Ebola

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I am very pleased to see the most reverend Primate in his place—a number of us were extremely concerned when he came back from Sierra Leone and was not himself well, so it is great to see him here. He is absolutely right: the international community is focusing on trying to ensure that we do not find ourselves in this situation again. The WHO has looked at its own reform and other international bodies will too, but it is vital that we learn the lessons of this particular epidemic.

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, the pharmaceutical industry claims that the reason why an Ebola vaccine had not been developed was that the number of victims was likely to be small compared to, for example, malaria. Does it have nothing to do with the poverty of the people affected or their inability to pay a market price for the drug? Does my noble friend agree that, but for the heroic efforts of hundreds of mainly local health workers, the Ebola outbreak could have become a pandemic, with possibly millions of victims, all for the want of a vaccine? Are the Government pressing industry to accept, in poor countries, production costs-plus payments for the vaccine, as happens for AIDS treatments in poor countries, with significant success?

[Baroness Northover]

My noble friend is right that there are models for how this might be taken forward and he is right that there were real risks of a pandemic. The United Kingdom and its NHS workers have actually played a pretty key role in stemming that, so that it did not become a pandemic. Certainly, in terms of the development of vaccines, that is another area that we need to investigate.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Friday 23rd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Purvis on the way in which he brought the Bill to this House. It is absolutely first-class. I echo his remarks on the quote from the National Audit Office on managing the ODA target. It states that DfID,

“worked hard to manage the substantial increase in its budget, completing preparatory work to strengthen … business processes, increasing the capacity of its workforce, and improving its”,

focus on capturing the results of its spending. Those words will be remembered for many months.

I remind noble Lords of what our ODA expenditure achieves and can achieve if this Bill is passed. UK aid saves lives around the world every day. It provides more than 40 million people with clean drinking water. It puts more than 10 million children in school. It delivers emergency food assistance to more than 11 million people. It provides 54 million people with access to financial services that helps them to work their own way out of poverty. UK aid has the potential to transform the lives of millions of people around the world. This Bill will enshrine that potential into law.

The facts and figures about world poverty and disease provided by NGOs such as Bond, Save the Children, UNICEF and RESULTS, which many Members will have received, make sobering reading. Nearly 14 million people die every year from poverty-related diseases, including TB, which we nearly eradicated some decades ago, and HIV/AIDS, which are each responsible for 1.5 million deaths every year. Globally, 35 million people live with HIV/AIDS.

Since 2002, the Global Fund has contributed hugely to the campaign to eradicate TB, funding the treatment of more than 12 million people. Since its inception in 2002, the Global Fund has helped to save nearly 9 million lives. DfID has pledged up to £1 billion pounds to the Global Fund over the next three years, which will save a life every three minutes and is an eloquent answer to those who might doubt the efficacy of DfID’s 0.7% of GNI budget being taken into law.

Since I entered your Lordships’ House in 2005, and particularly in this Parliament, I have been very fortunate to have had the opportunity, as a parliamentary representative, to see for myself the impact of some of the work that DfID is doing. For example, in Malawi, DfID wrestled with the tangle of local administrative practices that hindered the distribution of vaccines and dietary support for children. That has been overcome through a very tenacious approach to its task.

At the other end of the world, in Bihar state in northern India, with a population of more than 103 million, stunting and malnutrition are endemic. DfID is working with its Department of Agriculture. Although our aid programme is coming to an end, technical support continues. In that support DfID is helping the Department of Agriculture to develop crops with a higher nutrition content, expand crop diversity and access infrastructure to markets, cold storage and packaging and marketing skills, in an attempt to reduce the 40% of produce that is currently wasted.

In Ethiopia and Kenya, the story is even more upbeat, with DfID providing major support for Ethiopia’s land and agricultural reform programmes, which are aimed at unlocking the vast potential in the economy for developing an agricultural base. That is a precursor to an industrialised economy. In Kenya, DfID is supporting a small UK company that has invented a revolutionary and simple tank-fed system for regulating crop irrigation, which minimises water wastage in the process.

After these positives, one can only despair at the situation in Sudan and South Sudan, where millions have been displaced and thousands of children orphaned. The DfID teams work on, but some tragedies are difficult to deal with; for example, in Juba, seeing the plight of children as young as three and no older than eight attending an ad hoc playgroup run and supported by volunteers from UK NGOs. Talking to them through interpreters, we learnt that one little girl wanted to be a doctor. The dearest wish of another was to be adopted. The reality was that the children were found every morning wandering in the Juba markets, and brought in to be washed, fed and clothed. But in the evening, there was no alternative but to return them to the markets to find places to sleep. Their future was grim. The girls would be taken into one of the market brothels by the age of 11 and probably be dead by the age of 13. For the boys, the future was even grimmer.

Now, we have Ebola. In Sierra Leone, DfID, together with Save the Children, the British Army and NHS volunteers, has stepped up to the plate. They have prevented the Ebola outbreak turning into a pandemic, with potentially hundreds of thousands of victims. Dr David Nabarro, the UN Ebola special envoy, has described their effort as magnificent. I tracked him down in Davos to ask his views on the 0.7% of GNI for aid. He e-mailed me last night to say, in terms, that it gives the UK potential for significant impact and has massive benefit for poor countries. The UK and countries that commit to the target are more respected internationally and able to advocate more strongly for other donors to increase their development aid contributions. It is a very good thing.

From all these international debates and deliberations, one thing is abundantly clear. DfID has a formidable reputation among its peers around the world. It sets standards and achieves goals that are the envy of many. Adding legal force to a 0.7% commitment of GNI to the development aid budget can only reinforce the respect and leadership that DfID and the UK enjoy in the developing world.

Ebola

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, on bringing this debate to us today and on the eloquent way in which he set it out, for which I am very grateful.

There are clearly some fundamental lessons to be learnt from the Ebola catastrophe in west Africa, which can be summarised in terms of healthcare practice and provision, public health resources and general infrastructure. The year-long epidemic has now claimed more than 8,000 lives and infected more than 20,000 people. While the number of new cases in Liberia is falling, it continues to rise in Sierra Leone. The data from Guinea continue to be inconclusive, underlining the remoteness and inaccessibility of the mountainous forest region through Guéckédou, Macenta and Seredou.

Apparently the Ebola virus was discovered as long ago as 1976. I can vouch for the fact that in the mid-1980s, while I was working in the Guinea interior along the borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia, villagers would speak to me of their terror of a killer disease that they believed was caught by eating bush meat from monkeys, which may well have been Ebola. At the time, we were doubling the water supply of the capital city, Conakry, but nothing was being done for the remote villages scattered throughout the interior of the country.

A primary lesson is that by not developing a vaccine to tackle Ebola in the intervening 40-odd years, the pharmaceutical establishment bears witness to the eventual deaths of probably tens of thousands and the infection of many more. The reasoning is unclear, but seems to be associated with concerns over cost recovery from desperately poor communities. However, the cost to the regional economies of decimated and crippled communities does not seem to have been taken into account.

The decision by the board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance to support large-scale vaccination efforts with $300 million procurement funding as soon as a safe and effective vaccine is recommended by the World Health Organisation is very welcome. However, the WHO has been strongly criticised for its slow response to the Ebola outbreak, which to date has affected more than 20,000 people and caused more than 8,000 deaths. There are clearly lessons to be learnt on the effectiveness of the mobilisation, distribution and administration of global health relief.

The Ebola outbreak has underlined the need for a fresh approach to strengthening health systems in Africa. Strengthening must be community led. Donors need to prioritise and support community ownership of health systems. The top-down approach does not fully appreciate the spiritual, cultural and political undertones to health that exist among many communities and groups.

The NEPAD organisation of African countries has agreed that each should allocate 15% of GNI to the provision of state-funded universal healthcare, but, so far, there has been little progress. In this context, it seems bizarre that some donors are promoting USA-style healthcare models, based on the principle of private healthcare being purchased by the user, in communities where abject poverty is the norm.

There is now a thing called “Ebolanomics”, or the role of the pharmaceutical sector, which raises many questions about the interaction between market economies and the pharmaceutical sector. That needs to be analysed, understood and reworked into a modern model that responds to the needs of the global population. Barriers that have prevented earlier development of treatment need to be overcome, with more support being focused on the growth of the African pharmaceutical industry. The current business model needs to be redesigned. What would that model look like? Should there be a legally binding framework to guarantee funds to research and to produce and stockpile vaccines for diseases that would otherwise be neglected?

An unforeseen effect of the Ebola epidemic is its impact on programmes to tackle other pandemics, in particular malaria. The Ebola virus is distracting attention from other diseases that still ravage west Africa. Malaria patients in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea—the countries worst effected by Ebola—are now so terrified of the impact of the virus that they will not attend their local hospitals where their malaria could be easily treated with a package of available drugs. Fatoumata Nafo-Traoré, head of the UN’s Roll Back Malaria Partnership, says that without the necessary treatment, malaria patients are going to die.

The economic impact of Ebola on the sub-Saharan region as a whole will be significant, according to Roger Nord, deputy director for Africa at the IMF, who spoke at an Africa All-Party Group meeting recently. He reported that if it takes another nine months to get the outbreak under control, it is expected to reduce growth in Guinea by 1.5% and by around 3.5% in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Neighbouring countries such as Senegal and the Gambia are also starting to see tourism activities decline.

Margaret Chan of the WHO, while recognising the delayed international response and the need for increased international funds, has said that more important than anything else is the need for community funding and support. In this regard, community-level media and radio have an essential role to play, and I pay tribute to the work of the BBC World Service and BBC Media Action, which work with local FM stations that are trusted by their communities. In particular, I pay tribute to BBC reporters in the field who have overcome formidable physical obstacles to reach the most isolated communities in the grip of the Ebola virus.

Much of the work to defeat Ebola is being done by local people. Nigeria and Uganda have sent hundreds of health workers and South Africa has contributed significant funds. The media have a responsibility also to report what African people and Governments are doing to fight Ebola.

Global Development Goals

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on securing this debate on the case for establishing new development goals in 2015. The noble Lord’s contribution to this House, particularly in the All-Party Group on the Great Lakes Region of Africa and other all-party groups, is highly regarded and gives insight into the challenges that face Governments. It also engages with NGOs and civil society in the international efforts to deliver the MDGs by 2015.

I declare my interests, which your Lordships may recall include being the elected chair of the Africa All-Party Group, the UK director of the advisory council for the Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa, and a director of the advisory board of Transparency International in the UK.

In my remarks, I plan to stress the importance of strengthening democracy in the developing world to deliver sustainable development goals post-2015, particularly strengthening parliaments and their ability to establish transparency, accountability and probity in their dealings with the executive arms of their Governments. Before I do that, I should like to refer to a number of the issues raised with me and with other colleagues by various aid and development organisations.

Colleagues have mentioned the Bond organisation. In its paper, Inequality in a Post-2015 Framework, it points out that the new post-2015 sustainable development goals offer a critical opportunity to tackle extreme social, economic and structural inequalities, which perpetuate poverty and social exclusion across the world. Saferworld has raised its concerns about security, and UNICEF is campaigning vigorously to tackle violence against children.

The Bond organisation argues that the three dimensions of sustainable development—economic, social and environmental—should be reflected in the target and goal headlines in a balanced way. There is a call to tackle inequality and ensure that no one is left behind, with the belief that a post-2015 framework needs to be specifically aimed at reducing inequality within and between countries, as noble Lords have mentioned, and to tackle its underlying causes. Interestingly, in a recent address to the United Nations, the Pontiff, Pope Francis, raised inequality as a moral issue, condemning the “economy of exclusion” and its consequences, in views echoed around the world by religious and political leaders alike.

In addressing inequality as we seek to achieve the new SDGs by 2030, life chances and opportunities to be rewarded for your efforts and to realise your potential should not be determined solely at birth or be dependent solely on ethnicity or gender, age or geography. In that regard, I would be interested in the Minister’s views on how the UK Government think that the framework for the post-2015 development goals can best tackle inequality. Will the Government champion the proposed inequality goal in next year’s negotiations? What preparations are under away across Whitehall to respond to a global goal to reduce inequality?

As Health Poverty Action stresses in its case for new global development goals in 2015:

“Tackling inequality is fundamental to addressing poverty. This requires inequality to be mainstreamed across the framework, as well as a stand-alone goal on inequality”.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its recent report that we are running out of time to prevent catastrophic climate change, where average temperature rises exceed 2 degrees, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, so eloquently described for us. Many developing countries are already experiencing the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation through increased floods and droughts and uncertain weather patterns.

There are substantial opportunities for the new framework to promote win-win outcomes by setting targets for actions that have benefits for environmental and other development outcomes. These include cutting waste, technology transfer and renewable energy. Will the Government support and champion a stand-alone goal on climate change in the new framework? What should a green thread look like in goals such as economic growth and governance? How can the United Kingdom be assured that the Government’s proposed reduction in the number of goals and targets in the framework will still achieve environmental sustainability and contribute to action against climate change and sustainable development?

The Bond Beyond 2015 UK group puts forward a strong case for accountability and participation, calling for a more comprehensive system, with the post-2015 framework underpinned by a robust and comprehensive accountability mechanism, incorporating commitments to monitor, evaluate and report on progress, applying to all countries, to all participants and to all people.

That brings me to engagement with parliaments. Throughout the United Nations Development Programme, through the Paris and Accra conferences, through the fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, and now through the first High-Level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation in Mexico City, there has been a running dialogue on the role of parliaments in the development process. It has to be said that in some quarters of civil society, NGOs and the aid establishment, there has been a strong resistance to recognising any role at all for parliaments—the assumption being that donor and recipient nations need only work with them to achieve the aid and development goals.

Let us be clear: the only body that has the authority to approve and ratify state development—the only body that has a mandate from the people over development and state expenditure—is the parliament and the elected representatives of the country concerned. Only parliaments can insist on transparency, accountability and probity from the executive branch of government in actions taken on behalf of the people. That is why the brief on democratic governance issued by the United Nations Development Programme in January 2013 is encouraging.

In setting out the role of parliaments in defining and promoting the post-2015 development agenda, the UNDP makes the point that parliaments have often been sidelined in discussions on official development assistance—ODA—resulting in low accountability for budgeting of aid and its allocation to MDG achievement. The need for country ownership, government accountability and national policy was not sufficiently taken into account during the design and implementation of the MDGs and must now be highlighted as a requirement to ensure that a new set of objectives is attained. Those are not my words. They are the words of the United Nations Development Programme. We should listen to them.

Parliaments are at the forefront of these imperatives, because the play a critical role in meeting those requirements through their lawmaking, budgeting, and oversight functions.

AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler. I also congratulate him on consistently pursuing these issues and the work he is doing month after month, year after year. We owe him a great debt for that. I applaud the remarks made by the noble Lord opposite on middle-income countries and the Global Fund. I cannot remember his name. I do not watch television. You know where I am coming from. The noble Lord raised an important issue. In that context, we should remind ourselves that the Global Fund is a 21st century partnership designed to accelerate the end of the AIDS, TB and malaria epidemics. It is a partnership between Governments, civil society, the private sector and people affected by the diseases. The genuine nature of the partnerships it fosters is critical to the fund’s successes.

The Global Fund mobilises and invests nearly $4 billion a year to support programmes run by local experts in more than 140 countries. Following on from the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, thanks to the Global Fund, 7.3 million people are on antiretroviral treatment, 1.3 million of whom have been put on the treatment this year. Some 12.3 million people have been tested and treated for TB, 1.1 million of whom have been tested this year. Some 450 million mosquito nets have been delivered, 90 million of which were delivered over the course of this year. This has contributed to tens of millions of lives being saved in the decade since the Global Fund was founded. The Global Fund has set a number of goals in relation to its work on HIV, TB and malaria. These goals are due for delivery in 2016. It has already achieved 100% of its HIV goal, 115% of its malaria goal, but only 58.5% of its TB goal. The fund provides over 80% of international financing for TB, over 20% of all HIV funding and 50% of global malaria spend. As the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, mentioned, the UK contributed £1 billion to the fund in December 2013. This contribution will save a life every three minutes.

I want to talk a little about the UK Government’s pledge. They made a renewed commitment to Gavi to invest up to £200 million a year for the period 2016 to 2020 to ensure that 76 million children can access life-saving immunisation programmes. The UK’s contribution will save another 1.4 million lives and will help Gavi to move closer to its overall replenishment target of—would you believe?—$7.5 billion.

Despite the shift in the burden of disease, and indeed the population, from low to middle-income, funding allocations from the Global Fund appear to be moving in the other direction, as the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, mentioned. The application of new funding methodology in Kyrgyzstan—a country with significant HIV and TB burdens—has resulted in an almost 50% cut in total funding for HIV prevention and treatment. Funding for HIV and harm reduction programmes in Ukraine is predicted to fall by about $30 million from 2014 to 2015, on top of a 71% reduction in domestic funding for the HIV epidemic.

Another eastern European country, Romania, was allocated no HIV funding for 2014-16 because it was perceived that there were no political barriers to providing services for people living with infectious diseases, and there is no political will for funding harm reduction. Despite countries having greater GDP, it does not necessarily mean that they are choosing to invest more resources in disease-control programmes. I cannot say this loudly enough: a reduction in Global Fund support can result in the closure of key programmes. That threatens a resurgence of disease in countries where there has been a general reduction in rates over recent years. HIV and TB are prevalent in middle-income countries in our neighbourhood. They are infectious diseases and do not respect national boundaries. Growth of these diseases in central Asia and eastern Europe could impact on the broader region. If we inadvertently facilitate a reduction of disease control in countries just because their GDP has increased to place them in a different World Bank income category, we risk a resurgence in the epidemics.

Finally, I want to talk a little about DfID’s role. We must recognise that our Government, as a major supporter of the Global Fund, should be congratulated on the work they do. Accordingly, the UK has significant influence on the Global Fund board. DfID has made a move to close programmes in middle-income countries and focus its efforts on a smaller group of low-income and fragile states. We should be using our influence on the Global Fund to ensure that it continues to support programmes in countries that receive from few or no other external donors, and not try to influence the fund to focus its efforts on the same countries that DfID currently targets.

I hope that our Minister will commit to work with UK representatives on the Global Fund board and with the Global Fund to develop a more gradual taper of support for countries with increasing domestic resources. It is important to remember that access to treatment is still being denied to too many people, with a total of 29 million now estimated to be eligible. As a final quote, Michel Sidibe, the executive director of UNAIDS has said:

“HIV has transformed from a death sentence to a chronic condition”,

that is treatable, enabling millions of people to live long, healthy lives. However, this is far from enough to end AIDS by 2030, let alone ever.

Ebola

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Thursday 6th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, for almost a decade I was responsible for managing major infrastructure projects along the Guinea/Sierra Leone/Liberia border. Only 5% of Sierra Leone’s highways are paved and the rest of the network is gravel, generally poorly maintained. We are nearing the end of the rainy season, and in the interior some rivers will have flooded and roads and minor bridges will have been washed away, isolating many communities. In yesterday’s Disasters Emergency Committee briefing, it was clear that it had yet to reach the remote areas of Guinea.

Visiting American envoy Samantha Power has lambasted the international community for not supplying aid, doctors and health workers to an area where hundreds of thousands of people can rely on perhaps only a handful of clinicians for their health needs. As she boarded a plane for Guinea, she said:

“You have countries at the United Nations … who are signing on to resolutions and praising the good work that the United States and the United Kingdom … are doing, but they themselves haven't taken the responsibility yet to send docs, to send beds, to send … money”.

The international community,

“isn’t just losing the race to Ebola. We are getting lapped”.

Both the DEC and the UN admit that Ebola cases are doubling every three to four weeks, with the potential to reach 1.2 million. The WHO says that, unless the rate of infection reduces by 1 December, it will be overwhelmed by,

“an entirely unprecedented situation, for which we do not have a plan”.

At present, less than a quarter of the almost 5,000 planned Ebola treatment beds are operational, due fundamentally to a lack of foreign medical teams. Lack of bed space has become a huge issue.

What is desperately needed is the development of community health systems, which expand and grow from the bottom up in the communities and settlements in the interior. Dependency on outside intervention leaves the people hostage to fortune in terms of accessibility by road, particularly in the rainy season.

In this regard, what precisely are the special resources that NATO is able to bring? Does NATO have the thousands of clinicians and aid workers that might turn the tide? I some how doubt it.

Ebola

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The Government are extremely active at the moment in seeking assistance internationally. The European Council is coming up and the Prime Minister will attend. He has sought €1 billion from European countries. All embassies across Europe are very active in seeking funds for this extremely important and pressing crisis. The key thing about hospital ships is to make sure that there is capacity in Sierra Leone rather than seeing capacity as being offshore. In terms of being flown home, as my noble friend Lord Howe said the other day, sometimes it is not in the best interests of a patient to be flown home. The important thing is to make sure that if we have medical staff working there they are supported there if that is judged to be clinically the most effective way to look after them.

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, living and working in the remote forest regions along the border of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea is difficult enough in itself—without electricity, without any form of healthcare and without clean water. Adding the problems of trying to deal with Ebola creates a really difficult situation for these people. As a lead aid nation, has the United Kingdom ensured that it is securing support from local workers from all the distinct linguistic groups, reaching into the remotest communities in these areas? How is the United Kingdom responding to the efforts and offers of President John Dramani Mahama to make Ghana the regional base in west Africa in the international campaign to defeat Ebola?

[Baroness Northover]

The UK is supporting the training of many local workers. That is key, not only in Sierra Leone but in the other countries. UNMEER, which is the United Nations organisation set up to co-ordinate efforts across all the countries, including ones which are not affected at the moment, will have to be extremely vigilant. It is acutely aware of the need to make sure that health workers are in place in those countries.

Sudan: Meriam Ibrahim

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

One of the features about this case—there are others—is the international outcry. A striking thing is the way that it has affected the Government of Sudan, who were taken aback by it. That shows that this kind of campaign—as the noble Lord will know, a lot is going on through social media—can be effective, and that all voices need to contribute.

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Chidgey]

My Lords—

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

My Lords—

Development: Post-2015 Agenda

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, on securing the debate and giving those engaged in aid programmes and policy-making the opportunity to discuss these issues.

I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on raising the points that he did, particularly his comments on the Philippines. Quite a few years have passed since I was in Manila, although I do not want to tell noble Lords how long ago that was. However, I shall never forget seeing two things all those years ago. The nightlife of Manila is world famous for all the wrong reasons, but I shall never forget seeing a neon sign in the centre of the city which said: “AIDS cured here”. That showed the level of desperation and ignorance—or optimism, if you want to call it that—which existed in those days. The other thing I remember is that the Philippines benefited in some ways from the control that was exercised by the United States of America. I think that it was the only colony that America ever had. The Americans gave the Filipinos the gift of education, on which they thrived. However, the tragedy was that well educated young people who trained to become teachers and nurses were employed as waiters and waitresses because that was the only work that they could get. That is where the inequality struck home. I was a young man at that time but I have never forgotten how tragic and unfair it was that these bright, talented people had no opportunities.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for reminding us that we have achieved the aid target of 0.7% of our gross national income. I am obviously delighted that that is one of the great positive things that have come out of the coalition Government. The Liberal Democrats pressed to have that included in the agreement and it has been achieved. We should all take great comfort and pride from that.

In an Answer to a Written Question in March from my colleague Martin Horwood MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Lynne Featherstone MP, replied:

“The UK has been clear in its call for a standalone goal on gender equality and girls and women’s empowerment as well as ensuring that these issues are addressed throughout the goals and targets in the framework to be agreed by members of the United Nations. The UK’s statement at the Commission on the Status of Women highlighted the need for a standalone goal on gender equality and the empowerment of girls and women in the post-2015 framework. We are working with others across the international community, including civil society, to ensure that this is achieved”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/3/14; col. 87W.]

In a wider sense, inequalities remain unacceptably high across all aspects of life. Inequalities in income and wealth are severe and widening globally between and within countries. The richest 1% of the world’s population now controls some 40% of the world’s assets—a point raised by noble Lords earlier. Inequalities of opportunity and of outcomes cannot be fully separated, as poor outcomes frequently undermine future opportunities. There is strong evidence that unequal outcomes are transmitted from parents to children, compromising life opportunities for the next generation. Impacts on capabilities, through poor health stunting the process of brain development and learning, are often cumulative, irreversible and lifelong.

Inequalities matter not only because of their impact on social justice; they matter in relation to reducing poverty and achieving sustainable development. They need to be systematically addressed if the aspirations of the post-2015 development agenda are to be realised for all. Their persistence has made the eradication of extreme poverty and the full attainment of universal goals very challenging. Inequalities in themselves tend to be a barrier to opportunities. They undermine people’s sense of well-being, they increase the risk of violent conflict and they lead to harm in the wider society.

The Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals recognised that the MDGs focused more on global and national averages and aggregate progress without explicitly addressing inequalities, both within and between countries. The new framework needs to go beyond global and national averages. It needs to measure the levels of achievement of different social groups to highlight who has been left behind. It needs to incorporate targets to ensure progress for all social groups and reduce the differences in achievements so that action can be taken to improve the situation for all groups.

Because inequalities cut across all dimensions of development, there has been much discussion over whether there should be a stand-alone goal on equality or whether addressing inequalities should be mainstreamed across all goals, targets and indicators, or a combination of both.

In the current MDG framework, there are well established goals, targets and indicators with respect to gender equality, and there are proposals for additional targets for the post-2015 agenda. In this regard, NGOs are making an important contribution. For example, Christian Aid is calling for the closure of gaps impeding global equity, such as income inequality between genders, as well as inequalities relating to tax, social protection, land rights, governance and partnerships. It is calling for gender equality and women’s empowerment as a stand-alone goal and for transformational targets in areas such as gender-based violence, participation, leadership and economic justice. It is seeking the integration of gender throughout the new sustainable development goals.

Christian Aid acknowledges that the MDGs failed to address poverty among the most disadvantaged and marginalised populations, and it welcomes the “leave no one behind” agenda. In particular, it supports the idea that no new goal or target should be considered met unless it has been met for all incomes and specified social groups.

Another NGO, Age International, makes a strong case for tackling people of all ages in the post-2015 framework. This, it says, will be effective only if it is relevant to people of all ages. The open working group’s focus on tackling inequalities echoes the high-level panel’s call to “leave no one behind” and the idea that no target would be considered met unless it was met for all relevant social groups, including older people.

The global population is ageing rapidly. The number of older people is predicted to increase to 2 billion by 2050. Some two-thirds of older people live in developing countries. By 2050, this will have increased to four-fifths. This is a cross-cutting issue for people of all ages. Older people experience inequalities in their daily lives and are more likely to live in poverty. Globally, half as many again older women and nearly a quarter as many again older men live in poverty compared with women and men of working age.

Poverty cannot be effectively eradicated without taking into account all people, regardless of age, gender or ability. The MDGs made great strides in reducing extreme poverty but failed to address deep-rooted inequalities of age, gender and disability. Bond Beyond 2015 UK is the global campaign aiming to influence the creation of a post-2015 development framework to succeed the current UN MDGs. It brings together more than 900 civil society organisations from across the world. It makes the case that inequality is extreme and in many cases growing. It is unjust and damaging. Promoting equality must therefore be a cross-cutting objective of the post-2015 framework in addition to poverty reduction.

Finally, the UK Government have an important role to play in championing the promotion of equality as a cross-cutting objective of the post-2015 framework through the open working group, agreement of a joint EU negotiating position and the UN intergovernmental process in the run-up to 2015.

Middle East: Syrian Refugees

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord speaks from a great deal of experience and he is absolutely right. This is indeed creating a huge amount of instability right across the region, which is why we are looking at it in that light. That is why we are channelling so much support to the neighbouring countries in the region that are hosting so many Syrian refugees. We are acutely aware of the effect on their populations.

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, more than 2.5 million refugees have registered in neighbouring countries, and the number of internally displaced persons in Syria now exceeds 6.5 million. Taken together, that is a total of more than 40% of Syria’s pre-conflict population. More than half the refugees are children, as noble Lords have mentioned. In the absence of progress towards a political solution, the UNHCR predicts that this refugee population is set to become the world’s largest. Yet, is my noble friend aware that, so far, less than 4% of the refugees have sought safety in Europe? How do the Government therefore intend to respond to the UNHCR’s call for “much stronger international support”, clearly well in excess of the vulnerable persons scheme that began yesterday?

[Baroness Northover]

My noble friend is right about the scale of the challenge here and about the fact that most refugees have stayed in the region. Many of them, of course, wish to return home when it is safe to do so. That is why pursuing the peace process is the most important element here and why, in the mean time, we have to make sure that we provide as much humanitarian aid as possible. He will know that we have taken in, as of yesterday, refugees from the most vulnerable categories but, clearly, trying to tackle the crisis as a whole has to be our main strategy.