Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(13 years ago)
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Mr Mitchell
The hon. Lady is right to mention early marriage, which we are seeking to tackle in particular. We have conducted a pilot study with the Nike Foundation, with which we work closely, on preventing early marriage in the Amhara part of Ethiopia. The results of that pilot are excellent, and I can assure her that we are including in all our programmes, as a fundamental pillar of our work with girls and women, the point that she accurately made about stopping early marriage.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
The Secretary of State is right to stress the rights of women to choose when to have children and how many to have, but does he also agree that the evidence is that if we can promote sustainable development the necessity for large families diminishes and population pressures tend to reduce, and that that ought to be at the heart of the Government’s objectives in partnership with our development partners?
Mr Mitchell
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. A classic example is the work that the Government are doing and the priority that we accord to getting girls into school. We know that girls who are educated get married later and have fewer children. That is a good example of what he is saying.
Food Security and Famine Prevention (Africa)
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(13 years, 2 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) on two extremely good speeches on the vital subject that the House is debating.
The motion has three specific points. I want to say a few words about all three, but I start by acknowledging that the motion mentions the generosity of the British public through the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal. Throughout the country, people have supported that, and nearly £60 million has been raised. That, together with the efforts of the British Government and other Governments around the world, seeks to address the crisis in the horn of Africa and to stop a disaster becoming a catastrophe.
The House will be aware of what is happening in the horn of Africa. The rains have failed. Enormous numbers of people are moving first from the centre of Somalia down to Mogadishu and then from Somalia out across the borders into Kenya and Ethiopia. The Dollo-Ado camps in Ethiopia now contain 120,000 Somalis, 80,000 of whom have arrived there in the last few weeks. In Mogadishu, which I visited just three weeks ago, camps have sprung up all over that city. The World Food Programme is today feeding some 327,000 refugees there, in particular in therapeutic feeding.
In Dadaab, which I visited earlier in the summer—I know that the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) has been there recently, too—huge numbers of people have come across the border into Kenya. I saw a sight that one rarely sees in Africa—large numbers of mothers and their children waiting in the early morning in complete silence. I was able to talk to some of them; they told awful stories about being attacked and beaten as they came with their children out of Somalia. Many had lost children on that march, and their feet were cut to pieces by that long march. I pay tribute to the Kenyan Government who are housing 430,000 people in Dadaab, the largest refugee camp in the world, which was built originally for 90,000.
I also visited Wajir, where I was able to see the brilliant work that has been done by British non-governmental organisations—in particular Save the Children, but many others—in trying to cope with the crisis. I acknowledge and pay tribute to my shadow, the right hon. and learned Lady, for the way in which she, too, has emphasised the importance of placing help for girls and women at the centre of what we are doing—they are in the forefront of the crisis—and for the work that she has done in ensuring that this issue stays at the top of our international agenda.
The people in those camps are in many ways the lucky ones. Inside Somalia we are probably reaching about 1.2 million of the 3 million people who are in serious jeopardy at this time. Those who have followed these things will have seen that the global acute malnutrition and the serious acute malnutrition rates in Somalia are horrific. We have not seen such rates since the 1992 famine. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye made clear, it is not often starvation that kills people who are caught up in famines, for the reasons that she eloquently set out; it is disease. When the rains come, the immune systems of large numbers of people, already shredded by hunger, will not be able to withstand the waterborne diseases that will cut like a knife through that very vulnerable population. Cholera is already endemic in Somalia and Mogadishu, and measles and malaria will also affect huge numbers of very vulnerable people when the rains come.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
Will my right hon. Friend use his considerable leadership in his capacity as Secretary of State, within the international community, to get to the root of this issue? We want to deliver humanitarian relief now, but if we had spent half the money that we will now have to spend in advance, we would have avoided the problem and people would not have been in stress and dying. Spending money in advance rather than waiting for the crisis is surely the way we will have to deal with this in future.
Mr Mitchell
My right hon. Friend makes a good point, which I am coming to directly.
Britain has engaged vigorously over recent months in addressing all these issues, and I pay tribute to the outstanding team that Britain has in Nairobi, across Departments of the British Government, working with our partners and providing real leadership and advice across the international system.
Future of CDC
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Mitchell
The hon. Lady is nodding assent, and I will write to her on that basis.
The point I seek to make is that by helping the world’s poorest people to create wealth and build up their own assets, we will help them to pull themselves out of poverty, and become less reliant on aid and more resilient in the face of natural disasters. During her excellent speech, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) underlined the point that development finance institutions such as CDC should do more to reduce poverty. I completely agree with her. We need to see the new CDC leading the way and demonstrating how other international financial institutions, including the International Finance Corporation, can set a good example. We are pressing the IFC to do more in lower-income countries and particularly fragile states, and to be more demonstrably pro-poor in middle-income countries. There is no difference of opinion between the Front-Bench spokespeople on that point.
At the heart of the approach that we are discussing is a reformed and revitalised CDC that will be a catalyst for change in the most challenging environments where the transforming power of successful financial investment is most needed. In that context, the previous six months have seen an enormous amount of activity, and if I may, I will remind the Committee of what the Government have been doing. In October 2010, I informed the House of the Government’s decision to reconfigure CDC to boost its development impact, and a public consultation was set up as part of that process. In March this year, the Committee published its report on CDC. The Government responded on 4 May, welcoming that report and agreeing with the vast majority of its recommendations. On 7 June, I reported to the House that the Government and CDC had agreed on and published a new high-level business plan.
In his opening remarks, the Chairman of the International Development Committee stated how important it was that the Department should not be too distant from CDC. He expressed the view that the Department had previously seemed distant, although the two buildings are only about 300 yards apart. I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and we are intent on rectifying that within the important confines that Ministers and civil servants should not pick winners or make decisions on individual investments. They are, however, entitled as the 100% shareholder in CDC to express a clear understanding of the direction in which CDC should be moving. That is what we are doing.
Malcolm Bruce
I take the Secretary of State’s point about Ministers, but what about departmental staff and CDC staff who work together, particularly in bilateral areas? Our experience in the past is that CDC is never mentioned during programmes of visits to other countries. I hope that that will not be the case in the future.
Mr Mitchell
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We will, I hope, see secondments between the Department and CDC in the future, and we are intent on promoting much closer involvement, including at country level. When I first visited India, I, too, was struck by the distance between the Department and CDC, although it is fair to say that, such is the quality of the staff that we are fortunate enough to have in India, that is rapidly being rectified. The Chairman of the Select Committee will agree that that is a most important matter.
In the early part of his remarks, the Chairman mentioned the importance that the Committee attached to the role of the diaspora and, in particular, to remittancing and related matters. On page 2 of the Government response to the Committee’s report, we are clear that making intelligent and innovative use of that should be something that we progress, and we have every intention of doing that.
I do not want to waste the valuable opportunity presented by today’s debate by repeating the details that I have already given the House. Instead, I want to remind hon. Members of the broad thrust of the changes that we have made to CDC—changes that reflect the responses to the consultation and many of the comments made in the Committee.
Under its new business plan, CDC will become a pioneering investor—the most pro-poor investor in the world. As members of the Committee made clear, there have been too many examples of CDC behaving like any other emerging market private equity fund. I noticed that on one occasion CDC was the seventh investor in a fund, which does not suggest a great deal of pioneering. What CDC has that the market does not have is the ability to deploy patient capital, which does not require the same returns as are returned by the market. It can take a much longer view. That is one of CDC’s unique selling points, and it is extremely important that it is deployed.
CDC’s focus will be on development impact rather than corporate profitability. It will channel all its new investments into the poorer countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, where more than 70% of the world’s poorest people live. It will become bolder in its approach to innovation and risk, accepting higher financial risks where those are justified by greater development benefits. In other words, as I said, it will be a patient investor.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
Will my right hon. Friend accept the International Development Committee recommendation to put more resources into sanitation and nutrition, as they have been shown to be the prime cause of poverty? Half the population of India has no access to sanitation and malnutrition rates among Indian children are among the worst in the world.
Mr Mitchell
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Half the children in the state of Bihar are suffering from malnutrition. His point about the programme is a good one. We are looking at increasing the amount we spend on water and sanitation, and all of us are extremely grateful for the strong all-party support his Committee gave to the Government policy on aid and development in India.
Humanitarian Emergency Response Review
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Mitchell
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his welcome and for his words about the team who constructed the Ashdown report under Lord Ashdown, and about the response from my team, particularly those in DFID’s conflict, humanitarian and security department.
The hon. Gentleman is right that there is a huge amount of common ground on this matter. In opposition, we long realised that there was a necessity not to be complacent, but to accept that we could do some things better. That is why my right hon. Friend the present Prime Minister, some two years before the election, called for a report such as this, and why we have carried it out.
The hon. Gentleman was right to underline that all serious research suggests that the number of disasters will increase by as much as 50% over the next 15 years. That adds additional urgency to the work that we are doing. He was right to make it clear that the right way to lead in these disasters is through the multilateral system. That is why we are determined to play our part in making that system better. The cluster system that operates within it, in which Britain takes a leading role, is the right approach and we will do everything we can to see that it improves.
The central emergency response fund was set up by the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who is sitting alongside the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz), and we supported it strongly in opposition. We think that it works extremely well and that it provides additional and immediate money in the event of a disaster. That is why we have significantly increased resources to the CERF. The additional fund that I announced today for help in the first 72 hours from pre-qualified charities and NGOs will enable us to carry on the principle of that work in, I believe, a more effective way.
The hon. Gentleman was right to make the point that building in resilience from day one is vital in all the work we do, and that is now happening. He was equally correct about the importance of gaining access for humanitarian relief, which we have called for consistently in Libya and will continue to call for in Syria and South Kordofan in Sudan. He was right that women should always be involved in such work. The role of women as people who suffer from humanitarian disasters on the front line is well understood. We give that issue our strong support through this work.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s point about remittancing and that there must be transparency in all that we do. As he pointed out, the money that we spend is taxpayers’ money. We are committed to recognising that. That is why we published the transparency guarantee early in the lifetime of the Government. When taxpayers’ money was used to alleviate the results of the floods in Pakistan last year, we had a floods monitor online so that people could see how hard-earned British taxpayers’ money was being spent and what relief it was securing.
In respect of these proposals, I believe that the International Development Committee has announced that it will consider in about a year’s time whether we have enacted what we have said we will do.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and Lord Ashdown for his excellent report. On behalf of the International Development Committee, I thank Lord Ashdown for his active engagement with us on two separate occasions when we were preparing our report on the Pakistan floods. I note that the Secretary of State said that he will publish more detail than he could put in the statement on the steps that are being taken to improve the UK response.
Will the Secretary of State say what role the UK can play in getting UN leadership, not least to ensure that in the most vulnerable countries the UN co-ordinator has both the competence and the line-management authority to execute effective rescue operations? He spoke about the co-ordination of NGOs and lead NGOs. Will he ensure that that is not just a UK response, but that such co-ordination will happen internationally so that NGOs do not get in each other’s way and have the opposite effect to helping in the disaster?
Mr Mitchell
My right hon. Friend is entirely right about those dangers, which he and his Select Committee have identified in their work, not least on the crisis in Haiti and the international response to it, particularly in the early hours.
On co-ordination, I did not answer the question from the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) about the high-level panel. It is important to make it clear that Baroness Amos is leading an effective reform programme as the emergency relief co-ordinator. We back her strongly in that role, as do the heads of the UN agencies. I continue to talk to her and others at the UN about the findings of the multilateral aid review and the humanitarian emergency response review. That is the right way to take this agenda forward, so let us see how we get on with that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Mitchell
About a third of that money goes to the European development fund, which scored highly in the multilateral aid review, and that suits Britain’s interests because around 40% of it goes to Commonwealth countries and we contribute only 17%. The money spent through the budget is £800 million, over which we have much less control, and we are seeking to ensure that it is better deployed.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
The Secretary of State will of course acknowledge that the Government have committed additional funding to post-conflict states because that is where the greatest poverty and the greatest risk of falling back into conflict lies. Nevertheless, does he accept that, although we must do everything we can to stamp out corruption, it is precisely in those difficult climates that risks must be taken if achievements in poverty reduction and conflict prevention are to be secured?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. That is why we have focused very specifically on our support for the referendum. We are working very closely with President Mbeki on the issues of the border. We have had many discussions about the very points the hon. Gentleman mentions, most recently when I saw Salva Kiir on my visit just before Christmas, and we will be strongly supporting the new state in a whole series of different ways once it is set up.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
What engagement does the Secretary of State have with the African Development Bank and the World Bank on infrastructure development for southern Sudan—which, as he says, is desperately needed—given that the UK is a major contributor to both those organisations? What will their commitment be, and how will the Department for International Development co-ordinate with them?
Mr Mitchell
The Chairman of the departmental Select Committee is absolutely right to identify the crucial role that will be played by both the World Bank and the ADB. I recently had discussions on this very subject with Donald Kaberuka, the head of the ADB, in Addis Ababa at the African Union summit, and we will ensure that strong priority is given to infrastructure development. After all, this is a country with less than 28 km of tarmac roads.
Aid Reviews
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Mitchell
I certainly pay tribute to CAFOD and the brilliant work of Chris Bain in leading it. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the importance of transparency, which is why one of the coalition Government’s first acts was to publish our transparency guarantee. He is right about results and openness. We are all strongly behind the Bribery Act 2010. There are some standing instructions that need to be worked out by a number of Departments, but that will happen relatively quickly and the Act will be fully implemented.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
The review was right, and the tighter focus is welcome. The Select Committee on International Development will monitor not just the quantity and transparency of aid, but its effectiveness in tackling poverty and creating the space for development. However, will he explain one or two anomalies in his announcement? Burundi, which has already been mentioned, is a surprising omission, given that it is a poor country, but South Africa is included. What is the case for that, given that every other country on the list is a low-income country? Finally, will he confirm that targeting fewer countries will enable some of the staffing shortfalls that have been so apparent to be addressed, so that DFID staff are fully complemented where they are operating bilaterally?
Mr Mitchell
The Chairman of the Select Committee makes an important point. Programme staffing will be set to ensure that we can implement all the programmes. South Africa is a regional hub—an engine of economic development throughout the region—and much of our programme there is devoted to that. I have explained the position on Burundi, but, clearly, it too benefits from that engine of regional economic development. On his first point, the independent commission for aid impact, which is led by chief commissioner Graham Ward, one of Britain’s most distinguished accountants, reports to his Committee, not me, injecting that independent evaluation of British aid that is so important in maintaining taxpayer confidence in what we are doing.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman is right that there are more poor people in India than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. He is right, too, that we should focus on the poorest areas, and particularly on the role of girls and women. Over future years, we expect to be able to assist in ensuring that up to 4 million women have access to income through micro-finance and through focusing particularly on livelihoods. We will also support, of course, the strong programme on education in India. About 60 million children have been got into school over the last four or five years, which is a tremendous tribute to the work of the Indian Government, but it would not have been possible without the intervention of aid and support from Britain and elsewhere.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
Does the Secretary of State agree that it is worth recording that to lift the poorest people in India out of poverty by $1 a day would cost $166 billion a year, so it is appropriate to continue our transitional arrangements with India? The International Development Committee will visit India next month and we will want to see how DFID’s relationship with the country, albeit with a relatively small amount in comparison with the challenge of the problem, can deliver an accelerated reduction of poverty there.
Mr Mitchell
I am grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee for that comment and also to the Select Committee itself for going to look with care at development in India and the operation of our programme there. He accurately identifies the scale of need. It is worth noting that the number of the Indian population living on less than 80p a day is 7.5 times the total population of Britain. That puts in context the basic nature of this need and shows why Britain’s partnership is so important.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Mitchell
This is one of the issues that former President Mbeki is particularly addressing in the discussions about Abyei. As the hon. Lady implies, the largest amounts of oil are in southern Sudan but the mechanisms for extracting it and getting it out are pipelines through northern Sudan. The negotiations are continuing and are likely to continue for some time yet.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
The Secretary of State will be aware that oil wealth has not always transformed countries in Africa, or indeed relieved the poverty of those in question. What steps will DFID take to ensure that southern Sudan will have the infrastructure and diversification support it needs so that it does not become another country suffering the Dutch disease because of oil?
Mr Mitchell
The Chairman of the Select Committee draws attention to the resource curse that has afflicted so many countries in that part of the world. The point he makes is being directly addressed. I discussed the matter with President Salva Kiir when I was in Sudan in November. Sudan is one of the most underdeveloped countries in the world, with illiteracy of more than 82% and only 24 km of tarmacked road in the entire country. There is a huge development issue to be addressed, but there is also the ability, through oil wealth, to make real progress over the last five years of the millennium development goals until 2015.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(14 years ago)
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Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman needs to look carefully at the words that I used at the summit, about which he has just made his nice remarks. The fact is that 2.5 million deaths are caused by a lack of sanitation and 39% of people in our world do not have any access to a basic hygienic latrine. That is why we are focusing not on rhetoric but on results in trying to achieve specific outcomes in this very important area.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
In the last Parliament, the Department for International Development acknowledged that it had refocused its priority on sanitation in the wake of the report by the International Development Committee. Given that, according to figures from the “Water, Sanitation and Health 2008” report, 79% of rural homes in India have no access to sanitation, what will the Secretary of State do within the programme for India to ensure that sanitation is a key priority?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Mitchell
The right hon. Gentleman has some credit for having masterminded and pioneered the Bill that became that Act through the House of Commons. He is right to underline the importance of the transparency that the Act ushered in and the importance of the House of Commons being able to discuss it, with Ministers being accountable to this House for that. So I can assure him that, through the usual channels, I will underline the point that he has made.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
The Select Committee on International Development warmly welcomes the Secretary of State’s initiatives to make aid more transparent, and will co-operate with him and with Parliament to ensure that we give effective voice to that. Does he acknowledge that there are some concerns that ensuring that everything is transparent means that we might sacrifice longer-term, less measurable outcomes for shorter-term ones? Can he assure me and the Committee that that compromise will not undermine the effectiveness of British aid?
Mr Mitchell
As the Chairman of the Select Committee rightly says, transparency is about accountability not only to our own taxpayers in Britain, but for the people whom we are trying to help in the poor world; it is about enabling them to hold their own leaders to account. On the nature of evaluation, to which his question also referred, it is important that this should be about not only value for money and the accountancy-driven approach to that, but development expertise. As he says, a lot of development is very long-tailed, so we need to meld both those two streams of expertise together to achieve the right results.
Pakistan Floods
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Mitchell
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his welcome for the statement and I will try to answer his questions.
First, may I thank him for his comments about the hard work of officials across Whitehall and the brilliant work that is being done by British charities throughout the flooded area? He asked me about the meetings that have taken place. Off the top of my head, I cannot speak for all the meetings that the Deputy Prime Minister has had, but I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that I had a raft of meetings when I was in Pakistan and New York, as well as having numerous phone calls since I got back. I talked to the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister in Pakistan, to all the leading non-governmental organisations, and to the head of the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Islamabad, who has responsibility on the ground for the cluster system. I also had bilateral meetings with Canada, Norway, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Australia, and with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union while I was in Pakistan. In New York, I had meetings with the UN Secretary-General and John Holmes, and I lobbied hard with the UAE Minister for Foreign Affairs. I also spoke to my opposite number in the United States, Raj Shah, the Pakistani Foreign Minister, the Swedish Development Minister, the Irish Development Minister and Lord Malloch-Brown. I hope, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman feels that the British Government have used this opportunity to lobby hard and to get across the points on which he and I are agreed.
The right hon. Gentleman asked how much of the funding is new money and how much is coming from existing programmes. I cannot tell him that at the moment. Obviously, we first ensured that we found the money required, and in due course we will see what budget line it will come from.
The right hon. Gentleman next asked whether I am satisfied with the preparations made to tackle the secondary health crisis. He will be aware that the water is draining from Sindh extremely slowly because it is built on clay, and it might be many months before that drainage takes place. He is right to identify water-borne diseases and the dangers from them spreading rapidly through the vulnerable community, particularly among children and older people. All I can say is that we are on the case. I have spoken personally to the Secretary-General about that specific point, and all the money announced by the Deputy Prime Minister when he was in Pakistan last week will go directly to confronting that issue, which the right hon. Gentleman rightly raised.
Finally, the right hon. Gentleman mentioned leaks. I have seen these leaks, and I think that he will understand, having held this office, that there is probably less to them than meets the eye. However, he made two specific points. On the central emergency response fund—this proves my point—when his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), announced the setting up of CERF, we gave it strong support in opposition. I pressed in New York for additional amounts from that fund to be made available, and as part of our review, we will certainly see whether we can build on the substantial benefits accrued from that decision.
The right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) made another point about the lessons to be learned from this disaster. I am sure that there will be lessons—although obviously at the moment we are focused on confronting the emergency phase of this disaster—and I hope very much that they will be picked up and learned by the emergency humanitarian review that we have set up and is being chaired by Lord Ashdown.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and agree with him that the UK’s response, from his Department, across Whitehall and the private sector, and from private citizens, has been a leadership to the world, and also cements the relationship between the United Kingdom and Pakistan, which is very close and important. In the reconstruction effort, will he ensure that there is co-ordination between the World Bank, the United Nations, the IMF and the European Commission so that reconstruction is done to a standard that will ensure that, even if floods like this never happen again, future floods will not result in the same scale of devastation, because the standards will be higher and able to withstand the pressures? Finally, Pakistan has suffered from earthquakes and these devastating floods, and is tackling a very difficult insurgency. In those circumstances, would it not be appropriate for Pakistan to be promoted probably to the top of our bilateral aid list?
Mr Mitchell
On the last point raised by the Chairman of the International Development Committee, I said before these floods hit Pakistan that I thought it likely that, as a result of the bilateral aid review, Pakistan, within a comparatively short period, would become Britain’s most significant bilateral aid programme—so I underline the point that he made in his third question.
On his first point, I thank him for what he said about British leadership. It is encouraging to note that there has been a significant increase in support for the Secretary-General’s appeal fund. On his second point, about the reconstruction effort, he is clearly right that there needs to be strong co-ordination between all those taking part, and I hope that it will be provided by the pledging conference, which undoubtedly will take place before too long, and which I hope will take place in Islamabad.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman will understand that a Government who are properly co-ordinated and working together will discuss all these matters to make sure that, as I have said, we wire together in the best possible interests defence, diplomacy and development. However, as the hon. Gentleman is well aware, as he has been a junior DFID Minister, the OECD Development Assistance Committee rules are what pertain in the spending of money on development, and the coalition Government have confirmed what his Government said: those rules will persist.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s initiative in setting up a more effective watchdog for transparency and accountability and to publish what DFID funds in more detail from January. That will provide a welcome reinforcement of the value of our aid. May I also say that the Select Committees are very anxious to start their work and anything he can do to ensure that they are constituted will help to enable the International Development Committee to take evidence from him next Thursday so we can expand on these issues?
Mr Mitchell
I am grateful to the Chair of the International Development Committee for his comments. He knows a great deal about these matters. The transparency guarantee is enormously important, first in reassuring British taxpayers by enabling them to see where the money is being spent and that it is being well spent; and secondly, in assisting in the building of civic society to ensure that people in the countries we are trying to help can hold their own political leaders to account. I look forward to discussing next week with his Committee these and other matters, especially independent evaluation.
Global Poverty
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Lord Bruce of Bennachie(14 years, 4 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of global poverty.
This is the first opportunity since the general election that the House has had to debate international development and my first chance, as Secretary of State, to set out for the House how the coalition will address this vital agenda. My purpose today is twofold. First, I want to set out for the House the changes that we are making in my Department. Secondly, in the context of last week’s Budget, in which the Chancellor set out the scale of the fiscal crisis bequeathed us by the previous Government—a crisis that means that of every £4 of public expenditure, £1 is borrowed—I want to make it clear why our coalition Government stand four-square behind our commitment to the world’s poorest people, and why we will increase our expenditure on international development to 0.7% of our gross national income from 2013, define that expenditure under the OECD/Development Assistance Committee rules and enshrine that commitment in law.
In his Budget, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor reaffirmed that development spending will increase. As the Prime Minister has consistently made clear, the coalition Government will not seek to balance the books on the backs of the poorest in the world. It is clearly helpful that that strong commitment transcends party politics, both in the House and in the country. It is a strength of international development that it is seen not as the preserve or the passion of any one political party, but as a British commitment in which Members in all parts of the House strongly believe.
In that context I would like to say how pleased I was to see that the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) has been elected—unopposed—to resume his chairmanship of the Select Committee on International Development. I am also pleased that many hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), who have a long record of particular involvement and commitment in this area are in their places.
I should also like to express my admiration and respect for the extraordinary collection of skills and expertise in the Department for International Development, which I now have the privilege to lead. As the Prime Minister said on his visit to the Department last week, we should be very proud of the leading role DFID is taking in the fight against international poverty. The fact that in this time of great economic difficulty DFID has a ring-fenced, protected budget is not because we believe that money alone is the key to international development.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his position as Secretary of State. He said that he hoped to enshrine in law the commitment that all parties in the House share. Can he give any more information on how and when that might happen?
Mr Mitchell
I thank my right hon. Friend for his comment. I am not able today to give final details, but negotiations continue in the usual manner. I shall make sure that the House is informed as soon as final decisions on that point have been made.
We understand that one of the main causes of sustained poverty is conflict—that it is conflict that so often condemns women and children to grievous suffering. If someone is living in one of those dreadful camps, which hon. Members may have visited, around the world—the Prime Minister and I visited some in Darfur—it does not matter how much access to money, aid, trade or different articles of development they may have, because for as long as the conflict continues, they will remain poor, frightened, dispossessed and angry. Just as conflict condemns people to remain in poverty, so it is wealth creation—jobs, enterprise, trade and engagement with the private sector—that enables people to lift themselves out of poverty. All that underlines, again and again, as the Prime Minister did at the G20 last weekend, the importance of not giving up on the Doha round and, notwithstanding how difficult it is, remaining absolutely committed to it.
Making progress in the fight against international poverty and achieving the goals set down by the whole international community and enshrined in the eight millennium development goals cannot be done without meeting the financial commitments set out so clearly at Gleneagles in 2005—commitments that were underlined and strongly endorsed by the Prime Minister in Canada at the weekend. Although the British Government focused particularly at the G8 summit on MDG 5 on maternal mortality, the most off-track of all the MDGs, we are also leading the argument for real progress to be made on all the goals.
When the UN summit meets in September in New York, there will be just five years left for those goals to be achieved. We want to see measurable outcomes and a clear agenda for action agreed for the whole international community to ensure that the goals are now reached. In essence, we are trying to ensure that good, basic health care, education, clean water and sanitation reach the people at the end of the track, who today in all too many places in the world have none of those things.
Well spent aid has achieved miracles around the world. That is not of course to argue that aid is not sometimes stolen, embezzled or badly used. We will confront all three of those things head-on, but thanks to aid we have eradicated smallpox; we have reduced polio from 350,000 cases a year in 1998 to under 2,000 today; while the number of people on life-saving treatments for AIDS has increased from 400,000 in 2003 to 4 million in 2008. In Afghanistan, there are today 2 million girls in school thanks to the international aid effort.
Malcolm Bruce
I certainly accept that there was not only a lively debate but activity in the Department and the evaluation unit. The Committee visited the unit and met its representatives.
I do not suggest that there was a monopoly on one side of the House in this regard, but a permanent problem with aid and development is establishing what works, how the extent to which it works can be measured, and how people can be reassured that it works. We have all observed it in journalists’ correspondence, and in what is said by people we meet around the place. The bottom line is that people think that billions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money is being put into Swiss bank accounts on behalf of corrupt politicians. We all know that that is not what happens to the vast majority of UK aid—indeed, we hope, to any of it—but we must constantly improve presentation so that we can reassure taxpayers that that is demonstrably not the case, and that the aid really is making a difference. If it is possible to improve the existing mechanism, there is no reason why we should not try to do so.
The summit on the millennium development goals will take place later this year. The current Parliament is due to end in 2015, the year in which the MDGs are set to be delivered. We know that they will not be, but during this Parliament we must determine exactly how much we can prioritise them, and what we must do about those in regard to which we fall farthest behind.
Let me say something about MDGs 4 and 5. The Select Committee paid particular attention to maternal health in the last Parliament, and I was horrified by what we learned during that inquiry about the appalling and needless suffering of so many women in so many parts of the world. As has been said by the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Ann McKechin), whom I welcome back to the Committee, the problem is often the treatment and status of women rather than our inability to deliver services that could meet the needs of women in poor countries. Certain societies do not recognise the importance or necessity of such services.
I was particularly shocked, when the Committee visited northern Nigeria, to be told that the education of girls involved learning the Koran by rote, on the grounds that that was all that they needed to know because they would be married by the time they were 12 and pregnant by the time they were 13—and, in many instances, dead before they were 14.
We should not even think of girls in societies of that kind in the context of girls in our own society, who, at 12 or 13, might be regarded as far too young to give birth, but who might none the less be quite well developed. In countries where nutrition is poor, many girls aged 12 or 13 are not fit to give birth to children, which is why they die. Worse, those who do give birth are expected to deliver their children alone, without any form of attendance or support. I consider that appalling. I welcome the commitment to treating it as a priority, but I think it reasonable to suggest that the health of children up to the age of five should be linked to it. While the welfare of women has a very big impact on children, an awful lot of children die at the age of three, four or five. Unless we consider the two issues together, we may not be able to achieve the results for which we hope.
I was slightly surprised that the Secretary of State did not say more about the role of economic development and the role of the partnership between the public and private sectors, although there was a passage in his speech about it. Unlike the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, I am not talking about the role of the private sector in delivering social programmes and the like. I am talking about how we can deliver economic development better in partnership: how DFID’s engagement can create a climate in which businesses, whether indigenous or external, will invest and commit themselves to developing countries, so that those countries can grow their economies and revenue bases and reduce their dependence on aid.
The Secretary of State mentioned CDC in passing. The way in which CDC operates—as a kind of arm’s length “fund of funds”—is very easy to criticise, and Private Eye has had a field day doing so. However, CDC has clearly delivered a substantial amount of investment at no cost to the taxpayer, and has increased our development capacity because of the profitability of the fund. There are question marks over the use of tax havens, although I see the logic of the argument that that releases even more money for investment. I do not particularly want to develop that argument, but I have felt for some time that there is a gap between DFID’s development activity and CDC and the business sector that could be addressed constructively.
Mr Andrew Mitchell
The Chairman of the Select Committee has made an extremely good point, but if he reads the report of what I said today, he will see that we are very much on the case. We are restructuring the way the Department handles the issues to which he has referred, and we are looking specifically at CDC to ensure that we secure as much development gain and value from its work as we possibly can. We aim to do more rather than less.
Malcolm Bruce
I shall be interested to see how that develops.
I entirely accept that investing in health, education and infrastructure helps to create a climate in any given country that will make the business community better able to thrive and survive, but there are times when a partnership with business is needed to establish what aspects of health, education and infrastructure will best deliver investment. If we could do that more effectively, we might speed up the process of economic development rather than just aid support, with the help of better trading relations, a World Trade Organisation deal giving people real access to markets, and the elimination of internal obstacles to trade, both within countries and between neighbouring countries.
The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) has left the Chamber, but I want to say something about climate change. There is concern in the developing countries that all the commitment to poverty reduction could be easily subsumed into climate change measures. The 10% ruling was arbitrary, but I consider it important for the Government to focus primarily on poverty reduction, and not to allow climate change to divert funds that could be used for that purpose. We need a safeguard to ensure that that does not happen.
I am conscious of your constraint, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I shall not say too much more, but I want to make two or three comments about the country programmes. The Secretary of State said that there would be a review of those programmes. We need a fairly early indication of how that will take place, so that people are not faced with too long a period of uncertainty about where it is heading. Other countries, notably and recently Sweden, have conducted such reviews. It might be best if our review focused on a smaller number of countries in which our assistance could be even more effective.
The Secretary of State will not be surprised to learn that I have a view on the debate about China. The hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), who is present, does not agree with the rest of the Committee on the subject. I entirely accept that the development relationship with China should come to an end—that is not a point of concern to me—but the general relationship with the country seems to me to have continuing value, and it will require some budget if it is to continue. The Committee heard effective evidence of how well that can be done, and what a contribution it makes to reducing the MDGs, given the size and scale of China. I urge the Secretary of State to look at our report again. It does not really disagree with his conclusions or those of his predecessor, but it does suggest that there should be a little more space in the continuing relationship with China. That would be very beneficial to UK-China relations and to poverty reduction in China, not because the Chinese want our money but because we would be able to work with them to deliver better ways of achieving poverty reduction. Such an approach might even lead to partnerships in third countries between Britain and China, which would be a remarkably interesting and worthwhile development. That is all I would ask that he take on board.
Mr Mitchell
The Chair of the Select Committee is on to a very good point, because the Conservatives have for years said that it was wrong to spend taxpayers’ money in China. That country has just spent £20 billion on the Olympics, it has a space programme and it is a nuclear power. Since we made that plea on behalf of the British taxpayer, the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) has spent tens of millions of pounds on British aid in China. The Chair of the Select Committee rightly says that we need a partnership, an elevated relationship whereby we work together on common objectives and have a high-level dialogue on partnering on aid and development. We are in the process of working out precisely how to do that.
Malcolm Bruce
I am grateful for that intervention. The only practical point I make is that it requires a bit of funding to do demonstration projects.
Interestingly, the same arguments will start to apply to India, and I suspect that we are unlikely to come to the same conclusion on India. I found it interesting that the arguments used by the previous Government to justify the closure of the programme in China were used in reverse to defend the programme in India.
Mr Mitchell
China and India are fundamentally different, because India has more poor people within its boundaries than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa and the average income of an Indian is a third that of a Chinese. Of course we also have deep historical links with India through the Commonwealth and many other mechanisms, so I do not think that there is a direct analogy between the two countries.
Malcolm Bruce
I think that intervention proves my point. The Select Committee may well wish to examine the issue of India again, but we have not yet been formulated and we have made no such decisions.
Finally, it is impossible to have a discussion on global poverty without examining this country’s engagement in Afghanistan. I am concerned about the debate about Afghanistan, because the situation is complicated. Inevitably, the focus is on the military engagement and the casualty rate, and rightly so. We have to show, and we do show, enormous appreciation of the bravery of our forces and the sacrifices that they are making in order to contain an insurgency and create the space for a successful Afghanistan that can manage its own affairs—we hope that that is what will happen. It worries me that people do not appreciate what is happening in Afghanistan. They do not appreciate that we are operating across the whole country, that we are having real success in large parts of it and that the military operation in the south is not the whole expression of what is happening. So it is important that the Department for International Development’s engagement in Afghanistan continues in a way that demonstrates that what we are trying to do is build a state that can not only run its own affairs and enable us to remove our military support, but deliver to its people a development programme that will take them out of poverty. That will be the best and strongest basis for a secure future for Afghanistan and it is the right and proper, legitimate aspiration of the people of Afghanistan. Our UK aid programme must be focused on that more than anything else. People are looking for a clear separation between aid and development, and military support and containment; they are not looking for confusion between the two. I hope that, provided we can keep that right, we will be able to maintain a programme in Afghanistan that will continue to command popular support, because it is a poor country that we should and would be engaged in even if it was not in a conflict situation.
This is an important debate. The change in Government clearly will result in questions from all parts of the House about the future of our overseas development assistance, but what is clear to me is that we have a coalition Government who are determined to deliver our United Nations obligations and to apply principles to development that will continue to mean that Britain is a leading global player. As Chairman of the Select Committee, I look forward to its engaging with the Department in a constructive way that will help to shape that policy and influence it positively.