Queen’s Speech

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, having worked in international development for the best working years of my life, I can only admire the admirable simplicity of the approach of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, to this subject. However, as I will demonstrate, I do not think that compassion is enough. I also regret that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, is not in his place. I worked for an organisation that had equity investments in three seed companies in Africa. It worked very closely with the largest privately owned American seed company. It brought clonal tea to Zimbabwe and Tanzania and bred elite oil palms for the Far East. In fact, it did everything that the noble Lord suggested should be done now, and I was part of the British aid programme at the time.

International development and aid has in fact always been controversial. It has never been a simple subject. Indeed, if your Lordships were to read the 238 pages of DfID’s annual report—perhaps noble Lords do not read those 238 pages—you may end up, like me, completely confused. I say that advisedly. I am not sure, but I think that DfID is driven by the millennium development goals, yet those are not working. It is true to say that the countries that will be able to achieve the millennium development goals would have achieved them anyway and that those that cannot achieve them would never have done so anyway. There are countries going in and out of the green, amber and red definitions of the millennium goals, which certainly need to be thoroughly revised in 2015.

Our own House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee wrote a very good report about the effectiveness of aid, which noble Lords will no doubt have read. Reading that report, you see that there is deep controversy in the evidence given to that committee about the effectiveness of aid. Whatever might be said about my noble friend Lord Ashcroft’s blogs, he knew and knows about Zimbabwe from when he was young, and about Belize. Those are two quite difficult countries and in his blogs there are very interesting views.

There used to be great debate in this House about development and aid. Lord Balogh and Lord Bauer used to go head to head. Lord Balogh was an adviser on official development assistance, while Lord Bauer would say that economic growth and development were what was needed and that aid interrupted the progress towards economic growth and the elimination or amelioration of poverty. We now have consensus, which the noble Lord, Lord Collins referred to, so we cease to debate the matter as we are all agreed. All that does, if I may say so, is open the door to Mr Nigel Farage—not a very welcome development—because, as he says, if all three Front Benches agree there must be something wrong. On that proposition, I agree with him, even if his attitude to aid is completely mistaken.

I suggest a way of thinking about economic development and international development. There are four strands to it. First, there is economic growth, which leads one on to poverty. I think everybody agrees—the Secretary of State has said it—that economic growth is the most important means of reducing poverty. The House of Lords committee said that economic growth is essential if poverty is to be reduced, which is of course absolutely right. Secondly, the millennium development goals talk about the eradication of poverty but then refer to the eradication of extreme poverty. However, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that we have poverty in the United Kingdom. Thirdly, we have corruption. Nothing should be done if it leads to corruption and we must do everything to avoid it, but we have corruption here. We have not lost it; there is still some about. Fourthly, there is disaster relief, which I would like to leave out, but of course if Cockermouth gets flooded we give its people relief.

We need economic growth now in the United Kingdom. I have heard economic growth mentioned several times tonight in connection with the eurozone and Europe. We have not eliminated poverty and we never will. We have corruption. The Charity Commission is looking at the moment at a charity that appears to have behaved very badly. Is anybody suggesting that we should get rid of the serious fraud squad? We do disaster relief, too, so when thinking about international development we should stop thinking about achieving things and about targets or exits and endings. It is not that at all but a continuous process, which has gone on here and in the whole of the developed world and will go on everywhere else. When it goes on successfully, of course we will build much more interesting relationships of the kind my noble friend Lady Nicholson mentioned with Iraq, because that is all part of how you come out of problems of one sort or another and create positive relationships. We can make sense of the debate about international development only when we realise that none of the four strands which I have mentioned go away. They all persist.

I have quickly to declare an interest. I used to work for a thing that was called the Commonwealth Development Corporation. It was a classic development finance institution. We used to look for economic opportunities, carrying our own technology and management capability with us. We were prepared to lead and to be in consortia. We took risks and went where other people—the pure private sector—were not quite prepared to go. We did things that were quite risky and exciting and on the whole very successful. However, the previous Administration wanted rid of it. They thought that there was no place for such a gap-filling development finance institution, so they tried to sell it to the private sector. They modelled it on that private sector and left it in limbo.

The Secretary of State now says, “We work with the CDC”, although she qualifies that by describing it as the “revitalised” CDC. I wonder what that means and whether my noble friend on the Front Bench will tell us, if not now then later, when we have a Statement on CDC. I hope that we might get a trailer tonight because we still need a classically designed development finance institution that is not aid per se, or a profit maximiser, but a central economic development institution.

Global Health

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, is a tireless worker in the cause of global health, including, as we know on this occasion, through the development of a mix of appropriate and innovative skills in many places—here and elsewhere, but predominately in countries less fortunate than ours. He referred to the UK resource, and I want to go down a rather narrow path, talking about the UK’s capability to assist in the campaigns on tropical medicine and the contribution that we can make.

I should briefly declare my interests. I am involved with development at UCLH. I am also involved with the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and have on a number of occasions been involved with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It is usual for us in this House to discuss malaria and parasites, of which there are many different types which can lead to all sorts of very nasty results, and, lately, neglected tropical diseases. I am slightly less certain about our debating neglected tropical diseases. As a matter of fact, if you take the total UK capability, I am not sure that much is being neglected. As we know, ever since Manson and Ross connected the mosquito to malaria and the schools in London and Liverpool were founded, we have made an important contribution to fighting tropical diseases. Indeed, the Hospital for Tropical Diseases itself was founded nearly 200 years ago.

First, I want to talk briefly about London as a centre for excellence. It could perhaps be entitled “The Bloomsbury Campus”. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Keppel Street and the hospital, with its beds in Gower Street and outpatients and diagnostic laboratories in Mortimer Market, off Tottenham Court Road, are a real centre. Of course, we need to add the Wellcome Foundation, which is very close by. All those institutions are within walking distance and work very closely together. In particular, if a tricky case comes into the hospital, the conversations that go on between those institutions are close and entirely relevant. The people who practise in the hospital are also teachers and lecturers at the school, so there is a close combination of skills.

They have two agendas. The first is the domestic agenda, given the amount of travel and immigration. I expect that some noble Lords will know Dr Paul Clarke, who founded a tropical disease clinic called MASTA. Paul said to me one day, “John, you know that there are people who have come into Southwark”—he lived in Southwark—“from some strange places and have brought things that I have never seen before”. That is the domestic agenda. There is the rapid diagnosis of malaria and the concentration of quite rare diseases going on in the Hospital of Tropical Diseases. There is still some leprosy in this country, and it has often been misdiagnosed, and therefore having that capability is extremely important. Also important is the service whereby all GPs in the country can go on line or ring up for rapid advice if they are faced with a patient who they think may have returned from a foreign part quite recently.

On the overseas challenge, training, study and research are enormously endorsed by the Wellcome Trust, which makes large grants every year to both the London and Liverpool schools, as do Bill and Melinda Gates. It is an extraordinary amount of money, in one sense, and a great endorsement of the contribution of the Bloomsbury campus in London. Other institutions also make a contribution. DfID, as has been mentioned, is a strong supporter of this endeavour, as, indeed, is HEFCE, because they are either connected to or counted as higher education institutions.

This proliferation of support and the institutions involved bring challenges. Several departments of government are involved, and government departments are not always brilliant at talking to each other and providing a co-ordinated response. I wonder whether there is co-ordination.

Notably, the NHS, which is under pressure, changing configuration and always under some reorganisation, does not have the same agenda as DfID or the charitable institutions. I should like reassurance that DfID fully endorses this Bloomsbury campus and its contribution to those countries overseas which need that contribution, and that it will continue to give the participants enthusiastic support. Given that several departments are involved—notably the Department of Health and the NHS, with the ever present problems that they have to face—I ask the Government to make sure that nothing slips between the cracks.

Do the Government agree that the UK’s leading position in study, research, teaching and tropical disease clinical practice can continue to be a growth point for the economy? This endeavour has grown over the years and I see no reason why it should not grow further. Enormously satisfying careers are available in this activity and there is a huge job to be done overseas. If we can continue to get international support, surely this is an opportunity—and we are looking for such opportunities wherever we can.