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.

Government Overseas Aid Commitment: Private Investment

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The global goals seek to end poverty, violence and hunger in all their forms in this country as well as overseas. The figure of 0.7% of gross national income on development assistance should be a floor, not a ceiling. Although I have some sympathy with the accounting issues that the Secretary of State is dealing with in terms of the reinvestment of any profits, I seek a guarantee from her that any investments that we make with that budget—either through the World Bank or the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank—are climate-neutral and environmentally friendly. I also say to her that not a single pension trustee in the country will invest overseas if they think that their investment is going to displace Government investment.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Lady for her understanding of the issue of how we account for ODA. I can reassure her: this is the Government who introduced the 0.7%, and I have been an aid worker and believe in aid spending. I think that if we do not spend money on development, we pile costs on to other areas of public spending such as defence. I can also reassure the hon. Lady that the speech that I made today—I urge her to read it, if she has not already done so—makes it clear that we want to do more. Indeed, we must do more, because otherwise we will not deliver the global goals. So I can give the hon. Lady that guarantee. She is absolutely right: the public want to know where their investments are going. They want to know the environmental issues, and they want to know the social issues.

Sustainable Development Goals

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and to follow such excellent speeches from the hon. Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and from my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick). I find myself in violent agreement with everyone but particularly with the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) about her remarks on cycling. As a keen cyclist, I shall don my helmet and dash up to Euston later to conduct a witness session with young people in Birmingham.

I was keen to take the Environmental Audit Committee out of London. We are going to the midlands to listen to what young people have to say about their futures and their involvement in delivering this incredibly ambitious agenda. I therefore give my apologies to you, Mr Stringer, because I will have to leave at 3.15 pm—I thought we were to finish at three o’clock.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on the International Development Committee’s report. I will pick up a couple of the issues it found about the worrying lack of engagement from Departments across Government and how we will achieve the goals domestically and internationally.

I am reminded of when I was out campaigning for the Labour party, when I had just become an MP, to make poverty history. I was in Wakefield city centre giving out leaflets and said, “We’re trying to make poverty history,” and this woman looked at me and said, “Well, what are we doing to make poverty history at home?” Actually, probably all of us have been confronted with that question, and finally as MPs across parties and as Governments of whatever colour we have an answer. It is imperative that we get it right. As I was Labour’s shadow Secretary of State for International Development until 2015, this cause is very close to my heart.

The Environmental Audit Committee launched its inquiry on 25 July. We want to build on the International Development Committee’s inquiry and measure, monitor and—importantly—communicate the Government’s performance and progress towards achieving these goals. I will share a few initial observations on the principles of applying everywhere and to everyone and ensuring that no one is left behind. That is imperative, and that means that we must implement the goals domestically. The second principle is that we must focus on the poorest and most marginalised groups in society. That presents significant challenges that the Government, NGOs, the Office for National Statistics and we as politicians will have to tackle. I was in our Committee yesterday and I was in Berlin on Tuesday talking about the global goals. If we ask a bunch of 20-something people who work for NGOs—this is interesting—we hear, as a witness said yesterday, “We’ve got to look at all these goals, and we looked at water quality and access to water and thought: in the UK we don’t have a problem with that,” and yet we received evidence a couple of weeks before that nine UK water companies are in water stress. That might be 15 water companies by 2020 and all of them by 2030. The definitions of what we measure are in some way defined by the people we ask. If we put the question to NGOs in this country—which do not normally campaign on water and are not involved in its delivery—they will give a different answer to the people who are actually involved in that delivery.

On data collection, disaggregating the data is really important. A headline goal or target could be on nutrition, but we are not generally malnourished in this country; some might even think we are a bit too well nourished— I am certainly feeling that way at the moment; that is why I am on the bike again. We have got to look underneath malnutrition and at this country’s problem with obesity, particularly among children. A significant percentage of children are obese by the age of five, which has increased by the age of 11. That is a massive problem.

There is also a hidden problem of malnutrition among our frail, elderly population. It is hidden because we do not go into care homes and say, “Did you have your breakfast today?”, or, if the old person’s stomach has shrunk, “Did you have a light lunch at 11 o’clock and then something to eat at 1 o’clock?” We are able to consume and absorb less food as we get older, but we are not really changing our habits. We still expect three meals a day, but old people might need five or seven meals a day. Are we adapting our services? These goals profoundly challenge us to think about the problems and the difficulties we will have in collecting those data.

The Office for National Statistics says that about 70% of the targets are covered, but it will need to use data partners, such as NGOs, businesses and local government, to make sure the data are of good quality, and it will have to build trust in the information. We hope to inform the ONS’s consultation. It will be published on 29 November, which will be a critical moment in our country’s implementation. We need to engage the public on the goals.

We also heard from businesses yesterday. At the meeting I attended in Berlin, where there were environmental charities that are used to fighting businesses that want to build dams, chop down trees and exploit mineral deposits, it was very interesting that there was a strong reaction against me when I said, “No one is really talking about the role of business in this.” I thought to myself that business has probably lifted more people out of poverty than the combined global aid budgets and everything that charities have done, so it is a question of how we get business to address market failure. If people are hungry or in poverty, that is a market failure. How do we work with businesses to address that? Businesses want well-paid people who are able to purchase their goods and services, whatever they may be. We heard from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is developing an interesting data mechanism that can be applied globally. We heard about the insurance company, Aviva, which is on the frontline of flooding and climate change issues, and also from Hermes Investment Management.

We also have things to learn from other countries. Wales has a commissioner for future generations. At first, the Welsh Government were going to introduce a sustainable development Act, before realising that no one knows what sustainable development is—it is too abstract, too distant, too out there—so they talked about solidarity with future generations. They had a great programme of implementation and consultation that gave everybody in Wales ownership and understanding of what that Act means.

When we have our data partners and data parameters, we will need some poets to translate it into normal language. Obviously, that is part of our job as politicians —to translate very technical, difficult issues. However, we need to cascade that down. One of my concerns is that a lot of international NGOs came to our inquiry but we did not hear much from UK charities. That is a big problem, and we have a real job to do with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations to get that message out and get those charities to map every activity against the baseline targets.

We will also have to translate those goals into what we do as politicians. How is what we do in the House and every day that we spend as MPs going to end poverty or violence? Every Bill that we pass should be run past that mechanism if we are going to have meaningful action. We have looked at innovations from other countries. For example, Colombia has put its peace process at the heart of everything it is doing, while Finland has developed an online tool so that everyone can put in what they are doing to contribute to the goals and bring them to life. I am afraid that we have not yet seen the same level of enthusiasm from the Government. I will read the Minister’s response very closely in Hansard. I hope we will see a new level of enthusiasm on this.

Dr Graham Long, who is a senior lecturer at Newcastle University, set out some areas of concern in the UK: 40% of homes fail to meet the decent homes standard; 40,000 people die prematurely due to air pollution every year; the Trussell Trust gave out half a million emergency food parcels in the first half of the year, including to more than 180,000 children; we throw away more than 7 million tonnes of food and drink every year; as I said, nine companies are under water stress; since 2013, the suicide rate has increased to 12 deaths per 100,000 people, which is its highest rate since 2004. On energy efficiency, the phasing out of fossil fuels and non-communicable disease mortality, we have done an awful lot as a country, but we have an awful lot to do.

We need to work with local government, the NHS, schools—I was pleased to see some young people in their school uniforms in the Gallery who had come to listen to the debate—colleges, universities, large and small businesses, local and national charities and trade unions, which realise that there are no jobs on a dead planet. Those organisations will help to transform the goals into action on the ground and to build a community of likeminded people. As I said, I am off to Birmingham this afternoon.

However, we need leadership from the Government. The voluntary sector is waiting for the Government to show leadership; it is a sort of chicken and egg thing: if the Government do not lead, nobody knows about it and the charities feel like they are talking into a vacuum. We heard during our inquiry that the Government’s contribution to the goals is confined to the 2015 Conservative manifesto, but that was published before the goals were agreed and only lasts until 2020.

Perhaps we need to look at fixing this into law, as we did with climate change, and having something that sets the goals on a five-yearly basis—although not to coincide with general elections—and that are agreed by an independent committee and with an independent monitor that is able to look at those things in the round. The area on which I think the International Development Committee report was most damning was the “deep concern” at the lack of a strategic approach, the

“deep incoherence across government policy”

and the potential for progress made in one area to be undermined by its lack in another. We will look at that in a granular way. This is a 15-year agenda, and the goals are non-binding and voluntary, so we really need to see robust accountability mechanisms in place; we cannot rely only on the Environmental Audit Committee or the International Development Committee, which have very limited resources.

[Mike Gapes in the Chair]

I conclude, Mr Gapes, by saying that ours is the generation that can end extreme poverty, hunger and violence, reduce inequality and tackle climate change. I know that my Committee, and the other Committees of the House, will work over the course of this Parliament to ensure that we live up to our commitments and achieve those global goals. Our constituents, our children and our grandchildren are relying on us to do that. We must not let them down.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. Unfortunately, you have missed most of the debate. It has been incredibly interesting, and I am delighted to follow so many hon. Members, from all sides of the House, who have spoken very eloquently about the sustainable development goals. They have not been in existence for that long, but we are making some progress.

I am particularly interested to follow the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), who said, “There are no jobs on a dead planet”, and that the unions understand that. That is actually something I will touch on in my speech. We know that we need better health and education and a reduction in the disaffection of young people with politics, particularly, and with the world. We also know that we need more peace and fewer conflicts in the world. Many of those things affect countries in Africa.

I want to concentrate on jobs, which relates to goal 8. That goal is for

“sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”.

I will focus my remarks on African countries. Without jobs and economic growth, we cannot have any of the other things in the sustainable development goals. We cannot have better health or better education unless somebody pays for it. Jobs and livelihoods are incredibly important. They help families to educate their children and to have better health.

I have been privileged to travel to many African countries, and they are all delightful. They have very varied landscapes and types of countryside out there. The only thing they have that I hate is mosquitoes and malaria; that is the only downside I can see to African countries. It is a unique continent, but without tourism, which is what I want to talk about, most of its countries would have very few jobs for people to earn a living and to help their children and grandchildren. We do not want to continue giving handouts. People do not want handouts; they want a proper job, so that they can contribute to society, pay their taxes and help others by doing so. They want a livelihood that engages them and that they can enjoy.

Tourism is one such livelihood. It encompasses all sorts of jobs, from rangers out in the field to people working in the hospitality industry. Without tourism, Africa would struggle to survive. It is something many people in this country take advantage of; many of us have been on holiday to African countries and recognise that it is a most beautiful continent, with a fantastic climate. As I say, the only downside is malaria.

There is a tremendous diversity in African countries that tourism can take advantage of, but that diversity is at threat. If that threat is not tackled by the world, diversity will decline, if not disappear, in many countries. Elephants, rhinos, gorillas, wild dogs and even lions, to name just a few, are at risk of extinction from poachers, who earn so much by killing those majestic and beautiful animals.

The other problem that animals face, aside from the poachers, is their shrinking natural habitat, which I believe this country can help to protect. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) about the planting in Nepal that helps with climate change. That can also help to provide a habitat for some of these wonderful animals. DFID, alongside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, needs to push our Government, through the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to ban the trading of ivory worldwide.

Parts of elephant families are being killed, which is tragic. Since the Conservative party came into power, in the coalition Government before and now on our own, 120,000 elephants have been killed in Africa alone, reducing the population to just over 300,000. The problem is that the speed at which they are being killed is escalating, so my grandchildren and great-grandchildren may never see elephants.

[Mary Creagh]

The hon. Lady is making an interesting and valuable point. Does she agree that we need to do a lot more to ban the domestic trade in ivory in this country and the loophole that allows ivory allegedly produced before 1948 to be freely sold and traded? People can go to any antique shop down on the King’s Road and pick up some ivory. Until we take the cachet and the glamour out of ivory, including antique ivory, in our own country, we cannot lecture people around the world on this, because they can come back and say, “Well, I can get this on the King’s Road.”

[Pauline Latham]

There is a market and people are making money from it; the hon. Lady is right. I am campaigning to stop the trade in ivory not only worldwide but here, because we are nowhere near there yet, and we should be. We should be leading the world in blocking the ivory trade, and I know the Minister is interested in this issue.

Elephants live in large herds. They are very social animals. When an elephant is killed, the others grieve. We have seen it on David Attenborough’s programmes. If several animals in a herd are killed, poachers will generally go for the largest, because they have the biggest tusks, which poachers make so much money from. That means elephant families are losing role models for the younger elephants to follow.

We talk about dysfunctional families in this country; that is what we are seeing with wild elephants in Africa. Those elephants are losing the role models and the family structure that we have lost quite badly here. The non-mature males have no role models to follow, so they become delinquent and dangerous to the population. I know of one wildlife photographer who was trampled and savaged—he survived, but only just—by an elephant that was not behaving naturally. We are not only decimating these beautiful animals but changing the structure of their lives.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. Agriculture is a key economic sector of most of those countries. A recent McKinsey report states that the achievement of gender parity at a regional level, so that each country matches the best progress of the best country in its region, would add 11% of global GDP by 2025—a huge economic lever for all of us to pull.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The Zika virus crossed the Pacific and went from French Polynesia to Brazil in May last year. Since then, 4,000 children have been born with microcephaly. What analysis has the Secretary of State made of the risks to the poorest women and girls in the world if the virus crosses the Atlantic from Brazil to sub-Saharan Africa? Will she promise to keep a very close eye on that and use all British scientific knowledge to ensure that it does not happen?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. We had an urgent question earlier this week and the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), set out the research that we are now kicking off. She will also be pleased to hear that Chris Whitty, the DFID chief scientist who led our work on Ebola and helped us to shape our response to it, is currently in Brazil talking to the authorities there to ensure we manage the various risks she sets out.

Zika Virus

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. Concerns were expressed on the Floor of the House about the capacity of the WHO and the pace of its response to the Ebola situation. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made it clear that the UK, as the second-largest donor, is far from complacent about the need for reform, including monitoring reform. The chief scientific adviser and colleagues at the Department of Health are working together closely to ensure that the WHO is up to the mark, and colleagues will note that the latter has moved more quickly this time. We are in regular dialogue with it to ensure that its systems are as agile and responsive as they can be.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

It is predicted that 16,000 children will be affected by microcephaly this year in Latin America, so the world’s community is in a race against time with this horrible virus. Last week, the Chancellor announced funding of £500 million a year to the Ross Fund at Liverpool University to fight malaria. Compared with that, the announcement of £400,000 for Glasgow, which the Minister has just mentioned, pales into insignificance. Through him, may I urge the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to consider all resources to tackle the outbreak of this virus, for which there is no test, cure or vaccine? Any vaccine would require the application of careful moral and ethical standards to its testing on pregnant women, but it is necessary to save a generation of women and their children from disability and poverty.

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Lady is entirely right. I thank her for reminding the House of the Chancellor’s major commitment to fighting malaria. The Government’s commitments to the Ross Fund and the UK vaccines network make it clear that we stand ready to play a leading role in the development of a vaccination, though it would take time to come through. In the short term, however, I would not lose sight of the sensible steps we can take to educate people about how to mitigate the risk to themselves—by reviewing their travel plans and seeking medical advice before a journey—and to make the medical system in this country better informed about the risks.

Syria: Madaya

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I recognise the point the hon. Gentleman is making, but those operations are very different in nature. One of them can happen from literally thousands of feet up, but if we are going to get bread, water and medical supplies to the right people, that is an entirely different RAF operation, requiring aircraft to fly much, much lower, which is why it is so hard to do effectively. That is why, in the end, we have to get the system that is there to work. That is why we have international humanitarian law. We should not let up on this. We should make sure that the political system that is in place delivers for the people on the ground. As we are seeing, when pressure is brought to bear, that is what happens.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The abhorrent use of siege as a weapon of war is a symptom of Assad’s war without law and a war without end in Syria. He has reduced his economy to a wartime economy, based on disappearances, looting, and arms and people smuggling. The London conference, which the Secretary of State is organising, is an important step in the plan for peace and the economic reconstruction of that country. I wrote to the Prime Minister before Christmas, and copied her in, asking how UK-based people from Syrian civil society could be involved in that conference, so that the voices from Madaya and all the other besieged towns and cities in Syria can be heard in the conference, rather than it just being a top-down process. I wonder whether she has had a chance to look at that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

As my hon. Friend will know, that issue is enormously important to the Department and the Secretary of State. Inclusive growth and support for women and girls as part of economic development is a central pillar of our strategic framework for the future. We expect our support over the next seven years to help to mobilise finance for more than 200,000 SMEs, at least a quarter of which will be headed by women.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Small businesses in Rwanda and Burundi face credit costs of up to 20%. I know that DFID’s TradeMark East Africa project is trying to deal with that, but small businesses in Burundi now face an upsurge in ethnic violence, with foreign fighters coming in from Rwanda. May I urge the Minister, as he undertakes the bilateral aid review, to look again at our decision to leave Burundi in 2011 and to look carefully at the potential need to go back in there and have a presence on the ground?

[Mr Hurd]

I share the hon. Lady’s concern about the situation. We do not have a bilateral programme there, but we do a lot in terms of humanitarian support. I take on board fully her remark about the costs of capital to small organisations. I refer to my earlier answer: technology can help us to reduce such costs.

Humanitarian Aid: Refugees in Greece and the Balkans

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We have been clear that we will not give a running commentary on how many refugees have been resettled here, not least because they need to receive support and treatment and to get on with their new lives here without the glare of the media upon them. I will ensure that Home Office Ministers write to the right hon. Gentleman with further details on his point about Europol.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

We have heard about the problems of the 3,000 unaccompanied minors and the Minister’s warm words on the generalities. May I press her on the specifics of the case of Mr Nawaf Ali, who fled Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime in Iraq 14 years ago and whose two daughters, aged 14 and 15, are currently unaccompanied and seeking asylum in Germany? Will she and the Under-Secretary of State for Refugees meet me to cut through the bureaucratic claptrap that I have had from the Home Office on this case, so that these children can be reunited with their parents in Wakefield?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady has raised that case with me, but it is not one with which I am familiar. I am happy to look at the details and, if necessary, to meet her. As she said, many of the refugees are going to Germany, where there is an existing Syrian diaspora. That is perhaps why the flows there have been larger than those to the UK, even though we have provided asylum to many of the Syrians who have arrived. I will look at that case and, if necessary, meet her.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It is right that decisions on allocations are made independently of Government and not by Government. That is how the formula is reached. I can also tell my hon. Friend that there is an independent review of the funding formula under way. We expect to see its recommendations later this year, but these things should be done in a fair and transparent way.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister will remember meeting my constituents, Neil Shepherd and Sharon Wood. Nine years ago this week, Neil took their two children, Christi aged 7 and Bobby aged 6, on holiday to Corfu. The children tragically died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The family’s dearest wish is that no other family suffers the heartbreak and tragedy they endured. Tomorrow in the European Parliament there will be a vote on the recommendation that the Commission brings forward legislation to improve carbon monoxide safety and fire safety for tourism premises in the EU. Will the Prime Minister’s MEPs support it and, if the motion falls, will he consider instigating legislation in this country?

[The Prime Minister]

I well remember the meeting that we had and the great bravery of the parents, after their terrible loss, in wanting to go on and campaign to ensure that others did not lose children in the same way. I will look carefully at what the hon. Lady is saying about the European Parliament. As for legislation in this country, we have strict legislation on the use of fire-resistant materials, but I will look carefully at that too.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We are developing our work with the private sector. I met John Cridland of the CBI yesterday to discuss how that ongoing work is progressing, and we both feel that the relationship between the Department and businesses has never been stronger. The relationship is evolving, but we are on the right path and I think that we should be proud of how far we have come.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Members on both sides of the House agree that decent work is the best route out of poverty, but last week, Radio 4’s “File on 4” revealed problems with a DFID programme in Nigeria. It alleged that the project exported rocks instead of leather products, and that it was used as a cover for export fraud and money laundering on an industrial scale. The right hon. Lady and her Department refused to speak to the programme makers, so will she tell the House what action she is taking as a result of those revelations?

[Justine Greening]

The revelations were, as ever, not quite what they seemed. The export enhancement grant is not a mechanism that DFID is involved with at all; it is a Nigerian Government policy that was being misused and abused. We do work in the leather sector, but that work relates to helping local markets to develop. We became aware of issues with the export enhancement grant, and DFID worked with the Nigerian Government to encourage them, in the end, to shut it down, which they did about 12 months ago.

[Mary Creagh]

It is interesting that the right hon. Lady chose not to share that knowledge with the British public and had to say it here in the Commons. [Laughter.] Well, it is interesting that an answer was not given directly to the programme makers, but instead had to be dragged out of the Secretary of State. There is a lack of accountability, transparency and governance in another DFID project: the Private Infrastructure Development Group.

This year, DFID’s spending on private sector development will double to £1.8 billion, up to £400 million of which will be the UK’s contribution to the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank—China’s rival to the World Bank. What oversight and governance procedures has the right hon. Lady put in place to ensure that social and environmental standards and human rights are upheld in the work of the new bank?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady will be pleased to hear that we tried to make sure that the “File on 4” programme was well aware of the facts. It was aware of the facts and if she feels that the way in which they were presented gave her a misleading impression of the reality, that is an issue for her to follow up with the BBC. I obviously believe in freedom of the press. On the broader question, we are working to make sure that the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has the same quality of safeguards that we expect in the World Bank. Treasury Officials are working very hard on that as well.