Sustainable Development Goals

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I congratulate the Chair of the International Development Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), on securing this opportunity to discuss an extremely substantial and important report.

The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) has had to leave for another appointment. I had to give my apologies this afternoon, as I was unable to attend an appointment at the Malawi high commission, where the Social Work Malawi programme is being launched by the Children and Families International Foundation. The programme aims to bring social work skills and expertise to that country through training, resources and skills sharing. It is a very exciting initiative, which will no doubt contribute to the achievement of the sustainable development goals.

I am delighted to be back here in Westminster Hall talking about this subject because the first debate that I secured as a new Member in June 2015 was on the negotiation and implementation of the sustainable development goals. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby spoke in that debate; I think he was pitching for the chairmanship at that point—clearly a successful pitch. We were also joined by the former Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham. I think it is fair to pay tribute to him. Although we would not necessarily agree on everything, given the different parties that we represented, he spoke powerfully and with considerable experience on matters of international development in his time as a Member of the House.

Since the start of this parliamentary Session, the sustainable development goals have been an issue on the agenda of Members who have continually pressed the Government to make more progress. The target date of 2030 is not a moving target; it is not getting any further away. Every day, every second is precious and the Government need to continue to play the leading role that they played in drafting the sustainable development goals in starting to take forward implementation. The goals are not going away now that they have been agreed. I pay tribute to the work of the all-party group and the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) and Lord McConnell for their role in providing ongoing scrutiny.

The new Administration have sometimes been accused of having an aversion to their predecessors’ policies and legacies, but I hope that is not true when it comes to the sustainable development goals.

In summing up for the Scottish National party, I want to look at why the sustainable development goals are important. Themes have arisen from the debate. I want to comment on key points and recommendations from the report, and I have specific questions for the Government, many of which have been touched on by other hon. Members today.

The sustainable development goals are important, as we have heard from various Members. They build on the really important success of the millennium development goals, and the lessons of the millennium development goals, and they start with a very different mandate. They were not cooked up in a basement negotiating room of the United Nations General Assembly building. There was a global consultation and a participative drafting process, which gives them a significant mandate. The universality aspect is also hugely important. The goals apply equally everywhere. We must work to meet them at home as well as abroad, as almost every Member has said. The hon. Member for Wakefield drove that point home when she spoke about her experience on the Environmental Audit Committee. They also apply to all groups everywhere. They are not met until they are met in every geographic place and for every demographic indicator. That is the whole point of leaving no one behind. That is particularly true of older people and of women, as has been mentioned.

Most importantly, the goals are integrated with the climate change agenda. Climate change threatens to undo the progress made under the millennium development goals framework, so we cannot tackle poverty and instability without also tackling climate change. That relates also to the biodiversity points made with great eloquence by the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham).

The framework provides an accountability mechanism. This Government and Governments around the world, whether they like it or not and whether the party of government changes or not, are committed to achieving the goals. I was interested in the proposal by the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) for a 360° appraisal mechanism whereby countries could make recommendations and monitor the progress of their peers. It would be very interesting to take that forward. We have had several international examples—the national consultation in Germany, the responsible departments in the Norwegian Government and a programme for future generations in Wales. The Scottish Government have been thoroughly committed to taking forward the sustainable development goals agenda. Even before negotiations had concluded, the First Minister said that she wanted Scotland to play its part in achieving the goals. Work is under way to align the sustainable development goals with the Scottish Government’s national performance framework domestically and also to underpin their international development policy.

The report is a detailed piece of work. It is incredibly comprehensive, and I am happy to endorse pretty much everything it contains. It is important for the Minister to note that it was agreed on a cross-party basis. We have heard from all parties, and I congratulate the Chair on bringing colleagues together to make really useful policy and practical recommendations. The key message is that poverty reduction must be at the heart of development policy; the sustainable development goals provide a ready-made, consensus-based framework to deliver those.

The report touches on various important points. I did not hear much from Members, about tax justice and the importance of domestic resource mobilisation, although they are important. If we ever get to the point where we are able to start reducing aid spending, as some Government Back Benchers—not represented here today—seem desperate to do, it will be because developing countries are able to raise their own funds for poverty reduction work, but that will not happen without an end to tax dodging, which must be stopped. That could be started, as the report recommends, by introducing beneficial ownership registers in UK overseas territories.

There is a role for the private sector to play, as everyone has recognised. In the coming days we will be considering the Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill, which will provide interesting opportunities to explore these issues in more detail. What comes out of the report is that poverty, not profit, must be at the heart of development assistance and development investment.

[Dr Cameron]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the examination of UK tax treaties is also extremely important to ensure that they promote sustainable development across countries?

[Patrick Grady]

Absolutely. Tax treaties were touched on briefly. I think I heard double taxation talked about in the Chamber earlier today, and our hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) will be seeking to build on his predecessor’s reputation with his private Member’s Bill, the Double Taxation Treaties (Developing Countries) Bill, in a couple of weeks’ time.

The report goes on to talk about domestic responsibility. There has been a development today, and I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) for slipping me a copy of a letter that has been delivered into the hands of the Chair at short notice. I echo the questions that still remain and the disappointment that the sustainable development goals have not so far featured in the single departmental plans. There is a need for clearer and more co-ordinated policy. It would be useful to get some clarity about when the multilateral and bilateral aid reviews are going to be published and whether the Government’s rejection of the recommendations for a fresh White Paper and a consolidating Act is valid for the lifetime of this Parliament. Will they review that as we continue to make progress?

The point about Select Committees was particularly well made. I am a member of the Procedure Committee, and I think I would have a hard time persuading the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) to do very much in monitoring progress towards the sustainable development goals. The procedures that allow Select Committee reports to be discussed here in Westminster Hall and in the main Chamber can perhaps play a role in taking forward scrutiny of the sustainable development goals.

Will the Government continue to engage? I hope that they have not ruled out for the lifetime of this Parliament some of the more practical recommendations that have been made. We look forward to the publication of the aid reviews, and we hope that they contain more detail or at least a reference to the sustainable development goals. I have read the civil society partnership review document, and I was surprised to find that it did not contain the words “sustainable development goals” at any point, as I think the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) mentioned.

The point about data and monitoring is very important. The Overseas Development Institute’s briefing pointed out that Governments need to know where people live and what they need, so I hope that the Government will continue, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow asked, to use capacity building programmes to help countries generate timely and disaggregated data.

It is important that the commitment on gender equality and minority groups continues. The National Committee for UN Women is calling on the Government to commit to the Step It Up for Gender Equality initiative, and I have tabled written questions about that. Can the Minister tell us about the willingness of the UK Government to engage with that initiative?

The hon. Member for Congleton also spoke about religious intolerance. In this very Chamber, earlier today, Aid to the Church in Need issued a report on religious persecution around the world; and yesterday we marked red Wednesday, when a number of landmarks, including Westminster Hall, were lit in red to highlight the persecution of religious communities.

Other hon. Members went into detail on various matters. The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) talked about Fire Aid, whose conference Glasgow was proud to host earlier this year. Both the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Stafford mentioned the small grants programme, which, incidentally, the Scottish Government runs very successfully; perhaps the UK Government can learn some lessons from the programme.

On Tuesday the House will consider the Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill in more detail, and I hope that the Government will be prepared to engage constructively with any proposals to strengthen it or to make more explicit CDC’s responsibility to work for poverty reduction and the sustainable development goals.

I hope that the debate and the report will serve as something of a wake-up call for the Government. Despite what may be read in some of the gutter and right wing press, there is consensus across the country about the importance of aid and the need to tackle poverty. We of course welcome the continuing commitment to spending 0.7% of GNI on aid, but there is no point in doing it by going down a completely different track from the rest of the world, or not living up to the existing sustainable development goals framework and ambitions. We hear a lot about how aid should align with the national interest. Surely meeting the SDGs is itself in the national interest. The emphasis on the national interest implies somehow that previously aid did not work in the national interest, or that we have a deeper interest in aid’s effectiveness beyond what the SDGs are intended to achieve. In that case my question would be what is its purpose? What better or more noble purpose could there be than the eradication of poverty and disease, and the building of peace and equality for all? That is not just in the national interest. It is in the interest of everyone who lives on our shared planet. I hope that collectively we can continue with that attitude.