Development: Post-2015 Agenda

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Kinnock for initiating this important and timely debate. The OECD estimates that between 2000 and 2010, 83 developing countries achieved growth rates equivalent to double the OECD average, but that this growth has not necessarily been inclusive. Going back only 15 years, there were just two dollar billionaires in India; now there are 46. The $176 billion total net worth of the billionaire community has climbed from 1% of GDP to 12%. That is enough to eliminate absolute poverty in India twice, with enough left over to double spending on the country’s shockingly underfinanced public health system.

What is happening in India is part of a wider pattern. Almost half the world’s wealth, totalling $110 trillion, is now owned by just 1% of the population. Seven out of 10 people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the past 30 years. Developed economies with a fraction of the global population use about half of global resources and are responsible for 77% of all global emissions. As my noble friend Lord McConnell said, within countries, the vulnerable poor cluster in areas where climate change has a disproportionate impact, such as flood zones and dry rural areas. As my noble friend Lady Kinnock said, crucially, inequality is an issue that affects not only the global south but the global north, too. Between 1980 and 2007, the top 1% of Americans nearly tripled their share of the total national income from 8% to 23%.

Inevitably, tackling inequality will require confronting the root cause of discrimination that both drives and compounds such disparities in wealth. As we have heard in this debate, the most persistent and pervasive form of prejudice is gender inequality, but inequalities can also occur across urban-rural divides, or have different ethnic, religious or racial group dimensions. Discrimination on grounds of disability is also a critical factor fuelling inequality, as my noble friend Lord McConnell highlighted.

The conclusions of the recent session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women are a significant contribution to this debate. It concluded that gender-based discrimination, including the denial of the rights of women and girls, remains the most widespread driver of inequalities in today’s world. Gender-based violence, taking many forms, is a major element of this massive and continuing failure of human rights. What specific actions will the Government undertake to meet the challenges identified by the CSW, both domestically and internationally?

As we heard, when inequalities overlap they reinforce each other and create unique forms of discrimination and exclusion. Interventions to address the symptoms—for example, chronic poverty—will be undermined if the root causes are not also addressed. My noble friend Lord Parekh asked why inequality is a bad thing. He was right to highlight those issues. High levels of inequality generate considerable costs for society—weakening demand, restricting social mobility and undermining the labour market prospects of vulnerable social groups. Inequality is a key driver of financial crises, halting economic growth and fuelling economic instability. As we have heard, wealth inequality is also an engine of protest and instability, and a primary cause of political unrest.

A recent Oxfam report asserted that, given the scale of rising wealth concentrations, opportunity capture and unequal political representation are a serious and worrying trend. Both the Arab spring and the anti-World Cup riots in Brazil stemmed from public protest over high unemployment, increasing poverty and growing inequality. Widening gaps have accompanied progress towards the MDGs as Governments, in a bid to meet targets, have been guilty of targeting the lowest-hanging fruit. The common use of averages and aggregate data in MDG reporting and the lack of the data needed to disaggregate results by class, wealth, gender or race meant that emerging inequalities have remained unnoticed. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, will not be offended when I say that I hope that those issues are now much more apparent. It is when we disaggregate that we understand what is really behind the figures.

As my noble friend Lady Kinnock said, we have made progress under the MDGs. However, as Kevin Watkins of the ODI stated,

“data on progress has tended to divert attention from the disparities beneath the national averages. The disparities linked to wealth, gender, ethnicity and other markers for disadvantage have in some cases increased even as countries progress towards the 2015 goals. This is incompatible with the spirit of the MDGs. ‘Leaving the last to last’ is not compatible with a rights-based perspective. Moreover, inequality has emerged as a powerful brake on progress towards the MDGs”.

Although the high-level panel report makes a number of references to inequality and to a commitment to leave no one behind, no explicit inequality goal or target is suggested. Instead, the report recommends that data collected to mark progress on meeting the targets be disaggregated by specific groups.

I do not share the opinion of the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin. Like many others, the Labour Party was extremely concerned by the HLP statement that economic inequality is a matter solely for national policy and should therefore be excluded from the framework. The post-2015 development agenda is intended to be a single, unifying, global agenda. That means that whatever targets and goals we agree will be equally applicable to our work in the UK as to our work internationally through DfID. It is therefore crucial that our domestic and international approaches are both complementary and mutually reinforcing. For those of us on these Benches, tackling inequality complements not only our opposition to corporate greed but our promotion of responsible capitalism and Labour’s belief that our UK economy, just as our global one, must work for the many, not the few.

The UK Government should use their role in the ongoing negotiations to ensure that the post-2015 framework specifically tackles economic and other inequalities within countries through goals, targets or other mechanisms. Tackling inequality across the board will require a transformation shift in aid delivery. In education, the challenge then becomes not just universal provision but a focus on quality. In trade, it is not merely the provision of jobs but of labour market policies that allow for the role of trade unions, a minimum wage and measures to tackle the growing informal economy.

With decisions on the post-2015 agenda fast approaching, we are reaching a critical juncture. Decisions made now will shape the next generation of aid and development. More than this, they will shape the opportunities and life chances of the next global generation.