Zika Virus

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, the wider point is, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said, that the rate of spread of this particular virus is low. However, I agree with the noble Lord that we need to understand better why this virus and others are suddenly increasing at a greater rate than the normal pattern in the past. The UK is showing leadership by putting money behind research and development. Working with countries where outbreaks are taking place will not just benefit our own understanding but will build resilience for those countries.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, we have not heard from the Conservative Benches yet.

[Viscount Ridley]

My Lords, I have a feeling that the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, and I were going to say much the same thing, so I will have a go at it. Will the Minister undertake to look at the report on genetically modified insects by the Science and Technology Committee, under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Selborne? This came out in December, which was extremely timely, and examined the fact that a British company, Oxitec, has managed to suppress mosquito populations in Brazil by 90% in some areas. This is a fantastic new technology which could be much more helpful than other approaches in this case.

UN: Sustainable Development Goals

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on securing the debate and express my admiration for him and my noble friend Lady Jenkin for their living below the line. I remind them—perhaps naughtily—that there are free cheese biscuits in the Bishops’ bar. I welcome my noble friend the Minister to her role and have promised her that I will not be tiresome today.

I do not have an interest to declare in this debate although I have an investment in a DNA diagnostic company which might, at some stage in the distant future, prove to be useful in helping to fight infectious diseases in the developing world.

My main reason for speaking on this issue—I do not claim anything like the expertise of others in the debate—is that I was commissioned by the Wall Street Journal to write about the process of producing these sustainable development goals last year and I got interested in it. I am particularly interested in the question of priority setting and I will focus my remarks today on that issue. It is crucial that these SDGs are seen as an opportunity to set priorities within the development goals.

We need to have, I am afraid, a ruthless focus on value for money in what we direct our efforts towards because it is not a matter of identifying the biggest problems facing the world but of identifying the ones where we can get most results for the money that we are likely to spend. There is no question that money for foreign aid is limited The very brevity of the list of the eight millennium development goals and the deadline attached to them meant that they caught the world’s imagination, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans referred to the need for the SDGs to do so as well.

As my noble friend Lady Jenkin said, since 2000 the number of people living in extreme poverty and hunger around the world will have been cut roughly in half by 2015—a truly astonishing achievement. However, as the noble Lord McConnell, said, there is much further to go.

I worry that the list of SDGs may be too long because if you were to ask people to name the eight millennium development goals, most would not be able to do so. Even that list of eight was, perhaps, a little too long. All the pressure during the process of arriving at the SDGs has been to make the list even longer. NGOs and others have been bombarding those involved in the process with their own pet projects and the result is 17 goals divided into 169 targets. It needs leadership from the Secretary-General, Mr Ban, and politicians to bring focus to the process when the meeting takes place in September.

As Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, put it, you should “never ask a committee to write poetry”. One person who could bring poetry to this process is the UN Secretary-General, but he needs to edit with an axe, not a scalpel. Perhaps that is too violent a metaphor for the subject.

The worry is that the open working group’s proposals which have come to the zero draft are trying to be too comprehensive rather than forensic and targeted in order to arrive at an imaginative list that will enable us to measure progress by 2030. Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center has been working with his expert analysts on trying to help this process by focusing on cost-benefit analysis. His 120 experts went through all of the 169 targets to try to put a number for cost benefit on them. This exercise was well received in many areas, particularly in the developing world, where it got more attention than it did in the West.

The numbers produced by this exercise were startling. Every dollar spent to alleviate malnutrition can do $59-worth of good; on malaria, $35; on HIV, $11. By contrast, on setting a millennium development goal of limiting global temperatures to two degrees above pre-industrial levels, his 120 experts, who included Nobel Prize winners, calculated that would do just two cents of good for every dollar spent. On the other hand, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies would achieve more than $15 of benefit per dollar spent.

Surprising as it may seem, the global aid industry very rarely carries out these kinds of cost-benefit analyses. People in this line of work generally recoil from rankings because they feel like a heartless exercise in discrimination against other goals that are still worthy. The aid industry often seems implicitly to take the view that funds are unlimited and that spending on one priority does not crowd out spending on another but that is patently not the case.

Trying to solve the world’s problems with poverty and other development challenges is not like solving a mathematical problem—there is no right or wrong answer. However, there are better or worse answers. It is vital, to the extent that we can, that we set priorities—setting aside sentimental commitments—and do the hard work of assessing costs and benefits.

Ebola

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I am quite encouraged by what is happening in terms of vaccines for Ebola. As the noble Baroness might be aware, clinical trials have already started in Liberia, and the UK and the CDC are looking at rolling out trials in Sierra Leone.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, while congratulating the brave volunteers who have done so much to bring this epidemic under control, and while it is good news that there is light at the end of the tunnel, would my noble friend consider asking the World Health Organization to publish its internal review on why the early response to this epidemic was so bad and why it downplayed the problem when it had already become known to other agencies?

[Baroness Northover]

I am sure that there will be continued discussion as to the lessons we must learn. However, it was welcome that the WHO held a special session to look at some of those lessons and try to take that forward.

Ebola

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Thursday 6th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to begin by praising the Government’s generous and effective response to this crisis. The opening of the Kerry Town clinic in the last day or two shows the dedication and efficiency of our troops at their best. I hope that the Minister will pass on our congratulations on that. Even more praise should go to healthcare workers from this country who have volunteered and are active in Sierra Leone at the moment.

I do not think that we should be so impressed with the World Health Organization. Despite its history of overreaction to swine flu in Mexico in 2009, on this occasion it has been dangerously complacent for far too long. In March it contradicted Médicins Sans Frontières when it said that this crisis was getting out of control, saying that it was not. Only in June did it call a meeting of its global outbreak alert committee and it only declared an emergency in August. The danger is that if an international agency of this kind is not worried, then the rest of the world does not follow suit. It has a unique responsibility to get this kind of thing right. The world cannot be expected to respond appropriately if it is not getting those kinds of signals.

I can see why the World Health Organization thought that this problem was containable. The previous 33 epidemics of Ebola have all been relatively easily contained. What it overlooked, of course, was the desperate poverty and the aftermath of warfare in this particular region and that individuals in those countries were being left to bury their own dead, with particular risks to them, and to treat family members.

Poverty is the scourge we need to eradicate if we are to prevent such outbreaks in the future. It is no accident that this outbreak has happened in three of the very poorest countries in the world. I ask that my noble friend looks very hard at the World Health Organization and lessons that must be learnt from this epidemic when the time is right. Were its priorities correct in this epidemic?

One final, different point is that this is a disease that is harboured largely by bats, as far we can tell. It is not the only one—rabies, Lyssavirus, Hendra virus, Nipah virus, Marburg virus and even SARS are harboured by bats. We need to draw on zoological expertise to try to understand why so many dangerous diseases are coming from bats.

Ebola

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord is probably aware that William Pooley, who suffered Ebola and who was treated successfully, has contributed to the treatment of other patients. This is being studied along with pushing forward on vaccine research. There will be a meeting tomorrow of the WHO about that vaccine research. My right honourable friend Oliver Letwin and the Chief Medical Officer will be there.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister ensure that the Government look into the question of why the WHO took eight months to wake up to this epidemic, during which time there appear to have been reassuring noises coming out of local WHO chapters about how this was not a huge problem? Will the Government ensure that serious lessons are learnt about this?

[Baroness Northover]

I am sure that there are serious lessons to be learnt. We are fortunate to have international organisations but we need to make sure that we strengthen and improve them in the future.

Health: Ebola

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord is right, and so is Margaret Chan. The noble Lord will no doubt be reassured to know that the Foreign Secretary is chairing a COBRA meeting on EU co-operation this afternoon—in fact, as we speak. It is extremely important to get that international engagement. The Prime Minister will chair another meeting of COBRA tomorrow at 3 pm. We have sought to galvanise international reaction to this. As the noble Lord said, it is absolutely critical that we do so.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister congratulate those who are volunteering to go and work on this problem in west Africa for their courage, skill and generosity? Does she also agree that this will be defeated by on-the-ground, low-tech action but that, if it does not happen that way, we have a really serious problem because it will be a long time before vaccination and cure can help?

[Baroness Northover]

I am more than ready to endorse that view. It is astonishing to see the number of volunteers who have decided that they wish to go out to this extremely challenged region. We are humbled before that effort. My noble friend is right that we have to tackle this as a public health crisis but it is also encouraging to see the amount of effort now going into developing potential treatments and vaccines. It may come to nothing but I am extremely pleased that the United Kingdom is again leading in terms of the trials of the vaccine at the Jenner Institute in Oxford. If that works out, those vaccines should be available by the end of the year.

Agriculture and Food Industry

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Plumb and join others in paying tribute to all that he has done and said, not least today. I declare my interest as a farm owner in Northumberland, not very far from the noble Lord, Lord Curry. I am sorry to tell the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, who is not in his place, that the latest text from my combine harvester says that the barley bushel weight is disappointing.

As the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, has detailed, farming is an astonishingly successful industry but it is also countercyclical. It grew throughout the previous recession and has often done so. It was an important factor in keeping the economy going that at least one part of it was not badly affected by the great recession. However, we must redouble our efforts in the years to come to keep farming competitive.

This urgency comes not because the world will necessarily struggle to feed itself, with 2 billion more mouths to feed by 2050, and not necessarily because climate change will make it harder to feed the world. If anything, more rainfall and longer growing seasons mean that we may well see improved yields for some decades. These are not the main, imminent threats. Indeed, if British farmers sit back and think that population growth and climate change will ensure plenty of consumers for their produce, they may be in for a rude shock.

The world is on the cusp of a great farming transition. From now on, and at an accelerating rate, it is quite possible that we will need less, not more, land globally to feed the world, even as the population grows. My noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer spoke of “peak soil”. I commend the Minister’s attention to a paper by the Rockefeller University’s Professor Jesse Ausubel, Peak Farmland and the Prospect for Land Sparing. Professor Ausubel says that,

“humanity now stands at Peak Farmland, and the 21st century will see release of vast areas of land, hundreds of millions of hectares, more than twice the area of France for nature”.

His argument is as follows. At the moment, we are using 65% less land to grow the same quantity of food, averaged over all crops, as we did in 1960. Had we stayed at 1960s yields, we would need 3 billion extra hectares to feed today’s population—that is several continents. Yet yields are still going up globally at about 2% a year. If you assume, pessimistically, that that drops to 1.7%, you assume that meat consumption rates grow faster than they are growing at the moment and you assume that population growth falls more slowly than it is falling at the moment—if you make those three conservative assumptions—you still find that we will need 146 million fewer hectares of land in 2060 than we farm today. If you make more realistic assumptions, we will need 256 million fewer hectares to feed the population in 2060 than we need today to feed today’s population. In other words, the world will potentially find it easier and easier to feed itself, which means real competition for British farmers from elsewhere in the world. As for African competition in commodity grains, we still live behind an artificial European tariff wall—an unjustifiable wall, in my view. I commend what the noble Lord, Lord Curry, said about not letting the pursuit of self-sufficiency lead to perverse incentives.

We should note that whereas yields have quadrupled here since 1950—most wheat yields have gone up about fourfold—and even more than that in Asia and America, they have barely budged in Africa in that period. If Africa gets hold of fertiliser, as it will—it is doing so—world food production will soar. In short, we will need to plan for a very competitive future, with potentially low commodity prices and high yields. This could be an underestimate of how much land could be released from farming. If climate change enhances rainfall and lengthens growing seasons; if hydroponic irrigation gets going with cheap desalination, so that many desert countries can grow plenty more food; if the productivity of chickens, pigs and other livestock, as mentioned by my noble friend the Duke of Montrose, continues to increase; and if landless agriculture—that is to say, tissue engineering and 3D printing to make meat, although I am sorry to say that that is competition for wonderful Scottish sheep—all bets could be off in terms of how much less land could be needed.

Even without any of these new technologies, we will need less land. That reality has been concealed in recent years by what is little more than a scandal of biofuels. We have been turning 5% of the world’s grain crop into motor fuel. We have displaced just 6% of the world’s oil use, so the impact on oil use has been trivial, but it has had an impact on food prices none the less. When that madness stops, as it will, the extent to which the world needs less land to feed itself may well be revealed.

What does that mean for British agriculture? It means three things. First, we must press on with innovation. Yields have stagnated over the past 10 years in this country, as a number of noble Lords have said. We must rebuild the research base, as the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, said, and grasp the nettle of genetic modification, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said. I hope that the Minister will confirm the Government’s continuing support for genetic modification, particularly things such as nitrogen-use efficiency, which would decrease the amount of fertiliser needed to support a particular level of yield. We must redouble work on diseases, as the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, said, we need to tackle the crisis in crop protection. It is a genuine crisis, with black grass, yellow rust and these other problems, which are harder and harder to deal with. The precautionary approach that dominates the development of crop protection chemicals in the European Union has been disastrous in terms of allowing us to develop new and environmentally more friendly products.

Secondly, we need to switch our efforts to quality not quantity of food, with nutrient-enhanced varieties with Omega-3 amino acids and lysine-enhanced varieties of specialist crops. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, we need to link the health agenda to the food agenda.

Thirdly, and finally, we need to add value and move up the processing chain. Those are the things that will keep British agriculture competitive. Yet the opportunities for Britain are surely great, because Mother Nature has given us day length that the Spanish would die for; soil moisture that a farmer in Kansas would kill for; access to markets that most Africans cannot dream of; and mild winters that Canadians would greatly envy. The Canadian crop is possibly down by as much as 26% this year, I am told, which is partly because of the harsh winter they experienced.

One Lincolnshire farmer by the name of Tim Lamyman comes very close every year to beating the world record wheat yield, set in New Zealand some years ago, of 15.6 tonnes per hectare. He claims that if he was given unlimited use of nitrogen, he would get there. That is the potential of this wonderful country.