Oral Answers to Questions

Anas Sarwar Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is right to ask whether India has reached the point where we should end our development programme. Our judgment is that we are not there yet. As she said, India has more poor people than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. It also has the biggest Government-led pro-poor, anti-poverty programme anywhere in the world, and through our programme, we are strongly encouraging more of the same.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State outline what representations he has received from the Indian Government about his plans to spend 50% of DFID money on the private sector? Is that an aspiration only for India, or is it for other developing countries too?

[Mr Mitchell]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, the nature of development is to try to move countries off welfare development on to pro-poor, private sector investment, as that is something that helps poor people to lift themselves out of poverty. The decisions on the Indian programme were made in close consultation with the Indian Government, and take account of our priorities and theirs as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anas Sarwar Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr O'Brien]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing out that important disparity. The UK Government recently announced the framework for results on reproductive, maternal and neonatal health, which directly seeks to address how that disparity can be narrowed. I have seen for myself in northern Nigeria how DFID supports midwifery services, with a scheme to train 200 midwives who are then posted to rural facilities, which is vital to ensure that the disparity is addressed.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

I am proud to support Save the Children’s “No child born to die” campaign, which seeks to make more life-saving vaccines available to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable children. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation summit is to take place in the UK later this year, and Save the Children is lobbying for the Prime Minister to represent the UK at that summit. What steps will the Minister to take to make sure that the Government are represented at the highest level?

Oral Answers to Questions

Anas Sarwar Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan]

The answer is yes. DFID’s programmes seek to establish sustainable long-term solutions to poppy growing by promoting access to agricultural credit, releasing uncultivated land for productive use and strengthening access to markets for local producers. We are also trying to encourage farmers to grow different crops with a higher market value, including, for instance, pomegranates.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

The Government announced in the strategic defence review and in the comprehensive spending review that 30% of aid will go to fragile states. What proportion of aid will go to Afghanistan?

[Mr Duncan]

The amounts going to Afghanistan will be significantly increased, but the exact amounts will be announced in due course, when we have completed the multilateral and bilateral review process, which should be announced in the next few months.

Pakistan Floods

Anas Sarwar Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the money that is going from the British taxpayer and from people’s generous donations to the Disasters Emergency Committee does not go through the Government of Pakistan. It goes through the UN cluster system, with which he will be familiar, and through the NGOs that have been mentioned. If he cares to visit the DFID website, he will see an easily accessible monitor that enables people to track where British aid is going and what it is buying.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

I join the Secretary of State’s tribute to the British people. Every time there is a disaster, they put out their hands in friendship and donate generously. They have done so again now, and we must pay tribute to them for that. I also agree with his comments about the woeful response of the international community, and I understand the answer that he gave to the shadow Secretary of State about the discussions that he has had. It is always easy to get a response and donations when people can see the sad scenes and the high waters on their television screens, but what will happen when the waters subside and the cameras are switched off? The communities and the people of Pakistan will not overcome this tragedy in a matter of days; it will take months, if not years. The message that we need to get across to the international community is that, yes, Pakistan needs its support now, but it will also need it in the months and years to come. On that last point, what work is DFID doing alongside the NGOs and other international organisations on the ground to ensure that there is a co-ordinated response through the Disasters Emergency Committee?

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Gentleman speaks eloquently about the needs that will continue for many years as a result of this crisis and of the development needs of Pakistan. Three phases are involved. The first is the emergency phase, which I hope can be brought to a conclusion as swiftly as possible. The second is the rehabilitation and rebuilding phase, which will involve the pledging conference, to which I referred, in order to co-ordinate the international effort. The third will involve the long-term development programme. We are currently reviewing Britain’s contribution to that through the bilateral aid review. There will need to be great co-ordination between all members of the donor community and the Government of Pakistan to ensure that the programme addresses the long-term needs of the country and offers hope to the people who are in a pretty desperate position today.

Global Poverty

Anas Sarwar Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate all the new Members who made their maiden speeches today: the hon. Members for Wirral West (Esther McVey) and for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), and, in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk), who so powerfully highlighted the plight of the Palestinian people. I am sure that he will be a great voice for peace, equality and justice throughout this Parliament, and I congratulate him on his election to this House. I also congratulate the Secretary of State for International Development on his new role and wish him all the best in his endeavours. I am also delighted to see the Chair of the Select Committee on International Development in the Chamber, and I look forward to serving with him on that Committee.

In this country, we are extremely proud of the fact that everyone has access to clean water, nutritious food, quality health care and a first-rate education, thus ensuring that everyone has a good basic standard of living based on equitable principles. If we really do believe in such rights and principles, we cannot limit their application to ourselves alone. In this regard—I use a legal phrase here—equity truly is equality. I strongly believe in the principles of equality and justice, both at home and abroad—indeed, they are the very reasons why I engaged in the political process in the first place. I passionately believe that every child, regardless of where they were born, should have the same chances in life.

Many hon. Members, in their travels to and from Parliament on the underground, may have seen the amazing photo of a young African boy playing football with his friends. The caption reads:

“Abello is also tackling hunger, poverty and disease”.

This incredibly moving charitable advertisement highlights the fact that even while the entire world is gripped with the outcomes of the football World cup, there are still millions of people around the world, many of them children, who are fighting poverty on a daily basis. Surely, in this day and age, that cannot be right. This is an age that the formidable former Member of Parliament Tony Benn has described as one in which

“we have the power and technology to be able to resolve many of the problems the world faces and improve the lives of so many people”.

I am fiercely proud of my party’s record on international development while in government. Since 1997, we have created a dedicated Department for International Development, and Britain’s aid budget has trebled, helping to lift an estimated 3 million people out of poverty. Britain was the first country to sign up to the United Nations agreed target of spending 0.7 % of gross national income on development assistance. We have also led the way in cancelling debts owed by the world’s poorest countries, and we are now the world’s second largest bilateral humanitarian aid donor. We have stopped aid being tied to commercial interests, enabling poor countries to use the money to buy goods and services from the most cost-effective sources. That is a legacy that we on these Benches are rightly extremely proud of, but it is also a legacy that must be built upon, not diminished, because a tremendous amount of work remains to be done.

Approximately 80% of people in the world still live on less than $10 a day. Thousands of people die every day due to lack of food, and nearly 30% of children in the developing world are estimated to be underweight. Millions of people die every year due to preventable diseases, around half a million women die every year while giving birth, and more than 1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. The list is endless.

I really cannot stress enough to the Government the importance of continuity, through ensuring that the millions of people we have helped over the past 13 years do not fall back into poverty and through continuing to take millions more out of poverty every year. We can do that only by maintaining pressure on the international community and working with our international partners to ensure that the eight millennium development goals—ending poverty and hunger, universal education for children, the elimination of gender inequality in education, improving child health, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, achieving environmental sustainability, and the creation of a global partnership for development—are all met.

The millennium development goals have galvanised extraordinary efforts to help the world’s poorest people, but it is widely considered unlikely that they will be achieved by the 2015 deadline, especially following the results of the recent G8 meeting and the G20 summit. I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) in his question to the Prime Minister yesterday when he said that our commitments to international development must be maintained because

“our national interest, security stability and sense of humanity very often begin overseas”.—[Official Report, 30 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 860.]

Hon. Members will therefore appreciate how hugely disappointed I was to learn that the Prime Minister did not manage to persuade other members of the G8 to stick to the historic aid commitments that they had made at Gleneagles, which were kept out of last weekend’s G20 communiqué. This is doubly disappointing when we consider the fact that the global economic downturn is having a devastating effect on the lives of millions of the world’s most vulnerable people.

The failure of France, Germany and particularly Italy to deliver on the commitments that they made at Gleneagles represents an unforgivable betrayal of the world’s poorest people, because, in the words of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon,

“we cannot balance budgets on the backs of the world’s poorest people. We cannot abandon our commitment to the most vulnerable.”

For international development to be effective, it has to be a truly global effort on behalf of all developed nations. The Government must therefore do more to ensure that the future of the world’s poorest remains high not only on their agenda but on the agendas of other members of the international community.

If we are to address global poverty, we must address its root causes by making the global economy work better for the poorest nations. On a practical level, that means that we must ensure that the consistent and coherent approach adopted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander)—to whose contribution as the former Secretary of State for International Development I pay tribute—is kept as a part of our international trade policies by firmly placing development as their core guiding principle.

We also need to reform global financial institutions such the World Bank and International Monetary Fund by making their decision making processes more transparent and inclusive. We need to do much more to monitor and regulate international business and the impact that it has on the environment, because the effects of climate change are making it even harder than before to tackle global poverty. Developing nations now need significant sums of additional finance just to help them adapt to climate change.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to prevent tax avoidance in developing countries by helping to build and strengthen their tax administration and collection systems. More effective tax collection is vital because not only does it provide a sustainable stream of finance for developing countries but it promotes stronger governance through an accountable state-citizen relationship. The increased stability that it brings significantly enhances the prospects of economic growth.

The UN millennium development goals meeting in New York later this year represents a major opportunity to agree urgent action on behalf of the world’s poorest children. Globally, millions of children still have to work to survive and are having their rights denied as a result of poverty. In order to secure the best possible deal, the Government must, from the outset, put forward a clear agenda for the meeting in terms of the key objectives they wish to obtain. Otherwise they will risk having a re-run of the shocking episode that took place over the last weekend.

At a time when people question whether there is a global role for Britain to play in today’s world, what better role can there be for us than that of the leading voice for international development?