UN High-level Meetings in 2023

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) for securing this important debate on the upcoming UN high-level meetings on tuberculosis, pandemic preparedness and response, and universal health coverage.

The year 2023 marks the halfway point for the implementation of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, which were adopted in 2015 and are intended to be met by 2030. They include promoting good health and wellbeing, eliminating hunger and poverty, and advancing gender equality. In April, the United Nations Secretary-General warned that

“we have stalled or gone into reverse on more than 30 per cent of the SDGs.”

He called upon all states to

“recommit to seven years of accelerated, sustained, and transformative action”.

I fear that the UK Government are failing in respect of these vital goals, both domestically and internationally. UK bilateral health aid in 2021 was down £620 million—39%—on 2020. That decrease was partly due to reduced levels of spend on the health sector in response to covid-19, but it also reflects wider reductions in the UK aid budget. Domestically, this Government’s programme of austerity—their cutting away of the welfare state and essential services, including the underfunding of our precious and world-renowned NHS—has meant that since 2011, increases in life expectancy have slowed after decades of steady improvement. Inequalities in life expectancy have recently widened: between some of the wealthiest and the more deprived areas of Liverpool, there is a difference in life expectancy of 20 years. One in three people in my great city are experiencing hunger at this moment. As constituency MPs, we are also witnessing at first hand the decimation of local primary care services. The Park View medical centre in West Derby is currently facing closure, a matter that I will be raising with the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), in the House today.

I want to say a few words about the United Nations high-level meeting on tuberculosis, which the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has carried out significant work to combat globally. In 2021, 10 million people fell ill with TB and 1.6 million people died. TB diagnosis rates fell by 18%, which indicates not that cases are falling but, worryingly, that fewer cases are being detected by health systems. Alongside that, 450,000 new cases were diagnosed of multi-drug resistant TB—strains of TB that are resistant to modern antibiotics—yet multi-drug resistant TB treatment dropped by 17%, which indicates a reduction in diagnosis and detection.

Improving access to and quality of primary health care, including increasing the capacity, capability and equity of the health workforce, is crucial to delivering universal health care, reaching more people with TB and ensuring outbreaks of novel pathogens can be detected quickly. TB is both preventable and curable, yet people are still dying from TB because of a lack of political will and a consequent lack of funding to address the epidemic. Analysis also indicates a significant fall in TB diagnosis in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. As the World Health Organisation says, funding is less than half of what is needed.

Senior governmental engagement with the UN high- level meetings is vital to ensure that they are successful. Will the Minister please provide an update today on his engagement with the drafting of the political declarations for the three upcoming United Nations high-level meetings? Will he update us on his engagement with the TB high-level meeting process to date and outline what more the FCDO can do to support UK research and development, especially within the context of TB? Finally, can the Minister explain why the Government have taken the disastrous political decision to cut international aid spending and why they have relentlessly pursued an austerity programme domestically, all of which is profoundly impacting the health and wellbeing of millions of people in the UK and around the world and preventing progress towards the crucial United Nations sustainable development goals?