International Disaster Relief

Alistair Burt Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for the Middle East (Alistair Burt)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) for calling the debate, and all colleagues who have taken part.

To my knowledge, this is the first time I have faced an Opposition spokesman born not only after I first became a Member of Parliament but after I first joined the payroll as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ken Baker, which was a year before the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) was born. I will think of a suitable response in due course, but I put that on the record. It is a pleasure to welcome him to his place. I am sure he will give distinguished service on his party’s Front Bench for some time to come. We appreciate what he has to say and I am pleased he has such an obvious interest in this subject.

The UK has a leading reputation in humanitarian response, as colleagues have recognised, and the Prime Minister, the International Development Secretary and other senior Ministers attach great importance to that. The national interest is very wide and it encapsulates what the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) and others spoke of. It is not narrow or narrowly focused and need not be considered that way. It encompasses the values behind international development, to which all parties in the House subscribe. It is important that, when we talk about it, we make clear to those who support development that it goes very wide. The projection of values is important for a state, a nation and a people, and that is what we do.

I will concentrate on the subjects raised by my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, rather than on the flexibility of ODA, which the hon. Members for Dundee West (Chris Law) and for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who chairs the International Development Committee, spoke about. How we deal with that, and indeed how we look at what other Departments spend in relation to the delivery of ODA with a DFID interest, is an important separate debate that deserves at least an hour and a half of its own at some stage. I will be very happy if colleagues in all parts of the House put that forward for debate, so we can deal with it more fully. I will also deal with a number of issues that colleagues raised, not least resilience and preparedness, which a number of colleagues spoke about and which I will deal with in a bit more detail.

Since the Asian tsunami in 2004, DFID has mounted more than 30 humanitarian responses to both natural disasters and conflicts, including earthquakes in Nepal, Haiti, Pakistan and Indonesia, floods in India and the Balkans, hurricanes in Bangladesh, Burma, the Philippines and the Caribbean, conflicts in Yemen, South Sudan and Syria, and the Ebola outbreak in west Africa. DFID responds widely across an unstable world.

All colleagues mentioned the respect they have for those who go out and work for the United Kingdom abroad in those various areas. I echo that praise. It was very good that colleagues mentioned that. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton spoke of Jamie McGoldrick, who I spoke to just this week. He has done a remarkable job for OCHA, and I pay tribute to him and his colleagues who work in international organisations and are so important to us in finding out what is going on, and sometimes being in a position to say tougher things than nation states can say. I appreciate Jamie’s work very much. I know where he is heading to next and he will not have a quiet life there, either. We appreciate what he does.

As a number of colleagues have mentioned, the past decade has seen the number of people requiring humanitarian assistance soar. The UN appeal for 2018 stands at $22.5 billion—five times larger than the 2007 figure. That increase has been driven largely by two trends. First, the number of people affected by conflict, particularly within states, has increased, which has driven huge numbers of internally displaced people and refugees across Asia, Africa and the middle east. Secondly, crises are becoming increasingly protracted. In 1970, conflicts lasted an average of nine and a half years; today, that figure stands at 26 years. More than 80% of refugee crises now last for more than 10 years. That is putting huge strain on the system, let alone those who endure such misery.

National and local organisations are the first responders to disasters, but there will be occasions when those systems are overwhelmed by the circumstances facing them. That is why the Government are committed to maintaining the capability to provide bigger, better and faster responses to humanitarian emergencies: bigger because they are able to cope with more crises simultaneously, better by using a broader range of expertise, technologies and equipment to deliver bespoke responses to complex emergencies, and faster by quite simply reaching the people most in need as quickly as possible.

When needs are urgent, we adopt a “no regrets” policy to respond to disasters, meaning we take actions to kick-start a response before the full impact may be known, rapidly front-loading funding, relief supplies and expertise in order to save lives. We target our interventions to make sure they reach those who are most vulnerable: women and girls, children and those with disabilities. To do that, DFID maintains a number of response capabilities, which have time and again proven their worth in responding to major disasters.

First, the emergency medical teams, which the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby and other colleagues mentioned in relation to what we saw over the Christmas and holiday period of the team that went to Cox’s Bazar to assist those caught up in the camps with the outbreak of diphtheria. Through a partnership with the NHS, the fire and rescue service and the charity UK-Med, DFID is able to deploy doctors and nurses anywhere in the world to respond to humanitarian emergencies. Their expertise includes specialist surgeons, trauma experts, general medical or, in the case of the deployment to Bangladesh, public health and epidemiology. Thanks in no small part to their work, the outbreak of deadly diphtheria among the Rohingya refugees has now been curbed. I take this opportunity to thank them personally for the fantastic work they have done. They are a credit to their profession and to all of us.

Secondly, there is cross-Government work with the military. My hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine—indeed, my hon. and gallant Friend—rightly highlighted the crucial role of our armed forces in our disaster relief operations. We pay tribute to him and all his colleagues who serve in the forces. In September last year, a series of hurricanes hit the Caribbean; they were unprecedented. Although a certain amount can be predicted, which I will come to later, Hurricane Irma was the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, causing devastation across the region, and hot on its heels were Hurricanes Jose and Maria, adding to the chaos and disruption.

The UK launched a massive response operation, with DFID, the Foreign Office and the military working hand in hand to deliver assistance, repair infrastructure and get the region back on its feet. Some of that assistance was already there: humanitarian advisers were in the region 24 hours before the hurricane struck; the Mounts Bay ship already had relief supplies loaded, and within 36 hours those supplies were going from the United Kingdom. Hundreds of tonnes of relief were delivered by civilian and military means, including via the Royal Navy’s flagship HMS Ocean. Nearly 2,000 military personnel were able to deliver aid, maintain security and provide reassurance to affected communities.

The military have played a major part in responding to some of the most severe disasters of recent times. The men and women of our armed services have helped to construct Ebola treatment centres in Sierra Leone, fly aid to Nepal, rescue thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean and reach the most remote islands of the Philippines on HMS Illustrious after Typhoon Haiyan. That is perhaps an example of spending more widely that has a common interest, rather than just through DFID itself. Again, that is something we might explore in a further debate, to reassure colleagues that this expenditure, even if it comes from different Departments, is absolutely focused on the needs that DFID takes to be the most important. That co-operation is the result of regular training and careful planning between DFID and the Ministry of Defence. The two Departments have a memorandum of understanding that provides a simple mechanism for military assets to be quickly incorporated into emergency relief efforts when disaster strikes.

The UK does not respond alone. We work with the UN, non-governmental organisations, the Red Cross and other Governments to co-ordinate and deliver responses. Without those partners we would not be able to reach those most affected. OCHA is the key player in co-ordinating the UN’s humanitarian agencies, managing activity in different response areas, such as health, shelter, water and sanitation. The hon. Member for Rochdale spoke of the problems with water in the camps in Bangladesh. I met officials this week to discuss our response to that and what more can be done in relation to the concerns about that and health. It is very much on the Department’s agenda.

In relation to the European Union, the UK works closely with the directorate-general for humanitarian aid and civil protection in the EU Commission on many areas of humanitarian aid. DFID maintains regular engagement with the Commission and member states through its participation in the EU working party on humanitarian aid and food aid. As can be imagined, I have no intention of letting that relationship be lost in the events following March 2019.

We know that humanitarian assistance should be the exception, not the norm. Investing in countries’ resilience and preparedness not only mitigates the impacts of disasters, but provides better value for money in the long term. DFID has been investing in countries’ resilience for a number of years, and it forms a core part of our humanitarian aid reform policy. I will say a little more on that, because a number of colleagues raised it, and it is important.

We believe that development and climate finance can support countries and communities to better identify risks, as well as to prepare for and recover from disasters. Also critical is building strong health, education and social protection systems in developing countries, so that they are able to cope with crises. I will mention one or two areas where we are already working to deal with that.

In 2015, the UK committed to increasing its international climate finance by 50% over the next five years to at least £5.8 billion. It helps poor countries to adapt to climate change and promote jobs and livelihoods to reduce poverty. It will help to build the resistance of people, businesses and economies to increases in weather-related disasters or changes in climate trends. That money has already helped more than 21 million people to cope with the increased risk of droughts and floods.

We are investing in risk management tools, such as the index for risk management, and in insurance mechanisms, such as African Risk Capacity. We are also investing in climate science and modelling that will help us better to understand and predict risk, including through the science for humanitarian emergencies and resilience—helpfully, SHEAR—programme, which aims to advance the monitoring, assessment and prediction of natural hazards and risks across sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. The building resilience and adaptation to climate extremes and disasters—BRACED—programme aims to benefit 5 million vulnerable people, especially women and children, in 13 developing countries. The centre for global disaster protection will build the financial resilience of developing countries to natural disasters.

In all the ways that I have described, we are recognising the truth of what hon. Members have said in relation to preparedness and we are on the ball. I thank hon. Members who have spoken, and apologise for not being able to respond to them individually. I have outlined the world-class contribution to international disaster relief that the UK is able to make, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine for initiating this debate. Let me say two things in response. Although the debate has been on international disasters and in a way it is easy to convince the public that disaster relief is a good use of development aid, we have all recognised that development goes much further than just dealing with emergencies. We should be as proud of that as we are of dealing with the emergencies.

Yesterday, the Department said a sad farewell to Becky Dykes, with her memorial service. A DFID colleague, she lost her life in Beirut recently. Tributes were paid to her and her values and to the work in which she was engaged in Lebanon to improve the lives of those who, without her, would have had lives less well lived. Her life said so much about what all of us in this Chamber believe in, so we dedicate this debate to Becky and to all those like her, and we say thank you.