Poverty: International Development Aid
Lord Londesborough Excerpts(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
The noble Baroness differentiated between me as a Minister of the Crown and the Government. I assure her that we are at one and we totally understand the connection that she makes, because it is right. That is why we must focus on the most vulnerable. Again, I reiterate our focus on issues of girls’ education and the empowerment of women, because it is the most vulnerable who suffer and inequalities fuel that. We will focus on this in many of our programmes. That is why my right honourable friend the Development Minister has published our figures beyond this year and into next year, to demonstrably show how we are increasing funding, notwithstanding the challenges we face with the reduction to 0.5%, to ensure that there is real transparency in the British Government’s spending.
Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, the White Paper makes several laudable commitments, some of which require significant upfront investments, such as access to basic services, and that brings us the uncomfortable question of how these projects will be resourced, given not one but two huge hits to our ODA budget: some 25% lost due to the UK abandoning its 0.7% commitment, and almost 30% of what is left being spent on housing refugees in the UK. Can the Minister confirm the net budget for overseas aid once both these factors are taken into account?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, the strategic decision to reduce was taken because of domestic pressures. It was right that we gave a commitment to return to 0.7%, and the Government stand by that. On the issue of domestic spending on refugees, we have always acted within the DAC rules and we continue to do so. I do not think a single noble Lord will dispute that it is right that we have taken responsibility for those coming to the UK, whether from Ukraine, from Hong Kong or coming directly from Afghanistan, as they have recently, and that we use that money to help support them. We will act within the DAC rules. It does mean, yes, that there is less spending there, but it also ensures that we fulfil the responsibility that we owe to those coming to the UK to rebuild their lives.
Gulf States: Human Rights Abuses
Lord Londesborough Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, I also would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, for bringing this timely debate to the House. When I say timely, I refer to the World Cup currently being staged in Qatar, which though highly controversial, has at least brought the world’s wider attention to systematic human rights abuses not just in Qatar but across the Gulf.
Sadly, the World Cup has demonstrated that, even with a world-wide audience of 3 billion people, an extraordinary and grotesque spend of $220 billion to stage a four-week sporting event, its impact on human rights looks set to be very modest: notably for immigrant workers, women’s rights, and the LGBT community, despite the claims of a much-discredited FIFA. I will return to this subject later.
First, I have a quick word of introduction, as I am relatively new to this place. I do not claim to be either a Middle East or human rights expert, but I lived and worked as a journalist in Iran for a year back in 1978, which turned out to be the last year of the Shah. While Iran is not a GCC state, I learned at first hand that in this region, neither freedom of expression nor a free media was considered a human right. Indeed, one ill-judged word as a journalist and you were put on a one-way flight—if you were lucky. I also witnessed the extraordinary concentration of wealth, power, patronage and corruption, as well as the brutal suppression of opposition. Arbitrary arrest was commonplace in Iran—it still is—and there was next to zero accountability. Above all, the nation’s culture was dominated by a combination of absolute monarchy, or dictatorship, and the strong culture of religion—Shia Islam in the case of Iran, which even the Shah underestimated, leading to his downfall and the Islamic revolution.
In my subsequent years, I founded and ran a country risk information service on all developing regions around the world, which included Middle East Monitor and quarterly reports on every country in the Gulf. Interestingly, there was a very strong demand for these reports from national businesses in each GCC state, but the censors and customs officials ensured that delivery was virtually impossible, most notably in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Turning to the Gulf states and human rights in general, the culture and wealth of this region make it formidably difficult to make the sort of progress that we would all like to see. Culture is deep-rooted and resistant to change on many fronts, whether family, hierarchies, race, women’s rights, education or sexuality. We are also talking about six of the world’s richest states. In terms of GDP per capita based on purchasing power parity, five of the six are in the world’s top 20 wealthiest countries, with the exception of Oman, which sits in 27th place. Thanks largely to their huge energy reserves, they do not need our financial assistance. GDP per capita actually understates the issue, because the GCC’s distribution of wealth is one of the most uneven in the world. The top 10% of the region’s 54 million people own more than 75% of assets—this in a region that has an annual GDP of £1.2 trillion. That makes it all the more challenging for our Government and others to exert influence on their approach to human rights.
Returning to the richest of those states, Qatar, we are reminded of the concentration of power and money by two relatively trivial developments in the World Cup. I say trivial only in relation to other far more serious human rights issues, but they are illustrative. First, as the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, highlighted, we had the sudden ban on sales of beer at football stadiums, despite a $75 million sponsorship deal between FIFA and Budweiser. This turned out to be a last-minute decision from Qatar’s ruling emir, which, it is stated, is “non-negotiable”. FIFA, representing 200 footballing nations, simply caved in. We then had the absurd ban on European team captains wearing OneLove rainbow armbands, and Welsh supporters even having their official rainbow bucket hats confiscated at the turnstiles. As the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, put it so eloquently, they are terrified of diversity.
In terms of buying influence, we also have the profoundly disappointing sight of David Beckham, England’s former football captain—an incredibly wealthy man in his own right—being paid a reported £15 million per year to be an ambassador for Qatar, and declaring on a promotional video that this will be the first ever carbon-neutral World Cup. That is a ludicrous claim that has been emphatically dismissed by a chorus of scientists and climate experts—first sportswashing, now greenwashing.
As we know, Qatar is a country whose workforce is 90% dependent on immigrant labour, working on low pay and often in appalling conditions. Both Amnesty International and the Guardian have estimated that 6,500 migrant workers have died since 2010, the year Qatar was awarded the World Cup, in building World Cup-related infrastructure. When I raised the issue of migrant labour deaths in a supplementary question to the Minister last November, the Qatari head of the World Cup claimed, at that time, that the real number of such fatalities was a barely credible three.
I finish by addressing the challenging question raised by this debate: what steps might be taken by His Majesty’s Government to address human rights abuses in the Gulf? It is especially challenging in this economic climate. The UK’s trade with the Gulf stood at a significant £33 billion last year. At a time of declining trade with Europe post Brexit, the UK is in dire need of economic growth and an export-led recovery, and should be signing free trade agreements across the world. We are led to believe that signing an FTA with the GCC would add some £6 billion to our trade with the region and some £1.6 billion in net added value to the UK economy. However, the key question remains: do we want more trade at the expense of human rights? I ask the Minister: if we sign such an FTA, what priority would we give, and which terms or conditions would we apply, to human rights as part of the deal—or is it true that human rights have simply been dropped from the list of objectives?
The Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, said:
“The UK has a strong history of protecting human rights and promoting our values globally and we continue to encourage all states, including our friends in the Gulf, to uphold … human rights obligations.”
I ask the Minister what this statement actually means in relation to the Gulf, specifically in relation to the FCDO’s £10 million per annum Gulf strategy fund. Like the noble Baronesses before me, I ask him why, in the financial year 2021-22, the UK has more than doubled its allocated funding from the GSF to both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, two of the region’s worst human rights violators, at a time when we were cutting our global overseas aid budget by some 30%. I appreciate that the GSF does not come out of the ODA budget, but the thrust of my question, and those of others, remains.
Shortage of Workers
Lord Londesborough Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Londesborough
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to address the shortage of workers in the United Kingdom.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)
My Lords, with around 1.3 million vacancies currently available, the Government recognise the importance of filling vacancies in support of business and economic growth. Our approach focuses on how we can best support jobseekers and employers to overcome the barriers to recruitment, retention and progression in their sector. The Way to Work campaign focused on bringing employers and claimants together in our jobcentres to fill vacancies faster. As of 29 June, we estimate that at least 505,400 unemployed universal credit and jobseeker’s allowance claimants moved into work between 31 January and the end of 26 June.
Lord Londesborough (CB)
I thank the Minister for her detailed response, but the UK is suffering an employment crisis. Our workforce has shrunk by at least 500,000, with some estimates saying nearer 1 million —the biggest percentage drop of any G7 economy—and as the Minister says, we now have more than 1.3 million unfilled vacancies. Labour shortages do not just cause economic disruption; they fuel wage inflation and damage productivity—a classic recipe for stagflation.
Some employers are now employing underqualified or untrained staff and having to pay them 20% more. When will the Government respond to the scale of this crisis and come up with a comprehensive package of new measures to address this mass exodus of workers?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
The DWP is running numerous programmes to get people back to work to try to fill those vacancies, because, as the noble Lord said, the lack of workers and skills is not helping the economy. We do have a new Chancellor.
Covid-19: Global Vaccine Inequity
Lord Londesborough Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Londesborough
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to increase the United Kingdom’s role and contributions to address COVID-19 vaccine inequity across the world.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, the United Kingdom is at the forefront of the international response to Covid-19, spending over £2.1 billion since 2020 to address its impacts. We are keeping further support under review. Our funding has enabled COVAX to deliver over 1 billion vaccines to 86 developing countries. With supply no longer a major issue, the United Kingdom is also now focusing on tackling delivery bottlenecks and improving uptake to meet country targets, working closely with the COVAX Covid-19 vaccine delivery partnership.
Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, we are now just two months away from the WHO target of vaccinating 70% of the world, yet across Africa just 17% have had their first jab. The pandemic is not over—far from it. Some 700,000 Covid deaths have been recorded across the world in the last three months, and the vast majority of those were unvaccinated people. Can the Minister say when Britain will follow Germany’s example and provide 2022 funding to the global Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator, specifically our fair share contribution of £750 million? For wealthy countries, this is surely a small price to pay, not just to help vaccine supply but to support struggling health systems across low-income countries, and indeed to protect us all from the emergence of another variant.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, we have worked very much at the heart of the COVAX facility. We were the first country to commit over £0.5 billion to COVAX so that vaccines could reach the most vulnerable. The noble Lord is of course correct that there is more to do, and we fully support the World Health Organization’s target to fully vaccinate 70% of the world’s population. We have committed over £1.6 billion of UK aid to address the impacts of Covid-19, including £129 million to support the global development, manufacture and delivery of Covid-19 vaccines. These include projects such as in Ethiopia, where the UK leads the partner co-ordination group, and in Nigeria, where our health programme is supporting vaccine delivery in five of the poorest states. I agree with the noble Lord that there is much more to do, but we are very focused on reaching the most vulnerable and are working with the World Health Organization in pursuit of that objective.
Taiwan
Lord Londesborough Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, for securing this debate. It is even more timely and relevant than we could have realised exactly four weeks ago, when a number of us here today debated in this very Room the threat to democracy from autocrats and kleptocrats. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine inevitably raises concerns about the threat of China to Taiwan, which is also living in the shadow of an overbearing and menacing neighbour. That said, I do not believe that Taiwan will be the next Ukraine, as there are huge geographic, geopolitical, cultural and economic differences.
As we have heard, Taiwan’s democratic credentials are indeed impressive, moving up to eighth in the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, and first in the Asia-Pacific region. A liberal democracy, and world leader in gender equality in government, Taiwan also boasts a dynamic economy, agile industry and entrepreneurial zest. Yet the UK and especially the US must do more to support Taiwan, given the island’s contested status. As we know, the UK does not recognise Taiwan as a country nor maintain diplomatic relations, but we do lobby for its participation in international organisations, as an observer at the very least. Can the Minister inform us whether the UK is planning to step up such lobbying?
I ask this because the need for Taiwan, with its close cultural and economic relations with China, to fully participate in international organisations was demonstrated to devastating effect by the outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan. As we now know, China was very slow to admit to person-to-person transmission—in fact, fatally slow—and it was Taiwan that first alerted the WHO on 31 December 2019. Its warning was largely ignored as it was not a member of the WHO, while China was not just a member but—how can I put it?—a highly influential one. The weeks of denial from China and dithering from the WHO in early 2020 tragically contributed to millions of deaths and trillions in the economic damage that ensued.
The need for transparency has never been greater. Russia and China share a brutal coalition of disinformation and we must do our utmost to support states and countries such as Taiwan and Ukraine, which share our respect for the truth and a belief that freedom of speech is a very basic human right.
Autocrats, Kleptocrats and Populists
Lord Londesborough Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, as we have heard this afternoon, there is little doubt that democracy has been on the slide: the recent report from Freedom House pointing to 15 consecutive years of declining freedom and democracy makes a depressing read. I wish to focus on the decline in democracy rather than the rise of autocrats and kleptocrats, specifically during the last two years of the global pandemic, when the ability—or, should I say, appetite—of the so-called leading democracies to collaborate and work together for the greater global good has largely evaporated.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, so eloquently stated, the rise of populism and nationalism among major democracies was evident in the years running up to the pandemic. The election of Donald Trump in the US heralded four years of division—aided and abetted by social media—and a combative approach to the UN, NATO and many other multilateral organisations. Here in the UK, a deeply polarising Brexit referendum, where quality of debate, trust and objectivity took a back seat, has been followed by two to three years of an equally divisive Johnson Government, where—to put it very mildly—domestic issues have pushed critical global issues into the sidings. Sadly, there has been little sign that other countries in the G7 or indeed the G20 have stepped up.
I shall briefly compare and contrast the world’s response in 2008 to the global financial crisis to the current response to the global pandemic. Facing a pyramid of toxic debt from European and American banks, the G20 stepped up—with our Prime Minister at the time, Gordon Brown, to the fore—to assemble a $1.2 trillion-rescue bailout to avert the impending collapse of the world’s financial system. Some 14 years on, and we are in the midst of a far more serious world crisis. The IMF estimates that the damage to the global economy wreaked by Covid-19 will reach $12.5 trillion by 2024. It could be considerably more than that. In humanitarian terms, the pandemic numbers are even more chilling: nearly 6 million deaths so far, 160 million people dropping below the poverty line, hundreds of millions of children missing out on education, and tens of millions more added to ever-lengthening waiting lists for critical—and in many cases life-dependent—operations.
The tragedy of this is that the cost of vaccinating the world does not run into trillions; far from it, the figure is more like US$25 billion to US$50 billion. That is little more than 2% of the cost of the banking bailout and less than 0.5% of Covid’s estimated economic damage but, with wealthy nations focusing on their domestic vaccination programmes, it has been left to a critically underfunded COVAX to act like a charity, begging for vaccines to inoculate middle and lower-income countries. It is way behind its target of vaccinating 70% of all adults by September this year. The 1 billion jab milestone was finally reached in January, whereas 2 billion vaccines had been touted as a target for the end of last year. Currently, 3 billion adults across the world are totally unvaccinated.
Where is the leadership and collaboration from the so-called leading democracies? Where, indeed, is global Britain and what are the prospects for foreign secretary Liz Truss’s call at Chatham House in December for
“a network of liberty that spans the world”?
Vaccine inequity leads to a disturbing form of vaccine diplomacy, with China and Russia to the fore. Beijing has granted 53 countries free shipments of vaccines, including Pakistan, the Philippines and many countries in Africa. By the way, those countries are receiving the Sinopharm and Sinovac jabs, which evidence strongly suggests produce a much weaker immune response than the mRNA vaccines we all have here.
Sadly but, perhaps, inevitably, Covid-19 has presented autocrats and leaders in countries such as Venezuela, Belarus, Serbia and Sri Lanka with the excuse further to clamp down on civil liberties. The title of this debate raises the case for a co-ordinated response by the United Kingdom and her allies. Vaccinating the world surely provides that compelling case.
International Development Strategy
Lord Londesborough Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for bringing this important and very timely debate to the House. I will focus on two key issues: first, the longer-term impact of the Government’s decision to slash overseas aid by 30%, and secondly, the insufficient allocation of aid to Covid and global health. These two issues are of course connected.
With respect to reducing our contributions from 0.7% to 0.5% of GNI, many of us on all sides of the House have stated how unjust and poorly timed this measure is. It cuts our aid by almost £4 billion per annum, not just this year but for another two to three years by the Chancellor’s own estimates, and I fear probably beyond that. Why beyond? Because we may fail to meet the Chancellor’s two fiscal tests to restore the 0.7% contribution: that the UK is running a current budget surplus and that the ratio of underlying debt to GDP is falling. The Chancellor hopes to meet these tests by fiscal year 2024-25. But it was already a close call on both counts when they were announced six months ago. The OBR has since admitted to “modest headroom” on the debt target, which could be wiped out by the 1% lower growth or rising interest rates.
Since then, we have seen a slowing of GDP growth, we learned yesterday of a jump in inflation to 5.1%, and there is the rising menace of the omicron variant, all of which put government finances under further strain. Our overseas aid could be depressed for as many years as the Chancellor doggedly clings to these fiscal tests. I therefore ask the Minister: in light of the changing economic landscape, do the Government have any plans to reconsider these fiscal tests? Such uncertainty over our aid budget clearly undermines our international strategy and the aim for the UK to be one of the world’s leading development players—let alone our bid to become “global Britain”.
This brings me to my second point. If ever there was a need for the UK to step up and show some sorely needed leadership, it is in the area of global health. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, referenced the moral case for addressing vaccine inequality, as well as the economic case mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg. The FCDO’s spend allocation for Covid-19 and global health for this year stands at just £1.3 billion. This includes our commitment to the WHO and COVAX, and the donation of 100 million vaccines—although we learned two days ago that only 16 million have been delivered so far. You can argue, as I do, that our contribution to fighting the global pandemic should not be coming out of the annual aid budget at all, especially in its newly diminished state. In the face of the world’s worst health crisis for 100 years, the sum of £1.3 billion sends out a feeble signal to the rest of the world, especially to our fellow members of the G7.
Omicron is a stark reminder that we need to vaccinate the world, and quickly. There are 5 billion adults to vaccinate—6 billion if that includes those aged over 15—and they may need three or even four doses each. Richer nations may therefore need to donate more than 10 billion doses a year, yet COVAX’s target this year is 2 billion doses and only 600 million of those have so far been delivered. Here we are in the UK, with 80% of us already double-vaccinated, now scrambling madly for our boosters to protect us against a variant that emerged from a continent where the single dose vaccination rate is less than 12%. Where will the next variant come from? It is very likely to be from another country with high population density, poverty, poor healthcare and low vaccination rates.
Turning to the economic argument, the cost of the pandemic’s damage to the world’s economy is approaching $10 trillion, while the cost of vaccinating the world is estimated at $50 billion to $100 billion. Such a cost would represent history’s greatest bargain, so why has there been such a gulf in world leadership? Where are the G7, OECD, IMF and others on this issue—or are we going to continue to leave it to COVAX and the WHO? The UK’s approach is symptomatic of the problem: we are aiming to contribute just 100 million doses from an emasculated aid budget. As the fifth largest economy in the world, the UK should be leading by example. A £5 billion contribution to help finance 1 billion vaccines would be nearer the mark; Japan, Germany, France and Canada are contributing at similar levels, and the US considerably more.
Beyond the economic damage, the secondary impacts of Covid such as collapsing healthcare, gender-based violence and deepening poverty are the very areas that need our aid and assistance. But our contributions cannot keep up with demands if we do not help to protect the world from the pandemic. My second question to the Minister is this: what plans do the Government have to radically review the UK’s global health contributions as we approach the third year of a global pandemic?
International Development Strategy
Lord Londesborough Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, I cannot make specific commitments now other than to say that the strategy that we are due to publish will take forward our commitments in the integrated review that set out clearly that the UK is one of the world’s leading development actors. We are committed to the global fight against poverty and to achieving the sustainable development goals by 2030. The strategy that is published will absolutely support those aims.
Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, whatever development strategy is arrived at, the Chancellor is still wielding the sword of Damocles over the overseas aid budget, effectively slashing some £5 billion off our contributions for every year that we fail to meet his fiscal tests. We can only guess how many years that will be. Does the Minister agree that such financial uncertainty undermines the whole process of development strategising?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, we are in a position in relation to aid and aid cuts that I do not think anyone welcomes, but we are in the situation that we are in. The projections that the Government have put forward suggest that we are likely to be able to return to 0.7% by the end of this spending review, and of course that is something that I very much hope will happen.