Foreign Affairs and International Development

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

[Mr Hague]

I will give way in a moment, because I just want to elaborate on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) raised.

Not only is that a reversal of the overall policy of the previous Government, who closed 17 high commissions and embassies, but in some instances we are reopening embassies and high commissions that they closed.

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[Mr Hague]

I have more to say about that, but I promised to give way to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz).

[Mark Lazarowicz]

The right hon. Gentleman, like many, will know that, in some cases, embassies and consulates require new buildings, and this British presence overseas can be an opportunity to highlight the best of British design and architecture. I have been contacted by a constituent with a leading architectural practice who believes that the Government’s new arrangements discriminate against high-quality design and architecture in favour of the cheapest option and, sometimes, in favour of multinational companies rather than British architecture and design. Will the right hon. Gentleman look into that point, about which I have written to one of his ministerial colleagues?

[Mr Hague]

I will certainly have a look at the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. Of course we want to support British architecture, and I think that we do, very well, in many parts of the world. It also has to be cost-effective in this public spending environment, but I will look at the point that he makes.

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[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

There have been many passionate contributions to the debate, and the contribution from the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) was one of them. I draw attention in particular to the speech made by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock). Hansard will report all the words of her contribution, but it will not reflect the rapt silence in which it was heard by Members across the House as she raised the horrific situation of young Palestinian boys and girls in military custody.

I listened closely also to the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann), who stressed the target of 0.7%, to which the United Kingdom Government have signed up for more than 40 years and have not delivered on so far in one single financial year; and to my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who pointed out, almost amazingly, that in a Queen’s Speech debate over a series of days, we have no specific focus on the importance of the environment. I should have thought that by now we would have learned that it was one of the most important challenges that we face.

I listened closely to the opening speech from the Foreign Secretary, who touched on many of the key issues of the day. Nobody can doubt the challenge of the crisis of the eurozone or the situation in Syria. Both remain extremely serious, and there is a need for an urgent political solution, as far as that is possible, and the return of international military forces from Afghanistan as a top priority.

I take the opportunity to concentrate on a particular challenge facing northern Europe, a subject not touched on from either Front Bench or by anybody else today. The seas north of Scotland are warming at an alarming rate. Recent studies show that warming in the Arctic is occurring faster than anywhere else on the planet, and the average temperature in the region has surpassed all previous measurements in the first decade of the 21st century. Sea ice has been shrinking, and the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet and other Arctic ice caps will contribute more and more to the rise in global sea levels. The facts are sobering. Sea ice in the Arctic is melting faster than at any time in the past four decades, and during last summer the Northwest passage was free of ice, and this trend is set to continue and become the norm.

These changes in Scotland’s backyard are significant and they are accelerating. All our neighbours are at action stations, because they understand that the massive changes impacting on the high north and Arctic will become a significant feature of the years and decades ahead. The environmental concerns are alarming, but significant economic opportunities and geostrategic challenges must be tackled in parallel. Those include oil, gas and mineral extraction and new international shipping routes. Up to 30% of the world’s undiscovered gas reserves and 10% of oil resources are believed to be located in the Arctic. With the opening of northern shipping lanes, vessels sailing between east Asia and western Europe could save more than 40% in time and fuel costs by navigating the sea lanes north of Siberia rather than the southern route through the Suez canal. Rising sea temperatures also mean that there are new fishing grounds.

Given all of those developments, one would imagine that the UK Government would be taking this very seriously. After all, all neighbouring Governments in the north of Europe are doing so. Sadly, they are not. At last November’s International Maritime Organisation assembly, the UK did not even raise the massive challenges of the northern dimension. Among our neighbours, the changing circumstances are, however, being thoroughly considered.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is right to criticise the Government, but perhaps I can give him some reassurance as the Environmental Audit Committee, of which I am a member, is looking at this very issue, because we recognise that it does need to be given much higher priority by our Government.

[Angus Robertson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing that to my attention and I look forward to the conclusions of the report with great interest, because, as I said, our neighbouring countries have been considering this problem for a number of years. Given the national priorities at play, they are keen to ensure stability in the region, which necessitates ecological, economic, diplomatic and defence co-operation and understanding. All this explains why the countries adjoining the Arctic are taking the issue very seriously. Norway, Denmark, Russia, Canada and the United States have all developed specific policy priorities for the high north and Arctic. Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands consider this a top priority, as do nations such as Sweden and Finland.

Our neighbours’ multilateral engagement is extremely serious and they are working closely together. This has happened for decades through the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Nordic Council, and has recently been widened to include enhanced bilateral and multilateral relations with the independent Baltic republics. Nordic co-operation is broad and embraces areas such as environment, health, energy supply, research, culture, education, information technology, research and business advancement. A specific Arctic co-operation programme works together with countries in the Arctic Council, which was formed in 1998 with the signing of the Ottawa declaration. An additional important consideration relates to regional security, where finely tuned defence priorities provide the capabilities that secure stability and aid the civil power across the massive area that constitutes the high north and Arctic. Our neighbours are scaling up their infrastructural capabilities in the region.

Despite different relations to treaty organisations such as the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the Nordic and Baltic nations are pushing ahead as never before. This includes shared basing, training and procurement arrangements. For nations such as Norway and Denmark in particular, deployability and reach within the high north and Arctic is a key consideration. This is not the case for the UK.

Recently the UK Government mapped out their future priorities in a strategic defence review, a weighty 75-page report that does not mention the northern dimension once, underlining that it is not an important focus for Whitehall. In addition, UK defence cuts to infrastructure and capabilities in Scotland mean that we will have a diminished ability directly to co-operate with our neighbours. Damaging decisions, including the scrapping of fixed-wing Nimrod search and rescue aircraft, are at the top of that list. Air force operations are ending from two out of three of the northern air bases in the UK. No appropriate conventional sea-going vessels are based in Scotland at all. The recent arrival of a Russian carrier group around the Admiral Kuznetsov in the Moray Firth off my constituency necessitated royal naval interdiction craft being sent from the south of England to the north of Scotland, underlining that gap in capability.

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[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I would like to spend a few minutes addressing the Government’s failure to include legislation in the Queen’s Speech to make it mandatory for 0.7% of gross national income to be spent on overseas development, despite the fact that both coalition parties pledged themselves to such a commitment in their agreement. The Government can, of course, point to the fact that, notwithstanding the omission of such legislation, the Queen’s Speech confirmed their commitment to reaching the 0.7% target from next year. I congratulate the Government on sticking to that commitment—a commitment first entered into, of course, by the Labour party. I congratulate the Government because at a time of economic stringency, it would have been all too easy to succumb to the cries of those who call for overseas aid to be cut in favour of spending at home.

The continuation of the commitment to overseas development is a recognition of the fact that it is in our national interest to assist the poorest in our world community, because poor countries are less likely to buy our exports and poor countries that become failed states threaten our national security in all sorts of ways, of which hon. Members will be well aware. Supporting the poor in the poorest countries is also a recognition of a moral imperative, whether motivated by faith or by other ethical perspectives. Indeed, it does not particularly matter: it is a moral imperative, and I am glad that colleagues across the House have made that point in their speeches today.

That is why I find it surprising that the Queen’s Speech did not include legislation to make spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas development assistance mandatory. I do not accept the argument that the time cannot be found. The legislation would be short and would have all-party agreement. Given the experience of the previous Session, when legislation was sometimes in all too short supply, I do not think it would be difficult to find time. All I can assume is that the Government, although prepared to do good by stealth and quietly stick to the 0.7% spending target, were nevertheless not prepared to proclaim their commitment from the rooftops, for fear of attracting too much attention and political flak from their more right-wing members and supporters. I understand why that might have seemed an attractive course of action, but I believe it to be a great mistake, and one that will be counter-productive to the Government’s stated commitment.

Those who do not support the 0.7% commitment in law will have scented weakness in the omission of the promised legislation, and will draw the conclusion that they should press more, in the hope that they can undermine the spending commitment as well. However, if the Government had gone ahead with legislation, there would have been a battle, but once it was through, the very fact that disengaging from such a commitment would be more difficult—requiring, as it would, a new Act of Parliament to repeal it, and one that would certainly face strong opposition—would make the commitment much more likely to remain, no longer being subject to real attack.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend raises the important point of the 0.7% target. Would not setting such a target also be an opportunity for the Government to leave a lasting legacy, so to speak, for future Governments, demonstrating the immense commitment of the UK people to international development?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Indeed it would, which leads to me to the point that other countries look at what we in the UK do on development assistance. The UK under this Government—as, indeed, under the last—is seen as a world leader. In the current world economic situation, many richer countries are beginning to cut their overseas development assistance. The world community is beginning to draw back from the pledges it has made to the poor in poorer countries. Promises are being broken. An unequivocal commitment from the UK that we are standing by our promises—not just for one spending programme, but for the long term—would encourage those elsewhere in the world who want the promises made to the poor to be kept and who want to ensure that the weakest in the world community do not become the greatest victims of the world economic crisis.

I therefore hope that the Government will recognise that it would be to the advantage of their stated cause to introduce a Bill to make the 0.7% commitment mandatory. If they do not do so, I suspect that one of the hon. Members who signed the private Members’ Bill book today who comes up in the ballot will almost certainly choose to introduce such a Bill anyway, thereby putting the Government in the invidious position of either supporting it or asking Members to vote down legislation that they support. I therefore hope that the Government will think again on the 0.7% commitment.

However, legislation is one thing. Targets are important; what is also important is how spending on international development meets long-term development objectives and short-term crises. In that context, I want to say a few words about something that has not been covered in the debate so far: the spreading food and hunger crises in many parts of Africa. Western Africa is now facing a new hunger crisis, which has the potential to be as serious as the one in the horn of Africa. Hundreds of thousands are still facing hunger and, at best, life in refugee camps in Somalia, and we are seeing similar crises developing, for all sorts of reasons, in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When we look at what is happening in west Africa, we see an awful similarity to what happened in the horn of Africa. There were warnings about what was happening in the horn of Africa months and even years ahead; yet the world did not respond until it was too late. Since the crisis in Somalia, we have had the welcome Ashdown report, which was commissioned by this Government, on humanitarian and emergency relief. The food crisis in west Africa is a test of the new policy. I would like Ministers to tell us, if they can, what the UK is doing to put the new policy to the test in west Africa and to face up to the worrying possibility of a new famine, and to say what the Government are doing to that end internationally.

Conflict is obviously contributing to the crisis in west Africa, as it did in Somalia when the knock-on effects of events in north Africa moved further south. The growing humanitarian crises in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are also linked to conflicts in those areas. Conflict is often the underlying cause of hunger and famine in many parts of the world. Tackling the underlying causes is never easy; there are no simple solutions. Ideally, the problems need to be addressed by African solutions and initiatives, supported by the world community. I would like to know what the Government are doing to support campaigns by African institutions to tackle such regional security issues.

Long-term solutions also require an awareness that support for food production and agricultural development for and by local communities is vital. I agree with what the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) said about that earlier. It is vital that we give more support for food production and agriculture, to increase resilience to short-term crises and to provide long-term opportunities for development.

It is not only Britain that has a role to play in this regard; there must be agreement and action in the international community. I endorse the comments made today by the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander). We have heard some interesting comments from the Back Benches, and from the Secretary of State, but what was missing was an idea of an overall strategy and cohesion of themes linking together the policy on international development. International meetings including the G8, the G20 and the Rio+20 summit are coming up, and we must also consider the future of the Doha round. They will all require a strategy, but we have not heard one today from the Foreign Secretary. Perhaps we will hear more in the closing comments from the Secretary of State for International Development, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell).