Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Refugees (Richard Harrington)]

We hope that dispersal arrangements remain voluntary and are working with the Home Office, the Department for Education, the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services on a national dispersal scheme for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Provisions in the Immigration Bill will underpin dispersal arrangements and, if necessary, enforce them.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I know that the Minister for Housing and Planning well understands the extraordinarily high cost of private sector housing in London, but does he understand the impact that the changes to the local housing allowance are having on residents in my constituency? Will he ask his departmental officials to provide data on the impact of those changes?

[Brandon Lewis]

If the hon. Gentleman reads the answer I gave earlier, he will see that we have already outlined a one-year delay. We are also looking at the implications before the 2018 introduction and are working closely on it with the sector at the moment.

Zika Virus

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Gentleman’s general point is incredibly important. DFID places a huge amount of emphasis on the work that we do to stop people dying and to prevent diseases. Core to that is the work that we do with others to strengthen countries’ health systems, as well as the international system, as we discussed. It is about reform and investment in new tools and technologies—drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and tackling microbial resistance. Looking to the future, a key part of that is the investment in research of which this country should be proud.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Given that the eggs of this mosquito are reported to be able to survive in dry conditions for many days, what is the geographical extent of the spread of this virus within south and central America? What steps are being taken to manage the trade routes on which the eggs of those mosquitoes may be carried?

[Mr Hurd]

The mapping of south and central America is relatively well advanced, and I believe we have reasonably good information on that. The American authorities are alive to the risk and absolutely on it. To be honest with the hon. Gentleman, I am more concerned from a DFID perspective about the need to map and model the risks for other parts of the world, not least sub-Saharan Africa.

UK’s Development Work (Girls and Women)

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

There are a number of things. First, we must ensure that we have human rights monitors who are able to go into Syria so that we can find out for ourselves what is happening on the ground. Secondly, many of the women who are leaving are by that stage the head of their household as their husbands are no longer with them, and we must ensure that they get not only the care, often medical care, that they need but counselling for the trauma that they—and, often, their children—have gone through in order to make it to the refugee camps.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I welcome every word of the Secretary of State’s statement, but I want to dispute one letter. She spoke of setting up an expert advisory group on girls and women. Will she also ensure that it is an expert advisory group of girls and women? Perhaps it could include people such as my constituent Samira Khalil, a young woman from an Afghani family who was educated in Brent North and is now studying at Cambridge, or Faisa Mohamoud, who works for the Help Somalia Foundation and who could tell the right hon. Lady a thing or two about female genital mutilation and how it affects that community. Let us make sure that it is a women-led group with women’s experience at the heart of it.

[Justine Greening]

I suspect that it will be women-led, although there will be no absolute bar on men being involved.

UK Aid (Uganda and Rwanda)

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We took steps to stop our money going to the office of the Prime Minister before we had any evidence of a problem per se, particularly in relation to our own money. Other donors took steps once it became clear that there had been fraud and corruption with their money, so I like to think that we acted pre-emptively. The forensic audit that is currently under way will give us the information we need to understand what has happened with UK taxpayers’ money and what steps we may be able to take should any money prove not to have been disbursed in the way we wanted.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

When I was in Kinshasa in September, I made it clear to the high commission that more than 30 Members of Parliament whom I had met there had independently raised this issue as a serious concern that was disrupting their programme of government. Because of the amount of money we have invested in the Congo basin forest fund and other work that the Secretary of State’s Department is doing to great effect in the region, giving aid in Rwanda that undermines the capacity of the aid in those programmes to deliver is a serious problem.

[Justine Greening]

I have a huge amount of respect for the hon. Gentleman’s work in the area of international development, but we cannot escape the fact that much of the work that has been done alongside the Rwandan Government has been extremely successful in lifting people out of poverty. That is why I need to ensure that all the proper processes are gone through, and that I look at all the separate facts and evidence bases when I reach my decision in December. I can assure him that I will approach that exercise incredibly thoughtfully, and I will make an announcement to the House once I have reached a conclusion.

Afghanistan

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Clearly this is a real issue, and it has been raised by many parliamentarians across the House today. For the first time, women’s rights are now enshrined in the Afghan constitution. We are supporting many of the departments in Afghanistan that will play a key role in ensuring that those rights are respected and implemented on the ground. Having listened to the many questions asked today, I think this is an issue that I will want to pursue with perhaps a number of colleagues across the House, in order to tap into their clear knowledge and experience in this area over recent months and years. Indeed, I shall ensure that I get such a meeting organised.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I met a delegation of Afghan MPs this summer, and I think the Secretary of State is absolutely right to focus on women’s rights and the protection of women. Can she say what targets have been set, and what progress has been made towards meeting them, for reducing deaths in childbirth and infant mortality?

[Justine Greening]

I do not have those precise statistics with me, but clearly improving health care is critical. For example, we have moved from a position where very few children under the age of one had any kind of vaccine to one where a quarter are now vaccinated. There is now also much more support for women to ensure fewer deaths in childbirth. I shall write to the hon. Gentleman, and I thank him for the kind note he sent me on taking up this role. This is an area that I hope we can all focus on together.

International Development (India)

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I am delighted to take part in this well-informed debate, and I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), who chairs the Select Committee, for initiating it. He spoke with great knowledge and tact, and he put his questions and criticisms in a probing rather than a partisan way. I hope the Minister will be able to respond to many of them when he sums up.

I would like the Minister to clarify the Government’s position on aid to India somewhat in the aftermath of the Select Committee report. India is home to one third of the world’s poor and to more than 20% more poor people than all of sub-Saharan Africa. Across India, a child dies every 15 minutes from a preventable disease, one in three people remain illiterate and more than 400 million Indians have no access to electricity.

As the right hon. Gentleman outlined, poverty is largely focused in four Indian states: Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Paschim Banga—the state whose name I think he was looking for, which used to be known to us as West Bengal. Between them, they are home to nearly one fifth of the world’s poor.

In 2009-10, Britain spent £295.1 million on development projects in India. Of that, 45% went to the Indian national Government, while 48% was spent in partnership with those four states, which are the poorest in India. Britain’s aid targets were health, education, rural poverty, trade development and civil society. Its projects are achieving quite significant progress, providing 9 million slum dwellers with access to water and sanitation last year, putting 30 million more children in primary school since 2003, saving 17,000 lives per year by improving health care and lifting 2.3 million people out of rural poverty since 2005.

The Indian federal Government no longer believe themselves to be an appropriate recipient of development aid—at least not since our Government asked whether they thought they should receive it. Previous Governments had adopted a different approach, saying that that was not a question they would ask the Indian Government and that they simply wished to provide aid to achieve the millennium development goals for the world. Of course, once we ask the question, it is difficult for a proud federal Government such as India’s to say that they still want aid. I think the Government made a mistake in asking that question, but it is on the record, and both countries have set out their position, so it has to be respected.

The International Development Secretary gave a mixed message on the future of DFID’s Indian programme in his speech on Christmas eve, and we should probe this further. He defended the Indian aid programme, highlighting the fact that

“India is a place where there are more poor people than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa”

and stressing the success the Indian Government have had. However, he went on to say:

“Now is not the time to stop the programme in India but I don’t think we will be there for very much longer.”

The Secretary of State is an eminently reasonable man, for whom I have tremendous respect, and he has done a first-class job since he arrived in the Department. He is a reasonable man and he speaks reasonably, but others do not always speak reasonably, and the right hon. Member for Gordon outlined their argument. Indeed, in yesterday’s debate on UK-India trade, which took place in this hall, the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) put things rather differently. He spoke of India’s economic growth of 7% a year, and said that, with its nuclear and space programme, it had the responsibility to ensure that the benefits of that growth were more evenly shared among its people.

I want to take this opportunity to echo the words of the right hon. Member for Gordon and to address that distortion. India is on course to reduce poverty from 55% in 1990 to just 22% in 2015. No other country has ever managed such a sustained reduction in poverty, taking one third of its population out of poverty in a mere quarter of a century. India has put huge resources, proportional to its budget and its GDP, into poverty reduction. It spends a higher percentage of its budget on education than we do in the UK, its free food programme is the largest hunger-alleviation programme in the world and the employment guarantee scheme has been incredibly successful at getting people into work wherever possible. Since 2004, India has increased the percentage of GDP it spends on health, education and social services from 5.35% to 7.2%. As I say, it spends a higher proportion of its annual budget on education than we do in the UK—12.7%, compared with 11.5%.

Despite India’s impressive growth and her progress on infrastructure and urban development, and despite the fact that her middle classes have quadrupled in size in the past decade, India simply could not afford to alleviate her poverty on her own, even if she poured all her resources into it. A 2009 World Bank report noted that even if India legislated for a 100% marginal tax rate, the funds raised would plug only one fifth of its poverty gap. The idea has been peddled that India just needs to tax its flowering industries and its billionaires a little more, but that is a myth, and I am delighted that the Chairman of the Select Committee has nailed it this afternoon.

We must continue to support India in alleviating poverty. That is an international responsibility, and we must meet it. Will the UK Government commit to tying our aid to India to net reduction reductions in poverty and to India’s increasing ability to pay for poverty reduction itself? In that way, any decision to stop helping some of the world’s poorest people out of poverty would be based on facts on the ground, which can be established and quantified, rather than on what sometimes seem to be the whims of the populist press in the UK.

Those who argue for an end to aid should consider how things would be if Britain bordered the world’s next superpower and was surrounded on all sides by failed and unstable states, some with nuclear capacity. Would they then be so critical of relatively high spending on defence and space?

While I welcome the renewed focus on the three poorest states, I think we need clarity. As yet, we have had no comprehensive plan for how DFID will work with the private sector, but only a small number of specific examples. There are hints that much of this work will involve microfinancing, but will the Minister clarify the situation and perhaps expand on what is being done?

The Select Committee has criticised DFID’s internal knowledge of, and experience with, the private sector, particularly in-country. The delivery of such a large fund will require a far greater specialist team, but DFID has announced no plans to implement one. In total, DFID has only 58 private sector specialists, divided between all its projects across the globe. Does the Minister propose to enlarge that team to deliver the micro-level projects that such private sector funding may require?

In his Christmas comments, the Secretary of State described the fund as returnable to the taxpayer, but neither the India project plan nor individual project descriptions give any explanation of what he actually meant. The most likely explanation is that he was alluding to the fact that a large percentage of the funding will be delivered through microfinancing, which is repayable to the fund, and which can then be reinvested. If that is the case, describing it as returnable to the taxpayer in the UK may be misleading. If it is not the case, and the money will literally be repaid to DFID and then the Treasury, will the Minister tell us? We need a guarantee that when these funds are returned, they will be reinvested in full in India to alleviate poverty there.

Another area of concern is the long-term future of the India programme. The Secretary of State has guaranteed funding until 2015. We should certainly support that, but he has also said that he does not think it will continue for much longer, and that he sees it as a short-term programme. That troubles me for two reasons: first, insecurity of funding streams makes planning budgets at national, state and local levels nearly impossible. Deliverers need to be able to count on funding streams in the medium to long term to plan budgets efficiently and effectively. Secondly, although India has made progress in combating poverty, as I outlined, by 2015, 22% of the population will still be living in poverty. We need a guarantee that any reductions will be tied firstly to the rate of reduction in poverty, and, secondly, to increases in India’s capacity to bear that burden itself.

I welcome the tightening of focus on the three poorest states, but not if it comes at the expense of the many millions of people living in poverty in other Indian states. For example, Orissa, which was the fourth bilateral partner state with DFID, has, in large part through DFID’s work, succeeded in reducing the poverty rate from 21% of its population in 2006 to 4% in 2011. That is a phenomenal achievement. However, the population of Orissa is 36 million, so the remaining 4% means that there are more than 1.5 million people still below the poverty line. That is a population equivalent to the whole of Gabon, Gambia or Botswana. Yet the Department appears to be shifting its focus to sub-Saharan Africa.

The Government are, I think, pushing in the right direction on their India aid programme, but we need clarity about the detail, and we do not have that clarity yet. Will the Minister flesh out what the increased private sector focus will look like, and how and by whom it will be administered? The Government need to provide a sense of security to central and state Governments in India by guaranteeing that any cuts to the programmes will be made for the right reasons, and they need to stop playing up to the hysterical and factually incorrect opinions that too often come from their Back Benches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr O'Brien]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. In many degrees, this is a question of a stratified approach. It is really to do with the risk appetites and the profile of the funding instruments that lie behind it. I can certainly confirm that we hope that the revamped CDC will be able to take a greater interest in applying its patient capital approach, particularly to some of the infrastructure support that lies behind economic development, not least in the poorest states. But let us be absolutely clear, with the DFID instruments, we are able to put forward the funding that we do because our capital can take bigger risks in riskier places than even that of the CDC. We have to recognise that there is a connection, but not necessarily an overlap.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am particularly grateful to the Minister for addressing the point about the returnability of capital, because it is an important one to clear up. Will he state absolutely categorically that “returnable to the taxpayer”, which I believe is the phrase the Secretary of State used, does not mean that the capital should be returnable to the British taxpayer but that it should go back to the fund, and then, as the Minister said, be reapplied for the alleviation of poverty?

[Mr O'Brien]

I confess that, in all my briefings, I have not seen the phrase “returnable to the taxpayer” used by anybody. Let me be clear: this is returnable in relation to the repeated use of the resources for the application of their purposes in India. That is the idea. The International Development Act 2002 allows us to use returnable capital instruments, such as equity investments, guarantees and other hybrid forms—combined loans and equities—that promote development and poverty reduction.

There are entrepreneurs who improve the delivery of basic services. For instance, Irfan runs mobile clinics that provide a comprehensive range of outpatient medical services to poor people who are left out. He needs capital to buy the mobile vans and operate a professionally managed unit to provide quality service and make a profit. We can help entrepreneurs like him to do both, so that we have development and the sustainability provided by a profitable business. That is an example of a private sector programme.

The second pillar that we have agreed with the Government of India is a programme to help women and girls break the cycle of poor nutrition, poor education and early pregnancy that traps so many in India in poverty. That will focus our programme on the poorer states of India, particularly Bihar, Orissa—which has been renamed Odisha—and Madhya Pradesh.

A good example of transformation relates to some of the basic issues identified not only by the right hon. Member for Gordon, but by the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow. Mention has been made of manual scavenging—people cleaning toilets with their hands—which is not something that any of us could easily contemplate. The Department of International Development is supporting the Indian civil society organisations and there has been a series of successful local campaigns on the issue. We hope that, soon, this shameful practice will no longer exist.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that Germany, Belgium and France have much larger bilateral programmes in Burundi than Britain. We are providing only 3.6% of the funding through our bilateral programme, but we have to make tough decisions about how we spend our budget. It is, after all, hard-earned taxpayers’ money, and we do not think it provides good value for money to have such a small programme with such high administrative expenses. I can tell the hon. Gentleman, however, that through multilateral support over the next few years Britain will spend about double the sum of the old bilateral programme.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

3. What assessment he has made of the performance of his Department’s bilateral aid programmes with Indian states.

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

The bilateral aid review demonstrates that DFID’s programmes with Indian states yield strong development results with good value for money. The Independent Commission for Aid Impact will evaluate the India programme as part of its work in 2011.

[Barry Gardiner]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s response. He has recently been urged to discontinue aid to India, but does he agree that for as long as India continues to have a third of the world’s poor living within its borders, we will never achieve the millennium development goals unless that aid continues?

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Gentleman is right: India is a development paradox, as I have said before, and we are right to continue the programme for now. We have frozen the figure for the next four years, and we are moving to work only in the poorest states in India. As the hon. Gentleman has implied, there are more poor people in India than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

That is why our programme in India is in transition, why we will focus on three of the poorest states in the country and why, over the next four years, up to half the programme will transition into pro-poor private sector investment. That is the right way for us to position our development work in the partnership with India, which is of course much wider than development, and which the Prime Minister very significantly re-energised in his major visit last year.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on continuing with the £280 million each year to India. That is vital given that India has a quarter of the world’s poorest people living within its borders. How does he intend to focus the aid in those three states, particularly with regard to the health of young women?

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue in those terms. Diarrhoea is the biggest killer of children in Africa. This is a core subject for the coalition Government, and we are looking at it in our bilateral aid review. Although I do not wish to pre-empt that review, I can tell the House that I am confident that we will be able to ensure that, over the next four years, tens of millions of people will be able to gain access to clean water and sanitation who are currently unable to do so.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on his remarks at the millennium development goals summit earlier this year, in which he emphasised the importance of sanitation, but will he explain to the House why, when the United Nations passed an historic resolution on 30 September affirming that access to water and sanitation were human rights and that Governments had a legal responsibility to deliver that access, the United Kingdom voted against it?

[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.

Pakistan Floods

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s final point, and I know that the IMF and the World Bank will show great sensitivity in that regard. As I said in my previous answer, we are dealing with relatively small interest payments, but he is right to suggest that we should be sensitive about the matter at this time. I also refer him to my earlier remarks about the importance of macro-economic reform. That will undoubtedly be one of the issues dealt with in the discussions on that subject.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State spoke of the devastation caused when a wall of water travelled 1,200 miles down the country. A question that his officials will, of course, have considered is why it was able to do that, and no doubt the answer that they will have given the Secretary of State is that there was demand for wood from the forests to provide cooking fuel and enable construction to take place in Pakistan. Once the immediate need no longer exists and reconstruction is under way, will the Secretary of State consider the need for reconstruction of green infrastructure and the forests that would, in the past, have stopped that wall of water from travelling those 1,200 miles?

[Mr Mitchell]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for both asking and answering his question. He is right to talk about the importance of developing green infrastructure as part of the recovery phase, and I can assure him that that will be considered, but the truth is that a flood of such a completely unprecedented scale would have swept away almost everything in its path.