World Immunisation Week

Debate between Alistair Burt and Jeremy Lefroy

Thursday 2nd May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to welcome my very good friend the Secretary of State for International Development to his new role. We all know what a tremendous background he brings to this role, with vast international experience beyond the majority of us, and we all know the dedication he has put into his previous ministerial roles, and we are certain that we will see this reflected in what he does with international development. I am delighted to see him in his place. I am also delighted by the further progress of his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), who is now Secretary of State for Defence. She did a terrific job at DFID, and I am really pleased to see her in a post for which I think she has always been destined, bearing in mind her background. She will do a great job there. It was a great pleasure to work with her.

Not unusually for me, I find myself largely in agreement with the speeches that have been made from both sides of the House. I should like to say little bit about a topic for which I had responsibility in the Department until relatively recently and to offer thanks to colleagues who have been so effective on this and who will give great support to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development.

First, a personal word: as some hon. Members know, I have a very personal connection with vaccination, which I never fail to bring out. My dad, who is watching this debate courtesy of the great medium of television, is a doctor. When I was a small boy, it was his responsibility as my doctor to provide me with polio jabs. In the old days in the United Kingdom, we provided jabs for polio, not sugar lumps. Yes, I am that old. As my dad knows, we are talking serious needles; not the sort of thing that children get these days. These were really serious needles that bubbled away in the steriliser in the corner of the surgery, and they absolutely terrified this small boy. My dad had to chase me round his room. I would hide under the desk, eventually I would be brought out to see all the things that were meant to entertain me as he put the needle in. Then he did it. The lesson I learned from that was that if my dad, who loves me very much, could inflict a degree of pain on his crying little boy, there had to be a really, really good reason for it. And of course there was. Like the grandfather of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), I was spared polio, as were the vast majority of my generation and subsequent generations, because of that vaccination. That first early introduction to vaccination and needles, and the visits with my dad to hospitals that I thoroughly resented for many years—until I did a stint at the Department of Health—have stayed with me, so vaccination matters to me. It is an important thing.

My father subsequently got involved with Rotary International, and any discussion of vaccination and global health has to include a mention of the contribution that Rotary has made to the near-eradication of polio. The United Kingdom remains absolutely supportive of that policy, and we must not get so close to the line but then fail to drive it over. The contribution of Rotary International and its members in this country must always be recognised, and we should thank them most sincerely.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I would like to pay tribute to Rotary as well. I remember when my family was living in Tanzania and my daughter was born there, she was vaccinated against polio through a programme sponsored and funded by Rotary International, as were millions of other children in that part of the world. Rotary deserves huge credit for what it has done, and I thank the Rotary clubs across the United Kingdom for the money they have raised for that programme.

[Alistair Burt]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who speaks for all of us in the House in thanking Rotary.

I also want to thank one or two more people while I am on my feet. The first is the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on vaccinations for all, who will no doubt speak later in the debate. She makes a tremendous contribution on these matters in the House on all available occasions. I also want to thank Danny Graymore, who heads up the global funds team and is our senior DFID rep in Geneva, for all the work that he puts into this, as well as the team of colleagues in DFID who work so hard on this. I offer my deep appreciation to them for all that they have provided for me in the last couple of years.

I also want to thank Gavi’s chief executive, Seth Berkley, who does a remarkable job, and Henrietta Fore at UNICEF and her team in the UK. They do a tremendous job in vaccinating and in providing the vaccines and the basis for what both Front-Bench speakers have talked about. UNICEF vaccinates half the world’s children and saves 3 million lives a year. Since Gavi came into existence, it has vaccinated some 700 million children and 10 million lives have been saved, for the reasons that have been set out. We could not do without them.

Nor could we do without the health workers who are out there doing their job but, as those on both Front Benches have mentioned, they are under increasing threat. A specific example is Pakistan, where work is being done on polio. There has been a string of attacks in recent years, with seven policemen being killed in Karachi recently while trying to protect polio workers. In February 2015, four kidnapped polio workers were found dead near Qetta. In June 2015, 15 were killed by a suicide bomb outside a polio vaccination centre. Four were killed in 2014 in Qetta, and in 2012, five were killed in Karachi and Peshawar. This is not just about the threat of intimidation to health workers in different parts of the world; it does actually result in their injury and death. We in this country should always remember what it is like in some of those places. We should remember how important those people consider their work to be and why they consider it to be of such benefit to their communities that they would take such extraordinary risks.

I am proud of the part that the United Kingdom plays in Gavi, the global vaccine alliance. It brings together the private and public sectors in a shared goal of creating equal access to new and underused vaccines for children in the world’s poorest areas. It has strategic goals, which are all of importance to the United Kingdom and illustrate why we support it. The first is to ensure equitable uptake and coverage of vaccination. The second is to ensure effectiveness and efficiency as part of a strengthened health system. The third is to be part of the sustainability of a national vaccine programme.

At this point, I want to comment on what the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton said about DFID’s role in health systems abroad. This cannot all be done purely through the support of public sector health systems. The combination of private and public in health is absolutely vital, but he can be reassured that the determination of the UK Government and DFID is to strengthen universal healthcare systems. Money and support for healthcare must go into that, but there is a combination of public and private, as was made clear at a meeting with UNICEF in New York in September. It is a partnership, but this does not contradict the fundamental principle on which I am sure the hon. Gentleman and I are united.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that state co-ordination is sometimes needed, but that there are different systems? If we look at Zambia, we see that the Churches provide tremendous health coverage throughout the country, but they do so in co-ordination with the state so that everybody knows, as far as is possible, that they have coverage locally. Clearly, they have a long way to go, but they do a tremendous job in co-operation with the Government there.

[Alistair Burt]

Absolutely, and I think that that is the model to take forward for the development of healthcare systems. We need to bear in mind the nature of that relationship, because it will be absolutely key.

I am proud of the United Kingdom’s support for Gavi. We are its largest donor, and we are

“currently responsible for 25% of its budget. The UK has committed £1.44 billion to Gavi from 2016 to 2020, including funding to its innovative finance mechanisms. This investment fully delivers on the UK commitment to immunise 76 million children and save 1.4 million lives by 2020.”

I am grateful to the team for the briefing it gave me for the meeting with the all-party group, which I have kept. Credit where it is due: that was a quote from the Department’s own briefing. The replenishment conference is coming up. There was very little I could say about that when I was a Minister, but speaking from the Back Benches, I can say to the Secretary of State that I am sure we will sort it out and I hope he will be really, really generous. He can be absolutely sure that I will be on his tail if we do not make a serious commitment to Gavi, because it really delivers. Seth Berkley delivers for us, and the visit to Bognor Regis in the past few months when he saw the work being done here was really important. I hope the Secretary of State will bear that in mind.

Vaccination does more than the obvious function of preventing diseases in children. Its background, not only in the health system but in the development of countries, is fundamental. A healthy child goes to school, is able to learn, and grows into a productive adult. Unless that basis for immunisation is clear, so much development work is stymied right at the beginning. Immunisation is part of a sustainable, integrated health system. The reckoning is that the overall impact is that every £1 spent on immunisation leads to a £16 saving in terms of subsequent health care bills and people’s inability to interact effectively in the community.

Before I deal with the threats, I want to remind the House of what this is all about, and I will talk briefly about measles, because measles outbreaks have suddenly returned in recent times. The tendency in the United Kingdom is to accept measles as a rudimentary childhood suffering that is easy to go through, so the misery of measles is forgotten. A recent piece in Forbes Magazine talked about the problems of anti-vaccination and included a quote from Roald Dahl. His oldest daughter, Olivia, died of measles in 1962 at the age of seven, and the article quotes his words:

“one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ I asked her. ‘I feel all sleepy,’ she said. In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead. The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her.”

That is how real it is. When we talk about vaccination and take on those who are concerned about it, that is the reason.

Measles has largely died out in the United Kingdom, but it is coming back in different places, and it will come back here unless we challenge it. The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, but there have been 695 cases this year, mostly concentrated in three outbreaks and mostly concentrated in small tightly knit communities. The rise in measles cases in both the developing world and the developed world is really frightening, and it must be challenged.

When I was first made aware of the rising figures, I had a discussion with my ministerial team about how to deal with it. I have to say that I was pretty gung-ho and thought, “We’ve really got to take this on aggressively.” The team, to their credit, tried to scale me down from that, saying, “There are different reasons for the threat to vaccination, and you need to handle them differently.” That was good advice, and my sense is that the challenges are as follows. The first is the straightforward matter of incomplete coverage—the millions of children who do not currently get vaccinated. Gavi needs to look at where it is developing its resources, but it is committed to go to the poorest areas, and we need to keep that up. We need to deal with the areas where coverage is not great, but there are other threats, too.

We can divide anti-vaccination into several categories. First, there are religious reasons. I am unaware of any tenet in any major religion that suggests that vaccination is inherently wrong. It is quite the reverse. As a practising Christian, I believe that one of the revelations of God has been to give us the skills to discern what harms us and what helps us. That is where science and medicine come in, and vaccination is part of that. We have been given the skills to be able to help our God-given children and keep them healthy.

No major religion contradicts that, but sects in various religious denominations are against it. When we do get an outbreak, such as in an Orthodox Jewish community in New York, it runs around quickly. The United States has seen recent outbreaks in the Orthodox Jewish community, among Slavic migrants, in the Amish community in Ohio and the Somali community in Minnesota, because measles spreads quickly in a small, closed group and then it affects anyone else they come into contact with outside who has not been immunised. The United Kingdom should urgently work with religious leaders worldwide and say, “Please make a declaration to ensure that none of your leaders—none of those who promote a faith under your auspices—are in any way in any doubt about the value and importance of vaccination and say that there is no religious tenet against it.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alistair Burt and Jeremy Lefroy

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. It is very important that HIV/AIDS is not seen as an issue of yesterday. I was present at the Amsterdam conference last year to make the case that there are still target groups that need more support. Sustaining and ensuring that countries’ local health systems have sustainable methods of dealing with this is a fundamental of DFID’s global health work, and it is essential that this work continues.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on malaria and neglected tropical diseases, I have seen the excellent work that the Global Fund has supported over the years, but local contributions from endemic countries are incredibly important. Will the Minister enlighten on whether those contributions have increased over recent years so that they can be put alongside the contributions through the Global Fund?

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend is correct that national Governments have a significant responsibility regarding their contributions. Those contributions are increasing, but the question of mainstreaming that support so that it comes into their sustainable health systems naturally has to be considered. We will be working with other donors to boost the fund, and national Governments will have an increasing responsibility as time goes on, but they will not be left to deal with this situation alone.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alistair Burt and Jeremy Lefroy

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

We have said very clearly that we recognise a two-state solution. We are keen to ensure that when the envoy’s proposals come forward, they get a strong reception, and people can work on them to try to bring a resolution to this long-standing crisis. It is the only thing that will deal with the concerns that the hon. Gentleman raises.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

24. What progress the Government have made on strengthening economic and diplomatic relations with countries in Africa since the Prime Minister’s visit to that continent in August 2018.

Rohingya: Monsoon Season

Debate between Alistair Burt and Jeremy Lefroy

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alistair Burt]

That takes me comfortably to the second part of what I want to say. Let me answer that, because it is a perfectly fair challenge. I pay tribute to the Government of Bangladesh and the communities in Cox’s Bazar for the extraordinary generosity they have shown in welcoming hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing despicable persecution in Burma—persecution that amounts at the very least to ethnic cleansing, and possibly more. More than 680,000 have fled since the latest violence in August 2017, and they join about 300,000 fleeing waves of violence in previous years, bringing the total Rohingya population in Bangladesh to almost 1 million.

One camp alone in the Kutupalong area of Cox’s Bazar, which my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) referred to, contains almost 600,000 people, giving it the dubious distinction of being the world’s largest refugee camp. Conditions in such camps are almost unimaginably hard, as colleagues who have visited have made clear. As my right hon. Friend the International Development Secretary saw when she visited Bangladesh last November, many are makeshift, built piecemeal and without proper planning or foundations. Those fragile structures are extremely vulnerable to the heavy rains of the current monsoon season, which could soon be compounded by high winds and storm surges if a cyclone hits the area. The Bangladeshi Government have an excellent track record in saving lives in extreme weather events, and we call on them to use their expertise to help support those currently at risk.

As far as preparedness is concerned, UN agencies, the Red Cross and NGOs, with support from the UK, are working tirelessly on measures to improve conditions in the camps and prepare for extreme weather. The UK has led the way in terms of the scale and speed of our response to the crisis, pledging £59 million in humanitarian response. As colleagues mentioned—I am grateful to them for welcoming this—my right hon. Friend the International Development Secretary announced yesterday a further £70 million of UK support for the crisis, which will help to protect vulnerable people during this volatile rainy season, improving structures and infrastructure such as roads and latrines, and help to clear newly allocated land. It will also provide urgently needed humanitarian support such as food, medicines, shelter and psycho-social support to many hundreds of thousands of Rohingya and the communities so generously hosting them.

Let me spell out a few more details. That support is expected to try to help 200,000 people with much-needed materials to strengthen their shelters and 300,000 people with food assistance and clean water. The aim is also to provide emergency nutrition for 30,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women, plus 120,000 children younger than five. Another aim is to get access to midwifery care for 50,000 women, including many who may give birth during the rainy season, and to provide access to bathing cubicles for nearly 53,000 women and girls. It is hoped that another 50,000 people will be helped in getting access to healthcare services.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) for bringing forward the debate. I have written to the Minister about the potential for a serious malaria epidemic in the area. As he well knows, there is the issue of drug-resistant malaria coming up from Burma, which may impact on the area. What preparation is being made to prevent a devastating outbreak, which could transmit drug-resistant malaria further afield through Bangladesh and into India and beyond?

[Alistair Burt]

On receipt of my hon. Friend’s letter, I took advice from the agencies on the ground about their concerns. Their concerns were not quite as acute as his information, but they were aware of the risk and were taking precautions against them.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) mentioned the emergency medical team. It is not permanently out there but it is always on stand-by to respond, just as it responded to the cholera and diphtheria epidemic around Christmas time. Many people saw that work. That emergency medical team remains on standby. I am conscious of what my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said about malaria —we keep an anxious check on that.

Refugees and Human Rights

Debate between Alistair Burt and Jeremy Lefroy

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

I have not seen the content of the Bill, so I cannot give a response on that. I will, if I may, say something about children and family reunification a little later.

Human rights matter because they aim to protect the innate dignity of every human being. They promote freedom and non-discrimination, fairness and opportunity, but all too often it is the absence of those rights that drives people such as Yasmin from their homes. The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury is right that the series of challenges now facing the world in relation to the number of people moving is immense and probably more complex than ever before. It is no longer the case that refugees move simply because some natural disaster has forced them from A to B, nor is such movement simply the result of some worldwide conflict, which is what drove refugees post-1918 and post-1945. There is a series of issues in play, from demographics to lack of opportunity and individual conflicts.

In a sense, the movement back from the post-1945 world order, with the challenge to rules-based organisations, is compounding that in that we cannot find answers. My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) asked about what the UN should do given that if there is a veto in the Security Council, no action is taken. That has been demonstrated to be even more significant in recent times because of the conflict in Syria, but it can be raised in relation to other places. These are challenges the complexity of which we probably have not faced in our time, and they set the baseline against which we will all be judged.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that regional organisations such as the African Union, not just the United Nations, have an incredibly important role to play? If we think of the peacekeeping work that AU forces have done in Mogadishu and elsewhere on the continent, we see what they can do. However, they still need to do a great deal more, and perhaps we can support such work when UN action is not possible or is lacking.

[Alistair Burt]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, because he knows a great deal about the region and what he says is certainly true. The problem of the failure to deliver of those charged with these responsibilities in the past means that new opportunities have to be taken if we are not to leave more people in the circumstances that we have described. This is the way the world works: if an avenue to peace and the resolution of conflict is closed by the actions of some, we must look to open up new ones to prevent such a problem.

Turning to the some of the key challenges we face, I want to talk about conflict and the impact it can have. I assure the House that the UK Government remain committed to doing all we can to address the root causes of conflict and crises, and to redouble the efforts to find peace. I will address the particular areas that the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury mentioned.

As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said last month, not only is standing up for human rights the right thing, but it helps to create a safer, more prosperous and progressive world for us all. This is what global Britain stands for. Promoting, championing and defending human rights is integral to our work. Similarly, the UK’s leadership in tackling a changing climate and protecting the world’s natural resources is vital for global prosperity and poverty reduction.

Yemen

Debate between Alistair Burt and Jeremy Lefroy

Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The Crown Prince’s response, on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was to point out the need to control weapons that might threaten Saudi Arabia being smuggled into Yemen and used by those with whom the Saudis are in conflict, as has been the case for a period of time. We worry that the sophistication of the missiles being smuggled in has increased, which has thus increased not only the risk to Saudi Arabia and neighbouring places, but the risk of the conflict escalating and becoming still worse. There is a serious concentration on trying to prevent that, because it looks likely to prolong the conflict and make the humanitarian situation still worse.

At the same time, I understand that the Crown Prince was absolutely aware, as the public statement by the Saudis made clear, that the restrictions were intended not to cause the humanitarian situation about which there are now concerns, but to deal with the arms supplies being smuggled in. The partners, the agencies with which we work and we ourselves are impressing on the coalition that such a situation may be the unintended effect. That is why the restrictions need to be lifted, and there has to be the access for which the hon. Lady is looking.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Given that the United Nations has recently said that if the blockade is not lifted we are likely to see the worst famine for decades and given the outbreak of the deadly disease diphtheria and the 1 million cases of cholera, may I urge my right hon. Friend to make some kind of statement—not necessarily an oral statement, but one in writing—to this House every week, because the situation is developing daily and weekly, and we must be kept informed about it? I hope there will be a turn for the better.

[Alistair Burt]

I will talk with the Department and the House authorities about what the best way to do that would be. I quite understand my hon. Friend’s point. If there is a way to make sure that adequate information from Government and the other agencies involved is made available rapidly and effectively, of course I will try to do that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alistair Burt and Jeremy Lefroy

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

T2. What action does my right hon. Friend believe is necessary to counter the rise in resistance to antimalarial drugs in south-east Asia? In the past 17 years, we have seen much progress on reducing incidences of malaria around the world.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Alistair Burt)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that tackling malaria saves lives. It has a positive impact on improving health services for the poor and increases economic growth and productivity in affected countries. In April 2017, the UK announced that we would protect more than 200 million people from the pain and disfigurement caused by diseases such as malaria. I was at a conference addressing this subject in Berlin last week. Dealing with antimicrobial resistance will play an integral part in ensuring that drugs remain effective and that the UK remains a world leader in tackling malaria.

Mental Health Taskforce

Debate between Alistair Burt and Jeremy Lefroy

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The hon. Gentleman has a long-standing interest in these issues. He is absolutely right: in England, a pilot project with 27 schools is being run by the Department for Education to locate and identify a single point of contact in those schools on mental health issues for young people. Depending on the results, more projects can be rolled out. Early identification and support in school are absolutely essential, and that work is under way.

There are a number of different initiatives, sometimes inspired by people who have experienced personal tragedy in their own family. They realise that the tragedy that has befallen their young person might not have happened if their friends had been more aware of their circumstances, or if the school or college had been more aware. We look at all those different initiatives to see how best practice can be spread, but the hon. Gentleman is right to raise the issue.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister and the Government on their commitment on this. He has just spoken about best practice. Last month in Stafford we held a round table on mental health. One of the issues that came up was that there were a lot of good local initiatives, both in the public and the non-governmental organisation sector, but sometimes they did not know about each other. Will he point us to best practice in the sector?

Arms Trade Treaty

Debate between Alistair Burt and Jeremy Lefroy

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Gower (Martin Caton) on securing this debate on the arms trade treaty. I thank him for his courtesy in letting me and my officials have a copy of his remarks, which will make it easier to respond directly to his questions.

As we can tell from this debate and as I know from my correspondence, this issue commands a great deal of cross-party interest and support. The hon. Gentleman, the other Members who are present and many others feel passionately about this issue and follow it closely. I returned recently from the treaty negotiations in New York, where I had the good fortune to meet the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), who is in her place tonight, and the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood). That emphasises the interest that colleagues have in seeing as much of the process as possible after waiting for so long.

The timing of this debate is opportune, coming as it does at the mid-point of the highly significant negotiations that began in New York last week. It offers an opportunity to take stock of the negotiations and to set out the Government’s priorities for and commitment to a robust and legally binding treaty. I briefed the all-party parliamentary groups on the United Nations, on landmines and unexploded weapons of conflict, and on weapons and protection of civilians at the end of April. I stressed that securing a positive outcome in July would not be easy, but that we would do everything within our power to secure a good result.

Nothing that has happened since I attended the opening day of the conference has led me to change my view. This remains an incredibly complex negotiation, made more difficult by a hard core of countries that would like to derail the negotiations, as the hon. Member for Gower said. I assure the House that the UK’s teams in London and New York—and our embassies and high commissions across the world, because sometimes the decision makers are not in New York, but in their home capitals—are working long and hard to ensure a successful result.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Gower (Martin Caton) on securing this debate. Has the Minister spoken with his colleagues at the Department for International Development about how this trade affects the impact of UK development money, given the considerable amount of money that the UK taxpayer is spending in some of the worst affected regions of the world?

[Alistair Burt]

I assure my hon. Friend that I have spoken long and frequently with my colleagues at the Department for International Development, and in particular with my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, who will be going to the negotiations next week. It is clear that in a number of the countries that are most affected by the misery of an unregulated arms trade, we have deep concerns about all sorts of other issues. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the importance of that element of the negotiations and to the need for joint working. He and the House can be assured that there is exceptional joint working across the Government on this issue.

It is important that we keep in mind why we are having these negotiations and why the UK has led international efforts towards an arms trade treaty for so long. Those efforts started under the last Government, for which we give them great credit, and have continued under the coalition. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said at Prime Minister’s questions on 27 June that

“we back the arms trade treaty, as we have done for a considerable amount of time, and lobby very vigorously on that issue.”—[Official Report, 27 June 2012; Vol. 547, c. 302.]

The House is genuinely working together on this, recognising the problems that need to be faced.

The problems caused by the unregulated trade in conventional arms need to be addressed. The lack of effective and coherent global regulation fuels conflict, destabilises regions and hampers effective social and economic development. It can also have devastating effects on communities and individuals, with armed violence destroying lives and livelihoods and displacing communities. A lack of regulation means that arms can slip into the hands of those who would use them against our own troops and civilians. That situation has gone on too long, and we need to stop it now.

Those are the reasons why we have placed such a high priority on securing a treaty described as comprehensive, robust and effective. Ministers and senior officials regularly raise the arms trade treaty in our bilateral and multilateral meetings around the world, so that we can both work through particular issues that states may have and encourage positive and constructive engagement in the diplomatic conference in New York. We have used our international networks of posts to lobby in support of an arms trade treaty, and we have provided funding for non-governmental organisations from developing states to attend the conference.

No matter how committed we are to securing an arms trade treaty—I do not think anyone is in any doubt about that commitment—we cannot deliver it on our own. That is why we have put so much emphasis on working with our international partners, NGOs and representatives of the UK defence industry in the run-up to the conference. We have collaborated closely with the treaty’s co-authors, the EU and the P5, and will continue to do so as the negotiations progress, to seek to achieve a successful conclusion.

To get a truly effective treaty, we need standards not only high enough to meet our aims but with the global reach provided by the broadest participation of states, including the major arms exporters. It was always my intention to travel to New York for the start of the diplomatic conference, to signal the UK’s continuing commitment to securing an arms trade treaty. I arrived at the beginning of the first week and saw at first hand the real challenges that our delegation and other treaty supporters will need to overcome to ensure a successful outcome by the end of the month. In fact, the start of the conference was delayed for a couple of days by one such challenge, which threatened the start of the negotiations. The question of Palestine’s status in the United Nations is important, and there are plenty of colleagues in the Chamber tonight who understand that very well, but it cannot and should not be decided by the UN process on the arms trade treaty.

Despite the distraction and the loss of a couple of days, negotiations are now firmly under way, but challenges remain. To answer the first question that the hon. Member for Gower asked me, a particular problem that has dogged the first two weeks has come from a small group of states that continue to try to thwart the will of the vast majority of the international community, using a smokescreen of procedural points to stop substantive engagement on the issues that really matter. Of course, when a country has a real concern about what an arms trade treaty might contain or how it might operate, we will listen to it and work through its concerns, as is only right. However, we will not allow the conference to be railroaded by states that want only to prevent eventual agreement. We have already lost two days to procedural wrangling, and we cannot afford to lose further time.

Despite all that, the process is well under way. Ambassador Moritan continues to steer us towards our eventual goal, despite the choppy waters. Following my visit last week, I spoke to the ambassador on the telephone on Tuesday and offered him the UK’s full support. As I mentioned, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for International Development will be in New York next week, helping to sustain the momentum of the process and maintain our leading role at this critical time.

I have seen the engagement of our delegation in negotiations, and I do not think the House can overestimate how effective and useful its members have been, how much they know and how engaged they have been in the process in the many years since it started. A Minister’s presence can add a bit of weight. Whether that comes through my right hon. Friend’s physical presence or through me making the telephone calls that are needed to certain capitals, the House can be assured that our comprehensive effort will continue across Government right until the very end.

A programme of work for the conference has been agreed, and two main committees have been formed to look at different aspects of the treaty. They are being ably chaired by the Netherlands and Morocco and are gathering the views of UN member states quickly and effectively, trying to make up for the time that has been lost.

I regret that agreement on a programme of work has meant that some meetings are closed to the public. Despite that, we still recognise the important part civil society has to play in the ATT negotiations. The UK delegation is in constant touch with non-governmental organisations in New York and meets with them regularly to ensure their views are heard. It is important that we continue to work closely with them at this crucial point. They have been instrumental in the progress we have made on the ATT and we still very much need their help and expertise if we are to be successful.

I tried to remain close to NGOs in the run-up to the negotiations and considered whether they would formally join the delegation. For perfectly understandable reasons— namely, for their independence—they felt that that was not the right thing to do, but we continue to stay close. At the end of this weekend, I intend to speak on the telephone to our ambassador in New York who is dealing with the negotiations. I will probably also call the representatives of Amnesty International and Oxfam on behalf of others to see how they are with the process and to maintain my contact with them. That emphasises how much the Government are trying to keep engaged with NGOs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alistair Burt and Jeremy Lefroy

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

The question asks about our assessment of the political situation in the middle east and I am tempted to say simply, “It is extremely tricky.” Perhaps I might add that the unprecedented events of recent weeks have created profound political undertones and at the moment it is not possible to say just what the outcomes of these great events will be.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I thank the Minister for his reply. The Egypt-Israel peace treaty is a successful model of a land-for-peace agreement, and Egypt has played a crucial role throughout the middle east peace process. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that that agreement continues to be a cornerstone of the process?

[Alistair Burt]

We were all reassured when one of the first statements made by Egypt’s military council was that it accepted and will adhere to its international agreements. I think everyone understood that it was referring specifically to the peace agreement with Israel, and I hope that that will provide people with confidence. When I was in Egypt last week, I saw the relationship between the military and the politicians, and it is to be hoped that there will be a process towards democratic elections and government, and that that peace treaty will be adhered to by a future Government.