Millennium Development Goals

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the United Nations High-level Panel report into the successor agenda to the Millennium Development Goals.

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, I feel a bit guilty with my 10 minutes. Anyway, I welcome this opportunity to debate the impact of the United Nations high-level panel report into the successor agenda to the millennium development goals.

I start by welcoming my noble friend Lord Bates on his maiden outing to the Dispatch Box. Noble Lords may be aware that I co-chair Conservative Friends of International Development. There can be no more consistent and committed friend to international development than my noble friend. I doubt that there are many, if any, noble Lords in the Chamber today who are not aware of his recent walk from London to Derry, spending 35 days of his summer holiday walking 518.8 miles to draw attention to the plight of the children of Syria and in so doing raising the enormous sum of £50,000 for Save the Children. There may be others watching this debate or reading it in Hansard, or who may stumble across it later, who are not aware of this astonishing and generous feat. I urge them to find my noble friend’s JustGiving page, which is still open for donations. Tragically, Save the Children are in just as great a need of support in their humanitarian work in Syria today as when he finished the walk on 9 September.

This has been momentous and exciting year for development. As well as the high-level panel report, highlights include the UK’s achievement of the 0.7% GNI target, and hosting the nutrition summit and the G8. We can all be justly proud of the role that our Prime Minister and his team played in steering the panel and ensuring the delivery of such an ambitious agenda. There were times when the vision now laid out in the report seemed to be a long way off and I congratulate all the panel members and its co-chairs on rising to the challenge.

After five meetings, around 5,000 pages of submissions and more than 500,000 people consulted, the report is clear, intellectually coherent and moves on the debate about poverty and development without losing what is good in the existing agenda. It offers a clear storyline and an indicative set of goals to provide an example of how this might all translate into the post-2015 agenda.

The report is also a big leap of ambition from the MDGs. It includes, but goes well beyond, the core MDG business of health, education and poverty, and encompasses infrastructure, property rights, governance, violence and personal safety, an end to discrimination, and gender equality. It suggests aiming for zero targets—such as no people living in poverty—combined with nationally defined rates of progress towards that end.

The report has been well received both domestically and internationally. It has set the benchmark against which the discussions and processes of the next two years will be judged. This judgment will be against not only the report’s content but the way in which the panel conducted its work. Its emphasis on the importance of broad consultation and listening to the voices of the poor and vulnerable must be continued throughout the process.

No speech about the successor agenda can be delivered without referencing the historic impact of the MDGs. They motivated global action around a common cause: that absolute poverty was indeed beatable. The 13 years since the millennium declaration have witnessed some of the largest and most successful development impacts in history. The target of reducing extreme poverty rates by half was met five years ahead of the 2015 deadline. The target for access to improved sources of water has already been reached and there have been drastic falls in deaths from malaria, and in maternal and child mortality. Fewer people are dying of AIDS, malaria and TB.

That said, there is much more to do and it is important that we do not forget that there are still two years left to deliver on the current MDGs. The need to finish the job is one from which we should not be distracted. However, as the high-level panel itself said, we must go beyond the current MDGs because, commendable as they are, they did not focus enough on reaching the very poorest and most excluded. Reaching the target to halve poverty is a staggering achievement but one that leaves half the people in poverty behind.

The report states clearly that we can and must eliminate extreme poverty from the face of the earth by 2030. The Prime Minister helped to steer the panel to a consensus on the five big shifts required to achieve this visionary aim. Although everyone in this Chamber will be familiar with these shifts, they are worth restating. First, we must leave no one behind. We can end poverty by 2030. We can eliminate preventable infant deaths and we can make dramatic reductions in maternal mortality. Secondly, we must put sustainable development at the core, bringing the environmental and development agendas, which have been separated for decades, back together. Thirdly, we must put a focus on transforming economies for jobs and inclusive growth. As we all know, growth is the only real exit from poverty, meaning a much greater focus on promoting business and entrepreneurship, infrastructure, education and skills, and trade. Fourthly, we must build peace and effective, open and accountable institutions for all, ensuring that we tackle the causes and not just the symptoms of poverty. Fifthly, we must forge a new global partnership that brings national Governments, businesses, community groups, donors, local government and others to work together.

It is also true that ending poverty is not a matter for aid or international co-operation alone. The 2015 process must also be about developed countries reforming their trade, tax and transparency policies. This should build on the work already established under the Prime Minister’s leadership of the G8 in June this year.

Before moving on to the task that lies ahead, I will take a minute to reflect on what we in this House can and should be doing. As we approach the MDG deadline, we must consider the role of democratic governance and parliaments in continuing to promote development objectives. Participation, transparency and accountability are playing an increasingly important part in the post-2015 development agenda. The outcome document from the UN special event on MDGs last month mentioned that the new set of goals should,

“promote peace and security, democratic governance, the rule of law, gender equality and human rights for all”.

Parliamentarians play a critical role in meeting those requirements through their law-making, budgeting and oversight functions and their roles as the representatives of the electorate.

In September, UN states affirmed their commitment,

“to a transparent intergovernmental process which will include inputs from all stakeholders including civil society, scientific and knowledge institutions, parliaments, local authorities, and the private sector”.

However, the onus—and responsibility—is on parliamentarians to engage with those negotiations, which will be launched at the beginning of the UN General Assembly in September next year. We must all remain engaged with the process.

The next couple of years will bring plenty of challenges, but we should not forget that an ambitious successor to the MDGs is in our long-term interests. Every dollar invested in stopping chronic malnutrition returns $30 in higher lifetime productivity. The value of the productive time gained when households have access to safe drinking water in the home is worth three times the cost of providing it.

We will all be encouraged that the UN Secretary-General’s report on the MDGs picked up on the key ideas from the report. I urge the Government to continue to play a prominent role in the discussions, particularly in New York where the negotiations will take place. We wish the UN and the Governments luck and wisdom as they, together with civil society, businesses and other development actors, negotiate the final set of goals over the next couple of years. I think of the report as a Christmas tree, currently loaded with lots of glittering baubles; the task ahead is to prune that tree in order to get the results we need.

I leave your Lordships with this: on page 19 of the report the panel provides examples of the potential impact if its recommendations are successfully implemented. In short, it could mean a real and lasting impact on the poorest in the world. There would be 1.2 billion fewer people hungry and in extreme poverty; 1.2 billion more people connected to electricity; 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year saved from going to waste; 470 million more workers with good jobs and livelihoods; $30 trillion spent by Governments worldwide transparently accounted for; and 220 million fewer people who suffer crippling effects of natural disasters. Can there be a more pressing or important agenda for this House to support?

Finally, during our deliberations and discussions let us never lose sight of the fact that behind these enormous numbers lie people: human beings, individuals and families; real people with the same hopes, fears and aspirations as us, but people born and trapped in poverty, unlike those of us lucky enough to have been born winners of the golden lottery ticket of life.