Commonwealth Summit 2018

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, on obtaining, at last, this important debate and endorse what he said about the importance of parliamentary democracy and of strengthening that within the Commonwealth. I know from my own visit to the Sierra Leonean Parliament—I have visited twice, but once was a CPA mission to run a workshop on strengthening the committee function—how underresourced some Parliaments are and how difficult it is for individual MPs to hold their Executive to account. We cannot overestimate the importance of putting resource into that sort of capacity-building.

However, that is not the main thrust of what I want to say in my brief contribution today. I should declare an interest as the vice-chair of the All-Party Group on Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases. I want to speak this evening about the opportunity that CHOGM offers to make an extraordinary advance in the fight against malaria globally. I thank the Minister in particular for his courtesy in agreeing to meet me and a group from Malaria No More, which has been putting forward the plans and the proposal to have a focus on malaria at CHOGM next year.

Much has been said in the planning for CHOGM about the importance of ensuring its relevance to the individual citizens of the Commonwealth, particularly young people. I believe that a determined focus on malaria next year, and an active programme throughout the two-year leadership that follows, would fulfil that desire. Ninety per cent of the 2.4 billion Commonwealth citizens live in countries affected by malaria. That represents a third of the world’s population, but two-thirds of the world’s malaria burden.

Within the Commonwealth, we have a range of experiences in malaria. We have the countries for which malaria is a distant memory, but which are donors, the homes of scientific advance or the homes of businesses that are involved in producing new diagnostics, new medicines and, hopefully, new vaccines; the countries that have enormously high burdens of malaria, such as Nigeria and India; those that have recently eliminated malaria, such as Sri Lanka; and the countries that have ambitious plans to eliminate it, particularly Malaysia.

The Commonwealth represents the breadth and weight of the malaria burden, and some of the best examples of the determination, science and innovation that will help us to defeat it. It is a disease that kills people but also causes school absenteeism and poor productivity, and it is a barrier to economic development and fostering trade links. This disproportionate burden, its intersection with social and economic issues, and the sheer ambition to eliminate the world’s oldest disease make it a fitting choice for the Commonwealth’s next grand challenge.

The UK is a global leader in the fight against malaria. UK innovation, through firms such as GSK and through academic institutions of excellence in Liverpool and London, has had a major role in cutting deaths from malaria by over 60% since 2000, saving some 6.8 million lives. It has been calculated that every £1 spent fighting malaria delivers £36 of economic and social benefits. Yet, despite fantastic progress, a child still dies every two minutes from malaria, and a disease that costs $1 to diagnose and treat will kill 500,000 people this year. We also know that if we do not keep up the investment in fighting malaria, we could see all those hard-won gains disappearing.

The proposal for a focus on malaria at CHOGM has brought together a range of our Commonwealth allies, global civil society, business, global health institutions and philanthropy to support what could be a really innovative and exciting development. Given the UK’s leadership on malaria across scientific research, business innovation, development programmes and investment in the Global Fund, which made it clear at a meeting in Westminster this week how much it supports this proposal, we are extremely well placed to convene partners on this vital issue.

The collective power of the Commonwealth to galvanise action on the world’s biggest challenges has been demonstrated through the successful efforts to end polio. Putting the world on a path to end malaria is a fitting choice for the Commonwealth’s next great challenge. I hope the Minister will give us some encouragement that we may find a place for that focus at next year’s conference.