Population Growth

Lord Rea Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rea]

My Lords, I think that the whole House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for raising this Question and for his thoughtful and thought-provoking speech. The fact that 11 speakers have put their names down for this one-hour slot gives an indication of the importance of the issue.

I am going to talk mainly about population and economic migration but, on the way, I should like to flag up briefly the way in which rapid population growth will affect not only this country but the rest of the world through its impact on the environment by accelerating resource depletion and climate change. We are already faced with a time bomb since, although the output of greenhouse gases per head in the developing world is low at present—about one-20th of ours per head—this will inevitably increase with rising standards of living. China is already providing us with an example.

I should declare an interest in that I am a long-standing member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health. In January 2007, we published a report, Return of the Population Growth Factor, Its Impact upon the Millennium Development Goals. This was a distillation of a series of parliamentary hearings of experts in the fields of population and demography. Its conclusions, in brief, were that each of the first seven MDGs was adversely affected by population growth when it exceeded the rate of economic development. This applied particularly to sub-Saharan Africa, where population growth rates are the highest in the world and economic development the slowest. With regard to MDG 1, which is to,

“eradicate extreme poverty and hunger”,

the report says on page 21 under the heading “Running to stand still”:

“In sub-Saharan Africa, GDP per capita has been falling at nearly one percent a year, and those living in poverty … rose modestly from 44.6% to 46.4% between 1990 and 2001”.

Annual economic growth is expected to be 1.6 per cent between 2006 and 2015 but,

“due to the countervailing effect of rapid population growth, the World Bank predicts that by 2015, 340 million people in Africa will be living in extreme poverty, compared with 318 million in 2001”—

an increase of 22 million. The pressure to seek a better life in another country comes not so much from overcrowding and population growth per se but from lack of employment and poverty—in other words, “the economy, stupid”. Initially, employment is sought in the rapidly increasing slum cities of the developing world, but when this is not forthcoming the most enterprising citizens seek it elsewhere—perhaps in the El Dorado of the prosperous north and west. As the noble Lord said, the populations of some of those countries are in decline with a shortage of young people, so inward migration may not always be a bad thing.

Of course, there are reasons other than poverty for migration—conflict and political persecution are two. In the past, this country has benefited greatly from migrants from Europe fleeing political persecution. The largest number of immigrants, as the noble Lord pointed out, are seeking their way out of poverty.

There are two approaches to the problem, which are equally important. We must make more efforts to boost the economies of the developing world and diminish poverty. This in itself will result in fertility rates coming down. We all accept that that is a gargantuan task and inevitably slow. In the mean time, much can be done to assist mothers to have fewer children. The two most important are to aim to boost female education and to ensure that contraceptive supplies are made available to the 220 million women who wish to use them but at present cannot obtain them. There is no time to develop these themes. Suffice it to say that DfID is well aware of the needs of the developing world in reproductive health and family planning—not least because our group makes sure that they are aware. DfID devotes a greater proportion of its budget to it than most other countries. I am sure that the noble Baroness in her answer will take the opportunity to describe DfID’s work in this field.

[Baroness Northover]

I remind noble Lords that this is a tight time-limited debate, and when you hit four minutes you have already exceeded your time.