King’s Speech

Viscount Craigavon Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Craigavon (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to be able to contribute today on the role that international development plays in the FCDO. In that department’s various guises, that has been one of my main interests in my time in this House, mainly in the form of what one might now call demography, or population dynamics. I hope that might be regarded as important in its own way, allowing a disordered world to help itself to stabilise in a less drastic way than we have been hearing about today—a softer version of power.

Before, as I normally do, avoiding quoting any numbers in this field, I point to something that I am sure most noble Lords are aware of—that the current figure of world population is now just over 8 billion. When I first came to this House in 1974, the figure was almost exactly half that. As life has become more complicated, such figures are not the signpost they once were. Many countries now have to address underpopulation, and the focus of our concerns is now rightly much more varied. There is no magic solution, let alone the issue of asking the right questions.

Running through all this is the continuing legacy of the successful United Nations Cairo conference on population and development 30 years ago in 1994, with its programme of action, which has since been the steering document for the United Nations Population Fund, the UNFPA. There are regular conferences based on that and updating that original programme, the most recent conference being in Oslo in April of this year. I give this as an example of the department’s commendable support for multilateralism.

To address this debate more closely, and to focus on the role that one hopes the present Government will continue to play in this field, I would say that they have set out an ambitious programme. As encouraged by the concluding declaration of the Oslo conference, as well as ensuring that the target of 0.7% of GNP would be met and not just when we say we can afford it, also being asked for was, as is traditional in this field, that 10% of development budgets should be devoted to the programme of action. This includes the provision of the programmes on sexual and reproductive health and rights: access to family planning and reproductive health commodities. The important rights element has been added over the years.

This part of the Foreign Office has an excellent reputation to live up to, and we have the SDGs—the sustainable development goals—to guide us in sometimes challenging ways. So many of those are dependent on being population-based. As they do on so many other like issues, it is vital to our hard-won reputation that the department continues to support multilaterally the success of this 30 year-old programme, as endorsed by 179 countries, placing individuals at the heart of development. I hope that meets up with the good phrase that the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, used in her opening speech: “common sense and humanity”.