Food Security and Famine Prevention (Africa)

Debate between Alison McGovern and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 15th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Alison McGovern and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

The hon. Lady invents a mythical obstacle to achieving a derogation, without even having tried. Many of her Back Benchers who are constantly urging Ministers to stand up to the European Commission will be very disappointed that they are using the Commission as an excuse. They could have avoided this situation by not introducing the rise in VAT on fuel earlier this year. They should have considered the consequences before entering into such a policy.

The UK has not applied for as many derogations as other member states. We have only one reduced rate, which is used largely for energy and energy-saving materials and a number of health products, as well as the zero rate. France, Italy and Poland have each secured three different reduced rates of VAT, in addition to a zero rate, so there is clearly scope for the UK to ask for a little more.

While Labour was in government, we never applied for a special rate of VAT on fuel, but the reason for that is simple: we never raised VAT on fuel in the first place. This is a problem that the Government have created, so rather than simply telling the Committee that a derogation would be illegal, perhaps the Economic Secretary can once and for all tell us whether the Government have made any serious attempt to start negotiations with the European Commission on the matter, or whether they are simply capitulating to the Commission without putting up a fight.

We have tabled the amendment so that the Government’s fuel duty cut will be shown for what it really is—a 1p cut that is wiped out by the 3p a litre increase resulting from their VAT rise on fuel. It comes at a time when petrol prices are already rising rapidly and reaching record highs, when families are already squeezed and when the economy is struggling to grow. It comes after the Government refused to take the alternative approach that we put forward, which would have been a genuine help to families. The amendment means that the Government will have to face up to the fact that they have made the wrong choice at the wrong time and are harming, not helping, working people.

[Alison McGovern]

I rise to speak in favour of the amendment, which states clearly that the Chancellor should publish

“an assessment of the impact of taxation on fuel prices.”

It is a short but, I think, highly important amendment, not least because fuel prices are a key part of our economy and have an impact on inflation. I want to say a few words about why taxation on fuel has a bearing on inflation and why that is at the heart of some of the economic problems that we face today, not just from a dry, technical point of view but from the perspective of families in Wirral, Merseyside and elsewhere who are struggling at the moment.

This country has previously dealt with severely high inflation, but for many years we have had relatively low and stable inflation. That is also true across the globe. The nature of the fuel industry means that fuel prices have a specific impact on inflation, but I would point out that inflation in the UK is slightly higher than in the rest of the EU. That should be a warning signal to us. I am not particularly hawkish on inflation and on saying that fuel prices could drive problems in our economy. We need to recognise not the danger of returning to the days of terribly high inflation, but the danger of inflation of nearly 5% when wages are being held down, which limits people’s quality of life. People see food and fuel price increases when they go to the shops or fill up their cars—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) correctly said, food prices are partly driven by fuel prices—yet their wages are held down, so at the same time, they face higher prices in the shops and less in their pay packets every month.