Foreign Affairs and International Development

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I will give way in a moment, because I just want to elaborate on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) raised.

Not only is that a reversal of the overall policy of the previous Government, who closed 17 high commissions and embassies, but in some instances we are reopening embassies and high commissions that they closed.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

[Mr Hague]

No. I want to list them to the House.

In Africa we have reopened an embassy in Côte d’Ivoire and opened a new embassy in South Sudan; we are reopening our embassy in Madagascar, which should never have been closed; we are opening an embassy in Liberia; and we have set aside funds to open an embassy in Somalia as soon as circumstances permit. We have opened a new embassy in strategically important Kyrgyzstan, and we are establishing a new honorary consul network for economic and commercial diplomacy in Turkey.

In Latin America we have already opened a new consulate in the north of Brazil; we are reopening our embassy in El Salvador, which was closed in 2003; and on top of that we are strengthening many links with the people of Latin America, with an agreement for example to welcome 10,000 Brazilian students and researchers to British institutions by 2014. I stress that this focus on stronger ties in Latin America goes hand in hand with our absolute commitment to the rights of the people of the Falkland Islands to self-determination and to develop their own economy.

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[Alex Cunningham]

The expansion of the diplomatic network is important and welcome, but does the Foreign Secretary agree that businesses in the illegal settlements on the west bank should not have European Union grants in any shape or form, and that diplomats should be working to stop them?

[Mr Hague]

I will come to the middle east peace process later in my speech, but at the EU Foreign Affairs Council yesterday, we issued an important new and detailed statement about our approach to the two settlements, in particular. I will come back to that, but perhaps I will take the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) on this point.

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[Mr Alexander]

I am not familiar with the specific case of which my hon. Friend speaks, but I am clear that I do not regard boycotts on the basis of nationality as in any way constructive or helpful in achieving the two-state solution that we all want to see. That, in part, informed the position we took on the issue of universal jurisdiction when it came before the House, because surely we cannot be in a position in which those parties that are committed to a two-state solution are physically barred from countries and so are unable to enter them and facilitate that dialogue and those discussions. I will be very clear that those who continue to argue that the way forward is to seek to isolate and somehow delegitimise the state of Israel, whatever political party or organisation in the United Kingdom they are in, do a disservice to the pursuit of peace, and the absence of hope about those negotiations is one of the greatest threats to seeing and securing them.

[Alex Cunningham]

When I put this question to the Foreign Secretary he dodged it and said that he would address the issue later in his speech. What is your view on the use of EU grants by businesses in the illegal settlements in the west bank? Do you not agree that those grants should be stopped once and for all?

[Mr Alexander]

rose—

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[Pauline Latham]

I thank the right hon. Lady for that intervention. She is right. Women must not go backwards. Yesterday I heard the worrying news that in northern Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan, 700 schools have been bombed and girls cannot go to school any more. We must work with Governments to try to ensure that girls get a good education, not just in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but all over the developing world.

I have been to many African countries and have found that the schools there are so badly equipped that the teachers have no resources apart from a blackboard on which to write what they can remember. I am not saying that the children are not learning, because there are some very bright children in those circumstances, but they are not getting a rounded education. Last November or December a friend of mine, the hon. Michael Bayigga-Lulume, who is a Member of Parliament in Uganda, came over to this country and saw some schools in my constituency. He was astonished at the priority that this Government and every Government in Britain have given to schools. He has been to Britain before to attend conferences in Manchester, Birmingham and London, but he has never visited real places. By going into schools, he has recognised that we set huge store by education for all our children, not just girls or boys.

Other countries do not seem to do that. They do not put the necessary investment into schools. Schools require textbooks, and in this day and age they cannot manage without computers, so developing countries need to get their infrastructure sorted out. I suggest to the Under-Secretary, who is present, and to the Secretary of State that perhaps we should set up some exemplars in situ. We should go and equip schools properly, as we would a British school, and for a specific period we should pay for the teachers who have the right skills and the right education in order to promote education in African countries or in countries such as India and Pakistan. We should help them to see what it is like to have a properly resourced school, because without education none of the students will progress to top jobs. They will be able to do ordinary jobs, but they will not be high fliers because they will not have had the opportunities that we have in this country. I suggest that we do something like that to promote education in all the countries where we have a presence.

Not only should we invest in drugs to treat HIV/AIDS and malaria, but we should consider carefully resourcing treatments for diarrhoea. Everybody knows about the HIV/AIDS and malaria drugs, but very often the health problems of young children are caused by diarrhoea. There are many other causes, but it is very cheap to treat diarrhoea in young people with rehydration salts and zinc. We should be promoting that, along with the rapid diagnostic tests that can be done out in the bush, so that the people there can get an accurate diagnosis. If we can help with the health as well as the education of the young people, they will have a much better chance of a decent future in life, with proper resources.

I am always concerned when we provide budget support. It needs careful management by DFID. If we are not careful, we provide budget support for, say, a health budget, and the country says, “Yes, we’ve agreed to spend 15% of our budget on health. Thank you, that’s 6% of it, so we have to provide only 9%.” I always thought that our 6% should be on top of the country’s 15%, not 6% less for it to spend. I would like to see Governments pushed a little more to spend up to the 15% that many countries in Africa have signed up to so that they get a better health service.

Some of the health services that we see are very poor—hospitals for young children with no sheets and no nappies. They have no decent toilets and nowhere for the staff to wash their hands. If members of staff in a hospital cannot wash their hands, they cannot provide proper hygiene. I would like to see us helping with that, but in addition to the country’s own 15%, not instead of it.

We should be pushing and helping with the skills needed for agriculture, particularly in African countries and in India, while we are still there. We should try to help keep people in the countryside, rather than all of them gravitating to the cities, which are not healthy places to live for people with no job and no home, who are running around on the streets. It is better to keep people in the countryside so that they can provide a living for themselves and make the country more self-sufficient in vegetables and fruit. Instead of only one crop, maize, there should be diversity so that the people can become self-sufficient and have better diets. All the people in African countries can have better diets, which will make them healthier, and they will have a better living by getting added value on their crops. I should like to see DFID working hard on that.

I want to mention Congo quickly. In Rwanda we saw a genocide. The same thing is happening in the Congo. Unfortunately, nobody is talking about it. Millions of people are being murdered—slaughtered—and millions of women have been raped, sometimes by members of their own family, because their own families will be killed if they do not do it.

[Alex Cunningham]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Pauline Latham]

I am sorry, but I am running out of time.

We should be doing more to help those poor women who are struggling in their own country to have a proper living. We should be pushing the UN to do far more to help them, and we should recognise that a genocide is taking place there. It is not just a little local uprising.

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[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow so many powerful speeches tonight, particular several in a row from my hon. Friends. I would like to address two main issues this evening: the Government’s failure to give the ultimate commitment to help the poorest in our world and the total absence of anything in the Queen’s Speech on policy affecting Israel and the Palestinians. I declare my membership of Friends of Palestine. However, I welcome the mention of Congo in the speech by the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) and ask the Minister whether there are plans for a flight early next month to force Congolese nationals to return to that dangerous country. I hope that that is not the case.

To return to the aid budget, it says a lot about what the Government stand for when they are happy to give a tax break to millionaires yet cannot bring themselves to commit, through a statement enshrined in the law of the land, to helping some of the poorest people in the world in the longer term––people who live in the kind of abject poverty that we cannot even begin to understand. Indeed, the Prime Minister previously said that spending money on foreign aid in a time of austerity was a sign of “moral strength” and that Britain should be proud that

“we never turn our backs on the world’s poorest”.

But in the light of the Queen’s Speech last week, when the Government failed to enshrine in law the commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development assistance, the Prime Minister’s words were just further proof that they are a Government of broken promises, following such gems as

“there will be no top-down reorganization of the NHS”,

“we are all in this together”,

and

“my promise to pensioners is that we are on your side.”

I am proud that Labour made a commitment to meet the UN’s target of spending 0.7% of GNI on aid and to legislate on it by 2013, and I was pleased when that was taken on by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and included in the coalition agreement. I thought that surely the Government would not revoke that policy, which would prove to the country that the Tories were no longer the nasty party and that they genuinely believed in the moral duty of rich countries to help the poorest parts of the world. As the International Development Secretary said this year,

“On the whole, politicians should do what they say they are going to do”.

However, the Government now claim that a Bill to enshrine such a commitment in law cannot be introduced due to lack of parliamentary time, given their focus on the economy and, of course, the all important matter affecting the other place. That is a ridiculous notion. The Queen’s Speech did nothing to stimulate growth in the economy, nothing for young people looking for work, nothing for families whose living standards are being squeezed and nothing for small businesses that cannot get money from the bank.

Rather than telling developing nations, “Sorry, but we are simply too busy tackling the pressure issue of House of Lords reform and the accession of Croatia to the EU to provide you with proper assistance to help your citizens climb out of poverty,” a Bill committing to spend 0.7% of gross national income on aid would not and should not detract from other parliamentary business. It is supported by all three parties, would do much to show the international community that there is a genuine commitment to standing up for global social justice, and would undoubtedly increase the pressure on other countries to do more.

Legislation would also ensure that aid is maintained at an affordable level. Just as the absolute aid level may fall when Britain’s income goes down, so too should it rise when the national income goes up. As the charity ActionAid stated, legislation matters because aid needs to be around long enough to do the job. Many countries such as Ghana are now moving towards an end to dependency on aid, but that can happen only if we support them until that point. Legislation would provide the certainty that is needed for aid to be most effective.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend surprised that there is not enough time, bearing it in mind that we have spent weeks—no, months—without many votes at all? Surely there is time for such important legislation.

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[Alex Cunningham]

There is certainly time for such important legislation. We could get it through the House in one of those one-day things, It would not take any time at all for us to get this single commitment through the House, so I hope that the Government listen to the idea.

I want to say more about why aid is so important. No one can argue that aid is a panacea for all the developing world’s ills, but there is very strong evidence that international aid, including UK aid, is making a huge difference by helping to deliver and to scale up local efforts to save lives, educate children, develop livelihoods, stimulate growth, build democratic and fair societies and promote peace and security.

In 2009-10, UK aid ensured that 15 million people had enough food to eat and provided more than 1.5 million people with clean water, and over the next few years the UK’s contribution to the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisations will ensure that 80 million children can be immunised worldwide, saving an estimated 1.4 million lives.

Indeed, as the Secretary of State for International Development himself said, British aid pays for 5 million children in developing countries to go to primary school every day, which is roughly the same number as go to primary school in Britain, yet it costs only 2.5% of what we spend here.

There is still much to be done to ensure that every child in the world can get an education, and that every family can live with dignity and access health care and services as basic as clean water and sanitation. It is still estimated that 67 million children throughout the world are not yet in primary school, and that about 1,000 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and child birth every day in developing countries. This is not the time to turn our backs on those who are most in need, so I appeal to the Government to do the right thing. I believe that we will spend the money, but I want it enshrined in law.

I welcome the continuing work to secure long-term peace and security in Afghanistan, but I was disappointed by the absence of a similar commitment to building peace in other parts of the middle east, although the Foreign Secretary spoke at length on such matters today. I recently led a debate in the Commons on the dire humanitarian situation in Jerusalem, and, although there was some will from the Foreign Office Minister, the issue was conspicuous by its absence from the Queen’s Speech.

Last night, I heard the Palestinian ambassador tell a packed room here at Westminster that the daily expansion of settlements and the effective removal of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and the west bank are threatening any chance of a two-state solution. Time is running out, he said, yet the British Government have no clear plan for action in our own right or through our European partners.

So why take action? In 2011, more than 500 Palestinian homes, wells, rain water harvesting cisterns and other essential structures were destroyed in the west bank, including East Jerusalem, displacing more than 1,000 Palestinians. More than half of those displaced were children, for whom the loss of their home is particularly devastating, but the situation is not hopeless, and the Government can do much to help improve the Palestinian people’s quality of life and to start to build the foundations for a peaceful future. Simple but effective measures that the Government could take to develop things in that part of the world include introducing compulsory labelling for all goods so that consumers can tell at a glance whether a product is made in an illegal settlement or in Israel, ensuring that legislation allows for public bodies to exclude companies from benefiting from public contracts where those companies operate in breach of international law, and ensuring that charitable donations that benefit from tax relief do not in any way benefit illegal settlements on the west bank or in East Jerusalem.

The Government should press the EU to exclude companies from benefiting from research funding where those companies are operating in breach of international law and to end co-operation with countries on research that could have military as well as civil applications where we are not satisfied with those countries in respect of human rights, UN resolutions and international law. I urge the Government also to press the EU not to adopt with Israel the agreement on conformity assessment and acceptance of industrial products, as that would open up EU markets to Israeli goods and, in effect, represent an upgrade in EU-Israeli relations. Surely any such upgrade must be conditionally tied to respect of human rights and international law. The agreement would also allow Israel to export fresh and processed agricultural products to the EU free of customs or quota limitations. That is problematic, since it would be impossible to identify agricultural products, especially processed agricultural products, that originate from illegal settlements, and members of the public to whom I speak are keen to use their consumer power to bring about change in the region.

The omission of a commitment to aid and of comprehensive action to take some steps towards ensuring a two-state settlement for Israel and Palestinians shows a severe lack of ambition on the part of the Government. Britain does have the power to bring about change in the world and to improve the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable on the planet, and shirking our responsibility is no way to conduct a foreign policy.