World Water Day

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) on securing this important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it.

This debate marks international World Water Day, which is on 22 March and is an opportunity to talk about access for all to this necessary resource with a live-giving property—water. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on water, sanitation and hygiene, I am delighted to be able to speak in today’s debate. As hon. Members may be aware, I am unapologetically evangelical about the importance of water, sanitation and hygiene—WASH.

This debate will be warmly welcomed by constituents across the UK who support water projects so generously through organisations such as WaterAid and CAFOD. They get it. They get that we cannot eradicate poverty, we cannot have gender equality and education for all, we cannot tackle climate change, and we cannot achieve peace and security around the world if we do not fund water, sanitation and hygiene. Investment in national public services and water systems is both a high value for money investment and highly valued by the British public.

In my work for WaterAid, Christian Aid and CAFOD, I have seen the transformative impact that having water and sanitation can bring to people’s lives—to whole communities transformed by having water. I have seen women who can now get jobs because they do not have to be off fetching water. I have seen nurses and doctors saying that they are able to do their job—that they are able to save lives now—because they have water facilities in their clinics. But I have also seen the impact of not having water. I have spoken to a mother whose baby died of sepsis, an entirely preventable disease—clean water is necessary for preventing it—that is responsible for an extraordinary one in five global deaths.

Our aid budget simply does not fund WASH projects enough. Just 2% of the UK aid budget is spent on WASH, and even that is under threat, with the aid budget being cut by devastating amounts, from £15 billion to £9 billion this year. I urge the Minister to think WASH in all her planning, budgeting and delivery. I am very disappointed that the integrated review published this week contains almost no mention of water and sanitation, and no recognition of how fundamentally strategic this issue is. Its scale is enormous, and it must be met by equal ambition. We could be showing leadership on this across the world.

Some 2 billion people lack access to safe water for drinking, cooking or personal use, and 55% of the global population still lacks access to safely managed sanitation. One in two healthcare facilities in the least developed countries lacks basic water services. If my local hospital said it had no water, we would close it down. If my son’s school said it had no water, we would not send children to it. We would not say that those were adequate education or healthcare facilities, yet we fund the building of healthcare clinics and schools around the world that do not have water. It has got to stop. A shortage of clean water for hand washing, sanitation and hygiene is also fundamental in stopping the covid spread

I urge the Government to commit, as a minimum, to returning to the 0.7% aid target as soon as possible. I would like to hear more than warm words from the Minister today. Those words must be backed up by a step change in our funding for water and sanitation, using the role as the chair of the G7 to bring together global donors to fund this and using our role as host of COP26 to bring WASH funding to the fore. It is time for the UK to return to being a world leader in delivering water and sanitation programmes, and the UK public will cheer us on.