Global Poverty

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Sadly, I, like many other Members in the Chamber, have received letters and e-mails from constituents saying that we are going to be subjected to cuts in most departmental budgets, so we should also cut DFID’s aid budget. I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State say that “charity begins at home, but it does not end there”, because I will be able to go back to my constituents to tell them that we have a duty in this relatively wealthy country to help others.

I know that this will upset many of those correspondents, but I am very pleased to see that the Chancellor, the Prime Minister, and the Secretary of State and his team understand the importance of the budget for developing countries. I congratulate the Secretary of State on the start that he has made in changing the priorities in his Department because, as many Members have said, we need to ensure that money is well spent. There is a lot of corruption and we must ensure that the money goes to the people whom it needs to help and does not just go into the pockets of some politicians. That is why I am particularly keen to see measures put in place that stop that money going astray.

We do have poverty here in Britain, but the poverty in developing countries is very different and we can make a difference. Even in these difficult times, 0.7% of our gross national income is not a huge sum, but it might save some lives and help countries to escape from the worst life expectancy rates and early deaths from disease. Places such as Africa have to deal with many illnesses, such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. If we can help these places by providing the correct medicines at an affordable price and bed nets to save children from mosquito bites, which cause malaria, we will help with the population’s education. Children cannot go to school if they are ill; if they do not get an education, they cannot get a job; and the cycle is perpetuated. Much of Africa does have primary education but many children never go to secondary schools. Even if they do, girls may have to miss one week in four because they have no sanitary protection and have to stay at home. That cannot be right in 2010.

Aid money must be spent well, because we need to reduce the difference in the life expectancy of people in developing countries and that of ourselves—that is crucial to the well-being of these countries. I was one of those people who went on Project Umubano with the Secretary of State, and we saw so many things that impressed us. It is not that the people in these countries are stupid or unable to study; they have fantastic minds, but they do not always have the opportunities.

I have organised my own aid project in a small way in Uganda, so I have seen at first hand what direct aid can do to help communities. Such aid could be for an education project—we constructed one school and helped another to finish the building that included a hall, now called Derby hall, having been named after my constituency—or it could provide a water butt to collect water because there is none on site and people have to walk half a mile to collect it. We started a women’s co-operative using old British Singer hand-sewing machines to give AIDS widows the opportunity to learn to make school uniforms and to have an income, rather than live without money.

We are also helping farmers to start to become self-sufficient in growing crops. We give each farmer that has cleared 1 acre of ground 10 kilos of maize seeds to plant. At the end of the season, they give 10 kilos back, replant another 10 kilos for the next season and either sell or consume what is left. That is a highly sustainable way of getting farming off the ground. Those farmers should now be able to make money each season from their very fertile ground, which was previously underused because of a lack of leadership in the area. This year, we have given money to enable some farmers to start growing upland rice on the same principle.

That is just one of many thousands of private projects. The students I have taken out there and I have not changed poverty in Africa, but we have helped one small area of Uganda, and we hope to continue to do so. There are many thousands of projects in Britain helping countries throughout the developing world, and I suggest that we harness that tremendous enthusiasm and get them to work with us—rather like the big society idea and the fact that we are asking people out there what laws and regulations they want to see scrapped. Why not ask churches and schools that have their own projects, along with the many other volunteers, to tell us what has worked for them and whether any projects financed by outside aid have failed? That would give us a clearer insight into the matter. Big charities such as Oxfam do fantastic work, but they sometimes get carried away with what they are doing and do not see what is happening in small pockets of the country where the small groups of volunteers are working.

I should like my project to help in that way, by helping the coalition Government to come up with inventive ideas for helping people in Africa and elsewhere. We have the expertise out in Africa. My project in Uganda is in an area not far from Kampala—it is only two and a half hours’ drive away—yet most of the people there had never seen a white person before we started going out to them. As with everything else that the coalition is trying to do, we need to ensure that there is value for money, and that every pound we spend in a developing country gets to where it can make the maximum difference to the real people, and not to corrupt politicians.

Rwanda’s President has a fantastic vision of what he wants his country to be like, and it is possible to see the difference that he has made, year on year. It is a clean country that is improving its environment day by day. In fact, it is the cleanest African country I have ever been to. Much of Kigali has pavements, which few other poor countries would even think of having. That is because the President has a vision of what he wants his country to achieve.

Uganda has oil, but I fear that the people will not benefit from any revenue. Oil could put the country into a completely new ball game, providing money for decent housing, sanitation, education and better health care. We have a duty to persuade Presidents in this situation to use their country’s natural resources to produce wealth to help everyone, not just themselves. I urge the Secretary of State to take this into account whenever he speaks to the leaders of such countries. Those Presidents should enable their countries to become self-sufficient through their own wealth, and give it to the people to spend rather than spending it on their own pet projects. That would create wealth-generating communities, and we would need to provide less aid, which in turn would enable us to help more people in other countries, rather than having to spread the aid too thinly.