East Africa: Food Security

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

We continue to work to improve the effectiveness of the international humanitarian system. In the time of Covid-19, that is more important than ever. The UK is the largest donor to the UN’s Sudan humanitarian pooled fund, which aims to advance the Grand Bargain commitments that my noble friend referred to. That works by providing direct funding to national NGOs, as well as building the capacity of local partners to strengthen programmes and deliver results.

[Baroness Hayman (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a trustee of the Disasters Emergency Committee. That committee is launching a coronavirus appeal tomorrow to protect refugees and displaced people in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, including South Sudan, Yemen and Syria. Given the devastating consequences of the virus for those already desperately vulnerable people, will the Government encourage the public to give generously to that appeal by doing so themselves in the form of aid matching?

[Baroness Sugg]

I thank the noble Baroness for highlighting the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal. We will be supporting that appeal; I think we will be making an announcement on it tomorrow. The noble Baroness also referred to support for refugees and internally displaced people. Today we are making an announcement that we are supporting 5,500 teachers to ensure that refugees, over half of whom are young people, will be able to continue their education throughout the crisis.

Covid-19: International Response

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register and join others in welcoming the tone of the Minister’s introduction to the debate. There has never been a more important time for the UK to continue its investment in development and global health. We know from our own experience that the effects of the coronavirus are not spread fairly and equitably across the population and are not limited to those infected by the disease itself. Those wider effects—economic, social and health threats—are even more devastating in poorer communities and countries. They can overwhelm already overstretched health services and social safety nets, and undermine fragile economies. We have the chance to intervene to limit the spread of the disease and the damage it does indirectly.

As Covid-19 spreads to malaria-endemic countries, it is essential that we recognise the threat to the progress that has been made against that disease in recent decades and to hundreds of thousands of lives that could be put at risk by a malaria outbreak and upsurge. According to the WHO, severe disruption to net campaigns and other vital services could lead to a doubling of malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. We saw in west Africa during the Ebola outbreak an estimated 7,000 additional deaths from malaria in those aged under five, caused by the diversion of services and the end to malaria services that are so essential. We must act to prevent that happening this time. I hope the Minister will assure me that we will continue our leading role in malaria prevention.

Polio: Pakistan and Afghanistan

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

I am very pleased that my noble friend highlights the work of Rotary International. As she said, it has been at the forefront of the work to eradicate polio for more than 30 years, and it is a founding member of the WHO Global Polio Eradication Initiative. I will certainly join my noble friend in paying tribute to it today and I sure that many noble Lords will want to do the same. Rotary International has contributed more than £1.3 billion to the global initiative, which includes more than £32 million raised in Great Britain and Northern Ireland alone. My Secretary of State, Alok Sharma, was pleased to attend an event with Rotary International yesterday, where he met fundraisers and survivors of the disease.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the strength of the commitment in the Minister’s remarks today. Going the last mile and finding those most difficult cases—going from elimination to eradication—is a very expensive and difficult exercise. However, does the Minister agree that it is in fact an investment, which is the only protection for the world against the resurgence of such diseases? Therefore, will she also look at the Lancet Commission report on malaria eradication and the measures set out there, and again take that concerted approach that will allow us to rid the world of malaria? I declare my interest as chair of Malaria No More UK.

[Baroness Sugg]

The noble Baroness is right: the last mile is often the most difficult. We must not be complacent; we do have remaining challenges as we work towards complete eradication. We must continue the support from the UK and the international community on that. It is absolutely in the UK’s interest and the global interest to ensure that we do not see the return of this disease. Some figures say that even within a decade, we will see hundreds of thousands of new cases if we do not continue this. We must also look at how we combat malaria as well—absolutely. We were pleased to make such a significant contribution to the Global Fund recently, but both the UK and international partners must work together to tackle these diseases.

Ebola

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

I agree with the right reverend Prelate on the importance of getting education on this out, and community engagement remains one of the most important factors that will help in any outbreak. Strengthening this aspect of the response is a key part of the ongoing reset which the UK and other partners have pushed for. The response is increasingly working with religious leaders to help foster community trust and ownership and, on top of our wider support, we are funding anthropological research into community dynamics, which is working with faith leaders.

On the right reverend Prelate’s second question, we do of course have screening at the airports in the affected areas, but the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in the Cabinet Office is co-ordinating the UK’s preparedness, working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Transport and UK Border Force. We manage a returning workers scheme: people who have travelled to the area register, and we monitor their health. We have the expertise to handle a case of Ebola in the UK, with two high-level isolation units. We undertake a risk assessment every two weeks and monitor the situation daily. The current assessment is that the risk to the UK is negligible to very low.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I visited Sierra Leone during the last Ebola outbreak, and very much endorse what the right reverend Prelate said about the critical importance—we left it too late in that outbreak—of gaining the trust of communities through religious leaders and through young people from their own communities in order to adhere to public health measures. During that outbreak, we did not have the option of a vaccination, and that is why many front-line healthcare workers in west Africa died during that outbreak. We have a vaccine this time, but I know that there are concerns both about stocks and availability of the current vaccine and about the potential use of a second vaccine. Can the Minister give us any information on that issue?

[Baroness Sugg]

The noble Baroness is right to highlight the benefits that the vaccine has brought. Previously, an outbreak of Ebola was passed on to four people; now, it is just one, following the vaccine. We should be very proud that UK aid played a part in developing that vaccine. We are working closely with the vaccine manufacturer and the Chief Medical Officer in the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that we have enough. We are monitoring the numbers of vaccine that would be needed, and we are investing in further research to ensure that we are prepared for another outbreak.

Cyclone Idai

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hayman]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the current humanitarian situation in the countries affected by Cyclone Idai.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, Cyclone Idai is one of the most severe cyclones ever to hit southern Africa. Approximately 129,000 people have been displaced in Mozambique, 87,000 in Malawi and 4,000 in Zimbabwe. Some 2.6 million people have been affected across the three countries.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

I am grateful for that response and for all that the department has already done, including UK Aid Match, which has helped the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal reach over £21 million in less than a week. I remind the House of my interest as a trustee, and that the appeal is still very much open for those who have yet to donate. Does the Minister agree that the scale and effect of this disaster is devastating and still unfolding with, as he said, more than 2.5 million people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance and the threat of a secondary emergency from diseases such as cholera and malaria? Could he tell the House of the department’s longer-term plans to help these countries recover and what the Government are doing to encourage other countries to match this country’s generosity, both private and public?

[Lord Bates]

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness’s work with the Disasters Emergency Committee. The amount of money raised—£21 million—is phenomenal, thanks to the generosity of the British people. The UK Government contribution is some £22 million so far. The appeal launched by the UN is for some $289 million. The UK contribution, from overseas development assistance alone, is way ahead of that of any other country. The next nearest is the United States at $10.8 million and then Germany at $3.5 million. Rightly, the Secretary of State for International Development and the Minister for Africa have been putting great emphasis on getting other countries to step up to the mark and realise the severity of the situation faced by these people.

Yemen

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

That provision of maps is an essential precursor to the delivery of humanitarian aid. There is about 140 miles of very remote, rough countryside between those two ports. If goods and people are to travel along it delivering aid, it is essential that they can do so in safety. It is a condition of the Stockholm agreement.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, as was made clear yesterday, humanitarian agencies from the UK and elsewhere are functioning in Yemen, despite the difficulties, but does the Minister agree that, because of the collapse of public institutions, people’s access to essential services—water, sanitation, healthcare and education—have completely collapsed? Humanitarian agencies could do a lot more if they were allowed to, but they can never compensate for government spending. Is the right reverend Prelate not absolutely right to say that our Government need not only to step up their own efforts but to ensure that the international community does so as well?

Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

That is absolutely right. On the sustainable development goals to which all 193 nations are signed up, goal 3.3 is the specific commitment. If it is going to be met, nations will have to step up and put more funds on the table to ensure people get the treatments that are needed. In 2017, those diseases killed approximately 2.6 million people, so we are a long way off 2030. We have the technologies, but we need to make sure the resources are there so that they are delivered.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, there is another commitment to which the Government are a party and that is the commitment made at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting to halve malaria in the Commonwealth by 2023. The Global Fund has been absolutely crucial so far in the enormous achievements that we have made against malaria but, as the Minister said in his Answer to the Question, the achievements are in jeopardy if we do not go forward. Can he be even more positive about both the Government’s commitment to the sixth replenishment round and to persuading other Governments to meet their commitments too?

[Lord Bates]

I think that that is one reason we were party to the high-level meeting in the margins of the UN General Assembly in September, which sought to gather some momentum behind this issue. There are other challenges with malaria, which the noble Baroness, as someone who has championed this cause over many years in this House, will know, and they include antimicrobial resistance and insecticide resistance. The challenges, particularly in relation to malaria, are getting more difficult, and that is why we need the resources.

Cannabis: Medicinal Use

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

It is of course up to PCCs to decide the policy priorities for their local areas, and of course those will be different in different areas depending on the prevalence of drug use. The noble Lord is right that the numbers have dropped, but—and I see this, depressingly, in Manchester—the use of synthetic cannabinoids is rife in some cities.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I am afraid that I am still confused, even after the noble Baroness’s answer to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. As I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, if a family wants to be one of those permitted to use cannabis-based medicines in this country, it must prove efficacy, but because they are not already scheduled and licensed for such use, in order to do so the family must go abroad to take those medicines. The noble Baroness herself said in her answer that it was quite inappropriate that families should have to go abroad.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

There are two things here—and this will be third time lucky, maybe. If a family has to go abroad to get medicines, we still would wish to be sure of a medicine’s safety. So it is absolutely right that we would go through a process based on medical evidence on the safety of a drug. What we have seen in the last few weeks has actually been a short-term fix to what we need to sort out: the long-term problem and the solution of providing the appropriate drugs to these children for their conditions.

Neglected Tropical Diseases

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

I am a very charitable cause. My Lords, I am delighted to take part in this debate, and I draw the House’s attention to my interests as set out in the register. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Trees, on obtaining this debate and on introducing it so effectively and comprehensively. It has become something of an annual parliamentary event. If we look back to last year’s debate, we can see the value of having an annual debate. I start off by congratulating and thanking not only the noble Lord, Lord Trees, but the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bates. Last year, those of us who spoke in this debate—many of us are in the Chamber today—gave him not a hard time but an element of harangue because we were coming up to some crucial funding decisions. He took on board everything that we said. He went back to the department—and maybe there was an element of harangue in his conversations with colleagues—and he certainly came up with the goods. I think we ought to record, if not our effectiveness, his effectiveness in ensuring that the DfID commitment to NTDs continued.

As we have heard, that commitment is showing results. When we look at the fifth annual assessment following the London declaration and the published work of Professor Hotez, Professor Molyneux and Professor Fenwick—to whom the noble Lord, Lord Stone, referred—we can see that, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and particularly through the mass drug-administration programmes, we are making a real inroad into the diseases that we have described every year in terms of their debilitating effects on individuals and communities and their educational and employment status. We have often said that these are diseases of neglected people, not just neglected diseases.

We also have to recognise that while we have seen successes—I think we can say with some confidence from the academic research that the integrated MDA programmes are highly successful, and of course they are immensely cost effective because of the donations, as has been referred to—there are also areas where success has stalled. Sometimes that is because of conflict and political destabilisation. Last year we discussed the areas of Syria and Iraq, which have seen a rise in NTDs, but also in Venezuela destabilisation has resulted in the rise of Chagas disease, malaria infections and indeed schistosomiasis.

The noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, said correctly that we do not see these diseases in wealthy communities but we see them in wealthy countries. A growing number of NTDs now occur among the poorest living in G20 nations. For example, today 90% of people living with leishmaniasis and Chagas disease, particularly the latter, live in the four leading economies in the western hemisphere—the US, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico—and 99% of those sufferers are denied access to diagnosis and treatment. They are the diseases of the poor but they are not only diseases of the poor living in poor countries. It is very important that we realise that. There are 12 million Americans living with NTDs, particularly in the south.

So we need to look at conflict zones and at the poor in G20 nations. That means we have to continue with the drive for innovation, creativity and new treatments, particularly antihelminthic drugs, and I will bang the drum for vaccines once again. I particularly know about the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, which is developing a whole new generation of NTD antipoverty vaccines for Chagas, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis and hookworm, among others. Many of these vaccines are being developed jointly with manufacturers in disease-endemic countries, and obviously one can see the benefits of that. They are key technologies to ensure the elimination of NTDs.

Talking of vaccines, if I may digress a little, we have to be aware of the dangers of the anti-vax movement. Look at the progress of measles: last year we had 20,000 cases in Europe, and it looks as if we will have more this year. The pernicious effects of the anti-vax movement are already being felt among their own children and children among Europe. What we do not want to see is new vaccines coming in for these diseases being subject to the same sort of scaremongering. That is why it is very important that we take on the anti-vax movement very strongly, otherwise we will quickly erode the gains that we got through MDG 4 and Gavi.

I want to raise a point that I know is of issue particularly to those concerned with leprosy. For very obvious reasons, DfID has had a focus on five diseases and on mass drug administration programmes. In terms of bangs for your buck, one can see exactly why that has happened, but the London declaration went much further than those five diseases. I know that the work of DfID goes much wider than that—for example in the aid match that it has given for leprosy.

It is important that we recognise that many people suffer from not one NTD but several. We must not neglect opportunities to treat the whole person and all their diseases because we are too much in a single disease silo—which of course goes against the whole ethos of universal health coverage, which NTD treatments could be a pathway into.

Can the Minister reassure me that the department will look widely in asking for bids and expressions of interest for NTD work and consider bids that are not necessarily from the five priority areas but particularly involve co-ordination with one of those diseases and a separate disease? It would be nice to know a little more about the Ross fund and what elements of that are going into vaccine and treatment development.

I end by thanking the Minister once again so much for what he did last year.

Home Office: Immigration

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

On a number of occasions over the past couple of weeks, I have described the types of decision-making in UKVI that we are seeking to improve. That includes improving the training and mentoring programmes for new caseworkers, as well as the wider assurance process, which my noble friend would expect us to do. The assurance process follows the three lines of defence and at each stage of an assessment there is scrutiny of the effectiveness of the decision-making process.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, last week’s announcement of the changes in the tier 2 visa regime for NHS staff was urgently necessary and much appreciated. Will the Minister now look at some of the bureaucratic processes of the Home Office which are still causing problems, particularly for general practitioners already working in this country, and providing valuable services to patients, when their continued service is at risk? Will she also take the opportunity to confirm that the Department of Health and the NHS have a clear code of conduct on international recruitment to prevent unethical recruitment from developing countries, a concern which has been raised in the House?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Baroness for that question. In and of itself, the fact that doctors and nurses have been taken out of the cap will improve the bureaucratic processes and help decisions to be made more quickly. As to those doctors and nurses who are not in the occupation shortage list, the sponsor still has to go through the resident labour market test. I expect this to go more smoothly and to free up the numbers within the cap for other occupations.