Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Dan Carden and Lord Sharma

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

My hon. Friend raises an incredibly vital point. He may be aware that the Prime Minister announced at the United Nations General Assembly last month that we are encouraging countries to join the UK-led global ocean alliance of countries in support of protecting at least 30% of the global oceans within marine protected areas by 2030.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has announced a new commission of business and finance leaders to mobilise private finance to invest in some of the world’s poorest countries. What action is he taking to guarantee that all aid-backed private investments uphold labour rights and living wages for workers in the global south?

[Alok Sharma]

I think that is a sort of welcome for the infrastructure commission we have set up. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that labour rights are vital. When I was Minister for Employment, I worked with the International Labour Organisation on these issues, and if he has particular suggestions to make, I would be happy to discuss those with him.

[Dan Carden]

The Secretary of State is failing to take labour rights seriously. He is a career investment banker by trade, and he has—[Interruption.] I think it is relevant that he has gone from corporate wealth management to managing the UK’s aid budget. Feronia, a Canadian palm oil company based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has received tens of millions of pounds of UK aid via the CDC Group; it has been plagued by scandal for years; and, in July, Joël Imbangola Lunea, a community activist involved in a land dispute with Feronia, was allegedly murdered by a security guard employed by the company. Joël was father to eight children—

[Dan Carden]

Will the Department now launch its own investigation into this case and the litany of failures surrounding Feronia?

[Alok Sharma]

The hon. Gentleman is very welcome to write to me about the case. He wrote an article a few days back describing me as

“exploring ways to profit from human misery”.

May I just point out to him, with respect, that he could perhaps take some lessons from the Chairman of the Select Committee, who knows a lot more about development than he does?

Girls’ Education

Debate between Dan Carden and Lord Sharma

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of the statement and welcome him to his new role. He is the third Secretary of State I have faced in this position.

In its “World Development Report 2018”, the World Bank declared an international learning crisis. We know that it is too often girls who are most affected by the lack of education globally. They are twice as likely as boys to never start school. Given these figures, we welcome the Secretary of State’s focus on education, and girls’ education in particular.

While, like the Government, we recognise that the benefits of girls’ education reach far beyond the individual girl, does the Secretary of State agree that education is first and foremost a basic human right? That is why the Labour party is committed to a rights-based approach to education.

Last month, I visited Kenya and saw for myself the huge educational needs in that country. I visited state schools and low-fee private schools, meeting teachers, pupils, parents and civil society groups, and one thing was clear when it came to education: the people I met there wanted exactly the same things that my constituents in Liverpool want—decent, publicly funded schooling for their children. I am concerned about the growing support that DFID is providing to expanding private education in the global south, because we know that fee-paying private schools never reach the most marginalised children. We know from our own experience in the UK that universal public systems of education are the only way to reach all children. The International Development Committee has said that DFID’s support for private education is “controversial”. The last Independent Commission for Aid Impact assessment of DFID’s work to support the most marginalised girls found that DFID is “falling short” of its ambitions to educate the poorest and most vulnerable girls. One reason for that was a lack of influence by DFID on public Government-run education programmes.

In Kenya, I heard some worrying stories from parents and teachers about their experience with so-called low-fee private schools, and one chain of schools in particular: Bridge International Academies. Parents told me how they had been tricked into believing that their kids would benefit from scholarships, leaving them unable to pay fees and their kids missing chunks of schooling as a result. I met the head of the Kenya National Union of Teachers to discuss education in the country, and he had a very clear message: he wanted the UK to stop using aid money to privatise his country’s education system.

In August last year, Oxfam published its review of a DFID-funded education public-private partnership in Pakistan. It found that schools were failing to reach the most marginalised, relying on very low wages and poor employment practices. In February this year, the Send My Friend to School coalition released a report calling for DFID to ensure that its aid spending goes towards supporting education that is provided universally and is available free at the point of use. In April, a report from the National Education Union and Global Justice Now claimed that UK aid is being used to push an ideological agenda to expand fee-paying private education around the world.

Labour knows the importance of publicly delivered public services. That is why we will set up a new unit for public services within DFID that will champion education as a human right and a public good. Will the Secretary of State listen to the sector, to the unions and to teacher and campaign groups in the UK and the global south, who say that education is a universal right guaranteed by the state and not a market to make profits from? Will he shift his Department’s focus on education towards a human rights-based approach, so that all girls get the education they are entitled to?

[Alok Sharma]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his response. We are at a time when there is an enormous amount of rancour in this House and debates are perhaps not as good-natured as you would like, Mr Speaker, but this is an area on which I think we can all agree across the House. Education matters for every child, whether in our country or the developing world. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be pleased at the reaffirmation yesterday of the 0.7% commitment in the Chancellor’s spending review statement.

I very much share the hon. Gentleman’s view that the work we do in developing countries is incredibly important. He talked about his visit to Kenya. I was in Nigeria recently to see the work we have done in Kaduna state, working with the state—the public sector—to ensure that thousands of teachers are retrained appropriately. I visited a school where the school roll was failing only a couple of years ago—it was down to 400—but it is almost double now, and over half the children there are young girls. I had an opportunity to talk to them, and they were incredibly enthusiastic and positive, not just about their own future but about their own country. That is because of the great education they are getting.

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman said, but I want to respond to his point about where DFID’s funding goes. I want to make it clear that over 95% of my Department’s education funding goes to the public sector to support improvements in education outcomes. That is right and proper. We are working across the developing world with countries and their education ministries to provide support. Of course, where state provision is weak or non-existent, it is right that we work with non-state providers, including paid-for schools, to provide education to children who would otherwise get none, and we continue to work with a range of education partners to ensure the best results and value for money.

The hon. Gentleman talked about ideology. There is one education ideology that I suspect we share, which is that it is vital that every child gets the right level of education. We are both committed to ensuring 12 years of education for every girl across the world.