Sustainable Development Goals

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

That is a fantastic idea, and I hope the Minister will be able to respond to it when she closes.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will know that my Committee—the Environmental Audit Committee—has also been looking at the domestic implementation of the goals. Way back before the general election, we were told that the way of delivering the goals here at home was through the single departmental plans, so does my hon. Friend share my disappointment that only two Departments—DFID and the Treasury—mentioned the SDGs in their plans immediately after the 2017 general election?

[Stephen Twigg]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the leadership that she has shown on this issue and the work of her Committee, to which I will return in a moment. She is absolutely right. To be frank, I think the single departmental plans are an insufficient mechanism for delivering the goals anyway, but it is a huge concern if even that is not being achieved.

So far, 111 countries have submitted their voluntary national reviews to the UN. The UK was slow to put itself forward, only committing in November 2017 to present its first VNR, which we will do this year. We have fallen behind other key countries, including Germany, France, Sweden, Canada and Ireland. The Department did not even host its first stakeholder meeting on the VNR until the end of July last year. Departmental champions, described by DFID as

“responsible for supporting production of the review”,

were not appointed until late October 2018. DFID’s own stakeholder events—the only comprehensive attempts to reach out to different groups as part of the VNR—were very welcome, but they did not start until March this year—just three months ago.

One of the founding principles of the 2030 agenda is

“the requirement for all implementation and follow-up processes to be participatory and inclusive”.

Stakeholders from civil society, the private sector, Parliament and the general public have a crucial role to play in the VNR process. Indeed, stakeholders have been keen to engage more, particularly UK-based civil society organisations such as UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development and the Bond SDGs Group, the umbrella for the non-governmental organisations that work in development. Those organisations have been very active, yet they have said that the process has been frustrating. Bond described the consultation as “a missed opportunity”, adding that

“the Government has not been clear about specific opportunities for consultation with non-government stakeholders”.

UKSSD told us that stakeholder engagement has been “limited and selective”.

[Mary Creagh]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the review was not made available in any accessible formats and that the events were often called at very short notice, meaning that disabled people could not attend?

[Stephen Twigg]

I absolutely share my hon. Friend’s concern, not least when the guiding principle of the goals is to leave no one behind. If we are failing to engage with disabled people and disabled people’s organisations, we are leaving behind a group that has been left behind all too often.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on giving such a comprehensive overview of the process and the strategy we need for delivering the sustainable development goals both here and abroad. I want to take the opposite approach and focus on a couple of issues where the SDGs could be used as a tool with which to make progress.

The first is SDG 2, on zero hunger. We have tended to see that as an overseas issue, but, as I argued in my intervention, it is a real and growing problem here in the UK and needs a domestic focus as well. The second is plastic pollution and waste, which touches on a number of the sustainable development goals. In that case, it is almost the opposite—we are now alert to, if not on top of, the problems caused by plastic pollution as it affects the UK, but it is also very much an issue for developing countries and the Department for International Development.

SDG 2 was the subject of an inquiry by the Environmental Audit Committee, and I am glad to see a couple of my colleagues from the Committee here. The goal is to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture via five domestic and three international targets. Last year, UKSSD assessed UK performance against the domestic targets and judged that all were either amber, where

“the UK is not performing well enough or performance is deteriorating”,

or red, where

“there is little or no policy in place that adequately addresses the target, performance is poor.”

This is very much a problem in the UK. I recently held a Westminster Hall debate on the children’s future food inquiry, which showed that the UK has among the worst food insecurity levels in Europe. Nearly one in five under-15s live in a food-insecure household, half of which are severely food-insecure. We heard some terrible stories about children going to school hungry and their education suffering as a result. As many Members across the House have seen in their constituencies, the surge in demand for emergency food aid can be directly linked to the roll-out of universal credit, with its long waiting times, delays in payment and sanctions. The report found that not only the unemployed, but many people in low-paid and/or insecure work are affected by food poverty

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; she is a valued member of the Environmental Audit Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing. Was she as surprised as I was to discover, during our inquiry, that the UK has the second highest level of severe food insecurity of children under 15, coming second only to Romania in the EU? Does she agree that the roll-out of universal credit, which makes single-parent families up to £50 a week worse off, is a key driver of that food insecurity?

[Kerry McCarthy]

Yes, I very much agree with my hon. Friend the Chair of the Committee. I would say that since 2010 the Government have absolutely refused to acknowledge that this is a direct result of Government policies. In particular, it is because of the policies of the Department for Work and Pensions that the rise in food bank usage has grown so exponentially. We heard the Chancellor again this week taking a very blasé attitude towards the figures on poverty in this country.

[Mary Creagh]

Does my hon. Friend not think that there is a poetic irony in the fact that DFID uses the system of cash transfers to give food aid to people abroad, particularly in emergencies, yet it will not make cash transfers to hungry families here at home? It seems to big up the food bank movement—do not get me wrong; it does amazing work—but the most efficient way to feed people is to give them an income so that they may choose how and what they want to feed their own family.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Exactly. I could not agree more. It is absolutely shocking that so many families in this country are so reliant on food banks and other emergency food provision in this day and age.

As the EAC found when we looked into this issue, no Department has included domestic hunger and food security in its single departmental plan. It has very much fallen through the cracks and, as I have said, it is viewed only as an overseas issue. Whether intentionally or not, the Government are giving the distinct impression that they do not want to acknowledge or to tackle the crisis at hand. It was very telling that when we had I think four Ministers from various Departments in front of us for the inquiry—

[Mary Creagh]

Five.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The Chair says there were five Ministers. We asked, “Who is responsible for hunger?” and it was not just that there was no one with designated responsibility, but the fact that they all looked so blank and just looked at each other. It had clearly never occurred to them that perhaps somebody ought to be looking at this. That was one of the recommendations of the Environmental Audit Committee—that we appoint a Minister with responsibility for hunger and food security.

I do think there is the broader point, which I have returned to many times in this House, that the F in DEFRA stands for “Food” not “Farming”. We have quite a limited view of food policy in this place. We need to be looking not just at how we produce the food, but how the food gets to people, as well as healthy eating, public procurement, food waste and so many other issues, and hunger is very much part of that. We will do that only by making sure that there is someone with ministerial responsibility across the whole piece.

We also need to look at the issues of malnutrition and childhood obesity, which are part and parcel of the same problem. A recent report by Kellogg’s looked at food deserts in the UK and, absolutely shockingly, two estates in south Bristol—very near to my constituency—came in the top five in the country, and another one in my constituency was also singled out. These are places where childhood obesity will quite often still be a problem, but there is also the overconsumption of cheap, fast food, which is high in calories and low in nutrients. We need a definition of under-nutrition that covers both underweight and overweight individuals, and a tool for identifying it, as called for by the Patients Association.

If we are to leave the EU, British food standards must be maintained. We cannot have a rush to the bottom, whether on animal welfare or food safety standards. This obsession with ever-cheaper food is not the way to solve hunger in this country.

Earlier today, I chaired a session of the all-party group on food waste that was looking at the issue of food waste—surprisingly—with the new food waste champion. Sustainable development goal 12.3 is specifically about reducing food waste. In this country, we have signed up to a target of 50% by 2030, and it is reassuring that the Government are committed to taking action on that. However, it was very disappointing that the Committee on Climate Change, in its recent recommendations to the Government, has suggested only trying to reach that goal by 2050. If we are serious about tackling the carbon footprint of food waste—I am very fond of saying that if food waste was a country, it would be the third highest emitter after the USA and China—may I suggest that we ignore the Committee on Climate Change and stick with what we have promised under SDG 12.3 instead?

The second issue I want to speak about is plastic pollution. I pay tribute to Tearfund for its “No Time to Waste” report, which has already been mentioned. That excellent report shows just how far-reaching and serious the impact of plastic pollution is in developing countries. It is also a problem for us because multinational companies and waste exporters from developed countries are largely responsible for producing plastic in the first place. I have not yet caught the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall programme from yesterday, but I think it highlighted the fact that we export waste to countries such as Malaysia.

As the Tearfund report mentions, plastic pollution has a direct impact on our efforts to achieve more than half of the sustainable development goals, including those on poverty, hunger and economic growth. It is a threat to biodiversity, on which the production of nutritious food depends. It pollutes our water. Costs associated with ocean-based consumer plastic pollution amount to $13 billion every year. That includes revenue losses to fisheries, aquaculture and marine tourism industries, as well as the cost of cleaning it all up.

Plastic pollution is also relevant to the goal on healthy lives and wellbeing. Plastic causes flooding, and flooding causes the spread of waterborne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, dysentery and cholera. Burning plastic pollutes the air. I will never forget seeing a screening in Parliament of a film called “Trashed”, which was narrated by Jeremy Irons. It shows kids in the Philippines playing on toxic waste dumps, and we could see the steam coming off the dumps. The mothers were indoors, cooking and using the plastic as fuel. Again, that is incredibly toxic.

Between 400,000 and 1 million people die each year in low and middle-income countries because of diseases related to uncollected waste. There is obviously a problem with water and sanitation for people who live among uncollected waste.

Goal 11, the sustainable cities goal, is also relevant. Globally, 2 billion people lack waste collection, and a further 1 billion people lack safe disposal of waste, let alone recycling facilities, but at the moment only 0.3% of overseas development aid is spent on waste management. I know that the Government are trying to support waste management in developing countries. There tends to be a focus on health and education but not on basic public services. Waste collection in developing countries is crucial if we are to achieve a number of the goals.

Let us consider small island developing states. For example, in the Maldives, one of the islands is effectively designated as the rubbish dump because there is nowhere on the other islands to put the rubbish. The Seychelles are on their second landfill site. There are only three inhabited islands and the main island is pretty much built on a hill and there is little land there. The second landfill site was meant to last 10 years, but it will be full up in six. Where do they send the waste? Tourists who come in on the cruise ships mostly create the waste in the first place. We therefore need to consider how we support other countries to have a waste collection system.

Goal 12 is on sustainable consumption and production. As a Parliament, we should focus more on that. Global plastic production is completely unsustainable and plastics use is growing fastest in countries where there is no prospect of safe disposal. Plastic packaging accounts for nearly half of all plastic waste globally. Of course, that contributes to climate change. Global plastic production emits 400 million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year —more than the UK’s total carbon footprint.

Tearfund highlighted two examples of how the problem is growing in developing countries: what it dubs the “sachet economy”—single portion plastic sachets, which are easier and cheaper to produce and transport than bottles, but are currently non-recyclable, and plastic PET —polyethylene terephthalate. In 2017, global consumption reached 471 billion bottles, which, if they were put in a line, would reach from Earth to Mars.

Goal 14 is about life below water and goal 15 is on life on land. An estimated 8 to 12 million tonnes of plastic enter the oceans every year. That also pollutes our soil and fresh water. As the Tearfund report concludes, we will not meet the sustainable development goals without tackling the plastic pollution crisis. We have a time-critical decision to make. We can choose to ignore the evidence and carry on with our linear business model, churning out more and more plastic because it is cheap and convenient. We can continue to fail to invest in circular models and sustainable waste management systems, and ignore the devastation being wreaked across the planet. If we choose this path, and plastic production is allowed to continue to increase in line with predicted growth, it will completely overwhelm even the waste management systems of high-income countries. Communities will continue to be engulfed by mountains of plastic waste, our oceans will continue to fill up with plastic, and people and animals will continue to suffer. Or the global community can act while there is still time. I do not know whether the Minister has had the chance to read the Tearfund report yet, but I hope she does and that she elevates this issue to the position of importance it deserves on her Department’s agenda.