Burma

Debate between Lord Bruce of Bennachie and Meg Munn

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

Following the point of order from the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), I am pleased to see the Minister of State, Department for International Development, the right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr Duncan) sitting on the Front Bench.

I welcome the opportunity to make a statement on the International Development Committee’s report on democracy and development in Burma, which is also known as Myanmar. There is a little item in the report about the issue of its name. I had the privilege of visiting Burma last July as part of a delegation led by Mr Speaker and including my fellow Committee member the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), as well as the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). The Committee also visited the country last November. We spent time in and around Yangon, and in the capital, Naypyidaw. From Naypyidaw we drove down to Mandalay, stopping en route, and then made visits in and around Mandalay.

We concluded that Burma presents unique challenges in comparison with any of the United Kingdom’s other bilateral aid partners. As most people know, the country has endured 60 years of conflict and decades of military dictatorship, during which development and progress have regressed. Per capita GDP is $800, while the per capita income of its neighbour Thailand is $4,800. Although the UK has remained engaged and has provided support, the circumstances have been difficult, as the Committee observed in its last report in 2007. At that time, we could only visit refugee camps on the Thai border; we could not visit the country itself.

Since cyclone Nargis devastated the country, it has become apparent internally that if the country is to develop, it needs to change. The military Government have transferred some powers to the Parliament, and after by-elections last year, Aung San Suu Kyi was elected to Parliament along with 42 of her National League for Democracy colleagues. Full elections are promised for next year.

While a host of problems remain, a key opportunity exists for UK development programmes to help deliver transformational change. We must seize the moment. The Committee’s main conclusions are: that the Department for International Development should be more engaged with the political nature of Burma’s development—this is not just about development; it is about politics, too—and that the UK should continue to press for constitutional reform for the development of a federal structure inside Burma, which is being talked about widely there, and for the removal of the block on Aung Sa Suu Kyi standing for president. That is not because she has to be the president, but because it would be somewhat strange if a clearly popular elected opposition party candidate were not at least eligible to be a presidential candidate. As part of this, the UK Government should work to help the armed ethnic groups and the Burmese military to make the transition to delivering civilian Government. That is a huge challenge.

DFID has given a substantial chunk of its budget to health programmes and we saw, and heard, how radical and transformational they were, but the Department should place even more emphasis on addressing drug-resistant malaria in Burma as it is a problem that threatens to spread to the rest of the world with potentially devastating consequences.

One specific issue, which an exchange with the Minister shows he understands, is that DFID’s education budget in Burma is currently too small to be effective. We are not saying it is of no value, but we do think it should increase, with a major focus on teacher training. We have, effectively, a lost generation in Burma that desperately needs education.

We also think that DFID’s work to assist the peace process, to improve public financial management, to encourage the inclusion of women and to reform the Burmese military should continue, with additional funding made available as opportunities to expand these programmes arise. These are all major challenges.

We welcome the UK support for the Burmese Parliament. It should be a long-term partnership and the UK will need to reform its approach to parliamentary strengthening to ensure that DFID and the Foreign Office can rely less on non-UK organisations—such as United Nations Development Programme and the National Democratic Institute—and draw more on UK organisations. The Westminster brand is valued, and we think it is strange that we are buying expertise from other models when people would like to hear more from ours.

The UK is doing a very good job in helping to co-ordinate the role of the development partners as chair of the working group, and we believe that that should continue. Smaller donors should be encouraged to be part of that process, rather than to try to operate independently.

We recognised when visiting the peace centre that there is a ceasefire across most of the country, but as yet there is no peace process. The situation in Rakhine is critical and could threaten the whole reform process if it is not addressed. DFID can help by doing more to promote inter-faith dialogue and inter-community understanding.

We accept that in the current situation progress will be unpredictable and uneven, but supporting the reform process by working to deliver public services and develop livelihoods offers unprecedented potential.

To achieve these transformational objectives we recommend that the bilateral budget for Burma be increased from its current level of over £60 million to around £100 million. We think that there is more than enough work in education, in parliamentary strengthening and in building Government institutions to justify the steady build-up of expenditure and we believe that DFID could, and should, find that resource.

I hope the House will accept that the UK has a crucial role to play in Burma. We have partners we can work with. We have an opportunity that may not come again and we should not miss it.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I had the opportunity to visit Burma last summer, looking specifically at issues around maternal health. What struck the group that went out with Marie Stopes was that the budget for health in Burma is extraordinarily small. The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned the importance of developing the political process. Did the Committee look at the balance between UK funds helping to directly provide health services, for example, as opposed to working with the Government and Parliament and has it looked at the overall funding compared with international comparators?

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

We recognise that Burma needs capacity right across the whole system. Frankly, its spending on health and education has been minimal and its capacity to do that at the moment is pretty limited. We have to work with the partners we can find, sometimes directly. Of course we want to build up capacity within the Government, provided that the partners within the Government will respond in the right way, but we did see very good co-operation and real evidence that we are making specific changes. So our view is that we can expand the development support and help build those institutions, but we also need to strengthen the political capacity. One particular step is to enable Parliament to raise the funds that will ultimately enable these developments to be taken forwards as the economy develops. That is crucial and it is something DFID does very well in many other countries.