Foreign Affairs and International Development

Meg Munn Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing that out. Never before have our ambassadors been described in this House as “sizzling”, so I am delighted by his description—an accurate one—of their commitment to promoting British businesses overseas. They are now backed by the biggest drive to build up the Foreign Office’s diplomatic skills and capabilities that the Department has seen in modern times, with a new language training centre training up to 500 diplomats a year, more economic and commercial training and a new economics unit. Following his intervention, I pay tribute to the men and women of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence, who work tirelessly day after day in support of our country.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I understand that many of the more junior posts overseas will now be filled by locally engaged staff. How will the Foreign Secretary ensure that staff going on their first posting overseas once they get higher up the scale will have the necessary experience if they have been unable to gain that in other postings?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Lady is right to say that that is one of the changes in the administration of the Foreign Office. We are saving £100 million in administration, and it is not possible to do that without making some important changes, such as the one she refers to for A and B-band staff. Most of the staff who work overseas, of course, come in at a different level and did not acquire their previous experience at the A or B-band level. Those staff affected by the change will, in many cases, have the opportunity to seek promotion to higher grades—I strongly support that—so we are trying to mitigate the effect on their careers.

I announced to the House on 11 May last year that we would substantially reinvigorate Britain’s diplomatic presence overseas. I believe that there will never be any substitute for a strong British diplomatic service that advances the interests of the United Kingdom, centred on a global diplomatic network.

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[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I want to take the opportunity offered by the debate on the foreign affairs and international development aspects of the Queen’s Speech to raise again, as hon. Members will have guessed, climate security. I want the House to recognise that climate change is an issue of security and that it should not just be tucked away under the heading of environment and then forgotten about. On that subject, it is interesting that we do not have a day to discuss the environment and energy aspects of the Queen’s Speech, perhaps because there are not very many of them. I was struck by the fact that this time around we do not have a day when those aspects of the speech might usefully have been covered.

I want to place climate strongly in the framework of security issues and to say how sorry I am that ambitious measures to address the climate crisis were conspicuous in their absence from the announcements about the forthcoming legislative programme. That is an extraordinary omission when successive Governments have acknowledged that climate change poses one of the greatest threats to our collective security. Indeed, the coalition Government acknowledged as much in the foreword to last year’s national security strategy, which states:

“The security of our energy supplies increasingly depends on fossil fuels located in some of the most unstable parts of the planet. Nuclear proliferation is a growing danger. Our security is vulnerable to the effects of climate change and its impact on food and water supply.”

[Meg Munn]

I support what the hon. Lady is saying about this being an important international issue. When I was a Minister at the Foreign Office, climate change was seen as one of the key priorities and I found that our missions around the world also took it very seriously. A great deal was being done at that time.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I am pleased to hear that, because at the moment it feels like there is real tension in the Government about where climate change sits, as the Chancellor clearly sees it as an obstacle to his economic development plans and there is not much of a fight back.

The absence of such matters in the Queen’s Speech is a tragedy, because there are so many opportunities to pursue a green agenda at the same time as pursuing jobs and a stable economy. Indeed, by investing in a green economy, which is far more labour-intensive than the fossil fuel economy it replaces, we can get those jobs and get the economy stable again.

Hon. Members will know that climate change is already affecting many of the poorest communities around the world, undermining their livelihoods through changes in temperature and rainfall patterns and through the increased frequency and intensity of floods and droughts. It has been estimated that climate change is already responsible for about 300,000 deaths a year and is affecting 300 million people, according to the first comprehensive study of the human impact of global warming from Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum.

Although the impacts of climate change will fall disproportionately on the global south, this argument is not just about poorer people in far flung places. Increasingly, extreme weather events are happening much closer to home as well, such as the 2007 floods in Britain, which saw the largest ever civil emergency response since the second world war. From our riverside location at Westminster, we should perhaps take comfort from the fact that the Thames barrier is being prepared to cope with the sea level rise of 1.9 metres that is being projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the full range of its climate scenarios. Frankly, I am alarmed that we are having to consider such a sea level rise and that such measures are not being planned elsewhere.

The truth is that growing recognition of climate change as a serious threat to our national security, our economy and international development is not resulting in commensurate action domestically or internationally. What in the Queen’s Speech could help us? The new energy Bill, if it were significantly more ambitious than proposed, could play a role. Investment in major power infrastructure today will be with us for decades to come, but there is a real risk that rather than the “secure, clean and affordable” electricity system that we have been promised by the Government, we are more likely to end up with an insecure, dirty and expensive one. To avoid that, we need four crucial elements to be introduced into the electricity market reform proposals.

First, and most importantly, the energy Bill must contain a clear and absolute commitment to decarbonising electricity generation by 2030. That is not a radical green proposal, but is based on the advice from the Committee on Climate Change. I hope that the Prime Minister will ensure that that happens, given his own explanation of the crucial role of the committee. He said that it exists to

“take the politics out of climate change and show our intention to get to grips with the problem.”

Here is a perfect opportunity for him to demonstrate exactly that.

The second thing missing from the EMR proposals to date is the vast untapped potential of energy saving. We could argue all night about the various costs of low-carbon technologies, but I think that those on both sides of the House would agree that it is often a lot cheaper to save energy in the first place. The energy Bill must therefore introduce mechanisms to equalise support for demand reduction and energy saving, such as a feed-in tariff for energy efficiency. That should be the priority, not planning to subsidise EDF’s nuclear-generated electricity to the tune of £115 per megawatt hour. That is the level of subsidy that would be necessary based on EDF’s recent announcement of a new £7 billion price tag per nuclear power station. Let us remember too that subsidising nuclear power would fly in the face of the coalition’s promise not to provide taxpayer subsidy for nuclear. As the City analyst Peter Atherton has succinctly concluded, the only way that new nuclear could be built is

“if the construction risk was transferred to the taxpayer”.

I am extremely concerned that that is exactly what the Government will try to do.

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[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

Women have always played a part in war and peace, sometimes as arbitrators, sometimes as appeasers and at other times as agitants. As far back as the 7th century BC, Homer writes about my namesake, Helen of Troy, causing the launch of a thousand ships. Be it in fact or fiction, we know that throughout history women have not only driven men to defend the homes, their honour and their livelihoods but have also been drivers of peace. They are often the first to call for an end to fighting.

It surely follows that the inclusion of women at the official peace table is both logical and rational and reflects the needs of society as a whole. I am pleased to say that our Foreign Secretary has promoted that stance. He said at the launch of the “No Women No Peace” campaign in 2010:

“No lasting peace can be achieved after conflict unless the needs of women are met.”

Yet in the 16 peace processes undertaken since 2000, female involvement has been minimal. In five cases, no women at all were involved. Excuses include lack of knowledge, lack of experience and lack of negotiating skills, but those same criteria are rarely applied to military and political men, who continue to make the domain their own.

Notwithstanding those attitudes, there are many examples of women around the world who have been central to positive change—Mo Mowlam, Rosa Parks, Mary Robinson and Aung San Suu Kyi to name but a few. Their courage has created international awareness of women as peacemakers, a role that was recognised and adopted 10 years ago in UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. Although the resolution is yet to be rewarded with widespread change, I welcome the Government’s recognition of its importance in their national action plan, which was first published in 2010 and revised earlier this year.

[Meg Munn]

I agree with the hon. Lady that this is an enormously important matter and that having the national action plan is a good start, but should not the Government put resources behind that plan to make something happen? We need more than speeches.

[Mrs Grant]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point, but the Government are putting resources behind their words, and if she waits a little longer she will hear me give some examples of those resources and the Government’s action.

Correcting gender imbalance in conflict resolution is a very effective use of overseas aid and a rightful aspect of our foreign policy, but in some countries a seismic movement in male culture is needed before the empowerment of women can take place and the benefits be fully realised. South Sudan, the world’s newest country, is one such place, as I witnessed for myself on a parliamentary visit during the Easter recess.

Blessed with immense mineral wealth and fed by the waters of the White Nile, South Sudan has the potential to become one of the great breadbaskets of Africa. I saw a truly mammoth UN operation, supported by a raft of foreign aid. It should be a place with a future, but it soon became clear that some of the leaders were more intent on conflict over oil revenues. Tension was everywhere and the smell of catastrophe was in the air, yet throughout many discussions with influential politicians, not once did I have political dialogue with a South Sudanese woman. All such meetings were exclusively populated by men.

If we drill into the culture, the reasons behind that become plain. Under the “bride price” dowry system, women are regarded as the property of their husbands and fathers, turning them into economic objects. They are married off at a very young age and have to leave school, which is why 84% of women are illiterate. They are expected to bear many children, and one in seven women die in pregnancy or childbirth, the highest maternal mortality rate in the world.

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[Meg Munn]

Is not the hon. Gentleman illustrating the fact that there is quite a narrow focus on international issues? As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) said, there is no overriding theme running through the Foreign Office. Surely our diplomatic efforts should be about more than just trade. Did not the Government come unstuck in that way before, when the Prime Minister went abroad to promote trade at a time when there were real problems in the middle east that needed to be addressed through a much wider diplomatic effort?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I would take a slightly different view, having worked with the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development and served on the International Development Committee. I have seen a joined-up approach between DFID and the Foreign Office; more so than ever before. I also see Foreign Office Ministers taking such issues as human rights and the environment extremely seriously. Perhaps that has not come out in some of the debates so far, but my experience on the ground is slightly different from that of the hon. Lady.

Tackling the trade deficit is not just about increasing exports, however. It is also about doing more at home in areas where we have traditionally been large importers. Let us take food and drink as an example. The trade deficit in 2011 was £17.8 billion on food and drink alone. Ensuring that UK farmers have a fair deal from their customers would give a significant boost to agriculture and horticulture, creating many jobs in the process, which is why producers in my Stafford constituency welcome the legislation to establish an independent adjudicator between supermarkets and their suppliers.

In recent years, we have been told that the UK can no longer compete in standard manufacturing, and that we must concentrate on high value-added products. I disagree. It is not either/or; it is both/and. As wages rise in developing countries and as the cost of transport increases, there is an advantage in being close to our markets and not bringing everything in from the other side of the world.

That brings me to a subject that, as a Conservative, I perhaps should not raise—but I will. As a nation, we need to be prepared to identify strategic areas of business and to back them—not to the exclusion of common sense, but with more than warm words. Germany and France do that, and we can hardly say that their economies are less competitive than ours. As a result, state-backed—perhaps I should say “encouraged”—French and German companies have taken over swaths of British manufacturing and service industries. Many are good businesses that invest heavily in the UK—Alstom and Total are examples in my constituency—and they reap the rewards, but we do not see the reverse happening to nearly the same extent. Is it that our companies are less adventurous, or is it that they have lacked support and encouragement from successive UK Governments and face obstacles at the other end that the single market is supposed to prevent? Sometimes I think that there is a single market in the EU, and that that single market is the UK. I will believe otherwise when I see Severn Trent running the Paris water supply and Virgin Trains operating on Deutsche Bahn.

The UK’s role in helping with security in troubled areas is underplayed. Understandably, we concentrate on Afghanistan, where our forces—including the Tactical Supply Wing, the 22nd Signal Regiment and 3rd Battalion the Mercian Regiment from my area—have done so much in working for stability for the people of that country and to make our nation safer. However, trainers from the UK armed forces work in many other parts of the world. Recently, several colleagues and I were privileged to see the work of the British Peace Support Team in Kenya. The UK is also involved in training peacekeepers from the Ugandan and Burundian armies who are undertaking the vital and dangerous UN mission in Mogadishu. The question is often asked: what will our armed forces do once operations in Afghanistan are over? One of the answers is that they would do more of the training of peacekeepers, at which they excel. They are the best in the world.

The Gracious Speech states that the Government

“has set out firm plans to spend nought point seven per cent of gross national income as official development assistance from 2013. This will be the first time the United Kingdom has met this agreed international commitment.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 May 2012; Vol. 737, c. 3.]

As hon. Members have pointed out, that commitment has been around for 40 years, since the Pearson commission in the late 1960s. The UK’s aid programme makes a huge difference to the lives of millions. As the Prime Minister said:

“The last Session of Parliament also made an impact not just at home but around the world. We fed more than 2.5 million people facing famine and starvation, we supported over 5.5 million children to go to school in the poorest countries of our world and we immunised a child against diseases every 2.5 seconds of the last parliamentary Session.”—[Official Report, 9 May 2012; Vol. 545, c. 17.]

It is a privilege to serve on the International Development Committee under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), who I see in his place, and to see the effects of the good use of UK taxpayers’ money on the lives of the poorest: children able to study in classrooms for the first time, and deaths from malaria plummeting when UK Government money supplies bed nets, rapid diagnostic tests and artemesinin in combination drugs. This is a programme that looks to the future, helping growth in the private sector so that jobs are created and income generated, supporting tax authorities so that Government revenues grow and reduce the need for aid.

If I were to highlight one area that has been neglected over the years and is now more important than ever—my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) and the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) referred to it—it would be agriculture, in particular smallholder agriculture. We are seeing substantial investment in agriculture by large corporations across the developing world. Where this is done alongside and in co-operation with existing landowners, particularly the small ones, it can work very well, as I saw on recent visits to Zambia and Malawi, by increasing production, productivity and employment. Sadly, however, this is sometimes not the case, as we see examples of large land grabs that leave people destitute.

Some have expressed disappointment that the Queen’s Speech does not mention legislating for 0.7%. I have to say that I do not share their disappointment, as I am keen first of all to reach that amount by showing through action that we can achieve it. Perhaps we could legislate afterwards, having shown the way. What has become increasingly clear to me over the past two years on the International Development Committee is that what matters is that we keep our commitment to the amount, that it is well spent on the poorest and, most important of all, that the countries we are helping make every effort to reduce their dependence on aid. Countries such as Zambia and Rwanda have set out their clear intention to eliminate their need for aid. I welcome this and suggest that the Government ask this of every country we work with.

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[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I want to contribute on a number of issues, starting with international development. I support the aid target of 0.7% of GNI. It is a useful target. As others have said, it has been in place for many years, and it can help to identify an amount over time and enable us to compare what different countries are achieving. It is a real credit to the campaigners outside Parliament who pushed for our Governments to get to this stage, and it is a real credit to the last Labour Government that they set in motion the work to achieve that figure. It is also a real credit to this Government that they have retained the target. I have greatly enjoyed hearing support for it right across the Chamber, from Members of all parties. Let us remember that when the Labour Government came to power in 1997, international development aid had fallen to a quite low amount. From then onwards, we saw a steady increase towards the point when this Government have set out this firm commitment.

There are two issues to discuss about the figure of 0.7%. Much of the discussion about international aid both within and without Parliament tends to focus on achieving that figure, but in my view we do not focus enough on what is being done with the money and why. Members have had the opportunity to see some of the projects in action—I saw them when I travelled overseas—but many people outside Parliament have not. We need not only to give more publicity to what is being done with that money in their name, but to be assured that it is being spent in the best possible way. Aid needs to be effective. While we focus on this figure, I think we need to talk more, plan more and do more in seeking clear outcomes. That is why clear goals such as the millennium development goals are important. We must develop the capacity of beneficiaries to become sustainable and productive economies.

I would like to provide some examples from a United Nations Development Programme report that has just been released—the “Africa Human Development Report 2012: Towards a Food Secure Future”. It tells us that 40% of African children aged under five are malnourished because while there have been impressive gross domestic product growth rates, these have not led to the elimination of hunger and malnutrition. The report also identifies that simply focusing on agriculture will not be enough. An approach that works with the whole community is important, including building rural infrastructure and health services.

[Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend talks about the problems of malnourished children. It is important to realise that when children are malnourished, it amounts to a life sentence, as they are disadvantaged for the rest of their lives by being malnourished when they are born or in their earliest years.

[Meg Munn]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. That is why it is so important that we learn from successes such as Ghana, the first sub-Saharan African country to achieve the millennium development goal of halving hunger, and Malawi, which, through a subsidy programme for seed and fertiliser, has moved within two years from a food deficit to a food surplus.

I do not think that the target needs to be put in law, as each Government put a Budget forward, and each Government have to make a case. Support has to come from parliamentarians, who need to explain why we need that figure. I do not think we should have lots of civil servants running around trying to find the money that qualifies for the target. I have heard people use a terrible term when they have asked whether this or that spending is “ODA-able”—does it count, and can we put it within the 0.7%? Do we need to be that prescriptive about the exact amount? Let us focus on the outcomes. I would also like to see greater focus on investing in improved governance. In the context of effective use of aid, good governance delivers better outcomes for populations.

Let me speak briefly about the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, of which I have the honour of being vice-chair. I am delighted that the Department for International Development, in conjunction with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is putting funds into the Westminster Foundation for Democracy for more work of this kind to be done. It is the 20th anniversary of this organisation. It works with Parliaments and political parties, which are essential to building democracies that are responsive to their populations. It is not only a legitimate focus for aid, but an essential one if we are to see long-lasting changes.

The Prime Minister reiterated that our troops will no longer be in Afghanistan in a combat role beyond the end of 2014. I want to restate my concerns about women in Afghanistan, and the importance of the Government speaking up for women. Anyone who has met women MPs from Afghanistan will know how brave they have to be, often even standing up against their families just to run for election to Parliament. I therefore welcome Ministers’ previous expressions of support in this House, but more can, and should, be done. Women’s safety and security, and guaranteeing their rights, needs more than a passing mention in speeches. Just two months ago, Afghanistan’s leading clerics declared the worth of women to be secondary to that of men, and President Karzai publicly endorsed that decree, despite the new constitution enshrining in law equal rights for women. We know that, despite significant improvements having been made for women and girls in Afghanistan, many women face danger or are the victims of violence, and often they are punished for reporting crimes against them, rather than supported as victims. I therefore ask the Government to say today that they will insist on women’s involvement in all levels of the Afghan peace process, and will consult Afghan women, who know what is happening in their communities, and will explicitly include women’s safety in all discussions on security.

I welcome the changes in Burma. We need to encourage and support them, but I want to offer a word of caution: we must not rush forward too quickly. The Foreign Secretary said there was a plan to open a business office in Naypyidaw, but we should not be too quick to say that that is our No. 1 priority. We want to see democratic processes put in place, and we want all the ethnic groupings in Burma to have the opportunity to take part in them fully. There is still a great deal to be done, therefore. There have been human rights abuses, as well as forced labour, arbitrary taxation, extortion, forced relocation and extrajudicial killings—a litany of problems that have long beset Burma, and have been the effect of the regime. That is not going to change overnight. Many minorities have been persecuted, and forced into camps on the Thai border. For example, for many years people from the Karen community have come to the UK—many to Sheffield. That was supported by the UN, because they were living in terrible conditions, and could not continue to do so. We must not rush to develop our trade with Burma, therefore. Instead, we must continue to offer support, and look at how we can encourage the embedding of democracy in that country, where the people so greatly deserve such changes.

Finally, I want to say a few words about the UK’s overseas territories. I welcome the fact that we are to have a new White Paper on the overseas territories, and I look forward to reading it. I hope we will continue to support our overseas territories through our international aid budget and that they will continue to have first call on that budget. Although there are many countries and situations around the world that are deserving of our support and aid, these are our overseas territories, and we therefore have an extra responsibility towards them. I have welcomed the agreement to develop an airport in St Helena. As the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said, we should support and help countries and territories that need aid now. Without an airport, I am certain that St Helena would continue to need our ongoing aid well into the future.

For as long as we continue to have a responsibility towards our territories, we should continue to ensure that human rights are respected in them. We must continue to enforce the tight child protection procedures in the Pitcairn islands, for example. There may well come a point when some of our territories decide that they wish to become independent, however. In such circumstances, I would like our Government to give help and support so that territories can make that decision for themselves.

It is enormously important to reiterate that point in relation to the Falkland Islands. The Falkland islanders have long expressed the view that they wish to be British. The current behaviour of the Argentine Government, in trying to undermine their self-determination and their wish to remain British, is appalling.