Tigray

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Geraint Davies

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your benign sway today, Mr Davies. I congratulate the Chairman of the International Development Committee on so ably leading this debate and on all the work that she and her Committee do. I join her in praising hugely the humanitarian actors who are in harm’s way in Tigray today.

I went with Bob Geldof, who probably knows more about the situation in this part of Africa than most people in Britain, to see the Foreign Secretary some months ago at the start of the crisis. I was extremely impressed that the Foreign Office and the Foreign Secretary were absolutely on top of what was happening. With so much else going on, there is a danger that public attention on what is happening in Tigray, so eloquently described by the hon. Lady, is missing. There is not enough public attention. I urge the media to ensure that attention increases greatly. There is a lot else going on.

There is a massive deterioration in the position on the ground. At least 7 million people need urgent assistance. The position was set out yesterday on the BBC website, which reported that 150 people had starved to death. That really matters to us in Britain. In 2011, the development programme in Ethiopia was the biggest anywhere in the world. It is a big country and there have been huge development gains in health and education, particularly among girls, and in the rights of women. There has been enormous progress in that respect.

Britain has huge strategic, commercial and security interests there. Ethiopia, for example, is pulling troops out of Somalia at the moment, which creates space for al-Shabaab to do its evil work there. There are huge flows of desperate people across the border in Sudan, a fragile country where millions of people are displaced. The whole thing destabilises the region. Ethiopia is being pulled apart by the conflict. Liberation movements and alliances are growing in strength. At the best of times, Ethiopia is a very fragile democracy with 110 million people. A major collapse there will have far more impact than Syria, Libya or Yemen, and we need to bear that in mind.

So what should we seek? First, we need to seek a cessation of fighting on all sides. Secondly, we need humanitarian access, which is grossly inadequate at the moment. It needs to be led by the international community, drawing on British expertise, and by the United Nations and the World Food Programme, which is doing an enormous amount of good work there at the moment. However, its funding has been cut from £21 million last year to £9 million this year, and that needs to be put right. We need to recognise that people are starving to death in Tigray and that there is massive violence, as set out by the hon. Lady, so I will not repeat that. Britain has a big strategic interest. Whether we care about development or not, Britain has a huge strategic interest in this part of the world, especially in Ethiopia, where millions and millions of taxpayers’ money have been spent on the ground to massive and real effect. That is why this debate matters so much, and why the issues that we are discussing are so important.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Thank you for your brevity. I invite Navendu Mishra, who is a member of the International Development Committee, to contribute to the debate.

Leaving the EU: Integrated Foreign Policy

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Geraint Davies

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about the BBC World Service. In fact, when I was Secretary of State, I increased by nine times the amount of money spent on the BBC World Service Trust. On the OECD DAC, if we make a promise to the poorest people in the world—Archbishop Tutu described that as a sacred thing—we should stick to it. The promise was 0.7%, and I am very proud that a Conservative Government introduced it. My hon. Friend is perfectly right to say that we should always review the nature of the definition. What he says about Britain’s peacekeeping effort is absolutely relevant, but the OECD DAC works very well for Britain, because it brings countries that do not spend their aid as effectively as we do up to the standard that Britain expects, so we gain from that.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Bob Seely, you have 10 minutes left.

Debate on the Address

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Geraint Davies

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

To be fair, across the House, nearly all of us are doing what we think is in the best interests of our constituents. In my judgment, the best interests of my constituents are represented by drawing a line and moving on. There are tremendously important negotiations to come, of course, but once we have left the European Union, as we are bound to do following the referendum, we can start to repair two key things that need so much to be repaired. The first is the deep, deep divisions that run throughout our society, throughout all our constituencies and throughout the four kingdoms of the United Kingdom. A second referendum, which will clearly be very much in contention over the next few days, is a ghastly prospect, particularly as it would put back yet further the important and necessary act of healing the terrible divisions that disfigure our country.

[Geraint Davies]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that people out there are saying they want Brexit to be over? They do not want to get Brexit done; they want to get it over. The simplest way to get it over is to put the deal to the people, and then we could see Brexit as it really is, warts and all. The people could then decide, once and for all, whether this is what they want. Is it more money, more control and more jobs? No. People do not want it. Let us get it over, and let us have that vote. Otherwise we will not be getting it done; we will have years and years of trade negotiation and poverty.

[Mr Mitchell]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. I think he is arguing for a second referendum—a confirmatory vote. I cannot think of anything more likely to exacerbate and perpetuate these deep, deep divisions that disfigure our country than going on, month after month, for a second referendum. It is now for the House to decide whether we can secure a deal, and I very much hope the House will decide that on Saturday.

The second thing, and it bears upon the Gracious Speech, is that a resolution to Brexit at the weekend will allow Britain to re-engage internationally. As the House will be aware, our reputation has plummeted over the past three years. We have been absent from parade on a number of big issues where Britain had previously shown great leadership, such as migration, climate change, protectionism, terrorism and the desperate threats that the Kurds face today. Britain’s voice needs to be heard trenchantly on these issues and, over the past three years, Brexit has prevented that from happening.

Climate change, for example, was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech. I have talked to some of the Extinction Rebellion people who blockaded the streets around Westminster over the last week or so. It is easy to mock these people, but there is something rather noble about the cause they espouse. Talking to some of them while negotiating my way through Trafalgar Square on my bicycle has been interesting and constructive, but the problem is that, in attacking this Government, they are attacking the wrong target.

Britain has been a leader in tackling climate change at the major international forums of the UN and elsewhere. I pay particular tribute to important work by Lord Turner and his colleagues on the Committee on Climate Change. Britain has put its money where its mouth is in tackling climate change internationally, as well as domestically. Starting with the coalition, when I had some responsibility for these matters, we allocated some £7 billion for the international climate fund. For 2016 to 2021 we allocated £5.8 billion, from our hard-pressed taxpayers, for adaptation and mitigation of climate change. As the Prime Minister said, we are projected to spend £11.6 billion between 2021 and 2026. In addition, we are streets ahead of some of our European friends and neighbours in developing the technology, and here I highlight the Ayrton fund, which has allocated £1 billion for innovative technology. Britain has standards and an approach to climate change, both in adaptation and mitigation, that have been enormously effective. It is also worth bearing in mind that, this year, for the first time since the industrial revolution, we will consume more energy from renewables and nuclear power than from coal and gas.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Geraint Davies

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend makes his point exceedingly eloquently.

I want to underline to the House the fact that free enterprise and open markets have been, and continue to be, the greatest engines of social and economic advancement known to man. We need to stand up for those things more than we have done recently, against the opposing views espoused by the shadow Chancellor and, indeed, by large numbers of young people who were not around to learn some of the pretty basic economic truths that many of us learned in the 1970s and ’80s.

Having said that, capitalism has always required Governments and regulators to set boundaries to human activity and, inevitably, human greed, and that point chimes in very well with the activist views that our Prime Minister has expressed since she took up the job. I want to point briefly to three areas in which I think such regulation of capitalism is of the greatest importance. The first, which we have debated in the House, concerns open ownership registers, particularly for the British overseas territories. That was an initiative of the Cameron Government. We in Britain have imposed such transparency on ourselves, and we need to do so for the overseas territories. Many in this House care deeply about the matter, including my hon. Friends the Members for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), and the right hon. Members for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). It is important that the Treasury recognises that point in the Finance Bill, and I very much hope that it will do so.

Energy prices are the second area in which regulation is important. The Government are absolutely right to pursue that, because the current monopolistic situation works against the interests of consumers. The right way to deal with it is by regulation rather than by nationalisation, which is entirely unnecessary because of the regulatory regime.

Other Members have mentioned the third area in which regulation is required, but I will make the point again. A recent study of the annual reports of FTSE 100 companies shows that average pay for chief executives rose from £5 million a head in 2014 to £5.5 million in 2015. I find it offensive and totally unjustifiable that that is 140 times the average salary of their employees. It is noteworthy that only a quarter of FTSE 100 companies pay the voluntary living wage to their employees. The scale of that inequality, which is vastly greater than it was, gives capitalism a bad name. At a time when inequality more generally has fallen, with income inequality at its lowest rate for 30 years, this is something that the Government need to address through regulation.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the OECD identified a relationship between inequality and growth, namely that more inequality means less growth and a smaller cake. Is he also aware that when it is analysed using the Gini coefficient—the normal way of evaluating inequality—inequality in the UK is among the highest and fastest growing in Europe?

[Mr Mitchell]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s last point. I will rest on the recently published statistics showing that income inequality is now at a 30-year low in Britain.

My final point, which has already been raised today, is about intergenerational fairness. It is of course absolutely right that housing inequality should be right at the top of the list. We want future generations to have the opportunities that our generation had in terms of not only ownership, but part-ownership and rental. The importance of the decisions announced in the Budget is that they will give a real boost to the creative use of space. There is real encouragement for using brownfield land, which I spoke about earlier, and it is quite right to attack the misuse of land banks. It is also absolutely right to be creative in building new communities, but we need far more imagination. I would like the Government to commit to 1 million new housing starts over the next three years, which is slightly further than they have gone today.

We need to recognise that building new communities and focusing on infrastructure are absolutely at the top of everyone’s agenda. We should look at garden cities, and many people will be delighted at what the Government have said today. In the midlands, we want the Black Country garden city to be developed; so far, it is an idea without much flesh on the bones, and we need far more flesh to be added to those bones. We must build in the right places—progress will become ever more bogged down if we start to attack the green belt, and in my view, it is very important that the Government do not do that—but such building should be the top priority.

When it comes to intergenerational fairness, which everyone agrees is vital, we must not forget that excessive borrowing makes it worse. In the past six months, Germany had a public spending surplus of £8 billion, but we had a deficit of about £26 billion. This will have to be repaid, and it is a cruel and unfair deception on the next generation if we do not make it clear that if our generation does not repay it, theirs will have to do so. Austerity is not optional. It is not a Tory vice; it is fiscal responsibility, and we have to return to living within our means.

My final point on intergenerational fairness is that one of the best investments in future generations is Britain’s contribution to international development. The work Britain is doing, with the commitment made across the House to the 0.7% target, is driving real change in the world—it does a huge amount to help some of the poorest in our world—and contributes directly to making the world a safer and more prosperous place for future generations. It tackles directly the international dangers from climate change, migration, terror, pandemics and protectionism, and the Government should make more of this work. The Government, of which I was proud to be a part some five years ago, have done an immense amount, and such work is very important in addressing intergenerational inequity. In making more of such work, the Government will note that it is very strongly supported by people from across our country who are under 35—a cohort conspicuously absent among Tory voters at the last election.

I want to end by saying how pleased I am to see that the Government have given £1.3 million from the LIBOR fines to ZANE—Zimbabwe a National Emergency—a body that does hugely good work for elderly people in Zimbabwe. On behalf of all those involved with ZANE, I express my gratitude to the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer for making that very wise decision.

Pakistan Floods

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Geraint Davies

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. On his first point, all the money announced in New York—the second tranche, which is the doubling of our funding—is now being spent in Sindh and Punjab, for reasons that a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House have underlined.

My hon. Friend is right to identify the poor response, although while I was in New York there was a big increase in support from Saudi Arabia, Canada and Australia, and a number of other countries have followed since. I very much hope that at the European Union meetings taking place in the next fortnight, there will be a strong focus on ensuring that all the countries that can come to the assistance of Pakistan in its hour of need do what they can to help.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

In respect of flood risk management in the future, to what extent will the UK Government support sustained investment in the adaptation of Pakistan to climate change, therefore making the country’s infrastructure and communities more resilient to future flooding?

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to talk about the importance of ensuring that there is effective investment in flood defences. It is something that the international community and the Government of Pakistan will want to look at in all three of the phases I described.