(1 month 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.