Sudan

Debate between Charles Walker and Stephen O'Brien

Thursday 28th April 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. Can the Minister return to the subject of Sudan?

[Mr O'Brien]

That will form part of the state building of Sudan, and it applies elsewhere. Whether or not we are dealing with Dodd-Frank as an example, the Chancellor has said that he wants to explore that idea and see what lessons it has for us at a European level because, of course, it is only worth moving if we all move as one.

We also need to recognise that many African countries are mineral rich and that that is a potential means by which the private sector will be able to develop in such a way as to benefit the greatest number of people. The evidence shows that, if we can get the right explosion of what we might glibly call the middle class, or at least rising economic prosperity among a greater number of people, that will create the biggest, best and most sustainable alleviator of poverty. In the meantime, getting good public services, relieving poverty, saving lives and improving health have to be the first responses—even beyond humanitarian emergency responses—so that we can make sure that people have the opportunity to take part in that prosperity. At the moment, people are often denied a sufficiently long life even to have an opportunity to be a part of that future.

I was in Sudan three years ago in 2008. I went as chairman of the charity, the Malaria Consortium, of which I was then the honorary trustee chairman. I went from Juba, which at that point had only 10 metres of road metalled, up to Rumbek and Wau, where I met the new President of south Sudan, Salva Kiir, who happened to be landing in his jet—I had gone by car. We met on the airport apron and went up to Northern Bahr el Ghazal at Aweil and out to the tiny village of Aroyo. I saw for myself—this is a bit of a surprise to most people; it was particularly a surprise to me when I saw the request for 300 boats on the accounts of the Malaria Consortium—that, when the rainy season comes, Sudan is awash with water. It is not very deep, but the only way to get around is by boat. Many people do not understand the logistical issues that face the people of southern Sudan and that part of the country, and the challenge of dealing with the poverty.

The other thing I remember from that visit—this is not in my brief, but I remember it well and it is relevant to our consideration of the whole of the humanitarian response—is that because there has been almost permanent war going on since the ’50s and many conflicts before then, there has been a tendency for people to scatter, disperse and effectively hide. There are no pockets of population that are easy to address in terms of disease, economic opportunity, education or health access. It is a case of finding lots of people in very remote areas. We are talking about a particularly difficult area to service.

When looking at the analysis as DFID, it was clear to us that we should divide the £140 million per annum for the next four years—there is also £280 million in the current year—by a £90 million and £50 million split. I will talk about the results we intend to deliver in a moment. Hon. Members will know that we have been absolutely determined—this is partly in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood)—to say that it is not what we are spending that is important; it is the results we are seeking to achieve through working with local people. DFID does not go out there with DFID people. It has offices and so on, but we procure the best people in the best possible way—most transparently and by getting the greatest value for money—to deliver, many of whom are with the non-governmental organisations.

I shall partly answer a point I was going to mention later on NGOs. It is absolutely vital for the NGOs—particularly those with experience and knowledge of the territory, connections with people and trust within communities—to have the chance to bid for such opportunities. That is why on the DFID website there is a section on the Global Poverty Action Fund. CAFOD has knowledge of that, but other organisations will see that there is a series of rounds where those with expertise and experience have an opportunity to bid. If the organisations qualify, pass the due diligence tests and can demonstrate value for money and transparency, they will be part of the way in which we are able to deliver results.

The results we want to deliver in Sudan are to help 1 million people to get enough food to eat; to enable 240,000 more children to go to primary school; to provide malaria prevention and treatment for 750,000 people; to give 800,000 people access to clean drinking water and sanitation; to provide life-saving health and nutrition for to up to 10 million people; and to give 250,000 women better access to justice. That point was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr O'Brien]

One of the central points my hon. Friend made in his excellent speech was about whether we could lend capacity to help, particularly in south Sudan. One has to recognise that this is having a disruptive effect on north Sudan as well. While I do not want to sound as though I never want to make a decision by being too even-handed, at the same time we need to recognise that this is not just south Sudan. We also have to enable, through our aid, north Sudan to be functional as well. It will lose a huge amount of its country, and that is where the citizenship issue has become so difficult to resolve. I hope that some of the suggestions that have been made in this debate will be listened to carefully, because they sounded both visionary and like possible resolutions of that difficulty.

On lending capacity such as the human resource of experts—more than just money and the expectation of the results that that will buy, which was a point reinforced by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds—we have already made certain offers, some of which have been taken up. We have moved beyond—with confidence, I hope—any sense of guilt as the former colonial power. Many years have passed, but we recognise that we still have expertise in matters such as mapping, with surveying technology as well as knowledge from the past. Some offers have been taken up, although not all of them. We must build confidence and relationships, but I assure my hon. Friend that such offers have been made. There is more to be done, but it would be nice if some of those offers were taken up with more alacrity.

Part of accepting such offers is also accepting, to a degree, the basis for a resolution of disputes such as the Abyei demarcation or allocation. Any such resolution will be on the basis of maps and surveying—what was originally marked, or the contours of the land—rather than of what at the moment is a sense of tribal identity, or pastoralists’ right to transit across certain lands without crossing a border. Those complex issues remain to be negotiated, but the main point is to get the parties into a negotiating frame with such capacity building, as my hon. Friend said.

That gives me the opportunity, tangentially, to give credit to what was mentioned in the opening of the debate: the importance of some of the Church groups, such as the Episcopal Church mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry). I was pleased that he referred to the Archbishop of Juba, whom I had the privilege to meet, not only to hear his generous thanks but his recognition of the deep thought on how assistance and support should be given in order to achieve that negotiating framework of trust and respect, which has enabled us to have a real role.

Without being explicit, the debate touched on the visit of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to Sudan shortly, as part of the troika. All three will be travelling together, which is an important and powerful signal of unity and consistency of approach that has taken many years to bring about. Their message will be to encourage the various bodies to resolve the difficult issues, rightly building on the recognition of reasons to have trust and respect, and we can have a role in that. I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds for making that point.

I am conscious that I have not yet had a chance to cover some of the other points. How long does the debate go on for, Mr Walker?

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Twenty-eight more minutes.

[Mr O'Brien]

People might need to dash away, but I shall cover a few of the points.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East and others asked about the Lord’s Resistance Army. The LRA, having been driven out of northern Uganda, is now in pockets throughout the Central African Republic, the borders of south Sudan and the edges of parts of Uganda, even tilting into southern Darfur. We all abhor the whole essence of that abominable organisation, with its child soldiers and the mayhem it has caused over many years, but we are also concerned whether it might destabilise progress for south Sudan.

We are determined that the LRA should not represent such a factor by urging the regional Governments and peacekeeping forces—we have the two UN forces—to co-ordinate closely their efforts in combating the LRA. The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds about how quickly it can regenerate was well made and is well known among the experts. One of the best things to do, as part of our response, is to engage with the demobilisation of LRA combatants. We should offer the hope of such engagement to those young people.

I visited Gulu recently, too, but I was there some four years ago in another guise, when I met some former LRA child soldiers who have been converted. Some of them have visited the DFID offices in London. It is important to recognise that we must take such positive and constructive steps as well as simply maintaining our vigilance and, where we find the LRA, rooting it out of areas in which it might destabilise neighbouring countries.

[Mr O'Brien]

I know that and, when I have travelled in some difficult conflict areas such as the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, helicopter is the only mode of transport capable of being used by the UN for any purpose, so my hon. Friend’s point is extremely well made. I shall look into access to such genuinely vigilant machinery from the sky. If it is not available, I shall ask some more questions and perhaps reassure him at a later date.

Another point, made not least by my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham, was about trade. I emphasise that as far as DFID is concerned, for the past 11 years and at least since the International Development Act 2002, by law there can be no link between our aid—our overseas development aid spend—and British trade. That is the law, and what we must conform to. However, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office can make trade an explicit element of foreign policy, which it has now done as one of the new Foreign Secretary’s decisions. Trade, therefore, is now central to every aspect of our overseas engagement.

I confirm from discussions with my fellow Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs with responsibility for Africa, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham), that he has been looking explicitly for trade opportunities in both southern and northern Sudan. His visit received some publicity, but it was perfectly understood that the trade side was vital, and we have a long-standing trade relationship. Trade is an essential element in promoting the wealth-creation side of those economies. There is a clear distinction between what is done by DFID as part of programmes for ODA spend and what is done for trade by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and, indeed, by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

What is important and new is the DFID policy decided on over the past year, which is to include specifically, as a complete pillar of work, private sector development and the encouragement of the private sector and of trade opportunities in a context of confidence that enables people to be entrepreneurial, to have access to finance, to be above micro-finance, to have the ability to take a risk and to have foreign direct investment more encouraged because of greater security from an independent judicial system or in repatriation of dividends. Those are all things that people around board tables who take risks with money borrowed from banks need, so that they will be prepared to engage, whether in a tractor factory, a spares supply chain, some kind of commodity or agricultural processing.

Such discussions with countries might often be an FCO matter—which countries might we invest in, and which companies might do it—but it will also be a DFID matter, for a DFID Minister to decide. Such a policy is part of the discussions that my ministerial colleagues in DFID and I have had. For instance, a country might be prepared to make adjustments to its land law, so that those who acquired land could be confident that it was not going to be confiscated from them. That element would create confidence for investors, who would then know that they had collateral to offer to a bank, so that they could invest further, develop markets and make demands about the infrastructure that ought to be put in place in order for them to get goods to market. We have clear dividing lines but, at the same time, they are part of a co-ordinated whole. We can satisfy, quite rightly, the idea of a strong recognition of what is development and what is trade.

Allied to that was the question of whether we should badge our aid more explicitly. Hon. Members will be aware that, whether in Sudan or elsewhere in Africa, DFID has generated a strong brand as a trusted deliverer of development benefit and results. DFID has a brand, and one of the issues we face in trying to change that is that we might be in danger of taking something away, because DFID is currently respected. Importantly, we are working very hard, and hon. Members here will see from the letterhead when I write to each and every one of them that it refers prominently to “UKaid”—

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. The Minister cleverly mentioned Sudan once, but once every four minutes is not good enough, and perhaps he will return to it.

[Mr O'Brien]

I will do my best to respond to the debate, Mr Walker. I accept your stricture, and perhaps we can explore the issue on another occasion.