AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, in political affairs there are always a number of things that cannot be repeated too often. As regards global health issues, it is impossible to overemphasise either the importance of the work done by my noble friend Lord Fowler over the past 30 years or the value of the leadership that he has provided and continues to provide to politicians across party dividing lines who have committed themselves to doing all they can to support those on the front line—the doctors, scientists, academic authorities, health workers and volunteers—leading a battle against three diseases, malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS, that wreak such havoc in large parts of the world today. Some of us taking part in the debate had the great good fortune to hear a few days ago from a number of experts who have dedicated themselves selflessly to releasing as many as they can from suffering and achieving immensely impressive results, particularly in Africa.

However, there are those who succumb to the illusion that the battle is far advanced and final success is in sight. My noble friend Lord Fowler is tireless in pointing out how much remains to be done. He has made that clear again today, as he did in his recent influential—and, I am sure, best-selling—book, in which he stressed the essential uncomfortable truth that we all need to bear constantly in mind. This is how he put it:

“The central problem that the world faces with HIV and AIDS today is this: it is the millions of people infected with HIV who, in spite of the medical advances and all the money poured in, remain untreated”.

There are millions of people united with us in the brotherhood of man who desperately need the treatment to hold their HIV in check but who are denied it.

That fundamental point was underlined in the authoritative report published on World AIDS Day last week by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on HIV and AIDS, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. How welcome he is in this debate and the others that will follow. The all-party parliamentary group calculates that less than two-thirds of adults with HIV and three-quarters of the children living with it today are not receiving the treatment they require. Immense progress has been made, not least through the Global Fund, to which I, like other noble Lords, pay tribute, in extending access to the treatment that contains and controls HIV, and yet so much more remains to be done. The all-party report last week estimated that 55 million people will need HIV treatment by 2030.

It would be an immense tragedy if this country, which has made such a marked contribution to the progress so far, should falter now. However, without adequate funding our contribution is bound to falter, and the inimitably long period of experiment and trial needed to find an HIV vaccine will be extended further. That, I think, is the main cross-party message that this important debate seeks to deliver. Surely we cannot allow the defeat of pandemics that condemn millions to misery to be set back and weakened because of short-term factors in Britain connected with the coming general election. Rather, the main parties must stand firmly together, explaining, as my noble friend Lord Fowler constantly does, why the skills of our doctors and the breakthroughs achieved by our research scientists must continue to be placed at the service of mankind as a whole. We belong at the centre of the Global Fund, this remarkable international partnership that brings together Governments and the private sector.

The all-party report is entitled Access Denied. In her speech in response to it on World AIDS Day, my noble friend Lady Northover, who understands these issues so fully, referred to the need to address the numerous barriers that limit access to medicines. One of the most formidable of these barriers is the criminalisation of homosexuality in so many countries. In nearly 80 countries—too many of them members of the Commonwealth—it is a crime to be gay. In circumstances of such grotesque discrimination, gay people with HIV are not going to draw attention to themselves by seeking treatment, assuming that it is available. We have referred to this intolerable barrier to treatment—indeed, to simple human equality and dignity—often in our debates on global health and Commonwealth affairs in recent years. Like my noble friend Lord Fowler and the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, I believe that we should emphasise this again and again. The statistics are stark. In Caribbean countries where homosexuality is not against the law, of every 15 men who have sex with other men, one is infected with HIV. In Caribbean countries where it is a crime to be gay, the rate of infection is one in four.

It is, of course, the Commonwealth countries that are most prominent in our minds. They are closest to us, united by ties of kinship, friendship and history. The Commonwealth’s collective institutions produced clear evidence in 2011 that where homosexuality has been decriminalised, HIV infection had failed. To the infinite sadness of us all, that has not led to widespread reform, even though the criminalisation of homosexuality is plainly incompatible with the Commonwealth’s new charter, to which all its members nominally subscribe. Some Commonwealth countries glory in oppressing gay people, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, in relation to Uganda. As for the Commonwealth as a whole, does it want to be seen as upholding or blatantly ignoring fundamental human rights? It cannot dodge that question.