Hunger: East Africa and the Horn of Africa

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I join others in congratulating the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) on his excellent opening contribution.

The number of people affected by this crisis is truly staggering, and there is no doubt that the world, the UK included, needs to do more, but this is also a glimpse of a hellish future if we do not do more, as a world, to tackle poverty, conflict and climate change. This is a vision of what is to come.

Clearly, the cut in the aid budget and the fact that so much of it is being spent on refugees here in the UK means that the UK is doing less to assist. All of us who feel passionate about the UK’s international development efforts need to ask ourselves why, given the high point of 2005 with the Make Poverty History campaign, when our postbags and email inboxes were overflowing, so few people said anything when the aid budget was cut by the Government. I am the former International Development Secretary, and I got fewer than 10 emails.

If we are honest, we need to ask ourselves how we are going to remake the case— remake the argument—for countries to play their part in tackling the three great scourges of our time. Clearly, having a civil war is a really bad way to advance the interests of a country. One only has to look at Sudan today, South Sudan previously and the Sudanese civil war before that—three civil wars in the space of 35 years—to see that it leads to people fleeing, insecurity and poverty.

If that is not bad enough, human-made climate change is having the greatest impact of all and will wreak enormous damage on people’s lives if we do not do something about it. The truth is that we know what needs to be done; we just need to get on with it faster than we have been managing so far. I pay tribute to President Biden. For many years we criticised the United States of America for not doing enough, and then suddenly he came along with the Inflation Reduction Act. The initial response from some people was to complain and whinge and say it is not fair. I would tell them to not complain but emulate, because this is the future if we are going to tackle climate change.

My final point, which others have touched on, is that if we do not tackle climate change, the movement of people around the world will be on a scale that we have never before witnessed. Even during the Syria conflict, Lebanon’s population increased by 25%. That is the equivalent of 16 million people coming to Britain. Just pause and dwell on that prospect. I met climate refugees many years ago on a visit, as it happens, to Kenya, where people had moved because it stopped raining in the village where they lived. The fundamental truth is that human beings will not stay where they were born and brought up either to die of thirst or to drown as sea levels rise. They are going to be on the move, and the scale of movement will be enormous.

No wall, fence or immigration policy will prevent that movement. It is in our self-interest, in the true sense of the word, to do everything we can as a nation to help people in other parts of the world to be able to grow up, raise a family, live a healthy life, and be educated, safe and secure, wherever they happen to be. That is the argument as to why the United Kingdom should be doing more.