Gaza

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Tonge]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of living conditions in Gaza.

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

My Lords, the UK is very concerned about Gaza. We assess that around 1.6 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance. Households are receiving only five to six hours of electricity per day, there is limited access to safe water and power shortages are impeding health provision.

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am glad that the Minister has such an understanding of what is going on in Gaza. Let me add that it is so good to see him in his place.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

[Baroness Tonge]

However, with all these things that we hear are going on in Gaza, does the Minister agree that its people have now for 10 years been suffering cruel and degrading treatment, which amounts to the collective punishment of nearly 2 million people, more than half of whom are children? How long must this go on? How long will it be before our Government take some action?

[Lord Bates]

We are taking immediate action in the sense that we are providing humanitarian aid. The assistance that we are providing to UNRWA is helping some 1.1 million of the 1.9 million people who are there, but I have to say that the parties to the conflict must be the parties to the solution. There is an opportunity here in Gaza for its people to recognise the state of Israel, to renounce violence and to accept the agreements that are there to allow the situation to normalise and progress, as has happened in the Palestinian Authority areas. It is a desperate situation and we call on all those people to put the children, the women and the people of Gaza at the heart of their concerns.

Sierra Leone: Ebola

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on securing this debate.

I declare an interest as chair of the APPG on Population, Development and Reproductive Health. Members of the group visited Sierra Leone this time last year with the assistance of the UNFPA, which does much work there. While we were there, we were fortunate in bumping into the new Secretary of State, Priti Patel, at the high commissioner’s residence, so we corralled her and did not let her escape for a while.

Another memory of that visit was the plaque in memory of Jo Cox MP which had been erected in the Parliament chamber. It was shown to us by the niece of the late Satta Amara, founder of the 50/50 Group of Sierra Leone, which promoted women’s empowerment in the country. I knew Satta, and we had done exchange visits between her country and my constituency in the years before the Ebola outbreak.

I have indulged in that preamble because the empowerment of women by giving them power over their own bodies and over the number of children they have is very important to a country’s development and economic success. That means improving maternal health before all else. I do not have time to list Sierra Leone’s statistics and shall not do so. Your Lordships all know how dire they are.

After the end of the civil war in Sierra Leone, DfID was a major donor, particularly to healthcare, and efforts were made to roll out treatments for individual diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Yet during our visit, post Ebola, there was still very little evidence of a health network countrywide. Such a network does not particularly need doctors and nurses but it needs workers to impart public health messages and distribute supplies such as contraceptives, which only 16% of women in Sierra Leone can access.

We visited two hospitals: a very overcrowded and struggling government-run one, and the exemplary charity-run Aberdeen Women’s Centre. There are only 40 hospitals in the whole of Sierra Leone and few health centres, which in my view are even more important, although people were trying to create “pop up” health centres—again, to deal with HIV screening.

A worrying fact was the lack of treatment available for cervical cancer, which affects thousands of women in Sierra Leone. They test these women but there is no treatment available. It is very cruel to tell someone they have a disease but cannot do anything about it.

Also, will the Minister tell us when there is to be a campaign to vaccinate women against the HPV virus, which causes cervical cancer? I hear that something may be being done on this front; perhaps the Minister could confirm.

We were told that Sierra Leone was trying to develop health networks, but could the Minister tell the House if DfID is encouraging this? It is so important. The lack of such a network was in my view a major contributor to the spread of the Ebola epidemic. Does the Minister agree?

I would have liked much more time to talk about this beautiful country which has suffered so many misfortunes, from the curse of the diamond trade, as mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, to the recent mudslide and floods near Freetown— another blow to the health services trying to grow there. I hope the Minister will assure us that the UK will continue to engage with Sierra Leone and support the people there.

Development Aid Budget

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my erstwhile colleague. I was going to say “late colleague” but he might have taken that the wrong way. At one time he held the most coveted position in the House of Commons—or at least most coveted by me—as chair of the International Development Committee.

I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, for securing this debate. It is always important to bear in mind, when congratulating ourselves on our commitment to help the poorest people in the world, that we should ensure its effectiveness and monitor its impact, particularly in relation to the sustainable development goals, which were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell. Aid to the poorest people in the world does not just benefit them, if properly spent, but will benefit us in the longer term by reducing migration and expanding our markets. Do not forget that it is also the right and moral thing to do, as several noble Lords have already said. People sometimes forget that, so it is worth reminding ourselves of it.

I remember Justine Greening pledging to scrutinise the aid budget like never before when she became Secretary of State—and Priti Patel is doing the same thing. That is what they do, and of course they should. However, this country’s record is second to none. We have an all-party commitment to 0.7% of GNI to be spent on development aid, and it is worth noting that the International Development Committee, the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and the Independent Commission for Aid Impact all scrutinise the aid budget more than any other, it would seem. Added to all this scrutiny, as we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, Bill Gates, who is to be admired, has said:

“DFID is widely recognised as one of the most effective, efficient, and innovative aid agencies in the world”—


while the campaign for aid transparency Publish What You Fund rated DfID as “very good”, the highest category in its aid transparency index.

There is a long list of what UK aid has helped to do. For example, it has saved the lives of 103,000 women in childbirth, enabled 9.9 million more women to access family planning and provided safe abortions, especially for women raped in conflict. There is no greater impact we can have on development—here it comes—than empowering women, and the best way of doing that is to give them power over their own bodies in the form of family planning. This issue is so misread, and it frustrates me terribly that it is not number one on everyone’s list. If you want a country to develop economically you have to empower women, and to empower them you have to give them access to family planning. That is crucial. Alongside that, bed net distribution has halved the number of deaths from malaria; children are being vaccinated; there is more education, clean water and sanitation—the list goes on and on. There is our impact.

For aid to be effective, though, the recipients must have consistency and reliability, and this is currently at risk under the new Government. Governments of developing countries need to be able to plan and carry their projects forward. NGOs cannot plan if they do not have consistency of funding. I pick out as examples Marie Stopes International and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which no longer receive core funding from DfID and have been waiting for guidelines since last autumn to know how to apply for funding—not how to get it but how to apply for it—for the family planning and safe abortion work that they do among women and girls, particularly for the large cohort of young people that we have heard about in some of the most marginalised communities in the world. This work has already been held up for nearly a year.

Will the Minister please tell us when this matter will be dealt with? Women and girls are suffering because of indecision at DfID under the new regime. It seems that everyone from the Secretary of State downwards is saying the right things and supporting development, but there is no action on funding for big NGOs such as those I have mentioned.

I understand that in 2017-18—again, the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, mentioned this—20% of the aid budget is to be spent in other departments, which will rise to 25% the year after. Will the Minister confirm this and also that these departments are not rated as efficient as the Department for International Development? It is very worrying that the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence will be receiving DfID’s money when we know that they are not very efficient at spending the money they have already. The Minister should reassure us on this point.

Finally, on a matter very close to my heart and related to the Foreign Office budget, for how much longer will our aid budget be spent on providing health services and education for the people of Palestine, who could well provide it themselves if they were free to do so and their economy was functional? What impact are the grants to UNRWA to assist Palestinian refugees having? Why is it that we are—and have been for 50 years—supporting and funding the occupation of Palestine by another country, a rich country to boot, while doing nothing to resolve the situation that makes the aid necessary?

Have we ever done this before in our history? The occupying power under international law is responsible for the welfare of the people it is occupying. For 50 years, we have been shoring it up. To use our Department for International Development budget to help pay for Israel’s illegal occupation over 50 years surely makes us also complicit in breaking international law. Considering the length of time for which this outrage has been allowed to continue, it is an extremely ineffective way of using our aid budget—which is what this debate is all about.

US Overseas Aid: Global Gag Rule

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord leads me down a path. Our opposition on this is quite clear. When you look at the numbers and work in the international community, you recognise that the United States is the most generous country in the world, through its people and its private foundations, in what it gives to family planning around the world—it accounts for something like 47.5% of the total amount. Therefore, if we really care about people rather than political positions and statements, it behoves us to say that we want to work with our friend and ally to resolve these matters for the benefit of those whom we seek to help.

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, will the Minister assure us that women who have become pregnant as a result of rape in conflict situations will still have access to safe abortion?

[Lord Bates]

That is something on which this Government and the previous coalition Government did a great deal of work—my noble friend Lord Hague led on that—to raise the profile of the prevention of sexual violence in war. We will continue to work on that but, of course, in all cases when we are dealing with safe abortion we have to pay cognisance to the legal framework of the country in which we operating, and that requires a degree of sensitivity.

HIV Global Epidemic: Young People

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend is absolutely right in this respect. You need open societies. Good health promotion initiatives can happen only in open societies where people can talk freely. You would have thought that that message would have got through. Sadly, it has not reached everyone. We need to be sensitive because, at the same time as addressing the issues with our Commonwealth partners, we also need to continue to have access and to work with them to help the people who need that help. My noble friend Lady Verma held a very useful round-table meeting at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Valletta, Malta, last year. When the Commonwealth Heads of Government come to the UK in 2018, I very much hope that we will follow up on that work.

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that prevention is always better than cure? Does he also agree that the advent of an effective treatment for AIDS has spread the news that it is no longer necessary to practise safe sex? Will he therefore ensure that prevention in the form of barrier methods of contraception that have a double purpose, such as condoms and the diaphragm, are promoted alongside the treatment for AIDS?

Sustainable Development Goals

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, on securing this debate on such an important topic for all our futures, I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health.

It is widely accepted by the World Bank, other institutions and academics that there is a correlation between development and economic growth and the empowerment of women, a phrase that we hear much about. That is done by the reduction in family size and, subsequently, women’s access to education and training. Women can be empowered, though, only if they have power over their own bodies, and in many countries, developed and developing, women do not have that power. At this point I commend my noble friend Lord Loomba for the speech that he gave and for the work that he does in this field. It is much admired and appreciated.

I am sure that noble Lords all know the 17 sustainable development goals and the 169 targets attached to them. Personally, I have only just learned to recite the millennium development goals; now my failing memory has to cope with 17 SDGs and 169 targets, and I am not going to remember them. Can noble Lords recite them? Do your Lordships remember doing the catechism at school? Perhaps the right reverend Prelate remembers it; I never learnt that either, I have to say. Most important of all, for me, are SDGs 3.7, on good health and well-being, and 5.6, entitled “Gender equality” but dealing with women’s health and sexual and reproductive health and rights in particular. They do not deal with just maternal health, family planning and safe abortion but FGM, child marriage and violence against women generally, all of which are rife in this world and which must be eliminated. Here I must congratulate and thank the Government and the coalition Government before them on the continuing support on these issues and the high profile they have given them. Long may it continue.

My all-party parliamentary group recently produced a paper—here is a visual aid for noble Lords—following hearings on population dynamics and sustainable development. That is a rather clumsy title, but it is a good paper. It was chaired by the former MP Sir Richard Ottaway, who was one of my vice-chairs at the time. This paper deals with the advantages of reduced fertility rates—that is, family size—and links them to climate change, desertification and water shortages, which with large and often young populations lead to conflict and certainly to mass migration, which the world is experiencing now, not just in the Middle East but in Africa and Asia.

A friend on Facebook recently sent me an article. That is at least two times this week that Facebook has been mentioned in this House, I think, which may mean that we are modernising. This article was a very interesting one that I had never seen before, and gave a brilliant example of all these factors of population dynamics and climate change, and so on, coming together in the story of Syria. It was written a couple of years ago by William Polk, one-time professor of history at Harvard and I believe an adviser to the American Government, and was published in the Atlantic magazine. He describes Syria as densely populated in 2010, with a population of 24 million; one quarter of the land is arable, and the population is clustered in a very small area. He writes:

“Four years of devastating drought beginning in 2006 caused at least 800,000 farmers to lose their entire livelihood and about 200,000 simply abandoned their lands”.

In some areas there were 75% crop failures, and 85% of livestock died of thirst. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian farmers gave up and fled to the towns. Some noble Lords know this, I am sure. There they had to compete with refugees from Palestine and Iraq from previous troubles for water and food. Hostile groups formed. Representatives of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Syria—I did not know this—turned to USAID and described the situation as “a perfect storm”. No aid was given; nobody took any notice. They left Syria to it. When a relatively small group gathered in Deraa to protest against the Government and their failure to help them, the brutal crackdown by President Assad’s Government started and, as we say, the rest is history. I tell that rather lengthy story to remind noble Lords because it is very important as an illustration of what sustainable development goals should all be about.

From countryside to cities and between countries, human beings are on the move. This is why we in the group concentrated on the term “population dynamics”, which encompasses the demographics structure of a society, ageing populations who have a shortage of working-age citizens, and populations which are predominantly young. We must take all these things into account. All these factors have been recognised by the latest document to emanate from the United Nations, which we have already heard about in this debate, entitled Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Paragraph 34, in a section on urban development, states joyfully:

“We will also take account of population trends and projections in our national, rural, and urban development, strategies and policies”.

The UN gets it—I must send it a copy of our paper.

Let me stress that we are not talking about population control, but giving women the choice and necessary commodities to decide how many children they have means that mankind benefits in many ways. Countries such as Indonesia and Bangladesh are already benefiting. So are Rwanda, Tunisia, Vietnam and Ethiopia. Even Iran has reduced its fertility rate and the country has benefited as a result.

Finally, I thank the Government once again for their promotion of these issues and plead that when the Prime Minister addresses the assembly on the sustainable development goals in the autumn, he specifically mentions the benefits of the often marginalised subject of sexual and reproductive health and rights in his speech.

Middle East and North Africa

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, on returning home on Saturday evening, I switched on my television to catch up on the news, but instead caught the revellers at the Last Night of the Proms, singing:

“Land of Hope and Glory, mother of the free”.

It rather upset me in the circumstances. Sadly, we no longer have cause to be proud of ourselves as a nation after the last few weeks. In the eyes of the world, I am sorry to say, the Conservatives have turned the nasty party into a nasty Government, with their failure to act quickly in the present humanitarian crisis. On reflection, however, I do not entirely share that view; I hope to be constructive, and I commend the Prime Minister for his visit this week to the Middle East and refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan.

Last year, I visited Zaatari camp in Jordan and this year I saw several camps and enclaves of refugees in Lebanon, a country which has taken more than 25% of its population again as refugees in the last few years—a burden it simply cannot bear. These countries, together with Turkey, have taken hundreds of thousands of people, while UNRWA, which deals with Palestinian refugees, and UNHCR, which deals with the others from Syria and Iraq and elsewhere, are chronically underfunded. I congratulate our Government on being the second largest donor to UNRWA after the United States of America, but it is not nearly enough. That is the problem. Most refugees want a safe place to protect and feed their families until they return home, but the camps are overflowing and life in most of them is very grim. The fitter and braver ones head for Europe—and who can blame them? Our response should be on three fronts.

First, it is not enough to take a few selected families to come and live here. They are safe in the camps and should stay there. We should take the number requested of us and there must be European Union agreement on this. The United States of America should be involved and also the United Nations. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, who has left the Chamber, recognised this as a global problem and of course it is. This evening I heard that refugees have been tear-gassed at the borders of Hungary with Serbia. We should be ashamed of what is going on in our continent.

Secondly—this is my main request—we and our allies must step up the funding to UNHCR and UNRWA immediately, and ensure that those bodies can do a much better job as long as is necessary. It needs action by the USA, the UN and our country to raise the estimated £2 billion now needed for a really good network of safe, well-run camps in the Middle East allowing people to stay close to home. As the Minister said, this could ensure that the children in particular receive proper food and education, and safety from the traffickers, over the next few years. It could prevent young people being attracted by extremist groups. I know that both suggestions are very expensive but remind the House that Trident costs £2 billion a year simply to maintain, and replacement would cost probably a hundred or two hundred times that amount—I do not know. We have the money. I know where I would rather spend it.

Thirdly, and as the noble Lord, Lord Green, mentioned, before the civil war, there were refugees from Palestine all over the Middle East. More than half a million were in Syria, looked after by UNRWA there. They had been looked after for decades. I have been unable to establish how many Palestinians are among the people fleeing Syria at this time, but have the Government pointed out those Palestinians to the state of Israel? More than 26,000 people were immigrants into Israel and welcomed last year alone, mostly from affluent countries, so apparently it has the room and wealth to cope also with refugees. Last week on “Thought for the Day”, I heard the Chief Rabbi express quite rightly what I have experienced: the generosity of the Jewish people. He called for a paradigm shift in the response to this crisis. Finally, here is Israel’s opportunity. Give Palestinians fleeing war once again the right to return. Sadly, miracles no longer happen.

UN: Sustainable Development Goals

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, I must first thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for introducing this debate. I also declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health. I express my hope to noble Lords that I do not have to take injury time during this debate because I have a rather bad chest infection. My group has done a good deal of work on sustainable development and reproductive health in the last 10 years. I am well aware that the phrase “population growth” is a sensitive issue and must be tackled sensitively, but it must be taken into consideration when looking at these 17 sustainable development goals, with their 169 targets. They are daunting for everyone.

No goal can be attained if the population keeps on growing. For example, greater numbers of children may now be out of poverty as a result of efforts in the past 15 years all over the planet, but in the mean time greater numbers have been born and survived, so the world makes little progress and goals are not achieved. We are warned that the planet will run short of food, water and space and the very air we breathe will become more and more polluted. We must do something to stabilise world population.

For me, the solution lies in goal 5, which was pointed out in the briefing from Christian Aid mentioned by the right reverend Prelate. Goal 5 concerns gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. However, to empower women and girls means, first, that we must ensure they have power over their own bodies and over the number of times that they have to give birth. None of the women in this House could have done much without control of their own fertility. We sometimes forget the revolution that free family planning was to women in the West; we have forgotten the advantage that we have. We know that there are more than 220 million women in the world who would use family planning methods—despite religion, culture and control by their men—if they had the chance.

Fortunately, some are now being given that chance with the initiatives that, I am glad to say, were started by the previous Government and supported by worldwide bodies such as UNFPA, IPPF and the Gates Foundation. I hope that the Minister—whom I sincerely welcome to her position; it is good to see her—will reassure us that this funding will continue and that the Government will insist that sexual and reproductive health, and family planning in particular, should be specifically mentioned in the goals and targets that we expect at the end of the year.

This campaign was given a great welcome and an amusing boost, unintentionally, by no less a figure than the Pope, who has never been a fan of artificial methods of birth control. He recently told the people of the Philippines, who have huge families—a great problem for their Government—that they should not breed “like rabbits”, which I thought was quite pithy coming from the Pope. I hope that they took his remarks as seriously as the Government of the Philippines certainly have.

Smaller family sizes such as those being achieved by countries such as Bangladesh, Iran, Rwanda, Brazil and Indonesia, despite religious and cultural difficulties, show that this can be done and done voluntarily—no coercion is needed. When family sizes are smaller, women can be educated and ensure that their children are educated. All can eventually join the workforce to make their country more prosperous and less dependent on aid, with more food and water to share, less space needed to live in and less pollution of the air we breathe. All are great bonuses from providing a simple measure such as family planning supplies.

This is not just enthusiastic old me banging my favourite drum. In 2012 the World Bank produced convincing statistics to show that economic growth follows the drop in fertility rate—that means that it follows the drop in family size—and not the other way round, which is what everyone used to believe. The countries I mentioned earlier are good examples if noble Lords want to look them up.

Yesterday we saw a welcome report leaked from the Vatican, showing the Pope’s concern for the world’s ecosystem and our responsibility in the West to change our lifestyles and energy consumption—I am becoming quite a fan. We in the developed world are greedily using up the world’s resources. We must remember that; it is our responsibility too. I wish we could see more emphasis on energy conservation instead of constantly seeking new sources of energy and that we could all start eating more frugally and not being so greedy. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, will show us the way—we should have a special session on it. We in the West are responsible for most of the degradation of our planet. We must accept that, while encouraging our fellow human beings in the developing world to change too.

In conclusion, I return to my all-party group and the work it has done. Six years ago, we published a paper entitled Return of the Population Growth Factor on how we are not going to achieve the millennium development goals because of this problem. In a couple of weeks, our latest contribution will be launched, entitled “Population Dynamics and the Sustainable Development Goals”. Much better than we can do—well, not that much better—two years ago the Royal Society addressed this issue with a magnificent paper called People and the Planet. I urge noble Lords to read them all.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Verma) (Con)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for securing this debate, and commend him on his long-standing commitment to international development. With only a few months before the UN summit in September, it is right that we come together at this time to discuss the post-2015 development agenda. Before I continue, I also congratulate the noble Lord and my noble friend Lady Jenkin on their absolutely magnificent effort in making us all aware of how difficult it is to survive on £1 a day. I did it last year and can tell your Lordships that it was incredibly hard to manage. My noble friend magnificently produced three meals a day for us, but I really wanted to go back and eat a decent meal after the five days I spent eating stodge.

As your Lordships will know, this year is one of the most important for the international community in recent memory. In just one month, Governments will convene in Ethiopia, as noble Lords have said, to agree a new way to finance international development. The noble Lords, Lord McConnell and Lord Collins, asked whether the Chancellor would be in attendance. I cannot at this moment tell your Lordships who will be going, but we will be working incredibly hard to ensure that we get partners and to be as ambitious as the UK always is. The UK is always at the forefront in leadership in trying to get other countries galvanised into being much more ambitious. We are currently in the final stages of negotiations on the post-2015 agenda, which will culminate in a summit in September setting the direction for international development for the next 15 years.

Because time is quite short, I may not address all the questions that were raised. I undertake to write to noble Lords if necessary, although I hope that over the next few minutes many of your Lordships’ questions will be answered in my speaking notes. In December, the world will come together in Paris to agree a binding international treaty to tackle the global dangers of climate change. Noble Lords have made outstanding contributions today on the expectations but also the challenges facing us in the debate on sustainable development goals.

In 2000, the international community agreed the millennium development goals, and the years since have seen the greatest-ever reduction of poverty. As my noble friend Lady Jenkin and other noble Lords said, the MDGs galvanised the international community to achieve amazing results, and we can point to major successes. As has rightly been pointed out: extreme poverty has been cut by over 50%; there have been real improvements across all health targets; more than 9 out of every 10 children worldwide now have a primary education; and we are well on our way to tackling hunger and malnutrition.

However, it is important to emphasise that the MDGs were not perfect. There was too much focus on access rather than outcomes in areas such as education, they were not strong enough on environmental sustainability and they did not include the critical issues that a number of noble Lords raised today of peace, good governance and economic growth. As we reach the MDG deadline of 2015, discussions are under way to agree the next framework and a set of universal goals that will build the world we all want to see by 2030. The UK Government have been, as has rightly been pointed out today, at the forefront of delivering progress against the MDGs and have played an active role in working to define what comes next.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans wanted reassurances that the UK will continue to lead and will remain a strong voice. I reassure him that we absolutely will. We have, both through our legislation of 0.7% and our commitment that at every conference that we attend and with all our partners we will re-emphasise the importance that the UK places on it. The Prime Minister has said on many occasions that we cannot prosper on the backs of poor people; they must come up along with us. The UK’s priorities for this are clear. Over the next 15 years, we must eradicate the scourge of extreme poverty and put the world on a pathway to sustainable development. We must finish the job of MDGs, but also go beyond them to focus on the quality of services such as education, rather than just on access to education. We have to tackle climate change and environmental degradation as an integral part of our work on poverty eradication and global prosperity.

We must also do better. On the issue of ensuring gender equality, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development has said that it continues to be an absolute travesty that half the world’s population so often cannot participate in education, work or public life. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McConnell. We want to see gender as a stand-alone goal. It must cut across all our programmes and across all participation. I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, that we must not see it as one part of the life cycle of women. It must be an end-to-end discussion, and I very much look forward to being part of that discussion. Sometimes the debate focuses very much on the front end, which is absolutely right, because unless we get that part of the discussion right, we will never be able to progress and look much more deeply at how it impacts on other parts of the life cycle.

We must end the curse of violence against women and girls, and stop practices such as female genital mutilation, and child, early and forced marriages. I have campaigned against those practices for many years, and it is distressing that, in the 21st century, we still have to tackle these really miserable issues. We also have to focus on crucial issues that underpin successful poverty reduction: economic development, peace, good governance, access to justice and the rule of law, and stamping out corruption. Without achieving these, poverty eradication will be impossible.

We must ensure that no one is left behind. This principle, highlighted by the UN’s high-level panel co-chaired by the Prime Minister, is a major step forward. Too often people are left behind because of race, gender, disability or other forms of status. We support the call by the high-level panel to ensure that no target will be considered met unless it is met for all economic and social groups. The UK has also been at the forefront of the international community when arguing for a strong goal on gender equality. I am pleased to say that the goals and targets include all the UK’s priorities that I have outlined. If we can galvanise the international community behind our objectives, they will have the transformative impact that we need to see.

It is crucial that we are able to communicate the agenda to citizens around the world. We want to see the post-2015 framework inspire people everywhere to hold their governments to account to deliver the goals. We therefore want to secure a final outcome that resonates with people and speaks to issues that they grapple with. Again, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, that it must be about talking to children and getting them involved as part of the debate. Our world today is increasingly unrecognisable compared to the year 2000. To match the vision that we have for a new age, we need a new global partnership. The UK’s vision for the next 15 years represents a major step forward to a world where we have moved beyond the old-fashioned north-south divide, where we have come together to confront our common challenges.

A number of questions have been raised. In the short time I have, I will try to respond to some of them. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, asked about data and monitoring. I agree on the points about monitoring and reviewing. We want a robust global review mechanism in the UN, and it must be open and transparent. Accountability will take place at national level, but success, of course, will always depend on the engagement of Parliaments and citizens in all countries. That is why it is important that people across the world are engaged in the SDG agenda.

The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, raised the issue of targets in respect of women. The UK is making the experiences and lives of women and girls one of the very highest priorities in our post-2015 process. We have argued hard for a strong stand-alone goal on gender equality, and I am pleased to see that goal 5 contains many transformational targets and issues, including FGM and child early and forced marriage.

[Baroness Tonge]

I am very pleased to hear what the Minister says about gender equality, but do the Government intend to carry on their initiative on sexual and reproductive health and family planning?

[Baroness Verma]

I have a response to the noble Baroness in my pile but, if I do not reach it, I promise to write.

We are optimistically cautious that Addis will deliver a strong financial and policy package.

The noble Lords, Lord Rea and Lord Collins, and others raised the issue of universal healthcare. Our view is that we are at the forefront of arguing for a strong health goal focused on assuring quality health outcomes for all ages. We recognise universal health coverage as an essential means of ensuring effective health outcomes, and are pleased to see its inclusion as a target in the proposal of the open working group on sustainable development goals. It is the UK’s ambition for this framework to make sure that no one is left behind.

The right reverend Prelate asked about faith groups. We are working hard to ensure that the implementation, monitoring and review of SDGs includes all relevant groups, including faith groups. Part of my own area of responsibility is working with civil society and faith groups, and I look forward to the right reverend Prelate working with me.

I have hit 12 minutes and I shall get into huge amounts of trouble if I continue. On that note, I shall respond in writing to noble Lords on outstanding questions.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Friday 23rd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, I note with amusement that I am the first of a very long list of a positive feast of noble Baronesses who are going to speak to your Lordships next in this debate; I feel very proud of that, and I hope that you enjoy us.

I warmly welcome the Bill. The Pearson commission set this target in 1968 and it has taken us a long time to get there. I am pleased to say that it was official Liberal Democrat policy and in our manifesto from 1992, five years before I became international development spokesperson for my party in the other place. For me, as for my noble friend Lord Steel, it is the right and moral thing to do. It will increase the GNP of poorer counties, if we want to be hard-headed about it, and provide more markets for our trade. Eventually it will mean that we need to give less aid and, dare I say it, reduce the need for migration by people fleeing war and poverty in their own country for a better life here. That is what I would do if that were my family—UKIP, please note.

There are three main reasons for giving aid. We can all tell stories about the need for it. We know, too, of the success of our Government’s initiative, which I must highlight, on sexual and reproductive health and rights, beginning with the family planning summit in 2012. The very welcome extra pledges there have already seen 8.4 million more women and their spouses able to plan their families and have fewer and healthier children—the first step towards a country’s rise in prosperity, as more women and girls receive education and enter the workforce. There are endless examples of good outcomes.

Despite my enthusiasm, though, I worry about the delivery of aid and the accountability of those responsible for spending our money, and I hope that the Minister will give us some reassurances today. To illustrate this, I must say, as other noble Lords have said, that I am very concerned about the failure of Sierra Leone to cope with the Ebola epidemic. We intervened and stopped that war in 2001-02. Aid projects there have expanded and I know that, in the initial years after that war, DfID was not responsible for many health projects there, as it was mainly about security and nation-building. But according to DfID’s Operational Plan 2011-2015, we are going to be doing a lot of health projects. Those finish this year, so I want to know: have they been blown off course by Ebola, and what happened before that? What sort of things were we working on? Why were no health systems set up which would have given Sierra Leone a way of coping with the epidemic, as happened in other affected west African countries? Will the Minister please tell us whether we can learn from Sierra Leone?

I have also been concerned about the short-termism of various projects which then fail when our commitment ends and we pull out. I have heard this from Governments and NGOs all over the world. We must somehow address this problem.

I am sorry to tell the Minister that it is all questions from now on. Can she tell us about the forthcoming third international conference on financing for development, to be held in Addis Ababa in July? I had a Written Answer to my recent question but I am not going to read it out because I do not want to embarrass the civil servants, as it was complete gobbledegook. I would like the Minister to tell us about what will happen at that conference.

Can we guarantee that our aid money will go where it is needed and not be diverted to middle-income countries, as happens with a lot of EU aid? I know that Clause 5 is there to give us accountability and audit. But how are we to deal with corruption in the future? This delivery of aid and the proper expenditure of money are so important if we are to keep people on side. Having mentioned the EU, we have a lot of money going into multilateral aid with the European Union. That always seems to be very slow and cumbersome, and not to be as accountable as our own aid. Perhaps the Minister could address this now or in a letter.

Despite all these questions, I am delighted that this Bill has been introduced—let me crow—thanks to the influence of Liberal Democrats in this Government. That is a rare compliment from me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Northover]

Having been a Minister in the Department for International Development, I know that there is obviously flexibility in the department, because humanitarian conflicts will arise, which you have to put money into, while you also sustain support for various other projects. The noble Lord might read the NAO report; one of the things that struck me when I read it was that every department in government has to budget, and they know more or less what their budgets will be. There may be contingencies, and they may have a contingency fund, but they have to plan. It is not just left to what they may decide to do after six months or so.

The situation is no different in DfID. I assure the noble Lord that if he reads the NAO report very carefully he will see that it concludes that business was properly stress-tested and assessed. I think I should proceed, because I am now on 14 minutes, and I will come on to some of these other points. I will also be happy to meet the noble Lord after this debate, if that would help, so that we can explore some of those issues.

Noble Lords will be fully aware of the kind of projects that DfID is involved in; during this debate noble Lords have very helpfully outlined a number of these areas. A number of noble Lords emphasised in particular our support for women and girls and how right this is, including my noble friends Lady Hodgson, Lady Jenkin, Lady Manzoor, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kinnock and Lady Flather. We fully recognise the importance of supporting women and girls and thank noble Lords for supporting us in doing that. In addition, as part of that, the emphasis on maternal health and family planning was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, as well as by the noble Baronesses, Lady Tonge and Lady Flather.

Mention was made of women giving birth on a concrete slab. Today is my eldest son’s birthday. This morning I found myself thinking that, had I given birth in a developing country, he would have died and so would I. Noble Lords who think about it will probably recognise that either they or their close family might very well have been in that situation. As has been said, poverty is not an accident. It is not something that certain groups need to suffer from or should suffer from.

Noble Lords have made mention of our commitment of 0.7%, and some have suggested that the increase has not improved the quality of that spend. I assure them that the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD concluded recently in its formal peer review of DfID on the effectiveness of the way in which we have scaled up our spending in recent years, planning carefully to meet the target—and I have seen that this is very much the case—while at the same time increasing the quality of our spend. As noble Lords were speaking, I found myself thinking about the commitment that we have been able to make, for example, on so-called neglected tropical diseases. We hope that they are no longer neglected, so we can combat blindness, which is totally avoidable—something that we were able to do because of the increase in the budget.

In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, of course there are many lessons to learn from Sierra Leone. This was an unprecedented crisis. We have done a huge amount, as was noted during the debate, to ensure that it did not become a pandemic. She will know the details of our support there.

[Baroness Tonge]

Could the Minister perhaps expand a little bit on that matter? We would learn a lot if there was a proper inquiry into what happened in Sierra Leone in the years running up to the epidemic.

[Baroness Northover]

I am really running out of time, and I think that we have another Question down on that matter. We can certainly discuss it, and we will learn a lot of lessons from what has happened.

Noble Lords are very concerned that what we do is carefully audited. That is where Clause 5 is very important, and the independent evaluation that we put in place in 2010 from ICAI is extremely helpful. Of course, we will keep that under close watch to make sure that aid is effectively spent.

The noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord Tugendhat, mentioned the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs report of 2012, which the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, urged noble Lords to read. I also urge them to read the debate in your Lordships’ House on 22 October 2012 on that report and, in particular, the outstanding contribution by another economist, the noble Lord, Lord Stern, professor of economics and government at the LSE. He made an extremely cogent case.

My noble friend Lord Astor asked about the calendar year versus the financial year. We are monitored internationally on the calendar year, not the financial year, and we wish to be consistent with international best practice, which is why we will continue to report in that way.

The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, rightly encouraged us to place more investment in developing countries. We recognise the important role that the private sector plays in development, but he will recognise that it is not necessarily targeted at countries that most need it. It is true that that and remittances are playing a very important part, and that kind of investment is clearly key in lifting China and India out of poverty. However, that still leaves many people in poverty, which is why we are involved with so many multilateral organisations. For example, my noble friend Lady Hooper mentioned Latin America and the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, mentioned South Africa. Our involvement with the Global Fund and the World Bank helps to address poverty in those countries. We have to try to ensure that we have a more equitable society globally. Relying on foreign direct investment and remittances does not necessarily achieve that.

My noble friend Lord Astor wondered whether this was just about DfID’s spending. It is not; it is about official development assistance. Most of it is spent by DfID but other departments, such as the Foreign Office, the MoD and the Department of Energy and Climate Change rightly also have ODA budgets. I say to my noble friend Lord Shipley that ODA restraints mean that you cannot spend the money on arms. He is quite right: that would not be an acceptable route to go down. I can write to my noble colleague Lady Tonge about Addis.

I have mentioned the National Audit Office report. I suggest that noble Lords take a very close look at that. As regards those who are concerned about the money that was spent at the end of 2013, I point out that we had the Syrian crisis, with many more displaced people facing a winter in Syria. There was a lot of pressure from your Lordships that we should commit spending to that. We also had Typhoon Haiyan, which cannot be put down to DfID suddenly deciding to do something, and my noble friend Lord Fowler rightly chivvied me endlessly to support the Global Fund, which he and the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, emphasised the significance of in terms of dealing with AIDS, TB and malaria. All departments work to a budget. DfID knew that its budget was increasing and, fortunately, we were able to increase our commitment in some very important areas.

My noble friend Lady Williams rightly emphasised the involvement of young people. As my noble friend Lady Jenkin said, it is fantastic that people involved in the ONE Campaign are present in the Gallery. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Fox. I obviously did the right thing in supporting him when he was introduced in the House and look forward to his further contributions.

As noble Lords have said, and as my noble friends Lord Purvis and Lady Suttie emphasised, passing this Bill means that we can move on from the debate on whether we do this to how we do it, and ensuring the quality, predictability and effectiveness of our absolutely vital aid. I hope that noble Lords will give the Bill a Second Reading. Given that this is a simple and effective Bill, which has been carefully scrutinised and amended in the Commons, I hope that it will proceed through all its stages formally and by acclamation. However, if that is not the case, I am sure that noble Lords will engage fully in scrutinising the Bill and, most importantly, making sure that we pass it for all the reasons that they have laid out.

Developing World: Maternal and Neonatal Mortality

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. As chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health and president of the European forum of the same name, it is a subject that has occupied most of my waking hours in the last few years. Indeed, sexual and reproductive health occupied the whole of my professional life before I was elected to the other place.

I am constantly dismayed when I talk to colleagues about maternal mortality and family sizes. I get back the same old mantra. “Oh”, they say, “we can’t do anything about it—people in developing countries need big families because they have to have people to look after them in their old age and they need people to work in the fields. They’ve got to have big families—you mustn’t prevent them from doing that”. We have all been working hard in this Government, and in DfID in particular, to convince those Members that that is no longer the truth.

We have heard a lot of statistics, and I welcome their repetition; we should have them fixed in our head. But in fact maternal mortality is reducing—there is some good news. It has reduced by some 50% in the past 20 years; now around 250,000 women die per annum. That is still far too many, but it is reducing. With that figure goes the estimate that 2 million neonatal deaths occur per annum—and we know that they are linked.

We must also remember, as all Members have pointed out, that it is not just maternal deaths. They hide the fact that maternal morbidity and terrible conditions after childbirth, such as fistula—of which I know the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has had such experience and on which he has done so much incredible work—are also very important and account for millions of women being unable to take proper part in family life and look after their families properly because of childbirth. All are due to lack of proper medical and obstetric care and to other factors such as too-early marriage, child marriage, forced marriage, violence in marriage—but most of all, in my view, they are due to a lack of family planning, which enables women to control their own bodies and voluntarily space the number of children that they have.

We know that more than 2 million women in developing countries would use birth control entirely voluntarily if they had access to it. That is a fact. It has been disregarded in the past, but thanks to the efforts of parliamentarians here, Governments such as our own, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a great effort is now being made to get family planning supplies out to those women who need them.

In 2012, our own Government—and I am very proud to mention and applaud this—held a great family planning summit. Pledges were made from all over the world and progress has been made. Since then, 8.4 million more women are now able to control the number of children that they have: that is in a report from the organisation Family Planning 2020, which was set up to monitor the pledges given at the summit and see that they were being delivered. This is all happening despite tradition, despite their religion, despite all the excuses given in the past—especially the one that we need children to look after us in or old age. I am constantly telling my children that.

I hope that our colleagues in both Houses will take note and realise that maternal health—and family planning in particular—is the way to sustainable develop -ment. The World Bank, no less, has pointed out that sustainable development and a steady rise in a country’s GNP follow a reduction in family size or fertility rate in that country. We know now that it is not the other way around. Sexual and reproductive health and rights, including family planning, are essential for sustainable development. We are pretty sure, too, that fewer people will mean less environmental degradation; my all-party group is doing an investigation into this subject at the moment.

There are other advantages for us, too, when this happens. Less international aid will be required in the long term; there will be bigger markets for our goods, if that interests noble Lords; and—dare I say it—there will be less migration from those countries for a better life in the West. Let us say that loud and clear: if they do not listen to our arguments on maternal health and reproductive health and rights, tell them that; tell that to UKIP and tell those people who disregard the importance of international development.

I am still concerned that this message is not being taken as seriously as it should be by the United Nations body deciding on the action needed after 2015, as was touched upon by the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock. At that time, the millennium development goals should have been achieved. We know that MDG 5 on maternal mortality will not be achieved: there is not a hope.

The European forum of which I am the president—I want to tell your Lordships about this—has Members of Parliament from 25 countries in Europe and beyond. It includes members from Russia and Turkey; it is not just the European Union. We liaise with, and have encouraged the formation of, similar parliamentary groups to ours and similar forums in Australasia and Africa. All those parliamentarians all over the world are having meetings and making declarations on the very things we have been talking about this afternoon—impressing on their Governments, when they go back home from their meetings, that this is the line that they must take, both in their own country and internationally.

The international parliamentary conference on the implementation of all these declarations, meetings and forums that have taken place among parliamentarians was held in Stockholm earlier this year. Some of us went from our all-party group. This conference agreed that sexual and reproductive health and rights—remember all those elements—should be high on the list for the post-millennium goals agenda. That was only after lobbying the office of the UN Secretary-General after an unsatisfactory interim report was published that did not mention sexual rights or sexual health. It mentioned just reproductive health.

We finally got some movement. We lobbied, and the parliamentarians got together and wrote letters and started making a fuss about this, after all our efforts. I am glad to say that last week we heard from the Secretary-General’s office that the final version of what is called the synthesis report—sorry about the terminology; it is not mine—which was released on Christmas Day, of all days, included the words,

“women’s sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights”.

That has moved us forward quite a bit: it is mentioned, that is good, they are looking at it. However, the word “rights” still applies only to “reproduction” and not to “sexual”, which means that there is disagreement and concern about a woman’s right to safe abortion, which was mentioned by several speakers. Even after rape, we are still unsure whether women can get a safe abortion. There is no protection against FGM, for example. So we must keep putting on the pressure.

I am sorry, I have nearly finished. I fully understand that these are sensitive issues and I hope that the Minister can tell us that our Government—who have worked so hard on these issues in the last five years and held two special conferences this year alone to deal with FGM and sexual violence in conflict—will insist, at the final conference in September at the UN on the post-MDG agenda, that these issues will be dealt with in full.

Sexual and reproductive health and rights are human rights. We talk about the empowerment of women very glibly, but we cannot ensure that until we allow women to have control over their own bodies. We simply cannot. Women all over the world are depending on us to release them from the position to which they are condemned. We must not let them down.