UN High-level Meetings in 2023

Leo Docherty Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Leo Docherty)]

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair today, Mr Twigg.

I am very grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken today, particularly the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), who secured this debate. I also pay tribute to him for his work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on global tuberculosis.

Of course, I am standing in for and answering on behalf of the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who is the Minister for Development. I think that he has engaged previously on these issues with the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall.

As the hon. Gentleman outlined in his commendable speech, as we look ahead to the three high-level UN meetings in September, the debate provides us with a valuable opportunity to highlight the UK’s leading role in working with others to address global health challenges. I am grateful for the contributions made by all Members this morning.

The meetings will focus on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, universal health coverage, and tuberculosis. They will be a hugely important opportunity to maintain momentum on global health following the covid-19 pandemic and at this critical mid-point for the sustainable development goals. Of course, that will not be easy. Global health is now more than ever bound up with geopolitics, but we will nevertheless be ambitious in our aims while being aware of the challenges involved in negotiating across all member states.

Several Members have asked about prime ministerial attendance. We place huge importance on these meetings, and we will ensure that there is extremely high-level UK representation. I cannot yet confirm who will attend on behalf of His Majesty’s Government as the process is ongoing, but we recognise that this is an extremely high-level and important moment for global health, and we are therefore ambitious.

Let me turn to the content of the three substantive meetings. First, it is vital to achieve and maintain UHC at home and across the world, and strong, resilient and equitable health systems are at the heart of our approach. The hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) asked about the integration of WASH. We are supporting WASH within UHC through the international taskforce on WASH in healthcare facilities, our new WASH systems for health programme, and bilateral programmes in Malawi and Nepal. We have also integrated WASH in the UK action plan for antimicrobial resistance, recognising its role in responsible antimicrobial stewardship. I hope that attends to some of the hon. Lady’s questions.

People’s eyes are open to the need for robust, equitable health systems following the pandemic, so now is the time to raise global ambition. We are pushing hard for firm global commitments to achieving UHC by 2030, with country-led commitments to take tangible steps forward. We have three priorities here. The first is to prioritise universal coverage of quality primary health care, which is instrumental in ending the preventable deaths of mothers, babies and children. The World Health Organisation estimates that scaling up primary health care could save 60 million lives.

Secondly, nobody should be pushed into extreme poverty because they cannot afford to pay for healthcare, although that was the case for 381 million people in 2019, even before the pandemic struck. It is our priority that a commitment to reversing that trend is made at the meeting. Thirdly, we are working hard to secure commitments on steps to tackle the global shortage in health workers, which is predicted to stand at some 10 million by the end of the decade.

Alongside those objectives, we will continue to press for other UK priorities. Those include championing and protecting sexual and reproductive health and rights, and promoting joined-up action across nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene, as I mentioned, as well as climate and the environment, to support good health.

Let me turn to the meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. We must act on the lessons of covid-19 to protect future generations, and we will use the meeting to drive forward that vital commitment. Again, we have three priorities here. The first priority is to recommit states to the negotiations in Geneva on a legally binding pandemic instrument, which is due to be agreed in mid-2024. An ambitious instrument could transform global health security by delivering the changes necessary to withstand health threats.

Let me address concerns about the instrument head-on: nothing we agree will impact on the UK’s sovereign decision making on issues such as lockdowns or domestic vaccine roll out. The Government believe that a new instrument could help to speed up the sharing of information among member states on potential pandemic threats, and help to set out the “rules of the road” for future responses.

We also need to increase the financing available for pandemic preparedness. That is one of the best investments we can make, given the extraordinary costs of responding. The UK is therefore a proud investor in pandemic preparedness, including through the new pandemic fund, which will invest in products in lower income countries to improve their resilience to future health threats. We are pressing the multilateral development banks, including the World Bank Group, to do more to stretch their balance sheets in that area. We also want national Governments in low and middle-income countries to put more of their tax receipts into strengthening health systems and supporting universal health coverage and pandemic preparedness. Our third priority is to drive efforts towards a global commitment. We will be drawing up a playbook for responding to future pandemics, so that our successors have a guide to follow when the next one strikes.

Tuberculosis has been a significant theme of the debate. We will use the TB high-level meeting to galvanise a global political commitment to end that disease by the end of the decade. Work toward that goal was, of course, severely off track even before covid, and we have now seen two successive years of rising cases and deaths. TB kills more people than any other infectious disease, and drug-resistant TB is a leading cause of deaths related to antimicrobial resistance. A successful TB declaration at the meeting would incorporate quantitative targets and mechanisms for accountability, and commitments on financing and action. We have made good progress in pushing for a strong declaration, with clear targets and accountability mechanisms, to be adopted at the high-level meeting. We are working hard to secure high-level political attendance at the September meeting, especially by leaders of countries with high incidence of TB. We want to secure game-changing new commitments to action on the provision of TB services and investment in research and development.

We remain committed to championing progress on universal health coverage so that everyone everywhere has access to the essential health services they need without risk of financial hardship, including following a TB diagnosis. We want to ensure that, in the TB high- level meeting and the declaration, countries recommit to tackling the stigma and discrimination faced by people with TB. The UK is providing £1 billion over the next three years to the Global Fund, which will help to save more than 1 million lives around the world and will tackle TB stigma and discrimination.

Of course, the covid-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of continued investment in infectious disease research and development, as well as public health capacity, such as surveillance laboratories. It showed the importance of existing public health infrastructure when responding and adapting to new infectious disease outbreaks, which will be another theme at that meeting.

On product development partnerships, currently we are planning the FCDO’s future investment in global health research. As part of that, we will renew our investment in that area, including in product development partnerships and other organisations. We expect to announce more details during the latter half of 2023. Of course, the UK continues to play a world-leading role in research and innovation to combat TB. We are a strong supporter of product development partnerships and a world leader in life sciences. We are keen to see a global increase in the funding for TB research, so we are encouraging those who can do more to do exactly that.

The hon. Member for Ealing, Southall asked about Bedaquiline. The UK supports work to develop new treatments for TB and improve global access to them. Our funding for the TB Alliance supported the development of a new drug regime that includes Bedaquiline for treating drug-resistant TB. We will lay the foundations for ambitious outcomes at next year’s high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance.

The three high-level meetings in September are a hugely important opportunity to maintain momentum on global health following the covid-19 pandemic and at this critical juncture for the sustainable development goals. We will push for the meeting on universal health coverage, to revitalise a national political commitment to delivering that goal. We will focus on ensuring that the meeting on preventing and responding to pandemics drives strong engagement and outcomes, particularly towards the negotiation of a legally binding international instrument in Geneva.

We will use the meeting as an opportunity to reignite the political commitment to get us back on track towards ending tuberculosis, backed by targets and mechanisms for accountability. In all of these meetings, we will place a clear emphasis on strengthening health systems, which is vital to achieving our aims.