UN Sustainable Development Goals

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for introducing this debate.

In the UN’s 2024 report on progress towards the sustainable development goals, goal 2 on zero hunger was shown to be making the least progress of all. It is not that the world does not produce enough food to feed its growing population but that it does not produce it in the right place. Luckily, it is now well recognised that sending cheap food to countries with nutritional problems only undermines the local agricultural economy, meaning that farmers do not have the money to buy seeds and inputs for next year’s crop—thus the problem spirals downwards in the years to come.

Agricultural production in developing countries needs focus and a big shot in the arm that has so far been missing; that is why this goal is drifting away from us. As Bill Gates—I am the second person to quote him —said:

“If you care about the poorest, you care about agriculture. Investments in agriculture are the best weapons against hunger and poverty, and they have made life better for billions of people. The international … community needs to be more … focused to help poor farmers grow more”.


But it is not only international aid that is needed. The developing nations themselves must play their part. In 2014 the African Union’s Malabo declaration reconfirmed its Maputo commitment for each country to put 10% of its GDP into agriculture—but, so far, few countries have fulfilled that commitment.

It is not as though this has not been tried and tested. Vietnam used to be a big importer of rice, at great cost to its hard-pressed treasury. Then, over a decade or so, its Government put 10% to 15% of its GDP into agricultural development each year—irrigation schemes; crop storage; markets, both physical and virtual; roads to get supplies in and out of the countryside; and, above all, training. Vietnam is now the second-largest exporter of rice in the world, a fact that has kick-started a huge economic boom. As I say, it just needs focus.

I will focus on smallholder agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, where the current population is due to double by 2050. The lives of some 60% of the population depend on farming, and 65% of the farmers are women. Every woman farmer you meet who has learned to make money from her holding will spend it on educating her children, with education being the most important goal of all. The World Bank has said that money invested in agriculture in Africa brings three or four times the number of people out of poverty than money invested in other businesses. African agriculture needs investment and could bring huge rewards by kick-starting a much bigger economy.

Where is this investment needed? First, there is infrastructure—better mobile connectivity for weather reports, market reports and technical advice. You send a picture of your plant and are told what is wrong with it and how to fix it. We also need better roads for getting seeds and fertiliser in and harvested crops out. We need better power to process crops locally in order to avoid the huge post-harvest losses that are prevalent in Africa. Many countries in Africa do not have a national grid, so local solar power with some form of storage is the obvious answer. Local power will also help kids do their homework at night.

Then we need better management of water. Most sub-Saharan African countries actually get more rain than we do but, of course, African rains come all at once. So mini village reservoirs make sense. Also, Africa is full of aquifers, which are hardly tapped at all. Mankind in Africa uses only around 2% of its annual rainfall, compared with 40%-plus in parts of Asia, so there is a lot of slack here. We could quadruple the output of many farms by helping farmers borrow money to put into communal irrigation schemes.

Another need is better security of tenure on land. DfID started doing good work in this area, but I am not sure where that programme has got to in the FCDO; maybe the Minister can let us know. The point is that without security of tenure, it is difficult to invest. Why would you spend four years of your income on drilling a bore-hole when you could then easily lose your land? It does not have to be vacant possession—it can be through guaranteed-term tenancies —but it has to be done.

Furthermore, why would you borrow money if you can get only 45% interest rates—that is, if the bank will lend you any money at all? Banks do not normally lend to farmers unless they have other collateral somewhere else, such as a town house, but it makes no sense to borrow money at 45% interest rates. Donors such as the UK should guarantee loans to farmers at interest rates of less than 10%. Various UN pilot schemes in this area have worked well, and farmers are now proven to be reliable borrowers.

That brings me to the greatest need for African agriculture: knowledge. We must invest in agricultural training colleges, which have to be open to women. We must ensure that women farmers can get training on their farms, bearing in mind that female ownership of land is still frowned upon in some countries. We must encourage the private sector to assist in training, particularly for existing farmers.

There are two ways of improving skills in the existing workforce: push and pull. Push is when you go to a village and train farmers on the ground, but it is slow work and quite hard to scale up—although you can train a chosen farmer in each village then get her to train, say, 100 others. It is a sort of pyramid selling of agricultural skills. The other—and, I think, better—way is what I call pull. You encourage a private company, maybe with a subsidy or a guarantee or two, to invest in some form of local processing. It then trains farmers to produce a given crop specifically for it, so the farmer has a guaranteed market.

As an example of the latter, a few years ago I visited a Diageo brewery in Addis. It had started training farmers to grow the barley it needed to make its beer. It started with as few as 100 farmers; when I visited, it had some 3,000 and was intending to expand to between 15,000 and 20,000. Those farmers were making money and, of course, educating their children, which is, as I said, the most important goal of all.

In conclusion, these are my two main messages: first, get all Governments to wake up and recognise the opportunities that agriculture brings, while working hard to persuade all African Governments to put 10% of their GDP into agriculture and its infrastructure, as they have already promised; and, secondly, we all need to put more money into agricultural training for the women farmers of Africa. There is so much more to be done, but the rewards are huge.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)]

Well, up until that point, I thought it was quite a consensual debate. Anyway, it has been a very interesting debate and could not be more timely, and I thank my noble friend for initiating it.

Sometimes it is quite important to remind ourselves exactly what the SDGs are. They are universal. They apply to everyone and all countries; it is not the north telling the south or vice versa. If we start this debate on that basis, we can see a lot more progress.

I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, will forgive me because I am not being partisan, but I thought that the first attempt at the voluntary national review, which my noble friend referred to, was disappointing in the sense that it did not focus on the cross-governmental attitude. It did not look at how we are responding in education, health and other areas; it looked at what we are doing to others. I thought that was a missed opportunity and a big mistake. It could have been an opportunity to give the political leadership we needed.

By the way—my noble friend mentioned this, and it is important to restate it—this country has a proud record in promoting global development, certainly with Gordon Brown and how he pursued the millennium development goals, and of course the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, in pushing that SDG agenda. We have a proud record as a country and on a cross-party basis. It is important that we remind ourselves of that and that, as we move forward in trying to deliver on the SDGs as a new Government, we work across government and not just in the FCDO. I will come on to some of those other issues to do with departments.

I think that Anneliese Dodds, the Minister for Development, would have been delighted to be here in person to listen to this debate, but she is at Chatham House giving her keynote speech on the Government’s approach to development, which will cover many of the topics discussed by noble Lords today. I hope there will be an opportunity for us to circulate that and perhaps even have a further discussion about the future.

The other thing I would like to say at the beginning— I will return to some of these points—is that we have initiated a review under the noble Baroness, Lady Shafik, who was a Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Development. That review will be concluded fairly speedily, but I do not want to pre-empt some of the things it might include.

The Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have set out some clear priorities for the FCDO, tackling the issues that all noble Lords have raised today. The focus is on delivering the Government’s five missions: delivering growth, enhancing security, tackling the climate and nature crises, rebuilding our relationship with Europe and, as we are discussing today, modernising our approach to international development. This Government’s mission is to help to create a world free from poverty on a liveable planet. Inevitably, this requires holding on to the hope that we can get the SDGs back on track through clear, effective and modern development policy, placing climate and nature at the heart of everything we do. There is no pathway to development without increasing climate resilience, tackling the nature crisis and improving access to green energy, and no pathway to a sustainable future without development that leaves no one behind.

My noble friend is absolutely right about the importance of businesses and the private sector. The SDGs cannot be delivered by Governments alone and cannot be delivered even with the private sector alone. It is a joint enterprise. As my noble friend Lady Armstrong has also highlighted, this is about how we generate civil society to support the SDGs. I pick up the point by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester that mobilising civil society includes faith groups and other organisations. Even though I am a committed humanist, I have seen incredible work by faith groups in this country to deliver support for people—and I have seen that in other countries too. Mobilising that is incredibly important.

We had the Secretary-General’s pact for the future at the UN General Assembly, which will be important in mobilising for future generations. It is a key element. I hear what my noble friend says about that. There are always lots of kind words at these events, and we need to translate those words into action. However, the fact that we achieved a consensus at the General Assembly, across all countries, is a sign of hope and positive news.

Over the last three months—and it is only three months —this Government have focused on some key areas to tackle the issues that noble Lords have raised today. Economic growth is a top priority for this Government, at home and abroad. We are focusing on sustainable, inclusive economic development and growth that delivers opportunity and unlocks human potential. This approach is the one that will help to lift millions out of extreme poverty, as has been evidenced in the last 30 years. Giving local working people access to better and more productive jobs is the only way to sustainably reduce poverty and build resilience to climate change. As noble Lords are aware, by 2030, countries in the global South will make up the top 30 economies. I have been reminded in every visit that I have made to African countries in the last three months that, by 2050, a quarter of the world’s population will be African. It will be the biggest market, so we have to refocus our attention to these in terms of partnership and economic development. It is essential that there are quality jobs and infrastructure improvements, and that exports grow.

The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of—

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

Dillington—or just Lord Cameron.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Dillington—sorry; there are too many Lord Camerons in my mind. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, is absolutely right. I visited the food security conference in Kigali and I came away from that event feeling incredibly positive about the potential for agriculture in Africa. There is huge potential, but it needs to be addressed in terms of connectivity. The fact is that, from harvest to market, Africa loses 40% of its products simply because it does not have the cold storage or a way to manage the logistics. Those issues can be addressed with appropriate investment, and certainly with innovation.

We also have the FCDO’s new land facility programme, launched in 2024. It will build on previous work, and support partner countries in Africa, south-east Asia and Latin America to develop robust land administration systems to protect land rights and facilitate sustainable land investment, which is key. I have seen co-operation between local farmers and British farmers who have gone into countries to develop exports. The other thing that was stressed in Kigali is that most agricultural producers need support and help to focus on markets first—it is about understanding your market and increasing that investment.

In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, it is true that there are lots of targets with the SDG 2030 agenda but, at the General Assembly in New York, we were focused on the global digital compact. It was adopted at the summit of the future and focuses on inclusive adoption of digital technologies to accelerate SDG delivery, closing the divide in digital support through international multi-stakeholder collaboration, and recognising the role that AI can play. The Government have launched an AI for development programme, which aims to create safe, inclusive and responsible ecosystems. I add that we focus, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, did, on SDG 5, but I also focus on SDG 8, because that is about training a productive, inclusive workforce. We need to ensure that we see the SDGs in a more cohesive, comprehensive way.

On the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, all our development partnerships will focus on championing equal rights and empowering women and girls. That is absolutely essential. Investing in their progress and breaking down the barriers they face is essential to development. We will partner with others to confront the rollback of rights, tackle discrimination and scale up proven, locally led approaches to ending the gender-based violence she described. Next year will see the 30th anniversary of the Beijing declaration. We will work really hard to renew that, and the whole question of women, peace and security. Through these efforts, we will ensure that women, girls and marginalised groups have access to essential, quality education and, most importantly, sexual and reproductive health and rights. We will also focus on how we deliver that.

The other big issue we heard in this debate was reform of the global financial system for climate, nature and development. We understand everyone’s concerns about the unfairness of the current system, but I also want to address the whole question of ODA. The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, was absolutely right: we need to return to building a cross-party consensus. I do not think we need to be partisan on this issue, because what we are able to deliver on the SDGs benefits us all as a country. It improves our security too, and that cross-party support is something we have to try to return to.

I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, also said—that the problem with the cut from 0.7% to 0.5% was not just the cut but the way it was done and the speed with which it was done. I know the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, will agree with me on that. It caused huge damage to our credibility, and that is what we have to try to restore. I know the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, will say that I am just repeating what the previous Government said, and I will repeat it, since he expects me to do so: the Government are committed to restoring ODA spending to 0.7% of GNI—the Prime Minister has made that clear—as soon as fiscal circumstances allow. But that does not stop us focusing on what we do and how we deliver it. We will focus on impact, and I will certainly be determined to ensure that for every bit of our activity. I think that is what the development review will do. Let us focus on impact and how we can achieve more.

One thing I have been focusing on is a commitment to a partnership of equality and respect to deliver economic growth. We are working towards a general partnership to deliver reforms on a greater scale, in terms of the financial support globally. This includes championing reform of multilateral development banks, which are the largest source of development finance. There is a significant opportunity to increase the volume of finance they can offer. There is so much we can do beyond ODA; I think that is really important. We can see them go further and faster in stretching their balance sheets so that they can lend more, but donors also need to step up. We seek an ambitious replenishment of the World Bank’s IDA21, the largest source of low-cost loans for the poorest and most vulnerable. We are playing our part in increasing its pledge and urging all partners to contribute to the fund. Together, we can make sure that we deliver the largest replenishment in history.

Yet, despite this progress, the number of countries spending more on debt interest repayments on health and education remains too high. We will continue to push for improvements to the common framework for quicker debt treatments for countries experiencing debt distress. We are finding creative ways to give partners that sort of hope.

We have also rolled out and championed climate-resilient debt clauses, which allow developing countries to pause debt and repayments when disaster strikes. We know that the global financing gap cannot be filled through public finance alone. As I said at the beginning, the finance needed will be delivered through the private sector, and we are playing an important part in that.

I point out to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that we pledged up to £60 million for loss and damage, including £40 million for the new fund responding to loss and damage, and up to £20 million for wider funding arrangements. We are working closely with our partners to operationalise this fund.

How do we mobilise the private sector? Of course, we have to recognise that the City of London is the biggest global hub for mobilising capital, and we will be doing even more on that. We are also going to do more in working with BII to unlock that sort of investment. In my visits to Africa, I have seen how we can ensure greater access. We do not tell this story enough. I visited Angola and saw the Lobito Corridor, and I visited an extractive mine that was focused on delivering greater processing, bringing employment into the local labour market. It then supported investment in agriculture, using that connectivity, so there was a perfect, positive story to tell about development. I certainly want to focus on that.

Sadly, I am running out of time—now I know the difficulty the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, used to have. Security, which was raised by every noble Lord, and in particular by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester and my noble friend Lord McConnell, is an important area. Prevention of conflict and peacebuilding is essential. The review of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, looking at that peacebuilding element, will of course be part of that. It is about a resource.

There is no sustainable development without peace, and there is no peace without sustainable development. I focused on that last week at the UN, and I met all the people concerned, who were absolutely committed to ensuring that we can deliver more. In the current climate, it is even more essential that we focus on that. I caught the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, about women’s participation, which we are absolutely committed to.

I have an answer on the integrated security fund for my noble friend, and I also had a lot to say on illicit finance, but I have run out of time. I will write on those points, because I have visited places, particularly in the context of illicit finance and what we are doing to combat corruption, which is one of the biggest elements holding back development.

In conclusion, the SDGs will get back on track; we are determined to do so. We will focus on working together with our allies to face up to those shared challenges. This debate will be an important contribution to the way we refocus our efforts, so I thank noble Lords.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 31st January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, and indeed a panoply of excellent speakers over the past two days. It is a well-worn opening sentence of after-dinner speakers to say: “As Henry VIII said to his wives, I shall not be keeping you long”. I hope indeed that I will not be keeping your Lordships for long but, more to the point, as the 129th speaker in this debate, I will only focus on the Henry VIII powers in the Bill.

Like many others, I have serious concerns about the powers being taken by Ministers. I have seen forecasts that more than 1,100 SIs could be used in this process. In my field, which is the environment and our countryside, some 80% of our laws are shaped by, and in some instances controlled by, Brussels, so our countryside and environment, more than any other aspect of our lives, could be gravely affected by Clauses 7 and 9. It is to be hoped that some of the necessary changes to that body of EU controls, judgments and laws concerning the environment can be dealt with in the four Defra Bills that should come before us before Brexit on animal welfare, fisheries, agriculture and, most importantly, environmental protection.

In this way, we can deal properly with many of the issues involved on the Floor of the House, but we must get it right. Post Brexit, we must create a new “brand UK” that exudes quality in every aspect of our lives—our beaches, habitats, rivers, air, soil and, indeed, the rights of our workers and of our children. There must be no opportunity for the Executive to water down this quality agenda. We must think long term and not rely only on the promises of the current Executive. As sure as eggs is eggs, they will change, and who knows what we will get in their place—of whatever party.

I believe that a democracy is only as safe as its institutions are strong. Having Ministers able to bypass our institutions and processes is not a good sign. The unprecedented powers granted to Ministers could be dangerous.

I am extremely dubious about the current sifting arrangements proposed by the Leader of the House yesterday. One committee for the Commons; another for the Lords—what a waste of everyone’s time. What happens if they disagree? How can any such committee, of whichever House, contain all the necessary expertise in the various fields involved—fields as diverse as the licensing of drugs; changes to scientific research, employment law or the Equality Act; alterations to the birds and habitats directives vis-à-vis raptors, squirrels or seabirds, or changes to our nuclear industry? Et cetera, et cetera. How will one group of Peers know whether every SI involved is a mere technical adjustment or is instead—surreptitiously or inadvertently—a complete game-changer?

Then there is the likely number of SIs—supposedly more than 1,100. How can one group of Peers or MPs deal with them all? SIs will be flying at them like snowflakes on to a car at night. You focus on one which immediately melts on the windscreen. Meanwhile, another 50 have flown in unnoticed. You are driving your institutional car into the black of night and probably into a snowdrift. This is not good enough. In my humble view, what is needed in the Bill, as well as changing the word “appropriate” to “necessary”, is a scrutiny committee with the power to appoint expert sub-committees—like our EU Sub-Committees, but made up of Members of both Houses. The committee should have the power to propose that some negative instruments become positive and even recommend, in a few rare cases, that primary legislation is required. Because time is likely to be of the essence in this process—hence the need to use secondary legislation—I suggest that they should be able to recommend that such and such an SI should have a sunset clause. I have checked with the clerks, who tell me that this is entirely possible. This way, before the sun sets, as it were, there can be time—in certain crucial areas—for primary legislation to be properly debated in both Houses.

We need to aim for the very best of Britain in our new independence. We all know that Governments cut corners and we must ensure that, for our environment at least, in the Bill this is made too difficult to contemplate.

Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

62: Clause 68, page 30, line 31, at end insert—
“( ) In making a determination under section 67, the Secretary of State must exclude housing in rural areas.”

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[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, once again, I am very pleased to report that I am aware that, after discussions, as the Minister has already hinted, the Government are minded to accept the case for the amendment, with a view to bringing forward their own at Third Reading, which I hope will go most of the way to catering for the problem that we are trying to resolve—we being me and the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Beecham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for whose support for the amendment I am very grateful.

First, let me spell out the problem as I see it. There are two issues. The first is that we are desperately short of affordable housing in rural areas. As has already been said, our rural England affordable housing stock consists of about 8% of overall housing, compared with 19% in urban areas. Our villages need far more affordable housing, not less, if they are to remain as vital, vibrant communities, with all the self-supporting social fabric that many of us have already described in debate on the Bill. We absolutely do not need to be selling one set of rural affordable homes from the public sector to pay for the replacement of mostly urban affordable homes belonging to the charitable sector.

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[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I shall start with the noble Baroness’s point because I think it probably refers to the previous group in terms of local authorities and agreements with the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State and I, on behalf of the Government, absolutely acknowledge that local authorities know their own local communities. In the spirit of the approach that this House has taken, that is what I am trying to articulate today. Rather than it being central government’s suspicion of local government, we are head-on acknowledging that local authorities and local leaders best know the needs of their communities. I know the Secretary of State respects that.

I now move on to Amendments 62 and 63. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy, Lord Best and Lord Cameron. No, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, did not make any points on these amendments. He is so good that I think he has spoken. I have been particularly struck by the points that have been made about housing that is located in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty by the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Best. Greater planning constraints apply in these areas, which would make it more challenging to replace homes that are sold off with new housing. The Government want affordable housing in rural areas to continue to provide for those who need it the most, and in certain cases I agree that we should be clearer about how we can best protect it. Therefore, I hope the noble Lords will be pleased to hear that I am making a commitment—although the noble Lord kind of preceded me—to exclude local authority housing that is located in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty from the housing to be taken into account under this chapter. Housing in these areas will be excluded under regulations.

More broadly, throughout the passage of the Bill I have heard many powerful arguments about the need to protect rural housing. Amendment 119, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, who is not in her place, emphasises the need to protect rural areas more widely. I commit to look at the detailed points that have been raised about housing in rural areas during the remainder of the passage of the Bill to consider how we might use existing powers to make further exclusions to ensure that we reach a reasonable balance. I hope noble Lords will agree that these two commitments go a long way to meeting their concerns. In light of these undertakings, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, will withdraw his amendment.

Turning to Amendment 63, I agree that local authorities should make the best use of housing stock to meet people’s needs. This includes transferring tenants to alternative vacant social accommodation when it suits their circumstances—for example, if they are underoccupying or overoccupying a property. That is good stock management. However, I am concerned that Amendment 63 could open the door to local authorities seeking to reduce or minimise their payment. This would mean that there would be a lower level of receipts to build additional homes and fewer housing association tenants would realise their dream of home ownership. That said, I am not in a position to make a decision about whether to exclude transfers from the types of definition of vacancy using the regulation-making powers in Clause 77(2) until we have concluded our data analysis and understood the impact of such an exclusion. I assure noble Lords that we will use the views expressed to help inform decisions regarding situations when housing would not be considered as becoming vacant. With these assurances, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

I thank all Members of the House who have supported the amendment. I again thank the Minister and, indeed, her Secretary of State for the compromise position that they have offered. I look forward to discussing the details of the government amendment that will be provided at Third Reading. It is quite clear that the process in national parks, AONBs, the Norfolk Broads and other special areas is quite a simple matter to deal with. Housing in communities of fewer than 3,000 people where it is impossible to replace sold housing due to planning regulations, either as spelled out in the National Planning Policy Framework or where they have been interpreted by a local plan, will be the key to whether the government amendment will be acceptable. I look forward to the discussion and, in the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 62 withdrawn.