House of Lords
Introduction: Lord Mackinlay of Richborough
Education Sector: Equality of Opportunity
(2 months ago)
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Baroness Wilcox of Newport
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to promote equality of opportunity in the education sector, particularly in schools.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, who unfortunately is unwell.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, this Government are committed to promoting equal opportunities and breaking the link between young people’s backgrounds and their future success. Breaking down barriers to opportunity is one of our five missions, ensuring that every child thrives in education and achieves their ambitions, no matter their background. That is why, as first steps, we are committed to delivering 6,500 additional teachers and rolling out free breakfast clubs in every primary school.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that response. She will be aware that education provision all too often does not meet the needs of all children, particularly those with special educational needs and disabilities. The Government are committed to a community-wide approach to school inclusivity, so does my noble friend agree that there is a need for all state-funded schools to be required to co-operate with their local authorities on school admissions, SEND inclusion and place planning?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right that children with special educational needs and disabilities are not receiving the sort of education that they need and deserve, despite the enormously hard work of our teachers and others in supporting them. That is why we are committed to improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools, as well as ensuring that special schools cater to those with the most complex needs. As announced in the King’s Speech, we intend to legislate to require schools to co-operate with their local authority on admissions and place planning.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that women and girls with special educational needs have a history of being underidentified because they tend to cope in the classroom by hiding and disappearing, as opposed to disrupting? When do the Government reckon they will have enough trained teachers to spot the girl who has her head down and is desperately excluding herself from the classroom by being quiet, as opposed to the boy causing trouble at the back?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an important point about early identification of children with special educational needs or some form of disability—he is absolutely right. In the early stages, that needs well-qualified teachers, with the support of inclusive practice and expertise developed throughout the school, to recognise that. This Government are determined to improve that provision in mainstream schools.
Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)
My Lords, earlier this year, schoolteachers got a fully funded 5.5% pay increase, but no such award was made to college staff, even though most pupil-premium students in the 16-plus age group are in colleges. How do the Government propose to address the impact of this unequal treatment on colleges, including the haemorrhaging of skilled staff?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness will understand that in FE there is no pay review body in the same way as in schools. The Government were pleased to be able to fund the 5.5% pay increase for schoolteachers. The noble Baroness is right that, although we recognise the enormous contribution of FE staff, we were not able to match the pay for FE teachers on that occasion. This week, we have for the first time extended the retention incentive to teachers in the first years of their careers in FE. Applications for that opened on Monday, and lots of FE teachers have already applied for that. In our discussions on the spending review, we are thinking about and arguing hard for the support that further education needs and deserves, as the noble Baroness rightly said.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
Could this mission to promote equal opportunity in schools include much greater encouragement of teaching financial literacy in schools, in line with several ideas put forward by Members of your Lordships’ House?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Having spent 11 years teaching economics and business studies— I am not sure my personal financial literacy quite matches up to what might have been expected from that—I think the noble Lord makes an important point. A whole range of schemes and important initiatives already help in that area, and I am sure that teachers and schools would be keen to support others, as well as what they are able to deliver in the curriculum.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
My Lords, according to data published by the Education Policy Institute, disadvantaged learners in Yorkshire and the Humber are typically 21.4 months behind their more advantaged learners by the end of secondary school. This is opposed to a disadvantage gap of half that size, at just 10.4 months, in London. What steps will the Government take to reduce such perniciously stubborn regional inequalities in educational outcomes?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right that regional inequalities at key stage 2, GCSE and A-level are not just persistent but, certainly in some of those cases, have become worse. That is why the Government and the Department for Education are absolutely committed to ensuring that, wherever you live in England and whatever your background, you will have access to the highest-quality teachers and the best possible curriculum. This is the reason for our launching the curriculum and assessment review. That is absolutely at the heart of the Government’s opportunity mission.
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the latest figures show that 65% of Asian girls and 61% of black girls on free school meals go to university. That is fantastic, and a credit to them and their parents. But the comparable figure for white working-class boys on free school meals is just 15%. Getting on for 70% of young people from some wealthy London boroughs go to university, but the figure is less than 20% in places such as Barrow, Blackpool, the south Wales valleys and Grimsby, for example. What will the Government do to deal with this massive problem of educational inequality?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is right that white working-class boys are among the lowest-attaining groups in our schools. That links to the point about regional inequality made previously. It is why the opportunity mission is absolutely clear that we need to break the link between background and success. That means more highly qualified teachers in front of our students. It means making sure that children, whatever their background, get to school, are well-fed and are able to learn, which is the reason for our rolling out breakfast clubs in primary schools. It also means that this Government are absolutely focused on raising standards in all our schools for all our children.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Minister talked about regional inequality. Of course, the region, or country, with a severely underperforming educational system is Labour-run Wales, which has seen standards decline and where the OECD has described the education system as having “lost its soul”. That is in contrast to England, where we have seen international rankings improve in reading, maths and sciences. What will this Government do differently from Wales to make sure that we do not see the same decline here?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I am surprised, given the efforts that the noble Baroness made when she was a Minister in the Department for Education, that she is quite as complacent about performance in England as she appeared to be in that question. We are still in a situation, in 2024, where at key stage 2 the gap between the highest-performing and the lowest-performing regions remains the same, at 10 percentage points, and where at GCSE, the distinction between the best-performing and worst-performing regions has grown by 0.7 percentage points. So not only are all standards not high enough but we have ongoing, persistent inequality in our system between regions and between people, dependent on their background. With respect to England, this Government will not rest on their laurels in the way in which the noble Baroness seemed to suggest the previous Government would have done. That is why, as I have outlined, whether it comes to teachers in classrooms, getting children into our schools or making sure that we have a curriculum fit for them, we will take action, which the last Government failed to do.
Zero-emission Vehicle Mandate
(2 months ago)
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Lord Woodley
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the potential merits of bringing forward the deadline for requiring all new vehicles sold to be ‘zero emission’ from 2035 to 2030.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, accelerating to net zero is at the heart of our mission-driven Government, and this Government are taking action. All new cars and vans sold in the UK from 2035 will need to be fully zero-emission. We are not proposing to change this. However, we are committed to restoring the original 2030 phase-out date for new pure internal combustion engine cars, alongside setting out ways to support demand for zero-emission vehicles and accelerating the rollout of charge points.
Lord Woodley (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a former union convenor for the Vauxhall plant at Ellesmere Port, where I still have family working. The Tory Government’s delay from 2030 to 2035 has thrown the industry into complete turmoil, as the Minister knows, after manufacturers invested billions to prepare for 2030. What the industry needs most of all now is flexibility as their vehicles disappear from sale, apart from fleet sales. For example, Vauxhall makes electric—
Lord Woodley (Lab)
Comrades, please bear with me. For example, Vauxhall makes electric cars in this country, but they are not off-set by different quotas and fines for non-compliance. Therefore, will the Minister agree to meet the industry body, the SMMT, and trade unions to discuss the implications for UK jobs?
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, before my noble friend responds, I make it absolutely clear that this is Question Time and we need questions that are short and succinct, and short and succinct answers from Ministers as well.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Woodley is correct. The ZEV mandate includes zero-emission cars and vans separately. That is because the average emissions from cars and vans are not the same. However, the mandate is based on UK sales and not manufacturing. Manufacturers may continue to build any vehicles and export them. I am aware that the Minister for the Future of Roads, Minister Greenwood, has already met Unite on this topic, and the Department for Transport welcomes continued engagement with the SMMT and trade unions on it.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I agree with the premise behind the Question about the 2030 date from the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, but does the Minister agree that we need new regulations on electric vehicle charging points akin to those we have for petrol stations—regulations on equipment, safety and clear display of pricing—to increase confidence among potential purchasers of vehicles?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The noble Baroness raises a pertinent and important point. When I was formerly a member of the Electric Vehicle APPG, we had intensive discussions about that. There are enormous issues relating to accessibility and disabled people turning up at points and not being able to access them. We know that local government has a huge role to play in this. A review is taking place and will report in February next year. I hope that everyone can input into that review to make sure that we come up with a much more fair and equitable system.
Lord Lilley (Con)
My Lords, given that when the last Government extended the phase-out date from 2030 to 2035 they were aligning with Europe, is the decision of the present Government to go back to 2030 a deliberate decision to misalign with Europe and to seize a Brexit opportunity, or do they just think that the Europeans have got it wrong and they had to overcome their natural Europhilia?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I think the noble Lord has referred to himself as the grit in the oyster. He makes an important point, but we are responding to the demands of car manufacturers. I think everyone can recall the outcry when the change was made by the previous Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, more than a year ago. We are not playing games on this; it is about what is right for the industry, for the consumer and, most importantly, for the country.
Viscount Thurso (LD)
My Lords, in addition to regulation, is it not the case that the mode of taxation will also need to change and that, as we electrify our vehicles, we will need to move to road user charging rather than fuel?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The noble Viscount is absolutely right that the end date for the electric vehicle tax relief is next year. However, as he and everyone else in this Chamber will be aware, we are approaching a Budget and I cannot comment on any matter that might be raised in that.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord’s Question was all to do with zero emission in relation to electric vehicles. Will the Minister consider carefully the alternatives that we are faced with in zero emission, such as synthetic fuel, hydrogen power and so on? Are we not putting all our eggs in the wrong basket?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question. I am sure he is aware that trials are taking place around hydrogen-fuelled vehicles as we speak. Everyone is open to looking at new technologies coming along and making sure that we make the most of our mission to clean up the air in this country for the benefit of those who have to breathe it in as well as for the planet, in terms of the climate change objectives.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the Minister will know that the European Union is going to increase by a huge amount the tax on electric vehicles coming in from China. Can she tell me, or perhaps write to assure me, that this will not affect electric cars in Northern Ireland, which under the Windsor Framework is still in the European Union for this kind of thing? Does it mean that people in Northern Ireland will have to pay more or less for their electric cars?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right to raise the issue of China and Chinese imports. At the moment, imports from China represent 34% of EV cars coming into the country. We will work closely with our US allies and, obviously, with Europe—but we need to focus on economic security. I cannot answer the specific question that she asks about Northern Ireland, but I am happy to follow up with correspondence on the matter.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, why do the Government think that people on ordinary incomes will be able to afford these cars, especially if they have to take into account the possibility, which I hear is on the table, of road pricing?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I think the noble Lord has to reflect on the fact that we are talking about the new car market. An enormous amount of work needs to be brought together around the second-hand market—which also includes recycling the key component parts so that they do not end up in landfill or other places—so we can make sure that expensive components are available.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, does the Minister share the views put to me by other Ministers that the biggest problem they have is clearing up the mess created by the previous Tory Government?
Lord Sandhurst (Con)
I am not sure we have yet had an answer on the Government’s view on road pricing. Can the Minister answer and make it clear whether we are going to go down that line?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
In terms of clear answers, I thought I had made it absolutely clear that I am not able to comment at this point in time.
Lord Markham (Con)
We definitely did not get a clear answer to the question of whether ordinary people can afford these types of car. Perhaps the Minister would like another opportunity to answer that one.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I made it absolutely clear that we are talking about affordability across the piece. The new car market is a relatively small part of cars coming in altogether. Affordability is very much an objective on this side of the House, and I do not think we need any lectures at all on how we make sure that all people can benefit from improving manufacturing and living standards.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
Should we not be grateful that we are in a better position financially than we would have been, had we been trying to shift London airport down into the estuary?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I am sure the noble Lord has far more information on that subject, and I welcome his contribution.
Artificial Intelligence: Regulation
(2 months ago)
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Lord Holmes of Richmond
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to regulate artificial intelligence and, if so, which uses they intend to regulate.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my technology interests as set out in the register.
The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)
My Lords, as set out in the King’s Speech, we will establish legislation to ensure the safe development of AI models by introducing targeted requirements on companies developing the most powerful AI systems, and we will consult on the proposals in due course. This will build on our ongoing commitment to make sure that the UK’s regulators have the expertise and resources to effectively regulate AI in their respective domains.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, with individuals having loan applications rejected off the back of AI decisions and creatives having their works ingested by GenAI with no consent or remuneration, would not the Minister agree that we need economy-wide and society-wide AI legislation and regulation for the benefit of citizens, consumers, creatives, innovators and investors—for all our AI futures?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
Thank you. It is an important area, and one where we have huge opportunities for growth. There is definitely the need for regulators to become upskilled in the ability to look at AI and understand how it impacts their areas. That is the reason we created the Regulatory Innovation Office, announced last week, to make sure that there are the capabilities and expertise in sector-dependent regulators. We also believe that there is a need for regulation for the most advanced models, which are general purpose, and of course cross many different areas as well.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, notwithstanding the need for sector-specific approaches and expertise, does my noble friend agree that public confidence and constitutional legitimacy require primary legislation, and sooner rather than later?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
The reason we are establishing the prospect of an AI Act is to look at those models that are the ones that are at the biggest forefront in general use and carry with them specific opportunities and risks that require that specific legislation. It is not the case that that is true for every aspect of the application of AI in every single area, much of which can be covered by existing regulation and can be dealt with by regulators, provided that they are appropriately reinforced with the skills, capabilities and knowledge required.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, if a photograph tells 1,000 words, an AI-generated image can tell 1,000 lies. As a photographer, I am concerned about altered or manipulated imagery in journalism and on social media. Generative AI images used in journalism will soon be good enough to blur our ability to discern truth from fiction. What are the Government doing to support a move to a standard of authenticity signatures on real images, so that all photographs can be quickly verified as either real or AI-generated?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
This again is a very important area in which there are rapid technological advances. Watermarking to enable understanding of what is original and what is not, and indeed what component of originality is in any finished product, is an important development that is not there yet but is on the way. In the meantime, there are specific provisions in the Online Safety Bill to make sure that the most egregious examples of this are caught—and, indeed, are illegal.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
My Lords, this Government have pledged to recalibrate trade relations with the EU. However, the new EU AI legislation is much more prescriptive than the regulation proposed by the Government. How will the Government ensure that UK-based AI organisations with operations in the EU, or which deploy AI into the EU, will be aligned with EU regulation?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
As the noble Viscount points out, the EU regulation has gone in a somewhat different direction in taking a very broad approach and not a sector-specific approach. In contrast, the US looks as though it is going down a similar sort of route to the one that we are taking. Of course, there will be a need for interoperability globally, because this is a global technology. I think that there will be consultation and interactions with both those domains as we consider the introduction of the AI Act, and we are starting an extensive consultation process over the next few months.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, I am somewhat concerned by the Minister’s reference to regulating the most powerful and general purpose models, because I fear that that is a pathway to closing down markets and preventing access to challenger firms. But, in the context of copyright, which is of concern to all content creators and certainly to publishers, are the Government considering a mandatory mechanism to ensure transparency, so that those publishers that choose to opt out their data from the training purposes are able to do so?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
In passing, I will just reference the first part: even Eric Schmidt, at the investment summit on Monday, made the point that some sort of guard-rails and some sort of certainty for business are required in order to grow those most important models. There is a demand for something there and that is what we want to try to get right. It is not right to leave nothing as these models progress. I am sorry, I have completely forgotten the second point.
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
Yes—the question of intellectual property and transparency is important. We are consulting widely on this with the creative industries and with others. Indeed, in my own review, which I did for the previous Government when I was in my post as the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, I made the very clear point that we need to distinguish between the inputs to these models and what is required for intellectual property control there, and the outputs of the model, which goes back to the question about watermarking and understanding what component of the output is derived from which part of the input.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, one area of AI technology that has been used a lot without regulation for many years, and has been exposed as having some quite severe flaws, is that of facial recognition. It is being used a lot by police forces all over Britain and clearly has caused a lot of confusion and made a lot of mistakes. Will that be one area that the Minister will be looking at, specifically for regulation?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
That is an area that of course comes under several other parts of regulation already. It is also an area where there are massive changes in the way that these models perform. If one looks at GPT-4 versus GPT-3—I know it is not facial recognition, but it gives an indication of the types of advances—it is about twice as good now as it was a year ago. These things are moving fast and there is indeed a need to understand exactly how facial recognition technology is valid and where it has problems in recognition.
Viscount Camrose (Con)
My Lords, the supply chain for the development of the more advanced AI systems is, in almost every case, highly global in nature. That means that it becomes quite straightforward for AI developers to offshore their activities from any jurisdiction whose regulations they might prefer not to follow. This being the case, do the Government agree that the regulations for AI development, as distinguished mostly from use, are going to have to be global in nature? If the Government agree with that, how is it reflected in their plans for AI regulation going forward?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
The noble Viscount makes an important point. This will be global; there is no question about it. Therefore, there needs to be some degree of interoperability between different regions in terms of the regulations put in place. At the moment, as I said, of the two most advanced, the US is the biggest AI nation in the world and is developing a regulation along similar lines to ours, we believe. The EU is of course the most regulated place in the world for AI and we need to work out, in consultation over the next months, how to make sure that we work out where the areas of interoperability will lie.
Baroness Winterton of Doncaster (Lab)
My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that any advisory committees on regulation of AI should include smaller companies involved in the sector and also representation from the regions?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
This is an area where there were something like 100 new start-ups in the last year alone. We have something like 4,000 small companies. It is an area where small companies are critically important and must be involved in the discussion. It is worth remembering that some of the enormous companies were small companies not very long ago in this space; it is moving fast. I will also take this opportunity to say how fantastic it is that, in our own country, we had a Nobel prize awarded to Demis Hassabis for his extraordinary work and that of his colleague John Jumper at Google DeepMind.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I was delighted to hear the Minister’s response to my noble friend Lord Camrose. I am so pleased that the Government are taking advantage of this Brexit opportunity. Last week, I got a new iPhone—for the first time in 10 years —and it came with an Apple intelligence function that was not available on the iPhones released on the same day in the EU. Will the Minister confirm that we have no plans to follow Brussels in imposing needless regulation that is hostile to growth and innovation?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
We are very minded of the opportunity of AI—the report by Matt Clifford on AI opportunities will be coming out shortly. We want to see this as a growth industry in this country and, as I said, we are developing in the AI Bill an approach that is only about those general models and is not sector-specific regulation, thereby differing from the EU currently.
Taiwan
(2 months ago)
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Lord Alton of Liverpool
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether the Foreign Secretary plans to raise directly with the government of China the recent military activity against Taiwan during his visit.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
My Lords, in our Statement of 14 October, we stated our concern about China’s military exercises around Taiwan and reaffirmed our interest in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. The United Kingdom considers the Taiwan issue one to be settled peacefully by people on both sides of the strait through constructive dialogue, without the threat or use of force or coercion. We will continue to raise issues of concern with China.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. During the Foreign Secretary’s visit to Beijing this week, will he be raising the escalation in the military intimidation of Taiwan and its 23 million people directly with the Chinese authorities? With Bloomberg estimating that a blockade of the Taiwan Strait could cost the world economy around $10 trillion—equal to 10% of global GDP—can the Minister explain why the Foreign Secretary has confusingly decided to no longer describe the PRC as a threat, and spell out exactly what is the Government’s policy on Taiwan, which has never been a part of the People’s Republic of China?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
There are two questions there. The first is: what is our relationship with the People’s Republic of China? It is one of co-operation, particularly when we need to address those global issues, but we will confront China, when we need to, particularly on human rights issues, which the noble Lord has raised on repeated occasions. On Taiwan, we are quite clear about the need for peaceful dialogue to resolve these issues. The Taiwan Strait is of interest globally, but particularly to the United Kingdom in terms of our trade routes. Dialogue is what we will try to seek to ensure that we have a peaceful approach to these issues.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, the Chinese are placing great emphasis on, and putting great effort into, what is known as cognitive warfare, which seeks to undermine the structures, processes and will of the West—not least through AI. This is a serious threat to our society; we are playing catch-up, and we are playing it too slowly. With that in mind, will the Minister remind the Foreign Secretary, before he goes to Beijing, of Virgil’s famous line:
“Timeo danaos et dona ferentes”,
although, in this case, it is the Chinese, rather than Greeks, bearing gifts whom he should fear?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
Well, I think I understand the point of the noble and gallant Lord’s question. The fact is that Taiwan’s biggest trading partner is the People’s Republic. Trading across the globe with China is huge; it is its second biggest economy. It is also vital in terms of addressing those challenges that we face on climate. We therefore need to ensure that we have dialogue and co-operation. But we understand the other issues that the noble and gallant Lord has raised, which is why we committed to in opposition—and will deliver in government—a complete audit of our relationship with China as a bilateral and global actor to improve our ability to understand and respond to not only the opportunities but the challenges that China poses.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned the importance of dialogue in this relationship. Does he also recognise that supporting Taiwan’s democratic self-governance is essential for peace and security in the region? Following on from the increased Chinese military war-games in the Taiwan Strait, can His Majesty’s Government confirm whether they have further plans for freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I think I have addressed these issues. The increased tensions are concerning and we are increasingly concerned about the consequences should peace and stability fail the in Taiwan Straits, including, as I mentioned, for global supply chains. It is incredibly important that we focus on ensuring that there is dialogue and not aggression, and these things need to be resolved by the two parties in proper dialogue and consultation. That has been the position of this Government and the Opposition as well as the previous Government, and we will maintain that position as we move forward.
Lord Rogan (UUP)
My Lords, I declare an interest, having visited Taiwan recently as a guest of the World League for Freedom and Democracy. The Chinese President’s decision to authorise military drills around Taiwan in the week that our Foreign Secretary is due to arrive in China underlines his contempt not only for the Taiwanese population but for the British people. The Prime Minister visited Taiwan as an Opposition Front Bench spokesman in 2016 and 2018 and will certainly have a deep understanding of the issues challenging Taiwan. I ask the Minister whether and when the Prime Minister or indeed the Foreign Secretary intend to visit Taiwan in their new roles to have dialogue.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
As the noble Lord knows, I have also visited Taiwan. The United Kingdom has no diplomatic relations with Taiwan but a strong unofficial relationship based on deep and growing ties in a wide range of areas, underpinned, as the noble Lord said, by democratic values. We will continue to engage with Taiwan on economic, trade, educational and cultural ties. This relationship delivers significant benefits to both the United Kingdom and Taiwan and has featured a wide range of exchanges and visits; for example, on environmental, judicial and educational issues. We will continue to establish our relationship on that basis.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, it is a well-known geopolitical fact that India and China do not see eye to eye over many issues in Asia. Are our Government regularly in touch with the Indian Government over this issue?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
One of the vital aspects of the recent United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council, certainly in my engagement with both, is that we establish strong dialogue with both India and China on how we address the tensions that are developing. When I was addressing the Security Council on enlargement, we discussed with both the P5 and the 10 members of the Security Council that are there on an elected basis how dialogue and consensus is an important way of moving forward. I assure the noble Lord that we will continue dialogue on that basis.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, UK trade with Taiwan is of strategic importance to the United Kingdom, so tension in that area is of concern to our economy, especially in light of the fact that the UK has a trade deficit of £26 billion with China. That means that we are vulnerable to China with regard to trade, so I support the Government in carrying out a strategic audit. Will the Minister commit that that will be published and debated in Parliament in advance of the defence review and the Government’s industrial strategy, so that it can inform those, not be responsive to them?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I must admit that I was reflecting this morning, at an APPG meeting, on what we can do in the first 100 days. I was reflecting on the fact that I have been a Minister for only three months and I have actually been able to do quite a lot, but there is a lot to do and I do not think we should overstretch ourselves. We are committed to this audit; it will cover a broad range of deepening that relationship, because it is not just Government to Government or just in terms of the private sector. There is the local government sector, the public sector—a huge range, not least in the National Health Service, where we have had a lot of concerns about the nature of those imports. I am not going to give any timeframes or say whether or not it can be public; the important thing is that we are focused on delivering it and on better understanding our relationships so that we face up to the challenges that the noble and gallant Lord raised.
Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)
My Lords, taking account of what the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, just said, China has a huge influence on North Korea. As we know, there has recently been talk about the degree to which North Korea is having a major influence in Ukraine. Will the Minister comment on that?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, North Korea is one of the worst regimes in history in terms of the way that it treats its people, and certainly it is in a crisis situation. Russia, in trying to maintain its aggression against Ukraine, is seeking all kinds of supply streams, not least from places such as North Korea. We are assessing the impact of that, but our relationship with North Korea is very clear. We have expressed concerns at the UN and the Human Rights Council and will continue to do so.
UN Sustainable Development Goals
(2 months ago)
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Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale
That this House takes note of the impact of conflict, extreme poverty and climate-related emergencies globally; and of the progress towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, before we start, I point out to noble Lords that the advisory speaking time is nine minutes. That means that at eight minutes, they should make their concluding remarks, and at nine minutes their time is up. I urge all noble Lords to adhere to this advisory speaking time; it helps the House to function well.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, I start by drawing attention to my entries in the register of interests. I thank all those Members of your Lordships’ House who have agreed to speak in the debate; I am very grateful to everyone. Looking at the range of speakers, I can see that we are going to raise a variety of topics. That is useful because it gives me the chance to open with an overview. I am also very grateful to the electorate, because this is the first time I have had the opportunity, in the 14 years I have been in the House, to speak from the Government Benches; I thank them for that opportunity. I also thank those who provided my hearing aids over the summer because, for the first time in a long time, I will actually hear the full debate and the Minister’s reply. I welcome the Minister: we have worked hard on these issues for many years, and I have been delighted to see his work at the United Nations and in many bilateral visits over recent months. I wish him well in his role.
There have been 280 Members of your Lordships’ House appointed since the sustainable development goals were agreed in September 2015. It is quite a remarkable figure, and it shows that there may be many who have not taken part in a debate on the SDGs before, so I will briefly introduce the topic by saying that the millennium development goals agreed in 2000 came at the end of the decade of upheaval and change across the world in the 1990s. They were agreed at the start of the new millennium to give some direction to the support that was required to deal with extreme poverty in the global South.
Here in the UK at the Gleneagles summit in 2005, the UK Government turbo-charged their work on the millennium development goals, because they were already falling behind. The millennium development goals made a difference, but they only really dealt with a small number of very specific issues: primary education, the supply of clean water, maternity provisions and so on. They never really dealt with the underlying causes of extreme poverty and the difficulties faced by so many people across our world.
Instead of taking four hours to agree the millennium development goals, we took four years to consult on, debate and agree the sustainable development goals in 2015. They attack the causes of extreme poverty and vulnerability around the world—climate, conflict, inequality and the lack of strong national economies—to ensure that all the other work on education, health, clean water and public services is underpinned by stronger sustainable economies at the national level and the peaceful environment that is required to allow them to succeed.
The SDGs had core themes. Leave no one behind was the driving force, as was prioritising the most vulnerable in our societies to ensure that they are not left behind. They were universal, applying to every country in the world to ensure that people were not left behind anywhere. They were for everybody, everywhere. They had a structure: a system of voluntary national reviews which allowed national plans to be developed to prioritise the right goals in the right countries and ensure that they were reporting against their targets to their peers.
Unfortunately, although a number of countries in the global South took that structure seriously, far too many in the developed world did not. Perhaps only Japan, under Prime Minister Abe, really took seriously the need to create a framework in government that drove support for the SDGs at home and abroad. Perhaps also remarkably, businesses across the world, large and small, took this seriously. Many now embed the SDG framework in their long-term planning to preserve their supply chains and ensure that they are treating their workforces well, and to ensure that they are making a contribution to society.
However, by 2020 and the pandemic, progress against the goals was far too slow, and we were way off track already. Of course, the pandemic had a terrible impact, on everything from girls’ education to vaccinations and health system structures in different parts of the world. It also provided an opportunity for those who perhaps had less inclination to support the most vulnerable in our world to cut overseas aid, primarily here in the UK with then Chancellor Sunak’s decision to dramatically cut our aid budget in the middle of a global pandemic—a decision I still find utterly remarkable, but one that was also mirrored in some other countries as well.
Today we see the impact not just of that pandemic but of the rising tide of conflict around the world, creating a situation in which only 17% of the SDGs are even remotely on target to be achieved by 2030. We have the highest level of conflict around the world since the 1940s, over 700 million people are living in extreme poverty and the graph is going up, rather than down, for the first time in 30 years. We have had the hottest year on record—we can see the impact of climate change—and over 100 million people have been displaced, including nearly 50 million children displaced from their homes in our world today. All over the world, there are children who are out of school, who are not being vaccinated who would have been just a few years ago, who are hungry and would have been fed just a few years ago, and we have children in danger from conflict and violence. This is a global emergency, and the SDGs provide the framework for us to deal with it nationally and internationally.
As I said, I have found the support of businesses for the SDGs over this time to be particularly interesting. Businesses that have a long-term plan for success take into account the many factors that affect their success, whether that is their workforce, their supply chain, their impact on society or other factors. It is astonishing that over the course of the last nine years, Governments have let down populations so much when businesses have actually risen to the challenge.
Fast-forwarding to September 2024—I say this carefully—we saw at the United Nations more warm words of the sort we have seen again and again from countries around the world that actually do not mean it, and I want to start at that point. The pact for the future, which we of course signed up to at the UN General Assembly in September, has 56 individual actions to try to get the SDGs back on track in order to achieve as much as possible by 2030. It has the addition of a—very welcome—global digital compact, and a further declaration on future generations that expresses all sorts of wonderful motherhood and apple pie about where we should be in our world today.
The pact itself talks about a
“profound global transformation … human beings … enduring terrible suffering”.
It also talks about
“a moment of hope and opportunity”
and expresses a wish to see
“a world that is safe, peaceful, just, equal, inclusive, sustainable and prosperous”.
If we look around our world today, we are further from that than we have been for a very long time.
I say first of all to our new Government that it is vital that we engage in as many international fora as possible to ensure that we step up and push our peers around the world to be more committed to acting and not just talking. This includes the many countries that have stepped up at the United Nations and supported adopting these kinds of statements every September since 2015 and have either violated the commitments they made or ignored them.
Our new Government have a firm commitment to a world free from poverty on a liveable planet. Both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary referred to the SDGs in their speeches at the United Nations in September, and I certainly welcome that. Leaving no one behind is a driving principle that should underpin the review of our development activity that is under way in the FCDO.
I would also like to see a cross-government approach to this in the UK. We have waited nine long years for this, and almost secured it when Prime Minister Theresa May managed to get her Cabinet to have their pictures taken with placards on each SDG in February 2019. At that time, Secretary of State Penny Mordaunt was ready to make a number of commitments, before she was moved to become Defence Secretary. We need cross-government co-operation. This is not just about our global commitments in the FCDO and the climate department; it also cuts across other government departments. As we review our ODA and development activity, the SDG strategy should be centre stage, and we should commit as soon as possible to a second voluntary national review, as 2019 was the last time we reported on our progress against these commitments.
Of the three topics mentioned in my Motion today, I do not want to spend a lot of time on climate, because we discuss it on many occasions here in your Lordships’ Chamber. I just express the hope that what was being said and supported by the UK at the UN General Assembly in September is coherent with what we then say and do at the COP in Baku in November. One of the great benefits of the SDGs was to pull together financing for development, the development targets for the world and our climate targets in Addis, New York and Paris in 2015. We can play a role on these international stages to ensure consistency and co-ordination between what is being said and done in the different summits. I do not see action on climate and on development as an either/or; they have to go absolutely hand in hand.
I mentioned earlier that we have such a horrific and high level of conflict in our world today that it almost seems impossible to tackle. But we need a commitment in this country not just to our defence but to our interventions around the world that help prevent conflict and build peace. I would be interested to know more about whether the Government will continue with the integrated security fund, run from the Cabinet Office rather than from the FCDO. I would be interested to know more about how that fund will direct resources towards peacebuilding and conflict prevention, and not just perhaps more traditional forms of security. I would also be interested to know whether the remit for my noble friend Lord Robertson’s defence review will include a commitment to a greater UK intervention on conflict prevention and peacebuilding.
We can make a significant impact around the world on conflict prevention. At times over the last 20 years—with the Conflict Pool; the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund that was built up by the Conservative Government; and now, again, with this Government’s strong commitment—we have made a real difference on conflict prevention over the years, and I hope that will continue and expand with the new Ministers in place. I would us to have a particular impact on children affected by conflict. Organisations such as Education Cannot Wait, which supports education for children displaced from their homes due to conflict, are definitely worthy of the UK’s support as we review our development budgets.
Finally, on extreme poverty it is stunning that, having set out a commitment to leave no one behind, we are leaving more people behind in 2024. That cannot continue. There is a whole range of financial issues that we could spend a whole day debating, but I will highlight just a few. The first is our own official development assistance. This country has been spending a third of its official development assistance in the UK—not abroad but in the UK; not with the poorest people in the world but here in the United Kingdom—for the past couple of years. That is totally unjustified, unfair and wrong. I hope that the Government will do something to start to change that. We need to be consistent in our approach to ODA and, as I said, we should ensure that “leave no one behind” is a theme that runs through all our bilateral and multilateral interventions.
We also need to ensure that other forms of finance, which are in reality far more important than ODA, make their difference too. The UK and the City of London can make a real difference, whether in dealing with debt or getting private creditors to the table to deal with the terrible burden of debt; through tax transparency and making sure that climate finance is additional to development finance; or by ensuring that businesses step up to the plate in all these areas.
I will finish on this point: I am always reminded that this is, ultimately, about human beings; it is not about formulas, summits or even debates here in your Lordships’ House. In February this year, I met a young girl in Malawi, Alinafe, who walks seven kilometres to and from school every day. She is the youngest of seven in her family. She is the first to get past the first year in the local high school. She does not know anything about the SDGs—she has never heard of them—but what we do with them matters to her and to her opportunities and start in life. We should always remember that these human beings are at the centre of this agenda. If we do that, we are more likely to succeed.
Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for securing this debate and for his continued work on the UN sustainable development goals. Back in 2014, I think, I worked with the then Prime Minister—now the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton—on a high-level panel ahead of the SDGs. I have not been involved for as long as the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, but I agree with him that they are absolutely a strong framework for the world that we want, but of course we are a long way off track.
Conflict, extreme poverty, and climate-related emergencies are three crises that are deeply interconnected and jeopardise our efforts to achieve the SDGs, particularly goal 5 on gender equality, which I will focus my contribution on. These intersecting crises threaten the fundamental rights and well-being of women and girls globally.
The relationship between conflict and climate change is increasingly evident. As highlighted by the International Organization for Migration, climate-related factors are significant drivers of forced displacement, pushing individuals into conflict zones or making them refugees. That creates a vicious cycle of vulnerability, where women and girls face heightened risks, particularly to their health, safety and well-being. In regions plagued by conflict, we see not only a deterioration of those outcomes but an alarming rise in gender-based violence. Women and girls often become targets for exploitation, and their rights, safety and health are stripped away.
A study from the WHO highlighted that conflict situations often lead to a spike in maternal mortality rates, with women in these regions facing barriers to accessing healthcare services. Just a 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature correlates with a 6% increase in stillbirths, showing the direct consequences of climate change on maternal health. We know that conflict exacerbates the challenges posed by climate change. As natural resources become scarcer due to environmental degradation, competition over these resources can lead to conflict, further displacing communities and endangering lives. In such settings, the ability to access basic services, including healthcare and education, becomes even more compromised and difficult, particularly for women and girls who bear the brunt of these crises.
We must acknowledge also the impact of conflict, climate change and extreme poverty on hunger and nutrition, which is foundational to achieving all the global goals. Conflict is a major driver of hunger. Last year, conflict-driven hunger affected 135 million people in 20 countries. Reports show that malnutrition and hunger could increase by 20% by 2050 if we do not address the effects of climate change. Hunger and malnutrition, of course, affect everybody but, as ever, women and girls are disproportionately impacted.
Extreme poverty compounds these issues, leaving women and girls with fewer resources and options. They make up a disproportionate amount of the 700 million people estimated by the World Bank to live in extreme poverty. As I said, it acts as a barrier to accessing healthcare, education and economic opportunities. In many low-income countries, the lack of financial resources translates into an insufficient healthcare infra- structure, resulting in inadequate health services. The Covid-19 pandemic further highlighted those disparities, leading to disruptions in healthcare services including, importantly, sexual and reproductive health and rights. The repercussions of these disruptions will be felt for years to come, undermining progress made towards gender equality.
Gender equality—the subject of SDG 5—is not only a fundamental human right but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. Happily, we have made some significant progress over the last decades, with more girls getting into school, fewer girls forced into early marriages and more women in work, serving in parliament and in positions of leadership. Laws are being reformed to advance gender equality. I am very proud of the important role that the UK has played in this advancement through our international development work all around the world.
Despite these gains, significant challenges remain. Discriminatory laws and social norms are still pervasive; women continue to be underrepresented at all levels of political and economic leadership; and one in five women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 reports experiencing physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner within a 12-month period. As I have said, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic could reverse the limited progress that we have seen. Given all that, I very much welcome the Development Minister’s pledge to put women and girls at the heart of everything she does in government. I was pleased that, in an article ahead of the United Nations General Assembly, she highlighted that conflict drives home the very worst of gender inequality and intensifies pre-existing problems, intersecting to wreck the lives of women and girls.
How can we address this? First, we can do so by building on the role that the UK has played in establishing the women, peace and security agenda through the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which recognised the disproportionate impact of conflict on women and girls. We must work closely with our partners, including civil society organisations and communities, to fully implement Resolution 1325 and to ensure that all the resolutions that followed are implemented. They recognise the disproportionate and unique impact on women and acknowledge the very important contributions that women can make to conflict prevention and resolution, peacekeeping and peacebuilding. I pay tribute to the work of my noble friend Lady Hodgson in this area and her continued effort on her Private Member’s Bill.
Secondly, we must keep a strong focus on our work on gender-based violence, addressing its rising rates in conflict-affected areas—it must be a priority. As Minister, I saw at first hand the impact that UK programmes can have, helping the survivors of violence through support for safe spaces and comprehensive health services. But we must scale up effective and innovative interventions to stop violence before it starts. The programme What Works to Prevent Violence, run first by DfID and then the FCDO, does exactly that, and I hope that the new Government will continue to support its incredibly effective work.
Thirdly, we should continue our focus on supporting the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls. This is fundamental to progress towards gender equality. We know that conflict, extreme poverty and climate change make access to and the availability of SRHR services even more challenging. A key part of that is continuing work on strengthening education and health systems. Investment in education, particularly comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education, is crucial to help young people become empowered and to equip them with the knowledge they need to make informed choices on how they live their lives. Strengthening health systems will ensure that sexual and reproductive health services are accessible and effective. We should prioritize the integration of SRHR services into climate action plans, including ensuring access to these services during emergencies and incorporating better gender analysis into climate strategies to address the needs of women and girls.
Under the previous Administration, significant work was under way in the department, both to respond to the helpful inquiry from the International Development Committee into SRHR and on a campaign to give a renewed focus and push to the UK’s work on SRHR. I hope that work will continue to be encouraged.
Two overarching themes cut across all this work towards SDG 5. First, increasing support for civil society organisations is vital. I hope the Government will continue to ensure that there is adequate funding and an enabling environment for these organisations to amplify the voices of women and girls and to advocate for their rights. I know the Minister will agree with me that CSOs are often on the front lines of addressing the needs of vulnerable populations, and that their contributions really are indispensable. Secondly, on the importance of data-driven policies, we need to prioritise the collection and use of disaggregated data to understand the specific impacts of climate change and conflict on women and girls. That data is essential for creating effective policies and interventions.
The Minister and I have regularly debated finance for overseas development. I do not expect him to make any commitments on whether the Chancellor will replicate the previous Chancellor’s billions towards ensuring that more of our overseas development aid is spent overseas. However, I hope that he will be able to say something about the future trajectory of ODA funding.
Finally, I have a question. In the days of DfID, we had a strong strategic vision for gender equality. The previous Government set out a new international women and girls strategy in 2023, which formed a key part of the cross-party White Paper steered by the previous Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell. Can the Minister give any detail about how the new Government will ensure that women and girls are truly put at the heart of everything they do across the department? As the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, says, we need to make sure that this is not just warm words. What structure, mechanisms and accountability will be put in place to ensure that this is achieved?
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for putting down this subject for debate and for his continuing advocacy for the SDGs. As he mentioned, the millennium development goals made significant progress by their end date of 2015, with the halving of extreme poverty. The sustainable development goals had the ambitious target of ending extreme poverty while leaving no one behind. It was not to be a matter of averages. There were 17 goals and ambitions within each; it was comprehensive.
The UK played a key role in the development of the SDGs. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, was one of the conveners, and Michael Anderson, from DfID, was the key person, turning the discussions and commitments into an agreement. At the time, the UK was meeting the UN commitment of 0.7% of GNI for development. It was part of the coalition agreement. The last piece of legislation that went through Parliament in the final days of the coalition put that into law. It was part of our soft power, and of the UK playing a global role.
What then happened? That commitment was abandoned, as we heard. Then, without warning or consultation, and clearly lacking awareness of what he was doing, damaging even the UK university sector, including the Jenner Institute at Oxford, Boris Johnson destroyed DfID, theoretically merging it with the FCO, despite their different aims and expertise. That merger has still not fully settled, but we have lost a lot of development expertise and lost our leading place on this in the world.
Where are we now, and where is the world in achieving those SDGs? As the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, pointed out, we are just a few years from 2030. The UN reports that escalating global conflicts and increasing climate-related crises have badly affected the world’s ability to achieve those SDGs.
We know that investment in development is not only right but in our interest. As Bill Gates wrote in the Times this week,
“we see every day … how events in one part of the world have ripple effects, whether that’s through food prices, migration, or the spread of a disease like mpox”.
As he rightly argues, assisting countries to develop lifts everyone. Think of the populist exploitation of migration and the division caused in western societies by this, let alone the benefit to all of us of growth in the global economy.
The UN puts the lack of progress, and even reversal in some areas, down to the pandemic, conflicts, climate shocks and economic turmoil. Climate change is surely the most fundamental of all these challenges. The UN’s Global Humanitarian Overview 2024 stated that climate-related disasters are rising sharply—we all know this. It noted that 2023 was the hottest year on record, with drought in the Horn of Africa, wildfires in Canada, floods in north Africa, Europe and China, and heatwaves across the world. It noted a significant increase in the number of displaced people as a result.
Climate change will increase threats through extreme weather, sea level rise and natural disasters, which are likely to result in mass migrations, social and economic disruption, hunger, the spread of disease, water and food insecurity, and conflict over land, water and other resources. The World Bank estimates that over 200 million people could be forced to move by 2050.
There is increasing awareness of the health threat of climate change. That is particularly so for older people, young children and vulnerable people, and, as we have heard, the risks increase for women and girls. The UNFPA notes that climate-related emergencies cause major disruptions in access to health services and life-saving commodity supply chains, including contraceptives. Additionally, it warns of displacement, resulting in an increased risk of gender-based violence and harmful practices, including child marriage. Heat also worsens maternal and neonatal health outcomes, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, just said.
Can the Minister spell out how developing countries facing the effects of climate change will be further assisted, and whether, in particular, the Government will increase funding to support women and girls, including supporting sexual and reproductive health and rights and combating gender-based violence, as well as looking at the insidious movement of right-wing organisations which are seeking to undermine in this area?
Children are particularly vulnerable, of course, due to climate change and conflict. Save the Children points out that children may not only face severe injury or death but are often deprived of their education, healthcare, family support networks and food. It reports that, globally, almost 800 million children are living in poverty and exposed to high climate risk—a situation magnified by rising conflict.
According to the World Food Programme, a quarter of a billion people are facing acute food insecurity or worse. Good nutrition is fundamental. The UK’s global nutrition budget was cut by 60% following the aid cuts in 2021, and yet malnutrition is the leading cause of death in children under five. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, used to rail against the previous Government on this. Could he update us on the actions he has now been able to take?
The Prime Minister recently addressed the UN General Assembly and emphasised the importance of conflict prevention and peacebuilding. He called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, peace initiatives in Sudan, and support for Ukraine. He pledged to restore the UK’s 0.7% development commitment. He pledged to meet net-zero targets by 2030, increase climate finance, and support global adaptation efforts. That no doubt sounds very familiar to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell.
Where is the reality in this? The conflict in the Middle East is intensifying further. The loss of life and hope in the region is likely to foster even more conflict, which is in no one’s interests. Can the Minister update us on the actions that the Government are taking? Conflict in Sudan and the Horn of Africa is causing untold human suffering. What action are the Government taking to increase aid to this area? The Government urgently need to return to 0.7% and to reduce the amount of ODA being spent on in-country asylum costs; currently, as we have heard, it is a third of the aid budget. When will this happen?
Ahead of the Autumn Budget, there are reports that the aid budget will fall; we hear depressing accounts from within the department as to plans that might need to be made. Can the Minister confirm that the figure will not fall but will in fact rise, as the Prime Minister seemed to pledge? Surely the Government must recognise that it is both right and in our interests to play a key role in development and meeting the SDGs. We heard the warm words from the Prime Minister at the UN, but they are not enough if there is no action behind them.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for introducing this debate.
In the UN’s 2024 report on progress towards the sustainable development goals, goal 2 on zero hunger was shown to be making the least progress of all. It is not that the world does not produce enough food to feed its growing population but that it does not produce it in the right place. Luckily, it is now well recognised that sending cheap food to countries with nutritional problems only undermines the local agricultural economy, meaning that farmers do not have the money to buy seeds and inputs for next year’s crop—thus the problem spirals downwards in the years to come.
Agricultural production in developing countries needs focus and a big shot in the arm that has so far been missing; that is why this goal is drifting away from us. As Bill Gates—I am the second person to quote him —said:
“If you care about the poorest, you care about agriculture. Investments in agriculture are the best weapons against hunger and poverty, and they have made life better for billions of people. The international … community needs to be more … focused to help poor farmers grow more”.
But it is not only international aid that is needed. The developing nations themselves must play their part. In 2014 the African Union’s Malabo declaration reconfirmed its Maputo commitment for each country to put 10% of its GDP into agriculture—but, so far, few countries have fulfilled that commitment.
It is not as though this has not been tried and tested. Vietnam used to be a big importer of rice, at great cost to its hard-pressed treasury. Then, over a decade or so, its Government put 10% to 15% of its GDP into agricultural development each year—irrigation schemes; crop storage; markets, both physical and virtual; roads to get supplies in and out of the countryside; and, above all, training. Vietnam is now the second-largest exporter of rice in the world, a fact that has kick-started a huge economic boom. As I say, it just needs focus.
I will focus on smallholder agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, where the current population is due to double by 2050. The lives of some 60% of the population depend on farming, and 65% of the farmers are women. Every woman farmer you meet who has learned to make money from her holding will spend it on educating her children, with education being the most important goal of all. The World Bank has said that money invested in agriculture in Africa brings three or four times the number of people out of poverty than money invested in other businesses. African agriculture needs investment and could bring huge rewards by kick-starting a much bigger economy.
Where is this investment needed? First, there is infrastructure—better mobile connectivity for weather reports, market reports and technical advice. You send a picture of your plant and are told what is wrong with it and how to fix it. We also need better roads for getting seeds and fertiliser in and harvested crops out. We need better power to process crops locally in order to avoid the huge post-harvest losses that are prevalent in Africa. Many countries in Africa do not have a national grid, so local solar power with some form of storage is the obvious answer. Local power will also help kids do their homework at night.
Then we need better management of water. Most sub-Saharan African countries actually get more rain than we do but, of course, African rains come all at once. So mini village reservoirs make sense. Also, Africa is full of aquifers, which are hardly tapped at all. Mankind in Africa uses only around 2% of its annual rainfall, compared with 40%-plus in parts of Asia, so there is a lot of slack here. We could quadruple the output of many farms by helping farmers borrow money to put into communal irrigation schemes.
Another need is better security of tenure on land. DfID started doing good work in this area, but I am not sure where that programme has got to in the FCDO; maybe the Minister can let us know. The point is that without security of tenure, it is difficult to invest. Why would you spend four years of your income on drilling a bore-hole when you could then easily lose your land? It does not have to be vacant possession—it can be through guaranteed-term tenancies —but it has to be done.
Furthermore, why would you borrow money if you can get only 45% interest rates—that is, if the bank will lend you any money at all? Banks do not normally lend to farmers unless they have other collateral somewhere else, such as a town house, but it makes no sense to borrow money at 45% interest rates. Donors such as the UK should guarantee loans to farmers at interest rates of less than 10%. Various UN pilot schemes in this area have worked well, and farmers are now proven to be reliable borrowers.
That brings me to the greatest need for African agriculture: knowledge. We must invest in agricultural training colleges, which have to be open to women. We must ensure that women farmers can get training on their farms, bearing in mind that female ownership of land is still frowned upon in some countries. We must encourage the private sector to assist in training, particularly for existing farmers.
There are two ways of improving skills in the existing workforce: push and pull. Push is when you go to a village and train farmers on the ground, but it is slow work and quite hard to scale up—although you can train a chosen farmer in each village then get her to train, say, 100 others. It is a sort of pyramid selling of agricultural skills. The other—and, I think, better—way is what I call pull. You encourage a private company, maybe with a subsidy or a guarantee or two, to invest in some form of local processing. It then trains farmers to produce a given crop specifically for it, so the farmer has a guaranteed market.
As an example of the latter, a few years ago I visited a Diageo brewery in Addis. It had started training farmers to grow the barley it needed to make its beer. It started with as few as 100 farmers; when I visited, it had some 3,000 and was intending to expand to between 15,000 and 20,000. Those farmers were making money and, of course, educating their children, which is, as I said, the most important goal of all.
In conclusion, these are my two main messages: first, get all Governments to wake up and recognise the opportunities that agriculture brings, while working hard to persuade all African Governments to put 10% of their GDP into agriculture and its infrastructure, as they have already promised; and, secondly, we all need to put more money into agricultural training for the women farmers of Africa. There is so much more to be done, but the rewards are huge.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for securing this debate in advance of the Budget, which is due to be delivered in a fortnight’s time. Undoubtedly, that Budget will involve difficult decisions and sacrifices. It is easy to lose sight of how very fortunate we are as a nation when compared with many others around the world.
As noble Lords have mentioned, the UN has warned that progress towards the sustainable development goals has ground to a halt and in some cases been reversed. Over the last year, the prospect of achieving the 16th sustainable development goal of
“peaceful and inclusive societies”
for sustainable development, and
“access to justice for all”
has seemed even further out of reach as war in the Middle East has become broader and deeper, and multiple conflicts in Africa have also worsened.
With religious differences front and centre of the conflict in the Middle East, as with many others around the world, it may seem at first glance that religion is an obstacle to achieving the sustainable development goals. I have been told this quite often by those who work in development and peacekeeping. However, because of the potential for faith to divide, it is especially important for us to support the efforts of faith groups around the world who seek peace and reconciliation, in order truly to see sustainable development.
There are examples of such initiatives all around the world, from Northern Ireland to Nigeria, advocating for peace, de-escalating tensions and healing the wounds left by conflict, so that communities can experience lasting peace. For instance, the South Sudan Council of Churches has played a crucial role in peacebuilding efforts since the outbreak of civil war, serving as a mediator, brokering ceasefires and peace agreements, and providing humanitarian aid and many other things, leading to reconciliation at high level and at grass roots, although there is a long way still to go. In countries such as Nigeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, interfaith networks help foster understanding between different religious groups, bringing people of different faiths together to work for a common understanding and to stop conflicts spiralling out of control.
As anyone who has been involved in conflict resolution and reconciliation work will know, these efforts, as valuable and precious as they are, are not always popular and their fruits can be fragile. The new Government have outlined their commitment to reconnecting Britain, strengthening our reputation on the international stage and our moral leadership in humanitarian crises. I would be interested to hear what they are planning from the White Paper that was published last year. As they develop their own foreign policy, I urge them to champion and invest in locally led interfaith and reconciliation programmes at home and abroad. This is because, quite simply, Britain is connected. As we saw so clearly in the summer, our communities are not insulated from the impact of conflicts elsewhere in the world. Promoting peace and reconciliation across religious difference in other countries can help to make the UK a safer and more cohesive society, just as supporting interfaith efforts here in Britain can in turn serve as a model and inspiration for others.
This I know is an ambitious project, but one that would be markedly more feasible with proper use of our overseas development aid budget, as I think every speaker has mentioned so far. So, like many other noble Lords, I would like to see it restored to 0.7% of gross national income. The Government have suggested that they will do so when fiscal circumstances allow. That is to miss the point of setting the budget as a percentage of GNI—which means that we spend more when our economy is doing better and less when it is under greater strain. Nevertheless, in the meantime I urge the Government to commit to moving their spending on housing asylum seekers and refugees from the overseas development aid budget to the Home Office, and spending ODA where it is most needed, which is overseas, as the name implies.
I conclude with the thought that conflict has the potential to reverse the progress made across all the sustainable development goals. So I urge this Government to be courageous in standing with and resourcing those seeking peace and reconciliation, even where it seems most hopeless.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord McConnell for securing this debate, and for his long-standing and determined campaign to keep these goals at the forefront of our attention in this House. Today’s debate is another opportunity to focus on such vital issues.
We have debated challenges to achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals before, but, in the present climate, these seem particularly daunting. It is clear that everybody who has spoken in this debate shares my alarm at the latest UN report, which said that progress towards achieving the SDGs has “ground to a halt”. It is truly shocking that, in 2022, an additional 23 million people were in extreme poverty and over 100 million more suffered from hunger compared with 2019; and it is startling that the Covid-19 pandemic has undone nearly 10 years of progress on life expectancy.
I will focus my brief remarks on those who are particularly affected by multiple overlapping crises. They are most affected because these crises exacerbate pre-existing inequalities. When the number of people in poverty rises, when food security is weakened, and when income and wealth inequality increase, it is the most vulnerable groups in developing countries, such as women and children, who are hit hardest. Escalating conflicts are also having an appalling impact. In 2023, four in 10 civilians killed in conflicts were women and three in 10 were children.
Women and children are most susceptible to the impact of crises in healthcare and education. In its response to the UN report, UNICEF reminds us:
“Climate change, poverty, deepening inequalities and intensifying conflict are cutting children off from their chance to thrive”.
It warns that, if we do not act now, with just six years left to reach the sustainable development goals,
“we risk losing millions of lives to easily preventable causes like disease, poor nutrition and unsafe environments”.
Inequalities in access to health treatment, particularly vaccines, have also deepened in the current climate, with huge impact on life chances. While manufacturing capacity has increased worldwide, it remains highly concentrated. This risks shortages as well as insecurity in regional supply, made more vulnerable by escalating conflicts.
Education is a proven route out of extreme poverty. Children living through political instability, conflict or natural disaster are also more likely to be cut off from schooling, as are those with disabilities or from ethnic minorities. Escalating conflicts, disasters and public health emergencies mean that more children than ever are not in school and not learning. The UN report has shown that many countries have recorded declines in maths and reading skills—the building blocks of that route to increased prosperity.
Alongside this, the UN report says simply:
“Progress towards gender equality remains disappointing”.
It notes that more than half of the 120 countries it surveyed
“lack laws prohibiting direct and indirect discrimination against women”.
In this area I particularly recommend the work of Womankind Worldwide, the international organisation that funds and works with partners and women’s rights groups across the world to end gender inequality. In response to how the pandemic, the climate emergency and escalating conflicts are increasing inequalities across the globe, it is working to increase women’s economic rights and strengthen women’s participation and leadership in public life.
As we have heard, more than a third of the 17 targets for the SDGs have stalled or are in reverse, while not quite half are showing minimal or moderate progress. I echo the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, about the impact of conflict on women and girls. The UN report said that progress on all SDGs is reliant on peace and preventing violent conflicts. Yet, as my noble friend Lord McConnell said, the number of conflicts in the world is at its highest since the end of the Second World War. It is predicted that, by 2030, nearly 60% of the world’s extreme poor will live in countries affected by conflict, fragility and violence. Our global track record of bringing peace and prosperity to our people and our planet is poor. With six years to go, we must all do better.
The UN SDG report makes clear the need for stronger and more effective international co-operation to maximise progress. It calls for reform of
“outdated, dysfunctional and unfair international financial architecture to encourage greater investment in the SDGs”.
I strongly support this Government’s commitment to rebuilding Britain’s reputation on international development and to restoring development spending. Notwithstanding the crucial rider of this happening as soon as fiscal circumstances allow, I urge the Government to make their promised new approach a priority and to focus on the SDGs. Can my noble friend the Minister say whether we can expect a timeline for restoring ODA funding to 0.7%? Can he give us any indication of whether any new approach will include reducing the amount of ODA currently spent on in-country refugee costs? I echo here the concerns of many others in this debate.
The Prime Minister’s speech at the recent UN General Assembly was a welcome reinforcement of the UK’s commitment to the SDGs, but it is clear that achieving the SDGs, both here and internationally, will be possible only with strong financial commitment. We need to reaffirm that commitment urgently.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for securing this debate. It is a take-note debate on conflict, extreme poverty and climate-related emergencies and their impact on the sustainable development goals. My speech is in the nature of questions to the Minister about the action the Government are planning in two specific areas where they could clearly take action.
I begin with what is happening right now in Nigeria, Mali, Niger and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where floods have driven nearly 1 million people from their homes and killed more than 1,400 people. Save the Children tells us that around 10 million children in the region are being kept out of their homes. Mali has delayed the start of the school year for a month because so many people are sheltering in schools. In Chad, every province has flooded—and this is a country where more than 40% of the population lives in poverty and which is home to more than 2 million refugees. Those who question Britain’s contribution in taking refugees might like to consider that figure. These floods are, in part, a consequence of a natural weather cycle, but they are undoubtedly worsened by the climate emergency.
What does this actually mean at the human level? In the capital of Mali, Bamako, Reuters spoke to a grandmother, Iya Kobla. Her fishing village has been destroyed and many of the mud homes have been swept away. She told Reuters:
“We lost everything and now my grandchildren are all sick”.
Those grandchildren are sleeping on makeshift beds in the very school rooms where children should be learning.
Lest it be thought that this is happening in just one continent, in Latin America we have had a year of record heat, floods and drought, as the World Meteorological Organization reports. Those countries have suffered tens of thousands of climate-related deaths in the past year, at least $21 billion-worth of economic damage and “the greatest calorific loss” of any region. It has to be noted that nearly all the people suffering, people like Mrs Kobla, have done nothing to cause the climate emergency.
This brings up the context of loss and damage in COP climate talks. This is supposed to be compensation from those causing the damage to those who are mostly suffering from it. COP 29, which is fast approaching, is being touted as the climate finance COP, yet the Heinrich Böll Foundation reports that rich countries are fighting the inclusion of loss and damage as a thematic focus of climate funding in those talks. Can the Minister assure me that the Government support the inclusion of loss and damage as a thematic focus? What other plans do the Government have to advance the loss and damage agenda within COP and to deliver the funds that are so urgently needed?
I move on to my second theme. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, spoke about business stepping up to support the sustainable development goals, and said that the City of London can make a real difference. I agree with that: it can make a real difference by cleaning up the rampant corruption that is robbing huge funds from the global South. The robbing of the global South that began centuries ago continues apace. I cite former Government Minister Andrew Mitchell, who was the Deputy Foreign Secretary. In May this year, he acknowledged that 40% of the world’s dirty money flows through the City of London and the British Crown dependencies. According to IMF figures, 5% of global GDP is lost to corruption.
I am particularly driven to this theme by a meeting this week of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax. The topic of the session was Bangladesh and the return of stolen assets. We heard from Professor Mushtaq Khan from SOAS that Bangladesh has lost an estimated $50 billion to $100 billion. We heard from the central bank of Bangladesh how desperate it is to recover this money and how difficult it is expected to be. We heard very directly from Al Jazeera journalists how that money has flowed into this city, right here, right now.
It is not that people are not trying to do something about this. I note that a group of anti-corruption NGOs wrote to the Foreign Secretary on 3 September with three key recommendations: a surge in resources for the National Crime Agency’s international corruption unit to allow it to prioritise the urgent work in Bangladesh and elsewhere; greater external help for the interim Government of Bangladesh to allow them to identify stolen assets; and collaboration with key allies of the UK to identify targets for potential sanctions and visa bans. Susan Hawley, the executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, said:
“The UK really needs to put its money where its mouth is”.
In response to that NGO letter, a letter has been released from Catherine West, the Minister for the Indo-Pacific, dated 10 September. It listed all the existing organisations and structures that have been in place for many years and that have not stopped this rampant pillaging of the assets of Bangladesh. It concludes:
“We share your concern about the need to support Bangladesh. We will continue to work with the interim government in Bangladesh on their specific requirements including working with civil society, political parties and international partners”.
My direct question to the Minister is this: what are the Government actually going to do about this stolen money?
I need to tie together the two issues I have raised. Bangladesh has a population of 161 million people. It is the eighth most populous country in the world and it is acutely vulnerable to the climate emergency. Tropical cyclones now cost Bangladesh an average of $1 billion a year. Sea rise means that saline intrusion is affecting the drinking water and irrigation water of 20 million people, who are frequently forced to drink unsafe surface water as a result. One projection from the World Meteorological Organization suggests that one in seven people in Bangladesh could be displaced by the climate emergency by 2050.
But, of course, Bangladesh also needs power; it needs renewable energy resources. A 2018 study from Frontiers in Energy Research looked at
“the mean capital cost of a power plant in Bangladesh”,
which was
“twice … that of the global average”.
Bangladesh desperately needs investment. It needs support. It needs us to stop robbing it—to return the money that has been stolen through the City of London and is being held right around where we stand today.
Let us deliver possibility for the people of Bangladesh and the people of the world. This means not just aid, nor just loss and damage finance; it very much means a transformation of our own society.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, the debate we are having today on the UN sustainable development goals is, if anything, overdue, so the initiative by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, is doubly welcome. The hard fact is that the mid-term review of progress towards the 2030 sustainable development goals showed as much regress as progress. We in this country bear some responsibility for that, as we squeezed our overseas aid budget, cut back on our contributions to multilateral development programmes and diverted huge sums of development aid to financing Ukrainian refugees in this country. This lamentable performance was not without its cost to us in terms of waning influence in the global South. If we ignore its priorities, why should it pay much attention to ours?
Where does remedial action begin? Clearly it begins, if it does not end, with finding more overall resources for overseas aid to developing countries. Getting back to our legal obligation of 0.7% of gross national income will not be easy or quick, but it needs to start now. The Budget at the end of this month surely needs to contain some modest first steps in that direction. Let us hope it will, otherwise our credibility will be hard to sustain.
A key priority among the sustainable development goals must surely be climate change, both what we do in this country and what we do overseas through our aid programme. It would surely be better to move away from the annual wrangles at COP meetings over the global figures for developing countries to more practical and precise programmes which will help developing countries face up to a range of challenges for whose origins, as other speakers have said, they were not responsible. There should be more resources for those developing countries such as Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil and others whose action to check climate change could make a real difference; some linkage between relief for the heavily indebted countries and their action against climate change; and better ways of judging right across the board how well every country in the UN is carrying out the obligations it has freely entered into.
Then there is world health. This is now risking neglect as Covid fades into the rearview mirror, but do not doubt that there will be another global pandemic soon enough. We need to be able to spot it and take remedial action quicker than we did with Covid, and to find more equitable ways to distribute vaccines than we did on that occasion. Much will be riding on next year’s negotiations for a pandemic convention. What are the Government’s plans for that event?
Trade policy too is returning to the development agenda, after a period when freer and fairer trade worldwide was the order of the day and brought much benefit. Now, protectionism is on the rise, and we should have no illusions: if the sort of tariffs being touted by Donald Trump come into being and are replicated by other major trading nations—as was, lamentably, the case in the 1930s—then the damage to the prospects of developing countries will be real and profound. That disastrous precedent needs to be avoided if the SDGs are not to take another heavy hit.
The issues I have identified already make up a daunting agenda. Others in this debate will be added and will be every bit as important. Ducking that agenda would be a futile course, the consequences of which we would all suffer. The UK, working with other like-minded countries, has a modest capacity to make a real, positive difference, and it is in our interest so to do.
Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)
My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for this important debate, in particular for focusing on the human experience at the end of his remarks. I too will tell a story.
Like many other noble Baronesses, I am sure, I somewhat dread International Women’s Day—it feels like a tyranny for busy women to be even busier for a day—so this year, I decided to do something completely different: I visited Kakuma, a refugee camp in northern Kenya, as an ambassador and patron of a charity, iamtheCODE. Imagine my surprise as I walked into a metal hut in the middle of the camp, where maybe 150 girls were studying artificial intelligence on laptops, with the sustainable development goals written on the walls as the reason why they should be learning and being educated. I felt some optimism as these young women—completely unaware of the situation they were really up against—bounced around, danced for me and gave me so much reason to believe that they were going to be able to create the dynamics of change in their very tough environment.
I do not know how many noble Lords might know Kakuma, but it is a visual representation of why the sustainable development goals and, in fact—I say this to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell—this debate are so important. It sits beside Sudan; you can practically see people leaving that area because of the conflict they face in the hideous landscape behind them. There is no water, because the largest river that had run beside the camp for the past decade has now dried up. There is extreme poverty in the camp but, as always, extreme entrepreneurship taking place alongside it. There are these remarkable attempts at education, with charities delivering extraordinary services in the most difficult circumstances. I feel very lucky to have seen this up close and to have really appreciated so many of the goals face-to-face: SDG 4 on education; SDG 1 about poverty, which has been mentioned; SDG5 on women and girls’ inequality; and SDG 9 about infrastructure. I will make my first remarks on the latter.
I have worked in the world of technology for far too long, but even I find it hard to keep up with the pace of change, which we have frequently heard about in this Chamber over the last two or three years. When I look at the goals, I have a fear and anxiety that they do not adequately reflect the modern world in which we live. They do not adequately put technology and digital skills, and the pace of change in AI, at the heart of how we drive forward change. I would be very interested in the Minister’s response on how the UK can continue to modernise the SDGs and make sure that they really are fit for purpose, particularly against a backdrop of knowing that we are not achieving so many of them effectively. There is no explicit mention of digital skills, AI, data or many of the things that we know will be important to ensure that people living in those most difficult of circumstances have the skills and capacity to help in their local lives.
Not only that, but we also know that digital access can be a transforming technology for people. I saw those girls, who had no fixed status and often no families and will probably never leave the camp, believe that they had a future and the capacity to work because they were learning coding skills. I know I probably have a natural bent towards some of this stuff, but I know that everybody here would have been amazed at their resilience and optimism that they could create a career and future, and earn money, because of the opportunities that they were being given. Yet I do not see this adequately reflected in some of the frameworks around the SDGs. It will be so important to put data and understanding at the heart of them but also to continue to fight to close that digital divide, because it really impacts on all the other parts of the puzzle and the whole ecosystem.
One girl I met as I was leaving, who was a particularly brilliant dancer, told me that she wanted to become a climate activist. She said that she was going to use her coding skills to build awareness and to build apps to help people see what was happening to the local water supply, in order to be able to directly show—particularly to the corporate sponsors that were helping in the camp and with iamtheCODE and the work it does—the exact impact and devastation of the drought and the meteorological changes happening around her. I have absolutely no doubt that she will go some way towards doing this, but this relied on her being given this opportunity with technology. So my first question for the Minister is, how will we make sure that the SDGs really reflect the modern world we live in?
My second point is on the role of business. I am happy that the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, feels so optimistic that more progress has been made in business than in government. To some degree this is true. At this point, I declare my many interests, particularly as president of the British Chambers of Commerce but also as a member of the multiple boards from which I see this particular aspect of the SDGs. There is no doubt that in every boardroom I have ever sat in over the last 10 years, the SDGs have at least been mentioned, or sustainability goals are now at the heart of every board priority. We have many British success stories. I particularly highlight Belu Water—a member of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. I am sure many noble Peers know this company. It has a deep commitment to many of the SDGs—100% of its net profits go towards WaterAid and it does extremely interesting things with recycling its bottles. With such an overtly deep commitment to the sustainable development goals, it is an entrepreneurial local business that we in the UK should be proud of.
There are many other brilliant examples of British success, as I am sure all noble Lords would agree. However, I have an anxiety. As many noble Lords are aware—it has been vaguely referenced in the debate already—there is a move to undermine many of the ways businesses see ESG. That is perhaps the most obvious expression of some of the SDGs and the tangible way that both institutional investors and companies are looking at how to benchmark and deliver on commitments.
ESG did not exist a couple of decades ago. That is progress, and yet, when I think about US institutional investors in particular, there is a move to somewhat undermine its competence and importance and to put too many of the important ESG metrics in the camp of “wokeness”, or just diversity and inclusion gone crazy. This is wrong and dangerous—we need business and institutional investors looking at public companies to continue to apply high standards to companies and to invest based on their clarity of purpose in delivering on ESG metrics. I hope that this somewhat knee-jerk and unpleasant reaction to some of the DEI initiatives over the last decade does not take root here in the UK, and that we hold financial institutions, too, to a high standard. We know that it is that cycle that will deliver the change already mentioned in today’s debate.
I finish by asking the Minister those two questions. How will we make sure that we continue to put the latest thinking about technology at the heart of SDGs? How will we make sure that businesses have the necessary, understandable and not too complex frameworks to continue to deliver on the targets towards which we have made so much progress over the last decade?
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox; her points about technology are well made. I thank too the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for giving us the chance to have this debate. My only concern is that when we have these debates, it is the same group of people who are debating. It is unfortunate that the rest of the Chamber does not realise how important and central this is. It is not a peripheral issue, and yet I am afraid that too many of our colleagues regard it as such.
Nobody should underestimate the damage done in the last few years to the UK’s global reputation and the impact and influence we have. Those of us who travel—most of us do—have met people who have told us how they looked on in astonishment at our clumsy, bad-tempered exit from the EU, our threats to tear up international treaties, our disregard of international and domestic law, our slashing of our world-class international development assistance.
Even with Covid, we developed the vaccines, but did we share them with the developing world, as we had indicated we would? No, we did not. Unless we are honest about what we have done to our reputation, it will be difficult to start the process of rebuilding it.
Boris Johnson’s destruction of DfID and slashing of the aid budget, after promising to do neither, shocked our partners and opened the door for others to move in to the space we have vacated. The point has already been made that the cut was a lot worse than just going from 0.7% to 0.5%. That was bad enough, but the £4.273 billion paid domestically, which should be going to development abroad, as the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, has said, has reduced the budget in practical terms to some 0.3%, not 0.5%.
I acknowledge that at the end of the last government, Rishi Sunak tried to do some rebuilding by putting the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and Andrew Mitchell back in place. The rot was stopped at that point. Nevertheless, we must recognise that we have a lot of work to do if we are going to get back to where we were.
I had the privilege to chair the International Development Committee during the period when the UK delivered 0.7%. Not only did we set an example and encourage others to follow, but the quality of what we did was world class. It was untied to British commercial interests and focused on poverty reduction. We led the world in programmes empowering women and girls, delivering on education and health, and rolling out vaccines. What we are doing now is a shadow of what we were. I am glad that spending on Africa and Asia is beginning to recover, but it is from a much lower base.
I was recently told that the UK’s offer in many countries, once ranked as the best in the world and on a par with the Americans and the World Bank, is roughly equivalent to Sweden’s. No disrespect to the Swedes, who have always been generous with aid, but our population is more than five times Sweden’s, and yet we are delivering only at that level.
The nub of what I have to say is a political point. As the UK has diminished its reputation and influence, China and Russia have stepped in aggressively. They have moved in offering billions of conspicuously spent dollars of assistance with few questions asked, and certainly not focusing on poverty reduction. Until the demise of its founder, the Wagner Group operated as semi-licensed mercenaries of the Kremlin across Africa. It has now morphed into a state agency called Africa Corps. It is offering billions to acquire mineral rights and securing political support for Russia in the United Nations.
This is accompanied by a massive incursion into acquiring or developing media outlets pouring out propaganda against the democratic world. The BBC World Service, which is being forced to cut back because of budget constraints, estimates that Russia and China are between them spending between $4 billion and $8 billion a year acquiring or developing media assets across the global South. When the BBC, as part of its cuts, gave up its presence in Lebanon, Russia immediately picked up the frequency it vacated. These outlets are not promoting freedom, human rights and pluralism but denouncing ex-colonial powers such as Britain as unreliable exploiters, despite the irony of their own mercantilist expansion. Unfortunately, that propaganda has traction when countries look at the way we have behaved in the last few years.
Where are those who looked, and look, to us for leadership to turn in the light of this decline? How can we ensure, for example, that the Commonwealth still upholds the rule of law? I suggest to the Minister—I do not think I am speaking to closed ears—that these are immediate and urgent challenges for the Government if we are to start rebuilding the profile. We had it; we need to have it again.
I appreciate that a global impact review is taking place, but we need to take urgent action now and rebuild the cross-party consensus that sustained what was delivered and ensured that people were able to see that the politicians and the people were as one. It is too easy to use cheap comments such as “cash machines in the sky”—an ignorant and deeply offensive comment by Boris Johnson.
To the detractors of aid, I say that reducing poverty, malnutrition and hunger and providing clean water and sanitation are not only the right things to do but make a safer world and improve the chances of getting people in countries to share values. Narrow selfish nationalism always diminishes us. When they have been given the opportunity, the majority of British people have always shown strong support for compassion at home and abroad. The problem with the argument that charity begins at home is, as we all know, that it stays at home.
I have just visited Zambia, and I saw some concern that our presence was visibly reduced. Everywhere I went people said, “Where are you? What has happened to you? Where have you gone? Are you coming back?” I think I could find that in many countries across Africa. But I did see one or two quite encouraging things. I declare an interest as an adviser to a company called DAI. I was looking at some of the projects it is delivering on behalf of USAID. I also saw a couple of other organisations that I have a personal connection with. I chair a charity called Water Unite, which provides money to companies in-country to build sustainable provision of water and sanitation, and I went to a company called Jibu, a franchise operation which is providing clean water to businesses and individuals at an affordable and therefore sustainable level. Its ambition is to have a franchise operating in every part of Zambia. It is operating across east Africa. I saw a different Zambia- registered company, inspired by British interest, delivering investment in renewable energy by linking it to markets and ensuring therefore that although there is room for some aid in development, actual markets and the private sector can unlock real practicalities.
The Liberal Democrats have stated that we would commit to 0.7% immediately and would also re-establish DfID. I know that the Government are not going to do that, but I echo what everyone else has said, which is that the Government have made a commitment that they are going to do it. We have a Budget coming up. We have to see that progress is started in this Budget. I hope that the rumours suggesting not only that that will not happen but that the aid budget might be further cut will prove to be unfounded. It would be a terrible mistake if the Government went down that route.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend. As ever, he did what I expected him to do and covered the breadth of this subject with intensity but also personal knowledge and understanding that I have a lot of respect and time for, and he knows that.
Since so many other noble Lords have talked about the more general issues, I want to speak about a particular issue. Some noble Lords may say, “She’s at it again”. I want to speak about what the SDGs say about the role of volunteering in delivering outcomes. We rarely talk about it. We have incredibly good experience of and knowledge about it, but we have sort of abandoned it, and we need to get back to it.
Noble Lords have heard this from me before if they have been in debates such as this one, but I value enormously the role that Voluntary Service Overseas has played in my life and recognise that it has had the same effect on many other people’s lives. I went to Kenya to teach from 1967 to 1969. That was a long time ago, but it changed my life. Since I came back, I have never let go of keeping in touch with VSO, pursuing its objectives and understanding the changes in how volunteering now works. I was involved in its governance for over 10 years and have seen that volunteering is very different from when I did it all those years ago. It is now seen and recognised across the world as a very important means of developing objectives in international development.
I am sure noble Lords know that there is now a global volunteering standard. More than 60 organisations around the world have signed up to it, including the African Union. I went to Ethiopia after the signing of the SDGs and met the AU. We signed a memorandum of understanding between VSO and the African Union to develop national volunteering around Africa. VSO now works through joining together international volunteers, who usually come from here, with national volunteers who are volunteering in their own country. Frequently, they will be moved to another part of that country so that they learn a bit more about their country, in Kenya often working with a different tribe in the locality and so on. This means that high numbers of young people in and around Africa, as well as in Asian countries, have developed skills in leadership, working together and going across borders of traditional ways of doing things and have been able to participate with international volunteers, particularly young people, in tackling climate change and in peace and reconciliation at a very local level. They live in the local community and work with the local people and build their resilience and knowledge and understanding of how to tackle these issues.
I therefore agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Lane- Fox, that we see the inspirational and challenging things that are happening that local people are pursuing and that we are letting go. We gave up the youth volunteering programme during Covid, and I understand why, but we lost a raft of people who knew what to do and how to do it. I know that there are now thoughts in the FCDO about how we return to that, and I urge the Government to get on top of that and look at it much more carefully.
VSO is doing some incredible work on the border of Sudan and Ethiopia and in the Philippines on peace and reconciliation and on how local people can think about the things that will keep their community going, whatever is happening, and how they do that. Some of the work is remarkable and, as I say, inspiring. It is also working on issues around women and girls, particularly what is happening to them in conflict, and on climate change. On climate change, a lot of that is about how you develop resilience at a local level to make sure that a flood can be handled in a different way and the way that other climate change effects can be dealt with in the local community. This is what international development is all about, and it is also the way that many young people in this country have learned about the rest of the world and about how they can work in the rest of the world and get an enormous amount out of it themselves in terms of learning, skills and future opportunities.
There is someone here who did a short programme with the International Citizen Service. She came back and said, “I’ve totally changed my life aspirations and what I was going to do”; she is now working here in the CPA. We can change people’s views of what is going on in the developing world and the global South, if we get more involved and enable more young people, in particular, to get involved in volunteering.
I urge the Government on this. I know how tricky it is, but I have ideas for them which would mean that the new youth volunteering programme would cost a lot less than what the previous Government were working on when they left office. It can be done and I am sure that, even in times of difficulties, we can do it. I hope that the Government will take the opportunity to do that as quickly as possible.
Lord St John of Bletso (CB)
My Lords, I join the thanks to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for introducing this topical debate. I wish to focus my few remarks on the impact that conflict, extreme poverty and climate-related emergencies have had in Africa.
We are all cognisant of the horrendous crisis in Sudan—we had a very moving debate here just a few weeks ago—as well as the recent damage to infrastructure in Sudan, such as the dams in that country, due to widespread flooding and the ongoing conflict that has escalated the cholera pandemic. In the Horn of Africa, five consecutive failed wet seasons have left millions unable to grow crops and sustain livelihoods, putting them at risk of extreme hunger. Across Africa as a continent, a staggering 868 million people today face moderate to severe food insecurity.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, spoke powerfully on the impacts of climate change in Africa. I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington that we need to provide much more investment in agriculture. As he mentioned, 60% of those in most countries in southern Africa depend on farming for their livelihoods and, sadly, those suffering most are women and children. Africa contributes 3% to 4% of global carbon emissions but experiences about 25% of the observed global climate change damage.
Of the 17 SDGs, I wish to focus on goals 13 and 16, specifically on what action can be taken to combat climate change and its impacts, as well as what measures can be taken to promote conflict resolution. Sadly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, mentioned, the progress of the SDGs is severely off track. This pertains particularly in Africa. We continue to see the forcible displacement of people and, of course, increased resource scarcity.
I want to talk not just about the challenges; in a debate such as this it is important to look at future solutions. There have been countless studies on the positive benefits of promoting a green economy by creating jobs, growth and thereby stability. Africa has the potential to become a trailblazer for renewable energy solutions, both powering local communities and attracting foreign investment from wealthier nations such as the United Kingdom. Fossil fuel subsidies are estimated at $7 trillion per year. This massively outweighs subsidies for the green economy. Balancing these subsidies towards renewable energy and green technologies is crucial for Africa to advance sustainable development and address climate change effectively.
Technology can also address many of the pain points in Africa. As my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox said very powerfully, we need to focus on promoting digital skills. Some 57% of the adult population remain unbanked, without access to traditional financial services. Can the Minister elaborate on what measures are being promoted to increase access to microfinance to support small and medium-sized businesses across the continent? The financial inclusion landscape is certainly improving, with the rise in mobile banking and fintech solutions, and more access to affordable broadband thanks to Starlink, but a lot more can and should be done to improve the imbalance.
The ongoing conflicts in Africa have naturally had a massive detrimental impact on economic growth and sustainability, destabilising markets and thereby foreign investment. Conflicts, extreme poverty and climate- related emergencies are all interlinked. Roughly 60% of Africa’s population is under the age of 25. This youthful demographic should be a force for good, with its potential for increased growth. There should be more investment in the promotion of young entrepreneurs who can stimulate the economies of the future.
In conclusion, there is a long-term challenge but long- term challenges require long-term, systematic solutions. It is inevitable that there will be many more climate-related disasters and instability in Africa in the foreseeable future; the green economy must be prioritised to counterbalance this. I sincerely hope that the Minister, in winding up, can elaborate on what measures are being taken to promote peace summits, as well as addressing the financial measures that are planned to promote sustainable economic development in the continent.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, my speech is about world poverty today and its historical root causes. According to the World Bank, nearly 10% of the global population—approximately 700 million people—live in extreme poverty, defined as surviving on less than $2 a day. This staggering statistic is not merely a number but a scar on humanity. Such levels of poverty represent lives constrained and destroyed by historical inequalities, systemic exploitation, conflict, weak governance, environmental destruction and economic mismanagement.
The consequences of poverty are severe and far reaching for us all. For those directly affected it leads to poor health outcomes, low life expectancy, limited educational opportunities and, ultimately, political instability and conflict. Such conflicts create vicious circles. They lead to violence and displacement, destroy infrastructure, precipitate economic collapse and create refugee crises. This all deepens poverty. Although we have not witnessed large-scale wars since the Second World War, we have seen a troubling rise in small regional conflicts. These conflicts are predominantly internal, manifesting as civil wars, ethnic strife, terrorism and religious divisions.
We all agree that there are complex factors at play, but we must recognise the root causes of competition over resources and colonial legacies that disregarded geographic, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and tribal realities. The truth is that colonial rule has left deep scars and given rise to economic, political and cultural challenges that continue to challenge former colonies. A glance at the world map today reveals that most extreme poverty is concentrated in regions that were subjected to European colonial rule for centuries. This is the central point of my argument.
Colonial powers often employed divide and rule strategies, fostering divisions among local populations to suppress potential resistance. This left a legacy of ethnic and sectarian conflict. In some areas, resistance to colonial rule resulted in prolonged war, further entrenching a cycle of violence and militarisation that has fed into post-colonial conflicts.
Colonialism was also concerned with the extraction of wealth. It is a fact that western nations extracted vast resources from these regions, enriching their own economies while leaving poor infrastructure that hindered recovery. The authoritarian rules of colonial governance meant that, when these powers departed, newly formed states inherited a fragile and dictatorial structure, often leading to military coups and continued instability. It is also true that colonial rulers rarely invested in local institutions, leaving independent states ill-equipped to manage complex challenges of governance. This neglect contributed to weak states marked by corruption and inadequate public services.
Many newly independent nations emerged burdened with heavy debts and economic structures that were designed to benefit their former colonisers. Today we see many developing countries trapped in a cycle of debt, relying on international institutions for survival. Indeed, some scholars argue that colonialism never ended and that modern multinational corporations perpetuate a form of economic neocolonialism, exploiting resources in former colonies. The economic system crafted by the colonial powers favoured their industries and exports even after their departure. After the Second World War, many newly independent states became pawns in the Cold War, caught in a geopolitical struggle between the Soviet Union and the West. This further prolonged instability and hindered the development of functional states.
The legacies of colonialism have left indelible marks in many regions of the world. The economic exploitation, artificial boundaries, political instability and social fragmentation established during colonial rule continue to shape the world. If we are serious about tackling global poverty and climate disaster, we must face up to these persistent legacies and work together to map a new course for all humanity.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I declare that I voluntarily chair the UK board of Search for Common Ground, which is a global peacebuilding charity delivering programmes supported by the UK Government. I am also an associate of Global Partners Governance, which focuses on strengthening representative institutions linked with sustainable development goal 17.
As others have, I commend the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for securing this very important debate and for his tireless work in the all-party parliamentary group. Most recently, very early yesterday morning we had a session with Minister Dodds, who spoke with great passion about the Government’s commitment to the SDGs. This is an important debate. The SDGs were not in the Labour manifesto, so it is a good opportunity, early in the new Government’s term, for the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, to outline the Government’s thinking on how they will be going forward, and to report back on the very valuable work he did at the United Nations in recent weeks.
My noble friend Lord Bruce commented on the number of speakers in this debate. I note that the next debate on VAT for private schools has more speakers than a debate on global poverty, but “quality rather than quantity” could perhaps be said of this debate. That debate is sandwiched by another very important debate this afternoon, regarding Ethiopia. So this is a good day for us to consider not only the global challenges, which have been discussed, but what the UK’s response should be.
My noble friend Lord Bruce also explained why it is important. It is in the strategic interests of the United Kingdom to restore our scale and reputation of partnership programming. The very essence of a liberal, rules-based international order, compared with a multi- polar world based around Beijing or Moscow, is in our defence, security, diplomatic and development priorities. The SDGs should be at the heart of that.
My noble friend Lady Northover, in her extremely powerful contribution, outlined the consequences of the approach of the climate emergency—food insecurity and resource conflict potentially displacing 200 million people. We know that in the UK we are not immune from the consequences of that. It is in our domestic interests that we work abroad.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, and my noble friend indicated, the greatest impact is on women and girls. The sustainable livelihoods that would be denied, and the lack of economic development for women and girls, will mean fewer trading partners and less sustainability for the UK. Therefore, all this should be at the heart of what we believe should be a feminist UK development policy.
Conflict was, quite rightly, one of the themes of this debate. There is a need for a concerted effort on prevention, even as the number of conflict areas in the world has grown. But conflict today is different from what it was. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Sahota, said about the consequences of colonialism, and I share many of his views. But, unfortunately, some elements of conflict are different from in the past: civilians are more actively targeted and there is hybrid warfare and access to resource conflict. One more recent development is that conflict is not solely about nationality or territory; often, it is now about profiteering and the UK should take a lead on the dark links between global finance and conflict.
I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, “banged on” about volunteering. I declare that, earlier this year, I took part in a VSO visit to Cox’s Bazar and Dhaka. She is absolutely right—volunteering is not just a nice thing to do that helps the volunteer; it allows there to be networks of young people at the hard edge of peace and reconciliation work. I saw the programmes on climate action, young women’s sexual health and women’s economic development. That was in Bangladesh, where VSO has had programmes for 50 years. This has been a sustainable part of the UK’s relationship, regardless of the political circumstances, which can be complex and destabilising. So I hope the Minister will respond on the Government’s plans for the volunteering programme. It was welcome that the previous Government’s White Paper said that citizenship and volunteering would be brought back—although not at the scale there was under the coalition Government. I would be grateful to hear from the Government what the timing of that might be.
The 0.7% has been a constant element in many of the contributions, because it is not just what the UK’s policies for supporting the SDGs are; it is that we do it at scale. Over the period of the SDGs, very few countries have been able to deploy the level of resource that can have a global impact on their development. As the UK has pulled back by cutting our ODA by a third, we see the SDGs falling back. In many of the SDG areas, the UK was the principal funder—not just a contributory funder—and it was impossible to infill from other countries.
We heard that one of the worst impacts of the UK reneging on its obligation was that it gave some licence for other countries to cut and pull back too. This means that the cumulative impact has been even worse. We did that not in a calm and benign global environment but in the centre of a global crisis, with the climate emergency and a pandemic. The signal this sent to our development partners was terrible, especially since so many programmes specifically linked with delivery of the SDGs were cancelled mid-programme. ICAI showed the impact of this.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, was right: one of the worst elements of not only the cuts but also of removing DfID was that we hollowed out a network of policy staff, especially in agriculture. The UK was not only a deliverer of programmes but in many areas a thought leader, and it supported policy-making in many countries that lack the capacity themselves. The running down of the humanitarian response fund also meant that the UK response to humanitarian crises over recent years has been weaker than in the preceding decade.
I am disappointed that the Government have chosen not to restore an independent development department and I am also disappointed that they are using, word for word, the same language on the restoration of 0.7% as the previous Government—when the fiscal rules apply. Gordon Brown increased ODA after the 2008 global crash. David Cameron and Nick Clegg delivered 0.7% while other budgets were cut. Meeting 0.7% is not a fiscal choice but a policy one. Indeed, it should not be a choice at all; it is a legal obligation, not just to meet 0.7% but, under the 2002 legislation, for Ministers to have the ability to “provide assistance” for the reduction of poverty in countries “outside the United Kingdom”. If Governments choose to renege on legislation, they should be up front and repeal it; they should not ignore it. The consequences of that reneging are huge, especially since, as we heard, for the first time in our country’s history more official development assistance was spent in the United Kingdom than overseas.
In 2015 we had a window of opportunity of political consensus at home and the ability to bring political consensus abroad. Given the existing dysfunction in the United Nations and the higher number of conflict areas and vulnerable states than a decade ago, I fear that we would not be able to agree the goals today. Therefore, if we fail to deliver them, we will not have an opportunity again. The UK must restore its ability for global leadership and development and do it at scale—it is urgent.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to see the House taking note of the UN’s sustainable development goals, alongside noting the impact of conflict, extreme poverty and climate-related emergencies globally. Like others, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for bringing forward this debate on this important topic. We have had some excellent contributions, as one would expect given the considerable expertise that exists on this subject in the House.
My noble friend Lady Sugg made some particularly excellent points about the impact of poverty and conflict on women and girls. She highlighted some of the excellent work that took place under the previous Government and welcomed the continuation of that work under our new Government—I look forward to hearing what the noble Lord, Lord Collins, has to say about that.
One hundred countries have been at least partially involved in some form of external conflict in the past five years, and that number has, sadly, doubled since 2008. Between 2022 and 2023, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace, some 97 countries recorded a deterioration in peace. For many of us, the terrible conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan and the Middle East have brought this unsurprising reality to the forefront; we undoubtedly live in extremely dangerous times.
Although in recent years we have made considerable efforts to reduce global poverty, some 700 million people are still living on less than $2 per day. Despite that, I am still optimistic for the future and want to emphasise the importance of holistic action led not just by government but by those in industry and the private sector. Much has been said about this being a time of understandable constraints on public expenditure. Therefore, I favour a Government who also help to facilitate a private sector-led approach that allows society to take the lead and does not just leave everything to government. I want to advocate for a policy that supports corporate philanthropy and global responsibility and is more fiscally prudent and efficient than a solely government-led approach. We can see the contribution of many private sector partners here in the UK to improving our efforts to meet the UN development goals, from Tesco combating poverty and hunger both within our shores and overseas to Unilever improving its environmental and social working practices internationally.
We all have a part to play in helping to build a better world. I particularly welcome debate on this issue and thank the many noble Lords who have made some very thoughtful contributions. The previous Government did some excellent work in this area, and in particular were an ally to Ukraine. We must continue to stand with our many allies as the world becomes more dangerous.
I look forward to the response from the noble Lord, Lord Collins, on the many issues that have been raised, particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, just mentioned, on the 0.7% target—his colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, posed some interesting questions. I will not embarrass the Minister by quoting all his and the Prime Minister’s previous trenchant criticisms of the reductions implemented by the previous Government, but I know him to be a man of his word. I am sure that we are all eagerly anticipating him repeating some of his numerous promises today. I am sure it is just another example of the tough choices that the Government are fond of telling us they are keen on making.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
Well, up until that point, I thought it was quite a consensual debate. Anyway, it has been a very interesting debate and could not be more timely, and I thank my noble friend for initiating it.
Sometimes it is quite important to remind ourselves exactly what the SDGs are. They are universal. They apply to everyone and all countries; it is not the north telling the south or vice versa. If we start this debate on that basis, we can see a lot more progress.
I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, will forgive me because I am not being partisan, but I thought that the first attempt at the voluntary national review, which my noble friend referred to, was disappointing in the sense that it did not focus on the cross-governmental attitude. It did not look at how we are responding in education, health and other areas; it looked at what we are doing to others. I thought that was a missed opportunity and a big mistake. It could have been an opportunity to give the political leadership we needed.
By the way—my noble friend mentioned this, and it is important to restate it—this country has a proud record in promoting global development, certainly with Gordon Brown and how he pursued the millennium development goals, and of course the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, in pushing that SDG agenda. We have a proud record as a country and on a cross-party basis. It is important that we remind ourselves of that and that, as we move forward in trying to deliver on the SDGs as a new Government, we work across government and not just in the FCDO. I will come on to some of those other issues to do with departments.
I think that Anneliese Dodds, the Minister for Development, would have been delighted to be here in person to listen to this debate, but she is at Chatham House giving her keynote speech on the Government’s approach to development, which will cover many of the topics discussed by noble Lords today. I hope there will be an opportunity for us to circulate that and perhaps even have a further discussion about the future.
The other thing I would like to say at the beginning— I will return to some of these points—is that we have initiated a review under the noble Baroness, Lady Shafik, who was a Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Development. That review will be concluded fairly speedily, but I do not want to pre-empt some of the things it might include.
The Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have set out some clear priorities for the FCDO, tackling the issues that all noble Lords have raised today. The focus is on delivering the Government’s five missions: delivering growth, enhancing security, tackling the climate and nature crises, rebuilding our relationship with Europe and, as we are discussing today, modernising our approach to international development. This Government’s mission is to help to create a world free from poverty on a liveable planet. Inevitably, this requires holding on to the hope that we can get the SDGs back on track through clear, effective and modern development policy, placing climate and nature at the heart of everything we do. There is no pathway to development without increasing climate resilience, tackling the nature crisis and improving access to green energy, and no pathway to a sustainable future without development that leaves no one behind.
My noble friend is absolutely right about the importance of businesses and the private sector. The SDGs cannot be delivered by Governments alone and cannot be delivered even with the private sector alone. It is a joint enterprise. As my noble friend Lady Armstrong has also highlighted, this is about how we generate civil society to support the SDGs. I pick up the point by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester that mobilising civil society includes faith groups and other organisations. Even though I am a committed humanist, I have seen incredible work by faith groups in this country to deliver support for people—and I have seen that in other countries too. Mobilising that is incredibly important.
We had the Secretary-General’s pact for the future at the UN General Assembly, which will be important in mobilising for future generations. It is a key element. I hear what my noble friend says about that. There are always lots of kind words at these events, and we need to translate those words into action. However, the fact that we achieved a consensus at the General Assembly, across all countries, is a sign of hope and positive news.
Over the last three months—and it is only three months —this Government have focused on some key areas to tackle the issues that noble Lords have raised today. Economic growth is a top priority for this Government, at home and abroad. We are focusing on sustainable, inclusive economic development and growth that delivers opportunity and unlocks human potential. This approach is the one that will help to lift millions out of extreme poverty, as has been evidenced in the last 30 years. Giving local working people access to better and more productive jobs is the only way to sustainably reduce poverty and build resilience to climate change. As noble Lords are aware, by 2030, countries in the global South will make up the top 30 economies. I have been reminded in every visit that I have made to African countries in the last three months that, by 2050, a quarter of the world’s population will be African. It will be the biggest market, so we have to refocus our attention to these in terms of partnership and economic development. It is essential that there are quality jobs and infrastructure improvements, and that exports grow.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of—
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
Dillington—sorry; there are too many Lord Camerons in my mind. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, is absolutely right. I visited the food security conference in Kigali and I came away from that event feeling incredibly positive about the potential for agriculture in Africa. There is huge potential, but it needs to be addressed in terms of connectivity. The fact is that, from harvest to market, Africa loses 40% of its products simply because it does not have the cold storage or a way to manage the logistics. Those issues can be addressed with appropriate investment, and certainly with innovation.
We also have the FCDO’s new land facility programme, launched in 2024. It will build on previous work, and support partner countries in Africa, south-east Asia and Latin America to develop robust land administration systems to protect land rights and facilitate sustainable land investment, which is key. I have seen co-operation between local farmers and British farmers who have gone into countries to develop exports. The other thing that was stressed in Kigali is that most agricultural producers need support and help to focus on markets first—it is about understanding your market and increasing that investment.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, it is true that there are lots of targets with the SDG 2030 agenda but, at the General Assembly in New York, we were focused on the global digital compact. It was adopted at the summit of the future and focuses on inclusive adoption of digital technologies to accelerate SDG delivery, closing the divide in digital support through international multi-stakeholder collaboration, and recognising the role that AI can play. The Government have launched an AI for development programme, which aims to create safe, inclusive and responsible ecosystems. I add that we focus, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, did, on SDG 5, but I also focus on SDG 8, because that is about training a productive, inclusive workforce. We need to ensure that we see the SDGs in a more cohesive, comprehensive way.
On the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, all our development partnerships will focus on championing equal rights and empowering women and girls. That is absolutely essential. Investing in their progress and breaking down the barriers they face is essential to development. We will partner with others to confront the rollback of rights, tackle discrimination and scale up proven, locally led approaches to ending the gender-based violence she described. Next year will see the 30th anniversary of the Beijing declaration. We will work really hard to renew that, and the whole question of women, peace and security. Through these efforts, we will ensure that women, girls and marginalised groups have access to essential, quality education and, most importantly, sexual and reproductive health and rights. We will also focus on how we deliver that.
The other big issue we heard in this debate was reform of the global financial system for climate, nature and development. We understand everyone’s concerns about the unfairness of the current system, but I also want to address the whole question of ODA. The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, was absolutely right: we need to return to building a cross-party consensus. I do not think we need to be partisan on this issue, because what we are able to deliver on the SDGs benefits us all as a country. It improves our security too, and that cross-party support is something we have to try to return to.
I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, also said—that the problem with the cut from 0.7% to 0.5% was not just the cut but the way it was done and the speed with which it was done. I know the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, will agree with me on that. It caused huge damage to our credibility, and that is what we have to try to restore. I know the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, will say that I am just repeating what the previous Government said, and I will repeat it, since he expects me to do so: the Government are committed to restoring ODA spending to 0.7% of GNI—the Prime Minister has made that clear—as soon as fiscal circumstances allow. But that does not stop us focusing on what we do and how we deliver it. We will focus on impact, and I will certainly be determined to ensure that for every bit of our activity. I think that is what the development review will do. Let us focus on impact and how we can achieve more.
One thing I have been focusing on is a commitment to a partnership of equality and respect to deliver economic growth. We are working towards a general partnership to deliver reforms on a greater scale, in terms of the financial support globally. This includes championing reform of multilateral development banks, which are the largest source of development finance. There is a significant opportunity to increase the volume of finance they can offer. There is so much we can do beyond ODA; I think that is really important. We can see them go further and faster in stretching their balance sheets so that they can lend more, but donors also need to step up. We seek an ambitious replenishment of the World Bank’s IDA21, the largest source of low-cost loans for the poorest and most vulnerable. We are playing our part in increasing its pledge and urging all partners to contribute to the fund. Together, we can make sure that we deliver the largest replenishment in history.
Yet, despite this progress, the number of countries spending more on debt interest repayments on health and education remains too high. We will continue to push for improvements to the common framework for quicker debt treatments for countries experiencing debt distress. We are finding creative ways to give partners that sort of hope.
We have also rolled out and championed climate-resilient debt clauses, which allow developing countries to pause debt and repayments when disaster strikes. We know that the global financing gap cannot be filled through public finance alone. As I said at the beginning, the finance needed will be delivered through the private sector, and we are playing an important part in that.
I point out to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that we pledged up to £60 million for loss and damage, including £40 million for the new fund responding to loss and damage, and up to £20 million for wider funding arrangements. We are working closely with our partners to operationalise this fund.
How do we mobilise the private sector? Of course, we have to recognise that the City of London is the biggest global hub for mobilising capital, and we will be doing even more on that. We are also going to do more in working with BII to unlock that sort of investment. In my visits to Africa, I have seen how we can ensure greater access. We do not tell this story enough. I visited Angola and saw the Lobito Corridor, and I visited an extractive mine that was focused on delivering greater processing, bringing employment into the local labour market. It then supported investment in agriculture, using that connectivity, so there was a perfect, positive story to tell about development. I certainly want to focus on that.
Sadly, I am running out of time—now I know the difficulty the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, used to have. Security, which was raised by every noble Lord, and in particular by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester and my noble friend Lord McConnell, is an important area. Prevention of conflict and peacebuilding is essential. The review of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, looking at that peacebuilding element, will of course be part of that. It is about a resource.
There is no sustainable development without peace, and there is no peace without sustainable development. I focused on that last week at the UN, and I met all the people concerned, who were absolutely committed to ensuring that we can deliver more. In the current climate, it is even more essential that we focus on that. I caught the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, about women’s participation, which we are absolutely committed to.
I have an answer on the integrated security fund for my noble friend, and I also had a lot to say on illicit finance, but I have run out of time. I will write on those points, because I have visited places, particularly in the context of illicit finance and what we are doing to combat corruption, which is one of the biggest elements holding back development.
In conclusion, the SDGs will get back on track; we are determined to do so. We will focus on working together with our allies to face up to those shared challenges. This debate will be an important contribution to the way we refocus our efforts, so I thank noble Lords.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for his response to all the various points made in what was an excellent debate. I was glad of my new hearing aid, which allowed me to hear the speeches for the first time in a couple of years. There were many excellent speeches during the debate, and I hope that Ministers—not just my noble friend Lord Collins but others in the Government—will pay particular attention to the outstanding speeches from the noble Baronesses, Lady Sugg, Lady Lane-Fox and Lady Armstrong, and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. They raised specific and detailed points on where we can go forward in our development approaches and towards the sustainable development goals.
There is a clear message from this debate. Across the parties and individuals represented in your Lordships’ Chamber, there is a strong commitment to this country’s contribution to a more peaceful and prosperous world, and the sustainable development goals provide the framework through which we can achieve that progress. The new Government have an opportunity, with the strong support of people across this Chamber, to embed the sustainable development goals in the framework of policies the Government are pursuing. They can take early action to end the scandal of not just depleted ODA in this country but far too much of that money being spent inside the United Kingdom, and then ensure that, in this interdependent world, we engage internationally to change as many lives as possible as quickly as possible. I thank noble Lords for their contributions, and I beg to move.
Independent Schools: VAT
(2 months ago)
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Lord Lexden
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the implications of levying VAT on independent schools with effect from 1 January 2025.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a former general secretary of the Independent Schools Council and the current president of the Independent Schools Association, one of the council’s constituent bodies. Its 670 members—which are generally small in size, with great strengths in special needs, bilingual teaching and the performing arts—are particularly at risk as a result of the Government’s VAT plans. The council acts on behalf of some 1,400 schools, which are educating around 80% of the 600,000 children in the independent education sector.
Surely, it ought to be the duty of each and every Government, regardless of political complexion, to value and to safeguard all children in our country’s schools. The education of the many thousands in independent schools ought never to be harmed by the actions of government. Can it be right to inflict on some—perhaps many—of these children the problems that the imposition of VAT, our country’s first ever education tax, will inevitably cause?
Nevertheless, this very short debate is not about whether VAT should be slapped on school fees. The die is cast: Labour’s election manifesto said explicitly that VAT would be extended to school fees, and the Government are proceeding at breakneck speed to get it introduced. This debate is about the great haste with which the Government are acting. Out of the blue, schools were told at the end of July that they would start paying VAT five months later, on 1 January next year—five months to alter plans and budgets that had been fixed for the academic year starting in September. Notice of those five months was received during the school summer holidays, during which the Treasury held a consultation exercise covering a whole host of technical details.
The Government say, blithely, that five months is quite sufficient to prepare for this unprecedented change. I ask the Minister: would the Government ever contemplate asking state schools to redo their plans for a new academic year at such short notice? Taxation apparently trumps the education and welfare of children in our country’s independent schools. The Treasury wants to start getting in cash as fast as it can. Last week in the Commons, a Treasury Minister said that
“we want to raise the money as soon as possible”,
adding, breezily yet again:
“There will have been five months for parents and schools to prepare”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/10/24; col. 174.]
Glorious things are promised from the VAT receipts: 6,500 extra teachers, 3,000 new nurseries and breakfast clubs in all primary schools. All these benefits will come from money which, if the Government should manage to raise their levy target of £1.5 billion, will represent just over 1% of the total education budget. A degree of scepticism about these promises might be in order.
Will the £1.5 billion target be reached? The crucial issue is the extent to which the education tax will force parents to move their children to state schools. The Government say the numbers will be small. They have not bothered to make any assessment of their own; they are placing their faith entirely in one single report produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. This suggests that between 4% and 7% of children will “migrate”—a singularly inapposite term for the displacement and disruption of pupils during their school careers. That would mean up to 40,000 children would be unable to continue their education in the schools their parents had chosen for them. That in all conscience would be bad enough, but a number of other independent studies have calculated that the number will be much higher. The Government ignore them.
But even the author of the Government’s favoured report now has his doubts about its predictions. This is hardly surprising. The report itself declares that it is based on “relatively thin” evidence and “relatively old” data, garnished by details furnished by Catholic schools in America, whose relevance is unclear. Last weekend, the author of the IFS report said that the Government’s education tax could destroy the continuity of education for far more children: 15% could be forced to move. That means 90,000 children would be added to the number in state schools, virtually wiping out the £1.5 billion for which the Government introduced their education tax in the first place.
But such gloom is misplaced, say the Government, because, as the Treasury Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, told your Lordships a week ago,
“very many private schools will take steps to absorb a proportion, or all, of the new VAT liability, so there may be no increases in fees”.—[Official Report, 10/10/24; col. 2103.]
The noble Lord should get out and talk to those dealing with the financial affairs of independent schools. He would quickly discover that absorbing the education tax would mean cuts—above all to staff, who account for some 70% of school costs. No wonder the NASUWT has called for the new tax to be delayed until next September to try to find a way of reducing the prospect of job losses.
“What about the large sums that schools derive from their substantial capital assets?” some say. “They can be used to pay the education tax.” But no more than a small minority have any income from such sources. It cannot be said too often that most independent schools are small in size, serving their local communities in which they are embedded and by which they are cherished. Some 40% of independent schools have under 100 pupils. They have no handy reserves into which they can dip. They will be forced to jack up their fees by a massive 20% in the middle of an academic year—after a period of 20 years in which fees have risen broadly in line with inflation.
What have the Government to say to the thousands of worried parents up and down our country? I will give just one example. A father in Worcester will have to move his son from an independent school at the end of this term. He writes that,
“we need a local school that will teach my son for his A-levels starting in January. You can’t possibly expect a young man to drop two years and restart A-level courses in different subjects. He is studying Greek, Latin and German. There is no local school that can provide what he needs”.
How would the Minister reply to that distressed parent?
Independent schools are surely entitled to expect clear, comprehensive guidance on what they must do when the education tax takes effect in two and a half months’ time. They have not got it. What was issued to them a week ago by HMRC was woefully inadequate. In a letter to the Treasury last Monday, the Independent Schools Council described it as “disheartening” and “disappointing” and said that it did not provide the
“clear and comprehensive overview schools need”.
The guidance, it stated, was
“confusing, partial and lacking in relevant examples for schools”.
They may have just a single bookkeeper who will be a novice on VAT matters. The ISC said:
“Clear and understandable guidance is needed if mistakes are not to be made”.
Will the Minister give a firm commitment that this crucial guidance will be revised and reissued? Nothing could illustrate more clearly the folly of rushing to bring in the education tax on 1 January. Will the Minister tell the House whether anyone—anyone at all—outside the Labour Party itself has said that they support the introduction of the tax on 1 January?
Finally, in the debate that I introduced six weeks ago, much disquiet was expressed about the ways in which VAT will affect service and diplomatic families defending and representing our nation overseas; the families of the some 90,000 children with special needs who are thriving in independent schools without education and health care plans, which are so difficult and often so costly to get; and the Muslim, Jewish and other families who depend on small, low-cost faith schools in the independent sector. Will the Government now find the time to consider with great care the needs of these many desperately worried families? To do that, they should halt the dash to impose VAT in January.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, whom I much respect, for giving us this debate on a subject that is, I know, close to his heart.
The question of VAT on independent school fees was widely circulated before the election, so nobody should be surprised by it. I accept that the January date will have come as a surprise to some but, having said that, if a school has decided that the imposition of VAT will mean it has to close, I cannot believe that the tax starting in January rather than September will be the deciding factor. Surely no school that values its students would close half way through an academic year.
The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, mentioned job losses and the National Education Union. It seems inconsequential to me because, given the issues around the retention and recruitment of teachers, any teacher unable to gain employment in the independent sector will have no difficulty in getting a job in the state sector.
My final point is that there seems to be a hypocrisy here. The Tories have characterised the proposed national insurance contribution rise as ignoring a Labour manifesto commitment. Here is a Labour manifesto commitment being delivered, yet there is more criticism. You cannot have it both ways—much as some would like to.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I have four quick questions.
First, how many of the highly experienced educationalists on the Government Benches are in favour of making such a demanding change half way through the academic year? Will the Government consider deferring this damaging decision to September, which will give time for an impact assessment and cause far less disruption—although disruptive it will still be?
Secondly, on VAT, what action are the Government taking on the discrepancy that means that FE colleges are not liable for the VAT refund scheme in the way that schools and multi-academy trusts are? This takes well over £210 million out of FE funding every year. They do an amazing job on very limited resources and they really deserve parity.
Thirdly, how will the needs of children with special needs or special skills that cannot be met by the state sector be covered if the specialist schools cannot afford to continue? What provision is being made for this?
Fourthly, I come to my regular question on the children of military personnel. Will the education allowance be increased to cover the additional cost? Military children already suffer upheaval aplenty and military personnel may well not be able to afford the increase if the Government do not pay. I am happy for the Minister to write if she does not have time to reply.
We have 19 spare minutes in this debate; I apologise for taking up 17 seconds of it.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, during our previous debate, I referred to advice from my noble friend Lord Pannick on issues of compatibility with conventions that are relevant to the rights of children and their education. In the light of this proposal’s impact on schools catering for children with special needs, faith schools and specialist schools—as well as the disruptive consequences for children caused by the implementation date—several submissions have now been made by Members of this House to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I serve, urging it to consider these issues of compatibility. There is also to be a legal challenge in the courts. It would be prudent and respectful of proper parliamentary scrutiny and consideration for the Government to wait for the outcome of such consideration and I urge them to do so. It is true that, when you legislate in haste, you repent at leisure.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I strongly support VAT on tuition fees. If parents want to avoid it, there is a perfectly acceptable alternative: send children to boarding schools in the state sector, where VAT is likely to apply to boarding alone and not to tuition. For example, Keswick School, formerly a grammar school and now a comprehensive with a wide curriculum, in my former constituency, which three generations of my family have attended, provides day-pupil and boarding facilities in a beautiful environment in the heart of the Lake District, and attracts pupils worldwide.
Whereas public school fees average over £40,000 per year, state boarding schools such as Keswick School average at around £14,000. It is their wide social mix, in an atmosphere of local intake, parental aspiration and teacher commitment, that enable such schools to top state and private sector academic listings. Such schools are few and far between. I would like a huge expansion. Too many parents commit to public schools in the belief that a narrower social mix uniquely provides for the standards that they seek. They are mistaken. There are far too many casualties in the system that so often go unreported.
Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con)
My Lords, independent schools add greatly to their wider communities. They take the strain from the state sector through the willingness of parents to fund their children’s education, often at great personal cost. In many cases they offer a haven for children who struggle in large classes.
However laudable the Government’s aim to provide more resources in the state sector is, the means of funding this is questionable. This is not a theoretical debate. This affects real children and real choices. The changes to the system are bound to be complex, but enacting those changes in just five months and in the middle of the school year will have profound consequences for children in both the independent and the state sector. Philip Britton, the head of Bolton School, where I was educated and am a governor, has said that these changes need
“time and care and it really is a moment to press pause and think harder”.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, the limited warning and the unworkable timings of a school holiday deadline mean that smaller schools without large accounts teams and in-house expertise will struggle to make the required changes in time, and it is unfair to give schools and parents such little time to digest this.
What about the child who has to leave a school where they were happy and thriving, and where that child has a supportive network of friends? The mental health crisis for young people resulting from the pandemic should be a reminder that young people are vulnerable to change. Each of the children leaving a school that they love is an individual, not a statistic, whose day-to-day life has been upended with virtually no warning. These children are the voiceless victims of the policy.
What plans do the Government have to support children going through this change? I would be very interested to know what the Minister has to say. The focus should be on bringing the whole education sector together. One suggestion put to me by a leading independent school was that, rather than VAT, why do the Government say that they expect independent schools to show that 20% of revenue goes into supporting means-tested bursaries and partnerships? If schools do not meet their target, tax them on the rest. As it stands, levying VAT is a pernicious move which will be disastrous on the whole of education.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, I have two points for my noble friend the Minister by way of background to this debate. Does she agree that it is not just those parents who pay for their children’s schooling who care about their children’s education? Also, we all must pay our fair share of taxation—some taxes on our incomes, some on our expenditure through VAT. We pay our taxes not as a fee for service but as part of our commitment to society as a whole.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
Have the Government assessed the impact for Scotland? We have a different curriculum, exam structure, term dates, and pay and conditions for teachers. We also have different school starting ages, meaning that this policy could include nursery provision. Special needs are governed by the ASL Scotland Act. A diagnosis is not required to get help. We do not have EHCPs. A co-ordinated support plan is not a direct equivalent, as it is not required to attend a special school or receive additional support.
As education is devolved, the Government cannot reassure us that any income passed to the Scottish Government would be ring-fenced for education. At this moment, the Scottish Government are withholding £145 million from local authorities which is earmarked for education. Councils are making cuts. North Lanarkshire is reducing school bus services. Falkirk Council is considering cutting school hours. Inverclyde Council has said that if it does not receive the funding it will be forced to cut teacher numbers. Question 5 of the Treasury’s consultation asked:
“Does this approach achieve the intended policy aims across all four UK nations?”
Can the Minister tell us what responses to this question have revealed?
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, as a number of your Lordships know, I prepared an assessment on the school fees issue. I believe that this assessment was fair, honest and accurate. I sent a copy to the Prime Minister on 15 August and have supplied a number of Peers with copies, including my noble friend the Minister.
On the essential issue of the likely forced pupil migration, it is clear that the Government’s assessment is patently wrong. The consequences are grave: no profits whatever for the much-needed benefit to state education; and 80,000 pupils being forcibly migrated from the independent sector. This must not happen. I ask my noble friend the Minister to prevent it.
Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, this is intended to raise £1.3 billion to get 6,500 more teachers, yet we have 7% of children in private schools. I am a governor of Wellington College and a president of BAISIS. An estimated loss of 135,000 pupils would mean that we lost £1.58 billion not raise £1.3 billion, even if 15% to 25% of pupils moved to state schools. What about the 80% business rate discount being removed? That is so unfair. Will special needs children be exempt from this and continue to get help? Will Armed Forces children continue to get help?
We have a state school budget of £60 billion. Trying to save £1.3 billion when we actually end up losing £1.6 billion is not just a false economy; it is foolish. It is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Who thought of this? This is the politics of envy. We should be rising all the boats.
Viscount Bridgeman (Con)
My Lords, I will speak briefly on a particular aspect of education: cathedral choir schools. They are the inheritors of a priceless tradition that goes back centuries. The number of visitors to the cathedral services at which pupils sing is an acknowledgement of the hard work that choristers have put in, in their pursuit of excellence.
Musical education is hard work at these schools. They have a normal curriculum and rehearsals, and it is a condition of practically all choir schools that pupils study and learn a second instrument. If a cathedral school is forced by this new proposal to close, or at least to discontinue its choral traditions and facilities, the public sector will not be geared to take up the slack. I urge the Minister to do all in her power to safeguard the continuance of these very British institutions.
Baroness Keeley (Lab)
My Lords, the Government’s plan, linked to the policy to recruit 6,500 more teachers, is a vital step to solving the crisis in music education in state schools. Since 2010, there has been a catastrophic reduction in the number of children in state schools receiving sustained music tuition. We lost over 1,000 music teachers from state schools in a decade. Last year, the previous Government reached only 27% of their target for trainee music teachers. The number of GCSE music students has fallen by over a quarter since 2010 and the number taking A-level music has fallen by over two-fifths. Middlesbrough was among the areas that did not have a single school offering A-level music in 2021-22. Some 50% of children in independent schools receive sustained music tuition, but the figure for state schools is only 15%. The Government are right to take action to invest so that sustained music education and music qualifications become available to more pupils in state schools.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
I declare my interests, as in the register. I have three questions. First, in opposition, noble Lords made much of commitments to the performing arts. Why do they now attack schools providing specialist training in these disciplines? They rely on recruiting young people with talent regardless of the means to pay. Ability to pay will now trump talent, endangering the pipeline of young people empowering the creative economy, including the tradition of English choral music.
Secondly, what is the Minister’s advice to a pupil studying A-level music who is forced out of their school in an exam year with no local school offering that subject, which is highly likely as 50% of state schools no longer do? Is it home schooling or “give up on your dreams”?
Thirdly, £1.5 billion is a wild overestimate of VAT revenues because of pupil migration. Even if, in the Government’s economic la-la land, all the money goes on teachers, which it will not, because this magic money tree is also funding nurseries and breakfast clubs, it will add just one-third of one teacher to each school. Is this con trick not just raising unattainable expectations of increasing standards for vulnerable children?
Lord Mountevans (CB)
My Lords, we have heard of the disruption to be caused by the extremely tight timing and of the groups who will be impacted particularly hard by the Bill. I have travelled professionally around the globe, and Britain’s independent schools are admired the world over. They are soft power, which is terribly important in this country. I am all in favour of social mobility: I was something akin to a governor of that great school, Christ’s Hospital, a unique school with a special position in social mobility. Please, can we not seek to level up?
Lord Shinkwin (Con) [V]
My Lords, when I asked the Government in a Written Question what assessment they had made of the mental health implications of this policy on children with autism and neurodiverse conditions, the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, said that it was a “tough” decision. I agree—tough if you have autism, SEN or a disability. Can the Minister confirm that she will place in the Library a copy of her department’s rigorous assessment of the mental health implications for these children, which her noble friend seems unaware of?
Lord Parekh (Lab)
My Lords, we need to look at this thing from a wider perspective. I suggest that we look at it in terms of what it is trying to achieve. Basically, it is concerned with achieving a certain measure of equality. We all recognise that our society is, rightly or wrongly, characterised by a deep sense of inequality, and that has educational and economic roots: a few schools, for example, produce students who control positions of power. Therefore, if our society is going to make progress and be stable and cohesive, it should be equal. An equal society would mean that those who have should share with those who do not. Therefore, in principle, I support this principle. The only question is whether it will achieve anything by itself. No, it is only a small step. Are other measures being contemplated? I do not see that. Therefore, my answer is: yes, this is a step in the right direction, provided it is complemented by other steps.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, nowhere else in the world is education taxed in this manner. Thousands of our children are to be basically left behind in the middle of the year, just at the time they need to prepare for exams and just after they have been through Covid. Boarding is vital to the military, our diplomats, and those who work abroad. I went boarding at Bedford School because my father was working in Pakistan. No, we cannot have envy being the determinant of the education, and indeed the future, of our country.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, when it comes to this subject, here is the tack I would take: what is the practicality? What are you achieving? The fact of the matter is that the independent sector has had a tradition of covering gaps that the state has, particularly in special educational needs. There is music education, which it has quite clearly taken over, and the issues raised about services families. I gave some warning of this question, the answer to which should arrive in the Minister’s reply: will the Government take an assessment of what has happened in those three areas at least, and will they publish it during this Parliament so we can see what effect this has had? It is a fundamental change that they are making here, and they are on very shaky ground, so I would suggest that that happens.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I too thank my noble friend Lord Lexden for securing this debate. We have heard an overwhelming set of arguments this afternoon, as we did in our earlier debate, against this misguided move on the part of the Government.
Those arguments fall into different groups of children: those with special educational needs and disabilities, children from military families, children who take part in the music and dance scheme, and those attending cathedral choir schools. We have also heard serious concerns about implementation; the timing of introducing the new tax, particularly in Scotland; the disruption to teachers and children; the lack of readiness of HMRC; and, importantly, the impact on mainstream schools.
Organisations from the education unions to the Chartered Institute of Taxation are calling for delay, so I ask the Minister two questions. First, will she commit to talk to her colleagues in the Treasury to review the timing of the introduction of VAT? Secondly, if this really is not an ideological move, will she commit that the OBR will do future annual impact assessments, and reverse this if there is not a net contribution to the economy?
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for securing this debate and providing another opportunity for noble Lords to discuss the implications of tax changes affecting private schools. I welcome the speed with which those contributing to the debate have rattled through their questions and I will do my best to respond to the points that have been raised. Where I am not able to do that, I will write to noble Lords with those responses, although given that we had three and a half hours on this topic relatively recently I am not sure that any new issues were raised in this debate. That does not mean that I do not recognise the strong feelings that have been expressed.
For the Government, the key implications are to secure the funding necessary to improve the state-funded schools that educate 93% of our children. Our state-funded school system includes more than 20,000 schools in England educating almost 8.5 million pupils. It is to this system that most parents and children must turn to meet their high aspirations—they do not have a choice. It is to this system that any parent can turn if they need a school place for their child—this includes parents of children who have previously attended a private school or may do so in the future. It is this system which already supports the vast majority of children with special educational needs. Most children with education, health and care plans are already educated in mainstream state-funded schools. It is these schools that provide a safe, supportive and nurturing environment, and high-quality education, for most children. It is for all the parents who have no choice that we must focus our efforts on these state-funded schools—this is where our priorities lie.
Ending the tax breaks on VAT and business rates for private schools is a tough but necessary decision. It will generate additional funding—I am afraid I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria—to help improve services, including the Government’s commitments to improve state-funded schools, which includes expanding early years childcare for all, opening 3,000 new nurseries, rolling out breakfast clubs to all primary schools, recruiting 6,500 new teachers, and improving teacher and head teacher training as part of restoring teaching to the career of choice for our best graduates.
It is strange to argue that “£1.5 billion is not that much money and therefore we should not pursue this particular route”. It perhaps explains how we ended up in the fiscal mess that we have done that so many noble Lords opposite are so flip about £1.5 billion.
Many noble Lords expressed concern about the timing of this provision. It was, of course, included in the plans of this Government when in opposition, and was for some time. It was in our manifesto. We have had a consultation on the issue. I and my colleagues in the DfE and the Treasury have held many meetings with concerned groups to listen to concerns and respond to them.
VAT will apply to tuition and boarding fees charged by private schools. I should say to my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours that VAT will not apply to boarding fees in a state boarding school for terms starting on or after 1 January 2025. It is right that we end tax breaks as soon as possible to raise the funding needed to deliver our education priorities.
HMRC will be providing support to schools. Schools will be able to register for VAT following the Budget on 30 October. The Government recognise that, for many private schools, this will be the first time they have needed to register for VAT, which is why there is already bespoke guidance for schools. There will be online support sessions over the coming months to support schools to ensure that the registration process is as smooth as possible for them. That will help schools to be ready to charge VAT correctly and to remit it to HMRC.
I was clear the last time we spoke that the Treasury is assessing the impact of these changes in advance of the Budget. It will publish a tax information and impact assessment, including an equality assessment. The noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, wanted an assurance that that would include special educational needs, and it will. On the impact, it is worth pointing out this change does not necessarily mean that parents will automatically face 20% higher fees. The Government expect private schools, as all businesses have to when taxes change, to take steps to minimise fee increases, including through their ability to reclaim VAT that they incur in supplying education and boarding, and, like state schools—which have seen considerably smaller increases in the resources available to them than the increases in fees for private schools—to make savings where necessary.
I know noble Lords feel very passionately about special educational needs, and so do the Government. That is why my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has made improvements in special educational needs provision fundamental in our department. We are not willing to accept that the only way we can deal with special educational needs is by providing an opt-out for a small number of pupils. We have sought to ensure that these changes do not disadvantage pupils who genuinely need provision unavailable in the state sector. Pupils who need a local authority-funded place in a private school, including those with local authority-funded education, health and care plans, will not be impacted by the changes because local authorities are able to reclaim the VAT that will be charged.
Most children with special educational needs attend mainstream state-funded schools. Most parents do not have the option to secure support within a private school. It is right that, where parents have the resource to choose a private school place for their child, for any reason—I understand why parents might choose to do that, given the parlous state that special educational needs provision in our schools was left in by the previous Government—they should pay their fair share to support a good state-funded education for every child. Any child with SEN who needs a state-funded place can apply to their local authority. All state-funded schools are used to supporting the needs of children with SEN. With the actions of this Government, I hope they will be even better at doing that in years to come. Parents of children with needs that cannot be met by their current school can request an education, health and care assessment, which can lead to an education, health and care plan. As I have already pointed out, if it identifies that a place in a private school is necessary, that will not cost the parents.
Once again, noble Lords have rightly identified the considerable contribution made to our education and creative sectors by music and dance schools, and choral schools. The Government have been engaged in discussions with schools providing that service. It is because we recognise the enormous contribution made by the eight schools in the music and dance scheme that we already provide access to that provision for talented young people on a means-tested basis. This allows low-income families to access that specialist education, where they have the enormous talent needed to do that.
The right way to manage this is to consider the support that the department provides through our music and dance scheme, rather than through any tax exemption, given the simplification in this system that the Treasury has rightly set as a principle. I know that the department will consider these issues following the upcoming spending review, as will the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office when looking at the continuity of education allowances provided to eligible officials and service personnel.
Once again noble Lords raised the extent to which pupils will transfer out of private schools. There are always some pupils who move between the private and state-funded school sectors. Approximately 50 mainstream private schools close every year, for a range of reasons. Where schools close, pupils may transfer to another private school or move into the state sector. I am sorry, but I fundamentally disagree with the analysis of my noble friend Lord Hacking; all the evidence appears to suggest that the number of pupils who might switch schools following these changes represents a very small proportion of overall pupil numbers in the state sector, and any displacement is likely to take place over several years. The IFS, by the way, is sticking with its figure that there will be a small impact in pupils moving.
Given that private schools have increased their fees— I made this point in a previous debate—by 20% in real terms over recent years, yet we have seen few students moving, it is not unreasonable to suggest that there is an inelastic demand for private schools, and that we will not see the scare stories about pupils having to move which have been part of this debate. All children of compulsory school age are entitled to a state-funded school place if they need one. I know that moving schools can be challenging but, where that happens, local authorities and schools already have well-established processes in place to support pupils moving between them.
I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, that Scotland will be covered by the impact assessment.
Private schools will remain a part of our education system. Most pupils who are currently privately educated will continue to be privately educated. For the small number of parents who choose to move their children from the private to the state sector, we will make sure that there is a place for them. However, most children are already educated in the state sector, and that is where we must target our support and focus our efforts and resources. That is what we will do.
Ethiopia Famine: 40th Anniversary
(2 months ago)
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Baroness Featherstone
That this House takes note of the 40th anniversary of the 1984 Ethiopia famine in the light of the current conflict and food insecurity in the country.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
My Lords, 40 years ago almost to the day, on 23 October 1984, the nation was shocked by Michael Buerk’s famous BBC broadcast. It was a watershed moment in TV and world history that alerted the world to the terrible famine in Ethiopia. Close to 8 million people became famine victims during the drought of 1984, and more than 1 million died.
It was a broadcast that woke millions of people across the world to both the suffering of the people and the scale of the inequities across the world. It was transmitted by 425 television stations worldwide and gave birth to world fundraising in a way that we had never seen before, in the shape of the unforgettable Live Aid concert in July 1985, driven by Bob Geldof. It spawned Band Aid and subsequent initiatives such as the Jubilee 2000 campaign and Make Poverty History. It galvanised a whole generation into action. But what happened next, when the focus moved on, years passed and Governments changed?
In the decades that followed, huge progress was made to tackle hunger and malnutrition around the world and improve global health, with new resources committed by the developing world and effective pro-poor policies enacted by partner Governments in many countries. As an International Development Minister for two years during the coalition, I went to Ethiopia six times and saw both the progress and the need.
Today that progress is in reverse. As we look back and try to understand what the world can do to help deliver lasting change, with all the challenges that beset countries such as Ethiopia, what is the single most important thing that we—indeed, the world—can do to change the future more positively? Bill Gates has said:
“Every now and then, somebody will ask me what I would do if I had a magic wand. For years, I’ve given the same answer: I would solve malnutrition”.
He is right, because it is fundamental to everything.
This is important, not just because of the millions of lives lost to malnutrition and the millions more blighted by it but because every step forward to tackle the world’s challenges is made harder by malnutrition. Tackling malnutrition is fundamental in every aspect of improvement and change. It is absolutely foundational to global development and to a safe, secure and prosperous world. Without it, people cannot reach their full potential either physically or cognitively, economies are less productive and economic development is undermined.
Tackling malnutrition is also cost effective. It is the proven way to make progress on global development. For every $1 invested in nutrition, $16 is returned to the local economy, making it one of the most effective investments in the world. Conversely, malnutrition costs African economies between 3% and 16% of their GDP annually.
We know what to do; the world knows how to make progress on hunger and malnutrition and has done so to a remarkable degree in the past. Between 1990 and 2015 the proportion of undernourished people in low and middle-income countries was halved by global collective action. Sadly, we are no longer doing it. Today the world is cutting official development assistance, even as climate change and conflict contribute to growing levels of malnutrition and hunger.
When the UK Government reneged on their 0.7% commitment to overseas development aid in 2021, the global nutrition budget was disproportionately cut. A Development Initiatives report, commissioned by the UK Government, calculated that nutrition received a 60% cut. At the same time, debt servicing is once again placing unsustainable pressures on countries. We all remember Gordon Brown’s remarkable intervention in that regard.
So progress is going into reverse. In 2023 the World Health Organization estimated that 148 million children experienced stunting and 45 million children experienced wasting. Those are the two most severe forms of chronic and acute malnutrition, and they rob children of their life chances and, sometimes, their lives. Malnutrition is an absolute marker of inequalities in human development and will severely constrain the economies of low and middle-income countries in the future. That, in turn, will limit their ability to provide education and undermine their ability to provide public services and meet the aspirations of their people.
I remember a visit I made to a village in Ethiopia. I gave a talk to a group of women about contraception. Afterwards, I remarked to my civil servants that I was surprised to see so many children there—but, of course, they were not children but stunted adult women. I had never seen a stunted adult before. It was a truly shocking experience, one that we are fortunate never to see in this country.
What do we, and for that matter the developed world, need to do? I am hopeful that, with the new Government, we will see change from the retrograde actions in recent years. First and foremost, we must restore UK aid funding to the 0.7% of GNI for which we legislated under the coalition Government, becoming the first G7 country to meet this long-standing commitment. We must also reverse the 2021 cuts to the global nutrition budget, with an emphasis on long-term, predictable and multiyear funding so that we can build resilience. We need to invest in cost-effective and nutrition-specific interventions such as prenatal multiple micronutrient supplementation, MMS, which costs just $2.60 for an entire pregnancy. If all low and middle-income countries switched from iron and folic acid to MMS, half a million lives would be saved by 2040 and 25 million babies would have better birth outcomes.
We must also specify the proportion of the 2021 Nutrition for Growth summit pledge that will be spent on nutrition-specific interventions, as the Government did previously with a floor of 20%, representing the figure specified in the previous Nutrition for Growth pledge. The Government pledged to spend £1.5 billion on nutrition in the period to 2030—can the Minister update the House on where we are with that pledge?
We need to invest in research to improve climate resistance and the nutrient value of crops, and to support the fortification of staple foods to provide those vital micronutrients. Talking of crops and climate change, I note that one of DfID’s initiatives, together with local partners, was about creating routes to market and improving yield through knowledge. One such market that I visited was organised for local people to learn how to purchase good seeds, when to plant, where to plant and how to irrigate. Perhaps the most impressive thing I saw, and something I have never been able to forget, was a supplement in cow feed that meant a cow would fatten in 2.5 years, rather than the seven it usually took. That would triple the income of a family with one cow—although I dreaded to think what was in the supplement.
The environment in which nutrition suffers is plagued by conflict. There are so many warring parties, and we need to pressure them, to the best of our ability, to adhere to international humanitarian law and allow access to food supplies. We need to work with international and local partners to promote food security and peace- building.
Investing in nutrition is a cost-effective and proven way to make progress on global development. As I said before—it bears repeating—for every $1 invested in nutrition, $16 is returned to the local economy. It is one of the most effective instruments and investments. Equally, malnutrition costs low-income economies between 3% and 16% of their GDP, and the economies of reducing malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa are beyond proven.
The proportion of undernourished people in low and middle-income countries fell by nearly half between 1990 and 2015, as stated in the World Food Programme’s state of food insecurity report of 2015. In that period, Ethiopia saw a 57.2% reduction in the proportion of undernourished people in the population—noted in that report—and made remarkable progress in reducing child stunting, from 57.4% to 36.8%. Child wasting was reduced from 12.4% to 7%, and child underweight levels were reduced from 41.8% to 21.3% over the past two decades.
However, the recent conflict in northern Ethiopia, governance challenges and natural disasters have reversed some of that progress. Progress on infant and young child feeding practices is mixed, and children’s dietary diversity remains among the lowest in Africa. Malnutrition is the leading cause of deaths in children under five years old, responsible for 45% of deaths and claiming 2 million lives each year. According to the World Food Programme, over a quarter of a billion people across 58 countries and territories face acute food insecurity or worse.
Of course, it is not just Ethiopia; we see other terrible situations across the region—in Sudan, in Tigray and, sadly, many more countries. I could not believe the previous Government collapsing DfID into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The soft power and the good that DfID did were unquestionable. I do not know whether our new Government plan to re-establish it at some point, but the focus it brought to the critical pathway needed was extraordinary. The separation between what the Foreign Office did—foreign affairs—and what DfID did gave two angles, and soft power was extraordinary where DfID was at work.
I declare an interest. As I said, I spent two years as a Minister in DfID with special responsibility for sub-Saharan Africa, and I came to love those countries. That is why, when the noble Lord, Lord Oates, asked me whether I would become one of the three cross-party patrons of United Against Malnutrition and Hunger, together with the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, I said yes. I almost never say yes to any requests, as we get many, but I said yes to this, because our international development was something I was incredibly proud of and something that we as a nation were truly proud of too. We did good in the world, in partnership with local and world actors, and moved the dial forward.
But this is where we stand today. And as I stand here, I call on our new Labour UK Government to focus on malnutrition and to press our international partners to do the same. Surely we can promote this message—shout from this Chamber to reach across the world—of the urgent and ever-pressing need to focus primary development efforts on tackling malnutrition. It is the basis of everything, for without food you cannot study, you cannot grow, you cannot think, you cannot live, and you certainly cannot thrive.
Let us help enable the world to feed itself. I beg to move.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, given the gravity of the events that are the subject of today’s proceedings, if it is not exactly a pleasure to contribute to this debate, I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone. I thank her for securing this debate and for a clear-eyed, informed, impressively analytical and forensic speech. I intend not to repeat the appalling statistics that show the extent to which food insecurity in Ethiopia remains a present reality but to focus on the Tigray and Amhara regions.
As the Motion before your Lordships’ House makes clear, when we examine the situation in Ethiopia today, there is an awful resonance about the events of 1984. Though thankfully different in scale, the current acute food insecurity has one key element in common with the famine of the 1980s: both are, to some extent, manmade. An essay published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies in June underscores the extent to which, in the conflict between the Ethiopian armed forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front,
“belligerent parties on all sides employed food as a weapon, actions that included destroying local food supplies, dismantling capacities to produce food and market infrastructure, and diverting humanitarian aid toward supporters and away from adversaries”.
Though the TPLF and the Ethiopian Government concluded a fragile—and, in the case of the neighbouring Amhara region, largely ostensible—peace in November 2022, the concentric circles of that conflict continue to ripple outwards. Last year, we saw starvation deaths in both Tigray and Amhara. Almost 700,000 people are still displaced and over a quarter of a million men remain under arms and the TPLF banner. Despite the efforts of both this Government and their predecessor, there remains a significant gap between the humanitarian funding needed to feed the hungry in Ethiopia and the amount pledged by the international community.
Perhaps most importantly for those who wish to see the fragile peace between the TPLF and the Ethiopian Government endure, there has been no peace dividend in Tigray. History tells us that, if swords are to be beaten into ploughshares, a demonstrable improvement in everyday conditions needs rapidly to be achieved. Though this summer’s rainy season saw some crops being brought in, many farmers continue to suffer from the historical effects of drought, with some having been unable to harvest for years. Critically, agricultural infrastructure is in a parlous state, with many farmers having had their equipment looted or damaged during the period of conflict. The USAID-supported Famine Early Warning Systems Network has estimated that large parts of northern and eastern Ethiopia experienced crisis levels of food insecurity from August to September 2024 —that is the last two months—and parts of Afar, Tigray and Amhara in the north were in the emergency category.
Meanwhile, the western part of Tigray is disfigured by a campaign of ethnic cleansing prosecuted by Fano militia. They have displaced hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans, perpetrated massacres and used torture, sexual violence and arbitrary detention. That region is now cut off from aid delivery, and sesame, a crucial cash crop that underpins the economy of that region, is going unharvested. Negotiations between the Fano leadership and the Ethiopian Government are not progressing, with a resolution appearing unlikely in the months ahead. Indeed, the counteroffensive of the Ethiopian National Defence Force has led to the indefinite suspension of all transportation activities within the Amhara region, effective from 3 October. That will only impede humanitarian access further, lead to further food shortages and intensify the horrors of conflict.
Where food has so often been used as a weapon of conflict, there is nothing that will act as a greater spur to a renewal of hostilities as the persistence of starvation in peacetime. Earlier this afternoon, your Lordships’ House debated the link between conflict and extreme poverty. That link is as profound as it is inexorable, and no less indissoluble is the need to ensure that peace brings, if not plenty, at least the means of minimum subsistence.
All the humanitarian issues we have heard enumerated in this debate so far are taking place against a darkening backdrop in the Horn of Africa as a whole. The expansionist ambitions of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed are placing a severe strain on relations with Somalia, are pulling other regional powers, including Egypt and Turkey, into the orbit of this diplomatic crisis, and have fashioned an ideal context in which al-Shabaab recruitment and funding have spiked. I know, partly from a ministerial response to my Question I asked on the 7 October, that my noble friend Lord Collins and the Foreign Secretary have made representations at the highest level with the Government of Ethiopia to urge de-escalation. I know that the whole House will wish them well in those efforts.
As the FCDO’s report on UK aid spending in Ethiopia published in July last year made clear, there is something of a paradox about the economic situation there. It described 20 million people as “severely food insecure”, outlines the plight of
“11 million in drought-affected areas”
and identifies an upsurge in cases of cholera, malaria and measles. But this deterioration sits alongside an “ambitious reform agenda”, with significant investment in clean energy, aviation, finance and telecoms. Though any measures which improve the Ethiopian economy are positive, a sharp disjunction between the beneficiaries of this investment and those regions of Ethiopia that continue to see starvation deaths, a lack of basic infra- structure and outbreaks of conflict may serve only to stiffen the resolve of separatist movements to continue their armed struggle against a Government who are apparently oblivious to their suffering.
When preparing my remarks for today’s proceedings, a quotation from Marx’s essay on Louis Napoleon repeatedly came to mind. It runs:
“Men make their own history … under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”.
I hope that when our successors gather to debate Ethiopia a few decades hence, they will be in a position to celebrate long-term peace and progress rather than trace the outline of that dreadful historical circularity which has so often held Ethiopia in its grip.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate at such a critical time for the security of the peoples not only in Ethiopia but across the whole region. There are high levels of humanitarian need across many parts of Ethiopia, as has been described. It is driven by climate changes, conflict, disease outbreaks and high inflation. The debate is also timely, since the noble Lord, Lord Collins, has only just returned from his diplomatic visit to Ethiopia.
I thank the Minister for his helpful response to my Question for Written Answer on the humanitarian situation in Ethiopia. I admit that I tabled it only just after he had been appointed as a Minister, so it was rather a testing time but he responded with a very full and helpful Answer, for which I am grateful. He referred to the pledging conference in Geneva in April this year, which was co-led by the UK, Ethiopia and the UN. The conference helped to increase humanitarian funding by pledging almost $630 million, including $253 million from the US and $125 million from the UK. What is the Government’s expectation of the period of time over which those countries—not just the US and UK, but others that pledged—will contribute their pledges in full?
The Minister also referred to the provision of UK support to the Government of Ethiopia’s productive safety net programme. That is welcome and should strengthen food security and resilience for the 8 million people living in extreme poverty in Ethiopia. However, is he confident that this will be fairly distributed among the different and sometimes conflict-affected regions of Ethiopia? The noble Lord, Lord Browne, referred to the conditions in some parts of the country but, indeed, all regions are at times affected by conflict.
I note that one of the commitments made by the Ethiopian Government in Geneva was to facilitate unimpeded and sustained access for humanitarian organisations to reach affected populations throughout the country, including conflict-affected regions, and to ensure the safety and security of humanitarian personnel and assets. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Browne, about what has been happening. Can the Minister therefore give an assurance that the UK Government will focus pressure on the warring parties in conflict zones to adhere to international humanitarian law to allow access to food supplies?
The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, referred to the disastrous 1984 famine; I think all of us here are of a generation that can remember that. It meant, however, that huge progress was made around the world to tackle malnutrition and hunger, not only in Ethiopia but elsewhere. Ethiopia did indeed make remarkable progress after that famine. I had the opportunity to see some of the consequences of that progress when I went on a British Group IPU scoping visit to Ethiopia in February 2019. I went with just the noble Baroness, Lady Barker—I say “just”, but no one could say “just” about the noble Baroness, who is a force to be reckoned with; she is sadly not here today, but that is not her fault—and my then honourable friend in another place, Pauline Latham.
At that time Ethiopia was undergoing a profound political transition, set alongside economic and social transformation. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had been in office for nearly a year and had set a fast pace of reform. He declared the end of the conflict with Eritrea; appointed women to 50% of his Cabinet posts; appointed the first ever female President; and appointed a Tigrayan woman as Speaker of the House of Federation, with whom we had a very friendly and, I would say, very feisty meeting.
We saw construction under way of a high-tech business park and of a factory for the production of Ethiopian textiles and garments. The latter was expected to give employment particularly for women, who were experiencing high levels of violence and neglect and lacked the opportunity to get legal, regular employment. Our delegation left Ethiopia with hope that there could be a positive future. Later that same year, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Fast forward one year to November 2020, and the same Prime Minister declared a state of emergency in the Tigray region and Ethiopia endured two years of conflict, resulting in the deaths of thousands and the internal displacement of millions of people.
At this stage, we still hoped there might be a way of finding peace and progress. In November 2022, an agreement on a permanent cessation of hostilities was signed by the Ethiopian Government and the Tigrayan forces. However, the World Food Programme has reported that, despite agreement in the Tigray region, intense armed conflict had erupted elsewhere. Conflict combined with projections of severe drought conditions mean that over 8 million people are expected to be at risk of food insecurity this year. The expert briefing from the organisation United Against Malnutrition and Hunger, to which the noble Baroness has rightly referred, points out that some of the progress achieved over the previous two decades had been reversed by the recent two years of conflict but also by governance challenges, disease outbreaks—including malaria, cholera and measles— and natural disasters. By August this year, an estimated 16 million people needed food assistance and approximately 4.7 million children and women required immediate nutrition assistance.
While the Minister was in Addis, I note that he was able to have a meeting with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, which the Minister’s tweet—I follow him on Twitter, obviously—reported was:
“A constructive first meeting to discuss strengthening cooperation on shared priorities: promoting economic growth; bolstering global security; conflict prevention; reducing humanitarian need”.
I was rather concerned that conflict resolution was not in that list. Was it discussed and, if so, what were the consequences?
It is encouraging that the Minister took so much of his time this summer to pay attention, as Minister for Africa, to the very areas that crucially need that attention. I know it has been well received in the countries he visited, but it also means he is able to give us a much more up-to-date report today than we would otherwise be able to get. I look forward to hearing his views on how he sees the future for that region and particularly the future for our relationship with Ethiopia.
Baroness D’Souza (CB)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate. “Make poverty history” was the mantra in 1984, and who will forget the pictures of tiny children starving to death? Never again, we said. Indeed, while there has been remarkable progress in Ethiopia in the intervening years, certainly between 1990 and 2015 there has been a clear reversal, due in large part to conflict. It is estimated that something like 4.7 million women and children are in need of emergency assistance, reflecting a global trend of malnutrition once again becoming the leading cause of death in children under five. We hear these figures with a kind of resignation: it is too large a problem for any one source to deal with. But it remains an obscenity that we have what, in many cases, can be called deliberate starvation—a term far stronger than “manmade famine”.
We see two shocking examples in Gaza and Sudan: the deliberate blocking of life-saving humanitarian aid to those most in need—a clear flouting of international humanitarian law. I often wonder how many of us actually imagine what it is like to say to our children or grandchildren, whose stomachs are cramped with hunger, “No supper tonight, and nothing tomorrow, but there might be some food in the future”. It is unthinkable.
There are, of course, some uncontrollable causes of food shortage, through drought, disease or pestilence, but food shortages in these conditions do not necessarily imply famine. Famine is a phenomenon against which whole communities use their last possible defence: to uproot and trek to where food might be available. In this final stage, mass deaths from hunger and disease are inevitable. However, there are many discernible stages before this catastrophic uprooting, all of which can be managed, for example, by ensuring that the price of staples remains affordable, with cash incentives and food for work.
Working in Africa and Asia many years ago, it became clear to me that all vulnerable societies have food shortage survival mechanisms. Some of these centre around diversification of income sources. For example, a village woman may grow crops, weave baskets for sale in markets, brew local beer or ensure that some family members leave the rural area to become wage labourers in towns.
Rural groups often develop life-saving transactional relations with neighbours and with distant relations. All these strategies stand populations in good stead when food shortage is threatened. In this context, we should persistently monitor how far development agencies bolster these intelligent choices, or whether they perhaps instead focus on introducing new techniques which have no inbuilt protection elements.
In today’s world, the most devastating cases of starvation arise due to artificial man-made actions—as I have said, deliberate starvation. These include the forcible movement of populations by militias, the destruction and/or pilfering of food crop stores, control of markets as means of punishing one ethnic group or another, and the deliberate blocking of humanitarian aid.
We are dealing with the impossible—armies and militia groups marauding, bombing and making all coping mechanisms immediately redundant, as was the case in Ethiopia in 1984, when government policies of mass population relocation followed by a widespread cholera epidemic caused mass deaths from starvation. One has only to remember Mao Tse-Tung’s Great Leap Forward, the devastating famine of the 1960s, when the entire country was forced to abandon agriculture in order to manufacture steel in their back yards. A conservative estimate at that time was that 20 million people died.
What can be done? I believe that the international community can insist on accountability and culpability for abuses of the right to humanitarian aid, using some of the following channels. There should be meticulous monitoring of efforts to interrupt or block humanitarian aid, naming names and following up with prosecutions. I really would like to see a dedicated unit, UN-sponsored or otherwise, to note and list all those involved, including government agencies and armies. New food supplements should be developed for easy, effective and rapid distribution, possibly using drones, along with increased ratification of international instruments safeguarding the rights of civilians in armed conflict. Freedom of movement should be safeguarded and non-voluntary relocation prohibited, and the right of free access to humanitarian assistance for everyone should be affirmed.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for securing this important debate and for the opportunity to contribute to it.
I remember 1984 very vividly. That summer, I graduated from university and got married, and early that autumn, I began training for ordained ministry. I have clear memories of the powerful BBC news coverage of the Ethiopian famine—which, as the noble Baroness reminded us, was broadcast exactly 40 years ago this month—and of the Band Aid Christmas single that year and the Live Aid concerts of 1985. Those events were all quite formative for me.
In retrospect, our crowd-sourced responses to the famine in 1984 were naive, not least in treating the famine as simply a natural disaster and in failing to take into account the human factors that contributed to it, including both the global climate emergency, or global warming as we were just beginning to call it then, and the more local political and military practices. Although we may have learned a good deal in the past 40 years, and although we may be significantly more sophisticated now in our analysis of the causes of famine in that part of the world, it is evident that we are barely more effective at responding to it, let alone at preventing it. Both those aims are urgent: we need to respond effectively to the current crisis, and we need to improve our capacity to anticipate and therefore to forestall future famines.
The current humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia is again drastic, with climate shocks, including flooding as well as drought, compounded by widespread armed conflict inside the country and on its borders. Christian Aid estimates that at least 21 million people in the country need humanitarian assistance right now, and that is of course nearer to three times than to twice the number affected in 1984.
We also need to become better at anticipatory action: reducing the risk of recurring droughts and floods in future years. If solutions were easy, we would have found them by now, but there are steps that can be taken both at once and in the medium to longer term. I tentatively offer two of each. For the short term, first, I urge the Government to ensure that next year the overseas development aid budget really is spent overseas and on development, and not any longer on in-donor refugee costs. Secondly, I urge the Government to take advantage of the UK’s influence, as current co-chair of the Green Climate Fund, to focus climate finance on this region. For the medium term to longer term, I trust that the Government really will, as soon as fiscal conditions allow, and as other Lords have already urged, restore our ODA budget to the 0.7% of gross national income to which we committed ourselves in 2015.
Finally, we on these Benches welcome the Government’s manifesto commitment to tackle unsustainable international debts. We ask that this agenda be taken forward with urgency, and with due priority given to those parts of the world, including Ethiopia, where the humanitarian need is greatest. I would be grateful to know what assessment the Government have made, or intend to make, of these potential positive steps.
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chief executive of United Against Malnutrition and Hunger. I was 14 years old when that famous Michael Buerk broadcast led the 6 pm evening news on Tuesday 23 October 1984. It grabbed my attention like no news item ever had before or ever has since. It opened with these powerful words, which have haunted me ever since:
“Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korem, it lights up a biblical famine, now, in the twentieth century. This place, say workers here, is the closest thing to hell on earth. Thousands of … people are coming here for help. Many find only death. They flood in every day from villages hundreds of miles away, dulled by hunger, driven beyond the point of desperation. Fifteen thousand children here now; suffering, confused, lost. Death is all around, a child or an adult dies every twenty minutes. Korem, an insignificant town, has become a place of grief”.
That broadcast shocked a pop star—Bob Geldof—into action, and a world out of its indifference. However naive the response was, it was the waking of a movement which made a huge amount of difference in years to come. It changed my life; it led me to run away from home. I managed to get myself to Ethiopia, feeling somehow that simply by the passion of my desire to do something, I could make a contribution. Noble Lords will not be surprised to learn that, when I arrived, I discovered fairly rapidly that the demand for unskilled 15 year-old English kids was not great and that Ethiopia, at that time under its Marxist military Government, was not a fun place to be. But, luckily, more strategic responses were in hand.
Over the next three decades, as we have heard, huge progress was made in reducing poverty and hunger. As my noble friend Lady Featherstone said, that led to the proportion of people in the world going hungry halving between 1990 and 2015—a huge accomplishment. In Ethiopia, following the defeat of that brutal Marxist-Leninist regime of Colonel Mengistu, remarkable advances were also made. Economic growth took off and a focus by the new Government on pro-poor policies, supported by donor countries, including and in particular the UK, saw rates of extreme poverty and hunger reduced by half.
Today, as we have also heard, much of that progress has been going into reverse around the world, including in Ethiopia. Internal conflict, disruption to food systems as a result of Covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and drought and flooding, have led to a deteriorating situation across many regions of Ethiopia. The World Food Programme estimates that 19.7 million people are now facing high levels of food insecurity.
The UK Government have a long-standing commitment to development in Ethiopia and it was heartening that the Minister for Development, Anneliese Dodds, visited Ethiopia just a month after taking office and placed a real focus on the need to resolve conflict and secure peace and security across the country. It is also great to know that the noble Lord the Minister for Africa was also recently in Ethiopia. It is extremely heartening to have a Minister with such a long-standing commitment as a champion in the fight against malnutrition.
It is vital that we maintain our commitment to tackling the causes of malnutrition and hunger, because Ethiopia’s experience is not an outlier but part of a pattern where the achievements of the past three decades are going into reverse. Today, the World Food Programme estimates that 309 million people in 71 countries face acute hunger, and millions more are not getting the nutrients they need.
That matters because it means millions of children dying every year unnecessarily, and millions more who will not have the nutrients they need to develop physically and cognitively. It means lost productivity and economies that will not prosper, jobs that will not be available and societies that will be destabilised. In neighbouring Sudan, almost unnoticed by the world, a catastrophe is playing out that may prove even more devastating than the 1980s famine in Ethiopia. Already, as we heard in a debate we had at the initiative of the Minister a few weeks ago, famine has been declared in regions of Darfur and is likely to become far more widespread, and the displacement of people is having an impact on Ethiopia as well, adding to the pressures that it faces.
Even before the brutal civil war began over a year ago in Sudan, hunger was widespread and contributing to the displacement of people—because that is what happens when people go without food: they move, and when people move, tensions rise, with competition for pastureland and water, and other resources.
As in Ethiopia, so in Sudan—hunger drives instability and conflict, and conflict drives hunger, in a vicious and horrifying circle. Outside actors helping to sustain and fuel the conflict in Sudan have a wide series of motivations, one of which is the desire to secure access to food production. The United Arab Emirates, which denies involvement in the conflict but is widely held to be supporting the Rapid Support Forces, has invested heavily in agricultural land in Sudan as part of its efforts to secure food security for its own population, adding to this complex web of hunger and violence. In Ethiopia, Sudan, Gaza, Yemen and the DRC, conflict and hunger are coming together to cause immense human suffering. As Concern Worldwide (UK) warned in a report published today, climate change is only exacerbating the pressures on food systems, threatening hunger and instability across Africa.
If we are not as morally outraged as we should be about the suffering of millions of people around the world who do not receive the nutrition that they need to survive and thrive, perhaps we should consider the geopolitical consequences of a world that becomes ever hungrier. My hope and prayer are that we rediscover the moral outrage we felt in 1984 and marry it with our self-interest, so that I can look back at the 14 year- old me who sat and watched that BBC news broadcast and say, “In 2024, the world woke again from its indifference and demanded action”.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for introducing this crucial debate.
As many noble Lords have already said—it is worth repeating—the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s was one of the most devastating humanitarian crises of the last century, claiming up to a million lives and displacing millions more. It shocked the world into action. However, famine is not just a historical tragedy. It remains a deadly weapon in modern conflicts, including in Ethiopia.
I personally witnessed the use of food as a weapon during the 1990s, when the Bosnian Serb army laid siege to Sarajevo. My friends and relatives perished, some from bombings and others due to a lack of food and medicine. I also recall the so-called UN safe area of Srebrenica, where mass starvation of the civilian population preceded the genocide. Ethiopia’s tragedy should have served as a warning—a call to ensure that such horrors were never repeated—yet, in some cases, the lessons learned have been exploited to further weaponise food, with dire consequences.
It is worth reflecting on what this means in practice. The suffering inflicted on families deliberately deprived of the means of sustaining life is horrific; the effects persist long after the fighting. Children in the final stages of starvation endure their bodies self-cannibalising. Growth ceases. Limbs wither, bones decay and organs shrink. In the South Sudanese conflict, for example, women and girls were raped. They were forced into marriage and prostitution to survive. Single women, female-headed households, adolescent girls, elderly women, women with disabilities, and children are at particular risk.
Today, in Tigray, where food was used as a weapon during the recent conflict, the situation is particularly dire. Some 3.5 million people—more than half of the region’s population—require aid throughout the year. The root cause is the war’s devastation, which has plunged Tigray into extreme poverty. Soldiers were stealing and destroying food, destroying farms and livestock, vandalising water systems and obstructing humanitarian aid. Although natural disasters such as droughts and floods may seem inevitable, famine is often a man-made crisis, resulting from a deliberate withholding of supplies and a failure to act, leading to inhumane and catastrophic outcomes.
The integrated food security phase classification system warned recently of catastrophic and emergency levels of food insecurity across Haiti, the DRC, Sudan, Gaza and Afghanistan. USAID has described the crisis in Sudan as potentially even worse than the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s. The Norwegian Refugee Council stated that,
“Sudan is experiencing a starvation crisis of historic proportions. And yet, the silence is deafening. People are dying of hunger, every day, and yet the focus remains on semantic debates and legal definitions”.
I therefore welcome the noble Lord’s personal commitment to this region and look forward to more progress than we have made so far.
Although the climate crisis is a leading cause of the global rise in hunger, with climate shocks destroying crops, livelihoods and communities’ ability to sustain themselves, nearly 70% of the 309 million people facing acute hunger are in fragile or conflict-ridden countries. Violence and instability in regions such as the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia and eastern Europe disrupt food production, displace populations and often hinder humanitarian access to those in need.
The weaponisation of food is a political and military strategy intended to inflict suffering. However, rather than securing military victories, these policies fuel further violence and sow seeds of long-term instability. Since Defense Minister Gallant’s speech on 10 October, the Government in Israel have targeted food supplies, healthcare facilities and water infrastructure, cut communications and blocked humanitarian aid. Recently, humanitarian assistance was denied to 400,000 civilians in north Gaza. We decided to intervene, in particular the United States, and four days ago a letter was sent to Minister Gallant requiring assurances that American aid would not be arbitrarily restricted or obstructed, and signalling a potential halt to arms transfers if it was. The pressure seems to have worked, as 50 trucks were immediately allowed in; more might follow. However, it has taken way too long. One might cynically attribute this belated intervention by the US Administration to the upcoming US elections and competition for votes. Just imagine what a timely, earlier intervention, combined with a concerted diplomatic pressure, could have achieved, and the lives that might have been saved as a consequence.
The impact extends beyond hunger. Famine tears apart communities, weakens state structures and contributes to atrocities such as sexual violence. Famine often leads to forced resettlement, leading to overcrowding, insecurity and chaos, which creates the enabling environment for rampant sexual violence. Perpetrators frequently exploit the depleted protection mechanisms to inflict horrific suffering. The stories of sex for food and of sexual starvation crimes in Tigray and Sudan have been tragic examples of this.
We must act, not only because it is morally right and our common humanity demands it but because it serves our national interest. The unanimous adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2417 in 2018 was a milestone in recognising the links between conflict and hunger, yet today, Sudan’s conflict has ignited a hunger crisis of historic proportions. Without urgent action, hunger will claim more lives than the fighting itself.
Hunger is not merely a byproduct of conflict. It results from deliberate choices by warring parties to ignore international law, disrupt food systems, displace populations and obstruct aid. It often may appear that nothing can be done. That is not the case. We must prioritise ending fighting and ensuring respect for international humanitarian law. This includes insisting upon unhindered access for humanitarian aid, whenever and wherever, across borders and front lines; the protection of civilians and essential infrastructure; monitoring and mitigating threats to children, women and girls at risk of abuse due to food insecurity; helping to boost food production through steps such as the removal of mines from farmland; and supporting local communities.
In 2021, we committed to the G7 famine prevention and humanitarian crises compact, pledging to uphold UN Security Council Resolutions 2417 and 2286, yet we have lost momentum. I therefore urge the Government to recommit to these resolutions, particularly Resolution 2417, which condemns the starving of civilians and unlawfully denying humanitarian access.
Sadly, the famine of the 1980s was not an isolated incident. It was a collective failure to prevent and respond to policies of collective punishment that were repeated elsewhere. The culture of impunity persists, allowing the weaponisation of food and abuse to go unchecked. I hope that we can learn from the past and from our own mistakes. The best way to honour victims is to use every tool to ensure that starvation can no longer be used with impunity as a weapon of war. For that, we must act decisively, not just to respond but to prevent future conflicts and famines.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, the whole House is indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for initiating today’s important debate. During her remarks, she referred to the consequences of indebtedness on development—a point taken up by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield. Forty years ago, on 22 November 1984, in the House of Commons, I challenged the then Government on their policy on Ethiopia, stressing that Ethiopia was still paying back more in debt than it was receiving in aid.
As the noble Baroness rightly remarked, in comments that were echoed very movingly by her friend the noble Lord, Lord Oates, the catastrophe in Ethiopia was brought into our homes by the extraordinary journalism of the BBC’s Michael Buerk. His devastating first hand accounts roused our consciences and indignation —a point to which I will return in my comments.
I will follow what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, and roll the clock forward from the two years of war in Tigray between 2020 and 2022 to the situation there now. Professor Jan Nyssen of Ghent University, a leading European authority on the war, put the number of war fatalities at between 300,000 and 500,000 people, including 50,000 to 100,000 from fighting, 150,000 to 200,000 due to famine and 100,000 from a lack of medical attention. To be clear, this was manmade, but no men have been brought to justice.
Professor Alex de Waal, the executive director of World Peace Foundation, draws parallels with the catastrophic situation in 1984. He says:
“In 1984, the Ethiopian government wanted the world to believe that its revolution heralded a bright new era of prosperity, and foreign donors refused to believe warnings of starvation until they saw pictures of dying children on the BBC news”.
On Tuesday evening, while speaking here at a meeting held in the Palace, I was struck by the intervention of a Tigrayan who believed that a complete denial of media access to the region from 2020 to 2022 enabled the regime to repeat these unspeakable acts of horror—these atrocities. That meeting was held to discuss a report of the New Lines Institute, undertaken over two years and comprising some 100,000 words. It concludes that the crime of genocide has occurred in Tigray. I have a copy for the Minister, which I will give to him during the debate.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
The Minister will know then, having seen the report, that that the situation has echoes of 1984. Ethiopia, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Oates, was then ruled by the Marxist-Leninist, pro-Soviet Derg. That ended in 1991, when its leader, Mengistu, fled to Zimbabwe. The House should note that an Ethiopian court found him guilty of genocide in absentia. His regime was estimated to be responsible for the deaths of 0.5 million to 2 million Ethiopians, mostly during the famine. Of course, he has never been brought to justice, becoming a role model for others who commit atrocities with impunity.
In September 2023 I chaired a cross-party inquiry, which published a report entitled The Three Horsemen of the War in Tigray: Mass Killings, Sexual Violence and Starvation. It called on the UK Government and other actors to provide a response commensurate with the gravity and scale of what had occurred. It made clear that starvation in Tigray is not an unintended consequence of the conflict but, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, a method of war. That finding is underlined in the New Lines inquiry, which concludes that there was an
“intent to destroy Tigrayans as an ethnic group, in whole or in part”.
That is one of the criteria for the crime of genocide, fuelled by torture, rape, mutilation and sexual violence. Another criterion—one of those factors taken into account when declaring a genocide—is the prevention of birth, illustrated by the slogan:
“A Tigrayan womb should never give birth”.
In October 2021, Mark Lowcock, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, commented on the situation in Tigray, including the attempt to block aid from going into the region. These are his words:
“There’s not just an attempt to starve six million people but an attempt to cover up what’s going on. What we’re seeing play out, I think, is potentially the worst famine the world has seen in the 21st century … What’s happening is that Ethiopian authorities are running a sophisticated campaign to stop aid from getting in by, for example, making it impossible for truck drivers to operate by setting up checkpoints with officials and militia people, by preventing fuel from getting in … And what they are trying to do is starve the population of Tigray into subjugation or out of existence, but to avoid the opprobrium that would still be associated with a deliberate, successful attempt to create a famine taking the lives of millions of people”.
In 2021 Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s Foreign Minister and a European Union special envoy to Ethiopia, said that, following his talks with Prime Minister Abiy and other Ministers, he believed that they were
“going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years”.
In response to our cross-party inquiry, the Tigrayan Advocacy and Development Association told us:
“The Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara forces left a trail of scorched earth … in which they deliberately burned houses, forests, and field crops ready for harvest; cut mango orchards, papaya trees, and plant nurseries; mixed grains with soil; looted and slaughtered livestock; and killed hundreds of protected wild animals. To ensure no harvest for the next season, ENDF, EDF, ASF, and Fano militia worked in tandem to block vital agricultural supplies, including seeds, destroyed and looted farm tools and prevented farmers from tilling their land during the most crucial period”.
Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs reported that, at the height of the crisis, 100 trucks a day of aid needed to get to Tigray but only 10% had gained access in the previous three months. New Lines highlights the shooting of truck drivers and the arrest and detention of drivers before they reached Tigray as another way of preventing food getting through.
The restrictions of aid continued after the ceasefire and during the informal truce. Although WFP and OCHA reported a resumption of aid deliveries at the beginning of April 2022, in reality, while they estimated that 115 food trucks would be needed every day throughout May, convoys were able to bring supplies into Tigray on only six occasions.
That brings us to today. In February 2024, Tigray officials warned of an unfolding famine that could equal or eclipse the 1984 famine. Ethiopia’s ombudsman said it confirmed the starvation deaths of at least 351 people in Tigray and another 21 in the neighbouring Amhara region as a result of drought and instability. Once again, the scale of this tragedy—like that in Sudan, as we have heard—has been massively under- reported.
In February the Guardian reported that
“humanitarians have mostly kept quiet, fearful of losing their operating licences”.
It went on to say:
“In private, however, their language is stark. A recent memo circulated among aid agencies warns that ‘starvation and death are inevitable … in considerable numbers’ from March onwards in some areas of Tigray if aid does not reach them soon. Another says child malnutrition rates”—
the role that malnutrition can play in long-term development was emphasised earlier in the debate by the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, and others—
“are as high as 47% in parts of Oromia, Ethiopia’s biggest region”.
On 30 July, I asked the Minister to comment on reports that more than 2 million were reported to be at risk of starvation in Tigray. He responded:
“The humanitarian community is targeting 3.8 million people … with food assistance”.
I was pleased to hear that the UK is leading a pledging conference. I echo the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, as to how much of the $610 million has been raised and deployed.
I ask once more: what is being done to bring those responsible to justice? I hope, like the noble Lords, Lord Oates and Lord Browne, that in another 40 years there will not be a similar parliamentary debate asking why those with political power in 2024 did no better than those who went before them.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I join with others in congratulating my noble friend and commending her on securing this debate. We are very proud to have her on our Benches, with her record as a Minister. She is a perfect example of what Ministers can do, even in a short period, with passion, persistence and dedication. I am pleased that she initiated this debate, which has allowed us to reflect on failure. There is an element of success, of course, but fundamentally, 40 years on, we still have enormous challenges. The global community is not living up to the required response.
My noble friend highlighted the power of the BBC and broadcasters, of what good journalism can do, and of the ability to shock and then galvanise a response from the public. But with conflict and climate-induced hunger and starvation, famine is now back in the Horn of Africa and, as we have heard, on the worst scale in 30 years. The public appeals are less clear and there is little action. As we heard in the debate on neighbouring Sudan, the conflict has brought about a humanitarian crisis deeper and broader than Ethiopia 40 years ago, but it does not even warrant a Disasters Emergency Committee appeal. It does not even trigger the lowest level of what the DEC might seek to gain public support. What a contrast between that and 40 years ago.
Another contrast with 40 years ago is that when there was famine in 1984, global GDP was $40 trillion. At the end of last year, global GDP was $140 trillion, but now we have the worst malnutrition in that 40-year period. The IDA of the World Bank is now struggling to have a replenishment that might even just simply stay static, not grow. The World Bank has indicated that the majority of developing nations still have not recovered from pre-Covid levels, when the richest countries in the world operated out of self-interest rather than good interest.
I, like many colleagues taking part in this debate, have been to Addis Ababa on a number of occasions—most recently just three weeks ago. I know that many Ethiopians today do not like references to 1984 and the perception of a country in need. I can understand this and have seen for myself many areas where development has been raised. I congratulate policymakers for this, but with conflict, neighbouring tensions, lack of food security, drought and flood—a combination of natural and manmade impacts—there are too many still in grave need in the area. Some might consider the climate-induced impact to be natural, but this is a region that contributes just 0.6% of the world’s greenhouse gases yet is most afflicted by the consequences of our pollution.
In his excellent contribution, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, gave the scale of the crisis. My noble friend Lord Oates quoted Michael Buerk, who said that in the camp he was in a child was dying every 20 minutes. The nutrition and hunger crisis in the wider Horn of Africa continues today unabated. During the short time of this debate, 200 children will die hungry.
In response to this crisis in the Horn of Africa, the previous Government cut UK assistance by 80%. It was impossible to infill from other donors, so it was an actual cut to the global response. In 2017 the Government provided £800 million to a famine that was less than it was last year, when the Government provided £156 million. When it comes to the famine prevention initiative, working with the G7, the UK pulled back. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm the current Government’s position with regard to the famine prevention initiative. It is needed even more; we need to build on it, not retreat from it.
The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, in her excellent contribution cogently said that much of the crisis is manmade, and she is absolutely right. In her opening remarks, my noble friend said that the response to 1984 showed the best of humanity, but today we see the worst excesses of what man can do to man. But as we have heard, it is the girl and the woman who are the principal victims.
As a consequence of conflict and tensions around Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Somaliland, an increased number of people are now being smuggled from Metema in Ethiopia to eastern Sudan and, ultimately, trafficked towards Europe. The current situation in the Amhara region sees traffickers exploiting the conflict and crisis there.
As I indicated, the world is nearly four times richer than in 1984. Why is it that its leaders are not rising to the moment? Why is it that our public seem to be bored of seeing conflict? Why is it that they switch off? Policymakers seem to be cynical: as long as the growth of wealth is in the hands of those with power, they need not have the kind of response necessary for the crisis today.
This debate and the excellent one obtained by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, in which we debated 0.7% and sustainable development goals, sandwiched a debate in which more Members of this House spoke on the charitable status of private schools than those who have spoken on conflict, global hunger and malnutrition. In the wonderful memoir of my noble friend Lord Oates, telling his story as a precocious 15 year-old seeking single-handedly to solve the issue, there is a short chapter with which, with great coincidence, I want to close. One of the elements that motivated him as a youngster was seeing on the telly stories of the European Community stocking food that could not be resold. He said:
“In a desperate attempt to dispose of the grotesque mountains of excess, these stocks were handed out to charities, and—thanks to their charitable status—the most exclusive schools in the country were among the happy recipients. Subsidised butter fed to the richest people in the land while millions faced starvation. Don’t tell me there weren’t things to be angry about”.
In my mind, this debate means that we still need to be angry. The Minister and the new Government with an enormous mandate—a historic mandate on which I congratulate them—have a historic opportunity. I very much hope that they do not squander it, that we do not repeat the mistakes we have made in recent years and that we respond, as we should as one of the richest countries in the world, with a moral heart.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, it is difficult to follow such a powerful speech. Like others, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for securing this debate and reminding us of a couple of things: first, those terrible events 40 years ago and, secondly, just how old some of us are getting, yet we remember those days as if they were yesterday. As we mark this solemn 40th anniversary of the famine, we must not forget, as a number of other speakers, including the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have reminded us, the present situation in Ethiopia and surrounding countries.
In April this year, 21 million Ethiopian people needed food assistance—these numbers just get larger every time; they almost fade into insignificance, with a million here and a billion there. In this case, that would be about a third of the population of the UK. From these Benches, we offer our full support to the Government in taking constructive measures to support those many vulnerable communities in Ethiopia and highlighting the urgency to act.
The World Food Programme’s ramped-up efforts in February of this year were desperately needed to prevent the already severe food shortages becoming a major humanitarian catastrophe. According to the FAO and the World Food Programme, Ethiopia is predicted to be among the top five hungriest countries from June to October of this year. It was solemn to hear many contributors saying that this is not an accidental disaster; it is entirely man-made. The poor women and children are those who suffer, but it is usually made by men.
To what can we attribute the causes of this? Sadly, of course, it is the usual suspects of armed conflict, communal violence, flooding and localised crop production shortfalls. The friction between civilians, militias and Ethiopian federal forces has led to states of emergency in many parts of the country. The Ethiopian authorities, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, reminded us, have imposed curfews and restrictions on people’s movement. These appear to have worsened the situation in many respects by affecting livelihoods, access to market and important trade flows.
In April this year, the previous Government pledged to provide life-saving support to hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians. I take on board the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, that it was not enough; nevertheless, we did do that. The UK Government pledged to cover the deficit in nutrition supplies, to increase safe water and sanitation, and to provide emergency funding to help improve food security and resilience in Ethiopia’s vulnerable areas. Now that we have a new Government in office, I very much hope to hear the Minister confirm that that work to improve Ethiopian food security will continue. I hope that they will be able to keep to the promises that the previous Government made—I am sure they will, but it will be interesting to hear that confirmed by the Minister—and continue to act in the best interests of the Ethiopian people.
Let me also ask the Minister a couple of other questions. First, much of the Government’s current support is for short-term relief efforts, rightly, as we have just heard. But in addition, how can the Government best support the long-term resolutions, which will solve the problem only in the longer term, and what support can they give to institutions that will aim to resolve Ethiopia’s long-term food insecurity?
Secondly, would food aid and other current government pledges be best provided alongside diplomatic assistance to help resolve internal conflicts? If so, how can the Government best support existing NGO and IGO schemes to assist in conflict resolution? How can they effectively monitor the success and impacts of the aid that is given to Ethiopia and what metrics will they use?
According to the World Food Programme, South Sudan and Sudan are more severely affected by food insecurity. We had an excellent debate on that subject recently, so how do the provisions for and response in Ethiopia compare with those that will be given to other African countries? I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to those questions and some of the others posed in the debate.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for opening the debate with such insight and care on issues that are incredibly important. I share in what the noble Lord opposite quite rightly said: many of the interventions that we have made are not short-term but long-term. They require continuity to ensure that we deliver proper support, so I welcome his comments. Let me reassure him that we will continue, where appropriate, the good work of the previous Government.
Having visited Ethiopia just last week, I was struck by just how pertinent the issues from the famine of 1984 are. The scale of human suffering in 1984 affected our collective conscience and taught us some vital lessons about how we can prevent such disasters happening again. We can all be incredibly proud of the way the British public rallied round in what remains the biggest humanitarian fundraising effort in history. The BBC’s expert reporting was a contributory factor in bringing that famine to global attention, and we should pay tribute to that.
The celebrity-endorsed Live Aid event united 1.9 billion people and raised £110 million, or $333 million. Live Aid asked some tough questions of western governments and relief agencies around the world, and rightly so. It helped people become more aware of global inequality and exposed them to the politics of international development and assistance, particularly in Africa. However, the horrific images also contributed to the perception of Ethiopians needing to be saved by West, and the idea that famine is a natural disaster rather than a manmade one, as we have heard in this debate.
Over the last 40 years, I think our views have changed and our perspectives have widened, as the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, highlighted. Other events have brought to our attention the need for a changed attitude. I am pleased to say that this Government are bringing a modern approach to development and our relationship with the people and Government of Ethiopia. We want to learn the lessons from the last four decades and tailor our approach to both humanitarian response and bilateral relationships. That means working hand in hand with our development partners, making sure that it is just that—an equal partnership. That requires leadership and responsibility from both sides, not just to respond to the crises but to prevent them in the first place. That is why I visited Ethiopia, including the affected Tigray region, within months of becoming a Minister.
Today, not only do we have better monitoring systems for assessing levels of need, but better global co-ordination and preparatory measures. That means we are much more capable than before of preventing such crises. At the same time—I want to stress this point—it is the responsibility of the Ethiopian Government to find political solutions to the internal conflicts, which, as we have heard in this debate, worsen humanitarian needs. Let me reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, that I did make these points when I met Premier Abiy. He certainly gave me a history lesson, but we also focused very much on the future and what steps he needs to take to ensure that political effort is put into resolving potential conflicts in the future.
We are increasingly aware of the compounding impacts of climate change on the humanitarian crises. As I heard on my visit last week, it affects conflict, education, healthcare, the economy and our very ability to co-ordinate action globally. The UK’s engagement with Ethiopia has focused on tackling these issues, and adopting a multifaceted approach is key. That is why we have increased our focus on food, health, water and sanitation, and on the most vulnerable populations. We are also investing in improving data and evidence to enable informed decisions—a point that was made well in today’s earlier debate. We do this bilaterally through established routes and monitoring systems, via the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Of course, our approach must continue to evolve and we must focus more on preventive measures. It is hugely encouraging that we are one of the biggest contributors to the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, because equity is a key part of our approach. It provides a tailored response to vulnerable people, including internally displaced people and women and girls. As all noble Lords here are aware, women and girls bear the brunt of major crises. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his and the APPG’s work on this. I certainly have read the New Lines report— I will keep his copy as an additional copy.
When I was in Tigray, I met women and girls in the Sabacare IDP camp there. Such shocks worsen existing inequalities and education prospects, undoing the progress achieved in empowering women and girls. For example, the incidence of child marriage and gender-based violence significantly increases in the areas of drought. These facts show why we are adopting a more tailored approach.
This year, we are helping over 435,000 children and pregnant and breastfeeding women with nutritious food—the previous Government also contributed to this. I saw examples of our collaboration with the World Food Programme in Tigray, as it delivers holistic support to women and children in the health centre. It was a continuous programme, doing excellent work.
In 2023-24, we reached 36,879 women and girls suffering gender-based violence, and child protection services supported 52,000 wasted pregnant and breast- feeding women with critical nutrition. We provided regular cash transfers to 2,871 households with pregnant women and young children, and we placed 500,000 girls in school over the last year.
We have consistently called for the end of the wide- spread gender-related sexual violence in Ethiopia. We have deployed preventing sexual violence team experts in Ethiopia, as the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, mentioned. We will continue to focus on that work. We will protect more than 23,000 women and girls through those services, with regular cash transfers, as I said.
We obviously also need to focus on how to have future growth in Ethiopia. We have rallied international support for a multibillion dollar financial package from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. But no country’s economy can flourish in the midst of conflict, which remains a persistent contributing factor to the humanitarian crisis—another point I absolutely stressed to Premier Abiy. We know that the conflict in Tigray claimed the lives of up to 600,000 people.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has constantly pushed on the issue of genocide, and he knows the long-standing government position on how you make such a determination. But I reassure him that I am absolutely committed to ensuring that we hold those responsible to account and that we have proper policies to end impunity. That means ensuring that we not only support the evidence-gathering process but help survivors—who are left with a legacy of widespread human rights atrocities perpetrated by all sides—to get justice. We are committed to supporting them, which is why we support Ethiopia’s transitional justice policy and why, in my visit, I announced £16 million to help 75,000 Tigrayan military personnel return to civilian life.
As my noble friend Lord Browne mentioned, since August last year the Amhara region has been plunged into instability, with a full-scale insurgency. In other regions, violence is coming on. I assure my noble friend and others that the Government are absolutely focused on bringing international attention to this. We want to ensure that we join those affected by this conflict to call on the Ethiopian Government to find a peaceful resolution. I raised that not only with Premier Abiy but with all leaders in Tigray; I spoke to the Acting Premier and President in the region.
I want to underline the importance that we place on these issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, spoke about the pledging conference in Geneva. Certainly, we will continue that work—$610 million has been raised. The pledges made were intended for 2024-25, but we will host a follow-up meeting in November to ensure not only that we deliver those pledges, which have been met, but that we increase them from April. We are working on that. In the post-conflict situation in Tigray, I visited a manufacturing factory in the war zone. We will pledge further support, just under £7 million, for Ethiopia’s textiles and garments sector. Jobs are vital to changing people’s lives, and I have seen how this can work.
On malnutrition, I think noble Lords know exactly where my heart lies on that—for 10 years, I supported the Nutrition for Growth summits for the APPG. As noble Lords have highlighted, malnutrition has long-term consequences such as stunting, which excludes affected people from the economy and harms development prospects for populations far into the future. In tackling the risks of famine, we are also safeguarding Ethiopia’s future economic prospects. This is in all our interests.
The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, and others raised the issue of ODA spending. Certainly, the Prime Minister and this Government are committed to restoring 0.7% of GNI once the fiscal situation allows. However, as I said in the earlier debate and will repeat now, we are focused on impact and on delivering what we can. Nutrition is vital. Our support for the pledges of the Nutrition for Growth summit remains. It has the biggest multiplying effect in investment and development, and we will continue to support it. In 2021, the UK pledged £1.5 billion to improve nutrition of women, girls and children. It also pledged to integrate nutrition across the ODA portfolio and to use the OECD/DAC nutrition policy marker to report on nutrition integration in our programme. We will publish annual nutrition accountability reports on progress against our pledges—the previous one was published in August. We will continue that work, and I hope that I will be in a position to report on it in the future.
We know we are operating in a difficult environment in Ethiopia, with active conflicts, hard-to-reach areas and tough regulations, and many humanitarian agencies struggle to help those who most need it. As a result of the Geneva pledging conference, the Government of Ethiopia made commitments to reform humanitarian practices. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, that that includes facilitating unimpeded and sustained access to all areas and affected people, collaborating on an analysis framework that draws on global best practice—again, another issue raised with Premier Abiy. While food insecurity and malnutrition remain a cause for concern in Ethiopia, we hope that these steps will reduce prevalence over time.
In conclusion, this has been an excellent debate. Looking to the future, prevention has to be our primary goal. Our objectives must be to ensure that the events that stunned us 40 years ago are never repeated. We will do that by promoting sustainable economic growth, creating climate-resilient humanitarian systems and prioritising human rights alongside empowering women and girls. We will do this working in genuine partnership with the Government of Ethiopia. With conflicts currently raging across the country, reports of human rights abuses and violations, serious economic challenges and food insecurity crises throughout Tigray and Afar, there is much work to be done. As partners, our Governments must work towards the benefit of both our peoples. Resolving this is the collective responsibility of the Ethiopian Government and the international community, because only by working together can we discover lasting solutions to poverty and inequality.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
My Lords, I shall not detain noble Lords for long. It has been an excellent debate, and I want to thank every single contributor for their wisdom, knowledge, passion and intellect in addressing what are insoluble problems. When I was in Africa, they had an expression: “Eat while you are at the table”, which basically meant that if your tribe, ethnic group, people of your religion or whoever were in power, then all your relatives and your tribe were okay—at the expense of everybody else. Until that basic way of fighting for scarce resources is changed, I do not know how much you can change for the long term, because it is a massive undertaking. But in the short term, people are dying because they have no food.
I am grateful to the Minister, and I wish him well, and speed, with his work in Africa; it needs him. I again thank all noble Lords for their contributions, particularly my noble friend Lord Oates. If we had not had a 14 or 15 year-old boy running away to Ethiopia, we might not have had this debate today.
Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2024
(2 months ago)
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Lord Collins of Highbury
That the Regulations laid before the House on 30 July be approved.
Considered in Grand Committee on 15 October.
Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 (Disability Assistance) (Consequential Modifications) Order 2024
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
That the draft Order laid before the House on 26 July be approved.
Considered in Grand Committee on 15 October.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
With the leave of the House and on behalf of my noble friend Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, I beg leave to move the Motion standing in her name on the Order Paper.