Building Stability Overseas Strategy

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord McConnell for this important debate about joined-up approaches in government to dealing with conflicts and related humanitarian and environmental disasters. The report shows how UK departments deal well with crises. I saw that myself as chief executive of the Met Office in the 1990s, which was then part of the Ministry of Defence. Generally, there is a sort of crisis gene in Whitehall which does very well when there is a war or conflict but does not do so well as regards tackling long-term systemic problems. This was first pointed out in about 1850.

I noted the pertinent remark of the noble Lord, Lord Bates, that policy requires inputs from many fields. As a scientist, I would certainly add science to that. There is almost no mention of science or engineering in the report, which is extraordinary. Scientists not only in this country but also in developing countries desperately need encouragement and support. They will provide the relevant information in the long term. In fact, I am busy working to help networks in those countries.

In 1993 the world was involved in the consequences of the first Gulf War. When I read my Sunday papers, as I did then, I noted that large numbers of refugees were stuck in snowstorms on the Iraq/Iran border. These snowstorms had been well predicted by the Met Office computer so I asked my colleagues in the Met Office why we did not tell people about them. They said that there was absolutely no international protocol in place whereby a centre in the UK could communicate these warnings to the meteorological and humanitarian services in the relevant countries. This is still the problem. There is still tremendous difficulty in communicating information, particularly as regards floods.

This week we have seen a tropical cyclone strike the United States. For 40 years there have been excellent methods of communicating information about such events but it does not apply to many areas. There was a world conference in Yokohama in 1994. At that time the Chinese objected to the idea of transmitting warnings from one country to another. However, I am glad to say that great progress was made at the Hyogo conference in 2004 and there will be a further meeting in 2014.

Furthermore, there are now, of course, global weather forecasts on the television and communities receive some warning of extreme weather, floods and the spread of disease. Government and NGO expert advice is also needed. Nevertheless, the communication between national and regional authorities still remains quite inadequate. Researchers around the world should use the new information and methods that are becoming available. I am afraid that nationalism is evident even in science. For example, extraordinary new developments being used in Russia to detect earthquakes are not used in other countries as they are suspicious of the methods being used by Russia.

DfID was very concerned about the floods in Mozambique which occurred in about 2000. However, at that time it did not pursue particularly energetically the fact that the data which forecast the floods were not exchanged between Mozambique and Zambia. This position has now changed. I am very pleased to see that DfID supports scientific and forecasting work at the Met Office. For example, DfID took the warnings of the recent year-on-year droughts in east Africa very seriously. Those warnings were helpful as regards providing food and aid.

I hope that the Minister will say to what extent research into conflicts, particularly conflicts driven by extraordinary natural phenomena, is being considered. There is no discussion in the document about the use of conflict research, which has a long history. Indeed, many types of conflict have been predicted by academics working in this area.

The United Nations specialised agencies have a very important role in co-ordinating the work contributed by national bodies. There are United Nations bodies concerned with health, meteorology, the environment, hydrology, bodies such as UNESCO and so on. The Minister should emphasise that when winding up.

One of the features of these agencies is that they provide services following conflicts. One should mention the work of Habitat—one organisation that provides important information and support in the rehabilitation of housing and cities, following disasters or conflicts. I do not know whether noble Lords saw the pictures this week of the devastation of a whole area destroyed in ethnic conflict in the Muslim part of the coastal city of Myanmar. Satellite pictures showed only too clearly what had happened. This area will have to be rebuilt, and the kind of help provided through the United Nations system will be important.

This raises the issue that I hope Ministers can consider, as to how to improve the collection and distribution of data, which is often haphazard. That is particularly important in vulnerable countries and across the international organisations to enable societies to have the data to develop sustainably and peacefully, and deal with disasters. I have been campaigning on this issue since I was at the Met Office in 1995. I am afraid that I have met civil servants who have asked, “What have data got to do with policy”. I am sure that there are no civil servants like that in this Chamber, but it is a terrible fact that there is therefore absolutely no interest in providing even £10,000 or £20,000 to enable a country to co-ordinate its data. That is considered to be of zero interest. However, if I ask for £1 million for a particular project, I may get it. That may happen, all the data will be lost and the money will have no permanent effect. However, if I asked for the supply of an ongoing data service, the methodology of which the Americans have now developed, it would cost little money but the value would be extraordinary. So I hope that the Minister and his advisers can understand this.

Even in the UK, negotiating data arrangements between research councils, as I have done, is difficult. In Ghana, we carried out a study looking at all the agencies in that country, all of which are collecting data separately. They all agreed that if there was one centre that listed the data, they would agree to list their data. That would then enable all sorts of organisations to improve the information.

Data have become more important in government since the Berners-Lee report. He featured at the opening of the Olympic Games. I hope that his great role will be celebrated, that data will be taken seriously and that centres will be set up in all the countries we are considering, as well as internationally, so that people can know where the data are to encourage people to take further information and data on, for example, rain, to enable countries not only to develop sustainably but to have the information to respond to extreme events.