Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: Sustainable Development

Debate between Jim Shannon and Matthew Offord

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate forward. I spoke to him beforehand to highlight an issue that I feel is very important, as I know he does as well. Some 600 million children around the world still lack safe drinking water; 1.1 billion lack safe sanitation; and 690 million lack basic hygiene services. The worst affected are women and children who are internally displaced persons, refugees and from minority communities.

Research by Open Doors, an organisation that the hon. Gentleman and I understand very well, shows that there is a worrying tendency for Christian communities to be deprived of access to development aid, including WASH programmes. That is also highly likely to be the case for other religious minority communities. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that these programmes must be monitored to ensure access for religious minority communities and displaced persons in particular?

[Dr Offord]

I certainly agree. Any IDPs or people who are removed from their homes or the places where they live will have an immediate problem with access to water in some parts of the world. That is particularly difficult, as we are seeing in Gaza at the moment, for example; we also see it in parts of sub-Saharan Africa as people move as a result of climate change or political instability. It is one of the important issues that link many different communities and religions as well.

Water is vital to many individuals not only on a practical basis but, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) says, on a religious basis. The practice of many religions involves using water—I am thinking, for example, of not only Hindus but Muslims—for their daily rituals, and these are very important. It is a point well worth making, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for making the point, which I had not covered.

The UK has traditionally been a leader in the WASH sector. Given the multitude of challenges facing us, I ask my hon. Friend the Minister today: how will the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office project WASH funding increasing? Investing in sustainable and safe WASH is fundamental for countries to have a healthy workforce—the foundation for a thriving economy. The consequences of inaction would be monumental for many people. Left unchecked, diseases will become more frequent, leading to an increased demand for national spending on healthcare and reduced productivity.

WASH is often framed as simply building infrastructure, delivered with little thought to how it will be managed over time to deliver any benefits. But WASH is not about one-time access; it is a group of services and related behaviours that need to be accessed or practised several times a day and sustained over time. That means WASH systems need to be strong enough to deliver services continually to entire populations and to ensure that good hygiene behaviours are reinforced. I saw that on a recent visit to Ghana, where we saw not only water but the idea behind WASH procedures being delivered. Good practice was certainly reinforced.

The FCDO shift towards supporting WASH systems and away from just delivering infrastructure is very welcome, but we need to see more such programmes. The FCDO has a vital role in ensuring that others follow suit so that all interventions lead to a stronger sector. Similarly, it should encourage the integration of WASH within health, as it has done with its ending preventable deaths approach.

At the moment, despite progress on such programmes, we are seeing an international decline in investment in WASH. Since 2018, UK aid for WASH has been cut by two thirds, falling to approximately £70 million in 2021. For comparison, we spent £364 million on education and £548 million on health. The total share of the aid budget going to water supply and sanitation was just 1% in 2021. That is despite polling indicating that 53% of the British public list water, sanitation and hygiene as one of the top three most important ways of spending UK official aid development assistance. There is clearly a mismatch between spend on WASH and the popularity of the issue among the UK public.

With the upcoming international development White Paper due to be published soon, I ask the Minister to carefully consider the evidence provided. As the Foreign Office Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), said in his statement on 18 July, the White Paper

“will chart the long-term direction for UK international development up to 2030”—

just in time for the review of the sustainable development goals. Can the Minister here today indicate what level of prioritisation WASH will have in the international development White Paper?

I stress to the Minister that Governments and countries as a whole stand to gain hugely if investment in sustainable WASH services is provided. Sanitation alone can have huge economic returns, contributing to the world economy. On top of that, the return on that investment is vast, with basic WASH services providing up to 21 times more value than their cost. Action on this matter overseas will provide direct benefits to people here in the United Kingdom. As covid-19 has shown, infectious diseases do not respect international borders.

Despite the global pandemic, the UN predicts that 3 billion people globally do not practise hand washing with soap, and over 2 billion simply do not have access to basic hand-washing facilities. As a result, diseases spread fast and most easily in places where preventive measures such as WASH do not exist or are inadequate. Most importantly, in some countries this can push health workers, who cannot rely on the availability of soap and clean water, to over-prescribe antibiotics as a preventive measure, contributing to the rising threat of resistance to antibiotics. Yet investing in basic services and healthcare facilities decreases the demand for antibiotics, breaks the chain of infection and removes the opportunities for resistant infections to become dominant.

It is important at this point to say that most resistant infections treated by the NHS originated elsewhere in the world, particularly in low and middle-income countries. Tackling that problem is critical to UK public health and to protect the NHS. Healthcare-acquired infections already cost the NHS at least £2.1 billion a year—costs that will increase as infections become increasingly resistant to antibiotics. As the Minister will be aware, a high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance will be happening at the UN General Assembly next September, which could provide a significant moment to drive the political prioritisation of WASH and fighting disease abroad and here in the United Kingdom. Will the Minister commit to the UK encouraging political dialogue and drive financial commitments for WASH in the build-up to the conference? Of course, beyond the economic benefits and those for the UK, we are looking at action such as saving the lives of up to 300,000 children each year.

Touching back on achieving sustainable development goal 5—gender equality—women and girls face particular challenges when it comes to WASH. A lack of WASH facilities undermines the specific needs of women when it comes to menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth and menopause. Improving the future prospects of women and girls can be as simple as providing clean water and toilets at home, which would prevent women and girls from wasting 77 million days every year on walking long distances in search of water. That is time they can spend in education or, indeed, working. Beyond that, their direct health outcomes will vastly improve when investment is made in improving access to water and sanitation in workplaces and public spaces.

As the Minister will be aware, the UK will be working towards sustainable development goal 6, which is primarily split between two Departments: the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which focuses on improvements here in the United Kingdom, and the FCDO, which is working to improve international results. I am positive that ministerial colleagues will work together to ensure that progress is made to achieve the international targets, but I would be interested to hear what those collaborations will actually mean. However, we understand that this is not always the case in countries struggling with access to WASH. Institutional fragmentation occurs, which undermines the effectiveness of the WASH sector.

Drinking water, sanitation and hygiene typically have their homes within different Ministries, and often the responsible Ministries may vary for rural and urban services. Hygiene, for example, cuts across many sectors, Ministries and Departments, including WASH, health, education, gender and nutrition, meaning that it is everywhere and nowhere. That contributes to problems when it comes to generating political leadership, setting policies and raising finance. It gives rise to co-ordination difficulties, weak regulation and accountability, fragmentation in capacity-building efforts and different—sometimes competing—monitoring systems. Ultimately, this results in a clear lack of ownership and prioritisation by decision makers and budget holders. What assistance are the UK Government providing to other nations to adopt approaches to WASH similar to the UK’s, including the establishment of development banks?

Despite huge progress, WASH is facing significant challenges. The world is changing rapidly. When disease and war hit, water and sanitation are often forgotten first but the consequences are experienced immediately by those displaced. I urge the Minister not to forget the issue. Water is not just the source of all life; it is the source of all future prosperity and peace for billions of people in this world.