UN Women

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Stephen O'Brien

Thursday 10th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr O'Brien]

Unfortunately it is not Budget day, and I am not the Chancellor.

The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar made the call for immediate funding, and I promise that I shall come on to that. He talked about the need to strengthen women’s participation in conflict resolution, which was a theme of a number of the important contributions today. We in DFID are examining the centrality of women and girls in delivering all aspects of development, which is necessary partly because of their deep adherence to peace and security. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham said, we need to enable them to carry out the added role on which they will never let up even if there is total equality—ensuring that children have the very best safety and the best context in which to be raised and thrive. That was an important part of the debate.

The hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods), who spoke at the end of the debate, made a powerful addition to it. She centred her remarks on the fact that our own experience here in the UK is informative for programmes that we design to be effective and drive through results in some of the poorest countries. Those programmes reach some of the most wretched people, above all women, who, as has been said many times, make up 70% to 80% of those affected.

I listened with great care to my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod), as she happens to be my sister’s MP. She talked about a range of matters, and she introduced the important point that we must challenge people at all levels. It is right to challenge FTSE 250 companies and recognise that there are as many brilliant business women as there have ever been business men. We need to ensure that they are given exactly the same levels of responsibility for entrepreneurship and management, and that they feel there is always the possibility of progression and never a glass ceiling.

Despite many advances, we are still faced with enormous challenges, particularly in the poorest countries, although I do not in any way want to decry the serious challenges that still exist in our own society. Every year, more than a third of a million women die completely avoidable deaths in pregnancy and childbirth. It is vital that we take steps that will be transformational. We know that women own less than 10% of the world’s property and that, globally, 10 million more girls than boys are out of school. As many as 41 million girls worldwide are still denied a primary education. In some countries, as many as 60% of women say that they have been physically or sexually abused by their intimate partners. That puts in context some of the points about female genital mutilation, important though they are.

Women and girls continue to bear a greatly disproportionate burden of global poverty. We know that gender inequality lies behind the slow progress—very slow in certain places—towards the off-track millennium development goals, particularly MDG 5 on maternal health. Progress is also lagging on most targets under MDG 3 on gender equality, including those on secondary education, political participation and access to paid employment.

An important point was made earlier about water and sanitation, and the fact that it is vital to recognise that if we want to make it likely that girls will stay on into secondary education, we have to provide latrines and fresh water in schools so that they do not feel the embarrassment of the onset of puberty and menstruation. That is often one of the reasons why they leave school for ever and are subjected to an early marriage, which it would have been possible to avoid.

If we are to be transformative, UK support must make a difference, as it is doing. For instance, we supported the Ghana Government to remove health service fees for pregnant women, which led to a 50% increase in the uptake of maternal health services. Since May, the coalition Government have put girls and women at the very heart of development—they are front and centre of all our programmes; a stream running through everything that the Department does—and we are making strong progress. The Prime Minister has appointed my hon. Friend the Minister for Equalities, whom I am pleased to see in the Chamber today, as ministerial champion to lead our efforts to tackle violence against girls and women overseas. She is helping to ensure that we implement our important action plan.

Our work with multilateral partners is vital in helping us to achieve results for girls and women. The UK has played an integral, leadership role in the successful establishment of UN Women, which is why we have a place on the executive board. Let it be said that my right hon. Friend the International Development Secretary and the Conservative party have given full, unequivocal support, not only in opposition, but in government, to accelerating initiatives and leading as champions.

I was asked about the Secretary of State. He met the head of the agency, the former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet the day after her appointment in September and again at Davos in January. Baroness Verma attended the official launch of the agency in New York on 24 February, and everyone is actively encouraging donor support for it. We are in very close contact with the UN Women transition team and are offering at this point $1 million of transitional funding in the current financial year, a high level secondment and any other support that is asked of us, so that we can help to ensure that the agency gets off to the strongest possible start, which answers some of the questions that I was asked in the debate.

As was agreed with Miss Bachelet—the letter was handed over by Baroness Verma on 24 February—the core funding will be announced after the strategic plan, which will be available in June, to ensure that its priorities and the results that it will deliver are detailed. Members on both sides of the House have asked us to ensure that that funding is in place, as is right and reasonable. I hope that no one in the House regards spending UK taxpayers’ money as necessary until there is a clear plan of the results that we seek to achieve for women and girls worldwide. In the meantime, as I said, the transitional funding of $1 million can be accessed, which will ensure fast progress, which is important.

On international women’s day, DFID published its new strategic vision for girls and women—the various documents are on the website—setting out what the UK will do to achieve transformative changes in their lives, which includes saving the lives of at least 50,000 women in pregnancy and childbirth and 250,000 new-born babies; giving at least 10 million women access to modern methods of family planning; getting 9 million children into primary education, at least half of whom will be girls, and 700,000 girls into secondary education; working in at least 15 countries to prevent violence against girls and women; and getting about 2.3 million women access to jobs and 18 million women access to financial services.

It is right that the amendment was selected—I can see the hon. Member for Slough poised to intervene—but it is a matter for the House and not the Government to decide on Select Committee formulation and so forth, as I think she recognises. Therefore, considering how to take such a proposal forward is a matter not for the Government, but for House officials, who will no doubt canvass opinion. If I may give her some encouragement, the key to sustainable, transformational improvement for women and girls here and internationally is chasing those results, and to ensure that we drive for effectiveness. I fully recognise that audits can be a very useful spur for action—soundings will need to be taken on that—but one must recognise that audit processes look backwards. The question that we have been debating today, and on which there has been unanimity across the House, is about how we ensure that we are rooted for the future. Wherever we are on the spectrum, we need to ensure that the improvement is transformational, urgent and accelerated, and UN Women is probably one of the best ways of championing that across the world in all different countries’ circumstances and cultures.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his generous remarks, and I have been heartened by the support from across the House for my proposal. However, I accept that it is a matter for the House and that we need to engage other people in these discussions, so I intend to withdraw my amendment to ensure that we can finish the debate in the tone in which we have conducted it—absolutely unanimously.

[Mr O'Brien]

I am deeply grateful to the hon. Lady, because she has taken the sense of the House in how the debate has been conducted. We have heard not just excellent speeches, but a great sense of determination to make this new step work in a much more transformational way than before. Without question, Government policy, DFID and other Departments recognise that to achieve the results in empowering girls and women here and across the world, we have to increase the opportunity for girls and women to make informed choices and control the decisions that affect them. We need the laws to protect their rights, and we need to increase the value placed on them by society and the boys and men around them. We will know that we have succeeded only when women and girls themselves tell all of us—that is women and men—with confidence that their lives have improved sustainably and will continue to improve. I fully endorse the motion on the Order Paper.