Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

1. What steps she is taking to put girls and women at the heart of the UK’s development programmes.

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Justine Greening)]

Before I answer that question, may I say how shocked and saddened I was to hear of the deaths of the Britons, Simon Chase and Del Singh, in the recent bomb attack in Kabul? Both were part of the effort to rebuild Afghanistan. Del was an employee of Adam Smith International, working on a Department for International Development programme. Our thoughts are with their families.

Giving women and girls a voice, choice and control has a transformative impact on poverty reduction and it is critical to freer and fairer societies and economies. The Department for International Development puts that at the centre of its work, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who is introducing a private Member’s Bill on this very topic.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I welcome the fact that the United Nations does such good work to support women and girls. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the earliest years in a child’s life are the most important, and will she tell us what steps her Department is taking to support greater life chances for baby girls?

[Justine Greening]

This is an area on which my hon. Friend rightly spends a lot of time. Much of DFID’s work focuses on early-years health, including maternal health and antenatal and postnatal health education. Furthermore, our G8 focused on nutrition, which is particularly important in ensuring that babies grow up healthy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly write to the hon. Lady, because the truth is that that export scheme has been rolled into the export guarantee scheme more generally and the amount of export support is massively up on the last election, with billions of pounds in extra money being spent. The other point I would make is that exports, compared with 2010, were up by over 12% last year.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Q5. Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating the Northamptonshire Parent-Infant Partnership on its sell-out conference on early years intervention last week, where 27 local authorities were represented? Does he agree that, if we are serious about strengthening our society, providing psychotherapeutic support for families struggling to bond with their new babies is absolutely key?

[The Prime Minister]

I know that my hon. Friend speaks with a lot of personal experience, having set up a project in Oxfordshire, the county I represent, that has had a major impact. I think that her work does her huge credit. The truth is that all the studies show that real disadvantage for children kicks in right from the moment they are born if they do not get the love, support and help they need. That is why the projects she is talking about, along with the expansion of the health visitors scheme—4,200 extra health visitors—which can make a real difference, are so important. I will also point out the measure we took last week to make sure that new parents get proper contact with and information from their midwife both before and after their child is born so that we do everything to remove that disadvantage in the early months and years.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is just wrong, because the deficit is coming down and NHS spending is going up throughout this Parliament. I note that his own party’s health spokesman says that it is “irresponsible” to increase spending on the NHS. We do not think it is irresponsible; we think it is the right thing to do. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Health Secretary has set out the criteria for all local changes, including those in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. There has to be proper public and patient engagement, sound clinical evidence, support from GP commissioners and proper support for patient choice.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

The Prime Minister has taken a strong interest in the incredible work of the Oxford parent infant project in helping families that are struggling to form a strong attachment with their babies. Two months ago I started a new sister charity in Northamptonshire. Given the Prime Minister’s interest in strengthening families, will he commit to looking again at the incredible work that can be done in early intervention, which saves a fortune in the criminal and care services later on?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. I know about OXPIP and I am delighted that she is expanding the project into her own constituency. All the evidence shows that the more we can do to help children and their parents between the ages of nought and two—the key time at which so much disadvantage, which can have such a bad impact later on in life, can set in—the better. That is why her work, and that of Members across the House, in prioritising early intervention is so important for our country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

T7. What consideration has my right hon. Friend given to issuing food vouchers rather than food aid in order to promote free enterprise and choice in the developing world?

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This agenda has been championed effectively, not least by Save the Children, and it is one reason why we prioritise social protection rather than food aid. The aim of all these policies is to try to get people off food aid into much greater food security—as seen, for example, in the project between Britain and the World Food Programme, which I talked about earlier.

Food Security and Famine Prevention (Africa)

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my good and hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) and the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) on securing a debate on a subject that should be receiving far greater attention from the world’s leaders and press than it has to date.

My own recent experience of Africa has been through annual trips to Uganda with a group of Northamptonshire sixth-formers. I set up a project in 2006 with the aim of linking schools in the two countries and helping young people to gain a greater understanding of one another's lives and culture. Each year since then we have held a youth conference in Uganda, where the topics discussed have ranged from the role of women to fair trade, the environment versus development, and the role of supranational institutions. The conferences provide a fantastic opportunity for students to learn from each other’s very different experiences, but the one message that we have always heard loud and clear from those young Africans is that they want to make their own way as equals, and that aid for the poorest should offer a hand up rather than a handout.

The situation in the horn of Africa is devastating. More than 13 million people are affected in Ethopia, Somalia and Kenya, and the number is increasing. Tens of thousands of people are already dead, and the United Nations estimates that three quarters of a million risk dying in the coming months. However, to my great sadness, I have received one or two letters from constituents asking why we are bothering to try to help. They point to the fact that we have problems in our own country, and suggest that because of AIDS, civil wars, disease and natural disasters these people will die anyway, so it is all a waste of money. That is a pretty shocking attitude, but one that requires a serious and logical response. The problems of African famines are a stain on the conscience of the developed world.

I recently met a successful Asian Ugandan business man in the United Kingdom who argues that Africa subsidises the west, not the other way around. He analyses the price of a tonne of fresh pineapple or a tonne of coffee beans, which is the only income for the African producer. He then calculates the margin added by the processing of the produce—usually in the west—and the margin added by the western retailer, and concludes that the vast bulk of the value from primary goods is earned in the west. One can see his point.

I am proud that the Government stuck to the Conservative manifesto pledge to donate 0.7% of gross national income to aid. The United Kingdom is at the forefront of the relief effort in the horn of Africa, and is the largest humanitarian donor to the region apart from the United States. It is also good news that more donors are stepping up to the plate, and that the African Union and Saudi Arabia are now providing aid. However, we must accept that the international community has been slow to react. There were warnings of impending drought as early as August 2010, but little was done until the rains failed in May 2011.

We need to learn the lesson once and for all that prevention is better than cure. We must not only provide support early with the aim of avoiding repeat disasters, but achieve maximum value for British taxpayers’ money so that our constituents do not conclude that it is all wasted. We may not be able to predict droughts accurately, but we can do much more to prevent famine. Let me briefly outline three possible ways of doing that.

First, building community resilience is key. Improving access to markets for smallholders and giving targeted support to women who often provide the main support for the family can make a big difference. It is vital to focus on reducing trade barriers and tariffs for exports.

Secondly, we should work harder to address the real issues of poor government. It is a well-known fact that democracies have far fewer famines than non-democracies, even when differences in wealth are taken into account. Ethiopia, with a GDP of £18 billion, could afford to feed her people. Freedom of the press and a powerful opposition would have a dramatic impact in promoting prevention measures. Likewise, introducing property rights that allow farmers to own, rather than just lease, their land would give them greater ability to manage their own livelihoods.

Finally, when this immediate crisis wanes, I think we should look closely at Save the Children’s policy of distributing food vouchers rather than food. I am no expert, but it seems to me to be essential to enable the means of exchange. Families who are able to use vouchers to buy food and clean water to meet their own needs are empowered by that, and that creates better incentives for farmers to produce in order to meet demand. British aid is best spent helping Africans to help themselves. I fully believe in the old saying, “It’s better to give a fishing rod than a fish.”

UN Women

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran), with her powerful advocacy for the women of the middle east and her description of the very difficult lives that they are living out there.

I welcome UN Women’s ambitious and wide-ranging plans for women. Talking about the differences and similarities between men and women can be tricky, but does it counter the strong, rational argument for equality to raise the clear differences that exist? For instance, if we say that women are more likely to fight for peace, do we make it less likely that they will be taken seriously in a military scenario? Can we discuss differences without falling into the trap of stereotyping men and women into caricatures of themselves—the pink team and the blue team? It might be tricky, but it is dishonest to ignore the clear differences between men and women—the positive differences that create better outcomes.

There have been several references this week to the report from Lord Davies on women in the boardroom. I should like to draw the House’s attention to a report that came out this week from the City law firm Eversheds, which carried out a study of 234 listed companies. It showed that corporate governance issues had absolutely no effect on the share price, except in one area. The fact that there were more women on the board of a company had a positive influence on the share price. Let us hope that fund managers will pick up this important news and perhaps make it obligatory for the businesses they invest in to take on this particular aspect of corporate governance.

I am not here to raise the issue of equality on my own behalf or for women like me, as I recognise that I have had many privileges, but the issue is vital for less developed countries. As my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) pointed out, it is perhaps our duty, particularly on international women’s day, to raise this issue for other women. It is because of the differences and the vital but different contributions women can make that we need to fight for their opportunities and influence those outcomes when we can.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that so many women in needy countries are taking out micro-finance loans to provide for their children shows how the role of women is absolutely essential to feeding so many children in less developed parts of the world?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution; in fact, I am about to talk about a similar situation. As she implies, the difference women can make to managing their families in the developed world can create an opportunity for non-governmental organisations and perhaps UN Women to focus on women as providers in their own communities.

The human rights case for equality is, I believe, glaringly simple. Girls and women should not be disadvantaged because of their gender, and where that is the case, we need to remove the barriers in their lives. We know what a lot of those barriers are: they are to do with education, health, and taking action against violence, and the UN Women initiative will focus on those. I feel sure that few would disagree with that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)]

2. What mechanisms are in place to monitor value for money derived from overseas aid; and if he will make a statement.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

10. What mechanisms are in place to monitor the value for money derived from overseas aid; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

We are moving from a focus on inputs to a focus on outputs and outcomes—the results our money actually achieves. We will gain maximum value for money for every pound we spend through greater transparency, rigorous independent evaluation and an unremitting focus on results.

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend raises an important point about the next replenishment of the World Bank IDA funds. As I mentioned in answer to the last question, the multilateral aid review will be the body that looks at value for money. At the last replenishment—IDA15—as anyone who follows these things closely knows, Britain was the biggest contributor and that contribution was £2 billion. What I what from the next replenishment is for people to know to what extent we are getting clean water, sanitation, basic education and health care to the people at the end of the track, who do not have them in our world today.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Value for money is, of course, crucial, but there is another issue, which is getting the money to the front line once it has been allocated. Will my right hon. Friend explain what steps he will be taking to ensure that money gets to the front line, unlike in Haiti where, I gather, the vast bulk of aid that has been allocated has yet to reach the areas where it is needed most?

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the effectiveness of emergency relief. There are undoubtedly lessons for us all to learn from what happened in Haiti. That is why I have set up an emergency review of the way in which Britain does emergency relief, which is being chaired by Lord Ashdown. That review will focus on all aspects of how Britain does relief and how we co-ordinated with the UN cluster system, and it will focus particularly on the importance of the immediacy of that relief, getting shelter, food and medicine through to people in such desperate circumstances.