoke to goal 1, on ending poverty. Of course, there is more we must do to tackle the long-term drivers of poverty. Since the financial crisis, we have faced a challenging position. We will continue to monitor poverty trends closely and to develop further measurements in order really to understand the causes and consequences of poverty and solutions to it.
My noble friend Lady Stroud rightly highlighted the importance of having the right statistics for such understanding. As part of our commitment to tackle the root causes and as my noble friend said, we announced last week that we will publish experimental statistics in 2020 based on the work undertaken by the Social Metrics Commission. On my noble friend’s point on embedding this properly in DWP, she is quite right, and I am pleased to say that there is now an individual in DWP, and in all departments, who is responsible for embedding the SDP within the department. I will take it upon myself to send my noble friend’s words to that person.
Many noble Lords asked whether we are moving quickly enough to deliver the SDGs and whether the Government are working closely together enough to do so. I think it is fair to say that that is a common criticism I have heard since taking on this role. We are making progress in improving the granularity and coherence of planning to achieve the SDPs. The Government are well aware that more needs to be done in this area. Earlier this year the Minister for implementation held a workshop on this with key stakeholders to invite views on how to do this better. We have seen an improvement in the recently published single departmental plans and we will be taking the recommendations forward for the 2021 plans, but there is some way to go. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, mentioned Germany. We need to look at international examples to see what we can learn and how we can replicate that.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, asked about dates for the plans. I am afraid that I will again have to disappoint him. We have very recently published this and we are now speaking to people following the publication and building up the plans to get something in place.
The noble Lord, Lord Loomba, spoke of the remaining extreme poverty and hunger around the world. More than 780 million people still live below the international poverty line. We think the way to try to end extreme poverty and aid dependency is through inclusive economic growth, jobs, investment and trade. Social protection is important in reducing poverty and vulnerability and in helping people to meet their basic needs, pay for health and education services and build resilience to shocks. We are working closely with partner Governments in more than 20 countries on social protection and are helping them to increase the coverage, quality and sustainability of their systems.
The noble Lord, Lord Loomba, also spoke of the importance of leaving no one behind, both internationally and, of course, here at home. Once again, the UK was instrumental in including “leave no one behind” as an overarching principle within the goals. That included the promise to try to reach the furthest behind first, both in our international development work and domestically. Our VNR includes a stand-alone chapter on “leave no one behind”. Each of the 17 chapters on goals also include examples of how the UK is working to meet the promise to leave no one behind but, given the overarching principle, the more we can embed the SDGs within the department, the more we will be able to address that issue.
My noble friend Lady Verma spoke about the importance of data. I fully agree that data will be key to understanding how we and the rest of the world are progressing towards the SDGs. I was pleased to meet my noble friend recently to discuss the work of UN Women UK and I hope to meet the head of UN Women next week in New York. My noble friend asked whether we are moving quickly enough: my answer is no, I do not think we are. That is why we need to work with organisations such as UN Women UK to do so.
I am pleased to hear that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, will be presenting her report to the UN next week. She mentioned the importance of sexual and reproductive health and rights; I agree that resources are desperately needed. We lead the world in our long-term support for comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights, from tackling HIV to family planning and to FGM. I firmly believe that women and girls have the fundamental right to make their own informed choices. We are the second largest bilateral donor on family planning and we are proud to work closely with the UNFPA on that. Following this debate, I will be going to the population day event downstairs, where I will be talking about the importance of our maintaining that leading voice on SHRR and standing firm in the face of the global rollback on women’s rights.
The noble Baroness also highlighted the horrific consequences of violence against children. We continue to support the global partnership and the Safe to Learn campaign and are pleased to see a clear, growing momentum and awareness on the importance of ending violence. There is still a funding gap around that; we will be encouraging other donors to step in and fill it. If we are truly dedicated to reaching SDG 16.2 we need to be much more ambitious and aim to get transformational levels of funding on this issue.
The noble Lord, Lord Rees, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, rightly highlighted climate. As the noble Earl said, there is no planet B; we are increasingly recognising this reality. We also need to see innovation in technology, as the noble Lord, Lord Rees, pointed out. We have legislated for net zero by 2050; tackling climate change is, of course, a priority. We have committed to £5.8 billion of climate finance, but there is much more to do. I hope we will succeed in our bid to host COP.
If I am allowed, I will take two more minutes to try to get through this. On technology, the noble Lord, Lord Rees, highlighted the importance of research. We spend 3% of our budget on research; we need to share that with other countries. I very much liked the analogy of my noble friend Lady Stroud, when she spoke of the SDGs being seen as the North Star. I will keep that in mind as we continue to work to achieve them. I agree with her point on safety and security. We have long supported progress around the world towards peaceful and more just societies. We played a key role in negotiating goal 16. As I said, in 2018 we doubled our contribution to the UN Peacebuilding Fund. We also launched our National Action Plan for Women, Peace and Security, recognising that important link to goal 5. We will continue to work in this area, both on violence against women and girls and on peace and justice more generally.
I am sorry to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Collins, feels this is a missed opportunity but I welcome his constructive criticism. I have touched on a few of the points he raised. He is absolutely right that we need to raise awareness of these goals and to use the VNR and SDG summit as opportunities to do so. We are having a national conversation, pushing out awareness of the goals as best we can. We are working with businesses, the financial industry and local authorities; it is absolutely a shared endeavour and action will be required from everyone to deliver them.
We have actively consulted the trade unions. Their input was particularly valuable in relation to goal 8, which focuses on economic growth and employment. We have engaged with the TUC and other organisations. As I said before, we need to continue this. Following the publication of the VNR, DfID officials met TUC colleagues last week as part of that ongoing engagement. We will continue that engagement, as we will continue engagement with faith groups, local authorities and, indeed, everyone.
I am out of time. I apologise as there is much I have not yet covered, but I will follow up in writing. My main takeaway from this debate is a heartening one. I thank everyone again for taking part. The Committee is evidently united in understanding how much the goals in international development matter and represent an investment in the world around us. They are a moral imperative in this country. Every single one of us must individually do our bit to help the most vulnerable people in the world, and the goals help us to do so.