Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: Sustainable Development

Matthew Offord Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered water, sanitation, hygiene and sustainable development.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham. This is the first time that I have had the opportunity to do so, and I am particularly pleased that the debate is about an issue that I know is important to you personally. It is also important to those here to speak today, and I thank them for their attendance. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for a very important debate.

When the 17 sustainable development goals were set out by the UN in 2015, at the heart of that was one goal—to produce a blueprint for peace and prosperity. The 17 goals range from objectives such as economic growth to affordable energy, but they are all intrinsically interlinked and many of them will be unachievable without the others. Improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene—commonly known as WASH—is vital to many of the goals. Without the correct sanitation facilities, how can we expect women and girls to access education and workplaces? Without prioritising water resources, we reduce the ability to accurately manage and anticipate climate hazards. I will touch on these later in my speech, but I will start by saying that over the last 20 years we have seen that real progress is possible when WASH is prioritised in national development. However, we have also seen that many with the power to accelerate progress do not think that water, sanitation and hygiene are sufficiently important. That has led to progress being unacceptably slow, particularly among the poorest and most vulnerable groups and in the least developed countries and regions.

Now is not the time to slow down. Over the next decade, the populations in the areas of the globe with the worst access to WASH will grow—particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where the population is expected to double by 2050. An increase in extreme weather events, political instability, conflict, disease outbreaks and the global economic crisis pose huge threats to WASH. This has resulted in a depressing image for the future of WASH. Currently, 1.9 billion of the world’s poorest people live in severely water-scarce areas that risk security for WASH services. It is predicted that by 2050 that will increase by between 42% and 95%, potentially meaning that 3.2 billion people will be affected.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate forward. I spoke to him beforehand to highlight an issue that I feel is very important, as I know he does as well. Some 600 million children around the world still lack safe drinking water; 1.1 billion lack safe sanitation; and 690 million lack basic hygiene services. The worst affected are women and children who are internally displaced persons, refugees and from minority communities.

Research by Open Doors, an organisation that the hon. Gentleman and I understand very well, shows that there is a worrying tendency for Christian communities to be deprived of access to development aid, including WASH programmes. That is also highly likely to be the case for other religious minority communities. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that these programmes must be monitored to ensure access for religious minority communities and displaced persons in particular?

[Dr Offord]

I certainly agree. Any IDPs or people who are removed from their homes or the places where they live will have an immediate problem with access to water in some parts of the world. That is particularly difficult, as we are seeing in Gaza at the moment, for example; we also see it in parts of sub-Saharan Africa as people move as a result of climate change or political instability. It is one of the important issues that link many different communities and religions as well.

Water is vital to many individuals not only on a practical basis but, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) says, on a religious basis. The practice of many religions involves using water—I am thinking, for example, of not only Hindus but Muslims—for their daily rituals, and these are very important. It is a point well worth making, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for making the point, which I had not covered.

The UK has traditionally been a leader in the WASH sector. Given the multitude of challenges facing us, I ask my hon. Friend the Minister today: how will the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office project WASH funding increasing? Investing in sustainable and safe WASH is fundamental for countries to have a healthy workforce—the foundation for a thriving economy. The consequences of inaction would be monumental for many people. Left unchecked, diseases will become more frequent, leading to an increased demand for national spending on healthcare and reduced productivity.

WASH is often framed as simply building infrastructure, delivered with little thought to how it will be managed over time to deliver any benefits. But WASH is not about one-time access; it is a group of services and related behaviours that need to be accessed or practised several times a day and sustained over time. That means WASH systems need to be strong enough to deliver services continually to entire populations and to ensure that good hygiene behaviours are reinforced. I saw that on a recent visit to Ghana, where we saw not only water but the idea behind WASH procedures being delivered. Good practice was certainly reinforced.

The FCDO shift towards supporting WASH systems and away from just delivering infrastructure is very welcome, but we need to see more such programmes. The FCDO has a vital role in ensuring that others follow suit so that all interventions lead to a stronger sector. Similarly, it should encourage the integration of WASH within health, as it has done with its ending preventable deaths approach.

At the moment, despite progress on such programmes, we are seeing an international decline in investment in WASH. Since 2018, UK aid for WASH has been cut by two thirds, falling to approximately £70 million in 2021. For comparison, we spent £364 million on education and £548 million on health. The total share of the aid budget going to water supply and sanitation was just 1% in 2021. That is despite polling indicating that 53% of the British public list water, sanitation and hygiene as one of the top three most important ways of spending UK official aid development assistance. There is clearly a mismatch between spend on WASH and the popularity of the issue among the UK public.

With the upcoming international development White Paper due to be published soon, I ask the Minister to carefully consider the evidence provided. As the Foreign Office Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), said in his statement on 18 July, the White Paper

“will chart the long-term direction for UK international development up to 2030”—

just in time for the review of the sustainable development goals. Can the Minister here today indicate what level of prioritisation WASH will have in the international development White Paper?

I stress to the Minister that Governments and countries as a whole stand to gain hugely if investment in sustainable WASH services is provided. Sanitation alone can have huge economic returns, contributing to the world economy. On top of that, the return on that investment is vast, with basic WASH services providing up to 21 times more value than their cost. Action on this matter overseas will provide direct benefits to people here in the United Kingdom. As covid-19 has shown, infectious diseases do not respect international borders.

Despite the global pandemic, the UN predicts that 3 billion people globally do not practise hand washing with soap, and over 2 billion simply do not have access to basic hand-washing facilities. As a result, diseases spread fast and most easily in places where preventive measures such as WASH do not exist or are inadequate. Most importantly, in some countries this can push health workers, who cannot rely on the availability of soap and clean water, to over-prescribe antibiotics as a preventive measure, contributing to the rising threat of resistance to antibiotics. Yet investing in basic services and healthcare facilities decreases the demand for antibiotics, breaks the chain of infection and removes the opportunities for resistant infections to become dominant.

It is important at this point to say that most resistant infections treated by the NHS originated elsewhere in the world, particularly in low and middle-income countries. Tackling that problem is critical to UK public health and to protect the NHS. Healthcare-acquired infections already cost the NHS at least £2.1 billion a year—costs that will increase as infections become increasingly resistant to antibiotics. As the Minister will be aware, a high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance will be happening at the UN General Assembly next September, which could provide a significant moment to drive the political prioritisation of WASH and fighting disease abroad and here in the United Kingdom. Will the Minister commit to the UK encouraging political dialogue and drive financial commitments for WASH in the build-up to the conference? Of course, beyond the economic benefits and those for the UK, we are looking at action such as saving the lives of up to 300,000 children each year.

Touching back on achieving sustainable development goal 5—gender equality—women and girls face particular challenges when it comes to WASH. A lack of WASH facilities undermines the specific needs of women when it comes to menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth and menopause. Improving the future prospects of women and girls can be as simple as providing clean water and toilets at home, which would prevent women and girls from wasting 77 million days every year on walking long distances in search of water. That is time they can spend in education or, indeed, working. Beyond that, their direct health outcomes will vastly improve when investment is made in improving access to water and sanitation in workplaces and public spaces.

As the Minister will be aware, the UK will be working towards sustainable development goal 6, which is primarily split between two Departments: the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which focuses on improvements here in the United Kingdom, and the FCDO, which is working to improve international results. I am positive that ministerial colleagues will work together to ensure that progress is made to achieve the international targets, but I would be interested to hear what those collaborations will actually mean. However, we understand that this is not always the case in countries struggling with access to WASH. Institutional fragmentation occurs, which undermines the effectiveness of the WASH sector.

Drinking water, sanitation and hygiene typically have their homes within different Ministries, and often the responsible Ministries may vary for rural and urban services. Hygiene, for example, cuts across many sectors, Ministries and Departments, including WASH, health, education, gender and nutrition, meaning that it is everywhere and nowhere. That contributes to problems when it comes to generating political leadership, setting policies and raising finance. It gives rise to co-ordination difficulties, weak regulation and accountability, fragmentation in capacity-building efforts and different—sometimes competing—monitoring systems. Ultimately, this results in a clear lack of ownership and prioritisation by decision makers and budget holders. What assistance are the UK Government providing to other nations to adopt approaches to WASH similar to the UK’s, including the establishment of development banks?

Despite huge progress, WASH is facing significant challenges. The world is changing rapidly. When disease and war hit, water and sanitation are often forgotten first but the consequences are experienced immediately by those displaced. I urge the Minister not to forget the issue. Water is not just the source of all life; it is the source of all future prosperity and peace for billions of people in this world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Offord]

I am very grateful for the contributions from the Members who have come along today. What has struck me is that so many people have not only developed a passion for this subject, but have seen the situation on the ground when they have visited countries where WASH projects have been undertaken.

The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) mentioned the Ugandan visit that she and I made several years ago, and we certainly saw benefits occurring in that country. She also raised the issue of diarrhoea, which is very important: according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, 2,195 children die from diarrhoea each day—more than the number of children who die from AIDS, malaria and measles. Some 1.6 million people die each year from diarrhoeal diseases globally, and that is more than the number who die from suicide, homicide, conflict and terrorism in a single year. We often laugh about things such as diarrhoea in this country, but the statistics emphasise that this is a mass killer that we could easily overcome.

My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) spoke about her visit to Kenya through World Vision, as well as the issue of eye health—that is also very important to me—and sanitation. She mentioned that antimicrobial resistance kills more people than terrorism, and that fits in with the statistics I have mentioned.

The hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) says that she did not fall into her role with WaterAid, and she certainly did not; she has had a long and illustrious career in the international development sector. I was particularly interested to see that she worked in Serbia during the time of the war. As global head of campaigns at WaterAid, she will know, without any doubt, the importance of this subject, but I want to add to one of her points. She spoke about the unique experience of women and girls with access to water. One thing that I did not mention in my earlier speech is my understanding that the number of sexual offences against women and girls has a direct link with access to toilet facilities. Many girls do not use toilets at night or simply do not have the opportunity to, and those who do run the risk of sexual exploitation. So the issue of WASH is about not just health and sanitation, but sexual offences against women.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) mentioned his visit to Malawi, the issue of access to water and the three-day survival rule. The Minister may be a military man; I am not, but I am certainly someone who is interested in the outdoors. He knows the three-day survival rule, which is that human beings cannot survive for more than three days without access to water. They cannot survive for more than three minutes in extremely cold temperatures. They cannot survive for more than three weeks without food. But they cannot survive for more than three days without access to water.

The hon. Member makes a very good point about Gaza. It is certainly something that I will take on board. I think the Israelis should allow access to water. I defend them for not allowing access to other things, but I think that they should allow access to water. But I gently remind him that the EU did spend €100 million on putting 30 miles of water pipes into Gaza, and Hamas decided to remove those water pipes because they felt that they could make rockets out of those. I would certainly condemn that action.

The hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) emphasised the issue of hand washing and how it affects the entire world. I would point to the issue of bedbugs, which have spread across the channel very easily, so we can recognise that microbial diseases will spread even more easily than something as large as bedbugs. She mentioned her visit to Cameroon. Again, that emphasises the number of people who have visited and seen WASH projects.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) reminded us of the religious importance of water. I am aware that he had another important meeting to go to and was not able to stay for the rest of this debate.

I am grateful to the Minister, who outlined the Government’s actions, the additional funding, which is very important, and the importance of health programmes overall. I have, with others, met the Minister with responsibility for overseas development—my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell)—and he unofficially reminded us that the issue of WASH would be included as part of the international development White Paper. I am grateful that today this Minister has publicly announced that it will be included in the international development White Paper in the coming months. I am also grateful that he has reinforced the fact that political accountability and leadership are a priority for the Department and that these issues will be raised at the forthcoming UN conferences.

I am grateful for what the United Kingdom has done in this area. Although the issue of overseas development funding can be contested, the issue of overseas development funding being spent on WASH facilities is not. The people of the United Kingdom feel very strongly about that, and I certainly feel very strongly about it. Water scarcity is a problem across the world, but I hope that we can play our part, reduce the inequalities and improve the life chances of those around the world.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered water, sanitation, hygiene and sustainable development.