The UK’s Relationship with Africa

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Commons Chamber

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

I am grateful for the chance to speak in this debate and to the Backbench Business Committee for bringing the subject to the Floor of the House. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood).

I want to concentrate my comments primarily on education. With our partners, the UK can do much to build on the work of extending educational provision to more children in the poorest families in the poorest countries in Africa. Education is one of the most effective ways of helping development in poorer countries. It contributes to greater economic growth, healthier populations, and more stable societies. Equal access to education for all reduces inequality and poverty and increases empowerment.

Much progress has been made towards achieving the Education for All goals set by world leaders in 2000. As many Members have said, it is important to be positive, not least because that underlines to people in the UK that the money they pay in their taxes to support international development is well spent and brings about real change. It is good that since 1999 the number of children out of school around the world has fallen by almost half. Nevertheless, UNESCO recently reported that by next year many countries will still not have reached the Education for All goals. The situation is particularly serious in parts of Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, where 30 million primary-age children are out of school. Girls suffer most from this lack of provision. One in four girls is not receiving a basic education, and at the end of the last decade only 23% of children from the poorest households completed primary education. If recent trends in the region continue, although boys from the richest households will achieve universal primary education by 2021, universal primary education for girls from the poorest households will not be reached until 2086, and girls are not expected to achieve universal secondary education, even at the lower level, until 2111— 97 years away. That is clearly an unacceptable situation.

Unfortunately, just when funding for education is urgently needed to accelerate progress, that funding is in crisis. Although some African countries have managed to increase their domestic education budgets, others still spend too little—in some cases, less than 3% of GNP. Meanwhile, external aid for education from multilateral organisations and bilateral support from richer countries is declining. The UK is not in that position—it is leading the way in supporting basic education in poorer countries, including in Africa. That is happening under this Government and of course happened under the previous Labour Government. We have been increasing our aid to education at a time when several other donors have been making worrying cuts, not only in education support but in international development assistance.

Given what I said about the particularly serious situation regarding education for girls in poorer countries, I welcome DFID’s continuing commitment to supporting the education of girls, which is recognised across the House. The UK is also, of course, the single largest donor to the Global Partnership for Education. That leadership role gives us the opportunity to play an important part in influencing other donors to step up both their direct bilateral aid for education and their support for GPE.

The Minister will know that GPE’s four-year replenishment campaign will begin with a pledging conference in Brussels a week today, which will be attended by global leaders. It is not clear whether the UK Government will send a Minister to the conference or whether the UK will make a financial pledge to the fund. I certainly hope that the Government will send a Minister, so perhaps the Minister could tell us later. That would be an important way of emphasising our commitment to action.

UK non-governmental organisations have been calling on the British Government to make a number of commitments to the replenishment process. In particular, they have called for the UK to make a pledge of £525 million to the fund, thereby providing 25% of the target, if other donors also step up. The NGOs have called on the Government to continue the existing bilateral funding to education in developing countries, and to support developing country partners to increase their own domestic education funding, which is particularly important.

The campaign backing education for all has widespread popular support in this country, particularly from schoolchildren, who want to see children from poorer countries enjoying the same right to education as they do. Many Members will be aware of the “Send my Friend to School” and “Send my Sister to School” campaigns. Many schools in my constituency and, I am sure, others have taken part in them in this and previous years. I give a special mention to the children and staff at St Mary’s primary school in my constituency in Edinburgh, who a few days ago delivered just over 300 “Send my Friend to School” buddy cards to my office. Almost every single child in the school was involved and they were inspired by the school’s connection with a school and project in Tanzania.

Given the support for action from constituencies across the country, I reiterate my call for the Government to send a senior Minister to the pledging conference in Brussels next week and to make a financial pledge to the fund along the lines suggested by NGOs. If we do that, we can play a leadership role to influence other donors, help ensure a successful conference and allow the vital work, in which our country is playing an important and leading role, to continue.

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[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), so that I can stress the importance in my job and the Minister’s of talking truth to Governments and adhering to principles. The hon. Gentleman eloquently explained why that is important.

This has been an excellent and extremely wide-ranging debate. It will be a challenge, in 10 minutes, to commend sufficiently the eloquence and knowledge that I have heard over the past couple of hours. I will try to refer to all Members who have spoken, however, because every one has made a valuable contribution. I will also go through various points that I want to make and touch on various issues as I do so.

I thank the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) for securing the debate from the Backbench Business Committee, because we must continue to talk about the hugely important continent of Africa. A close relationship exists between the United Kingdom and Africa, and we need to reflect our knowledge to our constituents and show them that engaging with and meeting individuals from Africa is an important part of how we can do our job better.

Of course, as a Labour spokesman I am proud of the emphasis that the Labour Government who left office in 2010 gave to Africa. I thank the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) for referring to the work of Tony Blair and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and their commitment to Africa. At that time, organisations in all our constituencies, such as Jubilee 2000, placed on their agenda support for what has at times been a troubled continent. They got behind us as politicians and forced us to act, and the Government responded to that.

I congratulate the current Government on agreeing to achieve, and indeed achieving, the 0.7% of GNI target. The approach to the subject has been one of the best changes that I have seen in Conservative party attitudes in recent years, and I pay tribute to the Government for that. Within that consensus, it is important that we carry forward our perceptions across the Chamber.

We mentioned Africa’s strategic and economic importance, and we emphasised trade. The hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) worked hard as Minister for Africa, and was as assiduous and unfailingly polite as ever in carrying out that job. He was always keen to develop trade between Africa and the UK, and the envoys whom the Government have appointed have helped enormously with that. We must carry that forward.

Africa has not just close business links but also cultural links with our constituencies. I could not fail to mention Lesotho, which, as a number of Members know, is close to my heart. It was referred to as one of the beacon countries for democracy, and it has a close relationship with Wales and my constituency. Lesotho’s Commonwealth games team will be based in Wrexham this summer, as a follow-up to basing its Olympic team there. We are pleased that that relationship continues in civic life at a local level, and in our constituencies there is a huge interest in Africa as a whole.

As the hon. Member for Bedford said, it is important that our relationship with Africa is principled, characterised by consistency and built on partnership—I was pleased to hear that word. We have seen in Wrexham, and I am sure across the UK, how important it is that we learn from each other. I am unfailingly impressed by young people in Africa and their attitude to valuing education, health and family—I wish that some people in our country felt as deeply about those things as they do, because we have a lot to learn from Africa.

I join other Members in congratulating the Government on last week’s summit on the prevention of sexual violence in conflict, and I hope that we can build on those efforts with our international partners in areas of concern. We need increased co-operation between the UK Government and Governments in Africa to combat practices such as female genital mutilation—for example when it is expected that young girls are being sent to such countries to have that horrific form of abuse inflicted on them.

During the conference the UK national action plan on peace and security was launched. I welcome that and I met a number of women who expressed the need for women to be at the heart of security and Government issues. I am sure, however, that other Members would be as grateful as I would be for more detail on the implementation of that action plan, as we work on this matter in the days and months ahead. There is currently very little information on that, and if we are to work together to take forward that agenda we would like as much information as possible as soon as possible, so that we can co-operate.

Alongside the conference I had meetings scheduled with representatives from African countries, but they were unfortunately cancelled because visas could not be secured in time. Visas are often raised with me in my communications not just with Lesotho but with other African countries—particularly smaller ones—and across the House we would like to improve access to visas for people from Africa who want to come to the United Kingdom. That is a continuing problem, which I am sure inhibits trade and cultural relations between us.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

May I put on record my concern about the difficulties with visas faced by the Scotland Malawi Partnership, of which my hon. Friend and the Minister may be aware? I hope that some progress can be made on that.

[Ian Lucas]

I thank my hon. Friend for agreeing with me about visas and for highlighting the Scotland Malawi Partnership, which is almost as good as the Wales Lesotho partnership—high praise indeed. We need to work together, and we had some discussions in the Africa all-party group about visas. Perhaps we need to liaise on that with the Home Office in more detail.

A number of Members mentioned the importance of human rights across the continent, and I wish to refer to some of the smaller African countries. A number of representatives from the Gambia raised concerns with me about serious human rights abuses in their small west African state. Only last week, I wrote to the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Baroness Warsi, about the continued detention of human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko and journalist Bheki Makhubu in Swaziland. They were first arrested in March following their publication of an article criticising the High Court in Swaziland, and they now face charges of contempt of court.

The Government must do more to ensure that mechanisms are in place so that small African countries are heard and not overlooked. It is often difficult for those in countries with which we do not have the closest relations to exert pressure on Governments, but I imagine that a cell in Swaziland is as bleak as a cell anywhere else to the person involved. What is the UK doing, together with its international partners, to ensure that such mechanisms are in place?

Earlier I mentioned religious extremism, and we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) about the challenges in northern and north-west Africa. I commend the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee to which he referred—he serves on that Committee—which is valuable in explaining an area of Africa that is not focused on enough but is extremely important. The collision of cultures that is taking place across northern Africa, from Somalia to Mali and across Algeria, is of massive importance and linked to the issues we face in Iraq. We must have a collective focus on why people are turning to extremism and the most appalling behaviour as some sort of warped way of seeking to improve their lives.

We have seen many dreadful incidents of terrorism in recent days and weeks, and Kenya has returned to the news over the past few days. The right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) does much positive work with the CPA, and through its auspices last week I met some Kenyan parliamentarians and we had a good discussion. I was therefore saddened to see further problems in Kenya. We also heard from various speakers about the kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria, and the dreadful ongoing situation that reflects more generally the problems of extremism across the Sahel and northern Africa.

Bilateral and international efforts must focus on finding a long-term solution to combating Islamist militant groups such as Boko Haram. Further to discussions at last week’s ministerial meeting on security in northern Nigeria, will the Minister outline what leadership role the UK will play to help improve regional co-ordination to counter the threat of Boko Haram? More broadly, what steps are being taken on governance to try to improve and achieve a more successful approach to these massively important issues?

Stability is best achieved where countries can achieve economic progress that is balanced with stable consensual government based on democratic values. Whenever I visit Africa, it strikes me that the key to all of this, if I had to choose one word, would be “governance”—governance without corruption, and governance that people in that country believe in and think will improve their lives. The right hon. Member for Banbury spoke about Ethiopia, which he visited in the 1980s. For my generation, that was a hugely totemic country and a totemic issue that brought much political activity. There has since been great achievement and progress in Ethiopia, and it has performed well economically in many ways. We also heard about Rwanda, which has also economically progressed. There is, however, a political challenge in Rwanda and Ethiopia to develop a consensual form of government that deepens democratic activity and achieves economic success. That is the challenge for Africa and for all of us, and we need to work together to achieve that in the days, weeks, and years ahead.