Oral Answers to Questions
Alison McGovern Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Justine Greening
Yes, I do. It is projected that Lebanon, a country with a population of 4 million, will have 1 million refugees by the end of the year. If the same proportion of refugees were to arrive in the UK, the figure would be upwards of 15 million. We need to do everything we can to support not only the refugees but the host communities that they are going into.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
The UNICEF ambassador Eddie Izzard recently returned from Syria. He said that
“missing from these discussions are the Syrian children, who are not made of steel, and who are facing desperate and harrowing conditions.”
He specifically drew attention to the lack of education for children there. What conversations has DFID had about providing schooling for children in Syria?
Justine Greening
This is something that DFID has particularly focused on. We have given funding directly to UNICEF to support educational facilities—when I was in the Zaatari camp in Jordan, I saw school facilities that had recently been built—and to support counselling. I would like to look more carefully with the United Nations agencies at what we can do to provide trauma counselling for children and their parents, because many of them have gone through awful experiences before ending up in the refugee camps.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alison McGovern Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
There are many things that Government can do. In the last Budget there were a series of steps such as the enterprise finance schemes that we have established and the changes to capital gains tax. The biggest change is a change in culture, encouraging people to take that first step and supporting them along the way as they go.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Last week the House, to its great credit, supported unanimously full transparency from Government in respect of all documents relating to the Hillsborough disaster. Will the Prime Minister join me in calling on South Yorkshire police, following the example of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), to commit to the same openness and ensure that the Hillsborough independent panel has unredacted access to all papers?
The Prime Minister
I will certainly look at the issue the hon. Lady raises. I am not fully aware of the situation regarding the police papers and do not want to give her a flip answer across the Dispatch Box. The Government have done what we should have done with regard to the Cabinet papers, but I am very happy to look at the point she raises and get back to her.
Food Security and Famine Prevention (Africa)
Alison McGovern Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I am pleased to open the debate along with the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd). I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting us time to have this very important debate.
The famine in Somalia and the widespread emergency that exists across the region is the result of many failures. The failure of rainfall is often cited on the news, but just as important, if not more so, are the failures of Governments, both regionally and internationally, the failure to address the underlying causes of famine and food insecurity, and the failure to act in time and in a manner that prevents people from not having enough food. In Somalia, of course, there is also the fundamental failure of the state and the absence of peace and stability for the best part of two decades.
The UK has undoubtedly taken a leadership role in responding to the current crisis. The public’s generosity should be applauded, as should the Government’s contribution to the relief effort and the incredible work of our British charities. However, if we want to consign famine and chronic hunger in Africa to history, we have to ask ourselves some tough questions. Do national and international Governments respond quickly enough to emerging crises, and are we doing enough now to prevent further deaths in the horn of Africa? As the hon. Lady asked, have we done enough to boost small-scale agriculture production and support rural livelihoods in our international development work in Africa? Have we been too complacent about food price volatility, commodity speculation, biofuel land-grabs and food export bans? I hope that there will be answers to some of those questions during the debate.
I was 10 when I first saw TV images of dying children in Ethiopia. A quarter of a century has passed since then, and it saddens and angers me that yet again we see those scenes on our televisions. The crisis did not start when we first saw the reports in the news; the first warning signs came as early as last August. I have questions about the role of African Governments in facing up to and addressing emerging crises and about their capacity to respond. One NGO worker recently told me that in some parts of Africa they cannot mention the F-word and the C-word—famine and cholera—because the Governments simply do not like to hear them. Denying that the problem exists is not the way to stop it happening.
I also ask myself why, despite early-warning mechanisms being in place, the international humanitarian system waited until people were dying before it responded on the scale that was needed. Surely there needs to be more flexibility in the way that centrally held emergency funds can be released. I know that the report of Lord Ashdown’s humanitarian emergency response review underlines the importance of anticipation, but anticipation must be followed by action if it is to have any significance. I note the reference in the report published by DFID today to slow-onset crises and how we might better respond to those.
That leads me to the situation now. We know that 750,000 people are at risk of dying in the next few months alone. That is the equivalent of a city the size of Leeds. Thousands of people, predominantly women and children, are turning up at already swollen refugee camps every week. We must find a way to address ongoing needs—health and sanitation as well as food needs. As I understand it, many of the humanitarian grants that have funded the relief operation last for only six months, and some start to expire as early as October. We need a plan.
I could speak for longer about the current situation, but I know that the Secretary of State is here to provide an update and I want to turn to the issue of how we prevent such catastrophes from happening again. Last week, the United Nations Secretary-General called for the crisis in the horn of Africa to be turned into an opportunity. Among other things he called for investment in sustainable livelihoods; he is entirely right. One of the best ways to do that would be for the international community to stop paying lip service to the idea of supporting rural livelihoods in Africa—to the smallholder farmers and pastoralists—and get on and do it. We also need to have hard, grown-up conversations with African Governments about their expenditure priorities.
Some 70% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa are dependent on farming. When I visited Kenya last year I met many families who told me that their livelihood was their land but often their land did not produce enough for them to live on. They are sub-subsistence farmers. The sad thing is that it does not have to be that way. There are many brilliant projects run by charities such as Farm Africa, in which small interventions—better seeds, appropriate fertilisers, crossbreeding of livestock and basic knowledge about planting and irrigation—produce hugely increased yields and improve the resilience of local populations. The challenge is to scale up those initiatives, to extend their reach and to get all African Governments investing properly in agricultural extension services and appropriate research and development.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a compelling case about what can be done at a micro-agriculture level to support those farmers. Does she agree that the success of that absolutely depends on UK Government leadership in gaining access to markets for those farmers?
Heidi Alexander
I certainly do, and I shall come to some of the wider international issues later in my speech.
If we are serious about addressing these problems, the UK needs to look at how we prioritise our overseas aid expenditure, setting a standard for other donors in respect of investment in agriculture. Between 2007 and 2009, DFID gave on average $32 million per year to agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa—1.8% of our total bilateral aid in the region. When we increase our aid budget in 2013, what will we spend the additional money on? How much will go into supporting smallholder farmers and pastoralist communities? I have seen research that suggests that of the 14 operational or summary plans publicly available from DFID for African countries, six make no reference at all to agriculture or farmers, three make passing reference, two refer to food security in relation to humanitarian spend and only three—Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Mozambique—have any significant focus on agriculture and farming.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) and my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) on securing this debate on such an important topic.
There is no doubt that even in difficult financial times, when the disposable incomes of people in this country are squeezed, the British public are instinctively generous in their support for those in other parts of the world who are less fortunate. The work of the Disasters Emergency Committee in highlighting the famine and relief efforts in the horn of Africa has been vital in saving the lives of many hundreds of thousands of the poorest people in that region. Many of my constituents who have contacted me strongly support the work of the aid agencies and the resources that the UK Government are putting into the horn of Africa, and people in the region are very grateful for those resources. There is concern, however, that those in the most severe need and the areas most beset by conflict are the least likely to get access to the aid that they so desperately require.
As we have heard, according to the UN, as many as 13 million people across the horn of Africa region need food aid; as many as 750,000 people could die in Somalia alone over the next four months; and, worst of all, half of all deaths have been and will be of children. UN representatives on the ground have described the situation in parts of the region as worse than anything previously recorded. The question has to be asked, therefore: why do we get to such a stage of famine? Famine injects urgency, but it is often too late. That is not a new phenomenon. Since 1980, 42 droughts have occurred in the horn of Africa, almost half in the last decade alone, affecting more than 100 million people.
The situation is progressively worsening, nowhere more so than in Somalia. Not only do people need greater access to food, but there is acute need for safe water, sanitation and disease control. Famine in Somalia is coupled with massive displacement of people both within the country and to neighbouring countries. The large influx of refugees has overwhelmed local host communities, led to conflict over ever more scarce resources, exacerbated the problems massively and had a negative effect on already fragile ecosystems.
There is an urgent need to support countries that are susceptible to drought and to help to mitigate the impact on fragile environments. The summit on the horn of Africa held last week in Nairobi stated that
“we reaffirm that freedom from hunger is one of the fundamental rights of citizens of any nation. Every effort should therefore be made—by governments, citizens and the international community alike—to bring the current emergency to an end”.
More importantly, it went on:
“Every effort should also be made to ensure that in future, drought will not cause undue human suffering, including in particular famine”.
High food prices and price volatility are major contributors to the difficulties, and I want to highlight the impact that food commodity speculation is having on high food prices. That was also mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith). Banks and hedge funds are betting on food prices in the financial markets, causing drastic price swings in staple foods such as wheat, maize and soy. Massive food price hikes are catastrophic for the world’s poor because they are more likely to spend more than 40% of their income on food, as opposed to about 10% to 15% in countries such as the UK. Food becomes unaffordable, which leads to increased hunger and malnutrition as less dairy, meat, fruit and vegetables are consumed, so that people can buy staple food; to an increased burden on women, particularly as they are often forced to earn more money by taking up exploitative employment; to households using up savings, getting into debt or selling assets, including critical assets such as livestock and equipment, to pay for food; and to families being unable to afford health care and education, as more of their income is needed to buy basic food.
Historically, futures contracts were set up in US financial markets to help farmers to deal with price uncertainty in growing crops, but those contracts are now being bought and sold by bankers who have little or no involvement in the actual food being traded but who bet on food prices to make money. The World Bank lead economist, Wolfgang Fengler, highlighted that the price of corn reached a staggering 70% above the world average in east Africa as a result of a small number of farmers having control over the market and so keeping prices artificially high. It is extraordinary that it was cheaper to buy corn in the US and Germany than it was in places such as Somalia. Since January alone, the price of corn has increased by up to 200%.
While some are reaping huge profits from betting on food, poor families and people across the world are paying the price of hunger and malnutrition, but the problem could be easily solved by the UK Government backing proposals to regulate betting on food prices in financial markets. The Obama Administration in the US and, as we have heard already, the European Commission are calling for regulation to curb betting on food prices in financial markets. The UK has to play its part in backing the European proposals and not block important progress towards regulation.
Alison McGovern
Would my hon. Friend, like me, like to hear at the end of this debate a firm commitment to that?
Ian Murray
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for asking that question. It is important that food commodity speculation across the world is dealt with because it is exacerbating many problems. If Ministers gave a commitment at least to consider regulation, as the US and European Commission are doing, it would be incredibly helpful to efforts to deal both with the immediate problems of famine and drought in the horn of Africa, and with the long-term issues, as many of the organisations and the horn of Africa summit have suggested we need to do in order to prevent such crises from arising again.
The World Development Movement has led the charge; now the UK Government have to support two simple proposals that would be hugely helpful—again, it would be useful to hear whether the Government support them. First, all futures contracts should be cleared through regulated exchanges. Most contracts are currently made in private, which means that it is impossible to know how much and what is being traded; monitoring is impossible. Secondly, strict limits should be set on the amount that bankers can bet on food prices.
Combining risky financial gambling with a basic human need is a recipe for global hunger. Excessive speculation on food prices needs to be curbed and the UK Government should back the European proposals for regulation. Drought and famine are avoidable. Just two years ago, the G8 acknowledged that increased investment in agriculture was vital and committed $22 billion over three years to assist affected areas. We have to act now and the G20 summit in Cannes must reaffirm that commitment.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) and my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) for securing the debate, and to the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) for her excellent speech. My reasons for speaking in the debate are twofold. First, I want to raise awareness of this issue and thank those who have given, and to appeal for continued backing for that support. Secondly, I want to discuss some of the causes of the problem and some of the strategic issues involved.
Other hon. Members have mentioned the British support for famine relief. There are some in the House and elsewhere who argue that charity begins at home. Looking into the eyes of a starving child gives the lie to that argument, however. In this debate, we have acknowledged our moral responsibility to uphold the dignity of the people affected by the famine. Let the message from the debate be that Britain will continue to offer support to those who need it, wherever in the world they live. I thank from the bottom of my heart all those in my constituency and around the country who have given through the Disasters Emergency Committee, and we call on Governments around the world to do likewise and to stand up for the needs of the most vulnerable people in the world. The famine might no longer be on our TV screens, but that does not mean that it is not happening and that people no longer need our support. We have a moral duty to show our support for the people who are affected.
Other Members have given a good account of some of the causes of the problem, especially those relating to agriculture. There are interesting questions about the role of agriculture in development, and about whether the Department for International Development might do more work in that area.
I want to talk specifically about food speculation, although many other factors are involved. It has already been pointed out that famine is neither an accident nor a natural disaster; it is the result of human failure. The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye mentioned the comments of the Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen, about the causes of famine and their link to democracy. That point was well made, and needs to be listened to. People in the poorest countries do not have a voice, and that is part of the problem.
I want to ask the Minister some specific questions about food speculation, although I understand that he might not be able to respond to them as he will not be summing up the debate. If he wishes to intervene on me, or if he can answer them in any other way, that would be welcome. The evidence on food speculation is inconclusive, but that does not mean that there is no evidence; quite the opposite. Part of the reason for its being inconclusive is the way in which the speculation is happening. I shall come to that in a moment.
Let us be clear: famine involves political as well as economic failure. The food market is not serving the people of the world, as the hon. Member for South Thanet said. Mike Masters, a fund manager at Masters Capital Management, has done a great deal of research into this issue. He testified to the US Senate in 2008 that food speculation was certainly driving up food prices. He said:
“Most of the business is now speculation—I would say 70-80%.”
He went on:
“Let’s say news comes about bad crops and rain somewhere. Normally the price would rise about $1 a bushel. But when you have a 70-80% speculative market it goes up $2-$3 to account for the extra costs. It adds to the volatility. It will end badly as all Wall Street fads do. It’s going to blow up.”
Roger Williams
The hon. Lady is making an important point. High food prices and increased volatility seem to coincide with reduced world stocks of food, because that makes the trade more excitable. Would it not be a good idea for Governments to hold strategic stocks of food, so that they could intervene directly in these markets?
Alison McGovern
We need an effective market that encourages trade between poor countries and richer countries, because increased flows will help people in both. The threat implied by the hon. Gentleman’s question is protectionism, but in the end, if countries close their borders and try to stockpile, that will help none of us. However, that is a detailed question.
As a member of the International Development Committee, I have spoken to DFID about food speculation. I am told informally that the Treasury is leading on the issue and that it is not certain that there is any evidence. However, as the issue is clearly a development matter, I would be grateful if the Minister said at some point what role the Treasury has been asked to play in spotting and dealing with food speculation bubbles, specifically in relation to the G20. What action will be taken about over-the-counter trading? We need transparency and clarity on this matter—the reason the evidence is so inconclusive is that a lot of trading does not take place in regulated commodity exchanges—and the G20 is the way to get it. Will the UK support limits on speculation, either at the G20 or in other forums? Will we question the need for high-volume or high-frequency trading? Will the UK support the regulation of commodity trading alongside the regulation of financial products? If we go from having sub-prime market speculation undermining our global economy to having food speculation undermining it, we will have made the same mistake twice. I hope that at some point the Minister will comment on that regulation.
Heidi Alexander
The Minister will be unable to respond to the points that my hon. Friend has made today, owing to the time constraints in this debate. However, I have met Michael Masters and I know his concerns about commodity index funds. Will she join me in urging the Minister to write to those Members who have expressed concerns in this debate about the action that he might take, the conversations that he might have with his colleagues and the position that will be adopted in the upcoming discussions in Cannes?
Alison McGovern
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly helpful suggestion. The Minister might consider writing to those Members who have raised the matter in this debate or, indeed, to the Chair of the International Development Committee to explain what exactly DFID is doing to work alongside the Treasury.
Alison McGovern
I hope that the Minister is about to tell me how the Treasury will assist DFID in tackling food speculation bubbles.
Mr O'Brien
I am not going to give an immediate response because that is not how this debate has been designed. However, I can say that before the previous intervention I had already made a note that says, “Write a letter to the hon. Member”.
Alison McGovern
I thank the Minister for that. My fear is that we have an absence of leadership on some of these issues. I hope that his clarification will help us to move away from that.
At the end of the day, Britain has shown over the last decade what can be achieved to tackle global poverty if people right at the top of our politics are prepared to stand up and perform their moral duty to help poor people wherever they happen to live. I hope that all of us in this debate are behind that approach, and that the Minister will assist us in taking forward our aim of tackling not just today’s urgent problem, but the long-term strategic difficulties with food speculation.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) and my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) on securing this debate. I went out to Kenya with my hon. Friend about a year ago and I shall touch on some of the things we saw during that visit, which had a profound impact on both of us, not just negatively as we saw the problems faced by people out there, but positively as we saw what incredible things could be done for a very small outlay.
Let me start by talking about Somalia. As I said in my intervention, there is a Somali community of significant size in Bristol—some say that it is about 20,000 strong. Many arrived as refugees but others arrived from the former British colony of Somaliland. It is obviously no coincidence that Somalia has coped a lot worse with the drought situation than neighbouring countries, such as Ethiopia. Ethiopia has in place a food safety net to deal with such situations and when I went out there with the all-party group for Somaliland, we stayed in Addis Ababa and had lots of conversations with individuals from the Department for International Development and from the embassy. We then went out to Hargeisa to see the situation in Somaliland.
I was struck by the efforts that have been made on the aid front in Ethiopia, including the food safety net and public service agreements, which, despite political instability, problems and issues caused by the climate, were there as, indeed, a safety net. There is a complete lack of that in Somalia. There is also an effective early warning system in Ethiopia, which is not possible in a country as unstable as Somalia.
Constituents have time and again expressed their concern that Somalia has never had the political attention it deserves, and questions are always asked about why Sudan is seen as a political imperative as opposed to any other country that is riven by tribal conflicts or that has problems. I suspect that it is partly because Somalia is seen as such an intransigent and difficult-to-solve problem. One thing that could be done, however, is to give recognition to Somaliland. I was one of the founder members of the all-party group for Somaliland and it has been politically stable since the civil war of 1991, it has fair and free elections and there is huge potential to build the infrastructure and work with the diaspora to set up commercial organisations and use the ports at places such as Berbera for exports, making the country a lot more profitable and cementing its stability.
On food security, according to the World Bank, investment in agriculture in the developing world is between two and four times more effective in reducing poverty than investment in any other sector. As my hon. Friend said quite compellingly, agriculture has not been at the forefront of aid efforts; often the sector does not appear in country plans. It is important, and I hope that today’s debate helps to put down a marker that it should be given more priority.
When I was in Kenya last year with the all-party group I saw the work of the UK organisation Send a Cow, which has been working for over 20 years in Africa, and subsequently went to visit its offices near Bath. The organisation tells me that it takes an average of three to five years for an extremely poor community to become self-sufficient through one of its programmes. It would argue, and I agree, that that is a much better investment than having to provide food aid every time the rains fail. Self-sufficiency is key. The organisation achieves that by creating a network of peer farmers, so that the people who benefit from its initial work then train others in the community. Each family that the organisation works with passes on livestock, seed and skills to an average of 10 others in their community.
We saw in Kenya what a difference is made by small changes to farming methods—such as planting fertiliser pellets a certain distance from seeds so that they do not burn the seedlings as they come up—and investment in barns to improve grain storage. We saw the work of FIPS-Africa—Farm Input Promotions Africa—and FARM-Africa in developing disease-resistant strands of crops and we learned more than we ever needed to know about the insemination of goats. Those are small changes, and sometimes they are surprising because we think that they are things that people should have learned through farming the land over years.
When I went to India I spoke to a farmer who had just moved back to organic farming. He had come under huge pressure from companies selling pesticides to adopt what we in the western world would call modern farming methods, but when he switched back to organic methods his crops were far better and he was able to sell his food at market and make more money as a result. Some of these things have to be relearned, and we have to be careful that we do not try to impose our way of doing things.
Alison McGovern
Does my hon. Friend agree that that highlights the point made earlier about the question of DFID’s focus on agriculture and whether there needs to be a shifting of emphasis to some of the points that she is making?
Kerry McCarthy
That is true. In Bangladesh I went to a village where free-range chickens were running around. We went down the road and saw a structure made of twigs which was basically a battery cage for hens. The person I was with said, “This is progress. We are doing things the way that you do them.” In the western world we are trying to move away from battery cages and towards free-range farming. I worry—if I can end on a political note that has not yet been struck in this debate—that in this country the farming agenda has moved very much more towards speaking up for the farmers, for the vested interests and for the producers of food, and it is not about welfare methods or the consumers. There is an increasing emphasis on intensification, as we saw with the farming Minister’s support for the intensive dairy farm at Nocton. We need to set the standard in this country and abroad, and say that there is a sustainable way of feeding the world which does not involve locking animals up in battery cages and putting cows in the equivalent of multi-storey car parks.
Global Poverty
Alison McGovern Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
May I begin by paying tribute to the hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches today? The hon. Members for Wirral West (Esther McVey) and for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) all made excellent contributions. My contribution will not be anything like as expert as those of my hon. Friends the Members for York Central (Hugh Bayley) and for Glasgow North (Ann McKechin), who made wide-ranging speeches that covered many aspects. I want to highlight two specific points about global poverty, the first of which is the importance of trade, particularly fair trade. The second is the important role of democracy in tackling global poverty, particularly in relation to backing up organised labour in poor countries and supporting people on very low incomes in fragile employment.
On fair trade, we are all aware that aid is not the final answer but a tool to assist economic development. I have felt strongly for many years about the possibilities of Fairtrade labelling. The idea that started many years ago is now coming to fruition: by telling people in consumer countries that the goods that they buy somehow back up people on low incomes in producer companies, we have a mechanism for delivering on economic development. I pay tribute to the previous Government’s achievements in supporting the Fairtrade Foundation. There has been a massive expansion of the Fairtrade label, with 70% of people in Britain now recognising the label and understanding what it means—seven out of 10; that is a real achievement. Also, the Fairtrade label has been adopted by major brands in this country. Many people around the UK are choosing to back producers in other countries, and that is a victory.
I put this challenge gently to the Government that they should continue to support the Fairtrade Foundation. We are rightly seeking to reduce the deficit but, although the sums devoted to assisting international organisations to monitor free trade labelling are small, they have the power to do real good. I feel particularly strongly about this matter, as it combines two of my biggest passions in life—shopping, and supporting people on low incomes abroad. I have a personal commitment that I recommend to all Members of the House, and it is that I always buy any new product that carries the Fairtrade label, whatever it is—and then, before we know it, we are always buying Fairtrade coffee, which is great. As I said, I encourage the new Government’s Ministers to look at that programme carefully, to see what more we in this country can do to back up Fairtrade.
My second reason for speaking in this afternoon’s debate is that I came across an example in my constituency of Wirral South of trade union members in this country backing a campaign being run by trade union members in Pakistan. I found it quite inspiring and I want to share with the House the success that has been achieved but, before I do, I shall read a quotation from the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. He is a fine philosopher and economist who has done extensive research into the subject of famine and food security. He said that
“no major famine has ever occurred in a functioning democracy with regular elections, opposition parties, basic freedoms of speech and a relatively free media”.
I think that the lesson for us all is that we must support the good functioning of democracy in other countries. We cannot allow a discussion about global poverty to pass without recognising the politics that exists in other countries.
In that light, well-functioning trade unions are especially important. I mentioned that that had been highlighted for me by local members of a trade union in Wirral South. The company Unilever is based in my constituency and, by and large, it is a fine employer. I hear great reports from people in my constituency, who say that it is fantastic to work for. However, Unilever has a tea production plant at Khanewal in Pakistan, where 723 workers were contracted through an agency on a no-work, no-pay basis.
Now, I am from Merseyside, and I grew up with the tales of what used to go on in the Liverpool docks. There are memories in my family of what it was like to go down to the dockside without knowing whether there was any work or whether the family could be fed. Therefore, I feel passionately that we must seek to end these practices, wherever they are. What happened in Liverpool all those years ago was not right, and it is not right if it happens anywhere else in the world today.
The workers in Pakistan had no sick leave or annual leave, and no right to join a trade union, but they organised themselves. With the support of the IUF, an international trade union, they were able to make representations on how to deal with the problems that they faced, and they received support from trade union activists all over the world. Eventually, the IUF helped them to undertake negotiations with Unilever, which took place under the auspices of the UK’s national contact point responsible for the application of the OECD’s guidelines for multinational enterprises.
The two sides came to a settlement, under the terms of which Unilever agreed to create 200 additional permanent jobs, and many other successful outcomes were also achieved. The IUF general secretary said:
“The Khanewal agreement…is a great moment for hundreds of our members in Pakistan who will now take up permanent employment…It brings better livelihoods for their families and some dignity and security at work…Unilever’s willingness to work with us so constructively through the OECD process suggests we may be able to look forward to an ongoing and structured dialogue with Unilever.”
I wanted to highlight that because it is a real success. That shows what people can achieve when they are given the dignity to stand up for themselves and their work, and to influence their terms and conditions. That is one small example, but it is the pattern we need to follow. I call on the Government to work across Whitehall to stand up for low-paid workers internationally.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North had much to say about the importance of considering employment as a factor in poverty, and Professor Sen, whom I quoted, has also investigated that in great depth. We should all learn that the things that we are calling for in other countries are what we would want for our friends and families in employment in this country. I hope the Government go forward on that basis and I look forward to debating such issues in future in this Parliament.