Queen’s Speech

Debate between Lord Trees and Lord Russell of Liverpool

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, I want to address the cuts in official development assistance and to concentrate on their effects on health research and health interventions for and in lower and middle-income countries. I must declare my interest as vice-chair of the APPG on Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases. These cuts are massive, immediate and catastrophic.

Regarding research, the ODA support to UKRI and the global challenges research fund has been immediately cut by £120 million, which is nearly half the previously committed amount. Among many affected projects is the world-class research led by the Royal Veterinary College in London through the One Health Poultry Hub: a £20 million programme involving 27 institutions in 10 countries. This focuses on infectious zoonotic disease and antimicrobial resistance in poultry in Asia. It faces a 67% cut in its budget. However, we know that the next pandemic in humans is very likely to arise from animals, very possibly from poultry and very possibly in Asia. At the world-renowned Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, major research cuts are required in multiple programmes on human health. I highlight the cut of 68% to the ARISE programme, which is looking at human health in informal settlements in Asian and African countries and has helped these communities in their responses to the Covid pandemic.

On health interventions, the flagship UK-funded Ascend programme delivers preventive drugs for neglected tropical diseases to African countries. Just in January, the Prime Minister reiterated the UK’s support

“to protect everyone from pain, disfigurement and poverty caused by NTDs”.

Yet, the Ascend programme is now facing cuts of around £130 million to a total budget of £220 million. The programme has already been seriously interrupted by Covid-19 but has repurposed much of its activities to aid the Covid-19 efforts in 11 endemic countries. The current cut will not only halt those efforts but result in the cessation of drug treatments for target NTDs. Children who could be protected will be put at serious risk of going blind or developing completely preventable disfiguring and debilitating diseases. These are diseases for which no vaccines exist. The drugs that prevent them are donated for free by pharmaceutical companies such as our own GSK, but they will go unused.

In poor communities, good health is crucial to enable education, work and economic and social progress. To improve the well-being of such communities is not only a moral and humanitarian responsibility; it is in our own self-interest to create stable societies of growing wealth from which people will not migrate.

While these cuts are devastating for the current research and preventive programmes funded by ODA, they involve relatively small amounts of money in the context of the current pandemic: no more than 1% in total of the current budget deficit. I maintain that these cuts are totally disproportionate when we consider that £37 billion has been spent on the Covid test and trace system in the UK. One thirty-seventh of that, which is £1 billion, would avoid most if not all of the proposed cuts to overseas health research and interventions.

In conclusion, these cuts are contrary to our aspirations as a global scientific power. They damage our international reputation—we are the only G7 country to reduce its aid budget in a time of global crisis—and they seriously diminish our soft power reach. What soft power is greater than the gift of health? They run counter to our commitments to the sustainable development goals and they will diminish our capability to address major global challenges like food security, antimicrobial resistance and pandemic infectious disease risks. I submit that the damage far outweighs the savings made and I ask the Minister if Her Majesty’s Government will reconsider these cuts.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, have withdrawn from the speakers’ list, so I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Fall.