Water and Sanitation

Alan Duncan Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)]

I thank the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) for securing this important debate, and I welcome other hon. Members who have chosen to attend this morning.

Ensuring access to water and sanitation for the poorest is, to pick a metaphor, the bread and butter of development. When we get it right, so much else follows: children become more likely to reach their fifth birthday, and they are healthier and in a better position to benefit from education; women, who carry most of the world’s water, are empowered; and economic growth and prosperity are enhanced and facilitated. While we fail to deliver those most basic necessities, not only are there an estimated 2.4 million preventable deaths each year, but generations of people become trapped in poverty.

Tomorrow is world water day, and this year we have much to be proud of. We learned this month that the millennium development goal of providing access to clean drinking water has been met, and that between 1990 and 2010 more than 2 billion people gained access to improved drinking water. It is rare in international development to get news as good as that, and it shows that when aid money is spent well, it can make a tangible difference. Development works, and that is an example of the sort of progress that we can make. However, a great deal of work remains to be done. Some 783 million people remain without access to clean drinking water, and sub-Saharan Africa remains off track. The challenge is most acute for sanitation, which is one of the most off-track millennium development goals: about 40% of the world’s population—2.5 billion people—still lack basic sanitation.

The UK Government are committed to accelerating progress in that area. Last year, we made a commitment to provide 15 million people with access to clean water and 25 million people with access to sanitation and to improve hygiene for 15 million people by 2015. We are also committed to helping the world’s poorest countries to harness the full potential of their water resources and reduce the risks posed by floods, droughts and contaminated water. In Sierra Leone, for example, the Department for International Development provides support through the Government, UNICEF and NGOs, to improve access to water and sanitation. In 2010-11, that resulted in 100,000 more people having access to clean drinking water, 250,000 people in rural communities having improved sanitation and 380,000 people being targeted in hygiene promotion campaigns.

I hardly need to stress, on Budget day in the UK, how important it is that every pound of investment in this sector delivers the maximum impact. Our work in this sector, as elsewhere, is driven by the imperative that investment should deliver good value for money, be based on the best evidence of what works and be spent transparently and accountably. That is why we commissioned a review of the UK Government’s portfolio of work on water, sanitation and hygiene promotion. In particular, we wanted to know whether our investment was going to the right places, reaching the poorest and achieving the greatest impact possible. I can tell the House today, as requested by the hon. Member for Belfast East, that we will publish the details of that review to coincide with world water day tomorrow.

I am pleased to say that, overall, the review shows that the portfolio provides excellent value for money, delivering results across 14 major bilateral programmes. The review also shows that our programmes are reaching the people who need them most. In 2010-11, three quarters of the money that we spent through our country programmes was spent on basic systems—such as rural water supply schemes, hand pumps and latrines—that are most likely to reach the poorest. That is a higher proportion than for almost any other donor. We are doing that in the countries with the greatest need, such as Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, Bangladesh and India.

Detailed evidence from the review will inform my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development and my other ministerial colleagues when they consider whether and how the UK Government could do more. Just as important, the Secretary of State will share that evidence with other donor countries and developing country Finance Ministers when he attends the Sanitation and Water for All high-level meeting in Washington on 20 April. As hon. Members will know, the UK and Dutch Governments were backers of the Sanitation and Water for All initiative, launched in 2008. Through that initiative, DFID has been seeking to secure better targeting of aid to the sanitation and water sectors, as well as improved transparency and accountability from other donors and national Governments.

At next month’s meeting, progress will be assessed against past commitments, and we expect that new commitments will be made. However, we do not want just new commitments to do more. To see an equitable spread of access to safe water and to make better progress on improvements to sanitation, we need better targeting of aid. I can assure hon. Members that the Secretary of State will, based on our own experiences, highlight how well-targeted aid can reach poor people in fragile states and encourage others to target resources more effectively.

It is an injustice that the lack of something as basic as clean water and sanitation should still adversely affect the lives of millions of people. That injustice has the potential to undermine the achievement of a range of millennium development goals. For those reasons, the Government remain committed to dealing with this important issue. To that end, we will ensure that what we do achieves the greatest impact, that we keep learning and refining our aid programmes and that we share our knowledge and evidence with our partners, so that together we can all do more in the sector of water and sanitation.