Sustainable Development Goals

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Desmond Swayne)]

This debate has, to a large extent, been wrested from the Opposition Front-Bench team and rescued by the many excellent contributions we have heard. We began with the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell), who rightly pointed out the importance of pre-school education, and then my right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr O’Brien) brought the benefit of his expertise in stressing the need for security. I always welcome the experience and wisdom of the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke), who made an excellent point about development education. I hope the project that our schools go through every summer, Send My Friend to School, spreads to parents, because the children’s enthusiasm for the agenda is an example to us all.

I thank the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) for his excellent speech. He hit the nail on the head, as one would expect from a Select Committee Chairman of 10 years, and I shall return to his speech shortly, if time allows, because it was a seminal contribution. The hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O’Donnell), who rightly concentrated on malaria, made some important points, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) concentrated on tuberculosis and brought the benefit of his long experience, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), who has long been committed to these issues.

The hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) concentrated on the importance of our taking a lead and asked several questions about TradeMark Southern Africa. The Independent Commission for Aid Impact, which we set up specifically to examine what was going on, drew attention to the problems with the project, and, as a result, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State cancelled it. The hon. Lady also mentioned the PIDG, which, I recollect, was set up in 2002—perhaps when the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) was in the Department. However, we will attend to the issues raised in the NAO report. I share some of the concerns, but we need to bear in mind the huge leverage of the PIDG in getting private finance into poor countries. In her short, but pithy speech, the hon. Lady also asked about the ILO, as did other hon. Members. We took the decision we did following the multilateral aid review, but we still work closely with the ILO—in Bangladesh, for example.

I thought the remarks of the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth on fair trade were particularly pithy. He rightly drew attention to the false dichotomy between security and defence, and development; they are intimately connected. My right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) gave us the advantage of his 30 years’ experience, including as a Minister, and rightly drew our attention back to climate change and sustainability. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) highlighted the important report from the Environmental Audit Committee and asked several detailed questions. I offer her a trade. I have every intention of reading her report, but perhaps she will read this report: “A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development”. It is all in here: exactly how every single one of the targets has to be permeated with the key issue of sustainability. We are confident that the goals will be universal and we are ready to play our part: we have a strong cross-Government approach to this agenda, which is crucial to ensuring that all Departments are engaged and that the UK will be well placed to deliver these goals—it says.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) raised our sights and our ambition, pointing the debate back to the millennium goals. The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) focused our attention back on the Environmental Audit Committee report, but also made an excellent point about the international citizen service. He is right to praise that excellent initiative, which we are now considering what we can do to expand. I hope I have been able to reassure him on that point.

The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) brought her long experience and knowledge of nutrition to this debate, but when she went on to climate change there was an element of criticism. I would point out that we were one of the few countries that constantly tried to get a specific reference to the 2° target back into the goals.

This has been a very good debate in many respects—[Interruption.] Yes, there is a “but”. I want to return to the opening of the debate. We have a motion before us that seeks to divide the House. I have sat here and listened to all these excellent speeches and searched for the issue of substance that divides us. What have we got in the motion that seeks to divide us? The 0.7% target? We were all in the same Division Lobby on 0.7%. The only gripe is one of process—what kind of Bill it was.

We are also absolutely united in our approach to the importance of health. I pay tribute to the last Labour Government, who increased the bilateral spend on health. We have continued that; so much so that in the last seven years, bilateral health expenditure has doubled and now represents almost a quarter—23%—of our spend. We have already heard about the £1 billion commitment that has been made to the global fund. That will fund life-saving treatment for an additional 750,000 people with AIDS. There is no issue between us on health. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) asks, “What about the SDGs?” We canvassed hard and we have succeeded in getting specific targets and goals on health care.

When it comes to climate change, there is again no division of substance between us. On equality, there is the principle of no one being left behind before a target can be met. Again, there is absolutely no division of substance between us.

I come back to the speech by the Chairman of the Select Committee. He pointed out that we now have some 17 goals and 169 targets, when it was the ambition of the Secretary-General that we would have something small and understandable—something that we could all get behind and campaign on, something that we could measure and something that we could hold Governments to account on. That is what we should have been talking about tonight: how we get behind that agenda. They wasted the opportunity—