Sustainable Development Goals

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I refer Members to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I commend the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) on an extremely thoughtful speech, and thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) and the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) for their speeches and for proposing this debate. Indeed, I thank all Members who have spoken.

The millennium development goals have, by and large, been a success. Having lived in Tanzania throughout the 1990s, I saw what was happening in their absence. Malaria—I chair the all-party group on malaria and neglected tropical diseases—was taking a greater toll on people’s lives towards the end of the 1990s than at the beginning of that decade. The same can be said about many other diseases, but the introduction of the millennium development goals led to institutions such as the global fund and the Gates Foundation investing in tackling them. As a result, in the next few weeks we will hear about the tremendous progress made in cutting deaths from malaria by half, saving millions of lives over the past 15 years. Those lives would not have been saved but for the millennium development goals. Let us remember how much has been done through the MDGs.

The SDGs are of course far more ambitious, and I recognise that that raises some problems. The Sermon on the Mount is an incredibly ambitious statement. Every time I read it, I first realise how far I fall short, but at the same time it inspires me to go on to do better. It is the same with the SDGs. Every year, we should pick them up in debates such as this one. We will say, “Yes, we have made progress”, but they will also inspire us to do much better. I hope that the SDGs will do that in each member state that signs up to them. We must not lose ground against the millennium development goals or we will lose heart, as we will if the SDGs are simply not met and, for instance, we go backwards on infectious diseases.

I will mention four SDGs. On goal 3, on healthy lives, I want to echo the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) about the need to take a long-term approach. I believe that we must look at incredible challenges, such as the challenge of anti-microbial resistance to drugs, which means that we need to look at the global goods in which we must invest in order to develop antibiotics. That is not a three or a five-year funding programme, but a 20-year funding programme.

When the Select Committee went to Nepal earlier this year, we saw the great results of DFID’s long-term work on afforestation. We must do more on that great long-term project. On goal 3, we must also do much more on the integration of healthcare systems, rather than having the silo mentality that there has been in the past, although it is starting to break down.

Goal 8, on sustained, inclusive and sustainable growth, is absolutely crucial. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) has already mentioned it with specific reference to tourism. Hilton reckons that 70 million jobs may be created globally through tourism in the next 10 years. That will bring very good, high-value employment to countries that need it. We need full, productive employment and decent work for all.

Last night, I had a meeting with a great friend who works in Uganda and the Congo. Mainly as a result of his and his colleagues’ work, although with some support from DFID, he now works with 24,000 farmers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the poorest countries on earth. They have introduced a cocoa business that now brings tens of millions of dollars into the country and provides livelihoods for tens of thousands of people. That has been developed over the past few years, showing what can be done in the most incredibly difficult and challenging situations.

Goal 13 is on combating climate change and its impact. I had the privilege of walking with my daughter in the Swiss Alps a couple of weeks ago. I walked in the same mountains 35 years ago, when I worked in Switzerland. The glaciers are now less than half what they were then. That is on our doorstep in Switzerland; it is not Kilimanjaro, where I lived for 11 years and could see the glacier almost shrinking before my eyes. Climate change is a reality and, as the hon. Member for Glenrothes said, it is affecting countries such as Bangladesh right now.

Hon. Members have already referred to goal 16, on peaceful and inclusive societies. Without peace and inclusion and without greater equality within societies, we will not see development. I have just mentioned the Congo, and it is rare that there is development in the absence of peace; it takes much more effort.

I again want to mention Tanzania, where I had the pleasure to live. With the exception of the short war with Uganda, it has by and large been at peace since independence in 1961. Very few Tanzanians seek refuge elsewhere, because they want to stay in Tanzania, which is a peaceful and largely well-governed country. It is a poor country, but people want to stay there. Goal 16 is therefore absolutely crucial.

I again thank hon. Members for giving us the opportunity to discuss the SDGs today, but we must revisit them in detail every year so that we can be challenged and see where we have fallen short.