Sustainable Development Goals

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the chair this afternoon, Mr Stringer, and I am equally pleased to follow the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who has established a very doughty reputation in the House defending communities against religious discrimination and intolerance. That was demonstrated straightforwardly and powerfully in her speech.

I congratulate the Select Committee on the production of this very important report. Although it deals with national and global responses to the United Nations sustainable development goals, I want to focus more on delivery. I declare an interest as the voluntary, unpaid chair of Fire Aid, which is an umbrella organisation for fire and rescue services and non-governmental organisations and charities in the UK doing work around the world. I want to discuss their role in the context of two of the sustainable development goals. I make no apology for using this opportunity to unashamedly promote Fire Aid and everything that it does, as I hope colleagues will understand in a few minutes.

There are three basic issues that I want to address, which are relevant to goals 3 and 11: the role of fire and rescue services internationally, the creation of Fire Aid and the connection to and delivery of the UN SDGs, which were considered by the Chair of the International Development Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), in his introduction to the report.

Fire and rescue services have a long history of responding to international disasters. For decades, firefighters have volunteered to go to parts of the world affected by earthquakes and other natural disasters. In the early days, I believe all were volunteers. It was personal, unpaid, informal and sometimes not helped—indeed blocked—by the fire brigade bureaucracy. That has changed. Firefighters now not only attend disasters but are continuously out in countries around the world, being proactive—building safety infrastructure and resilience, and therefore saving lives.

A number of fire and rescue organisations and NGOs emerged from those years of activity and experience and in 2012-13 banded together. I was recruited and invited to assist by Emma MacLennan, director of the charity EASST, the Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport, which works in eastern Europe on road safety matters. I was nominated by Lord Dubs and Lord Robertson from the other place, because of my background of 23 years in the fire brigade, two years as road safety Minister and time as a former member of the Select Committee on Transport, which you served on in a distinguished manner, Mr Stringer, for many years. I was asked to chair that umbrella organisation.

What emerged was the organisation now called Fire Aid. Founding members included the Asian Fire Service Association, whose conference I spoke at in Wembley this morning, Blythswood Care, the Chief Fire Officers Association, EASST, Fire Safety Friends of Russia, Kent fire and rescue service, Operation Florian, Staffordshire fire and rescue service, the United Kingdom Rescue Organisation and the World Rescue Organisation.

We had one-off funding from the Department for International Development to set up our website, which was extremely welcome, in recognition of the vital role carried out by the UK fire and rescue services and NGOs in donating equipment and training for communities and countries in need. We subsequently secured some sponsorship from the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile Foundation. We have memorandums of understanding with the Institution of Fire Engineers, the Chief Fire Officers Association, and the Fire Brigades Union.

Our founding organisations are working in 30 countries around the world, mainly in Africa, Asia and eastern Europe. Volunteers from our partners deliver equipment donated by fire brigades and fire industry manufacturers. They provide training on how to use the equipment as well as mentoring key staff wherever they go. They instruct on how to build the safety infrastructure, emergency services co-operation and communications that we in the UK take for granted.

Our website provides a clearing house for donated equipment, for which we organise and provide storage. Overseas partners or UK-based organisations can bid for that equipment and we match what is available with identified need and assure transparent and accredited use for those good enough to donate that equipment.

Our organisations have provided the manual for fire safety in refugee camps to the United Nations. Operation Florian was invited to work in the Lebanon for three weeks in August this year to undertake a fire-risk reduction project in a number of informal settlements to improve the protection and safety for Syrian refugees after a series of fatal fires.

That brings me to the UN and the sustainable development goals. The UN declared a decade of road safety from 2010 to 2020, and we have been supporting those objectives. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby mentioned, the 2015 UN summit adopted a new agenda for the next 15 years. It included 17 goals and 169 targets, several of which directly relate to the work of Fire Aid partners, and therefore we can assist with them. I will mention two in particular. Goal 3 is

“Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”,

and target 3.6 is

“By 2020, halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents”—

we call them crashes in the UK, but the language has obviously not caught up yet. The majority of collisions are caused by people making deliberate decisions to use their mobile phone, to speed, to drink drive, not to wear a seat belt or to take drugs. Most crashes are not accidents, because they could be avoided.

Goal 11 is

“Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”,

and target 11.2 is

“By 2030, provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons”.

I attended the UN and World Health Organisation’s second road safety world summit in Brasilia last year. Sadly, no UK Minister from DFID or the Department for Transport was available to attend. The UN subsequently adopted the statement from that summit. The targets are as I mentioned, but in real terms they aim to halve the 1.2 million people who die in road crashes around the world every year and reduce the 20 million people who are seriously injured.

As we all know, our roads in the UK are among the safest in the world, and our fire and rescue service has the ability and motivation to play its part in delivering that great record. We can share our knowledge, expertise and abilities with other countries that are not so fortunate. I thank DFID for the support we have received from it so far. We stand ready to assist in realising the international targets.

It to the Government’s credit that they have achieved the 0.7% GDP aim. We are a small facilitating charity, and we are very frustrated because when we approach our embassies and other organisations overseas to try to tap into the DFID money, we are told that it is not worth getting out of bed for less than £1 million. We have only one part-time member of staff, and £20,000 would sustain us for a whole year. It is difficult to get recognition for the role that we play.

When I spoke at the conference in Brasilia on a post-crash response platform, most of the other speakers were bidding for more investment in medical facilities. They wanted trauma centres, better-equipped accident and emergency departments, more neurosurgeons and MRI scanners. Those are all appropriate asks for casualties, but Fire Aid pointed out that the victims need to be rescued from the crashed vehicles first. Without fire engines, cutting equipment and trained crews, they will not need better hospitals and clinical staff because the casualties will not get to the medical facility. Without joint working with the police and ambulance services, the casualties will not reach the hospitals; therefore, they will not need medical assistance. In some eastern European countries, nearly 80% of road crash victims die at the roadside. In the UK, it is about 30%. Some countries do not have a single 999-type emergency telephone number. There are simple things that we can deliver, such as equipment training and facilities. I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate all our volunteers and membership organisations on what they deliver. I hope we can solicit some more support on their behalf.

We have a solid road safety record in the UK. We have great expertise in dealing with crashes, and we have volunteers who want to help less fortunate countries. That could be viewed as soft diplomacy—clearly it is—but morally it is the right thing to do. Organisations such as Fire Aid need resources. I am delighted that the Minister and my hon. Friend the shadow Minister are in their places, and I look forward to their responses.

Drug-resistant Tuberculosis (Developing Countries)

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you presiding in the Chair, Mr Caton. I will try to get through my remarks as quickly as possible, as a couple of other hon. Members would like to make a contribution and the Minister, whom it is good to see in her place, has very kindly indicated that she would be happy to hear them.

After making a few brief comments on tuberculosis and drug-resistant TB globally and in the UK, I will raise three important points that I hope the Minister will be able to address: support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; investing in innovation; and the need for a national strategy in the UK to include an international target. However, before raising those issues, I would like to make a few observations.

The Minister recently met the all-party group on global tuberculosis to discuss its report, “Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis: Old Disease—New Threat”. Much of what I will speak about today is focused on the conclusion and recommendations of that report, which makes constructive recommendations that are evidence-based. I thank Mr Simon Logan, co-ordinator for the all-party group, for his assistance in preparing my remarks for today’s debate.

Tuberculosis in the UK reflects the global reality. TB is one of the world’s most common deadly infectious diseases. In the 1970s, my wife was a junior hospital doctor. Her consultant told her that by the time she became a consultant, TB would have disappeared, like polio, due to BCG, mass X-ray and drug treatment. How wrong can you be?

One third of the world’s population has latent TB, but only a small percentage goes on to develop the active form of the disease, which makes them sick and can kill if not treated. Unfortunately, little progress has been made towards eliminating TB in the UK—there are about 9,000 new cases each year—and global progress is painfully slow. The disease remains an urgent public health problem around the world, and we now face a new threat—drug-resistant strains that are significantly more expensive and difficult to treat. It should be said that both are curable, albeit with a long course of antibiotics. TB does not get the profile that the death and destruction it causes warrant. This is a serious issue, and we must do more to tackle it. It is not only a moral obligation; it is in our national interest.

The first line of defence against drug resistance is appropriate management of TB and the strengthening of the World Health Organisation’s standard treatment, called directly observed therapy, to prevent resistant strains from developing. However, we also need to take steps to tackle this threat head-on, as it is often airborne and can be passed from person to person in the same way as normal TB.

Rates of drug-resistant TB appear small in terms of the global burden of the disease, accounting for 440,000 of the almost 9 million new cases each year, but only about 10% have access to diagnosis, and the financial and treatment burden is substantial. The number of people affected is increasing and so is the cost. Patients have to take 15 to 20 tablets a day for up to two years to be cured of this more extreme form of the disease and they often experience horrible physical and psychological side effects as a result. It is also on the rise in the WHO European region, particularly in eastern Europe. Almost 80,000 cases occurred in the European region in 2011, accounting for nearly one quarter of all DR-TB cases worldwide.

The UK is not immune to this problem. London has the highest TB rate of any capital city in western Europe, and resistant strains of the disease have gradually but significantly increased since 2000. In my constituency, there are 61 cases of TB per 100,000 people. That is in Tower Hamlets. Neighbouring Newham, which I used to represent before the boundary changes in 2010, has double that amount, giving it the highest rate of TB in the UK. It is comparable to that in some high-TB-burden developing countries. To put that into context, the UK average is 14 cases per 100,000 people.

The threat that this public health concern presents to the UK recently led the chief medical officer for England, Dame Sally Davies, to warn that antimicrobial and infectious disease resistance poses a serious threat. One of her key recommendations was for the Government to campaign for it to be given a higher profile and priority internationally. In that regard, financing mechanisms such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria plays a crucial role in funding programmes for diagnosing and treating TB in low and middle-income countries. The global fund accounts for almost 90% of international TB funding. For many countries, there would not be a response to TB without the global fund’s support.

[Sir Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) and I were on a visit to Ethiopia and visited St Peter’s hospital there. I asked what percentage of the funding for the drugs came from the global fund, and it is 100%—without it, people would die.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My hon. Friend reinforces the point that I have just made about how important the global fund is. As I am sure the Minister is aware, the global fund is asking donor Governments, such as the UK Government, for new funding in this replenishment year, and the UK Government have a crucial role to play in ensuring that that process is successful.

In the history of the fight against TB, there have been periods of urgency and periods of innovation, but only rarely have urgency and innovation come together. The rise of this new extreme form of the disease has given a new sense of urgency to global TB efforts, and after a decade of focused investment in TB innovation, we have a promising pipeline of new drugs, diagnostics and vaccines.

It is clear that to address rising rates of drug resistance, action is needed at national and international levels. The all-party group recently published its report, which was the culmination of more than six months’ work consulting world-leading experts on steps that the Government could take to help to address the increasing threat of drug-resistant TB. I shall highlight three key recommendations from the report, and I would be grateful if the Minister focused on those in her response.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this important issue to Westminster Hall for debate. A group of children and young people from Swaziland were recently in my constituency. They were a Christian choir, and every one of those children had AIDS. In Swaziland, 40% of people have AIDS. Does he feel that we need to address such issues at the highest level? That choir is an example of what can happen when medication is available; if they can survive AIDS and TB, they can make a contribution to their country and ultimately across the world.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I am sure that the Minister will repeat that agreement on the positive outcomes that result from appropriate treatment.

First, the report recommends that we strengthen the global fund by doubling the UK’s contribution. International donor funding, including the majority of the UK’s response to TB in developing countries, comes almost entirely through the global fund. In 22 high-TB-burden countries, six are totally reliant on the fund and in another 15 it accounts for two thirds of their budget. To scale up access and treatment for DR-TB, which remain woefully low, the resources the global fund has at its disposal need to increase. The Government have a key role to play in the replenishment of the fund, having been a key driving force behind the recent reforms it undertook. I commend the Government for that policy. What are their thoughts on our contribution to the fund to address the threat of TB and DR-TB? A lead from the UK should happen as soon as possible, to help leverage more from other donor Governments in this important replenishment year.

Secondly, the report recommends investment in innovation through TB REACH and continued investment in research and development. The Government have already shown leadership in support of developing new, badly needed tools to tackle TB—a policy of successive Governments that I hope will continue. Some of those tools have come to market, specifically new rapid diagnostics, but despite that, 3 million people each year still fail to access diagnosis and treatment for TB, which includes a large portion of people with drug-resistant strains. We need to accelerate our efforts to diagnose TB by rolling out new technologies, and it is clear that we need to think outside the box. TB REACH is one way to do that.

As the Minister knows, TB REACH is a Stop TB Partnership-hosted initiative that gives small grants of up to $1 million to find and treat those who do not have access to TB diagnosis or treatment. It is an incubator for innovation and pushes the frontiers of technology. It works closely with DFID-funded UNITAID. In short, TB REACH goes where others cannot and shows Governments and donors how to reach the unreachable. Critically, it often demonstrates with data what projects could be scaled up. The Minister may wish to express a view on whether she agrees with that assessment. Beyond their contribution of core funding to the Stop TB Partnership, which does not cover TB REACH, I ask that the Government become a donor to TB REACH, to maximise their investments in UNITAID and support the expansion of new diagnostic tools to detect and ultimately treat cases of TB, in addition to the work of the global fund. The funding allocated should be directed by the evaluation of the Stop TB Partnership later this year. I will be interested to hear her view on that recommendation.

Thirdly and finally, I want to mention a national strategy for TB in the UK and the importance of a global target within that. A national strategy for TB has never been developed, despite the public health risk the disease presents. The UK has seen rising rates of TB since the 1980s and DR-TB increased by 26% in the past year alone. I welcome that the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) indicated that her Department is supporting Public Health England to develop a strategy. I bumped into her before the Division and thanked her for her leadership on the matter, in which I have a constituency as well as a personal interest. I was recently invited to a seminar, organised by the Barts and Royal London TB unit, by Dr Veronica White, the consultant in respiratory medicine. Unsurprisingly, it is the biggest TB team in the UK and does sterling work locally and nationally.

With all that in mind and given the clear link between global and UK rates, will the Government set a specific target on their contribution internationally to tackling DR-TB as part of a comprehensive TB strategy, led by Public Health England?

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for highlighting the all-party group on global tuberculosis, which it is my privilege to chair—I am not paid. Not only does the work on TB help to deliver the Government’s international development objectives, but it is also in Britain’s interest to get it right.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

The hon. Gentleman makes a critical connection between our national interest and the international case, which the Minister and her team acknowledge. I am grateful that she is here. I look forward to her response. I thank her and her officials for the excellent work that they have been doing on this subject. I know that members of the all-party group are also grateful for the engagement that she and her team have had with them, and we look forward to it continuing.

UN Women

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), with whom I agree about resourcing UN Women. I met recently representatives of Voluntary Service Overseas who discussed UN Women with me. They emphasised how the new agency was created in response to a concern that the UN system was failing women.

Very little is being asked of the UK Government in global economic terms. The UK, which was crucial in establishing the agency, is being asked to commit £21 million in annual core funding—just 0.2% of the UK’s overseas aid budget—to UN Women. UN Women is now in a most precarious and parlous position. The Government have stated that one of the Department for International Development’s six priorities is to lead international action to improve the lives of women and girls. As my friends in VSO say, therefore, the Government should step up to the mark and commit the funds. Without even the most minimal of financial input to keep it going, UN Women will continue to lack not only the staff, but the presence necessary to reach out to, and work with, women across the globe.

We know that many other countries are looking to the UK for leadership on UN Women, owing to our pivotal role in setting it up. In this case, why not make that a cause of great pride, by turning our commitment to gender equality into something concrete? I look forward to hearing the latest from the Minister on that, and I commend the Government on their support for the agency.

When I discussed international women’s day with my senior parliamentary assistant Debbie Fenn recently, she referred me to a book written in the early 1980s, “The Triple Struggle”, a compilation of the experiences of Latin American peasant women in their own words, put together by Audrey Bronstein. The “triple struggle” referred to the three major ways in which those women experienced hardship: they were women in a society dominated by men; they were peasants, and as such lived in a state of collective poverty; and they were inhabitants of the third or developing world. Although the book was written in 1982, the themes remain. It is of paramount importance to record and highlight the ways in which those at the sharp end—those facing the worst oppression and subjugation—battle, learn, develop and refuse to be victims.

Stemming from the Bangladeshi aspect of my constituency of Poplar and Limehouse, it is Bangladesh that I know best when it comes to aid issues, charitable activities and, in particular, women’s development. I have now visited the country on a number of occasions, including on a VSO placement with my wife Dr Sheila Fitzpatrick. I strongly commend the VSO’s parliamentary scheme, in which a number of colleagues have also participated. Sheila and I have developed a close and ongoing link with Shishu Polli Plus, known as Sreepur Village. I would like to say a few words about how the place has affected me, showing me how our efforts and actions in the UK can translate into something significant and meaningful when we work with others—and in particular with women—in one of the world’s poorest countries.

Part of the theme of this year’s international women’s day is about providing a pathway to decent work for women. This aim or objective is very much what Sreepur is all about. I should declare an interest, in that I am a patron of the charity and my wife Sheila is a trustee. Three of the nine trustees are MBEs, which says a lot about the charity: Rubina Porter from Merseyside, who was most recently honoured; Trisha Silvester, the chair of the charity who runs the UK headquarters; and Pat Kerr, the founder and inspiration behind the village. Pat was a British Airways cabin crew member and set up the orphanage over 21 years ago with the help of friends and colleagues. To its credit, BA has assisted over the years, and Derek Palmer, Pat’s husband, is also a trustee. Colleagues of my generation may remember the Desmond Wilcox documentaries on the BBC that gave publicity to what is a great institution.

Sreepur Village provides a loving environment, food, clothing, education and vocational training for destitute women and their children. Thousands have benefited over the years. Sreepur Village also runs an outreach programme in the local community. Details are available on the Sreepur website. Sreepur Village is quite a place. Words such as “awe-inspiring”—or, more commonly these days, the Americanised “awesome”—are often bandied about without meaning much. However, some places really are awe-inspiring, or simply inspiring, and Sreepur is one of them. I should also mention Khadija Sultana, the executive director in Bangladesh, and Maureen Fox, the administrator here in the UK. Colleagues have probably got the idea that I am talking about a lot of amazing women who are the core movers of the charity.

VSO has also started the Godmothers campaign. What marks out VSO is its core belief. It does not lift people out of poverty; it gives them the tools to climb out of it themselves. What is impressive and moving about the Godmothers campaign is the notion of a group of people watching over UN Women—and, in my view, watching over not just the organisation of that name, but flesh-and-blood women in the world who need our solidarity and support. The aim of the Godmothers campaign is to see UN Women properly funded. The organisation was given that name because it was originally anticipated that it would be women who would wish to watch over UN Women, but there are men, too. There is also an understanding of what has hampered previous UN women’s agencies, and there is a determination that the new agency should not be thwarted in similar ways.

Together, “u” and “n” are two big letters; “un-” is a small but deadly prefix. Words such as “unworkable”, “unproductive” and “untenable” are all pretty miserable terms. Worst of all, in terms of being of tangible assistance to the women of the world, is “unsuccessful”, because if this kind of work is unsuccessful, it means a failure not only to improve quality of life, but to save lives. The stakes could not be higher. That is not what the Godmothers want to see; they want, and I want—and, I am sure, the whole House wants—UN Women to work to its fullest potential.

The sentiments expressed in the motion and the amendment from my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), which I also support, are laudable. I would probably choose to speak more of nurturing, supporting and encouraging the self-empowerment of women than of “empowering women”, as the motion suggests, but the basic premise is that women in our one, big world matter. There is no point talking about the big society if one half of it is not heard, not reached and not included. I look forward to other contributions to this debate.

Global Poverty

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. Yes, the issue of grievance procedures—how one resolves grievances—is of particular concern in Afghanistan, and we are looking precisely at that in conjunction with other important matters in the run-up to the Kabul conference.

Our determination and commitment to tackling these problems ever more effectively is both a moral matter and one that is very much in our national self-interest. I believe that in a hundred years’ time generations that follow will look back on us in very much the same way that today we look back on the slave trade. They will marvel that our generations acquiesced in a world where each and every day almost 25,000 children under five die needlessly from diseases and conditions that we absolutely have the power to prevent. For the first time, not least through the benefits of globalisation, our generations have the power and ability to make huge progress in tackling these colossal discrepancies in opportunity and wealth around the world.

Many Members will have their own direct experience of what I am describing. In my case, I think of a visit to a remote corner of Uganda with the Medical Missionaries of Mary, who work with families of AIDS orphans. I remind the House that there are more AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa than there are children in the whole of the United Kingdom. I think of the family of six orphaned children I met, of whom the eldest, at 14—the same age as my own daughter at the time—battled each and every day to get her siblings dressed and to school. I remind the House that today Britain is educating 4.8 million primary schoolchildren in Britain, while at the same time in the poor world we are educating 5 million children at a fraction of the cost; in fact, 2.5% of the UK cost.

It is those harsh realities of life in large parts of the world—grinding poverty, hopelessness and destitution—that have galvanised the commitment and passion of so many in our country today to ensure that, in our time, through our generations, we will make a difference. It is true that charity begins at home, but it does not end there.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to their places and wish them well during their tenure. In respect of personal experience, my wife and I were able to benefit from a VSO placement in Bangladesh. The VSO placement scheme for parliamentary colleagues has been running for a couple of years, but will his Department continue to support it? It offers parliamentary colleagues an opportunity for short placements of two to four weeks during the summer recess in order to visit some of the countries that DFID supports, and to learn much more about its work.

[Mr Mitchell]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I cannot give him that guarantee today, but I am familiar with the scheme he describes. It is an excellent scheme, and we have no plans to alter it at this time, but I shall write to him, giving him specific details, when we have made a decision.

What is less easily articulated is that tackling poverty throughout the world is also very much in our national interest. Whether the issue is drug-resistant diseases, economic stability, conflict and insecurity, climate change or migration, it is far more effective to tackle the root cause now than to treat the symptoms later. The weight of migration to Europe from Africa is often caused by conflict, poverty, disease and dysfunctional government. We see people putting themselves into the hands of the modern equivalent of the slave trader and crossing hundreds of miles of ocean in leaky boats in the hope of tipping up on a wealthy European shore. Often, they are not people seeking a free ride, but the brightest and the best from conflict countries, seeking a better life for themselves and their families. It is much better to help them to tackle the causes of their leaving the country that they have come from. Our prosperity depends on development and growth in Africa and Asia.