Universal Health Coverage

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and John Lamont

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on securing this important debate. I recognise that he was a great champion of these causes during his time as a Minister, and he has continued that valuable work from the Back Benches.

A key part of progress towards worldwide universal health coverage is tackling the world’s major health challenges. Only once those are under control can developing nations achieve sustainable healthcare systems and move towards universal health coverage. I am pleased that the United Kingdom is a world leader in supporting the Global Fund to tackle AIDS-related illnesses, tuberculosis and malaria, which kill around 2.5 million people a year.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on securing this debate and opening it so well.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that TB is a perfect example of the need for universal health coverage, and that if we invest well in TB programmes with universal health care in mind, it will make a real difference to developing countries across the world?

[John Lamont]

I absolutely agree, which is why the UK’s role in tackling TB is so important.

As a country, we will pledge up to £1.4 billion to the latest round of the Global Fund, which will help to provide life-saving antiretroviral therapy for more than 3.3 million people living with HIV, support treatment for 2.3 million people living with tuberculosis, and distribute 92 million mosquito nets to protect children and families from malaria. The UK is the second largest donor to health aid, having contributed $5 billion over the past 30 years. I believe that is something that we as a nation should celebrate.

This global effort, which is being led by the United Kingdom, is changing the world. Child survival rates are one of the greatest success stories, with child mortality levels more than halving since 1990. However, there is still a huge distance to go. Although access to healthcare is improving globally in both developed and developing nations, progress is slow and the gap between countries with the best and worst access to healthcare shows little sign of closing. We need to address that, which is why I support calls from Save the Children for the UK to champion a universal health coverage approach at the UN’s high-level meeting on universal health coverage in September—something my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire has already raised.

This is not about dictating to other nations how they should manage public finances. It is about explaining the benefits of investment in healthcare—not only in improving the health of local populations, but in facilitating improvements in education, poverty and long-term economic development. The UK should champion the principle of healthcare being free at the point of use, and support Governments to increase health spending to 5% of GDP and integrate nutrition and immunisation into national healthcare plans.

Access to universal health coverage needs to be as broad a principle as possible. In some areas, a little investment can make a huge difference to people’s lives. Cerebral Palsy Africa is a charity based in Duns in Berwickshire in my constituency, and it provides support to enable children to attend school in Ghana and other African countries. It was set up by physiotherapist Archie Hinchcliffe, after she saw what rehabilitation could do for young cerebral palsy sufferers—the condition was simply not seen as a priority in many African nations. That is despite early intervention making a huge difference to the lives of sufferers. DFID’s small charities challenge fund recently awarded the charity £50,000, which is being used to train special needs teachers and specialist physiotherapists in Africa. We should all welcome that, and it demonstrates how funding from the United Kingdom Government can have a real impact on UK-based charities working in other parts of the world.