Sustainable Development Goals

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests listed in the register, some of which impact on my work on the global goals. I am grateful that the voluntary national review mentions the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development that we set up in 2015, which I think was the first such group in the world to be established in a parliamentary setting.

The UN global goals for sustainable development are the most ambitious set of commitments ever agreed by the international community. We know that the gender inequalities that exist pretty much everywhere but at a very extensive level in many countries, the lack of rights and the lack of education are all interlinked. We know that poor health, poor sanitation and hunger—lack of access to food—can all be very closely linked. We know that conflict, climate change and economic underdevelopment are combined key drivers of migration and of some of the problems created around the world for individuals, families and countries by that. We know that all those problems are complex, and therefore the solutions have to be comprehensive.

That is where the strategy adopted by the United Nations in 2015 to develop those comprehensive goals in a strategic sense has been absolutely right. We also know that in developing the millennium development goals, there was a lack of attention on the causes of underdevelopment and poverty, as opposed to some of the remedies. As a result, no conflict-affected or fragile state anywhere in the world achieved even one of the MDGs. Throughout the period of the MDGs and since, natural disasters have destroyed years of development in a matter of minutes or hours. We know that where there is a lack of access to justice, democratic institutions and peace, all development that takes place is at risk. Therefore, the fundamentals of a democratic and just society must be in place if we are truly to end poverty and meet the other global goals.

The global goals provide answers to complex problems, and they are important also because of the strategic overview they give of how we should approach our global relations. The UN said, first, that the goals would be universal, that no one would be left behind, and that it was not just a case of the rich world contributing more to the poor world—the goals would apply everywhere to everybody. Secondly, the goals tried to address the key causes of underdevelopment, poverty and conflict around the world, but had a system of accountability built into them. That system revolves around Governments—countries as a whole, preferably—having national strategies. Those national strategies then develop into three or four-yearly reports to the United Nations through the voluntary national review process, and that process should include Parliaments, parliamentary debates and decision-making.

My starting point is therefore to thank and congratulate the Minister on securing this debate today. It is very important that we have a debate in advance of the VNR being presented to Parliament, although I must say that I seriously doubt the wisdom of the judgment by the Whips on all sides to move this debate to the Grand Committee, away from the main Chamber, to make way for a debate on public toilets. That perhaps says a lot about the state of British politics today.

The VNR is a distinct improvement on where we were about 12 or 18 months ago. If we are being honest, the UK was slow off the mark. Having been intimately involved with decision-making on the global goals prior to 2015—the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, was one of the many Ministers involved in that—we took our foot off the pedal. We did not have the clarity of national strategy and co-ordinated action across the Cabinet that should have been taking place. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, the Secretary of State, Rory Stewart, and their two predecessors—in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, and Penny Mordaunt MP—have ensured that over the past 12 to 18 months the goals have become much more central to the work of DfID and perhaps occasionally other government departments, and that is welcome.

However, although the VNR has many positives, it has unfortunately been a bit of an opportunity missed, due to the political circumstances of the moment. On the positive side, we are perhaps showing other countries around the world how to produce objective data properly by using the Office for National Statistics and objective data that may not all be comfortable for the Government, it having been published and given to the UN back in May.

In our VNR we quite rightly comment on both the UK and the global picture—there is a balance between the two—emphasising the universal nature of the goals. While the commentary is largely positive, it is not all positive. I think the Government have tried, occasionally, to be humble and reflect that there are negatives as well. That is welcome and something we need to build on. It reflects the role of the devolved Governments, local government, business and civic society. That is all positive. Being honest, we are four years into a 15-year challenge—the biggest challenge the world has ever set itself—and we have to admit there is some way to go.

I shall briefly emphasise the areas where there needs to be urgent attention between the presentation of the VNR to the UN next week by the Secretary of State—I hope I should not say the outgoing Secretary of State—and the important SDG summit on 24 and 25 September that will take place as part of the UN General Assembly weeks. There are areas where we in the UK—I emphasise “we” because, yes, it is the Government’s responsibility, but these goals are everybody’s responsibility, so we all have a part to play—need to strengthen our resolve and make some firm decisions. The first is that the responsibility for these goals, under any new Cabinet or Prime Minister, needs to move from DfID to either the Prime Minister’s Office or the Cabinet Office. There needs to be a proper cross-department, cross-government committee responsible for implementing the goals at home and abroad. That is also true in relation to our overseas development assistance because so much of that is now spent by other departments.

Secondly, we need a proper stakeholder body—there is a reference to this in the report—that brings together business, civic society and others in the UK to build a proper partnership inside the UK that can drive action on the goals over the next 11 years. Thirdly, we need to take the initiative in the UK; because of our role in global business and because of the key role that business can play in delivering these goals around the world and transforming people lives, there should be a specific initiative to try to establish more momentum in the UK in every sector, particularly in global businesses, to ensure that the way they treat their employees and customers, source products and invest around the world is in line with these goals. The UK Government could take a greater role in that. Fourthly, we need to establish some kind of independent mechanism for reporting to Parliament that would ensure that the responsibility beyond government is recognised and that we have a very honest and clear reporting mechanism that allows us to debate these goals on an annual basis.

The UK had a key role in leadership in advance of 2015. We need to recapture that role. We have an opportunity to do that this September. It is intolerable that in 2019 we live in a world where hundreds of millions of girls do not go to secondary school and lose out on all the opportunities in life that result from it. We know that there are countries around the world where people do not have basic rights and democratic choices. We know the craziness of the world today where there are more mobile phones than domestic toilets. This is an intolerable situation in 2019, one-fifth of the way into a new century. The UK could and should take a greater lead to step up action on the goals globally, not just within our own borders. We could do that, particularly on goal 16 on peace and justice and democratic institutions to which we direct a high level of our aid spending, but we have a role on the Security Council and elsewhere on conflict prevention and peace-building. We should do it more in relation to our overseas development assistance by linking it directly to the goals and insisting that there is a link between implementation of the goals nationally elsewhere in the world and our aid.

Finally, we need to ensure that through the UN Assembly in September there is an agreement for a big push in 2020, the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, to say that in the final 10 years of this programme of delivery on the goals we are really going to make a difference and leave no one behind.