Job Creation: Developing Countries

Debate between Baroness Featherstone and David Simpson

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Westminster Hall

[Lynne Featherstone]

I will respond to the hon. Lady in a moment on the issue of deadweight loss.

Moving on from CDC, in the long term, the key to mass job creation is improving the environment for domestic and other businesses to invest and grow. DFID is focused on these long-term determinants of job growth.

[David Simpson]

As we believe that these projects and job creation are very important, does the Minister agree that we cannot overestimate the number of jobs that need to be created? I believe the figure is 95 million over the remainder of this decade, so time is of the essence. We need to move on this issue.

[Lynne Featherstone]

The hon. Gentleman is obviously right. We work in that direction and we are working as fast as we can to enable job creation to happen. I have covered a number of things, but part of what DFID does is on the enabling environment for investment and therefore job creation, whether that means cutting the time it takes to get goods across a border from four weeks to one day, or help with filling in forms or how long it takes to start a business—all the things that are very off-putting to investors. We are working on all fronts.

I do not know whether those hon. Members present have ever eaten in Nando’s, for example, but I was in Mozambique, where Nando’s exclusively grows its peri-peri peppers. It is a labour-intensive process, with massive work for smallholdings, done to a very high standard—because the standards, both of the product and how people work, are very important to DFID and the British Government—which means huge job creation. It is a win-win for the country, the company and the individuals who are being taught and looked after while they grow peri-peri peppers—and I can highly recommend peri-peri chicken.

DFID currently supports more than 60 programmes with specific targets to provide economic assets to girls and women in developing countries. We have set ourselves a target of helping 18 million women to access financial services and 4.5 million women to strengthen their property rights by 2015. Both will have a fundamental impact on the job prospects of the women involved by improving their control over assets and finance.

For some women in work, the conditions remain unacceptable. The UK is supporting the International Trade Centre to work with Governments and customs authorities in east Africa to improve conditions for female informal traders, who face harassment and extortion at borders—the example often given is someone who starts with 12 eggs and, by the time they pay off all the people who have to be paid off, has about three eggs left to sell. That is a common, everyday kind of factor.

The Department is also scaling up its work on education and skills—an important point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford raised—to make sure that skills are relevant to people’s changing opportunities and that the private sector is involved in designing, delivering and financing them. We are also increasing our work on infrastructure—my hon. Friend talked about power and transport—and thinking afresh about urbanisation, in order to create more and more productive jobs.