US Overseas Aid: Global Gag Rule

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord leads me down a path. Our opposition on this is quite clear. When you look at the numbers and work in the international community, you recognise that the United States is the most generous country in the world, through its people and its private foundations, in what it gives to family planning around the world—it accounts for something like 47.5% of the total amount. Therefore, if we really care about people rather than political positions and statements, it behoves us to say that we want to work with our friend and ally to resolve these matters for the benefit of those whom we seek to help.

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, will the Minister assure us that women who have become pregnant as a result of rape in conflict situations will still have access to safe abortion?

[Lord Bates]

That is something on which this Government and the previous coalition Government did a great deal of work—my noble friend Lord Hague led on that—to raise the profile of the prevention of sexual violence in war. We will continue to work on that but, of course, in all cases when we are dealing with safe abortion we have to pay cognisance to the legal framework of the country in which we operating, and that requires a degree of sensitivity.

HIV Global Epidemic: Young People

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend is absolutely right in this respect. You need open societies. Good health promotion initiatives can happen only in open societies where people can talk freely. You would have thought that that message would have got through. Sadly, it has not reached everyone. We need to be sensitive because, at the same time as addressing the issues with our Commonwealth partners, we also need to continue to have access and to work with them to help the people who need that help. My noble friend Lady Verma held a very useful round-table meeting at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Valletta, Malta, last year. When the Commonwealth Heads of Government come to the UK in 2018, I very much hope that we will follow up on that work.

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that prevention is always better than cure? Does he also agree that the advent of an effective treatment for AIDS has spread the news that it is no longer necessary to practise safe sex? Will he therefore ensure that prevention in the form of barrier methods of contraception that have a double purpose, such as condoms and the diaphragm, are promoted alongside the treatment for AIDS?

Sustainable Development Goals

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, on securing this debate on such an important topic for all our futures, I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health.

It is widely accepted by the World Bank, other institutions and academics that there is a correlation between development and economic growth and the empowerment of women, a phrase that we hear much about. That is done by the reduction in family size and, subsequently, women’s access to education and training. Women can be empowered, though, only if they have power over their own bodies, and in many countries, developed and developing, women do not have that power. At this point I commend my noble friend Lord Loomba for the speech that he gave and for the work that he does in this field. It is much admired and appreciated.

I am sure that noble Lords all know the 17 sustainable development goals and the 169 targets attached to them. Personally, I have only just learned to recite the millennium development goals; now my failing memory has to cope with 17 SDGs and 169 targets, and I am not going to remember them. Can noble Lords recite them? Do your Lordships remember doing the catechism at school? Perhaps the right reverend Prelate remembers it; I never learnt that either, I have to say. Most important of all, for me, are SDGs 3.7, on good health and well-being, and 5.6, entitled “Gender equality” but dealing with women’s health and sexual and reproductive health and rights in particular. They do not deal with just maternal health, family planning and safe abortion but FGM, child marriage and violence against women generally, all of which are rife in this world and which must be eliminated. Here I must congratulate and thank the Government and the coalition Government before them on the continuing support on these issues and the high profile they have given them. Long may it continue.

My all-party parliamentary group recently produced a paper—here is a visual aid for noble Lords—following hearings on population dynamics and sustainable development. That is a rather clumsy title, but it is a good paper. It was chaired by the former MP Sir Richard Ottaway, who was one of my vice-chairs at the time. This paper deals with the advantages of reduced fertility rates—that is, family size—and links them to climate change, desertification and water shortages, which with large and often young populations lead to conflict and certainly to mass migration, which the world is experiencing now, not just in the Middle East but in Africa and Asia.

A friend on Facebook recently sent me an article. That is at least two times this week that Facebook has been mentioned in this House, I think, which may mean that we are modernising. This article was a very interesting one that I had never seen before, and gave a brilliant example of all these factors of population dynamics and climate change, and so on, coming together in the story of Syria. It was written a couple of years ago by William Polk, one-time professor of history at Harvard and I believe an adviser to the American Government, and was published in the Atlantic magazine. He describes Syria as densely populated in 2010, with a population of 24 million; one quarter of the land is arable, and the population is clustered in a very small area. He writes:

“Four years of devastating drought beginning in 2006 caused at least 800,000 farmers to lose their entire livelihood and about 200,000 simply abandoned their lands”.

In some areas there were 75% crop failures, and 85% of livestock died of thirst. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian farmers gave up and fled to the towns. Some noble Lords know this, I am sure. There they had to compete with refugees from Palestine and Iraq from previous troubles for water and food. Hostile groups formed. Representatives of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Syria—I did not know this—turned to USAID and described the situation as “a perfect storm”. No aid was given; nobody took any notice. They left Syria to it. When a relatively small group gathered in Deraa to protest against the Government and their failure to help them, the brutal crackdown by President Assad’s Government started and, as we say, the rest is history. I tell that rather lengthy story to remind noble Lords because it is very important as an illustration of what sustainable development goals should all be about.

From countryside to cities and between countries, human beings are on the move. This is why we in the group concentrated on the term “population dynamics”, which encompasses the demographics structure of a society, ageing populations who have a shortage of working-age citizens, and populations which are predominantly young. We must take all these things into account. All these factors have been recognised by the latest document to emanate from the United Nations, which we have already heard about in this debate, entitled Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Paragraph 34, in a section on urban development, states joyfully:

“We will also take account of population trends and projections in our national, rural, and urban development, strategies and policies”.

The UN gets it—I must send it a copy of our paper.

Let me stress that we are not talking about population control, but giving women the choice and necessary commodities to decide how many children they have means that mankind benefits in many ways. Countries such as Indonesia and Bangladesh are already benefiting. So are Rwanda, Tunisia, Vietnam and Ethiopia. Even Iran has reduced its fertility rate and the country has benefited as a result.

Finally, I thank the Government once again for their promotion of these issues and plead that when the Prime Minister addresses the assembly on the sustainable development goals in the autumn, he specifically mentions the benefits of the often marginalised subject of sexual and reproductive health and rights in his speech.

Middle East and North Africa

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, on returning home on Saturday evening, I switched on my television to catch up on the news, but instead caught the revellers at the Last Night of the Proms, singing:

“Land of Hope and Glory, mother of the free”.

It rather upset me in the circumstances. Sadly, we no longer have cause to be proud of ourselves as a nation after the last few weeks. In the eyes of the world, I am sorry to say, the Conservatives have turned the nasty party into a nasty Government, with their failure to act quickly in the present humanitarian crisis. On reflection, however, I do not entirely share that view; I hope to be constructive, and I commend the Prime Minister for his visit this week to the Middle East and refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan.

Last year, I visited Zaatari camp in Jordan and this year I saw several camps and enclaves of refugees in Lebanon, a country which has taken more than 25% of its population again as refugees in the last few years—a burden it simply cannot bear. These countries, together with Turkey, have taken hundreds of thousands of people, while UNRWA, which deals with Palestinian refugees, and UNHCR, which deals with the others from Syria and Iraq and elsewhere, are chronically underfunded. I congratulate our Government on being the second largest donor to UNRWA after the United States of America, but it is not nearly enough. That is the problem. Most refugees want a safe place to protect and feed their families until they return home, but the camps are overflowing and life in most of them is very grim. The fitter and braver ones head for Europe—and who can blame them? Our response should be on three fronts.

First, it is not enough to take a few selected families to come and live here. They are safe in the camps and should stay there. We should take the number requested of us and there must be European Union agreement on this. The United States of America should be involved and also the United Nations. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, who has left the Chamber, recognised this as a global problem and of course it is. This evening I heard that refugees have been tear-gassed at the borders of Hungary with Serbia. We should be ashamed of what is going on in our continent.

Secondly—this is my main request—we and our allies must step up the funding to UNHCR and UNRWA immediately, and ensure that those bodies can do a much better job as long as is necessary. It needs action by the USA, the UN and our country to raise the estimated £2 billion now needed for a really good network of safe, well-run camps in the Middle East allowing people to stay close to home. As the Minister said, this could ensure that the children in particular receive proper food and education, and safety from the traffickers, over the next few years. It could prevent young people being attracted by extremist groups. I know that both suggestions are very expensive but remind the House that Trident costs £2 billion a year simply to maintain, and replacement would cost probably a hundred or two hundred times that amount—I do not know. We have the money. I know where I would rather spend it.

Thirdly, and as the noble Lord, Lord Green, mentioned, before the civil war, there were refugees from Palestine all over the Middle East. More than half a million were in Syria, looked after by UNRWA there. They had been looked after for decades. I have been unable to establish how many Palestinians are among the people fleeing Syria at this time, but have the Government pointed out those Palestinians to the state of Israel? More than 26,000 people were immigrants into Israel and welcomed last year alone, mostly from affluent countries, so apparently it has the room and wealth to cope also with refugees. Last week on “Thought for the Day”, I heard the Chief Rabbi express quite rightly what I have experienced: the generosity of the Jewish people. He called for a paradigm shift in the response to this crisis. Finally, here is Israel’s opportunity. Give Palestinians fleeing war once again the right to return. Sadly, miracles no longer happen.

UN: Sustainable Development Goals

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, I must first thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for introducing this debate. I also declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health. I express my hope to noble Lords that I do not have to take injury time during this debate because I have a rather bad chest infection. My group has done a good deal of work on sustainable development and reproductive health in the last 10 years. I am well aware that the phrase “population growth” is a sensitive issue and must be tackled sensitively, but it must be taken into consideration when looking at these 17 sustainable development goals, with their 169 targets. They are daunting for everyone.

No goal can be attained if the population keeps on growing. For example, greater numbers of children may now be out of poverty as a result of efforts in the past 15 years all over the planet, but in the mean time greater numbers have been born and survived, so the world makes little progress and goals are not achieved. We are warned that the planet will run short of food, water and space and the very air we breathe will become more and more polluted. We must do something to stabilise world population.

For me, the solution lies in goal 5, which was pointed out in the briefing from Christian Aid mentioned by the right reverend Prelate. Goal 5 concerns gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. However, to empower women and girls means, first, that we must ensure they have power over their own bodies and over the number of times that they have to give birth. None of the women in this House could have done much without control of their own fertility. We sometimes forget the revolution that free family planning was to women in the West; we have forgotten the advantage that we have. We know that there are more than 220 million women in the world who would use family planning methods—despite religion, culture and control by their men—if they had the chance.

Fortunately, some are now being given that chance with the initiatives that, I am glad to say, were started by the previous Government and supported by worldwide bodies such as UNFPA, IPPF and the Gates Foundation. I hope that the Minister—whom I sincerely welcome to her position; it is good to see her—will reassure us that this funding will continue and that the Government will insist that sexual and reproductive health, and family planning in particular, should be specifically mentioned in the goals and targets that we expect at the end of the year.

This campaign was given a great welcome and an amusing boost, unintentionally, by no less a figure than the Pope, who has never been a fan of artificial methods of birth control. He recently told the people of the Philippines, who have huge families—a great problem for their Government—that they should not breed “like rabbits”, which I thought was quite pithy coming from the Pope. I hope that they took his remarks as seriously as the Government of the Philippines certainly have.

Smaller family sizes such as those being achieved by countries such as Bangladesh, Iran, Rwanda, Brazil and Indonesia, despite religious and cultural difficulties, show that this can be done and done voluntarily—no coercion is needed. When family sizes are smaller, women can be educated and ensure that their children are educated. All can eventually join the workforce to make their country more prosperous and less dependent on aid, with more food and water to share, less space needed to live in and less pollution of the air we breathe. All are great bonuses from providing a simple measure such as family planning supplies.

This is not just enthusiastic old me banging my favourite drum. In 2012 the World Bank produced convincing statistics to show that economic growth follows the drop in fertility rate—that means that it follows the drop in family size—and not the other way round, which is what everyone used to believe. The countries I mentioned earlier are good examples if noble Lords want to look them up.

Yesterday we saw a welcome report leaked from the Vatican, showing the Pope’s concern for the world’s ecosystem and our responsibility in the West to change our lifestyles and energy consumption—I am becoming quite a fan. We in the developed world are greedily using up the world’s resources. We must remember that; it is our responsibility too. I wish we could see more emphasis on energy conservation instead of constantly seeking new sources of energy and that we could all start eating more frugally and not being so greedy. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, will show us the way—we should have a special session on it. We in the West are responsible for most of the degradation of our planet. We must accept that, while encouraging our fellow human beings in the developing world to change too.

In conclusion, I return to my all-party group and the work it has done. Six years ago, we published a paper entitled Return of the Population Growth Factor on how we are not going to achieve the millennium development goals because of this problem. In a couple of weeks, our latest contribution will be launched, entitled “Population Dynamics and the Sustainable Development Goals”. Much better than we can do—well, not that much better—two years ago the Royal Society addressed this issue with a magnificent paper called People and the Planet. I urge noble Lords to read them all.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Verma) (Con)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for securing this debate, and commend him on his long-standing commitment to international development. With only a few months before the UN summit in September, it is right that we come together at this time to discuss the post-2015 development agenda. Before I continue, I also congratulate the noble Lord and my noble friend Lady Jenkin on their absolutely magnificent effort in making us all aware of how difficult it is to survive on £1 a day. I did it last year and can tell your Lordships that it was incredibly hard to manage. My noble friend magnificently produced three meals a day for us, but I really wanted to go back and eat a decent meal after the five days I spent eating stodge.

As your Lordships will know, this year is one of the most important for the international community in recent memory. In just one month, Governments will convene in Ethiopia, as noble Lords have said, to agree a new way to finance international development. The noble Lords, Lord McConnell and Lord Collins, asked whether the Chancellor would be in attendance. I cannot at this moment tell your Lordships who will be going, but we will be working incredibly hard to ensure that we get partners and to be as ambitious as the UK always is. The UK is always at the forefront in leadership in trying to get other countries galvanised into being much more ambitious. We are currently in the final stages of negotiations on the post-2015 agenda, which will culminate in a summit in September setting the direction for international development for the next 15 years.

Because time is quite short, I may not address all the questions that were raised. I undertake to write to noble Lords if necessary, although I hope that over the next few minutes many of your Lordships’ questions will be answered in my speaking notes. In December, the world will come together in Paris to agree a binding international treaty to tackle the global dangers of climate change. Noble Lords have made outstanding contributions today on the expectations but also the challenges facing us in the debate on sustainable development goals.

In 2000, the international community agreed the millennium development goals, and the years since have seen the greatest-ever reduction of poverty. As my noble friend Lady Jenkin and other noble Lords said, the MDGs galvanised the international community to achieve amazing results, and we can point to major successes. As has rightly been pointed out: extreme poverty has been cut by over 50%; there have been real improvements across all health targets; more than 9 out of every 10 children worldwide now have a primary education; and we are well on our way to tackling hunger and malnutrition.

However, it is important to emphasise that the MDGs were not perfect. There was too much focus on access rather than outcomes in areas such as education, they were not strong enough on environmental sustainability and they did not include the critical issues that a number of noble Lords raised today of peace, good governance and economic growth. As we reach the MDG deadline of 2015, discussions are under way to agree the next framework and a set of universal goals that will build the world we all want to see by 2030. The UK Government have been, as has rightly been pointed out today, at the forefront of delivering progress against the MDGs and have played an active role in working to define what comes next.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans wanted reassurances that the UK will continue to lead and will remain a strong voice. I reassure him that we absolutely will. We have, both through our legislation of 0.7% and our commitment that at every conference that we attend and with all our partners we will re-emphasise the importance that the UK places on it. The Prime Minister has said on many occasions that we cannot prosper on the backs of poor people; they must come up along with us. The UK’s priorities for this are clear. Over the next 15 years, we must eradicate the scourge of extreme poverty and put the world on a pathway to sustainable development. We must finish the job of MDGs, but also go beyond them to focus on the quality of services such as education, rather than just on access to education. We have to tackle climate change and environmental degradation as an integral part of our work on poverty eradication and global prosperity.

We must also do better. On the issue of ensuring gender equality, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development has said that it continues to be an absolute travesty that half the world’s population so often cannot participate in education, work or public life. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McConnell. We want to see gender as a stand-alone goal. It must cut across all our programmes and across all participation. I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, that we must not see it as one part of the life cycle of women. It must be an end-to-end discussion, and I very much look forward to being part of that discussion. Sometimes the debate focuses very much on the front end, which is absolutely right, because unless we get that part of the discussion right, we will never be able to progress and look much more deeply at how it impacts on other parts of the life cycle.

We must end the curse of violence against women and girls, and stop practices such as female genital mutilation, and child, early and forced marriages. I have campaigned against those practices for many years, and it is distressing that, in the 21st century, we still have to tackle these really miserable issues. We also have to focus on crucial issues that underpin successful poverty reduction: economic development, peace, good governance, access to justice and the rule of law, and stamping out corruption. Without achieving these, poverty eradication will be impossible.

We must ensure that no one is left behind. This principle, highlighted by the UN’s high-level panel co-chaired by the Prime Minister, is a major step forward. Too often people are left behind because of race, gender, disability or other forms of status. We support the call by the high-level panel to ensure that no target will be considered met unless it is met for all economic and social groups. The UK has also been at the forefront of the international community when arguing for a strong goal on gender equality. I am pleased to say that the goals and targets include all the UK’s priorities that I have outlined. If we can galvanise the international community behind our objectives, they will have the transformative impact that we need to see.

It is crucial that we are able to communicate the agenda to citizens around the world. We want to see the post-2015 framework inspire people everywhere to hold their governments to account to deliver the goals. We therefore want to secure a final outcome that resonates with people and speaks to issues that they grapple with. Again, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, that it must be about talking to children and getting them involved as part of the debate. Our world today is increasingly unrecognisable compared to the year 2000. To match the vision that we have for a new age, we need a new global partnership. The UK’s vision for the next 15 years represents a major step forward to a world where we have moved beyond the old-fashioned north-south divide, where we have come together to confront our common challenges.

A number of questions have been raised. In the short time I have, I will try to respond to some of them. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, asked about data and monitoring. I agree on the points about monitoring and reviewing. We want a robust global review mechanism in the UN, and it must be open and transparent. Accountability will take place at national level, but success, of course, will always depend on the engagement of Parliaments and citizens in all countries. That is why it is important that people across the world are engaged in the SDG agenda.

The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, raised the issue of targets in respect of women. The UK is making the experiences and lives of women and girls one of the very highest priorities in our post-2015 process. We have argued hard for a strong stand-alone goal on gender equality, and I am pleased to see that goal 5 contains many transformational targets and issues, including FGM and child early and forced marriage.

[Baroness Tonge]

I am very pleased to hear what the Minister says about gender equality, but do the Government intend to carry on their initiative on sexual and reproductive health and family planning?

[Baroness Verma]

I have a response to the noble Baroness in my pile but, if I do not reach it, I promise to write.

We are optimistically cautious that Addis will deliver a strong financial and policy package.

The noble Lords, Lord Rea and Lord Collins, and others raised the issue of universal healthcare. Our view is that we are at the forefront of arguing for a strong health goal focused on assuring quality health outcomes for all ages. We recognise universal health coverage as an essential means of ensuring effective health outcomes, and are pleased to see its inclusion as a target in the proposal of the open working group on sustainable development goals. It is the UK’s ambition for this framework to make sure that no one is left behind.

The right reverend Prelate asked about faith groups. We are working hard to ensure that the implementation, monitoring and review of SDGs includes all relevant groups, including faith groups. Part of my own area of responsibility is working with civil society and faith groups, and I look forward to the right reverend Prelate working with me.

I have hit 12 minutes and I shall get into huge amounts of trouble if I continue. On that note, I shall respond in writing to noble Lords on outstanding questions.