Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
The Secretary of State for International Development (Priti Patel)
This year we have significantly increased our support, providing a further £80 million of humanitarian aid to support more than 9 million people affected across the region. I can assure my hon. Friend that we are working to tackle poverty and the crisis in the region at source, rather than waiting for the consequences to reach us domestically.
Jeremy Lefroy
There are more than 2.6 million displaced people in the area, 6.4 million people are facing food insecurity, and a public health emergency has been declared in four countries, together with the Central African Republic, in response to a polio outbreak, yet United Nations appeals are only one third funded or less. What more can the UK Government do to bring this crisis to the world’s attention?
Priti Patel
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to an appalling situation facing the region, and more must be done to meet the humanitarian needs. The UN needs that help to increase its capacity and develop. As to what more can be done, we encourage Governments across the world in the donor community to step up their contributions, just as we have, because the humanitarian response required must be funded now. With my hon. Friend and with the UK Government, we are challenging everyone to step up and do more.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Hurd
If that is the wish of the House, I am sure that both Departments will listen to it carefully. We are extremely concerned about the situation and have been for very many months. I am in regular contact with the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge), who has responsibility for Africa, about what he is doing on the diplomatic front and what we are doing in terms of planning contingencies in the event of an escalation of the humanitarian crisis.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
Young people from specific communities are being taken from their homes, tortured and then killed. We have a deep crisis in Burundi: a President in denial who refuses to accept the validity of the Arusha peace process. What can the UK Government do to encourage other neighbouring African countries to take this matter even more seriously than they appear to be doing at the moment?
Mr Hurd
I share my hon. Friend’s concern and passion about this situation. I assure him that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and I work together extremely closely to put whatever pressure we can on countries that may have influence, and to ensure that we are in a position to do the right thing in providing support for the Burundian people.
Developing Countries: Jobs and Livelihoods
Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered jobs and livelihoods in developing countries.
I draw attention to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
“A good job can change a person’s life, and the right jobs can transform entire societies. Governments need to move jobs to center stage to promote prosperity and fight poverty”.
Those are the words of Dr Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, in his introduction to the 2013 World Development Report. In 2014, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development said:
“Growth reduces poverty through jobs…raising incomes for individuals through the dignity of work and providing tax receipts for governments to fund basic public services like health and education.”
On the other hand, the lack of jobs and the opportunity to earn a living fuels discontent and unrest and drives economic migration. We are seeing the consequences right now, which is yet another reason why working in partnership around the world is both the right thing to do and very much in our national interest.
In sustainable development goal 8, UN member Governments commit that by 2030 they will achieve
“full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value”.
Just last year the International Development Committee published a report on jobs and livelihoods. One of its recommendations was that jobs and livelihoods were “such an important issue” that its successor Committee in this Parliament should take it up
“to assess what progress has been made.”
I am sure that that will happen in the coming years, but I wanted to ensure that the matter was raised in the House. I am delighted to see so many colleagues present. Other members of the International Development Committee would have been here, but the timing of the debate clashes with a meeting of its Sub-Committee on the Independent Commission for Aid Impact.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend feel that the Prime Minister’s initiative to make a number of MPs, such as myself, trade envoys will contribute to the work he is describing, given the wide role we have been given? How much does he think the prosperity fund will play a role in helping to develop local industries and situations to enable the creation of new jobs?
Jeremy Lefroy
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He is doing fine work as a trade envoy for Nigeria, which is vital, because British investment around the world will help to create jobs. The prosperity fund will provide opportunities for people to develop that work. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.
The 2013 World Development Report estimated that, globally, 200 million disproportionately young people are unemployed, with a further 620 million young people neither working, nor looking for work. Due to age profile and population growth, the report estimates that a further 600 million jobs will need to be found in the next 15 years just to keep employment rates constant. Personally, I would put that figure even higher, at closer to 1 billion.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. He is discussing the figures and alluded to the fact that we would like to go further. Does he agree that it is almost a pipe-dream that the sustainable development goal that appears to indicate the elimination of poverty and unemployment, particularly in developing countries, will be achieved by 2030? We really need radically to reassess what we are doing to achieve that goal.
Jeremy Lefroy
The hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point. One reason why I called for this debate is because not nearly enough work is going on around the world. The UK is taking a lead, but he is absolutely right that much more needs to be done here and around the world.
In many countries, much of the work is subsistence agriculture and low-income self-employment—that is true for something like 50% of the 3 billion people working worldwide. Making ends meet is extremely difficult. I have to admit that all the figures I have cited are imprecise and sometimes speculative, which is a problem. We do not have accurate data, but I hope we will see more in future. It is about not only data but action, but action depends on good data.
The World Development Report found that: first, there are too few productive waged jobs in modern, formal sectors; secondly, most people are engaged in very low-productivity, seasonal or subsistence work in both rural and urban areas; thirdly, there are large gaps in job opportunities for women, youth and marginalised groups; fourthly, much work is in poor conditions, or is unsafe or risky, including in formal employment; and fifthly, many labour market-related institutions are ineffective, including skills institutions.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I apologise that I cannot stay for the whole debate, but I am going to an event in the House of Lords to mark Small Charity Week and speak about the importance of small charities in international development. Does he agree that many small and grassroots organisations have an important role to play in equipping people in developing countries with precisely the kinds of skills he is talking about, which they need in order to move into productive employment?
Jeremy Lefroy
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I will give an example of that later in my speech, but he is absolutely right. I made a similar point in Monday’s debate in this Chamber on foreign aid expenditure.
What can be done? I shall give several possible solutions. First, let us work with what we have. I shall start with agriculture, because it is at the heart of the economies of most developing countries. It provides most of the work and a considerable share of GDP, Government income and exports. It also provides the basis for local manufacturing. Even in developed economies such as ours, food and drink production is the largest manufacturing sector. Why should that not be the case in developing countries?
Although all countries will of course wish to diversify into other sectors and reduce reliance on agriculture, that is not the same as neglecting agriculture. That mistake has been made far too often in the past, both by Governments and by their aid-funded advisers. I am glad to say that things have changed over the past three decades. Countries such as India and Vietnam, and more recently Ghana, Tanzania and Ethiopia—to name but a few of many—have given much more prominence to agriculture and increased their support of it. The same is true of development agencies, especially the Department for International Development. I welcome that.
Working with what we have in agriculture also means working with the smallholder farmers who are its backbone. When I started to work with smallholder farmers nearly 30 years ago, the view of many was that they were on the way out, and that the future of agriculture was large-scale farming. In fact, they are more important than ever, providing food security even in conflict zones. For example, in the 1970s Angola produced a similar amount of coffee to Uganda, but Angola’s coffee was almost all produced on large estates, while Uganda’s was produced by smallholders. Both countries went through long periods of turbulence. Today, Uganda’s coffee production is the same as it was back then, if not more, but Angola’s coffee production has almost disappeared. Smallholder farmers are incredibly resilient.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. He has vast experience of developing countries. Does he agree that there needs to be an emphasis on educating young people so that there are links with the business community? He will know that every year in the House there are campaigns to get children in developing countries into education. That would help them on the pathway to jobs, no matter how little.
Jeremy Lefroy
I agree entirely. I shall address that issue in a moment, because it is vital.
I have a couple of other examples of sectors in which we can work with what we have. Hospitality is important in every developing country. It is about not only international tourism, but looking after people in one’s own country and wider region. Hilton estimates that, if there is proper investment around the world, the hospitality sector alone could create an additional 70 million jobs over the next decade. Apart from agriculture and agricultural processing, construction is very likely to create and sustain jobs and livelihoods in most parts of developing countries. I shall say a little more about that later in my speech. We must also consider local services. Services are often neglected in favour of large manufacturing investments, yet in every town and city, along every main street, one will see service businesses. We need to support and encourage them, because if every service business employed one more person, millions more people would be employed throughout the developing world.
Secondly, not only should we work with what we have, but we must not stand still. Everyone wishes to see a better life for their family. Incomes from agriculture can be improved in many ways. That subject is worth an entire debate in itself, but, to be brief, they include enhanced productivity through better inputs, advice, irrigation, finance, diversification, storage to reduce crop losses, and access to markets and to information about those markets. In other words, that means moving on from subsistence agriculture.
DFID’s recently published conceptual framework on agriculture puts it well. It says that there is
“the assumption that sustained wealth creation and a self-financed exit from poverty depend, in the long-term, on economic transformation and the majority of the rural poor finding productive and better paid employment outside of primary agricultural production”—
note that the framework says primary—
“Despite the need for this transition, agricultural growth and downstream processing and productivity growth are likely to be important, if not essential, as a continued source, if not driver, of growth.”
When I was involved in buying cocoa from smallholder farmers, we saw the price per kilo paid to farmers, and hence their income, rise at least fourfold over two or three years as result of a combination of improved quality, better logistics, a higher world market price and a greater percentage of that price being paid to the farmers. It also depended on having a reliable buyer prepared to take a long-term approach, rather than one driven by short-term trading considerations. The farmers’ improved incomes not only sustained and improved their own livelihoods but created jobs at a tremendous rate. The money stayed in the local economy to support input dealers, schools, clinics, general stores and bars. That, in turn, created jobs in local and national manufacturing and service businesses. I am a believer not in trickle-down economics, but in trickle-up economics, and smallholder agriculture is at the heart of that.
I have concentrated on agriculture, but the need not to stand still applies to all the other sectors I mentioned. In hospitality, training, good-quality service and investment meet the needs of nationals, not just tourists. There is no reason why someone cannot provide an excellent hotel or tourist spot for their own population. They do not need to rely on a few hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of overseas visitors.
Construction jobs can be enhanced through a formal apprenticeship scheme of the kind I mentioned. They can also be supported by placing specific requirements on contractors in large infrastructure projects to employ and properly train local people in their work. That is increasingly happening, but it needs to be extended to the most senior levels of the contract, not just the grassroots workers. Skills are best transferred in the heat of building a major road, bridge, airport or railway line.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman also recognise the importance of urban planning, in particular for the foundations it lays for economic development? We need to do more on that.
Jeremy Lefroy
That is a very interesting point. I agree. We see the consequences of poor urban planning in many parts of the world. In that context and the general context of construction, I would like to ask the Minister whether all the infrastructure and construction projects that DFID supports now have clauses that require the training and development of local skills, rather than just bringing in professionals and others from outside.
Thirdly, we must act locally and regionally, not just from the capital city. People working at the grassroots are the best at creating large numbers of jobs, so Governments and aid organisations need to concentrate their work there, not just in capitals or large cities. The Bangladesh-based international development agency BRAC is effective at doing that, as I saw in Babati in Tanzania—a small town south of Arusha, which the International Development Committee visited in 2014. Charities such as Hand in Hand, set up by the Swedish entrepreneur Percy Barnevik, also work outside the main cities and capitals.
In Nigeria, which the International Development Committee visited in March, DFID has an office in Kano. I think it is the only major aid organisation based in Kano, which gives it the advantage of having a greater appreciation of the situation on the ground. I would encourage the same elsewhere. I would like to see DFID staff based in regional towns and cities, not just capitals. Given modern communication technology, we do not need expensive infrastructure to do that, and I think many would welcome the chance to do their work outside the bubble of a congested, expensive capital city.
Regional trade is vital. DFID has some excellent programmes—in particular, TradeMark East Africa, which, like many things I am going to talk about, is worth an entire debate itself. I will not say more about it at this stage, other than that I believe it has done some excellent work in breaking down trade barriers across the region.
Fourthly, we need to embrace job creation in public services, which are sometimes forgotten. Building public services, such as health and education, provides huge job opportunities. The NHS is the UK’s largest employer by far. At the moment, in Tanzania there is one doctor for every 25,000 people, whereas in the UK it is something like one for every 350. If Tanzania increased its number of doctors to one for every 2,000 people, that would create more than 20,000 highly skilled roles in that country alone, and probably more than 100,000 in total in the health sector. I am very glad to hear that this month Tanzania is considering increasing its health spending substantially in its budget. If that happens, there will be greater employment in the health sector. The same applies to education.
Of course, there is an argument that that depends on increasing Government revenue. That is absolutely true, but it also depends on choices about how Government revenue is spent. It is a virtuous circle: greater access to healthcare and education helps people’s productivity, and hence increases the income that generates taxes. I do not have an estimate of how many additional jobs will be created in developing countries if staffing and education reached just one quarter of developed countries’ levels, but it would be in the millions globally, and almost all would be filled by the young people who need them most.
Fifthly, we need to be inclusive. We need to ensure that the work covers everybody, and women and girls must be at the heart of it. Policies that exclude people are not only wrong, but bad for jobs and livelihoods, and hence economic growth.
Sixthly, there must be access to the right kind of finance, without which we cannot create jobs and livelihoods. Again, a separate debate is required on that issue, so I will limit myself to two examples. Small and growing businesses, which will create the most jobs and need finance, tend to be seen as risky. Commercial banks are increasingly risk averse in developing countries, as they are in developed countries, as they implement capital adequacy rules designed, understandably, to protect depositors. Loans come with high security requirements, so finance will increasingly need to come in forms that are not so restrictive. The providers will need to be willing to take on risk—that applies as much to the UK as to developing countries. The last thing we should do is discourage entrepreneurs by promising them destitution if things go wrong, which is pretty much what commercial banks in developing countries do: they take everything away if the loan goes bad.
The Economist recently published an article with examples of that kind of finance, including GroFin and Equity for Tanzania. I have to declare an interest: I helped to found Equity for Tanzania, and I am director of its charitable parent organisation in the UK. It leases equipment to the growing businesses in Tanzania, and takes as security only the equipment itself. It has the specific aim of job creation. Returning to the point that the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) made, it was supported by a small grant from DFID about 12 years ago and developed into a much larger organisation.
The second example is CDC—formerly the Commonwealth Development Corporation—which invests in larger business. It has the specific aim, set up by the previous Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), to create jobs and livelihoods, and to work in the most needy countries. I welcome that.
Finally—this also relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North—we need education and training. A strong and diverse economy built from the grassroots also needs a vibrant education and training system that teaches not simply the essential building blocks—mathematics, sciences and languages—but the skills that people need to work for themselves or run a small enterprise. When the International Development Committee visited Sierra Leone in 2014, President Koroma stressed to us his desire to see more vocational training. In Nepal in 2015 we saw a vocational training scheme run by the Swiss and supported by DFID. There is a tendency to see traditional vocational training models as ineffective, having high capital and running costs and being inaccessible to young people. I believe we need models that are more akin to our apprenticeship schemes, and that are based on working alongside skilled businessmen and women. People should receive financial support for doing so, together with some central training. That is cheaper and more effective.
I also suggest there is a need to embed business and self-employment training within school curricula. Most students will end up working for themselves, or in small enterprises, and they will be better prepared if the training starts in school—again, the same applies in the UK. We do not have enough of that in our school curricula. It would also raise the status of business and self-employment as something a student wishes to do, rather than as a last resort if they cannot go to university or obtain a government or salaried job of some kind. Excellent work on that is done by Youth Business International, part of the Prince’s Trust network, and Peace Child International.
I will now look briefly at DFID’s work, first at its economic strategic development framework, which has five pillars: improving international rules for shared prosperity; supporting the enabling environment for private sector growth; catalysing capital flows and trade in frontier markets; engaging with businesses to help their investments contribute to development; and ensuring that growth is inclusive and benefits girls and women. I have already touched on many of those subjects, so DFID is already covering a lot of the ground. The DFID framework, however, excludes the role of public services in economic development, especially job creation. When the framework is next revised, I ask the Minister to include that in it; it is important.
The second area in which DFID is doing a lot of work is its youth agenda, “Putting young people at the heart of development”, published only in April this year. It focuses on two transitions, between childhood and puberty, or adolescence, and between education and productive work, going from dependence to independence. The April publication has been followed up with a couple of internal papers on youth and jobs, and youth and entrepreneurship. DFID is apparently preparing for a consultation on the issues later this year. That is good, and I welcome it, but we need not only consultations and papers, but action. DFID has the opportunity to lead such work internationally.
Finally, there is the World Bank, which I began with. I declare an interest, as I chair the international Parliamentary Network on the World Bank & International Monetary Fund. In 2014 the bank launched its Solutions for Youth Employment initiative and an umbrella trust fund for jobs, which is supported by DFID. Will the Minister tell us about any progress on that? Are we simply discussing a lot of nice platitudes, welcome though they are, and even policies, or are we talking about real action to create, or support the creation of, those jobs and livelihoods, which are so urgently needed?
In conclusion, I welcome what is being done at the moment. As the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) said, we must go a lot further and a lot faster. I want to see every DFID bilateral programme fully engaged with the host Government on jobs and livelihoods, particularly for young people. They will find an open door, because that will always be one of the top priorities of any responsible Government. That does not necessarily mean large programmes in every country—we need to avoid duplication—but it does mean constant dialogue to see how we can support the Government.
DFID needs to use its influence in all multilaterals to put jobs and livelihoods at the centre of activity, particularly in health and education, which we cannot see as somehow completely divorced from jobs and livelihoods, because they depend on people working in them and having their jobs and livelihoods in those sectors.
Make no mistake, this is possibly the biggest challenge of our generation, along with tackling climate change. Hundreds of millions of young people could be ignored, without hope, seeking to move elsewhere, and at the mercy of people traffickers or extremists, or we could have those same young people engaged, valued and able to contribute where they are.
Jeremy Lefroy
I am most grateful to everybody here for their valuable contributions. We have touched on a huge range of subjects that are vital to consider in relation to jobs and development. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke about the need to tackle unemployment everywhere, and the importance of small projects. The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) mentioned the important work that the Scottish Government do through their development fund, and how critical it is to work with young people. The hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), in a powerful and passionate speech, spoke about the business environment, the importance of tackling corruption, stability and direct investment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond) spoke about many issues, and particularly the importance of the digital economy in the developing world. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) mentioned the importance of education. The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Stuart Blair Donaldson) spoke about the vital nature of partnership working and the work that the Scottish Government have done in partnership with Malawi on Kilombero rice and, indeed, Mzuzu coffee, which I have had the pleasure of tasting. The hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) spoke powerfully about the need to be ambitious and aspirational, and touched on city planning.
The Minister spoke about DFID’s work, which I commend. He indicated that DFID is moving powerfully in the directions in which I would like to see it go. He spoke about infrastructure and Energy Africa, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) instituted last year, and about how that is already making progress.
Above all, there is a passionate desire here to work for inclusive, job-rich growth in developing countries, because that is important for the people in those countries, and because it allows them to stay where they are and not put pressure on our country. It is in their interests and ours.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).
Foreign Aid Expenditure
Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I refer to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Almost all the work that I have seen carried out with the support of DFID tackles individual poverty. It also supports global public goods, which is in the interests of us all. As the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) mentioned earlier, if we take our foot off the gas with diseases such as polio, malaria or neglected tropical diseases, the tremendous work done over the last 15 or 20 years will be undone. We must continue it.
The same is true of the work on water and sanitation referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). DFID’s work has reached 60 million people over the past four years—vulnerable people in remote rural areas and the most difficult of circumstances. We have heard about the work with Syrian refugees who can have an education as a result of the work funded by DFID. Just two or three months ago, the International Development Committee saw the tremendous work being done with children in the north of Nigeria to ensure that they have an education fit for the 21st century, and last year we saw forestry work done over more than 20 years in Nepal, increasing forestation there by around 15%. That is important in tackling climate change.
I want to mention five ways in which DFID could look for improvement. The first is always, where possible, to consider the use of returnable capital instead of grants. In many cases, grants are most appropriate, but in many other cases, particularly involving work with the private sector, it would be better to use concessional lending or returnable capital, which can then be recycled.
The second is maximum leverage. We find, for instance on health, that many of the countries where we work committed in Abuja in 2001 to spend 15% of their budgets on health, but are nowhere near that at the moment. If we can connect the work that we do with them with reaching the target that they themselves set, we will get tremendous leverage from our spending.
The third, mentioned by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), is effective partners such as BRAC. If we can use effective, low-cost partners that are prepared to work in difficult circumstances, we will find that our aid goes much further.
The fourth is to encourage the backing of small grants. Often, as hon. Members have mentioned, grants aimed at organisations working from our own constituencies can do a tremendous amount of good, perhaps matching the money that we raise locally. DFID says that that is sometimes too difficult for it to do.
Finally, DFID needs to be more rigorous in planning and more efficient in spending. There is much more work to be done on that.
Clean Water and Sanitation (Africa)
Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Percy. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing the debate and for speaking so eloquently, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) and the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods).
I will give two examples from my own experience of why this issue is so important. In 1982, I visited for the first time a country that was then a developing country—Peru. I was in the high Andes and visiting a friend of mine, Philip Archer, who was a doctor with a mission there. For the first part of his service—three or four years—he had been a doctor at a health centre. Time after time, the patients who came through his door had diseases that were caused by poor water or lack of water. For his second period of service, he said, “There is no point in my treating the symptoms; I will treat the cause”, so he ended up becoming a public health educator and putting in water systems to help the people of the high Andes.
My second example is perhaps closer to home. My wife ran a public health education programme in northern Tanzania, Kilimanjaro region, for the Evangelical Lutheran Church Northern diocese. As part of the programme, she and her colleagues also saw the problems caused by poor water—not so much on the mountain, where there was plenty of water, although sanitation was sometimes an issue, but on the plains, in particular among the Masai, and elsewhere. She, too, said, “There’s not much point talking to people about health education when they don’t have water, or if they do, they have to walk several kilometres to it.” The problems that that brings have been eloquently described. Collecting water is usually—almost always— done by women or girls. They suffer attacks from wild animals. We heard of people being killed and very badly hurt by crocodiles when collecting water from rivers and, when walking through the bush, by other wild animals. People are also attacked by humans from time to time—they have to cope with all that as well as missing out on their education or livelihood.
With the help of the Rabobank Foundation of the Netherlands, the northern diocese of the Lutheran Church instituted a programme for drilling shallow wells in various villages. In my view that was done in a very sensible manner—I have to say that because my wife was in charge of the project and she is an extremely sensible person, as were her colleagues. They did it under the guidance of the local community, which, first of all, would come to them and say, “Let’s have a shallow well. We really want one.” They then had to show a sign of commitment, so the idea was that the well would be drilled with money from the Rabobank Foundation and other donations, but the villagers would collect the money for the pump. By doing that, they would assume responsibility for the pump and for its maintenance.
By and large, the programme worked well. I shall be going back to Tanzania later this year and I hope to see some of the wells that were drilled up to 20 years ago—or even longer—still in operation and maintained, with the villagers contributing a set amount each month for the pump’s maintenance. Perhaps they will have replaced the pump in that time with the money that they have accumulated.
To me, the programme spoke of a lot of things: first, of the determination of the people themselves. They wanted clean water and could see the impact on their wives and daughters; the women were the loudest in saying, “We want this.” Secondly, these were not massive programmes. This was not a huge project. It involved a few thousand dollars per village and the villagers themselves were able to collect several hundred dollars for the pump. We are therefore talking about small programmes, the impact of which, as we have seen in the International Development Committee, is sometimes overlooked. However, a great deal can be achieved by running a large number of small village and community-based programmes.
At the same time, sanitation was a clear issue. Public health education was the way to convey the importance of good sanitation, and it did not take a lot of money; this was a public health programme that covered several hundred thousand people yet probably cost only a few cents per person per year. People did not have to be given money; once they were told the importance of putting in more modern sanitation and modern toilets, they did so, because they saw how obvious it was. They heard about the consequences of poor sanitation and poor water and did something about it. I will come on to what I would like to ask the Minister at the end, but I am talking now about a relatively modestly funded programme achieving significant results. The educators, who were trained by my wife and her team, would go out into their community, month in, month out, and encourage people to improve the sanitation in their homes and villages.
My final point is about the link with disease, which has already been made very clear and is completely uncontroversial. If we look at the diarrheal diseases, in particular, and one or two others that are classified among the neglected tropical diseases—I declare an interest as chair of the all-party group on malaria and neglected tropical diseases, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire also contributes hugely—we see that many of these diseases are directly linked to a lack of water or poor water and a lack of hygiene. I know that DFID has made neglected tropical diseases a key part of its programme from 2011 onwards. Indeed, under the previous Labour Government, a significant sum of £50 million was committed, which was raised to £240 million over five years under the coalition Government. It has been shown that there is a huge payback from work on neglected tropical diseases—something like £30 to £40 for every £1 invested.
Will the Minister commit, first, to look at the whole area of water and sanitation and see what more can be done? This is a very basic thing. I saw the impact at first hand 35 years ago, yet we are still talking about it. Let us do more.
Secondly, let us do it in a smart way. There are so many programmes around the world. Water Aid is a fantastic organisation that has contributed to many of them, but there are so many programmes that are not big and which perhaps go under the radar. Let us see how we can support them as a country. We may have to go through a larger organisation to do so, but let us ask how we can do more than we are doing at the moment. Let us not hear colleagues come to us and say, “Well, I’ve got a link in my constituency to a water project in Africa, but I cannot get DFID to support it because it is too small.” Excellent programmes such as Aid Match and Aid Direct have made a real impact in this area, but let us make water programmes a priority; they are ideal and they very much fit into that category of spending.
Thirdly, let us look at how we can support health education programmes, which, again, are often fairly low-key but incredibly effective. They can be run through government, faith groups, Churches and community organisations and are often low-cost, involving amounts of money that do not appear on DFID’s radar. There must be ways of ensuring that these programmes are supported, either though some kind of match funding or direct funding, or even possibly, as we have suggested in our Committee, by making funds available to local DFID offices for support, without people having to go through the centre, with the time and effort that that involves.
Finally, I emphasise again the importance of continuing to support neglected tropical diseases alongside the work on WASH—water, sanitation and hygiene. In fact, WASH projects and NTD projects should go together. Even though providing medicines to schoolchildren to get rid of worms is excellent, there is little point in doing that year after year when those children will get worms back immediately because the water is poor. Let us have the two kinds of projects going hand in hand. As the current programmes come to an end and the Department considers the future funding of neglected tropical diseases, I urge the Minister to consider the huge value for money that those programmes provide.
Thank you for chairing the debate, Mr Percy, and I thank the hon. Member for Strangford for securing it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Hurd
The hon. Gentleman is right to point to the enormous success of the Global Fund in making it easier to access medicines. It is important to note that since 2002 the Global Fund has helped reduce deaths from the big three diseases by 40%—a staggering achievement—but there are still too many people dying unnecessarily from those awful diseases, which is why we look forward to a successful replenishment of that very important fund.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
The all-party group on malaria, which I chair, is extremely concerned about resistance to anti-malarial drugs in south-east Asia. The Global Fund is doing a great deal of work on that. Can the Minister update the House on the progress of that work?
Mr Hurd
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his persistent and tireless work in this area. I was with the senior team at the Global Fund the other day in Geneva to discuss it. I have no doubt about its commitment in the face of that challenge. I hope my hon. Friend takes some pride in the fact that the British Government continue to lead in this area, with the recent refresh of the commitment to spend £500 million a year in the battle against malaria in all its forms.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Justine Greening
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In fact, when I had the privilege of chairing the UN Security Council last October, the issue we talked about was the need for the international community and the Security Council itself to look at fragile countries before conflict hits and perhaps to have better early warning systems, whether on human rights or any other area, to highlight where we need to do work in advance to keep peace and stability, rather than having the costly after-effects of responding to war.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
What work is my right hon. Friend doing to ensure that humanitarian aid is joined up with longer-term development aid?
Justine Greening
The world humanitarian summit is a key opportunity for us to knit these agendas together clearly. At the moment, I would describe the humanitarian system as a hospital that only has an accident and emergency department. From the start of such crises, we need not only to think ahead about how we can deal with the day-to-day challenges that refugees and people affected face, but to begin to build in long-term solutions so that they can get their lives back on track. That is why the issues of jobs in particular, getting children into schools and helping host communities—the communities that host the refugees—to cope are so important.
Ebola: Sierra Leone
Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Justine Greening
The work that is under way on the ground aims to ensure that the whole framework that we put in place to tackle the major outbreak swings into action again at the local level. That means the isolation of potential Ebola sufferers. It sits alongside ongoing surveillance work, which was how we picked up this case in the first place. We must continue to emphasise the need for safe burials so that this case does not spread more broadly, and work with communities to deliver that.
I mentioned the hospital and treatment centres that provide the isolation units we need to treat Ebola sufferers effectively, and the lab testing. Those things are legacies of the UK’s work with Sierra Leone, which means that it is now better placed to deal with this case. I emphasise that as we go through the contact tracing period and the quarantine period for high-risk contact, it is inevitable that further cases may emerge. That is all part of the steady eradication of Ebola, and getting to what is called “resilient zero”. Unfortunately, we do not expect it suddenly to switch off overnight, which is why we were keen to ensure that some of the underlying processes remained, as well as having the right people and surveillance in place to deal with such situations.
The hon. Gentleman asked about WHO reform and the emergency response, and he is right about that. We must ensure that resourcing is funded internationally, to enable the WHO to put into practice the new strategies it is now developing. The UK was one of the initial contributors to a fund that was set up to do that within the WHO, and we are strongly lobbying other countries to join us.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
Our thoughts are very much with the people of Sierra Leone. The Secretary of State said last July that the United Kingdom will stay the course until Ebola is defeated. Will she confirm that the UK will stay the course until Sierra Leone, in partnership with its Government, has health systems that are as strong as they need to be to tackle such outbreaks—and indeed all other diseases—in future?
Justine Greening
We will certainly stay the course, and my hon. Friend will be aware that part of our work with Sierra Leone over a number of years has been to strengthen healthcare systems. That has been vital for Sierra Leone and in the context of this outbreak, because there was a point at which people were extremely concerned about the potential of the disease to arrive here in the UK. It is not just in Sierra Leone’s interest that we do this work; it is in our interest to have a WHO that is able to respond effectively to international health emergencies.
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria
Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) for his eloquent speech and for setting out the case so strongly. I declare an interest as a trustee of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and I have previously done work on artemisinin.
The impact of the Global Fund cannot be underestimated. Since its inauguration, we have seen for malaria alone a reduction in deaths of at least 48%, most of them among children. It is largely through the Global Fund that we have seen the possibility of the mass distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets, which cut in half the chances of children catching malaria. The fund has also supported the use of rapid diagnostic tests, which have made rapid diagnosis possible in rural areas for pretty much the first time. Malaria treatment can therefore begin quickly, before the disease has taken hold.
Five hundred and fifteen million treatments for malaria have been provided, largely of the effective artemisinin-based combination therapies, which were previously much too expensive for most people. The Global Fund has without doubt helped to transform the global malaria situation from one that was becoming out of control in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s, to the current situation, where we are speaking with some confidence of elimination—indeed, several countries have become malaria-free.
There have, of course, been problems. The misuse of funds and tools—such as bed nets—and poorly implemented programmes have hit the headlines. However, the Global Fund has always taken such problems seriously and taken action to remedy them. The question is whether the fund is the best way to tackle these diseases in future, and if so, what it needs to change to become even more effective. I am certain that it has a vital role to play. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs said, one of the strongest arguments is that it funds programmes developed by the affected countries themselves. Aid-funded programmes have often been criticised for being the pet projects of the donors without reference to those who are supposed to benefit. The Global Fund takes the opposite approach.
It is important that the Global Fund looks hard at how it operates. I shall mention very briefly four things that it should look at. First, it could do more to ensure that its programmes are fully integrated into the health systems of the countries that it supports and strengthens. I would have much more to say on that, but there is not enough time. I would be very happy to speak to my hon. Friend the Minister about that on another occasion.
Secondly, the global community needs to consider the case either for a separate fund for neglected tropical diseases or for including such diseases in the work of the Global Fund, with increased funding. Diseases such as lymphatic filariasis, soil-transmitted helminths, trachoma and so on—there are 17 of them in total—affect 1.4 billion people on the planet.
Thirdly, the Global Fund needs to report more regularly and more strongly on the work that it does. I was perplexed that the fund did not respond more strongly to adverse reports in the press last year of malaria bed nets being misused. They were indeed being misused, but it was in only a tiny minority of cases. It is vital that corruption and the diversion of funds are investigated and offenders caught, and the Global Fund does that, as it did in Sierra Leone in 2014. At the same time, it needs constantly to point out just how many lives continue to be saved every year as a result of its work across the three diseases. I would like to see quarterly, not annual, reporting.
Fourthly, the Global Fund needs to keep a very close eye on the fight against resistance to antimalarial drugs and the insecticide on bed nets, and allocate money accordingly. The same goes for multi-drug-resistant TB, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs mentioned. If not checked, such resistance threatens the substantial gains made over the past 15 years. The importance of the Global Fund to the battle against malaria cannot be overestimated. We were losing that battle but we are now, I hope, on the winning side.
Syria: Madaya
Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Justine Greening
The hon. Lady has set out very clearly just how much work the RAF has done and the challenges of carrying out airdrops in this particular situation. DFID and the MOD have never had a closer working relationship in providing humanitarian support to those who most need it around the world. Whether in tackling Ebola, responding to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines or saving the lives of people on Mount Sinjar by dropping water, the MOD, and the RAF in particular, have played a critical role, and I have no doubt that they will continue to do so.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I thank the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Jo Cox) for her urgent question and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for her answer and all the work she and her Department are doing 24/7. Will she make it a top priority to send food not just to Madaya but to wherever there is the opportunity to do so? Does this not show the importance of the UN system? Whatever its faults—there have been many—it is the only game in town, and the UK must support it in every way possible and encourage our friends, our allies and indeed the whole world community to do the same.
Justine Greening
I agree wholeheartedly. It shows that in such circumstances our main leverage is the existence of a rules-based international system. Human rights are universal. It is occasionally argued at the UN that sovereignty is more important than human rights, but human rights do not depend on where someone is; they are universal and apply to people wherever they are, including in Madaya.