Yemen

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The Crown Prince’s response, on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was to point out the need to control weapons that might threaten Saudi Arabia being smuggled into Yemen and used by those with whom the Saudis are in conflict, as has been the case for a period of time. We worry that the sophistication of the missiles being smuggled in has increased, which has thus increased not only the risk to Saudi Arabia and neighbouring places, but the risk of the conflict escalating and becoming still worse. There is a serious concentration on trying to prevent that, because it looks likely to prolong the conflict and make the humanitarian situation still worse.

At the same time, I understand that the Crown Prince was absolutely aware, as the public statement by the Saudis made clear, that the restrictions were intended not to cause the humanitarian situation about which there are now concerns, but to deal with the arms supplies being smuggled in. The partners, the agencies with which we work and we ourselves are impressing on the coalition that such a situation may be the unintended effect. That is why the restrictions need to be lifted, and there has to be the access for which the hon. Lady is looking.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Given that the United Nations has recently said that if the blockade is not lifted we are likely to see the worst famine for decades and given the outbreak of the deadly disease diphtheria and the 1 million cases of cholera, may I urge my right hon. Friend to make some kind of statement—not necessarily an oral statement, but one in writing—to this House every week, because the situation is developing daily and weekly, and we must be kept informed about it? I hope there will be a turn for the better.

[Alistair Burt]

I will talk with the Department and the House authorities about what the best way to do that would be. I quite understand my hon. Friend’s point. If there is a way to make sure that adequate information from Government and the other agencies involved is made available rapidly and effectively, of course I will try to do that.

International Freedom of Religion or Belief Day

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I apologise that I came to the debate only recently because of attendance at a Select Committee, Mr Rosindell. I shall keep my remarks short in case other hon. Members have already covered what I want to say. And what I want to say comes very much from my own family’s experience—not recent experience, but experience as a Huguenot family back in the 1600s, when the family came from persecution in France to the freedom that there was in England and, indeed, in other parts of the United Kingdom and other parts of the world.

There are three areas where I believe that the freedom of religion, of thought and of expression is vital and it is very important that our Government proclaim that in a modest, factual and responsible way around the world. It is not something to be ashamed or shy of, but something to be celebrated.

The first area concerns the economic consequence of freedom of faith or religion. The Huguenots were industrialists in France. When they were driven out, it cost France a substantial industrial base, particularly in textiles, but they brought that industrial base to England and other parts of what would become the United Kingdom. As a raw material producing country with the great wool barons of East Anglia, England became a textile-producing country and was one of the bases for the expansion of industry in these islands. So a practical reason for toleration is that it allows people with initiative, imagination and drive to come to your country. We have seen that on so many occasions.

One of the most recent examples in the United Kingdom was when Uganda, under the dictatorship of Idi Amin, decided that it did not want its Asian community any more. The Asian community that came from Uganda to the UK and other parts of the world—but mainly to the UK—as a result of that expulsion has been of enormous benefit to this country. The welcome that this country and other countries gave was both the right thing to do and very much in our interest.

[Bob Blackman]

My hon. Friend is making a good contribution to this debate. Does he also recall that the wonderful people expelled from Uganda, whom I regard as Britain’s gain and Uganda’s loss, were denied access to return to India, the nation of their birth, by the Indian Government at the time? That is why a Conservative Government in this country encouraged them to come here, and they have contributed tremendously to the economy and wealth of this country.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I am most grateful for that intervention; I was not aware of those details. I would point out that the same people who were welcomed here are now contributing greatly to the economy of Uganda and other parts of the world. The blessings that they have received in this country, very much by dint of their own hard work and application, they want to spread around the world. They are a fine example of what can be done when a people who are persecuted in one country and welcomed into another then decide to share the benefits of their prosperity with other countries around the world. I would also say that about Huguenots, who have made a great contribution in this country, in Canada, Australia, South Africa and Germany, and in what were then the Low Countries and now the Netherlands and Belgium.

Religious persecution is counterproductive. It drives out people who have a strong faith. Often with a strong faith comes a strong commitment to the community and therefore the economy, and to the common wealth of the nation, so I urge all Governments that persecute religious minorities to simply look to their own interests. They are absolutely doing the wrong thing for the future of their own country. They are narrowing the economic interests of their country and narrowing the culture and political space within their own country.

Secondly, I would look at the benefits to science. It has often been said that there is not much contact between science and religion, but I would say absolutely the opposite. What often drives scientific investigation is a desire to know more about this wonderful creation of God. My own father-in-law, the late Professor Donald MacKay, who was from the north-east of Scotland, always proclaimed that that was the most wonderful part of these islands. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I will not comment on that, but I can hear some affirmation. He worked with Alan Turing and many other distinguished scientists. He was a physiologist and brain scientist and also a very strong believer who wrote many books on the relationship between science and faith, which are well worth reading. I could give many other examples of scientists who have derived their desire for the investigation of this world from their faith and trust in God.

Thirdly, I want to stress what religious persecution takes from a country in terms of its culture. If some of the most creative people—those who have a faith or no faith—are persecuted and driven out, a huge amount of the country’s culture is lost, whether it is in its literature, music or graphic arts. There are many examples, but I will give just one small example of how our great writers and artists in this country have drawn upon their faith. Jane Austen grew up in a vicarage in Hampshire and the next-door parish was the parish of the Reverend Lefroy, hence the connections between her family and the Lefroy family over the past 200 years. It is clear that that experience of growing up in an atmosphere in which there was a strong and vibrant Christian faith had a great influence on Jane Austen’s writing.

Would Jane Austen’s novels have been written in a country in which there was repression? Possibly. We have seen examples of great literature that has come out of repression, but I would argue that a free country where people are allowed to follow their faith and to express themselves in a way they believe is right, and where there is no fear of the law coming down on them because of what they think or believe, is the best possible environment in which to produce great literature or great music. Thank you, Mr Rosindell. I appreciate the opportunity to say those few words.

Hurricane Irma: Government Response

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

The conditions when Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel Mounts Bay arrived at Anguilla were still very severe, but what they did have was the helicopter so they were able not only to do an immediate assessment across Anguilla but to restore power to the hospital and get the airport going again. What they did was significant. In terms of landing on difficult windy sands, the vessel did not do so on that occasion partly because we were trying to maximise or optimise the utility of the ship by getting it to do what it could urgently to make do and mend in Anguilla before going to the British Virgin Islands, where it became clear that the devastation was greater and where the population is larger. Before the threat of Hurricane Jose came in, which would have meant that they had to sail away again, they brought urgent help to the British Virgin Islands having left half their supplies to help Anguilla. Those operational decisions are to be admired.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

HMS Illustrious helped greatly during Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, as did HMS Bulwark during Ebola in Sierra Leone, and now RFA Mounts Bay in the Caribbean followed by HMS Ocean. It is absolutely vital that the Royal Navy and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary have the vessels to back up British work on international development, and we know that HMS Ocean is due to be decommissioned. Can the Minister assure me that this is being fed right into the naval shipbuilding strategy?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

There is a shipbuilding strategy for two new aircraft carriers, but obviously on the detail of our shipbuilding and fleet the answer should come from Ministers from the Ministry of Defence rather than me, but I reiterate that Mounts Bay did an incredible job, is perfectly well suited to the task and had been pre-positioned with appropriate supplies. That is the answer to the question asked by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), the Chairman of the International Development Committee, because to take supplies in from a ship that has not faced the risk of those supplies being destroyed is the best way of bringing urgent relief to where it is most needed. I would point out as well, on the question of co-operation, that we have HMS Ocean leaving Gibraltar, which will also carry helicopters on behalf of the French.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I stand here as a Kennedy scholar, which is a very similar structure, and we have a fantastic programme of Chevening scholars sponsored by the Foreign Office. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has confirmed that he will raise the Fulbright scholarships with Secretary Tillerson when he next sees him.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

With 250,000 people from Burundi now refugees as a result of the repression and human rights abuses in that country, what is the Foreign Secretary doing to stimulate dialogue to resolve the political impasse there?

[Rory Stewart]

The situation in Burundi is very disturbing. We call, above all, on the Burundian President to respect the Arusha accords and to give proper space to the former Tanzanian Prime Minister in leading the peace talks. In Burundi, as in so many countries in the world, the only long-term solution is a political solution to a humanitarian crisis.

Global Education: G20 Summit

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg]

The Minister asks a very reasonable question, which I was going to come on to, but I will answer now.

The previous International Development Committee, which I chaired, was looking at education. In April, we wrote to the Secretary of State with a proposal that I will refer to in a moment. The solution that we identified is one with which the Minister may or may not agree: we should slow down the shift of ODA spending from DFID to other Government Departments. We want to have a good evidence base for additional spending, and the money saved by that slowing down would enable our proposed increase in spending on education. I will come to that in more detail now.

Before the general election, the Committee was taking evidence on education. As I have just said, I wrote to the Secretary of State in April, urging DFID to increase the percentage of its annual spend on education to no less than 10% of its budget, which would represent an additional 2.5% on the current spend of 7.5%. Many organisations, such as the Malala Fund, RESULTS and others, have urged the Government to go much further and commit 15% of the DFID budget to education.

Since we made our recommendation, the latest DFID figures for the budget spent on education have fallen slightly from that 7.56%, so in the first instance the Government need to reverse that decline and then to head to at least 10%. I would be grateful if the Minister—perhaps not in the debate today, but afterwards—provided me with a complete breakdown of all UK ODA spent on education, including that from other Departments as well as DFID.

I now move on to some of the multilateral organisations, which are more directly relevant to the G20 summit. The Global Partnership for Education supports 65 developing countries to ensure that every child receives a quality basic education, giving priority to the poorest, the most vulnerable and those living in countries affected by fragility and conflict. Along with Education Cannot Wait, the GPE forms an essential part of the multilateral landscape on education, with its focus on low-income countries and basic education, where support is most needed. The GPE has been through significant reform in recent years and, as pointed out by DFID’s multilateral development review, it now aligns well with UK priorities.

The view reached by the previous IDC—I am delighted to welcome to his place my friend, the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), an assiduous Committee member since 2010—was that the United Kingdom needs to take a lead during the Global Partnership for Education replenishment round for 2018 to 2020. A substantial contribution from the UK to that replenishment would ensure that the GPE continues to achieve results and, we hope, would act as a lever to encourage and press other Governments to commit their support to funding the work of the GPE.

I also take the opportunity to urge the Government to push for this weekend’s G20 leaders’ communiqué to include a reference to the importance of fully funding the key multilateral bodies, the Global Partnership for Education, Education Cannot Wait and the international finance facility for education.

One of the greatest challenges to face the world in achieving global goal 4 is tackling inequality in education. The theme of “Leaving no one behind” is indeed at the heart of the sustainable development goals. The most marginalised children, including girls, disabled children and refugees, are those most at risk of missing out. A very large proportion of the world’s children are clearly being left behind, and reaching them will be a critical challenge for DFID in the years ahead.

The education of girls is essential, and DFID has rightly made it a priority in recent years. Breaking down the barriers that prevent girls from getting access to education is a huge challenge. I welcome the innovative approach of the Girls’ Education Challenge and recognise that the lessons learned from its programmes could be vital in finding out what works in supporting more girls to receive an education. The G20 rightly has a focus on female economic empowerment. Education is clearly a crucial component of the economic empowerment of women and of economic opportunity for other marginalised sections of society. I urge the Government and the G20 to recognise the vital role that education performs in the economic empowerment of women, especially in the developing world. This summit is an opportune moment for them to do so.

UNICEF estimates that 90% of disabled children in the developing world—nine out of 10 disabled children in the world’s poorest countries—are out of school. That is an extraordinary statistic. The British Council highlighted that although DFID has had a strong focus on girls’ education, it

“has had less focus on children with disabilities and special educational needs”.

The Secretary of State has acknowledged that. She said in March:

“Disability is shamefully the most under-prioritised, under-resourced area in development.”

I agree, as did the last International Development Committee. We recommended in our letter that DFID should place a greater emphasis, akin to its focus on girls’ education, on working to ensure that disabled children have access to appropriate high-quality education. I mentioned the remarkable programme run by Leonard Cheshire that we witnessed in Kisumu in Kenya. That is the sort of programme that I hope DFID not only continues to fund but increases support for, where there is a proven case for doing so.

Let me say something about early childhood education. We know from academic evidence that, by the age of five, a child’s brain is around 90% developed. Early childhood education is crucial for cognitive development and learning outcomes, so investing in pre-primary education can make a real difference to children’s life chances and thereby help to reduce inequality and, indeed, deliver excellent value for money.

It is estimated that, for every dollar invested in early childhood education, the return can be as high as $17 for the most disadvantaged children. Despite that, a new report by Theirworld shows that 85% of children in low-income countries do not have access to pre-primary education. Theirworld states that more than 200 million children under the age of five risk failing to reach their potential.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I apologise for arriving late, Mr Stringer—I was in another debate when this one began.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) and I saw a good example of the importance of early childhood education in Tanzania earlier this year. We saw pre-school children being educated in a small rural community, in preparation for their attendance at a primary school. That was a DFID-funded project, and it is exactly the kind of thing that addresses the need that the hon. Gentleman so eloquently set out.

[Stephen Twigg]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The example that he gave from Tanzania and my example from Uganda demonstrate that DFID is supporting some brilliant programmes for disabled children and for early childhood. If DFID is able to find the funds to increase its education spending, those are the sorts of programmes that should be protected and, where the evidence is there, expanded—either into other countries or in the countries where they already exist.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Stringer. I will make only a few comments—I had not expected to be called, but I am very grateful to you for calling me.

In the course of my membership of the International Development Committee, I have seen several excellent education programmes that underlined to me how extremely important this subject is. I recall a visit—in 2011, I think—to a small private school that had been set up just outside Lahore by a lady, with some helpers, for the children of the workers of a brick factory. The children had been working in that factory, some of them for many years. This was their first opportunity for education, and the thrill on their faces could be seen as they encountered the wonders of education for the very first time. It was a small private school—the state was not able to provide that—it was basic and it was set up pretty much in the open air by an extremely dedicated lady, but it was doing a tremendous service.

Another programme I recall—I think I was with the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron)—was in Kano in northern Nigeria. We visited a primary school with an enrolment of about 13,000 pupils. It was by far the biggest school I have ever come across. Again, the keenness of all the children could be seen. DFID’s work there was in providing a modern curriculum on the basis of which the children were taught. The school educated boys and girls together, and if I remember rightly, it also had special provision for disabled children. The city of Kano had been subjected to major terrorist attacks just one year previously, but here were boys and girls whose parents were absolutely determined to send their children to be educated.

There is also the example of pre-school provision that I mentioned in my intervention. To answer my hon. Friend the Minister’s point, it was very much supported by the Tanzanian Government, who were determined to put money into it. Young children were being taught Swahili and maths—basic education—in a church made of thatch, mud and wood, because that was the only public building in that village. They were taught by a volunteer from the local community who was paid for by the local community not in salary but in board and lodging. The local community combined with DFID and the Tanzanian Government to ensure that that pre-primary education was in place. We then visited the primary school where some of those children went after spending a year or two in that pre-primary education, and heard directly from the teachers how important it had been that the children had received that education.

I came to realise that education is so important through our work in the International Development Committee in the previous Parliament, under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). He is absolutely passionate about this issue, for which I commend him. I hope he is re-elected as Chair, so that he can continue that work in this Parliament. Education is so important because, unless we have first-class education systems throughout the world, people will not achieve the jobs, livelihoods and other things that they have the potential to achieve, and that are absolutely vital for development. They will not have the health services that we know can be achieved, as we have seen in our own country.

Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby for all his work on this, and I trust that this will be a major theme of the International Development Committee’s work in this Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Rory Stewart)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. As always, we have had a very good debate. I am particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) for initiating the debate. He is a real inspiration, as are the other hon. Members in the Chamber. It is quite unusual in politics—it sometimes feels unusual, anyway—to have people who seem so sincere, so committed to an issue and so interested in the detail, rather than simply being interested in posturing, and that really comes across. One reason why the whole House feels strongly that the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby has been an excellent Chair of his Committee is precisely that he approached the role in a very fair, objective and ethical fashion. It is therefore a great pleasure to be involved in this debate.

An enormous number of things have been touched on today. The basic message that I would like to get across is that the real problem in this field is not the big ideas, but the implementation. The really big problem, underneath all the very good contributions and really good points made by hon. Members, is that the situation on the ground in many developing countries is an absolute disgrace. Very sadly, what is happening even in those schools that exist is really depressing. I will try to touch on some of the points that have been made, but the scale of the problem is the central issue.

The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) made a series of really good points—points that it is easy to relate to. They were points about disability, about schools that she has seen in which there are no windows and children are wearing gloves and—I am imagining the Shatila camp in south Lebanon, where there are real problems—about electricity. Very good points were also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby about issues such as pre-school education. The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor), made a very strong statement about refugees in Uganda, and others have made statements about disability.

The fundamental underlying problem is that before we start talking about all those things, we have to acknowledge that the basic primary education in most of the countries that we are discussing is not even beginning to be good enough. Nearly 67% of children coming out of primary schools in the developing world basically cannot read or write. One of the tragic choices that an international development agency faces is how to get the balance right between making sure that the schools and teachers that already exist are teaching something of value to their children and a dozen really good ideas about how we can improve things by bringing new people into schools, getting girls into secondary school, improving vocational education or addressing the crisis in classrooms.

Money is one of the aspects of this problem. This excellent report, “The Learning Generation: Investing in education for a changing world”, put together by the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, estimates that $3 trillion needs to be spent on education annually within a pretty short period. We can have a discussion about whether DFID should spend 8%, 10% or 12%, but the amount it currently spends on education is one five-thousandth of the amount that would be needed to address global education. Even if we took up the challenge from the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby, ramped that up and spent 100% of the entire British aid budget on education, that would still be only one five-hundredth, or 0.2%, of the global need.

Huge theoretical problems underlie this endless debate. One of the challenges is what kind of jobs or employment opportunities are available to children in the developing world when they come out of school. One of the challenges around vocational education is working out what jobs there are at the end of it. Like the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, I was in a vocational training centre in Nigeria last week. I was in Kaduna. I do not know whether we were looking at the same centre, but in the centre I was at the carpentry and construction schools were indeed dominated by men; the women were largely in the hospitality and sewing schools.

The fundamental problem underlying that issue is that it is not clear that there are any jobs in Kaduna for people who sew, cook, make buildings or do carpentry—the skills that those people emerge with at the end. At the end of a six or twelve-month course, are they skilled enough as carpenters or construction workers to be valuable to a business? Many of the employers we talked to in Kaduna in northern Nigeria are much less interested in those hard vocational skills than they are in soft skills—someone’s ability to engage with customers and their work ethic, discipline and desire to turn up to school.

There are huge questions in the report around family planning. All of us can see the correlation between investment in girls going into secondary education and girls having smaller families, which is very good for their health. But what exactly is that relationship? Is it that what they learn in school makes them less likely to have children or is it simply about the fact that they are in school? If it is the latter—if the fact that someone stays in high school means they are less likely to have children—will the social pressures that drive people into early marriage simply mean, conversely, that those same girls are removed from school?

The claim is made that if someone in the developing world goes to primary school, their income over their lifetime will be five times higher than that of their parents. But if we got everybody into primary school, would that be true? We would effectively be claiming that we could guarantee to quintuple the GDP per capita of these countries by getting 100% primary education. That, presumably, is not true.

Above all, we have to start from a position of realism. We agree violently with everybody in this room that education matters, but we must get a clear sense about why it matters and the unexpected ways in which it does. There are ways in which it might matter for family planning, but exactly why does it? How does it work for skills? Imagine a craftsperson in central Asia. What exactly are they learning in school that will allow them to supply calligraphy to a Saudi hotel or get carpets into a London market? Is it their literacy and numeracy skills or their confidence? What kind of emphasis are we putting on opportunity, empowerment or getting people into a digital world? What kind of jobs are we trying to prepare people for?

Ethiopia famously believes in a policy of agricultural-led industrialisation, but is the industrialisation envisaged in 1991 going to be an option in 2020? Or will—as Larry Summers, one of the co-authors of the report, suggests—increased automation mean that the shoe factories we were hoping for are increasingly located close to markets such as Britain and the United States because the shoes will largely be made by robots? These are big questions underlying what we are trying to do in the education system.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I am following what the Minister says extremely carefully and entirely agree with the thrust of his argument. In his work has he seen good examples of where this work preparedness and soft skills, which will be vital for young people if they are to have the jobs and livelihoods they need in the future, are happening, either in DFID’s programmes or elsewhere?

[Rory Stewart]

The honest answer is that I have seen them, but they are easier to identify in schools where a great deal of investment is going in to individual children. I have a particular case study in mind of a vocational training school that does a three-year course that includes literacy, numeracy and English along with vocational skills, has a business incubation process at the end of it, links people into an industrial park, helps to create the markets and then moves away. But that requires an enormous amount of investment in the individual and is very difficult to replicate at scale.

One of the challenges is that that gold standard, which really does get extraordinary successes—at that particular vocational school, 95% of graduates find their way into employment in those sectors—is being achieved for an expenditure of about $1,200 per person per year. How is that going to be achievable with investment down at $50 to $60?

As I move on with the argument, the key is the very detailed work done by DFID education advisers—looking critically at what goes on on the ground, for example. One of the striking things we see from this conversation going back and forth is the real differences that exist between Kenya and Uganda, or Tanzania and Lebanon, and the different ways in which people are approaching this issue.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby has focused a great deal on spending. We will reply to the hon. Gentleman by letter, having taken on board the overall ODA expenditure on education; the plea for the excellent global partnership, which we do believe in; and the request on the G20 communiqué. All that is fully lodged in the brain. Fundamentally, however, my argument is that, although spending is very important, the big question is not about expenditure but about what we actually do. It is not the “how much”, but the “how”.

How do we sort out teacher training in the developing world? How do we deal with the issue of ghost teachers? How do we deal with the fact that in many cases we are paying the salaries of teachers who do not exist? A survey found that in Ghor province in Afghanistan 3,500 teachers on the Afghan Government payroll were not teachers at all—they were just ordinary people sitting at home and receiving a teacher’s salary. That is replicated again and again across the developing world.

How do we deal with political resistance? How do we deal with a country where a particular political party has taken over the teachers’ union? How hard can the teachers’ union be pushed? How do we deal with the fact that many of the teachers being dealt with are spending most of their time teaching in private schools and only part of their time teaching in the public schools for which they were originally employed?

We all agree that education matters. We are really proud in DFID of what we have done. We are proud that we have achieved this 43% change in the number of people going into primary education. It is extraordinary. Countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan now see primary school registration rates, theoretically, of 88% or 90% of children. If we look back 15 or 20 years, in Afghanistan, famously, no girl was going to school at all. These are incredible changes, but there is so much more to do.

If I may for a second, I wish to pay tribute to the Secretary of State for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who has, as the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow pointed out, put a lot of emphasis on disability. She has also put a lot of emphasis on some of the issues that are raised by Gordon Brown’s Education Commission. One that we have not discussed today is testing and standards—all the grisly stuff that, in the British context, gets everybody overheated about Ofsted. That is a critical question: how much emphasis do we put on testing? More than 50% of the countries concerned have no testing in place.

I am aware that I am trespassing on your patience, Mr Stringer, so I will move toward the end of my speech. I do not wish to continue for too long, but I will make two main points. One, before we all give up in despair, is that there are places where progress has been made. Ethiopia is a striking example of a place that has gone from one in five children in school to four in five. How has that been achieved? Largely through the leadership of the Ethiopian Government, who are genuinely committed to education, teacher training, getting people into remote areas and access for marginalised communities such as disabled people, women and others.

We have had other kinds of experiences in other countries. One question is how to deal with the particular context. In Afghanistan, education is community-based, and Save the Children, CARE and the Aga Khan Development Network work in remote rural villages in Hazarajat. That is quite different from what reform means in Jordan, where USAID has been working with the Jordanian Government on education for nearly 40 years; in the Education Minister’s office, reports are piled up almost to the ceiling. There is almost nothing in one of those reports from 1987 with which we would disagree today, but the challenge has traditionally been implementation, particularly on difficult issues such as how to deal with teachers’ unions—to drop a grenade into the middle of this room.

Dealing with teachers’ unions is not as easy as it might sound in a British context. In Jordan, the issue has famously been dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. We can discuss the political contexts in other countries, and what they mean for the curriculum and for what goes on in the classroom. In conclusion—to reassure you, Mr Stringer, that I will not remain on my hind feet forever—

Budget Resolutions

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

I totally agree with the Foreign Secretary that today—at this moment—we are presented with a massive opportunity to create a new form of global Britain. I particularly agree with his points about Britain’s soft power. Just to clarify the point about the British Council, the figures actually show that there will be a 43% rise in FCO funding by 2020, reflecting the seriousness with which we take the opportunities for Britain’s soft power.

The opportunities for global Britain are of particular importance to my constituents and to people in the Black country part of the west midlands. The announcement of the midlands engine strategy in the Budget is a significant moment for the people of the Black country. The Budget sets aside £55 million of new investment for the area, building on the significant investment made in the previous Parliament when, through the city deals, £1 million was invested in an advanced science, technology and engineering centre at Halesowen College. Significant progress has already been made in investment in the Black country, and the area is one of the UK’s fastest growing sub-regions, with more jobs and better skills, but we need to do more.

As we build the global Britain that the Foreign Secretary talked about, areas such as the Black country face five key challenges. The first is skills. Even though the number of young people not in education or training in the Black country is below the national average—we have made significant progress—skills gaps still exist in the area that I represent. I welcome the £7 million of new capital investment for further education that was announced in the Budget as part of the midlands engine strategy, but more is needed for investment in technical skills and to tackle historical levels of educational underperformance in the Black country and the wider west midlands. Skills gaps hold the Black country back as we seek to develop this global Britain.

The second challenge is transport and infrastructure, where historical under-investment is also holding the west midlands back. I welcome the announcement of £25 million to tackle congestion as part of the midlands engine, and we need a longer-term focus on the potential benefits of HS2, the development of Birmingham airport, and our rail and road network across the Black country and the west midlands.

The third big challenge addressed in the Budget, and one that we need to consider in the long term, is innovation rates. The Black country is becoming a world leader in, for example, the automotive, aerospace and advanced manufacturing sectors, with products such as Bugatti brakes and even the chairs used on “Match of the Day” being produced in the area, which is developing a worldwide reputation for design and product manufacturing.

The fourth challenge, which is a cumulative impact of the others, is relatively low productivity. It is a puzzle that we are yet to solve, and we need to tackle it by approaching it from all angles: improving skills, improving education at primary and secondary levels, and investing in transport infrastructure and the wider social realm.

The fifth challenge for the Black country is exporting, inward investment, and the potential opportunities of Brexit. With a 49% increase in exports since 2010, the west midlands’ export performance has been excellent in recent times and better than many other UK regions. We must be positive about the future and position the west midlands front and centre in our global trade plans to take advantage of the opportunities presented by Brexit. That is why I welcome, as part of the midlands engine strategy, the move towards the creation of a midlands trade and investment programme to develop markets to which the west midlands does not currently export. It has a good record in China and the United States, but we have the opportunity to open up and exploit new markets in many other countries.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that foreign language skills are one of the most important things that we lack? That is intimately associated with our relatively poor export performance in the past, and we need better learning and teaching of foreign languages in order to penetrate those new markets.

[James Morris]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Foreign languages are one key component, but the challenge in areas such as the Black country is to raise education performance levels more broadly. Standards need improving at primary and secondary levels, and we need to focus on technical education. The west midlands must face outwards and take advantage of the global opportunities that are currently presented.

Critically, the Black country and the west midlands are too often talked about as though they are a relic of Britain’s industrial past, but that is wrong. The Black country is increasingly in the vanguard of our industrial future. It is a leading player in high-tech manufacturing and has an increasingly competitive, productive economy. We do not need to focus on managing decline. The Black country is not some kind of industrial museum to look back on with fondness as part of Britain’s industrial greatness. The area is becoming a world leader in critical parts of our economic future.

As we take a forward view of global Britain, it is important not to focus just on London and the south-east; part of our long-term strategy should be the rebalancing of the economy. It is taking a long time, but we have made a lot of progress towards achieving that rebalancing. We must redouble that effort, invest in the appropriate skills and in the future of the businesses in the west midlands, and take away the barriers to growth, which include our transport infrastructure. It is simply too hard to get around the Black country and the wider west midlands, and the evidence is that transport bottlenecks make it increasingly difficult for the west midlands to realise its economic potential and achieve productive growth. As I said, we are not managing decline or nostalgically looking back to a mythical golden age; we seek to embrace the future of the Black country and of our young people in a global Britain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a real honour to follow the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton), who made some extremely important points, particularly about those who are self-employed.

I believe the Budget was extremely balanced and very sensible, not trying to do too much, but trying to do the right things and, by and large, succeeding. The concentration on technical skills—the T-levels—on infrastructure and on living within our means was welcome. We saw money put into the right places, including business rate relief, addressing a problem for a number of companies in my constituency and, no doubt, in the constituencies of all right hon. and hon. Members.

There was also a substantial increase in the investment in social care. I believe this is just the start; we need to see a radical revamp of the financing of health and social care. In announcing a Green Paper on social care, the Chancellor took a first and firm step in that direction, and it needs to be followed by others, but I very much welcome the increased investment in social care.

Of course, there has been some discussion about the ways in which the additional revenue was found, but let us not forget that this was a balanced Budget: the Chancellor did not seek to increase borrowing—absolutely rightly—and nor did he seek to cut spending any further than was already planned in some Departments. He sought to raise the revenue to pay for the additional investment in social care. That is absolutely the right way to go about it, and I commend him and his team for that.

Raising the revenue through national insurance contributions was absolutely understandable given the constraints, but I welcome the fact that there will be a closer look at this whole area. As the right hon. Lady said, self-employment will be with us increasingly in the coming years, and more and more people are becoming self-employed. That is something to be welcomed, and I have been self-employed in the past. As my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) said, it is something we should encourage, but, at the same time, we have to recognise the risks involved.

In future, as we look to raise additional revenue, we ought to look at some of the reliefs available to the higher paid, whether that is reliefs on national insurance and pensions, or reliefs available through schemes that have perhaps outlived their usefulness and that relate only to people at the higher end of the income scale.

That brings me to an important point. As a Parliament and a nation, we have to decide what level of income—what percentage of our GDP—we will raise in taxation and what percentage we will spend. We tend to raise approximately 37% of GDP in taxation, and that will continue through to 2020-21. We spent 40% in 2015-16, and that will go down to about 37% at the end of this Parliament. If we are to maintain the kind of commitments in all areas that we, and the Government, wish to, whether on defence, international development, looking after the elderly through social care, increasing investment in health or increased pension costs, we will find it very difficult to stick to a level of 37% of GDP in terms of both income and expenditure—it will be nearer 40%. That is still well below almost all our fellow European countries, certainly France and Germany. However, we have to take this seriously. It is not legitimate for us to stand here and advocate the kind of investment that, rightly, we want to see, while retaining our footprint as global Britain, and not be prepared to pay for it.

I serve on the International Development Committee, and a couple of weeks ago was privileged to see the work that DFID-supported organisations do in Tanzania with some of the poorest people on this planet in supporting them in their education. We have seen many other such schemes around the world. In Congo last year, we saw DFID working in a place where pretty much nobody else was working—apart from the Congolese people and Government themselves—to bring water schemes to people for the first time.

I was there with the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma). I think he will remember that visit, where we washed our hands together having drawn water from a pump that had just been put into a village—the first water that those people had not drawn directly from the river. This work supported by DFID is absolutely priceless. As the Foreign Secretary said, it gives Britain a global presence. However, the point made by another speaker about funding for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is also valid. We have to remember that as we withdraw from the EU there are many Foreign Office missions around the world where we do not have a DFID presence and yet a lot of British development is going on through the European Union. That will now have to be picked up by the Foreign Office. We need to look very carefully at the funding for that.

I would like to say many other things, but time is limited. I make just one plea. The British Council does fine work, as we saw in Tanzania. It wants to teach people English and there is huge demand for that, so we need to give it the necessary resources.

Yemen

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

The right hon. Gentleman raises some important points. The UN resolution gives legitimacy to Mr Hadi’s call for support by any means—I think those are the words that were used—which is why it was possible to put together the Saudi-led coalition to thwart the advance of the Houthis from the north of the country.

The right hon. Gentleman is also right to underline our important relationship with Saudi Arabia, which it values and we value. Saudi Arabia is learning the hard way, and making those steps has been difficult. It is better that we do as we are doing and take Saudi Arabia through the process than for it to join other countries that would not exert the same pressure concerning humanitarian issues, women’s rights and all the other aspects that we want it to move towards.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

What discussions have my hon. Friend and his colleagues had with the UN Under-Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs, Stephen O’Brien? Have the United Kingdom Government agreed to meet any request that the United Nations has made in that respect?

[Mr Ellwood]

The Minister of State for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) met Stephen O’Brien only a couple of weeks ago, and I meet our former colleague regularly. At the UN General Assembly in September last year, he co-chaired a meeting with the Secretary of State for International Development to raise funds, to ensure that other countries joined us in providing the finances necessary to give humanitarian support to Yemen. I pay a huge tribute to him and the work that he is doing in the United Nations.

UK-West Africa Relations

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[James Duddridge]

I have great respect for my hon. Friend’s views on health, and he hits the nail on the head. It is ludicrous for DFID to promote health when there is vast expertise in the Department of Health that we should leverage. The same goes for the Department for Education. We can do a lot more. We must also support parliamentarians. I recently met the Sierra Leonean Select Committee on health through the good offices of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. It was clear that it was not getting the leverage in its Parliament to move things forward and propose changes.

I have recently started engaging on tuberculosis, which I had really associated only with being a by-product of HIV. The World Health Organisation estimates that more than 800,000 people in west Africa fell ill with TB in 2015, and nearly 300,000 people died. The mortality rate in west Africa for TB is around 36%, which is double the global average. I am keen to work with the Global TB Caucus, and I encourage other hon. Members to do so. Parliamentarians can play a great part in dealing with TB, and that caucus mobilises parliamentarians from across Africa. Will the Minister see whether his good offices in west Africa—ambassadors and high commissioners—can be used alongside the Global TB Caucus to encourage parliamentarians of those nation states to get more involved and collectively work with us to deal with this issue?

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning TB, which is absolutely vital. Does he agree that tremendous progress has been made in west Africa in the past 15 years in reducing both the incidence of malaria and mortality from it, not least given the support from DFID and the UK Government more generally? There is a real issue in the Sahel with intermittent malaria, which DFID is trying to tackle. As Nigeria is one of the two countries in the world where malaria is most prevalent, it is vital that we continue that support.

[James Duddridge]

My hon. Friend has a great reputation on those issues and on international development more generally. He is entirely right gently to reprimand me and say that we must look at the successes as well as the problems. The successes show that the aid budget works and that we should do more of it—they do not show that there are so many problems even after we have done all that work. Aid works and we should do more of it.

I turn to the perennial subject of Donald Trump—he pervades even a debate about west Africa. Will the Prime Minister raise the subject of Africa when she meets Donald Trump? I think she should. We should find out his views about Africa and aid in Africa. We have heard his views about family planning, and there may be a vacuum that the UK and other countries will need to step into, but what is his view of AFRICOM, the US’s African command? What is his view about stepping in if things deteriorate in places such as Burundi, where the Americans would have been well placed to offer support if regional forces did not? Will the Americans be prepared to step up? What discussions has the Minister had with his French and American counterparts about the global effort if there is a need to surge forces into Africa?

There were many places that I did not get to visit. I encourage the Minister to travel the road less trodden and visit the likes of Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger. I wish I had gone to Gambia. If one has visited some of those smaller countries, when things kick off—for want of a better word—and there is a problem, one sometimes has a rough idea and can pick up the phone and speak to people. The UK Government’s understanding, knowledge and penetration of Africa means that they are able to do that.

I have taken far too long—I apologise to Members—but in summary, I ask the Minister to do three things: help Nana in Ghana, look to set up a Francophone group of businesspeople, and lobby for structure of government changes so that Africa is better represented by HMG here in the United Kingdom.

African Great Lakes Region

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) for an extremely good and well-informed speech, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) who has also sponsored this debate.

The UK is increasingly engaged in the great lakes region and rightly so. It is vital that we continue to be so for the long term, and that we do not dip in and out but maintain our presence in a positive way in the many different respects I will come on to. I am more positive about the great lakes than I have been for some time. We have on many occasions in the past year raised huge concerns about the future of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, yet I hope the agreement reached on new year’s eve will be remembered in the same way as we remember the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland: as a time when differences were put aside in the interests of their people. As the hon. Member for Bassetlaw said, the agreement talks about elections this year, no third term for President Kabila, and no referendum or constitutional changes.

I pay great tribute to the Catholic Church, which has done so much; to the retiring US envoy Thomas Perriello, who has done a tremendous job; to our own Foreign and Commonwealth Office; to the EU; and to our own great lakes envoy, Danae Dholakia. I also want to pay tribute to the work done by DFID—colleagues and I saw its work on a visit in July—particularly on health in remote regions and access to water. They are some of the best projects I have ever seen. They are done at low cost by people who have been really committed to the DRC for decades. These are not consultants who come and go, but really committed people who put their life’s work into helping the poorest.

Burundi is another matter, but we must be as positive as possible. The years 2015 and 2016 have been a tragedy for that country. It is vital that 2017 is better. Every effort must be put into turning the country around, principally by those who have responsibility for it. One lesson we have to remember is to ensure that any agreements made are watertight. The Burundi problem arose from the lack of clarity over how many terms the current President would serve or in what way he would be re-elected. As a result, hundreds if not thousands of people have been killed. Any agreement must look forward to problems that may arise when they are signed.

The former President of Tanzania, Benjamin Mkapa, is negotiating and has done a fine job. We must continue to support him in every way possible. It is disappointing that some organisations have withdrawn their support from the process. We can understand the reasons why, but I believe it is the only game in town and they need to be engaged with it. As President Mkapa said, they need to deal with the situation as it is: to work with President Nkurunziza; to try to persuade the Government of Burundi to turn away from an extremely dangerous path; to see extrajudicial killings stopped; to see paramilitaries and roaming gangs return to lawful activity; to restore law and order and human rights; and above all to not let the blight of ethnic hatred, to which the hon. Member for Bassetlaw referred, come back. Burundi has suffered as grievously from genocide as Rwanda, but it was a rolling genocide over decades and not a genocide in 100 days in 1994.

I will not say much about Rwanda, because other Members possibly will do so. It has been a success story, but with problems along the way. There is an election this year. This is a time for the country to come together. It is also a time to look to the future. If as seems likely President Kagame, who in many ways has been an outstanding if flawed leader, stands again, he needs to look beyond the next term as to who his successor will be. He has the interests of his country at heart. He will want it to prosper in the future. He knows that he will not be around forever—none of us are.

Tanzania is probably the country in this region that is closest to my heart, having lived there for so many years. It has generally managed the transition to free and fair elections extremely well, except, sadly, in the case of Zanzibar. There was progress in Zanzibar from 2010 to 2015, but the elections in that year were flawed and pulled in a way about which our Government made their view quite clear. The elections were re-held in 2016 without the presence of the main Opposition party. It is vital that the island of Zanzibar comes together with the Union Government and resolves this problem. The people of Zanzibar deserve nothing less. They are a peaceful and wonderful people.

At the same time, Tanzania has respected the two-term limit for presidents impeccably, for which we should give that country great credit. The CCM, the major ruling party, has achieved a great deal, but it needs to go further. The Government need to bring in an independent electoral commission in Tanzania. In my opinion, that is the biggest flaw in Tanzanian democracy at the moment. At the same time, the Opposition need to use Parliament and the parliamentary process to deal with the understandable questions it has for the Government, rather than just taking to the streets every time. I pay tribute to the Opposition for keeping calm and not going ahead with the major demonstrations proposed in September, which I believe would have resulted in unnecessary violence and possibly deaths.

On Uganda, the examples of former Presidents Benjamin Mkapa and Ali Hassan Mwinyi in Tanzania, as well John Kufuor in Ghana, show the benefit of presidents who recognise the importance of term limits. Those who stay on forever rarely go gracefully. That is surely a lesson for Uganda. The peace and stability since 1985 has been a huge relief for the people of Uganda, but proper open and democratic transition is also a sign of wisdom and maturity.

Finally, I wish to refer to development in all these countries. In our debate on the sustainable development goals last November in Westminster Hall, I referred to the five levers of development that I believe are crucial, including to all the countries of the great lakes region: jobs and livelihoods, health and health research, education, gender equality and infrastructure. DFID and the UK are involved in pretty much all these countries, including in Burundi—not directly but through multilateral means—and it is vital that this continues. As I said at the beginning, we must remain committed for the long term to ensuring the future prosperity of this wonderful and very important part of the world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Finally, a cerebral and immensely patient Member of the House who is unfailingly courteous at all times, Jeremy Lefroy.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. What support are Her Majesty’s Government giving to the welcome moves towards a settlement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo?

[Mr Ellwood]

I had the pleasure of visiting the country last year. I was very concerned about the delay to the elections, of which my hon. Friend will be aware, and President Kabila not recognising that his time was up. I am pleased that political dialogue has now been developed between the Government and the Opposition, and that we are now on a programme to ensure elections happen in 2017. I will return to the country very soon to make sure that is enforced, and to offer our support and assistance to this important country.